Destination-D, WDW May 12-17 OKW/BLT – Final Trip Wrap Up

[franandaj]

That update was rivetting. I went back to read it twice and could have easily sat here with reading it over and over and over again.

Thank you so much for being so generous with your time and sharing all the individual snippets that had this disney tragic hanging by the edge of her seat.

I'm glad that you enjoyed all the little stories. I knew from the last one I wouldn't remember a thing if I didn't take notes. I'm so glad I did because even with the notes, it was just enough to shake the rest of the story out of my brain and relate it to you all!

OK..I think the price of admission would be covered with that duck story.. I love that...

I know wasn't that just so cute!

Agree, too cute! I'm amazed they got them to wear hats in the end!

The guy who was hosting the panel had hosted quite a few others and I thought the most hilarious part was when they were relating the part about the hats (they told it much better than I did), which they dragged out for all it's humor value...but at the end when he made this very soft comment..."yeah a lot like the people here with pins" it was really funny, fans can get unruly!

If I had seemed a tad green and jealous before...let me just say it is NOTHING compared to seeing those pictures and reading about you listening to Richard Sherman!

I really wish I were there....but your TR is a very (not so close) good second best.

I'm so pleased you got to enjoy so much history and memories about The Way Disney Were.

You might want to consider that 2013 to conincide with the 2013 Expo!

Wonderful..so glad they did the concert on the alst evening in WDW as having it on the first night in DLR made the 2nd night end 'flat'.
After Destination D-Disneyland, I got the DVD about the Sherman Brothers, "The Boys" ,and would recommend it to any fan. Just a wonderful story..very moving .

I'm so now looking forward to the Expo!

Loving this trip report! StarTours, Little Mermaid and D23 coverage all rolled into one.

Hopefully we'll do the AP preview of the LM in a couple hours.

What an amazing trip report! Thanks so much for sharing. I have enjoyed this so much on my "bonus" day off today from an unused snow day. Makes me wish so much I was in Florida today.

Glad you enjoyed it!

 

[Leshaface]

Okay i'm a little late..sorry!

The new Star Tours ride looks AWESOME! I CANNOT WAIT to ride it! I probably should know this already, but is the ride 3D? Like, do you need to wear glasses?

 

[franandaj]

Okay i'm a little late..sorry!

The new Star Tours ride looks AWESOME! I CANNOT WAIT to ride it! I probably should know this already, but is the ride 3D? Like, do you need to wear glasses?

It is 3D and one of the scenarios it's quite evident and really cool. They tell you to put on your flight glasses when you're about to start your journey.

 

[franandaj]

Day 5, Part 1

As we went to sleep last night tapping our toes to, “There’s a great big beautiful tomorrow…”, we had large plans.

1) Get up at 6AM
2) Breakfast at the Wave (even though we didn’t have ADRs),
3) EMH at DHS including TSMM
4) Check out Star Tours for soft opening

This was all going to happen before 10AM and we would have the rest of the day to visit all sorts of other attractions.



We woke up at 6:30 and decided to sleep some more, we gave up on EMH. At 8:30 we decided to watch the shuttle launch on TV at 9AM. At 9:20 when we woke up again, we decided we better just take it easy and follow the original plan!

I made breakfast (as planned) we had French Toast, scrambled eggs and bacon.

Around 11:00AM we headed for the bus stop. We went to the Polynesian and the Grand Floridian on our trip to DHS.

We arrived at DHS around 12:30PM

We checked TSMM for FPs but they were for a return time of 8:00-9:00PM, so we decided to head over towards Star Tours.

As we headed towards Star Tours I saw this sign and it reminded me of something that the imagineers told us in the seminar. This sign caused a lot of discussion. They weren’t sure if they should have the words Tatooine Traders in English only or this other language that appears above. Evidently because of the storyline, it would not make sense for the alien language to be here, because at this time of the story there would have been not presence of this alien species on Tatooine. However the imagineers decided to go for it because it looked cool. Within 24 hours of it being live, someone posted on one of the boards that “they have Tatooine Traders in ‘whatever alien language’ on the wall outside the shop. That’s so cool, but there wouldn’t have been any ‘insert alien name here’ at that time in the story!” I laughed when I saw that because the fans really know their stuff!

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[franandaj]

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The wait was about 30 minutes, but what they did was gave us the equivalent of a handicapped FP. We could come back in half an hour and go through the HA line instead of having to wait in line. We went inside Tatooine Traders, I bought a shirt with Kermit on it that read, “come to the green side”. and then I rode over to RnRC to get a couple FPs. Some shots outside the queue

They didn’t allow us to take any pictures inside the queue, but it was very similar to the DL queue that I posted earlier last week. After the ride (which was awesome!) I was hungry and something on my way to RnRC and back gave me a hankerin’ for a Hot Dog. I checked the menu on allears.net and sure enough the backlot express had a hot dog on the menu and a burger, so Fran was happy too! What can you say, it’s a hot dog!

We went on the Great Movie Ride next. Of course it was too dark for most of my pictures to come out decently!

My FPs were almost up for RnRC so we headed in that direction, but took some time out to ride

It had been a long time since Fran had been on the ride with me and she actually walked through the queue! However, we had to take a couple breaks for her to take a rest, so I snapped pictures. It was nice that the crowds were light that day!

After that I used my FPs on RnRC and then did it once through the single rider line. Here is one for old age! This was the first time I’d been on a Roller Coaster since getting my permanent seeing glasses. I didn’t think to take them off until after we were launched into the upside down loop de loop! After my first trip, I stopped off with Fran (patiently reading her book) and left my dangly earrings and glasses with her. I should have taken off all my earrings, because later that day I realized that all the backs had fallen off my earrings!

After that we headed back to the room since we had a 7:10 reservation at Citricos’.

 

[DisneyFirefly]

It looks like you guys had a good day, even with the late start!

 

[Hawleys]

Hopefully we'll do the AP preview of the LM in a couple hours.

Yea! I haven't spoiled myself by reading ahead. Can't wait!

 

[PrincessInOz]

Sounds like an awesome day! Glad you didn't lose your earrings....were you able to replace the backs of them?

 

[Wonder2008]

I haven't had computer access for a few days, so I'm backing up a bit back to the Destination D event.

Your pictures of the Fantasyland expansion were great. I'm so glad you got that aerial view of the site right now.

One story I remember from the two panels was about extending the Disneyland Monorail across West Street. There needed to be a certain distance between beam supports, but it wouldn't be wide enough for a city street to pass under. So, they made a median in the middle of the road which Anaheim required Disney to maintain. So, after all of that, one of the panelists said something like "at least we let them keep the road!"

Your coverage of the Richard Sherman concert was great. I really agree with you in that they know their audience with Dreamfinder's appearance. It might not have been as "big" as Captain Jack at the first D23 Expo, but it was quite a surprise. I don't get teary-eyed very often, but I certainly did.

Thank you again for sharing your pictures from that great weekend.
Robert

 

[franandaj]

Day 5, Part 2

We arrived back at BLT around 6PM. To get to our reservation at Citrico’s we needed to leave a about 6:30. Fran was really tired, the last time she went on that many rides was a long time ago, and she definitely needed a nap. When I got back to the room I checked online and there was a 7:40 reservations available for Citrico’s so I changed it to give us another ½ an hour. While I was tired, I wasn’t exhausted enough to warrant resting and we had been at BLT for three nights and still had not seen anything besides the elevator, our room and the hallway. So I decided that I was going to go about the property and take some pictures and at least take in the sights.

The carpeting in the hallways was very cute.

Then I went up to the Top of the World Lounge to check out the view.

After running around the property I could tell there was no getting Fran up before our reservation and going to a signature was really futile in her exhausted state. We decided to chance a walk in at ‘Ohana and given the fact that we would show up so late it would pretty much be no problem. I cancelled Citricos online and started the “wake up process” this can take anywhere from 30-90 minutes!

It wasn’t a problem. We arrived about quarter to nine and they gave us a pager and told us it would be 15-20 minutes. Within 5-10 minutes the pager went off and we were seated about 1 row away from the windows. The brought us this bread which looked quite familiar

We had some cocktails

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[franandaj]

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Salad, Chicken Wings, Potstickers and Dipping Sauces. These were all really good! The salad had some sort of sweet Asian style dressing on it. I LOVE potstickers and had to really exercise control not to completely devour these because I wanted to have room for the rest of dinner!

For our main, they served noodles and vegetables on the side. They were good, especially since I’m a noodle-aholic, but I was getting very full and wanted to enjoy all the meats.

The first server was really good about letting me take a pictures of the meat on the skewer. I think these are pieces of chicken, but now it’s really hard to tell!

Yup! It’s chicken!

They were rather generous with the shrimp

The top sirloin was very good! We waited a while for this, but I wasn’t going to move on without it.

I know there was some Pork Tenderloin in there too Maybe that was served with the chicken.

I was totally stuffed, but nothing was going to stop me from eating this!

Ohana Bread Pudding!!!!! OMG! This stuff it TOTALLY to die for! Everything that people say about it is true. I would totally come here just to eat this, but the rest of the meal was really good too!

They turned the lights down while we had dessert and piped in the music for Wishes and we could see the fireworks (kind of) through the windows. I was in such a food coma by that point it really didn’t matter. Here is a show of the grill where they cook the skewers.

Day 6, Part 1

This was our final day at the world. We packed everything up and this time we actually kept track of everything that we put in the OL on the website where they let you store this information. Thank god it won’t be a mystery when we go in October “Are there ponchos in there? Did I put those canned goods in or did we take them in the suitcase?” I forgot to put my dish washing brush back in there, but that was easy to put in the suitcase.

Anyways the same gentleman from Bell Services who brought our bags was the one who picked them up. We checked our bags at the airline desk, our carryons were held in Bell Services storage and we were on our way to Epcot, it was only about 10AM!

The Flower and Garden show had ended two days before and I was disappointed that we didn’t get to go in the butterfly house. Well there’s always next year’s trip! But I was pleased to find that the Topiaries were still up.

Evidently these guys were late to the party, sometime to do with Pixar having to give their approval before they could display them.

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[franandaj]

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As soon as we got in I raced over to the Land to get us FPs for Soarin. Fran has never been on it at WDW. I only went on the WDW version for my first time on the last trip mainly because of that whole “I’ve done it at the original, why do I need to do it here?” mentality. Now that she has all bionic parts, she will go on more rides. We met up in Mouse Gears where I scored a nice pair of Mickey CZ earrings Then I headed over to Mission Space to ride the Orange Team while she worked out something that was going on with the cashier and gift cards. I didn’t have time to quibble over how much was left on the cards, I had rides to go on and a lunch reservation!

But I did stop for these cuties!

Finally arriving at Mission Space

We headed towards World Showcase after my journey to Mars, stopping to admire these beauties.

I’ve always seen other people’s pictures of this, I’m so glad that now I have my own!

I love these guys!

Here’s Mexico

Norway

China

Africa

This one’s for you Usnuz if you’re still following!

And Germany…our destination

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[franandaj]

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The restaurant didn’t open until noon and there was a HUGE line of people who evidently also had reservations at noon. They were even taking walk ups, it wasn’t that busy at all. We were given a pager and shortly thereafter were seated. If you want a private lunch, Germany is not the place to come. They seat everyone in parties of eight, and everyone meets new friends while dining. We were seated with a couple from New Jersey and their kid, and a young couple from the Midwest whose uncle had taken them as a treat. We had a good time and the food was very good.

Both us started off with a sampler of German beers. I liked the last three best and Fran liked the first one, but we didn’t share! They were all really good!

This was my first plate of food

It was made up from the following:

Some green salad with some sort of German dressing. I skipped the chickpea salad, but did opt for some cole slaw, tomato salad and cucumber salad. I also skipped the beets.

I tried the various wursts, pickles, meatballs, and a little Potato salad, but I skipped the macaroni salad, the other one was a sausage salad.

Definitely the Pretzel Rolls! Fran got a bowl of the Cauliflower soup and while I am not a fan of Cauliflower, it was good and creamy and only had a small hint of Cauliflower flavor. I only had a bite of this, there was too much else that was good!

Next plate was the hot items!

I had the chicken schnitzel with the brown sauce, a piece of the roasted chicken and some green beans. I skipped the meatballs since they were the same as the cold ones. There was also some poached salmon, but I’m not a salmon fan.

I had some of both kinds of sausages with the sauerkraut, and a couple potatoes

I skipped this round of potatoes and pretzel bread, there were too many other yummy things to try!

I did get some of the roast pork, and despite my asking for a little slice, they always give me too much!

And if you couldn’t find ANYTHING else that you liked on the buffet at least they had macaroni and cheese, which I took a little bit of, and it was very good!

But this is what I wanted. Spaetzle and Cheese!

Now here’s where I begin to break down. I could barely finish my hot plate of food. I had to take a real breather. All this goodness to choose from and here is my measly dessert plate.

But I enjoyed the live entertainment.

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[franandaj]

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Finally we rolled ourselves out of there, I was really glad that we picked Germany for our last meal. It had been almost 15 years since I ate there last, but after I read Bonnie’s (bangzoom6877) Dining Review I really wanted to go back there. The worst part is that all of our TS meals this trip were buffet-all-you-can-eat style! I think I’ve gained 10 pounds at least, but wait until you see the next stop!

At Disneyland we used to have these things called Cheshire Tails. They were marshmallows on a stick dipped in caramel and covered with a candy like coating. Unfortunately on my last visit there, I was told they no longer make them. You can get Tigger Tails at the candy shop near Pooh’s ride and all the marshmallows on a stick whether coated in chocolate or whatever have a layer of caramel. Not so at WDW! All week I searched out caramel chocolate marshmallow treats to no avail, but the answer to my mystery was just about to be revealed!

Karamelkuche!

The only thing that I could think of was that when Werther’s came into Epcot all the other shops in the world couldn’t sell things to compete. Here was all my chocolate caramel goodness. Now I know that we need to visit Epcot on the first day of our trips to the world and stock up!

Boy did we stock up! Chocolate Caramel Rice Krispy Treat, 3 Caramels, 3 Chocolate Caramels, 3 piknwheels, Caramel Popcorn, and a few other things too! $50 later we had a big bag of yummy caramel goodies that we brought home and enjoyed for about a week after our trip. However this was mine for now. I was too stuffed to eat it right away, but I saved it until we got back to the hotel and ate it while waiting for our ME bus to arrive!

We finished our trip around the world

Here’s Morocco

France

Now notice this little lizard enjoying the topiary. I took so many #@$#^% shots of this little guy trying to get him with his red throat in a bubble that I ended up wiping out my battery of the camera!

Crossing the bridge to England

And in England

Here’s Captain Hook….oh yeah, that was the picture where my camera battery died!

So we moved on to Soarin’ where we plugged my scooter and Camera in at an outlet and went down to ride the ride. Now in California when you get inside the building, you go down a hallway turn left or right and there is a small queue before your go to the boarding area. We went up and up and up and still further up. We finally came to a CM who told us to wait just a moment before taking our FPs. We were sent to a queue in a long, long, long hallway.

Now, our ME bus leaves at 4PM, we decided we should be back at the resort at 3:30PM so that meant on the monorail by 3:00PM, which then meant we should head for the exit of Epcot at 2:30PM. It was now 2:25PM!!!!!!! Yikes! The line didn’t move, for about 15-20 minutes, I was starting to panic a little bit, and finally we started moving. I didn’t realize how big the loading area was, and soon we were being sent to the boarding area. We rode our flight and decided to meet upstairs, me taking the escalator and she would wait for the elevator. Just as I unplugged my scooter and put away the cord, and got the camera secured, she came riding up. We dashed for the exit, but I did stop to get this shot with better lighting than this morning!

And with that we were on our way to the monorail, the Contemporary and ME. We made it with 5-10 minutes to spare, but I really don’t like cutting things that close! On our way to the airport we stopped at two other resorts, and I was thrilled to get this small preview our next trip.

So that about wraps it up. The trip was waaaay too short! I’ve been home now for about three weeks and already have two more trips booked plus a few weekends at Disneyland, and in about two months the D23 Expo is coming up! I have nothing to complain about, but I miss it already! Maybe we’ll go spend a day at Disneyland and DCA once the So Cal Annual passholders are blocked out!

Anyways, thanks for reading! Catch you again in October when I’ll be a live as I can from WWoHP, BCV and VWL.

 

[DisneyFirefly]

Awwwwww I'm so sad it's over! It looks like you guys had a wonderful time, though

 

[supersuperwendy]

Awesome pictures!!! We haven't been to the Biergarten in years so I just booked a dinner for December!!! I love the BLT pics...I can't wait to stay there again someday.

 

[Doug7856]

Thanks! A very enjoyable trip report!!

 

[ACDSNY]

Great pics of Epcot, some day we'll have to go back to the Flower & Garden Festival, it's so pretty!

 

[PrincessInOz]

T'was a quick trip but fantastic!

Sad it's come to an end...but there are so many more trips and TRs to come.


Looking forward to more food porn, which I know will always be a feature of your TRs.

 

[remed1978]

Thank you so much for sharing! What a fantastic trip! Can't wait to hear about your future visits!