If you’ve joined me before, welcome back!
Thank you! I feel welcome!
This trip was a rather large, elaborate extended family vacation including my family of 5, my parents, my 2 sisters and my brother in law and niece. If you're not counting, that's 11 people total with 9 tickets and connected FP+ to keep track of.
Holy cow! I don't think I realized quite how many of you there were! Adding extra people always seems to change your touring style a bit when you're used to travelling with a specific group. We even found this since Nathan and I are used to only worrying about the two of us, and then we did some park touring with his family (group of 7) and my family (group of 8).
I felt like I was constantly checking and updating things on the app or explaining where we had to be and when. I just didn’t have very many of those opportunities to get a picture, or just enjoy the moment.
Understandable! I love and hate the more technologically-based system at WDW now. Definitely has pros and cons. And working with such a large group and their different ideas made a difference I'm sure.
Pretty fabulous-looking family you've got there!
Favorite Character: Moana… which is awesome because guess who’s not in the park and has no merchandise for sale at Disney World???? Try explaining to a 5 year old who has a temper with a hair trigger why you can’t meet her favorite Disney character.
I feel DD here. I—a grown adult—was pretty frustrated that I couldn't meet Moana anywhere on property.
Right now things are going ok… he’s having some issues with learning to drink from cups and bottles and gaining weight, but he’s doing well now and developmentally he’s right where he should be.
Excellent news! What a roller coaster you've all been on!
Our drive quickly hit a snag. Within a few miles of getting on the interstate, we hit a construction zone, then we followed that up with some heavy rain in Louisville and an accident south of there. Based on the GPS arrival time, we lost about 2 hours before we ever got out of Kentucky. It wasn’t the greatest start.
How incredibly frustrating!! We had similar congestion-related frustrations on our second day of driving when we went through DC and Virginia, and we lost SO much time.
I’m normally a cheapskate, but we had so much crap to haul in that I decided to tip bell services and request their help. They loaded a cart up and walked away with our stuff while I was still getting the last few things out.
We made serious use of bell services on our trip since we drove and had all the stuff from the wedding! I hate to pay someone to do something I can do myself, but in this case it was totally worth it!
I suggested walking down the hall and tapping her band on doors until one opens and then see if it is clean. She didn’t appreciate in that idea, so I let it go.
I wonder why she didn't take you up on this!
The good news, since Mom went to the desk with her and Sis1 didn’t physically harm anyone, they gave everyone in Mom’s room and Sis1’s room 2 anytime FP’s for the following day at MK.
The bad news… I’m planning this frickin trip and organizing FP’s and nobody in my room got one.
Jeesh! Always the one who puts in the most work who's the most under-appreciated!
20 minutes later one finally shows up.
Wow, I hope the buses aren’t this bad all week. 
We were watching the clock at this point. We wanted to take the monorail from MK to the Contemporary, but I was starting to think walking might be quicker. On top of having a long wait, our bus driver was slow. Really slow. 28 minutes after we boarded the bus at AKL, we were finally getting off at MK.
Yes. 28 minutes.
Oh man. We had pretty great luck with busses at AKL, but I've heard from most people that they didn't have the same experience. That's wild!
I ended up stuffing myself.
Because buffet.
Naturally.
But then at one point he walked up and took a plate from Sis2 while she literally had the fork in her hand eating from the plate.
This is my absolute biggest pet peeve at buffets! I can't believe it when a server takes a plate you're eating from!
He wouldn’t give them high fives or anything, but he also didn’t cry, so that’s something!
I consider that a win!
This is pretty adorable.
Disney did handle that well. That table basically disappeared. Like literally I look away and look back and the table was gone. I don’t know where it went or how they moved it out of a crowded restaurant so quickly. They managed to secure and completely block the area from view while they cleaned the floor. Had I not seen what happened when it happened, I’d probably never even know.
Wow!
Yeah, Disney seems to have a serious handle on that kind of stuff, with a procedure for every emergency. I'm seriously emetophobic, which means I have an unreasonable pathological fear of vomit, and I rarely see anything bothersome at Disney, not because it doesn't happen I'm sure, but just because of how they deal with it. When we were there in August we walked by a cast member casually standing in Frontierland over a large pile of napkins. Only because I looked closely did I notice that there was a tiny bit of puke at the edge of the pile peeking out. Mostly people walked right by and never would have known the difference.
A bus pulled up just after the fireworks ended, but before the masses could make it from Main Street to the bus stops. We got to sit down on a bus that was about half full for our ride back to AKL.
Nailed it!!
It kind of bothered me that they separated us from the kids, even if just temporarily and obviously security never had eyes on them while they had us distracted going through their security checks. I get why security is there and unfortunately is needed. But after this, I refused to push the stroller to the side for the rest of the trip until I had emptied my pockets and I was getting ready to step through the metal detector myself. I had a few security officers who didn’t seem to like the fact that I kept my stroller in the way of the line, but I simply told them the stroller was staying with me until it was my turn to go through the detector and they didn’t really push the issue.
I don't even have kids and this rubs me the wrong way...
Turns out, DS wanted to wear a blue band (his was green). That means he put on LG’s band instead of his that morning. So it took a little bit of time, and I snapped at him for putting on the wrong band. I was in the wrong and probably a little too hard on him, but the CM who came to help got him a card to use for the day and it didn’t end up being a big deal.
These things happen! As do those kind of too-strong reactions by parents. Good for Disney for getting it sorted without too much trouble!
We did enjoy the show, it was nice, but it just didn’t have the same feel as the old show at the train station. The kids all enjoyed seeing the characters come out and it wasn’t a bad way to start the day.
I agree. Pleasant. Liked the characters. Just not the same.
Our plan had been to go to Winnie the Pooh next, but decided that another dark ride might not be the best course of action. Niece wanted to do the carousel. As much as it killed me to do something like the carousel 20 minutes after RD, we decided that doing something she wants to do might be the best choice.
Probably a good call! It's hard to sacrifice those early morning touring hours, but those first few Disney experiences can make or break a trip for a kid.
Lovely!! And Cinderella is looking particularly nice this day.
Niece has always been very slow to warm up to anyone other than Sis, BiL and Mom… she’s not a fan of Dad, can’t stand me and was slow to interact with DW. It was nice, because by the end of the week she was having a lot of fun with all of us and not acting so shy and afraid of everyone.
Awesome! The magic of a Disney vacation at work!
By the end of the week, we’d have more Mickey shaped straws from lemonade slushes than you could ever imagine.
These things are crazy! They multiply like rabbits! I don't know where we got all of ours!
When it was finally time to check in for lunch, we headed towards the Beast’s castle off in the distance. We got to the stand to check in only to find out we were standing in line behind the representative of a dance group with a reservation for 32!
Holy cow!!
Sis didn’t want to pre-order since she needs gluten free. I think she wanted to be more hands on about making sure she was eating safe food since she got sick from cross contamination on our last trip.
I feel this! I'm gluten free also, though probably less sensitive than your sister (i.e. I avoid gluten very strictly, but I gave in on this trip for the first time and ate the churros at Tiffins lounge, which are GF but aren't made in a dedicated fryer so there's a high change of cross-contamination, and I don't recall reacting to them.) The first time we ate at BOG I didn't pre-order, but then I risked it this last time and it was okay for me.
I can actually do quite well in the heat (love Vegas in the summer - at night 95+ degrees) - I don't like the humidity and the melting feeling. I fully admit to being spoiled by not having to 'deal' with any weather my entire life. 
On your drive to the world without much incident. Not a great start when you are 2 hours behind from the get-go.
Hope you're having a great start to your week!
