It Really is a Whole New World...Mother Daughter May 2017 TR! (Updated 8/26!)

Well we're booked for September...sort of. This morning I went on to verify there were still rooms available, and noticed the price of the package in my cart had dropped significantly, like over $1000! I totally jumped on it, verified the details, and booked immediately. YES! But then a message popped up saying that booking was down for today. Hm. Odd.

So I checked MDE and the trip was there, but only the room, everything else disappeared! HA! I ended up calling Disney, and the CM I spoke to was soooo confused, he couldn't figure out how I had even booked part of the package since all of the bookings are down today. So now I have to call back tomorrow to fix it and add back in the tickets. BUT...the room is there, so I guess we are officially going back!

Now if only they'll give me the price of the package I saw this morning...
 
Part 10: Steak and Songs!
May 11th

I woke up from my nap early and decided to swing by Crews Cup to pick up a grapefruit beer to bring back to the room and enjoy out on the balcony while my mom still slept. I love being able to do this, especially with our view this trip! Can I remind you of our view?


Pure happiness!

I sat out there for a while jotting down trip notes. My mom eventually came out to join me and we chatted a bit about how lucky we’ve been all trip and how excited we were for the evening!

It eventually became time for us to get ready for dinner. Little side note. I know I’ve mentioned this a ton already, but we loved loved loved the barn door between the vanity area and the room in the renovated rooms! It made it SO much easier to get ready and have actual privacy.

Ok, back to the trip report. After getting ready, we headed out and made our way downstairs a minute or two before 5 for our reservation at the Yachtsman Steakhouse!

We hadn’t eaten there in years. Actually, dare I say decades? I think the last time we ate there was possibly when I was in high school in the 90s. Eek!

Also, on our trip in September, we ate a bunch at Crews Cup, and they have this window looking into Yachtsman displaying the steaks which looked so good, so we decided we had to come back to dine there this trip!

When we arrived they were still setting up, so asked us to wait in the hall, but a minute later they called us in and brought us back to the table. We had a great table next to the window, perfect for people watching!

We ordered a bottle of wine, and took a very quick look at the menu since we already pretty much knew what we wanted to get so didn’t need long!

We both ended up getting the 6oz fillet, and then got the mac and cheese and mushroom sides to share.

The meal started out with a bread basket and roasted garlic, YUM!!!!


Then came pure happiness...



Oh my goodness, it was amazing. But so much food! Neither of us could finish it, we tried for a solid 1.5 hours but ended up throwing in the towel and getting a doggy bag.

By the time we wrapped up at Yachtsman, it was almost time to head over to our next activity for the night, so we ran upstairs to put our food in the fridge, then made our way back out and over to the Boardwalk!

This evening we were going back to Jellyrolls! This is one of our favorite places, we always make sure to go at least once per trip. We ended up getting there around 7:15, but as usual, they weren’t letting people in yet. We were glad we got there early though, a crowd of people started forming behind us shortly after we arrived. We’ve never seen so many people there that early before!

They let us in around 7:20, and my mom and I went to grab a table at the front and center. Perfect. My mom had brought a list of songs she wanted this time, so we wanted easy access to the stage!

The nights start off slow there, they didn’t actually start playing until around 8:30. This night was an especially slow start. Usually before the players come out, a few people have already put requests up, but no one had that night. This lead to a very long, slightly awkward start to the show where they had to explain to everyone how to request songs. Even after explaining people still didn’t get it and would just randomly shout out songs they wanted to here!

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When they did finally get going and people finally understood how to request songs, it took a very oddly religious turn. Some group was apparently very into songs about Jesus, and kept requesting them over and over. It was fine for a song or two, but after a while we were ready for some different music! So my mom and I started putting up our requests, which the crowd didn’t seem to appreciate.

Let’s just say it was a very particular crowd who only wanted to hear country music and nothing else. It was actually a bit sad, during the non-country songs, I looked at the crowd in the mirror above the stage and so many of them were sitting there stone faced looking miserable, all the while my mom and I and the table next to us were belting out the lyrics at the top of our lungs. I completely understand having your tastes, but come on people, there's no need to pout!!


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The guys playing that night were great though and did a fantastic job mixing up the music. As the night went on the crowd changed and requests came in that even I didn’t know! Haha. But we stuck with it and kept putting up our napkins.

Before we knew it, it was last call. Wow, the night went by fast! Before stopping, one of the players shouted out to my mom and I since we had been there the whole night and asked if we had any requests, so I requested a final Tom Petty song to end the night. It was awesome!

I’m happy that I made it to close this time around! Sadly, usually I’m ready to head back to the room before my mom. She loves Jellyrolls SO much, and well, I just love sleep so much.

After closing out our tab, we slowly made our way home. We were surprised to see how many CMs were out working at 2 in the morning! Guess it’s a 24 hour job to keep that area looking great!

We finally made our way back to our room and turned in for the night. We didn’t set our alarms this time around since we planned on sleeping in as late as we could!

Day 2 New things!

-New opening at MK

-More new Flower and Garden

 
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Sounds like a great start to a fun day at MK!

Too bad about the crowd at JellyRolls, but at least you got to enjoy yourselves.. that's the main thing, everyone got something they liked.
 
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Sounds like a great start to a fun day at MK!

Too bad about the crowd at JellyRolls, but at least you got to enjoy yourselves.. that's the main thing, everyone got something they liked.

Repeat Splash rides is an awesome way to start the day! Highly recommend it :)

It was an interesting crowd that night, but it was still so much fun. Those guys put on such an amazing show. It always blows my mind that they actually know some of the songs people request, such talent!
 
Part 11: Dreaming of Jackhammers
May 12th

Our plan had been to sleep in as late as we could this morning. This turned out to be a massive fail. The YC was undergoing refurbishment while we were there, and for the previous days we could hear some light noises of buzzing and an occasional bang from the construction, but nothing loud at all, more just background noise. Well, the one day of the trip we decide to sleep in, it seems the construction crew decided to work directly under our room.

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Oh my goodness. It was so loud!

We were sound asleep, when suddenly at 7AM there come these huge bangs from downstairs. Those jolted us awake. Construction wasn’t supposed to start until 9, so we were super annoyed. The banging continued for the next few hours, and right at 9 the REAL noise started. Apparently when they say construction doesn’t start until 9, they mean the loudest of the construction, not all of it. Ugh.

At 9 that buzzing we had heard earlier in the week, which then was just an easy to ignore background noise, became unbearably loud. It sounded like they were trying to saw through the floor!

We decided it was time to stop trying to catch up on sleep and just head out for the day. Our plan for the day was to sleep in, which obviously didn’t happen, then do something completely new: head down to the pool!

We had talked about doing this on so many of our previous trips, but we always ended up deciding to head to a park instead!

So we got changed and sunblocked and headed out of the room.

When we stayed at the YC in September, we loved making use of the staircase by our room to get downstairs. So this morning we decided to see if we could find a staircase by our room to use. Surprise, there was one just two doors down from us at the end of the hall. So we went in, but when we got down to the 2nd floor there was a big sign saying Cast Members Only Beyond This Point. Oops.

So we went up to the 3rd floor to exit and walk over to the elevators. I open the door to the 3rd floor and see…woah…a job site. Yeah, we completely forgot about the construction below us.

There were no walls anywhere, plastic sheets hanging all over the place, the floor was down to the concrete, in fact everything was removed down to the structure, it was a mess.

My mom and I stood there for a moment in shock, then slowly backed our way into the staircase before anyone saw us standing there in our bathing suites!

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We made our way back up to the 4th floor and headed over to the elevator, completely abandoning all plans to find a quicker route!

Finally, we made it down to the pool, and after so little sleep, heading down to relax at the pool ended up being so nice. We got there about 20 minutes after they opened, there were a handful of people already there, but it wasn't crowded at all. We found our chairs, and decided to just lay out for a bit since we were still super tired.

Eventually we started getting a bit too hot, so hopped into the pool to cool off.

This time we brought our camera!




We brought a ball down to play with so played catch for a while, then did a few loops on the lazy river, and eventually went to lay out a bit more. It was such a great and relaxing morning activity.

Around noon we decided to head back up to the room for lunch and to get ready for our park of the day!

We ended up just eating the leftovers from dinner the previous night for lunch, and I swung by Crews Cup on the way up from the pool to grab my grapefruit beer! We enjoyed our mini meal out on the balcony before getting ready for our afternoon!

Due to the construction noise still going on, we didn’t stay in the room very long and ended up heading out a lot earlier than we had planned.

We made it to the bus stop around 1:30, and had a bit of a wait for the bus. At least the board was working so we knew we’d have a 15 minute wait. Guess we can’t always have amazing bus luck!

Soon enough we saw the bus we were waiting for, the Animal Kingdom bus! Off we went to our next adventure!

 
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Part 12: There are a lot of characters out there!
May 12th

We got to AK a lot earlier than we had planned, so we didn’t have FP+ lined up for another hour. At first we didn’t think this was a big deal since in September we came to AK around the same time of day without any FP+ and all the rides were pretty much walk on all afternoon except for the safari which was I think a 15 minute wait. So we figured while we waited for our FP+ time, we’d just hop on a ride or two. HA. Great plans, for September, not so great plans for May!

We got through security and were surprised at the lines just to scan bands. Eventually we made it through and into the park to see we had once again picked a park full of cheerleaders! Yay! On top of the crowds of cheerleaders, it seemed a ton of school districts in central Florida had field trips to AK that day. We counted 16 different schools!

Kinda bummed I never had a cool school field trip like that…

Oh well, nothing we could do about the crowds, and we knew that AK can feel super crowded while still having low wait times, so we had our fingers crossed that would be the case that day. Yeah. We were wrong again. I pulled up MDE to see which rides had short waits, and it was none. Absolutely none. EE was 70 minutes, Kali was 120, the safari was 60, and Dinosaur was 60. Wow. Compared to the fall when EE was 10 (actually walk on), and the safari was like 15, this was nuts!

Alright, change of plans. We decided we might as well just do some photopass pictures instead while waiting for our FP+. So we headed over to our first photographer!


Cheerleader photobomb!

After our pictures, we decided to wander around to see if we could find other photographers. They didn’t have the usual one with EE in the background, so we just took our own picture there.



We did eventually find a photographer on the way out of Asia to Dinoland, so stopped to get our pictures!


This one was actually pretty cool, the animated version has snow falling!

After wrapping up with that photographer, my mom really wanted to go find a shady place to sit since it was once again a crazy hot day. So we made our way over to Dinoland, and found a shady path with benches to hang out at.

We took some pictures back on the trail while waiting for our FP+



We were there for a few minutes when suddenly we see a duck…a Donald Duck!

We figured we might as well go say hi since we still had time before our FP+, so got in the line that had already formed to meet him.






By the time we wrapped up with Donald it was time for our first FP+ of the day, Dinosaur! We were excited to see it since it had also been down in September. We meandered our way over and got there just in time for it to shut down. Yay!

Ok, not yay. Big fat BOOOO. It was so stinking hot that day, I think the high was 98, and when the ride goes down, they don’t let anyone into the building, they make you stand out in the sun. Ick.

We didn’t really have anything else to do, so we decided to just wait it out, so got in line behind about 3 other groups. The CM’s had us stand back a little bit from the FP+ scanners, which was just dumb because this group with about 10 people pushed past to ask the CM about when it would open, and then decided to just stay there in front of all of us already waiting.

Yes, I know, only 10 people, no big deal. But still. We’d been there for about 15 minutes at that point, so it was really obnoxious for these people to just roll up and jump in front of everyone.

Ok, done with my rant.

Turns out my mom decided to document us waiting...haha, love it!



After about a 25-30 minute wait, the ride opened up again! Yay! We made our way through the queue and to the pre-show.

We had expected the pre-show to be updated when it was down for refurbishment in the fall, but it seemed the same to us! Then again, I think the last time we rode Dinosaur was in 2013, so it’s totally possible we just don’t remember.

After the preshow we got in the line for the ride, and once again we were put in the front row! Yay!

So I had a temporary lapse of memory, and had thought the picture was taken at the very end of the ride where the dinorsaur drops down from above and the car drops to miss it. Yeah, it’s been a few years…

Anywho, I love making faces for ride photos, so during that part of the ride stuck out my tongue at the dino for what I assume will be an awesome picture. Well, come to exit the ride to see the picture is in a completely different place! Ha!



Notice how confuse I look? That’s the “wait, is the picture here?” look.

After Dinosaur, we had a bit of a wait til our next FP+, so my mom wanted to find a shady place to sit down. First however, gift shop! While exiting Dinosaur I saw a shirt I HAD to have…




Yeah, I love it.

After getting the shirt we went outside and found a water fountain to fill up our bottles, then made our way to the 2nd exit store. We couldn’t help but to laugh that they make you walk through two stores to get out…guess they really want to move all that dino merchandise!

We exited the second store just in time to see Goofy and Pluto strolling by! We waved, at them as they walked by, then made our way to a shady table near the store. After a short rest I suggested we got see where Goofy and Pluto went and maybe stop to say hi, so we headed off in the directly they were going.

It was easy to find them, and since we still had some time until our next FP+ we decided to get into line to meet them. It was actually a really nice wait. It was all in the shade and had fans, so it felt a lot cooler. Much better than the wait for Dinosaur! Have I mentioned how hot it was? Yeah, upper 90s was a bit too hot for those of us coming out of a northern winter!

The wait ended up being maybe 20 minutes, but soon it was our turn to meet Goofy and Pluto!!!






After our pictures it was about time for our next FP+, so we made our way around to Asia. For our next ride!
 
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Hi I've just starting reading your TR (as of yesterday) and it's a really great read. Thanks for all of the photos too! What a great relationship you and your mum have...I'd love a like-minded travel buddy like that. We'll be staying at BCV on our next trip and can't wait to explore YC while we are there. Your photos of the resort are gorgeous. Thanks again :goodvibes:goodvibes:goodvibes
 
Part 13: I don't speak cow, I speak whale!
May 12th


We got to EE just in time for our FP+, but my mom decided she needed to use the facilities before riding, so off we went to find the nearest bathrooms. It actually took a while to find them, thanks to the fantastic theming of AK and the massive crowds, we probably walked by a few before finally spotting one almost in Africa!

After using the restrooms we made our way back to Asia to use our FP+ for EE. We got there just as one of the large groups got there, so ended up with probably 50-60 people in front of us. Grr. We were certainly not having the best timing!

We ended up having about a 20 minute wait even with the FP+ for EE, but at least it was cooler in the queue, and we didn’t really have much else we wanted to do before our next FP+ so it was a good to eat up some time.

Before long we were at the loading area and got a seat in the middle of the train.



I love this ride, so much fun!

After getting off we filtered through the gift store again, where I decided to do some shopping since we still had almost 30 minutes until our next FP+. I ended up getting my dad a shirt that says “expedition leader” which I’m sure he’ll love.

The shopping didn’t take up much time, so we decided afterwards to start making our way in the direction of our next FP+ and stop at any photopass photographers we saw. We only found one, but she was great and took a ton of pictures for us!




She had us do this one pretending to be overheated...we didn't really have to pretend...

As we were walking away from the photographer, I just happened to turn and look the opposite way and saw King Louie and Baloo walking towards us! I told my mom we should follow them to get pictures, and since we had time left until our next FP+ she happily agreed.

We followed them to their meet and great area, and got in the line that had already formed. It was a bit of a wait, but soon enough it was my turn! My mom decided to sit this picture out.



By the time we wrapped up with those silly creatures, it was time for our FP+! Yay! So we headed over to Africa to the Safari!

Once again we had a bit of a wait, this time almost 30 minutes even with the FP+. At that point we were getting tired and hot, so were relieved when it was our turn to load and we could sit down!

I wasn’t expecting the safari to be very active being the afternoon and with the unseasonably warm weather, but boy was I wrong! We usually do the safari first thing in the morning to see the animals more active, but this afternoon was the most active we’ve ever seen!

From the very beginning we had animals all over the place.

This guy kept mooing as he scratched his neck.

One guy in the back of our vehicle decided to start mooing back at him, and the CM was quick to pick up on it and goes “sir, I didn’t realize you spoke cow” to which the man replied, “I don’t, I only speak whale.”

HAAAAA!

Ok, bad joke aside. It was an amazing safari, and we saw so many animals we rarely do, like the warthogs, and the cheetahs.




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The vehicle in front of us even got stuck for about 5 minutes because a rhino decided to plant himself smack dab in the middle of the road and she couldn’t get around him!

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It was a great ride, and by the time it was over, we had about 30 minutes until our dinner reservation, but we were getting hungry and wanted to sit in the AC so off we went to Tiffins to see if we could be seated early!
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Hi I've just starting reading your TR (as of yesterday) and it's a really great read. Thanks for all of the photos too! What a great relationship you and your mum have...I'd love a like-minded travel buddy like that. We'll be staying at BCV on our next trip and can't wait to explore YC while we are there. Your photos of the resort are gorgeous. Thanks again :goodvibes:goodvibes:goodvibes

Thank you so much! Yeah, it's great that my mom and I travel so well together, we're so like minded it makes vacationing with her so easy!
 
That stinks that you weren't able to sleep in!

Glad you had a nice morning at the pool!

Great pics around AK and such cute character pics!

Wow the park was definitely crowded!
 
Can I remind you of our view?

Still beautiful!! I love it!

I sat out there for a while jotting down trip notes.

I always think I'm going to do this and I never do :sad2:

Sadly, usually I’m ready to head back to the room before my mom. She loves Jellyrolls SO much, and well, I just love sleep so much.

I feel like this will be me and my mom in October. I'm not a night owl by any stretch of the imagination.

Oh my goodness. It was so loud!

this is my nightmare. I'm sorry you didn't get to sleep in, this would drive me nuts!

My mom and I stood there for a moment in shock, then slowly backed our way into the staircase before anyone saw us standing there in our bathing suites!

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:rotfl2::rotfl2:Best use of this gif ever, I'm cracking up!

Soon enough we saw the bus we were waiting for, the Animal Kingdom bus! Off we went to our next adventure!

Yes! Animal time...my favorite!

Kinda bummed I never had a cool school field trip like that…

I have a friend in Miami whose kids go nearly every year...usually to AK or Epcot. Where I went to school, we had theme park field trips that were awesome, but Disney World?? That will always be the coolest, and I will always be so jealous.

Oh well, nothing we could do about the crowds, and we knew that AK can feel super crowded while still having low wait times, so we had our fingers crossed that would be the case that day. Yeah. We were wrong again. I pulled up MDE to see which rides had short waits, and it was none. Absolutely none. EE was 70 minutes, Kali was 120, the safari was 60, and Dinosaur was 60. Wow. Compared to the fall when EE was 10 (actually walk on), and the safari was like 15, this was nuts!

Oh my gosh...this sounds like my departure day. All week my crowds were low, my AK days were amazing, and then on departure day I couldn't even get fast passes (I'd waited b/c i wasn't sure which park I'd choose to go to) and the lines were insane, everything over an hour wait, and it was the week that single rider line was down for EE.

We were there for a few minutes when suddenly we see a duck…a Donald Duck!

I love his fuzzy fur! It always looks so soft!

Yes, I know, only 10 people, no big deal. But still. We’d been there for about 15 minutes at that point, so it was really obnoxious for these people to just roll up and jump in front of everyone.

I would have told them to get to the back of the line. At California Adventure last summer, we waited for Nick Wilde and Judy Hopps for a really long time. We were the first people in line for the upcoming set, had been there since they walked away for their break from the previous set. A line grew behind us, and then about five minutes before they came out, group of people walked up and asked the CM what the line was for, she told them, and they proceeded to step in front of us. I told them, sorry, nope. Check out the line behind me, it ends wayyy back there. The people behind me backed me up, and they moved on.

It was the first time I'd really made more than a passing comment to anyone who line jumped, but I was NOT giving up that spot. We were meeting Nick and Judy first gosh darn it! (and it ended up being AWESOME)

So I had a temporary lapse of memory, and had thought the picture was taken at the very end of the ride where the dinorsaur drops down from above and the car drops to miss it.

In my opinion, this is where the picture should be taken! Everyone always looks so calm at the actual photo part, it's silly!

From the very beginning we had animals all over the place.

I always felt the same about active animal mornings and slow afternoons, but over the past few trips I've come to realize they are out in the afternoon too. Now I try to do the safari first thing and then fast pass it a little later. I had really good luck on my May trip after some giraffe disappointment on the last few visits!

The vehicle in front of us even got stuck for about 5 minutes because a rhino decided to plant himself smack dab in the middle of the road and she couldn’t get around him!

I love the rhinos!! I always hope one will stop us so I can be close to one, but hasn't happened so far. Usually it's the ankole cattle that get in our way if we get stopped!
 
Sounds like you're having a great time with your mom! Boo to early morning construction noises!
 

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