2BoysMum&Dad
Mouseketeer
- Joined
- Feb 5, 2004
(Alternative Title The Im really only 37½ plus state tax Tour)
Sunday 6th February 2005
The Cast
Chief trip organiser Me
Chauffeur Me
Trip destination research assistant Me
Financial backer and consultant Me
And finally, the holidaymakers Just Me!
Today is the reason I am out in Florida. I start writing the notes for todays trip report at 6.35am as I was awake at 6pm and decide to get a few things down on paper. I have opened all my birthday cards which Ive displayed on the table in my room and decide not to get too depressed as I am not old until 10.45am! Its just as well it hadnt occurred to me immediately that it was passed 10.45am at home and therefore I was already 40! As I am up bright an early, do I leave the room for the parks or do I hang around for a couple of phone calls that Im expecting? I think my mother would be disappointed if she doesnt get hold of me as shed previously pointed out a few days ago that its a special day for her too! I decide to ring home, let it ring a couple of times before hanging up. It took Trevor quite a while to return my call, mainly because my mother phoned him before he got the chance! He said happy birthday and I spoke to Michael and Piers who also wished me happy birthday. I asked Trevor to get my mother to call me because I would be out of the room soon. Mum called, had a nice chat and then I was off.
After yesterday mornings saga with the car and spending so much time getting to Universal Studios, I decide to have a car free day. I get on a Disney coach heading for the Magic Kingdom and get a seat quite near the front. After getting through the security bag check area, it is now just before 8am. Queues are forming at the ticket gates and we are then let in at 8am on the dot. First job, visit Guest Services and announce it is my birthday. The nice CM said happy birthday and youll be wanting one of these then? and gave me a large Its my birthday today badge. I ask him about the steam train as I didnt see it running last time I was in the park (on Friday). He said it would be running from 9am. I put on my badge as I walk across the bottom of Main Street and take a picture of Minnie Mouse on a bench before heading towards the Camera Center in the building opposite.
I get my latest batch of digital pictures put on CD but they are not able to make prints. After double checking with the staff in there that my pictures had been recorded on the CD, I rather nervously format the memory card on my camera. Whilst in the Camera Center waiting for my pictures to be transferred onto the CD, I do a spot of browsing and admire the nice collection of Disney pins and lanyards. I have my DIBB pin, a happy birthday Disney pin from Elise yesterday and the special large birthday badge from Guest Services. One or two more nice pins from here and its seriously worth considering buying a lanyard! Well, I fall for it!
Although MK is open early for Disney residents at 8am this morning, most of the park is still roped off until 9am. I want to head for Splash Mountain so walk up Main Street and make a left for one of the bridges towards that area. I sat for a while looking at the park map and got friendly with a family with kids who are also aiming for Splash Mountain after rope drop. I then moved to the next bridge as that looked like a better place to make my way to Splash Mountain. I get to S.M. and end up with this family in front of me in the queue (six of them) and the Splash Mountain boats have room for eight people. This works well because they could sit together with me sitting on the back seat (I make up for two people anyway!
). I love this ride and although I worried about the drop (like I did last time, last year) it is nowhere near as bad as the anticipation. Get slightly splashed but I knew sitting at the back was a good choice, the front seats apparently get the worst of the splash.
Next port of call, Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. This is something I avoided like the plague last time but I have since come to the conclusion that it cannot seriously be a frightening ride. It might be fast, but cannot be bad. A family from Splash Mountain overtook me while walking between the two, the man was on his mobile phone explaining that his family were first in the queue for Splash Mountain and was therefore treated by being escorted by a CM to get to the front of the queue for Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. I didnt particularly see much point of this at the time as there was actually no queue to speak of!! But I can see this would be brilliant on a very busy day when the queue for B.T.M.R. could be long by the time you had done S.M.
I was actually still a little apprehensive about doing B.T.M.R. just before I got on and decided to ask someone in front of me about it who was obviously a veteran on such rides. She told me that this is actually not as bad as parts of Splash Mountain and if I can do S.M., I could certainly do this. Reassured, I happily got on. It is actually very nice. It is fast but doesnt have the big drops of S.M., its quite fast and a bit rough but absolutely no problem. After getting off, I spotted a nice viewing area where I took some pictures of the attraction.
Then I got on the WDW Railroad and alighted at Mickeys Toontown Fair which doesnt open until 10am. Mickey Mouse himself was in attendance for the rope drop here and kept us entertained by tapping his wrist occasionally with impatience! We were all excited to see Minnie emerge from her house a little further up and rumours immediately started flying around when Donald Duck followed her out of her house! What would Mickey say!
After rope drop I had a brief wander about, then made my way to Fantasyland. I had a very small (and bad) breakfast this morning, just one third of a cookie which was left over from what should have been my breakfast in my room this morning. But, as you may remember, I ate it in my room last night! I found Pinocchio Village Haus for something more substantial, but was disappointed that it seemed deserted. I found a notice on the door quoting serving times and it seemed they didnt start operating until 10.30am. I hung about until they started serving and had (typically American) a cheeseburger, fries and a diet coke (yeah, I know I know I know I know I know, not an ideal birthday breakfast but hey, were in America!).
Loads of C.M.s had spotted my birthday badge this morning in the Magic Kingdom and they all said happy birthday to me.
I now decide I want to have a look around the Grand Floridian. Apparently the shops are great to look around and its a great resort for a nosey. Out of MK and hop onto the resorts monorail. I was expecting it to go anticlockwise straight towards the G.F. resort, but the resorts monorail goes clockwise. It meant taking longer to get there, but it also meant a nice ride through the other resorts on route. I took a load of nice pictures including a princess party in progress with a large group of young girls dressed up in their lovely favourite princess dresses taking place in a bright room at the end of the lobby area and hosted by a couple of CM Disney princesses. Then I spotted the cafe and hoped to have some of their famous tea and cakes. The woman at the podium said they would be starting to serve lunch in ten minutes and perhaps I would be interested in that instead. Sounded nice, so she took my name and I said Id be back in ten minutes or so. I used the nearby restroom and made sure I looked presentable before returning to the cafe. There was a small gathering of waiting staff hovering and chatting around the podium, it was very quiet in the cafe. They spotted my birthday badge and wished me a happy birthday. I was taken to a nice little table at the very far end with a lovely view through the window. As I was being shown my table, I asked if they had any light meals as it wasnt long since I last ate and wasnt hungry enough for a big meal. There is a nice wide selection of food on the menu and I chose the chicken cesar salad and a cup of Prince of Wales tea chosen from their nicely presented selection box. I also had a large glass of orange juice.
When I had finished eating, I made it quite clear I had finished eating (nice clean plate, cutlery together etc) and tried to catch the eye of any passing waiting staff. The service so far had been exceptionally good, attention to detail flawless and timing impeccable. So I was now a little put out that it was taking them so long to ask if I wanted anything else or bring the bill. It wasnt really that long (probably only about five minutes), but I was suddenly aware of why there was a short delay! I was aware of a waiter and waitress walking in my general direction and they both seemed to have their gaze fixed in my general direction. I looked around to see where they might be going but every time I looked back at the waiter he looked increasingly suspicious about something! Then I noticed she was carrying an iced fairy cake with a single candle in it and placed it in front of me. He lit the candle and made some big speech to the whole restaurant (now mostly filled up) about it being his very best friend in the whole wide worlds birthday today and would everyone now please sing happy birthday to ..... erm, he said, by the way, what is your name?!!!!. Very funny, but also very embarrassing (yet again!). Third day in a row I have had a restaurant singing happy birthday to me! I couldnt eat all the cake (even though it wasnt terribly big) and asked for a box for it.
Back onto the monorail and I get off at the Magic Kingdom to get the coach back to the Pop Century Resort. I didnt have to wait long for a coach (less than ten minutes) and I decide to have a little nap in the room. I am a little disappointed as I enter my room not to see a signed Disney birthday card and helium balloons waiting for me. Oh well, Im not a kid and Im not going to have a paddy!
Its only 1pm now and maybe one will arrive a little later if Im lucky! At around 2pm theres a knock at the door and guess what? Yup, its a Disney card signed by Belle and Beast and a bunch of helium balloons attached! This really did bring a tear to the eye, even if I did have to personally engineer the whole thing myself (telling the chap on reception when I checked-in that it would be my birthday today!). As I am writing these notes now, I am finishing the remains of the birthday cake from the Grand Floridian, so many apologies if there are a few crumbs caught up in todays trip report! 
My legs were aching a little from all the walking I had done so far since leaving home and decide the best cure was a swim in the nice flower shaped pool. This always seems to do the trip (learnt from our trip last year) and I am raring to go to another park, MGM this time. Got my lanyard with birthday badge at the ready and I head for the coaches at the front of PCR. I come across a couple also waiting for an MGM coach who had come off the coach from the Magic Kingdom earlier and we had a nice chat while we waited and on the coach.
First port of call at MGM was the Great Movie Ride. Remembering what I read about the two different versions, I was wondering which I should do. For this attraction, you sit in a very large vehicle which can hold a lot of people. There are two connected together and you get a tour guide standing at the front talking your way around the attraction. The front pair of cars in the loading area does one version of the attraction and the back pair of cars does another version of the attraction. The front pair had just left, so on this occasion I didnt get a choice, unless I wanted to wait. It didnt bother me which I saw anyway, so I happily sat on an available seat on the second row of the first vehicle. We had a nice young tour guide but I was then shocked to see we had a woman playing the part of Bugsy! They cant do that! It was a little unfortunate that she was trying to do the accent so well that I couldnt actually understand much of what she was saying, she also spoke in a very muffled manner. Other than that, I did enjoy the ride. I am convinced they have toned it down. Didnt the Alien bit used to be a lot more scary?
Next thing to see was a stage performance of Beauty & The Beast, or Belle & The Beast as the Americans like to call it. On the way to see this, I am sidetracked by a street performance which was very entertaining! There were five supposedly famous actors doing stand-up comedy stuff. A nicely dressed chap in a blue suit mingled in the crowd to get a word for the actors to use. Each one in turn had to stand at the microphone placed in the middle of the street and do a joke based on the joke a man walks into a bar ... , but they had to substitute a man for a hundred ... and the word suggested by the audience. The actor with the fewest laughs at his or her joke got eliminated. This was repeated until only one actor remained and deemed to be the winner. This was really hilarious and extremely entertaining. The actors really had to think and this couldnt be rehearsed, really put them on the spot!
Finally off to see Belle & The Beast. During the performance, the memory card in my digital camera started playing up and I was getting strange messages about it being corrupted or something. Oh dear! It was just as well Id gone to the MK camera center and got a large number of pictures transferred onto a CD this morning. I would have lost pictures taken at CRT and the ones Id got of Vicki (opticalhazer) and Elise yesterday. As it was, I had lost the pictures of my Grand Floridian meal and birthday cake, the street performers a few minutes ago and most of the others I had taken today. I was grateful I still had all my really important pictures.
After Belle & The Beast finished, I headed towards MGMs camera center and asked him to check my memory card. He got me to read a disclaimer (didnt want to get sued for deleting photographs) and I said I was quite happy to take responsibility if there were no pictures showing on it! My fears were confirmed, nothing showed up on his machine. In an act of rashness, I bought a new memory card from him which probably cost me far more than anywhere else in Florida! But at least I could carry on taking good quality photographs without having to resort to a disposable camera.
Next job, I head towards the Fantasmic area and grab something to eat on the way. There were quite a few eateries just before getting there and I had some chicken strips, fries and a diet coke. I sat down to eat most of it but then carried the fries with me to save time. It was nearly time to start the show! I got a great seat in the front row on the far right hand side which was good for a quick(ish) exit afterwards.
Fantasmic was, well, fantastic! One of the boats early on had trouble with its real fire torches and went around unlit, they couldnt get them alight and I felt sorry for them. This is a great show and it doesnt matter where you sit, you get a good view from anywhere. It didnt take me too long to get out of the park, definitely sat in the right place for getting out at the end. I was back in my room by 10pm.
So, its still my birthday and its 10pm. What should I do? The choice is Jellyrolls, Pleasure Island or any number of interesting options! How about I dont tell you until tomorrow! I did do something but I am going to keep you all in suspense until my next instalment, watch this space!
Sunday 6th February 2005
The Cast
Chief trip organiser Me
Chauffeur Me
Trip destination research assistant Me
Financial backer and consultant Me
And finally, the holidaymakers Just Me!
Today is the reason I am out in Florida. I start writing the notes for todays trip report at 6.35am as I was awake at 6pm and decide to get a few things down on paper. I have opened all my birthday cards which Ive displayed on the table in my room and decide not to get too depressed as I am not old until 10.45am! Its just as well it hadnt occurred to me immediately that it was passed 10.45am at home and therefore I was already 40! As I am up bright an early, do I leave the room for the parks or do I hang around for a couple of phone calls that Im expecting? I think my mother would be disappointed if she doesnt get hold of me as shed previously pointed out a few days ago that its a special day for her too! I decide to ring home, let it ring a couple of times before hanging up. It took Trevor quite a while to return my call, mainly because my mother phoned him before he got the chance! He said happy birthday and I spoke to Michael and Piers who also wished me happy birthday. I asked Trevor to get my mother to call me because I would be out of the room soon. Mum called, had a nice chat and then I was off.
After yesterday mornings saga with the car and spending so much time getting to Universal Studios, I decide to have a car free day. I get on a Disney coach heading for the Magic Kingdom and get a seat quite near the front. After getting through the security bag check area, it is now just before 8am. Queues are forming at the ticket gates and we are then let in at 8am on the dot. First job, visit Guest Services and announce it is my birthday. The nice CM said happy birthday and youll be wanting one of these then? and gave me a large Its my birthday today badge. I ask him about the steam train as I didnt see it running last time I was in the park (on Friday). He said it would be running from 9am. I put on my badge as I walk across the bottom of Main Street and take a picture of Minnie Mouse on a bench before heading towards the Camera Center in the building opposite.
I get my latest batch of digital pictures put on CD but they are not able to make prints. After double checking with the staff in there that my pictures had been recorded on the CD, I rather nervously format the memory card on my camera. Whilst in the Camera Center waiting for my pictures to be transferred onto the CD, I do a spot of browsing and admire the nice collection of Disney pins and lanyards. I have my DIBB pin, a happy birthday Disney pin from Elise yesterday and the special large birthday badge from Guest Services. One or two more nice pins from here and its seriously worth considering buying a lanyard! Well, I fall for it!
Although MK is open early for Disney residents at 8am this morning, most of the park is still roped off until 9am. I want to head for Splash Mountain so walk up Main Street and make a left for one of the bridges towards that area. I sat for a while looking at the park map and got friendly with a family with kids who are also aiming for Splash Mountain after rope drop. I then moved to the next bridge as that looked like a better place to make my way to Splash Mountain. I get to S.M. and end up with this family in front of me in the queue (six of them) and the Splash Mountain boats have room for eight people. This works well because they could sit together with me sitting on the back seat (I make up for two people anyway!
). I love this ride and although I worried about the drop (like I did last time, last year) it is nowhere near as bad as the anticipation. Get slightly splashed but I knew sitting at the back was a good choice, the front seats apparently get the worst of the splash.Next port of call, Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. This is something I avoided like the plague last time but I have since come to the conclusion that it cannot seriously be a frightening ride. It might be fast, but cannot be bad. A family from Splash Mountain overtook me while walking between the two, the man was on his mobile phone explaining that his family were first in the queue for Splash Mountain and was therefore treated by being escorted by a CM to get to the front of the queue for Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. I didnt particularly see much point of this at the time as there was actually no queue to speak of!! But I can see this would be brilliant on a very busy day when the queue for B.T.M.R. could be long by the time you had done S.M.
I was actually still a little apprehensive about doing B.T.M.R. just before I got on and decided to ask someone in front of me about it who was obviously a veteran on such rides. She told me that this is actually not as bad as parts of Splash Mountain and if I can do S.M., I could certainly do this. Reassured, I happily got on. It is actually very nice. It is fast but doesnt have the big drops of S.M., its quite fast and a bit rough but absolutely no problem. After getting off, I spotted a nice viewing area where I took some pictures of the attraction.
Then I got on the WDW Railroad and alighted at Mickeys Toontown Fair which doesnt open until 10am. Mickey Mouse himself was in attendance for the rope drop here and kept us entertained by tapping his wrist occasionally with impatience! We were all excited to see Minnie emerge from her house a little further up and rumours immediately started flying around when Donald Duck followed her out of her house! What would Mickey say!
After rope drop I had a brief wander about, then made my way to Fantasyland. I had a very small (and bad) breakfast this morning, just one third of a cookie which was left over from what should have been my breakfast in my room this morning. But, as you may remember, I ate it in my room last night! I found Pinocchio Village Haus for something more substantial, but was disappointed that it seemed deserted. I found a notice on the door quoting serving times and it seemed they didnt start operating until 10.30am. I hung about until they started serving and had (typically American) a cheeseburger, fries and a diet coke (yeah, I know I know I know I know I know, not an ideal birthday breakfast but hey, were in America!).
Loads of C.M.s had spotted my birthday badge this morning in the Magic Kingdom and they all said happy birthday to me.
I now decide I want to have a look around the Grand Floridian. Apparently the shops are great to look around and its a great resort for a nosey. Out of MK and hop onto the resorts monorail. I was expecting it to go anticlockwise straight towards the G.F. resort, but the resorts monorail goes clockwise. It meant taking longer to get there, but it also meant a nice ride through the other resorts on route. I took a load of nice pictures including a princess party in progress with a large group of young girls dressed up in their lovely favourite princess dresses taking place in a bright room at the end of the lobby area and hosted by a couple of CM Disney princesses. Then I spotted the cafe and hoped to have some of their famous tea and cakes. The woman at the podium said they would be starting to serve lunch in ten minutes and perhaps I would be interested in that instead. Sounded nice, so she took my name and I said Id be back in ten minutes or so. I used the nearby restroom and made sure I looked presentable before returning to the cafe. There was a small gathering of waiting staff hovering and chatting around the podium, it was very quiet in the cafe. They spotted my birthday badge and wished me a happy birthday. I was taken to a nice little table at the very far end with a lovely view through the window. As I was being shown my table, I asked if they had any light meals as it wasnt long since I last ate and wasnt hungry enough for a big meal. There is a nice wide selection of food on the menu and I chose the chicken cesar salad and a cup of Prince of Wales tea chosen from their nicely presented selection box. I also had a large glass of orange juice.
When I had finished eating, I made it quite clear I had finished eating (nice clean plate, cutlery together etc) and tried to catch the eye of any passing waiting staff. The service so far had been exceptionally good, attention to detail flawless and timing impeccable. So I was now a little put out that it was taking them so long to ask if I wanted anything else or bring the bill. It wasnt really that long (probably only about five minutes), but I was suddenly aware of why there was a short delay! I was aware of a waiter and waitress walking in my general direction and they both seemed to have their gaze fixed in my general direction. I looked around to see where they might be going but every time I looked back at the waiter he looked increasingly suspicious about something! Then I noticed she was carrying an iced fairy cake with a single candle in it and placed it in front of me. He lit the candle and made some big speech to the whole restaurant (now mostly filled up) about it being his very best friend in the whole wide worlds birthday today and would everyone now please sing happy birthday to ..... erm, he said, by the way, what is your name?!!!!. Very funny, but also very embarrassing (yet again!). Third day in a row I have had a restaurant singing happy birthday to me! I couldnt eat all the cake (even though it wasnt terribly big) and asked for a box for it.
Back onto the monorail and I get off at the Magic Kingdom to get the coach back to the Pop Century Resort. I didnt have to wait long for a coach (less than ten minutes) and I decide to have a little nap in the room. I am a little disappointed as I enter my room not to see a signed Disney birthday card and helium balloons waiting for me. Oh well, Im not a kid and Im not going to have a paddy!
Its only 1pm now and maybe one will arrive a little later if Im lucky! At around 2pm theres a knock at the door and guess what? Yup, its a Disney card signed by Belle and Beast and a bunch of helium balloons attached! This really did bring a tear to the eye, even if I did have to personally engineer the whole thing myself (telling the chap on reception when I checked-in that it would be my birthday today!). As I am writing these notes now, I am finishing the remains of the birthday cake from the Grand Floridian, so many apologies if there are a few crumbs caught up in todays trip report! My legs were aching a little from all the walking I had done so far since leaving home and decide the best cure was a swim in the nice flower shaped pool. This always seems to do the trip (learnt from our trip last year) and I am raring to go to another park, MGM this time. Got my lanyard with birthday badge at the ready and I head for the coaches at the front of PCR. I come across a couple also waiting for an MGM coach who had come off the coach from the Magic Kingdom earlier and we had a nice chat while we waited and on the coach.
First port of call at MGM was the Great Movie Ride. Remembering what I read about the two different versions, I was wondering which I should do. For this attraction, you sit in a very large vehicle which can hold a lot of people. There are two connected together and you get a tour guide standing at the front talking your way around the attraction. The front pair of cars in the loading area does one version of the attraction and the back pair of cars does another version of the attraction. The front pair had just left, so on this occasion I didnt get a choice, unless I wanted to wait. It didnt bother me which I saw anyway, so I happily sat on an available seat on the second row of the first vehicle. We had a nice young tour guide but I was then shocked to see we had a woman playing the part of Bugsy! They cant do that! It was a little unfortunate that she was trying to do the accent so well that I couldnt actually understand much of what she was saying, she also spoke in a very muffled manner. Other than that, I did enjoy the ride. I am convinced they have toned it down. Didnt the Alien bit used to be a lot more scary?
Next thing to see was a stage performance of Beauty & The Beast, or Belle & The Beast as the Americans like to call it. On the way to see this, I am sidetracked by a street performance which was very entertaining! There were five supposedly famous actors doing stand-up comedy stuff. A nicely dressed chap in a blue suit mingled in the crowd to get a word for the actors to use. Each one in turn had to stand at the microphone placed in the middle of the street and do a joke based on the joke a man walks into a bar ... , but they had to substitute a man for a hundred ... and the word suggested by the audience. The actor with the fewest laughs at his or her joke got eliminated. This was repeated until only one actor remained and deemed to be the winner. This was really hilarious and extremely entertaining. The actors really had to think and this couldnt be rehearsed, really put them on the spot!
Finally off to see Belle & The Beast. During the performance, the memory card in my digital camera started playing up and I was getting strange messages about it being corrupted or something. Oh dear! It was just as well Id gone to the MK camera center and got a large number of pictures transferred onto a CD this morning. I would have lost pictures taken at CRT and the ones Id got of Vicki (opticalhazer) and Elise yesterday. As it was, I had lost the pictures of my Grand Floridian meal and birthday cake, the street performers a few minutes ago and most of the others I had taken today. I was grateful I still had all my really important pictures.
After Belle & The Beast finished, I headed towards MGMs camera center and asked him to check my memory card. He got me to read a disclaimer (didnt want to get sued for deleting photographs) and I said I was quite happy to take responsibility if there were no pictures showing on it! My fears were confirmed, nothing showed up on his machine. In an act of rashness, I bought a new memory card from him which probably cost me far more than anywhere else in Florida! But at least I could carry on taking good quality photographs without having to resort to a disposable camera.
Next job, I head towards the Fantasmic area and grab something to eat on the way. There were quite a few eateries just before getting there and I had some chicken strips, fries and a diet coke. I sat down to eat most of it but then carried the fries with me to save time. It was nearly time to start the show! I got a great seat in the front row on the far right hand side which was good for a quick(ish) exit afterwards.
Fantasmic was, well, fantastic! One of the boats early on had trouble with its real fire torches and went around unlit, they couldnt get them alight and I felt sorry for them. This is a great show and it doesnt matter where you sit, you get a good view from anywhere. It didnt take me too long to get out of the park, definitely sat in the right place for getting out at the end. I was back in my room by 10pm.
So, its still my birthday and its 10pm. What should I do? The choice is Jellyrolls, Pleasure Island or any number of interesting options! How about I dont tell you until tomorrow!
I did do something but I am going to keep you all in suspense until my next instalment, watch this space!
oh my, I nearly spat my drink everywhere when I read that 
How weird that you had your memory card wiped in the same spot I did, sat down waiting for Beauty and the Beast - I lost over 100 photos because at the time, none of the photo shops put photos to CD from my particular memory card. Glad you didn't lose many important photos! Come back with more, I want to know all about what you did that night.
can't wait to read more!
Looking forward to reading more 
