300 PhotoPass pictures later, here we are.... A May/June 2017 TR! Updated 8/15!

Spacecow

Mouseketeer
Joined
Mar 26, 2017
Hello and welcome to my trip report! This is my first report, which is fitting, since I just took my "first" trip to Walt Disney World (more on that later...)! My sister and I stayed at Port Orleans Riverside from 5/29-6/4. I wanted to get this TR started while everything was still fresh in my mind! We hit all 4 parks, including spending some time in Pandora, and took a trip to Blizzard Beach. And yes, we did take over 300 PhotoPass pictures along the way- and thanks to Memory Maker I have them all, ready to share! So if you're ready for a ton of PhotoPass pictures and a 5 day non-stop (well, mostly non-stop) WDW adventure, read on! :flower1:

Let's get some introductions and background info out of the way, shall we?


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This is my sister and I on our last Disney trip- Disneyland in 2014 to celebrate my high school graduation. I'm on the left, she's on the right. We grew up in Phoenix so we're Disneyland veterans. Our favorite ride at Disneyland is Pirates of the Caribbean, and our Disney characters are Winnie the Pooh and Eeyore. Our favorite part of any Disney trip is getting tons of character pictures!


Our trip was a joint graduation celebration. A few weeks ago, this happened:

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I graduated from the University of Colorado Boulder (go buffs!) with a degree in Strategic Communication- which is just a buzzword way of saying Advertising. :p I graduated a year early, which was really exciting. I have an internship lined up with an ad agency out here in Phoenix that'll hopefully turn into a full time job. I'm kinda sad to be leaving Boulder but I'm glad to not have to deal with snow anymore- I'm a desert child through and through.

And then two weeks after I graduated, this happened:

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My sister graduated from high school! :yay: She's headed to ASU in the fall (go sun devils!) which is only about 45 minutes from our house. My parents are glad to have her close to home. She's going to be majoring in marketing, and she hopes to run her own bakery some day.

So with both of us graduating so close together we decided to have a joint graduation trip as opposed to two separate trips. This was meant to be a big, once in a lifetime "last hurrah" kind of trip, mostly because it's the last Disney trip my parents will ever pay for :P. But also because we're both crossing major milestones after this, with me entering the "real world" and her taking on college life.

Like I mentioned earlier we decided on staying at POR in one of the royal rooms. Well, I should say that I decided that we would be staying there.... My sister really isn't a planner :upsidedow she's really a "go with the flow" kind of person who didn't really have strong ideas about what we should do and where we should do it- she was just happy to be along for the ride. Which ended up working out well because I love to plan. So I chose the hotel, picked the dates, chose our ADRs, picked our fastpasses, and planned basically everything- while still trying to account for a bit of flexibility. Which is a very difficult thing to do! It's not exactly easy to plan for spontaneity. But it all worked out, as you'll soon see.

Here's an overview of what the plan was:

5/29
- Land at MCO at 5, arrive at POR, spend the evening at Disney Springs

5/30- Magic Kingdom! Rope drop to close. Lunch at Crystal Palace, dinner at Cinderella's Royal Table. Fastpasses for Big Thunder Mountain, 7 Dwarves Mine Train, and Space Mountain.

5/31- Hollywood Studios in the morning, Magic Kingdom in the evening. Lunch at Sci Fi, dinner at Be Our Guest. Fastpasses for Rock n Rollercoaster, Star Tours, and Voyage of the Little Mermaid. (the tiers at HS really do suuucckk....)

6/1- Animal Kingdom. Tentative plans to eat at Satu'li Canteen depending on the crowds. Fastpasses for Kilimanjaro Safari, Expedition Everest, and Flights of Passage (woo!).

6/2- Epcot. Dinner at Via Napoli. Fastpasses for Frozen Ever After, The Character Spot, and Spaceship Earth. Planned on rope dropping Test Track (again, I hate tiers.....)

6/3- Blizzard Beach and ending the trip with the Magic Kingdom. Fastpasses for Pirates of the Caribbean, Big Thunder Mountain, and Space Mountain.

6/4- Spend the day exploring the resort before the Magical Express came to get us at 3 :(

Things didn't exactly play out that way, but then again, when do they ever? :)


Oh, and about the whole "first" trip thing.... Welllll technically that's a lie. When I was 3 and my sister was a baby our parents took us to the Magic Kingdom for a few days, while we were still living in Georgia. The only thing I remember from that trip is riding the monorail and meeting Mickey in Toontown. Since my sister was a baby she of course doesn't remember anything. Soooooo considering that neither of us had been to WDW since 2000, and we hadn't ever been to 3/4 of the parks, I felt ok calling this our first trip..... and getting a first visit button. :ssst: My mom says getting the buttons was dishonest but since they don't have "first visit since 17 years ago when we were an infant and a toddler" button I had to make do with the first visit one. Is it against the rules? Maybe. But the rules are more like guidelines anyway :P


Ok I think that's enough for a first post. Thanks for reading this far and I'm excited to share my trip with y'all!
 
Part 1- Arrival Day

After counting down since I booked the hotel room on November 21st (my 21st birthday :)), the day was finally here!

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As you can see from the time in this screenshot, I wasn't exactly getting a full night's sleep. But who can ever sleep before going to Disney?! Our flight was at 11:25, which isn't super early, but I of course put off packing until the last second and had to get up way earlier to get everything done.

We arrived at Sky Harbor sometime around 9. My dad is a huge stickler for getting to the airport at least 2 hours early. He flies for Southwest so we usually get there a lot earlier if we're using buddy passes and have to play the game of "will I get on this flight or a flight 3 hours from now".... You gotta love flying standby ;). But this time we had tickets, thankfully.


Despite our dad being a pilot my sister and I are both scared of flying. Well, after braving a ~9 hour flight to London last year I feel like I can finally be classified as a "nervous" flyer instead of a "terrified" flyer. I never really relax on a plane, but after flying in and out of Denver for a few years (those mountains DO NOT like airplanes) I'm getting less afraid of turbulence. So anyway, the 4 hour flight to Orlando wasn't exactly appealing to either of us but we knew it was a necessary evil to get us to Disney.

Here we are putting on a brave face before takeoff:

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The flight was bumpy but not terrible, and it really went by fast. Before we knew it we were on the ground and heading to the Magical Express- it felt so cool getting to skip baggage claim!

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The bus wasn't very crowded at all. Here we are right after boarding, listening to the chick on the TV talk to some people from the Festival of the Lion King show I think.

While we were on the bus I checked my email and saw that our room was ready! It also said that we didn't even have to go to the front desk when we got the POR. That threw me off a little, it felt weird to think that we could just go to our room when at every hotel I've ever stayed at we had to visit the front desk. We ended up going there anyway, just for the woman at the desk to confirm that they did in fact need nothing from us. :rotfl2:


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I snapped a pic while we were there. The lobby is gorgeous! I also took that time to get our fraudulent First Visit buttons, and a celebration button for our graduations.

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Then it was time to find our room! We were in Parterre Place, which is the royal room building with a less opportune location according to everything I'd read online, but the walk to the main building and the south depot bus stop wasn't bad at all. We were in room 9741, a garden view room.

Here's the view from outside:

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And here's the room! I was really thrown off to not see the fancy pillows or runners on the beds- but I guess Disney got rid of them either because people were stealing them or because of hygiene issues. A little disappointing, but the room was still really cute. My sister knew pretty much nothing about it going in, because as I said before she wasn't really part of the planning process, so she got a kick out of the animated headboard. It was a great room for us- I loved having double sinks, it made getting ready in the morning soooooo much easier.

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After getting settled we decided to head over to the food court for dinner. We both had the make your own pasta, which was really good! The breadstick was hot and fresh too. I loooove bread. :love:

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After dinner we took the boat ride over to Disney Springs, which was nice.

We floated by French Quarter:

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And then arrived at Disney Springs!

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Disney Springs was HUGE! We're used to Downtown Disney so we really weren't prepared for how big it is. We stopped by the Days of Christmas store and picked out our souvenir ornaments:

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And then went by Sprinkles and used the Cupcake ATM! The cupcake was really good, I'm always hyped for Sprinkles. I had the red velvet and I actually don't remember what my sister had. Something with coconut.

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We walked around for a while longer after that and then caught the bus back to Riverside. We had considered going to see the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie that night, (we're huge pirates fans!) but we were just too tired and we knew it would be a long movie- they all are :upsidedow

We got back to the room and were ready to start getting ready for bed- but there was one problem. Our luggage wasn't there yet!!! I was a little worried and annoyed. I know the website says it can take up to 3 hours to get your bags, but it was nearly midnight at that point and we had landed at 5:30. So I called down to bell services and the guy who answered was like "oh, yeah we'll send those right up"..... So I'm not really sure what the delay was if they had the bags down there. About 30 minutes later (!!!!) a guy brought us our bags. Can't say I was too impressed, but I'm willing to chalk it up to logistical errors- nothing I wanted to spend the time complaining to the front desk about.

We got ready for bed quickly and settled in to get some rest before first rope drop at the Magic Kingdom. But that's a story for another post :)
 
Part 2: Magic Kingdom- Our First Rope Drop!


We woke up bright and early to get ready to be there for rope drop at the Magic Kingdom. The park opened at 9 and I wanted us there by 8:15 at the latest.... Which looking back wasn't all that necessary because we weren't trying to rope drop 7 dwarfs or anything like that. I was just overly excited I guess :) We ended up getting there right around that time after just missing the first bus. After bag check and security we were working our way down main street by 8:30. And we used that time to take our first PhotoPass pics!

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The photographer told us to hold up a #1 because it was our first visit...... Lol

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And here she had us do some sort of princess pose, I guess.

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According to the PhotoPass website it was 8:45 at this point (this will be SO useful for my trip report, because I wasn't paying attention to times at all on the trip!) and we proceeded over to the Liberty Square entrance. Now, you'll have to remember that I had little to no concept of the layout of the Magic Kingdom aside from glancing at maps online, so I wasn't sure which entrance would be faster to get to Big Thunder Mountain, which we planned to rope drop. Looking back it might've been faster to go through Adventure Land. But hindsight is always 20/20! There wasn't much of a crowd:


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We watched the welcome show (it was cute!) and then proceeded to Big Thunder Mountain:

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It wasn't too crowded and it was still basically a walk on, but I can't help but think we could've been in front of a lot of these people if we'd come in through Adventureland instead. Big Thunder is always a ton of fun- we rode it two times in a row. We love to ride our favorite rides over and over again which is why I chose to rope drop it in addition to having a FastPass for it. I think I narrowly prefer the Disneyland version though.

After leaving Big Thunder we worked our way back through Adventureland, and took another set of PhotoPass pictures in front of Pirates of the Caribbean before we rode it (it was still a walk on at this point in the morning) :

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Our first magic shot! BTW, I still haven't seen the new movie! I heard it wasn't great, but that's what the critics say about all of them. My sister and I are both big fans of those movies so I'm sure we'd enjoy it. The 4th one wasn't that great but it still had it's moments. Personally, I rank them Dead Man's Chest > Curse of the Black Pearl > At World's End > On Stranger Tides. I know most people think the 1st one is the best but it was never my favorite and I adore Dead Man's Chest! Any other Pirates fans feel free to sound off below with your own rankings :)

Anyway, we rode POTC and we were both unimpressed. I'd read that the Disneyland version was superior but wow, the WDW version doesn't even compare. It felt like a "greatest hits" version of the DL one where they just took the most popular scenes and strung them together. Whenever we're at Disneyland we ride POTC again and again but we only went back one other time on this trip! A true disappointment imo.

After that less than stellar experience we rode the magic carpets (we're both suckers for Dumbo-esque rides) and then headed back up to Big Thunder to use our fastpass. Our next fastpass was for Space Mountain at 11 so we started to work our way over to Tomorrowland. On the way, we stopped for another PhotoPass opportunity:

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Can you tell we were both sweaty by this point? :rotfl2:I was really concerned about the heat and humidity going into this trip. Being from Phoenix we definitely know heat, but humidity is completely foreign to us. After spending a few years in Colorado I was also really used to thin, dry air and elevation- pretty much the complete opposite of Florida. But honestly, throughout the trip we commented to each other about how NOT terrible it felt outside. Sure, we were sweating like crazy and felt sticky but it didn't feel like we were sitting inside an oven like it does at home. There was always a nice cool breeze and sitting in the shade actually helped a lot- I feel like shade hardly helps in Phoenix, and there's rarely a breeze. When there is a breeze, it's hot and feels like having a hairdryer blowing hot air at you. Sometimes I'd check my weather app and see it was 90% humidity but it never felt as unbearable as I thought it would! And the daily rainstorm really helped cool things off. The only time throughout the whole trip that I felt like the heat was getting to me came later on this day, which I'll get to later.

After walking through Tomorrowland it was time for Space Mountain! I have the unfortunate luck of seeming to always visit Disneyland when Space Mountain is closed, so I hadn't been on it since 2013. So I was really excited to ride this version. I was kind of thrown off by the fact that you don't sit next to anyone in these rockets! They reminded me more of the Matterhorn bobselds in that regard. Since I haven't been on the Disneyland version in years I didn't really remember it enough to compare it to this version.

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And here's the ride pic! We both loved the ride and I lost count of how many times we rode it on this trip! I think we got to 12. On the days of the trip we weren't spending in the Magic Kingdom we park hopped with the single purpose of riding Space Mountain- made possible by the Express Transportation buses, which I highly recommend. But you'll see how that all played out later. :)

We took a ride on the People Mover after getting of Space Mountain:

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We then walked over to Fantasyland and did the teacups to kill the last bit of time before our 7 Dwarfs Mine Train. That was a bit of a mistake, because I felt nauseous after :crazy2: I drank a bunch of water and started chewing some gum (that always helps me) so I didn't actually get sick but wow, I don't think I'll ever do the teacups again.

Then it was time for the last of our pre-booked fastpasses, the Mine Train!

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I think what bothers me most about this pic is how I look like I have no teeth. :rotfl:The ride was fun, and actually faster than I expected, but definitely too short and not at all worth the long waits it has. I liked rocking the carts back and forth though.

Side note, I'm not really sure why they felt the ride should take 2 pictures? Unless you're looking right up at this camera I can't see how it takes any good pics:

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By this point it was just about time for our lunch ADR at the Crystal Palace, so we headed back that way. I'll start off the next update with that. :)
 


"I think what bothers me most about this pic is how I look like I have no teeth."

lol'd at this! following along :)
 


Coming over from my Trip Report! I'm excited to hear how things went at POR. We'll be staying there in December in the Royal Rooms and I'm SO excited about it.

As far as rope drop goes, I usually mess up and go the wrong way too. On my most recent trip, I was headed to Peter Pan, and thought I was in the area to go to the right side of the castle - but was actually in the path to go straight through the castle. That probably cost me 15 minutes of time - which is so disappointing on a Rope Drop morning!
 
Following! My sister and I did a trip together last year - so fun! We're 50+ but not too old to still have fun at Disney :thumbsup2

Fun! It's the best way to do Disney in my opinion- so much easier to plan for 2 people and it's great bonding time!

we will be staying in a Royal Guest Room in September, glad to see the photo of your room! I am following along!

Yay, how exciting! I loved the room a lot. The themeing is so cute.

I'm enjoying your trip report!

Thanks for reading! :)

Coming over from my Trip Report! I'm excited to hear how things went at POR. We'll be staying there in December in the Royal Rooms and I'm SO excited about it.

As far as rope drop goes, I usually mess up and go the wrong way too. On my most recent trip, I was headed to Peter Pan, and thought I was in the area to go to the right side of the castle - but was actually in the path to go straight through the castle. That probably cost me 15 minutes of time - which is so disappointing on a Rope Drop morning!

Yay! I loved the royal room a lot, I would definitely want to stay there again. The resort in general is beautiful too. Definitely a great experience overall except for the delay in getting our bags which I'm willing to excuse.

And yeah rope drop mistakes really do suck! My sister and I are both not so great at reading maps so we end up on the wrong paths a lot. At Hollywood Studios we thought we were heading towards TSMM and ended up at Rock N Roller Coaster! Thankfully it didn't cost us too much time but it was still annoying.
 
i've never stayed in a royal room, my family is too big but they look adorable :lovestruc as for your trip, it looks like you and your sister had so much fun! tuning in::MickeyMo
 
I'm enjoying your report so far. I love picture heavy reports so keep up the good work lol. BTW you are both adorable and obviously having fun.

Our 3 boys all graduated from college the same year so we decided to take a celebratory trip. We went to California for 2 weeks. Can you believe that my kids refused to let me go to Disneyland?!! Heartbreaking :worried:We've been to DW many times and they wanted a vacation without Disney...boohoo...So close yet so far...
 
Enjoying your trip report!

Thanks for reading! :)

I would love to stay in the Royal Rooms... they're gorgeous! Enjoying your "first visit" TR ! :D

The rooms are even cuter in person! All the little details are so fun.

i've never stayed in a royal room, my family is too big but they look adorable :lovestruc as for your trip, it looks like you and your sister had so much fun! tuning in::MickeyMo

Glad to have you along for the ride! ::MickeyMo we had a ton of fun, it was just about the best trip I could've asked for.

I'm enjoying your report so far. I love picture heavy reports so keep up the good work lol. BTW you are both adorable and obviously having fun.

Our 3 boys all graduated from college the same year so we decided to take a celebratory trip. We went to California for 2 weeks. Can you believe that my kids refused to let me go to Disneyland?!! Heartbreaking :worried:We've been to DW many times and they wanted a vacation without Disney...boohoo...So close yet so far...

Omgggg, a trip to California without Disney isn't a trip at all in my opinion, lol. My parents are similarly over Disney and much prefer going to San Diego whenever we go to California, which is still nice but it's not the same at all!
 
Part 3: Lunch at the Crystal Palace, overheating at the 3 o'clock parade, and dinner in the castle

Before I pick up where I left off, here are a few random musings/things I forgot to include in the first 2 parts of the report:

I stayed at a Marriott this week and it reminded me of something that really surprised me about POR: the beds were uncomfortable! I'm used to hotel beds being "soft" for lack of a better word, like the kind of beds you can just sink into. So I was really thrown off when I laid down on the first night and felt like I was laying on a dorm room mattress! Both my sister and I found the beds to be too firm and uncomfortable. We both slept fine, probably because we were so tired after the parks and could've slept anywhere, but still. I've read people saying the values have uncomfortable beds, but never the moderates, so I was really surprised. Anyone else feel this way? Do tell.

While we were walking to the food court on the first night, we saw a proposal! The couple had just gotten back from a horse drawn carriage ride when the guy got down on one knee and asked her to marry him. It was really cute! We saw 3 other proposals on this trip. I guess that's the magic of Disney :)

Also, fun fact: My sister was at Disneyland with a school group the day that Johnny Depp was there. He went dressed as Jack Sparrow and was on the POTC ride interacting with the boats going by. She was on the ride like an hour before he was there and missed him completely!! It was all I could think of when we were riding POTC in the Magic Kingdom.

I think that's all for things I forgot to mention. Now, back to the report! :)

When I last left off it was time for us to make our way to the Crystal Palace for our lunch ADR. I was super excited for this meal because Winnie the Pooh characters are my favorite and I knew that this was the only place to meet Eeyore, who is my absolute favorite (as you can see by my profile picture). We arrived about 10 minutes early and waited on the patio for them to call us. I love how they say "Winnie the Pooh and friends are ready to welcome *family name*" when your table is ready. We didn't have to wait long until it was time to go inside!

I snagged a quick picture as we were walking to our table. The restaurant is so pretty!

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I love that Eeyore's in the background. He was actually the last character we saw and I felt like it took a lonnggg time for him to come to our table. I didn't mind waiting, because it was nice to sit in the AC and relax, but still.

As soon as we were seated and got our drinks we went up to grab food. Since we had (very expensive) dinner reservations at Cinderella's Royal table at 6:50, I wanted us both to have a light-ish lunch so we would be hungry enough at dinner to eat everything. Usually when we do Disney we just have snacks throughout the day and maybe a dinner, but usually a quick service dinner. We rarely if ever do table service, and NEVER two table service meals in one day. We're not big eaters and that's a lot of food. So anyway, I was on a mission to find the perfect balance between not eating enough and eating so much that I wouldn't want dinner.

I didn't take any food pictures here, but I ended up having the Cesar salad and some chicken. I don't remember what my sister had. But we both liked the food well enough.

Then the characters started to make their rounds! Since there wasn't a photographer or a cast member going around with them, and I'm shy so I didn't feel like awkwardly asking one of the people at the other tables to take a pic for us, we only got individual pics with the first few characters :/ still, here's the ones of me (because my sister never sent me the ones of her :rolleyes:)

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I was excited to meet Piglet, I've never seen him at Disneyland. He was really cute. All of the character interactions were great! Tigger is always tons of fun, and Pooh was adorable- he congratulated us on our graduations by pointing at our buttons and then clapping and pretending that he was throwing a graduation cap.

After waiting, getting more food, getting dessert, and waiting some more, Eeyore finally came to our table! He had a cast member with him so we could get a pic with both of us in it, finally!

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I'm biased, but I think Eeyore is the cutest Disney fur character. I made sure and got one of him and I when I was sitting down, because I wanted to try and recreate this picture as much as possible:

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That's me on my actual first visit to the Magic Kingdom, waaay back in 2000. Based on the background, I thiiinnkkk this was taken at the Crystal Palace. I wish I remembered anything about this, but I don't :( all I know is that we've had this picture on the wall for as long as I can remember and I was excited to take a new version!

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And here we are! Eeyore hasn't changed a bit, has he? :) Putting these pics side by side makes me feel silly about wearing a first visit button, but like I said in the first post the Magic Kingdom was the only park I had technically been to before.

After Eeyore walked away I looked around and asked my sister "I wonder how we pay?" and like 2 seconds later a waiter swooped in and gave us the check. They must really watch and know exactly when you're done with the characters! The lunch was expensive, but I'd gladly do it again because the characters were so fun.

While we were sitting at lunch I booked us 3:30 FPs for The Haunted Mansion, and it was about 2:50 when we left. I was wondering what we were going to do to kill the time, but then we saw people lining up along the paths- the parade was coming! We got really good spots sitting on a fence in Liberty Square, especially since we didn't camp out like a lot of people seem to. We didn't actually get any parade pics (boo, I know! :sad1:) but I thought it was a great parade! I liked it more than Soundsational at Disneyland- which, fun fact, we saw on the day of its soft opening back in 2011. We had just finished lunch nearby and a cast member gave us the scoop that a few parade was going to be starting soon and told us exactly where to sit. Since nobody really knew about it we got a great spot. It was a cool experience.

But anyway, while we were watching the parade I noticed something weird. I felt.... Cold. Like I was actually shivering. Seeing as it was 95 degrees and we were RIGHT in the sun I knew this wasn't right. I got scared for a minute and thought I was having heat stroke or something. I also felt a little dizzy and sick, which was even scarier. So I started chugging water and focused on making sure I didn't pass out or anything. Kinda ruined the parade experience a little! I'm still not sure what happened, but I guess the heat was getting to me. This was the only time in the whole trip that anything like that happened.

After the parade was over and I stopped feeling like I was on death's door, we headed over to use our FPs on The Haunted Mansion. That ride's always a good time, but I've gotta say I don't think it's worth the long lines. The wait was over an hour when we got on. It was at this point that my sister and I promised ourselves that we wouldn't wait over 40 minutes for anything on this trip. We *mostly* fulfilled that promise too, thanks to the tip I read online (it might've been here on the dis actually!) about refreshing MDE a lot because FP availability changes so much.

After the mansion we headed over to It's a Small World (which was a much longer ride than I expected it to be!) then we went and rode The Little Mermaid, then Dumbo- which wasn't that fun because our elephant was broken! It wouldn't go up or down so we just sat there. o_O We circled back down and used a FP on Winnie the Pooh, spent some time looking around the gift shop, rode the carousel, and then finally it was time to head to the castle for dinner!


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I don't love, or even particularly like, any of the pics we took with Cinderella- by this point my feet were KILLING me, so I wasn't feeling too great or wanting to smile all that much, and I think it shows. My mom always raves about Vionic's shoes so I got a pair of their flip flops for this trip- and I wore them for a week prior to break them in, but I guess it wasn't enough because they hurt my feet a lot. :( luckily I had packed other shoes too, which worked a lot better for me and my feet never hurt as much as they did on this first day.

Despite being in pain the photographer did catch a real smile from me (even if it's not the most flattering angle :rolleyes:):

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We didn't have long of a wait before they called us to our table. After struggling to get my aching feet to take me up the stairs, we arrived. The waiter told us that the fairy godmother wanted to give us wishing stars to celebrate our graduations:

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I thought that was a cute touch. He came back around and gave us magic wands too, which I thought was cute.... Until I looked around and saw that they give them to all the children....? And the few other tables that didn't have kids with them didn't get magic wands. So I'm not sure if he thought we were a lot younger or what. Either way, here I am with my magic wand :rotfl:

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Can you tell how hard it was for me to smile at this point? Seriously, my feet HURT. Thankfully I remembered that I brought motrin and once I took a few of those the pain subsided and I was able to make it through the rest of the night.

You can also probably tell from that pic how bad the lighting was in there. I didn't really like any of the pics we took with the princesses. In fact, I didn't really like the experience all that much in general. The food was fine- I had the chicken, my sister got the beef and shrimp. But we both agreed that the princesses seemed..... Off. I generally don't love meeting face characters because I find it harder to "play along" and pretend I'm not talking to somebody in a costume who might very well be around my age. But even still, we had great face character interactions with Tiana, Rapunzel, and Starlord later in the trip. The princesses here were just... Awkward. Not to sound rude but I felt like they were understudies or something. And they should really fix the audio system in there, we could hardly hear when they made the announcement for each princess.

I don't even want to post the pics we took because they were so underwhelming and badly lit. But here's the one I think is the least terrible :rolleyes:

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For the amount of money we spent, it was a very disappointing experience overall, and I wouldn't do it again. At first I thought "oh, well maybe if I'm traveling with someone who had never been to Disney World, I'd take them" but now I don't even think I'd do that. I'd much rather take a first time visitor to Be Our Guest, which as you'll see later on we absolutely loved.

After our lackluster dinner we went out and saw the hoards waiting for the fireworks. We overheard a woman asking a cast member what would happen if it started raining, and they assured her it would be delayed in the case of lightening but not cancelled. This was an omen....

.... But I'll start off the next update with how we spent our first night in the parks in a HUGE thunderstorm. Thanks for reading! :)
 
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GET A DISNEY VACATION QUOTE

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