Allons-y! UPDATED 6/18: This is the end...

A few days ago, I found myself wondering if you had started updating this TR (having not checked in since it was just the PTR) and realized you were 40-some chapters in! I've been slowly starting to catch up ever since then and just finished Day 2.

I'm so glad that you liked Luigi's Flying Tires too! It's one of our favorite parts of Cars Land and I truly don't understand why it has such a bad rap. We always get moving so fast!

Also, couldn't agree with you more about stupid people taking flash pictures in dark rides. We had a similar experience on PotC the other day and I just wanted to get off the ride about 2 minutes in.

I liked reading your review of Blue Bayou. We're going there next week for our anniversary and hearing about your experience makes me excited.

Finally, I think the Splash lyrics are "Pretty good, sure as you're born." Still don't really know what that means either.

Looking forward to catching up some more, and then I'm sure I'll have more to comment on.

We may be the only members in the 'Luigi's Flying Tires fan club', but we are all very enthusiastic members lol.

Oooh happy early anniversary!! Be sure to ask for a water side table, it is totally worth the wait :)

That is so funny you started to check my trip report now, because I am 1 or 2 updates away from getting to our very short DIS meet!! Maybe you could sense it in the force :lmao:
 
IJ was awesome as usual. The atmosphere of that queue/ride just can't be beat. I think I've almost settled on being a female Indiana Jones for Halloween at WDW this year.

After our adventure with Indy, it was about time to check in for our dinner at Thunder Ranch BBQ! Love that place.



On the way we stopped to pet Brother's Brother, Reggie.





We were seated immediately and then...my biggest regret of the entire trip happened.

It must have been time to close the petting zoo, because CMs started to lead all the animals backstage and we had a real good view of them as they left. First went Brother's Brother, walking docilely along. And next....gah I wish I had my camera or was filming this!!

A giant herd of goats just went zooming by! It was so hilarious, and best of all, after the initial herd had zipped by, a straggler came along, who was actually hopping along!!

It was so amazingly adorable and funny, instead of walking he was hopping up into the air!!

I have never seen anything so cute and am so sad I didn't get it on film.

Anyway...then our food came out:









All of it was amazing as usual. And we also really enjoyed the entertainment, and I really hope that waitress with the awful singing voice never leaves, I love her.

We still had a couple must dos left on our list, so we headed straight for IASW.





Luckily it was up and running and was a walk on.



Just before dark is one of my favorite times to be at Disney. Talk about magic coming to life. The torches blaze to life in Adventureland. The fairy lights twinkle on in Fantasyland. The soft glow of the lamps brightens Frontierland. The bright, colorful lights of Tomorrowland. And of course the castle lights up. But I don't need to describe how pretty the lit up castle is to any of you.









I know a lot of people are annoyed by IASW, but I just really enjoy it. There is so much to see.



Panda!!





My favorite boys!







There is something super not right about this sun:



Next on our list of must dos (and a first for us) was the Disneyland monorail!

But first, the Teacups at night:



I do love how those lights look.



And...the was kind of a let down. I thought we would ride over more parts of the parks than we actually did, kind of like how the WDW monorail goes over a large portion of Epcot. So yeah, at least we got to cross it off our list.

When we finished the monorail loop we got off and saw that the parade was going on. Hello again!



Ooh pretty lights:

 
Great pictures of IASW. I too love that almost-dusk time of night when the lights come on but there is still some natural light. Seeing the Carsland lighting is on my AP bucket list for later this year.

I think you see a good deal of Tomorrowland and Fantasyland from the monorail, depending on where you sit. I almost always seem to ride it from the DLH to Tomorrowland, so I really need to see the other half of the loop!

PHXscuba
 
Great pictures of IASW. I too love that almost-dusk time of night when the lights come on but there is still some natural light. Seeing the Carsland lighting is on my AP bucket list for later this year.

I think you see a good deal of Tomorrowland and Fantasyland from the monorail, depending on where you sit. I almost always seem to ride it from the DLH to Tomorrowland, so I really need to see the other half of the loop!

PHXscuba

I loved the neon lighting at Carsland. When they start to play the Sha Boom song, it really feels like you are in Radiator Springs.
 


We were in a hurry and still had a lot to do, so we directly proceeded to get lost in the line for the Fairy meet and greet. I really cannot explain how we accomplished this, heck, if I could explain it I probably could have kept it from happening. We eventually realized that we were trying to backdoor ourselves into the Fairy meet and greet from the exit line, so we turned around and found our way back out of Fairy land.



Tricky fairies.

We had grabbed Soarin FPs on our way out of DCA last time, so back we went for another flight!



At this point I had been texting back and forth with Tayalltheway and we finally found a convenient time to have a very short DIS meet!

Taylor and Tracy were waiting for us on a bench outside Soarin, I was pretty nervous since it was my first DISboards meet up and I can probably come across as weird but they both couldn't have been nicer.

We spent a couple minutes chatting and had a good time. We were on our last few hours in DL though and they totally understood our 'last hours in Disney madness' so we ran off to check some more items off our list.

I really wanted to ride RSR one more time, but we needed to check in for our F! dessert package so we were off to the races again.

We arrived at the line at about ten til 8, there was a really long line to check in, I forgot that both showings can check in at 8 pm. The line moved pretty quick though, but all the front row seats were gone by that time, so we contented ourselves with 2 second row center seats and hoped for the best.

Since we had an hour before our Fantasmic, we decided to walk onto...



The Haunted Mansion! You know how there are just a couple rides you don't feel right leaving Disney without having done at the last minute? Well this is one of them for us.





Hurry baaaaack...We'll definitely try!





Then we just had time for another of our must dos:



POTC! Excellent ride as usual, and we were off with 10 minutes left to find out F! seats.

We ended up lucking out and there was an extra empty seat in front of us, so I got an unimpeded view! Yay!! The people sitting around us were all super nice as well and checked to make sure I really could see since they could hear that I was worried about it.

We got our huge dessert packages:



These things really had a lot in them. Eating at Thunder Ranch (albeit 3 hours before) was probably not a good idea. We were both stuffed and could barely eat anything, but we did enjoy the hot chocolate that a CM brought to us at our seats.

DL's Fantasmic is so much better than WDW's!! I really didn't get many good pictures at all, but I loved the puppet Pinocchio scene.



And the Peter Pan and Hook fight on the pirate ship was just incredibly choreographed and amazing to watch as the ship sailed by.





I attempted lots of pictures of Murphy and this is the best that came out:



Sorry bud, not your best side.



The reserved seats were pretty expensive, but when it comes down to it, totally worth it.

Who knows when we'll be back to DL, and we had about 3-4 days to see everything. I really didn't want to give up 2 or more hours of our park time saving a seat. Especially when I'd still probably not be front row and have tall people standing in front of me. I stress out about stuff like that (like where I'll end up standing for WOC), so the price was definitely worth it to get our reserved seats.

Then it was over and we had a decision to make. DCA was open for maybe half an hour more, so we could race over to ride RSR or we could stay in our seats and watch the fireworks we hadn't had a chance to see. Folks, there really was no right answer. To my sort of dismay, we decided to ditch the fireworks for RSR.

We took off, and were pleased to be herded backstage by Main Street so we could get out quicker.

I was so sad to hear snippets of ride music as we raced along!! I didn't know DL did that with the fireworks, I thought it'd be the same show we saw the last time we were here. It was so amazing to me that they incorporated the rides and I was so sad I couldn't properly watch.

Anyway, we made it to DCA, with the gate attendants reminding us that the park closed in 15 minutes and looking at us kind of strangely for wanting to go into a park that closed so soon.



I looked back to see a firework:



We speed walked through Bug's Land. Sorry Bug's Land, we still haven't properly explored you or ridden any rides. Hey, I understand. It's tough to be a bug.

We made it into RSR single rider line with 5 minutes to spare! And Brian and I ended up in the same car, sweet.





Maybe it was a good thing I chose RSR, because I finally got to experience Ramone's paint shop!



...I promptly decided I missed seeing Guido, so I definitely prefer Luigi's scene.







I think I would have been a little sad either way I had chosen (RSR or fireworks), but I did have a good time on RSR. We raced back out of DCA (tired?! Who is tired when you have last night at Disney adrenaline?!).

 
my sweetest friend the end.

<ahem>

We had some shopping to do and decided to heck with it, we were going on POTC one last time. We like for that to be our last ride of the trip because we love it so much.





I got a black Hurley coat and 2 vinylmations and a miniature Donald hat that I could torture the pets with back home.

Oddly enough, my 20% off purchase coupon that I'd got when I purchased my park tickets was not valid...because it'd expired 3 months earlier. Which was weird...I had purchased our park tickets like a week before the trip. Why would they print out an expired coupon with the tickets?? Who knows.

Anyway we made it to POTC in time and had a very satisfactory last ride. Last rides are always kind of weird. Your enjoying the ride, but at the same time also kind of reflecting back on the entire trip.





Sadly, we slowly made our way back to Main Street.







We stopped at Snow White's wishing well.









We did some shopping and browsing as we walked out:







Always look up and around in the gift shops guys, there is some pretty cool stuff in there.







Then we were gone :(





No Disneyland, thank you.

We made it back to the hotel where I enjoyed some of the treats I'd saved, my Matterhorn macaroon from lunch earlier:



And some popcorn I bought on the way out:



Here are our prizes from the horse game:



And Figment also wanted his picture taken:






The next day was pretty boring. We were up around 9 and checked out of the hotel, we made one last stop in DD for beignets and a mint julep at Jazz Kitchen Express. We got a couple sandwiches from EOS for the plane ride.

We were pretty late dropping the rental car off and made it to LAX about an hour before our plane left. Great planning, right?

Miraculously we made it through security and got to our gate in time. We had a connecting flight at Baltimore and we ended up getting home to Columbus pretty late around 1 am.
 
Even though I know I'll probably be back within the next year or two (or sooner this year), it's still hard to leave DL. It was really hard for me to leave WDW because I knew it would likely be several years minimum until we go back. I imagine the two are reversed for you.

I always like to poke around the gift shops but it's dangerous (on several levels) when I have the 4 kids with me.

Be sure to put a link in this thread when you start your AZ trip report so I can find it!

PHXscuba
 


Even though I know I'll probably be back within the next year or two (or sooner this year), it's still hard to leave DL. It was really hard for me to leave WDW because I knew it would likely be several years minimum until we go back. I imagine the two are reversed for you.

I always like to poke around the gift shops but it's dangerous (on several levels) when I have the 4 kids with me.

Be sure to put a link in this thread when you start your AZ trip report so I can find it!

PHXscuba
It is super hard to leave. I dunno though...after this Arizona trip I was really ok with going on other vacations that aren't Disney. I know that is blasphemy, but I really do like seeing new places and exploring.
 

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