"I Think I Might Be a Disneyland Person!" - Feb. 2016 ~ Updated 2/19/21: TR Complete!!!

Ahhhhh! OMG, those updates were so priceless...is there anything more awesome than a toddler at a character breakfast?! It's been a rough week around here between prep work for our own Disneyland trip (spent an entire day trying to get a Blue Bayou Fantasmic! dinner package booked the day they released them :crazy2: Got it booked, finally, after 14 hours of work on & off) & all the work on getting our kitchen ready for a budget remodel (why are we doing this the same month as a Disney trip?! Why did I think this was a good idea?!). I definitely needed those Izzy giggles this morning! Both you & Dug really captured the interactions so perfectly. That was absolutely adorable.

Thank you, also, for the buffet pics & pics of your food. Nice to see what options they have. I agree about the vaguely labeled white condiment section...condiment roulette, I guess! Not sure I would have been willing to take the risk! :rotfl2:


Can't wait to hear how you guys enjoyed DCA!


~Meg
 
Since Izzy and I had just changed two time zones, though, it didn’t feel so bad.

This is something I love about coming from the east coast of Canada! When we go to WDW we gain an hour and those early mornings are easy as pie!

When Dug made it back, we were on our way to this very dangerous destination :scared: :


Woah. ...good to know I guess?

We had never met him before, so that was neat, until he tried to eat Izzy :laughing::


Oh my goodness! So horrific! A raccoon eating a child!

Haha this is cute. But that's exactly what it looks like he's doing.

I have some video that mostly consists of Izzy giggling (starts blurry, but gets better):

Such a cute video! And I love the way toddlers throw themselves down on top of whatever character they're hugging. :)

After Dale wandered off, check out who was peeking around the corner at us:


What a sly chipmunk!

I think we went up to get some food, though (finally!). Looks like Izzy had a plate-full-o-carbs:


The best kind of plate, by far.

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Such a cute photo of you three!

I thought it was poor planning that they had multiple similarly-colored condiments in this spinner without labels directly on them :sad2::


Ooooh. Can you imagine going in to butter your pancake and getting a pancake full of mayo? Yeah, I'll pass.

I think Dale was afraid of a toddler wielding a sharp object. :scared:

Rightly so! Smart chipmunk!
 
That is one interactive character meet! Chip and Dale practically pulled up a chair and ate with you all. That sort of attention is unheard of at WDW. How awesome that Izzy got to experience that in DL.
 
What a fun breakfast!! I guess an early one there is the way to go...so much character interaction!
 


At both WDW and Disneyland, I love Tomorrowland all lit up at night
Me, too!!! :cloud9:

I wish I could remember why I took this picture in the queue :confused::
Well if Izzy is anything like my niece and nephew maybe she got her hands on your phone and took it herself! :laughing: I can't tell you the "surprises" I've had on my phone later... :rolleyes1

There were a couple nights on our trip where Disneyland was open late, so we’d decided to each take one as a solo night.
Nice! I've sure benefited from your solo time before (;)), excited to read about it later :thumbsup2

Totally looks like he’s about to propose in that last one. Pretty sure she would have accepted. :lovestruc
:rotfl: What fun character experiences for Izzy!!! :goodvibes
 
Hi, all. Since many of you are fellow trip reporters, I wanted to pop on here to discuss photo hosting with you. As some of you have probably learned, Photobucket decided to pull the plug on 3rd party photo hosting (what we use to put the photos on here when they are saved in Photobucket), unless the user pays them $400/year. :scared1:

Paid accounts are apparently grandfathered in through December 2018. After that, it's anyone's guess as to whether the company is even still in business (major user backlash right now). As a longtime Photobucket user, this is all very concerning. Luckily, I do have a paid account (like $25/year, not the $400 they now want!) So, my photos should remain in my TRs for the next 1.5 years. However, I do have an old free account that is hosting my oldest TR photos (prior to Dec. 2010 and maybe a few random ones since). Those images are still showing up, I think, but they are likely to break the links at any time.

I REALLY don't want to go back and re-link every single photo to whichever non-Photobucket source I end up using, but there's no way I'm paying that amount to "save" them. But I enjoy looking back at my old TRs sometimes and don't want them to be broken. :sad: (Side note, I know I can upload directly to the DIS, but the 10 pics/post limit is way under what I have in most posts, so I'd have to completely re-do my TRs in like 3 times as many posts. :eek:)

So, that said, anyone have any hosting sites they really like that are unlikely to charge exorbitant rates to store TR photos? Given that Dug works in the web world, he might be able to set something up for me, but I'd like to know what other options there are before putting him through that work. If you are using something that might be a good choice going forward, let me know. :goodvibes I'd like to be prepared in case Photobucket doesn't realize their mistakes and correct them by the end of 2018. :sad2:
 


I've been using Flickr and it's awesome. But now I'm worried about old TRs! I don't even know if I'd remember my photobucket login.
 
When Dug made it back, we were on our way to this very dangerous destination :scared: :

What is that sign for?!?!

There were random Mickeys :earboy2: :

I love these benches!!!! And I love that you take pictures of just about everything on your trips! I really need to step up my game on our next trip.

Meeko! What a good meet!

Kidding, of course, they were having fun together:

She is SUPER excited to meet him! Love it.

And this one too!

Looks like Izzy had a plate-full-o-carbs:

A girl after my own heart!

Man that was a lot of Chip & Dale! Izzy seemed to love all of it!

I feel bad for everyone with the photo bucket accounts. I just started using disboards, and have just been uploading directly to the site. I can't image having to go back and re-upload all your photos! I hope you (and everybody else) find a good alternate!
 
Thanks for the heads up. I'm gonna go save my old trip report.

If you have a Mac, id suggest going to each post and selecting "print" then down in the lower left corner select "PDF" and then "save to PDF"
You can save each individual post as a PDF and save your trip report that way.

There may be an easier way too. I'll do some investigating.
 
Howdy! Just caught up on your TR - love all the pictures and the little details you give. Izzy was a dynamo on that first day! We stayed at the Park Place in way back in 2005 when our kiddos were 3 & 6yrs old respectively and the short walk was really nice.

Bummer about PhotoBucket going to that high-priced model, Imgur or Tinypic are good alternatives from what I hear.
 
Hi, all. Since many of you are fellow trip reporters, I wanted to pop on here to discuss photo hosting with you. As some of you have probably learned, Photobucket decided to pull the plug on 3rd party photo hosting (what we use to put the photos on here when they are saved in Photobucket), unless the user pays them $400/year. :scared1:

Paid accounts are apparently grandfathered in through December 2018. After that, it's anyone's guess as to whether the company is even still in business (major user backlash right now). As a longtime Photobucket user, this is all very concerning. Luckily, I do have a paid account (like $25/year, not the $400 they now want!) So, my photos should remain in my TRs for the next 1.5 years. However, I do have an old free account that is hosting my oldest TR photos (prior to Dec. 2010 and maybe a few random ones since). Those images are still showing up, I think, but they are likely to break the links at any time.

I REALLY don't want to go back and re-link every single photo to whichever non-Photobucket source I end up using, but there's no way I'm paying that amount to "save" them. But I enjoy looking back at my old TRs sometimes and don't want them to be broken. :sad: (Side note, I know I can upload directly to the DIS, but the 10 pics/post limit is way under what I have in most posts, so I'd have to completely re-do my TRs in like 3 times as many posts. :eek:)

So, that said, anyone have any hosting sites they really like that are unlikely to charge exorbitant rates to store TR photos? Given that Dug works in the web world, he might be able to set something up for me, but I'd like to know what other options there are before putting him through that work. If you are using something that might be a good choice going forward, let me know. :goodvibes I'd like to be prepared in case Photobucket doesn't realize their mistakes and correct them by the end of 2018. :sad2:

I've been using Smugmug.com for years. I have the basic plan, which runs $5.99 per month or $3.99 per month if you pay a year at a time. For that I can upload unlimited pictures and videos. They originally started as a picture backup site, so your pictures are replicated to 3 different datacenters in the US, but they do so much more. I mainly use them for backing up and sharing my photos. They have an app that automatically uploads the pictures we take on our phones, so I don't have to worry about something crashing on my phone and losing my pictures. They also make it very easy to share photos, for example for our recent trip to Disneyland, I created a password on our Disney pictures folder. That allowed me to send my daughter a link that automatically opened a web uploader for her to share her pictures to that gallery. It's also super simple to download all of the pictures from a gallery, if you want to work on them locally. And they offer print services, so we've used them for Christmas cards several years.
 
Hmm. I've started using Imgur, and I like it fine. But I don't know how reliably it will remain free over time, since I didn't expect this issue with Photobucket. I'm in the same boat about not wanting to re-link all my photos, but I don't have nearly as many as you would! Good luck!
 
Izzy clearly had a great time with the characters at breakfast. Chip and Dale are the best for interaction. I remember years ago Hannah jumping off the train when she spotted Meeko.

I use Flickr for my trip reports and find it works well. It must be so frustrating for people who have so many photos linked to photo bucket.
 
I've switched to Imgur and am slowly switching my photos to that site. However, from the chatter I've heard, I'm just delaying the inevitable; it seems more and more sites are going the route of photobucket. (The reason I chose Imgur over flickr is because I read flickr is trying to switch to a subscription-based company, as well.) It's a frustrating scenario...all those old photos have to be swapped.
 
Ahhhhh! OMG, those updates were so priceless...is there anything more awesome than a toddler at a character breakfast?! It's been a rough week around here between prep work for our own Disneyland trip (spent an entire day trying to get a Blue Bayou Fantasmic! dinner package booked the day they released them :crazy2: Got it booked, finally, after 14 hours of work on & off) & all the work on getting our kitchen ready for a budget remodel (why are we doing this the same month as a Disney trip?! Why did I think this was a good idea?!). I definitely needed those Izzy giggles this morning! Both you & Dug really captured the interactions so perfectly. That was absolutely adorable.
Thank you for your comment - made my day! :goodvibes I love that others get something out of these reports. And YAY for finally getting your Blue Bayou package! :cool1: I hope it's worth it! Also good luck with your kitchen remodel!

Thank you, also, for the buffet pics & pics of your food. Nice to see what options they have. I agree about the vaguely labeled white condiment section...condiment roulette, I guess! Not sure I would have been willing to take the risk! :rotfl2:
It was a pretty decent buffet, but that white condiment spinner was so poorly thought out! :eek:

Can't wait to hear how you guys enjoyed DCA!
Let's put it this way: I pretty much want to go back there every day lately. ::yes::

This is something I love about coming from the east coast of Canada! When we go to WDW we gain an hour and those early mornings are easy as pie!
Oh, wow - we lose an hour for WDW, so that's funny to think about!

Woah. ...good to know I guess?
CA warns you about EVERYTHING. :eek:

Oh my goodness! So horrific! A raccoon eating a child!

Haha this is cute. But that's exactly what it looks like he's doing.
Brings new meaning to, "she's so cute I could eat her up." :rotfl2:

Such a cute video! And I love the way toddlers throw themselves down on top of whatever character they're hugging. :)
Haha, Izzy has definitely pulled her share of characters and princesses to the floor. :rotfl:

What a sly chipmunk!
He was really enamored with us. Or else just really bored. :rolleyes1

The best kind of plate, by far.
:thumbsup2

Such a cute photo of you three!
Thanks!

Ooooh. Can you imagine going in to butter your pancake and getting a pancake full of mayo? Yeah, I'll pass.
I know! I would think it happens all the time too. :confused3

Rightly so! Smart chipmunk!
Don't want to get a cut in that precious fur, I suppose. :scared:

That is one interactive character meet! Chip and Dale practically pulled up a chair and ate with you all. That sort of attention is unheard of at WDW. How awesome that Izzy got to experience that in DL.
It was really different...kind-of like Garden Grill, but even more so. The perks of an empty restaurant. :thumbsup2

What a fun breakfast!! I guess an early one there is the way to go...so much character interaction!
Definitely! They're probably full of energy just starting their shifts, so use it all on the handful of people there.

Me, too!!! :cloud9:
:cloud9:

Well if Izzy is anything like my niece and nephew maybe she got her hands on your phone and took it herself! :laughing: I can't tell you the "surprises" I've had on my phone later... :rolleyes1
Haha, could be. But I don't think she was doing much of that at this point. I do have a pretty amazing compilation of Izzy selfies from a 3-minute span at WDW this past February, though. :laughing:

Nice! I've sure benefited from your solo time before (;)), excited to read about it later :thumbsup2
:goodvibes Solo time is the best! (and even better with another solo DIS-er!)

:rotfl: What fun character experiences for Izzy!!! :goodvibes
She really was having a great time with them that morning.

What a fun breakfast! So much character interaction, and good food, too!
Great way to start off our first full day! :thumbsup2
 
I've been using Flickr and it's awesome. But now I'm worried about old TRs! I don't even know if I'd remember my photobucket login.
Ugh, you must have used Photobucket early on? I know you use Flickr now and it seems like it works well from what I can see. I actually clicked through a bunch of random TRs the other day and it looks like a good chunk of the DIS is using Flickr.

What is that sign for?!?!
From what I've seen, the state of CA has laws that require everyone be warned about everything. Like I know that we've bought random (pretty innocent seeming) products with labels that say "California wants you to know this could kill you" (or similar :lmao:). So, I guess that we might die from visiting Disneyland, but that seems like a decent way to go, I suppose. :confused3 I'm willing to take that chance.

I love these benches!!!! And I love that you take pictures of just about everything on your trips! I really need to step up my game on our next trip.
Haha, I was actually just thinking about the picture thing today as I was working with the pictures from my early trip reports. Our first trip as a couple (Dec. 2009), there were only like 20-something pictures I posted for a whole day! But, that was also prior to everyone carrying around a smartphone with camera. Now I take WAYYYYY too many (and Dug always has :laughing:). You should see how many more pictures I have that I don't even post. :eek: I do make an effort to take a lot of random photos, though, so I can piece our movements together post-trip when I make notes (I am not very good at making notes during the trips).

Meeko! What a good meet!
It was!

She is SUPER excited to meet him! Love it.
And I doubt she even knew who he was.

And this one too!
So fun!

A girl after my own heart!
:thumbsup2

Man that was a lot of Chip & Dale! Izzy seemed to love all of it!
They are the best - we have had SO many great times with Chip and Dale over the years. :lovestruc

I feel bad for everyone with the photo bucket accounts. I just started using disboards, and have just been uploading directly to the site. I can't image having to go back and re-upload all your photos! I hope you (and everybody else) find a good alternate!
Thanks, it's such a pain! When I started doing TRs, there was never an option to upload directly. And now I don't want to use it, as I can't imagine how many posts my reports would be if I had to limit each one to 10 pictures. :rotfl: Anyway, yeah, I am really not looking forward to this project. :sad1:

Thanks for the heads up. I'm gonna go save my old trip report.
No problem!

If you have a Mac, id suggest going to each post and selecting "print" then down in the lower left corner select "PDF" and then "save to PDF"
You can save each individual post as a PDF and save your trip report that way.
I actually have done that, though need to make sure I'm up to date. Back when the DIS changed platforms, I got paranoid and saved everything like that. And I'm glad I did, as they screwed up a lot of my old punctuation in the transition. :sad2:

There may be an easier way too. I'll do some investigating.
Let me know if you find anything helpful.

Howdy! Just caught up on your TR - love all the pictures and the little details you give. Izzy was a dynamo on that first day! We stayed at the Park Place in way back in 2005 when our kiddos were 3 & 6yrs old respectively and the short walk was really nice.
Thanks! She did great traveling and we had a blast on day 1. LOVED that short walk...spoiled me forever. ::yes::

Bummer about PhotoBucket going to that high-priced model, Imgur or Tinypic are good alternatives from what I hear.
Thanks! I just don't get the decisions they made. I mean, someone who (in theory) only has like 20 pictures in Photobucket, but all linked into forums, is never going to be able to justify $400/year to stay with them. They should have thought this through better. :confused3

I've been using Smugmug.com for years. I have the basic plan, which runs $5.99 per month or $3.99 per month if you pay a year at a time. For that I can upload unlimited pictures and videos. They originally started as a picture backup site, so your pictures are replicated to 3 different datacenters in the US, but they do so much more. I mainly use them for backing up and sharing my photos. They have an app that automatically uploads the pictures we take on our phones, so I don't have to worry about something crashing on my phone and losing my pictures. They also make it very easy to share photos, for example for our recent trip to Disneyland, I created a password on our Disney pictures folder. That allowed me to send my daughter a link that automatically opened a web uploader for her to share her pictures to that gallery. It's also super simple to download all of the pictures from a gallery, if you want to work on them locally. And they offer print services, so we've used them for Christmas cards several years.
Thank you so much for the info on this! I've seen this recommended in other places as well and decided to try the free trial - seems great, so far! I don't mind the small fee, as I currently pay a small fee for Photobucket (and smugmug seems to work much better than photobucket ever did). Also, that comment about sharing photos is super helpful! We did a joint trip with another DIS-er (@Imagineer5 ) in December and still haven't managed to share our photos with each other, so this would be perfect! :thumbsup2

Hmm. I've started using Imgur, and I like it fine. But I don't know how reliably it will remain free over time, since I didn't expect this issue with Photobucket. I'm in the same boat about not wanting to re-link all my photos, but I don't have nearly as many as you would! Good luck!
Yeah, I'm wary of the free ones now because they may follow suit. And, heck, I'm a paying subscriber of Photobucket, but I'm still not going to be able to maintain my links past next year. I kind-of don't trust anyone to maintain my photo links now. :sad1: And, yeah, there are a LOT to re-link. Ugh.

Izzy clearly had a great time with the characters at breakfast. Chip and Dale are the best for interaction. I remember years ago Hannah jumping off the train when she spotted Meeko.
Ha, cute! Yes, we consistently have great experiences with Chip and Dale! Love them! :love:

I use Flickr for my trip reports and find it works well. It must be so frustrating for people who have so many photos linked to photo bucket.
Thanks! Definitely frustrating and maddening. >:(

I've switched to Imgur and am slowly switching my photos to that site. However, from the chatter I've heard, I'm just delaying the inevitable; it seems more and more sites are going the route of photobucket. (The reason I chose Imgur over flickr is because I read flickr is trying to switch to a subscription-based company, as well.) It's a frustrating scenario...all those old photos have to be swapped.
Such a pain. When I joined, Photobucket was THE place to store photos for the DIS. And now it's hard to know where they'll be safe. I hope the other companies take note of the backlash against Photobucket's poorly thought out plan and do better. But, yeah, I don't know how I'm going to find time to swap out all those old photos. As it is, I haven't even found time to set up chapter links in this TR. :headache: But, hey, I guess if I have to go back into my old posts, maybe I can fix all the punctuation that got screwed up a couple years back when the DIS migrated. :idea:

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thanks for all the feedback, everyone! I've been working on the photo hosting issue a bit. I started by removing all of like 12 photos I had in a very old free Photobucket account and shutting it down with a lovely note to Photobucket about how misguided they are. :rolleyes2 Most of those photos were from my VERY FIRST report on the DIS!! Because there were so few, I actually went into the posts and inserted them directly into the DIS. And it seems to work just fine. :thumbsup2 If you are interested in a short and entirely different report, feel free to check out this guy: https://www.disboards.com/threads/m...by-a-13-and-9-year-old.2367668/#post-34940632 It's great for nostalgia too! :goodvibes

Beyond that, I decided to sign up for the free trial of Smugmug and that seems to be working quite well from my 1 day of testing. Unless I find an issue, I will probably move my other free Photobucket pictures over there and re-link my first few reports. Just wondering, do you guys still see the photos in the early ones, like this one? https://www.disboards.com/threads/the-last-minute-super-bargain-bonus-trip-9-11-update-the.2541655/ I do, but wasn't sure if there were just cached on my computer or something.

Since Dec. 2010, I've used the paid account, so I'm not going to worry too much about those until, well, next year sometime? I will probably upload the photos into Smugmug, but save the re-linking projects for later. For the time being, I'm going to work on my next update with Photobucket, as I have the pictures ready there, but might switch over the new updates soon.

And one more trial thing. Apparently Smugmug handles uploading videos much better than Photobucket, so I'm debating if I link them there or keep using (free) Vimeo for those. So, here's a video I found in my old account and am testing how it posts here. But it also reminds me how much cooler we used to be pre-parenthood. :lmao: Enjoy:



Hmmmm, looks like I can't actually embed it here, so may be sticking with Vimeo. But I'll leave it here anyway for fun. :thumbsup2
 
I can still see all your pictures on both reports!
Loved your year of Disney video! Strange to think how much has changed in 7 years!!! (At Disney and at home!)
 
I can see the pictures no problem! Good luck on your migration to a new service. I don't have experience embedding their photos in posts, but I've used a paid account with Flickr for ages and have been happy with it for photo storage. Price is not bad, either. Sounds like you might have found a good option, though! I hope that works out well!

So glad you liked DCA. I like it so much that i insisted on introducing 2 different family members to it on 2 different trips this year & made them buy longer tickets so they could come visit it with me.

DL will always have the top spot in my heart, but I really love that park, too and am so nervous to find out whether my husband & mother will like it as much as I do because it feels like I'm always reading people taking digs at it. Makes me glad to hear that I am not the only one who enjoys it. Can't wait to read your next report!

~Meg
 
I can also see those pictures! I wonder if Photobucket just hasn't noticed and sunk its claws into them yet? Because strangely once in a while some of my photobucket pictures in the middle of a TR will appear while all the others around it will have the third party hosting message. So frustrating!
 

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