Lots of Completed Trip Reports....Nov 2009 - April 2014

[tksbaskets]

Fun update Deej! I love your picture of the ride number. Also, I might add if that was your DS at the Shootin' Range - she has some seriously toned arms.

Hope the Jungle Cruise opens up.

I always have tugs of nostalgia in the Tiki room too. 1976 in Disney World with my folks...

 

[deejdigsdis]

Anyway, as I was saying 1 year and 4 months ago...

We rode the non-improved Matterhorn Bobsleds.

Ten minutes later my 4 guys were riding the Teacups. I went for a restroom break at one of the cutest restrooms ever (think playing card bathroom stall doors) and headed back to watch my guys on the Teacups. It turns out I missed them, but fortunately my sister took pictures of them spinning round and round.

After their Mad Tea Party, I gave the boys the park map and let them take the lead.



It was off to Mr. Toad's Wild Ride.



I remember the line being on the longer side, but we had a lot of Fantasyland rides to cover on this our last day as a family. We entertained ourselves by checking out the Hidden Mickey book:



And taking pictures of flowers:



OK, so maybe I was the only one entertaining myself by taking pictures of flowers.



I can assure you that my husband was doing no such thing.

My SIL texted while we were in line. We had said our goodbyes the night before, and early this morning they began their loooooong drive back home. Anyway, she said that her kids kept asking her to check the ride wait times on her phone and often wondered, "What do you think they are doing right now?"

Moving along to our next Fantasyland ride...at 1:10pm...something that I really know better NOT to do...King Arthur Carrousel. Actually the line wasn't bad at all. According to my pictures, only 10 minutes passed between riding Mr. Toad and hopping on the Carrousel.



More while-we-wait flowers:



Doubloon...rumored to be Lillian Disney's favorite horse on the carousel. Not sure if this is true or not.



On to Dumbo! I'm glad I can still get my older boys on this ride. My unposed pictures of them smiling ear to ear prove to me that I don't really have to "get" them on the ride against their will. We waited in line for 30 minutes. Not bad for a Friday afternoon on a party day.



It's 2:30 by this time and we are HUNGRY! So we were off to one of our favorite lunch spots...Hungry Bear Restaurant.



I love the peacefulness at the waterside tables. Even when it's busy there is still a calmness sitting by the water, tucked away from the hustle and bustle, watching the ducks, hearing the Mark Twain whistle, and waving to other guests as they sail by.

I didn't get any pictures of that serene scene, but here's a picture of what I ate... the Fried Green Tomato Sandwich and the best slaw ever. Very cool and refreshing.





Our calm and peaceful lunch came to a halt. My 9 year old son...um...well...I'll just show you a picture:



Yes, he managed to cover his shoulder in duck poop. I'm still not exactly sure how it happened. I do know that a duck didn't just fly over and poop on him. The wipes I'd been carrying around certainly came in handy.

While my husband was helping our son get cleaned up, I spread our Fast Passes across the table and took a picture. Gone are the days of Fast Pass stashes such as these:



OK, I better post this to see if it worked. I noticed photobucket is different since the last time I used it. Much longer codes. Let's see if this worked...


ETA: Good, it worked. My main reason for the edit, though, was to draw attention to the fact that this is post number 1313 for me. Disneyland's address!

 

[Sherry E]

deej!

It's as if you were just posting yesterday...hardly any time has passed since the last installment.

What a delight to see your photos again! I think that all of those flowers were definitely photo-worthy. So, so pretty.

I know that you -- as a fellow flower photo enthusiast -- probably know what I mean when I say that, after a while, one can become "flower jaded" and take them for granted or just not appreciate their beauty. Flowers are such a naturally a beautiful subject for pictures, as we know, but after a while they either all end up looking the same -- or the flowers in question are not particularly well-maintained and so they look a little wilted and drab.

Sometimes I find that I will stumble upon a gorgeous bed of bright flowers and, no matter which angle I use to try to get a halfway decent photo, there is one discolored, mangled or sickly-looking flower in the bunch that ruins the shot. And to crop it out after the fact could throw off the composition of the photo. So I often just pass by pretty flowers at DLR now, unless I can find a good, clean patch of them without any bad ones nearby!




About Photobucket - yes, Photobucket underwent a massive overhaul of their site last year (in fact, it was early last year). Initially they removed many features and much of the functionality, which enraged their users (both the paying and free account users). They took away so many options and changed the layout completely, making it very difficult to find photos, edit, etc. Everything was knocked out of the sequence many of us had saved our photos in, and the various "sort by..." functions were not there! I'd had my photos in the "Sort by File Name" order and suddenly everything was out of whack, so that trying to find one photo in an album of over 250 photos was like searching for a needle in a haystack.

I have well over 14,000 photos stored in one Photobucket account and several thousand photos in another, so you can imagine that anything that disrupts my ability to locate my photos and do with them what I want will infuriate me.

Many disgruntled Photobucket customers took to the Internet to complain. For a while, the Support staff left a few threads open in the Support section of Photobucket, where we all voiced our annoyance on a daily basis. When the complaints got to be too voluminous (and too angry), Support closed the threads and people continued complaining on the Photobucket Facebook page.

So, while the layout of the website is totally different now -- and there appears to be no way to download an entire album without doing it photo-by-photo -- Photobucket actually did pay attention to our many rants and complaints, and they re-implemented some features that we need. They truly seemed to be totally clueless about and unaware of how their customers were using their site prior to the massive overhaul! They didn't realize that most of us were doing specific things in specific ways.

One sneaky thing that Photobucket has done, however (because they want people to use up all of their bandwidth and/or storage space so they will have to pay more money), is to take away the ability to actually upload photos at a designated size. For example, in the past layout of Photobucket, if we wanted to upload photos at 640 x 480, for example, the photos could actually be "resized upon upload," so that the photo size that was displayed and stored was 640 x 480.

Now, of course, clever Photobucket removed that resize-upon-upload feature, but they have an option for the "display size." This means that when you upload new photos, they will be stored -- whether you like it or not -- at the original, gigantic size that most cameras produce...which uses up more bandwidth and storage space, of course. The photos can not resize upon upload. BUT you can choose to "display" the photos at certain sizes online. This means that the bulk photo uploaders (people who take hundreds or thousands of photos) will either have to resize all of their photos before uploading to Photobucket if they want to store smaller sizes, or they will risk using up a lot of their storage space and have to pay more money. The people who don't take a lot of photos won't have to worry about it too much.




One final thing -- slaw. You mentioned the slaw at the Hungry Bear. I have not tried that slaw as of yet, but now I'm curious about it!

I've never been a big slaw person but this past December I ate at Tangaroa Terrace in the DLH for the first time, and I ordered the BBQ chicken sandwich and slaw. This was an interesting sandwich in that the chicken breast was breaded with panko crumbs; the BBQ sauce had a bit of a kick to it (tamarind, I think??); and the slaw was green papaya slaw, if I recall correctly. All of those ingredients together made for an interesting flavor mix.

Are you an old school slaw type of person, or do you think you would enjoy green papaya slaw?

 

[mvf-m11c]

It is so nice to see you update your 2012 TR. You and your family were able to do a lot of rides that day and they weren't that long to get on which is a good thing. As always your pictures of the flowers at the parks are very nice. The food porn at Hungry Bear restaurant looks very appetizing.

 

[tksbaskets]

Hi Deej! (*and Sherry and Bret),
I got the email notification and said to myself "Hey, isn't that Deej's thread?" So fun to get a surprise update. Great shots of the flowers and Dumbo.

Duck poop?? I guess where there are ducks there is... Bummer it's on your boy.

Shall we be looking forward to more updates? Sigh...I miss the days of the FP stash...we had to work within the system on our trip this past December.

Glad to hear from you!

 

[deejdigsdis]

deej!

It's as if you were just posting yesterday...hardly any time has passed since the last installment.

What a delight to see your photos again! I think that all of those flowers were definitely photo-worthy. So, so pretty.

I know that you -- as a fellow flower photo enthusiast -- probably know what I mean when I say that, after a while, one can become "flower jaded" and take them for granted or just not appreciate their beauty. Flowers are such a naturally a beautiful subject for pictures, as we know, but after a while they either all end up looking the same -- or the flowers in question are not particularly well-maintained and so they look a little wilted and drab.

Sometimes I find that I will stumble upon a gorgeous bed of bright flowers and, no matter which angle I use to try to get a halfway decent photo, there is one discolored, mangled or sickly-looking flower in the bunch that ruins the shot. And to crop it out after the fact could throw off the composition of the photo. So I often just pass by pretty flowers at DLR now, unless I can find a good, clean patch of them without any bad ones nearby!




About Photobucket - yes, Photobucket underwent a massive overhaul of their site last year (in fact, it was early last year). Initially they removed many features and much of the functionality, which enraged their users (both the paying and free account users). They took away so many options and changed the layout completely, making it very difficult to find photos, edit, etc. Everything was knocked out of the sequence many of us had saved our photos in, and the various "sort by..." functions were not there! I'd had my photos in the "Sort by File Name" order and suddenly everything was out of whack, so that trying to find one photo in an album of over 250 photos was like searching for a needle in a haystack.

I have well over 14,000 photos stored in one Photobucket account and several thousand photos in another, so you can imagine that anything that disrupts my ability to locate my photos and do with them what I want will infuriate me.

Many disgruntled Photobucket customers took to the Internet to complain. For a while, the Support staff left a few threads open in the Support section of Photobucket, where we all voiced our annoyance on a daily basis. When the complaints got to be too voluminous (and too angry), Support closed the threads and people continued complaining on the Photobucket Facebook page.

So, while the layout of the website is totally different now -- and there appears to be no way to download an entire album without doing it photo-by-photo -- Photobucket actually did pay attention to our many rants and complaints, and they re-implemented some features that we need. They truly seemed to be totally clueless about and unaware of how their customers were using their site prior to the massive overhaul! They didn't realize that most of us were doing specific things in specific ways.

One sneaky thing that Photobucket has done, however (because they want people to use up all of their bandwidth and/or storage space so they will have to pay more money), is to take away the ability to actually upload photos at a designated size. For example, in the past layout of Photobucket, if we wanted to upload photos at 640 x 480, for example, the photos could actually be "resized upon upload," so that the photo size that was displayed and stored was 640 x 480.

Now, of course, clever Photobucket removed that resize-upon-upload feature, but they have an option for the "display size." This means that when you upload new photos, they will be stored -- whether you like it or not -- at the original, gigantic size that most cameras produce...which uses up more bandwidth and storage space, of course. The photos can not resize upon upload. BUT you can choose to "display" the photos at certain sizes online. This means that the bulk photo uploaders (people who take hundreds or thousands of photos) will either have to resize all of their photos before uploading to Photobucket if they want to store smaller sizes, or they will risk using up a lot of their storage space and have to pay more money. The people who don't take a lot of photos won't have to worry about it too much.




One final thing -- slaw. You mentioned the slaw at the Hungry Bear. I have not tried that slaw as of yet, but now I'm curious about it!

I've never been a big slaw person but this past December I ate at Tangaroa Terrace in the DLH for the first time, and I ordered the BBQ chicken sandwich and slaw. This was an interesting sandwich in that the chicken breast was breaded with panko crumbs; the BBQ sauce had a bit of a kick to it (tamarind, I think??); and the slaw was green papaya slaw, if I recall correctly. All of those ingredients together made for an interesting flavor mix.

Are you an old school slaw type of person, or do you think you would enjoy green papaya slaw?

It is so nice to see you update your 2012 TR. You and your family were able to do a lot of rides that day and they weren't that long to get on which is a good thing. As always your pictures of the flowers at the parks are very nice. The food porn at Hungry Bear restaurant looks very appetizing.

Hi Deej! (*and Sherry and Bret),
I got the email notification and said to myself "Hey, isn't that Deej's thread?" So fun to get a surprise update. Great shots of the flowers and Dumbo.

Duck poop?? I guess where there are ducks there is... Bummer it's on your boy.

Shall we be looking forward to more updates? Sigh...I miss the days of the FP stash...we had to work within the system on our trip this past December.

Glad to hear from you!

Sherry, Bret, and TK!!

Sherry, I know what you mean about the flowers. Remember that sorry bed over by the Haunted Mansion? Everything was dried up and so odd-looking, but it wasn't on purpose.

I'm so glad I missed that Photobucket chaos! What a nightmare.

I'm not a traditional slaw person. The first slaw I ever had that I liked was the zesty slaw from Big Thunder Ranch BBQ. It was vinegar-based instead of mayo-based. So much better. Then this slaw came along at Hungry Bear. I think they just call it "slaw." I think it just says "a side of slaw" on the menu. It's a mango jicama slaw, I believe. I'm not generally a mango fan but I love the slaw. I'm not generally a papaya fan, either, but I just might enjoy green papaya slaw.

Bret, Thank you! You're right, we had some pretty nice wait times for Fantasyland on a Friday afternoon on a party day in October. I can't imagine how many trips you've taken to the DLR since I last went!

TK, Yes, I hope to wrap this TR soon. It's been far too long! I may not remember many details from that trip back in Oct. 2012, but I still have plenty o' pictures to share. Look for another installment tomorrow.

How did the Fast Pass situation work for you? I've been wondering how things have turned out since they began enforcing the return time window. What is the general consensus? Shorter lines for FP? Less FPs being pulled?

 

[tksbaskets]

Fast pass changes - well the return lines were much shorter. On our previous trip to DL the FP return line for TOT was longer than the stand-by line in the evening.

We did have to alter out touring plan to make sure that we were back at the window of the FP but for the most part it was fine. There were a couple of times we didn't get a FP because the return window was during a time that didn't work for us.

Still a bit sad to night have a fist full to use at the end of the day...

 

[deejdigsdis]

Fast pass changes - well the return lines were much shorter. On our previous trip to DL the FP return line for TOT was longer than the stand-by line in the evening.

We did have to alter out touring plan to make sure that we were back at the window of the FP but for the most part it was fine. There were a couple of times we didn't get a FP because the return window was during a time that didn't work for us.

Still a bit sad to night have a fist full to use at the end of the day...

That is pretty much what I fugured. Thanks for the answer, TK.

Off to update!

 

[deejdigsdis]

I can't remember what we did after lunch. The next picture on my camera was this:



Then this:


I know we didn't go inside.

And then this:



So somehow we went from lunch at Hungry Bear to Main Street. I'm thinking we went to put something in the locker???

Our family of 5 went off on our own for a bit for the first time. First stop:



Time to whip out that Fast Pass Stash! I know the 5 of us rode Space Mountain twice in a row. I always try to take a picture of our ride pictures. I took a picture of the first one at 4:19pm, and took a picture of the second one at 4:38pm. Not bad! Yay for using 2 FPs in a row! Little did I know that would be my last time to do that...

We had 2 more Space Mountain FPs so my husband rode with our 9 year old and I took our 12 and 6 year old boys for a train ride for some reason. I think we were headed to Splash Mountain but I'm not sure why we took the train. Apparently we boarded at the Main Street Station.



I do remember the parade going by. We enjoyed watching the excited party guests coming in, but felt a bit of sadness knowing our trip was winding down.



DS 12 was getting sleepy while waiting for the train to come.











Finally we boarded the train and got off in NOS, I guess, and then rode Splash Mountain. Splash was followed by a bit of treat shopping at Pooh Corner.

A few sweet treats:







I can tell it's been a while since I've been to Disneyland when I gasp at the prices of these treats. $4.99 for 1 cupcake? Seriously? I've yet to try a decent cupcake at Disneyland, but they sure are cute.



My 2 boys sharing some Mickey Head Truffles on a bench while we wait for my husband and other son to join us in Critter Country.



OK...I lost 2+ hours of what we might have done after Splash Mountain, since I don't have any more pictures until 8:00pm.

Backing up... I need to repeat part of the Disney Gift Card story. I am just going to copy and paste an explanation of said story from an earlier post as a refresher:

Now for the most frustrating moment of the trip. My parents got a Disney Visa before the trip, and in turn received a $200 Disney Gift Card. I was in charge of buying everyone's Disneyland tickets so my dad gave me the gift card to cover most of my mom's ticket price. I gave my husband the $200 Gift Card to pay for the meal at Boardwalk P & P. He came back and said they wouldn't take it. It turns out that the magnetic strip on the back had been mostly scratched off. Knowing my parents, I figured they must have thought they needed to scratch off an area to reveal a PIN or something. My husband didn't want me to say anything to my mom. I think he was picturing Drama at Disneyland. Not sure why since that's not really my thing. I knew how to talk to her without making her feel bad. I just needed to know if that was indeed what happened, and let her know to never do that again. So I nonchalantly talked to my mom and asked her if that's what she had done. I was right. My dad told her to scratch it off to get the PIN. I let her know we'd get it all figured out, but next time she doesn't need to do anything to the card. I didn't understand why the restaurant couldn't just plug in the card number by hand, but for some reason they couldn't. More on this later.

(The text in the original post contains lots of "headache" emoticons, just for the record!)

Time for the "more on this later" as mentioned in that post. I went to City Hall to take care of this whole $200 Disney Gift Card fiasco. Between standing in line and actually being "helped" I was there for 1 hour. (I might just say here that there were some extremely rude guests complaining about the most ridiculous of things. Wanting compensation because your child couldn't see the parade? Really? I might also add that every CM working in there during that hour handled all complaints very calmly. Hats off to them.) OK, back to MY complaint... I figured the CM that helped me could just manually punch in the card number, see that the Disney Gift Card was indeed unused, cancel it and issue me a new one. Not so. They brought in a guy that was referred to as "their top computer guy." After doing whatever it was that he does, the bottom line was that they couldn't issue me a new card, I couldn't use it to purchase food, but I was welcome to use it to buy merchandise. They couldn't explain to me why I couldn't use it to buy food (which is what I needed it for, we aren't big souvenir people...give me a Christmas ornament and maybe a t-shirt and I'm good) but merchandise was purchase-able. Yet at the same time they couldn't manually type in the numbers of the card and run it that way. So I'm not sure what the deal was. I left feeling frustrated. They were able to tell the gift card was indeed unused, but they couldn't cancel it and just give me a new one. But they did give me this as a consolation:



So with an unusable (to me) $200 Disney Gift Card in hand, the 5 of us headed over to DCA to use our pass to ride TOT.



I'm not sure how we spent the rest of the night. Maybe another ride on TOT?
I have another picture, anyway.



I do remember taking the boys to get some corndogs and my husband went to get some Frankenweenie food. One boy fell asleep at the table. I ended up taking that boy back to the hotel. My husband stayed with the other 2 and rode California Screamin' one last time. I began packing for our trip home the next day with a pit in my stomach. Our wonderfull vacation was pretty much over. I was kicking myself for not staying until close, but at the same time my middle son was done. It was better that I take him back than my husband, as my sis and I would spend a few more hours together just the 2 of us in the park the next morning. One last use of our APs.

 

[mvf-m11c]

Bret, Thank you! You're right, we had some pretty nice wait times for Fantasyland on a Friday afternoon on a party day in October. I can't imagine how many trips you've taken to the DLR since I last went!

It was good that you were able to go on the rides at Fantasyland during MHP. During your visit on Friday the 26th, I arrived in Florida during my WDW trip. It was nice to go during the Halloween season as well as the Food & Wine Festival at EPCOT where it is different compared to the Halloween season at the DLR. What was your last trip to the DLR? I have went plenty of times since the 2012 WDW trip. I have started a new DLR trip report thread since the old one doesn't have much posts left. Here is the link: Second All in One Disneyland TR Thread Universal Studios Hollywood - Dec 2013 #72 4/1


That was good to have all those FP's in hand to be able to ride the rides later that day where the stand-by queues can be very long in the afternoon to nighttime.

When you were at the Main Street Station and looking at the turnstiles to enter the park, it looks like it was going to be a busy day during MHP.

I'm sorry to hear about the gift card. I know that it can be a pain where you can't use it.

Good to hear from you after being away for a while on the threads.

 

[Cheshirecatty]

Hi deejdigsdis!

I just found your report, and it is one of the most visually beautiful reports I've ever read---WOW!

What a treat to view(and read!)

I have to say that I am partial to the pics of Oscar---so wonderful---what a dear man!

I'm excited to read the rest--keep it coming!

 

[deejdigsdis]

It was good that you were able to go on the rides at Fantasyland during MHP. During your visit on Friday the 26th, I arrived in Florida during my WDW trip. It was nice to go during the Halloween season as well as the Food & Wine Festival at EPCOT where it is different compared to the Halloween season at the DLR. What was your last trip to the DLR? I have went plenty of times since the 2012 WDW trip. I have started a new DLR trip report thread since the old one doesn't have much posts left. Here is the link: Second All in One Disneyland TR Thread Universal Studios Hollywood - Dec 2013 #72 4/1


That was good to have all those FP's in hand to be able to ride the rides later that day where the stand-by queues can be very long in the afternoon to nighttime.

When you were at the Main Street Station and looking at the turnstiles to enter the park, it looks like it was going to be a busy day during MHP.

I'm sorry to hear about the gift card. I know that it can be a pain where you can't use it.

Good to hear from you after being away for a while on the threads.

Thanks Bret, and thanks for the link to your new TR thread. I haven't been to DLR since this trip I'm currently reporting on...so Oct. 2012.

Hi deejdigsdis!

I just found your report, and it is one of the most visually beautiful reports I've ever read---WOW!

What a treat to view(and read!)

I have to say that I am partial to the pics of Oscar---so wonderful---what a dear man!

I'm excited to read the rest--keep it coming!

Cheshirecatty - Wow! Thank you for your kind words! I'm glad you are enjoying it. Oscar is quite a treasure. Do you know if he is still there?

 

[Sherry E]

Deej -

Oscar was there the last time I was at DLR, for the holidays last year. I finally met him -- I had never met him before. I'm sure he is still there, but I could be wrong.

 

[tksbaskets]

Deej -

Oscar was there the last time I was at DLR, for the holidays last year. I finally met him -- I had never met him before. I'm sure he is still there, but I could be wrong.

We saw Oscar in December

 

[Cheshirecatty]

Hi deej!

"Yes", Oscar is still there(well, he was when we were there in Feb./March)!

 

[Sherry E]

Deej --

I am just now getting the chance to come back and comment about the dreaded gift card fiasco. You know, I should point out that I had been thinking about your gift card situation recently -- even before you resurfaced on the DIS to continue your TR -- and wondering what exactly happened (I thought about it because I was looking at the strip on the back of a card I have). You must have read my mind! I remembered that you had teased the gift card story way back when.

To be honest, I don't even really understand why your card could not be used for meals, despite the strip being scratched. As you said, surely there has to be a way the restaurant CMs can just run the numbers manually and/or City Hall somehow issues a new card or gives you a voucher for food or something. Anything. Maybe I just want to believe that Disney can work miracles and perform feats of magic but if they can delve into enough to see that the card had not been used and you still had the $200 on it, then I'm uncertain as to why the end result couldn't have been that you could buy actual meals with it.

To me, it doesn't really sound as if you were expecting an unreasonable result (unlike the people who wanted refunds because their kids couldn't see the parade or whatever!), and it also doesn't sound as if the reason why you couldn't buy meals with it was explained properly by the City Hall folks. The thing is, $200 is a hefty amount to lose out on for meals. It's not like we are talking about a $25 gift card (and even the $25 gift card would be a big deal to me, personally) that you couldn't use for meals. A card with $200 on it is a huge deal -- and that amount of $$$ makes a big dent in the meal spending. So I am quite surprised that the City Hall folks couldn't make it work.

I'm not even sure why the strip on the back is a huge deal if it is scratched off, if I am thinking of the same kind of card you're referring to. There is a strip on the back of a lot of the gift cards and it does have a security code or PIN under it -- the last several cards I have gotten were like that. In fact, the one I have now -- which only has a small balance left on it -- is one with a strip, and I scraped off the strip to get the code for an online purchase. After that I took that same card -- with the strip scraped off and all -- to DLR with me and used it for a drink or food or something. It worked fine.

Then again, there are also gift cards with the PIN or code printed on the back and no strip covering them at all (those might be the ones ordered from Disney Gift Cards.com??). So I am confused.

Your card was a Disney gift card and not a "Disney Shopping" gift card, I am assuming? I know that there are two different kinds of gift cards, and the latter Shopping one is the one that is generally only used for merchandise at the Disney Stores and online and what not, whereas the Disney Gift Card is the one that can be used for meals in the parks, the DLR hotels, shopping, PhotoPass, etc.

The gift card that was given out back in 2009 for the free birthday promo (by Disney Parks) was sort of an equivalent to the Shopping gift card in that meals could not be purchased with it, but you could buy souvenirs.

However -- and I hope you found this out and did not let that $200 go to waste! -- those cards for "souvenirs" or shopping can also be used to purchase edible items in the sweets shops. I doubt you would have bought $200 worth of goodies on that trip, but you can buy things at Candy Palace, Marceline's, Trolley Treats, Pooh Corner, Ghirardelli -- or probably any store that sells sweet stuff. You could buy the $4.99 cupcakes with the $200 gift card because they are sold at the sweet shops. If you wanted to load up on gingerbread men with mouse ears, the $200 shopping card would work!

(I cringe when I think about the fact that my friends still have their unspent birthday gift cards from 5 years ago, because they can't find anything they want to buy with them. I would have had that card used up in 20 minutes upon receiving it, if I had gotten one! Like you, my friends would mainly use the cards for meals and not souvenirs so they haven't used the cards -- because they don't shop at DLR. They also won't part with the cards either. They won't give them away. I told them, "If you haven't already found something you want to spend your gift cards on by now, then you never will!" So they feigned momentary interest in using the cards by walking into Ghirardelli and looking at the various packages of chocolates they could give out as gifts. I said, "Yes! Great idea!" And then they shrugged and walked out, with no chocolates!)

Anyway, what a nuisance for you to have to deal with (I will insert the headache emoticon for you - ) -- and again, it wasn't a small amount of money. It is safe to say that if someone is holding a gift card with $200 on it, chances are the plan is to use it on important things while in the parks. I think that Disney should have somehow treated that situation with a bit more importance than if it had been a small denomination, and tried to make it work for you the way you needed it to work -- the way it was originally designed to work!

 

[deejdigsdis]

So it sounds like Oscar is still in the house!

Sherry, I don't have time to address everything in your most recent post, but I wanted to say I found a way to use the $200 Disney Gift Card. Really, the best way possible for me! I used it on the Disney website to go toward the purchase of a park hopper! And I will be using it tomorrow! More details later because I need to get some sleep. Woo hoo!

 

[lucysmom]

Oh my!! I have just finished reading all 55 pages of this thread. You have been my bedtime reading for the past week. I have loved it and I await new posts eagerly. You are truly a gifted photographer. Viewing your photos has shown me so many beautiful details that I have just walked past without ever really seeing. I feel like part of your family now. I hope your mom and dad are doing well. I totally understand your middle son's fears. It was great that he conquered them with so much pride. My DD (15) still won't ride Splash Mountain! However, on this past trip she conquered Space Mountain and even tried CA Screaming (but she didn't like that one!) I hope you get to go on another trip soon because we all travel with you through your photos! Three years is much too long to wait. Thank you for this lovely thread.

 

[Sherry E]

Oh my!! I have just finished reading all 55 pages of this thread. You have been my bedtime reading for the past week. I have loved it and I await new posts eagerly. You are truly a gifted photographer. Viewing your photos has shown me so many beautiful details that I have just walked past without ever really seeing. I feel like part of your family now. I hope your mom and dad are doing well. I totally understand your middle son's fears. It was great that he conquered them with so much pride. My DD (15) still won't ride Splash Mountain! However, on this past trip she conquered Space Mountain and even tried CA Screaming (but she didn't like that one!) I hope you get to go on another trip soon because we all travel with you through your photos! Three years is much too long to wait. Thank you for this lovely thread.

lucysmom --

(By the way, hi!)

In Deej's post to me (just above yours), it sounds as if she did go on another trip to DLR -- this week! (She used the gift card to get the Hopper, and then used the Hopper at DLR the next day after she posted.) At least, that's what I took from what she said.

If there are springtime photos coming up in Deej's TR I will be avoiding this thread for several days, as I am headed to DLR very soon for the Easter/Spring fun. I know what's there already, so it's not a surprise, but I don't want to be subconsciously influenced by any photos I see and then end up getting pictures of the same things! I want to go in with a blank slate in my mind!

 

[lucysmom]

Ooh, Sherry, I can't wait to see your photos, too! I envy the talents you photographers have. It is a special way of looking at things and helping us see all the details we nonphotographers miss. Have a wonderful springtime trip!