Mother Daughter Trip Nov. 29 - Dec. 7 (updated 3-8-15)

[Kirby]

Hello, my name is Susan and it's been 12 years since my last trip to WDW.

I haven't written a PTR because I was afraid I would jinx our trip. My daughter, Carol, who is 23 years old asked me last January if I would like to go to Disney World. I said, sure, who wouldn't?. Then she asked again and I said, seriously?. Yes indeed she was serious! Her husband who was getting ready to go to Afghanistan had actually suggested we take a girl's trip since we both love the place so well.



We picked our dates and got her vacation approved. I work for my husband so I can pretty much take off when I want. Then she moved home when her husband left the country, transferred to a local branch (she's a teller) and lost her second week of vacation. Carol told the branch manager about our trip and was told "it's okay if we won't need you".

So you can see why I haven't created a PTR. I didn't want to start one and then have to end it with a "we can't go now". But since we leave in two days I thought I would take a chance.

 

[Kirby]

When Carol moved home in May I began shifting gears in my head. I began to wrap my brain around the fact that we just might not get to go on our trip just in case it actually became fact.

But, just in case, we went ahead and began making plans in August to stay at Orange Lake Resort. You see, Carol and her husband were married last October and went to WDW on their honeymoon. They stayed at the Orange Lake Resort and bought into the time share there. If I could have had some input on that I would have steered them towards DVC.

I really wanted to stay on site but just couldn't pass up a week's lodging for free. Then, miraculously, (I won't go into detail) we ended up booking six days at Shades of Green instead.

In September I began looking for those coveted ADRS. Even though I haven't seen the Mouse since 2002, I knew that these boards would give me all the information I needed.

We wanted to do things that we haven't done, which is a lot. One thing that is so nice is the My Disney Experience. It was so much fun being on the hunt for the ADRs that we wanted. We were able to get:

BOG dinner
Akershus lunch
Hollywood Brown Derby Fantasmic
Rose and Crown Candlelight Processional with Patrick Neil Harris

We're also doing Sci Fi and Trail's End. We got a number of other bookings but canceled them. We didn't want to be running from ADR to ADR.

 

[Kirby]

In October we decided to fly instead of drive. It's a good day and a half drive for us. We didn't know what time she would get off on Black Friday and to arrive on Saturday would mean an all nighter for us. She thought it was doable but I knew that it wasn't even a possibility for me. Flying makes me really, really nervous. That's why I'm up at this time of the night typing this report. I've got plenty of Xanax though for the flight there and the one home.

After that decision was made we thought, hey, we have an extra day we can stay. But SOG didn't have a room for that extra day. Hmmmm, what should we do?

Well I got on that nifty MDE and found that we could do a split stay at POR. Yay! Its my favorite resort! After a quick call to SOG we had a five night at SOG and three night at POR all set.

But still in the back of my mind is the thought that we just might not get to go........

 

[Kirby]

Well, here it is. Almost the eve of our trip.

Carol and I sat down last week and went over all the ADRs I had made and the tentative schedule. Most of that went out the window except for a couple of things that were sort of set in stone. We canceled quite a few ADRs and we got our schedule down to where we think it's workable for us. We really want to be laid back and take it easy.

I never have mentioned tickets have I? Well, since our trip has been tentative for the most part, we decided to wait and purchase tickets until we arrived. Of course this messes up our chances with the FP+ but we'll just have to wing it. And we want to go to MVMCP while we are there. So far none are sold out as far as I can tell.

This is our tentative schedule for the week:

Saturday - arrive 12:00 and be picked up by Florida Town Car with a quick stop at the grocery store. Check in at SOG, purchase our tickets and hopefully go straight to our room. Depending on how hungry we are we might log in our tickets with MDE and then head to MK to activate them. Then we'll either go to Boardwalk or DTD for dinner. After we get a full stomach we'll begin looking at what's available for the week with the FP+.

Sunday - rope drop at MK. Haunted Mansion and Peter Pan are first on our agenda. Then off to Gaston's for a cinnamon roll. We'll spend the rest of the day at MK eating lunch at Columbia Harbor House. After a ride on the ferry, dinner will be at Trail's End. Depending on the time we may resort hop on the monorail to look at the Christmas decorations.

Monday - rope drop at DHS. Then a ferry ride to Epcot for a late lunch at Rose and Crown. The second CP with PNH and Illuminations to end the evening.

Tuesday - rope drop at Epcot for Future World and an Akershus lunch. Then off to MVMCP for the night.

Wednesday - we may sleep in a little after a late night at MK. We have an early lunch at Sci Fi. Then we'll go back to MK for a BOG dinner at 6:55. We plan to close the park down again.

Thursday - up early to check out of SOG and check in at POR. We'll probably head over to POFQ for some beignets. Then it's back to DHS for a Hollywood Brown Derby lunch and Fantasmic at 6:30. The Osbourne Lights will be high on our agenda.

Friday - rope drop at AK and then later in afternoon we'll go to Epcot and visit the countries we haven't been to.

Saturday is a non park day. We hope to check out AKL, visit DTD and anything else we can fit into our day.

Sunday - leave very, very early to head for home .

I look over this schedule and it seems that we will be running our feet off. But we plan to take it easy and just smell the roses. We're okay if we don't get on the 7DMT. Just enjoying our time together is the most important thing.

 

[Kirby]

Carol is planning on taking her lap top with her. They are in the middle of purchasing a home and there could be some things that she has to take care of.

So, maybe I can do some of my TR when I get back to our room while it's still fresh.

 

[Kirby]

Well, my daughter gets off work at 3:00 today and she hasn't called me so I'm guessing our trip is good to go.

Whoo hoo!

One of the hardest things I've found this week is keeping myself from looking for more ADRs or trying to find one that is a little bit better time than the one we have. None of them are late, the latest is 6:50 pm so I feel we are doing pretty good.

 

[Kirby]

So, we're looking over what we're taking, going over our tentative schedule, etc. and Carol decides she doesn't want to eat with the princesses at Akershus after all. Oh well.............

My eyes are getting droopy so I guess I need to hit the sack. I'll be up again in five hours. Hope I can get a little sleep.

Can't wait to get back to the Magic!

 

[Kirby]

Saturday

Well, I was able to get some sleep and with the help of two Xanax, able to get on the plane with no anxiety.

We flew Southwest, so excited that we can fly non stop from Dallas now, and arrived in Orlando about 12:30 pm. Our driver, Kenny, with FL Tours was there waiting on us. He was so friendly and treated us like royalty.

After a brief stop for water and donuts, we headed to Shades of Green for a five night stay.

Our check in was easy and we were given a third floor room in the Magnolia Building. Then we walked over to Customer Service and purchased our park and party tickets. We bought the Armed Forces Salute tickets which was a 4 day park hopper for $177, a one day Magic Kingdom ticket and a MVMCP ticket for Tuesday night, December 2nd.

Shades of Green is a gorgeous resort! You don't have the magic like you do in the Disney properties but there is a statue of Mickey in the lobby.

Another view of the lobby.

The stairs down to the bus area

Our room was so nice and large. Plenty of room plus more for the two of us. We had a balcony that overlooked a pond. So pretty!

We got settled and then decided to catch a bus to DTD to activate our tickets. The bus system at SOG is good but not as accommodating as Disney's when it comes to arrival/departure times. If you miss a bus for say Animal Kingdom you might have to wait an hour before the next one arrives. They are very punctual though. SOG buses for MK and Epcot go to the TTC. AK and HS buses go to the park themselves. And the DTD bus dropped us off over by T-Rex.

We didn't know the bus schedule yet and were fortunate to catch a DTD bus right off the bat. We were the only ones on the bus and our bus driver from Jersey told us a lot of Disney trivia. We greatly enjoyed our bus ride!

After a word of advice from our Jersey friend to leave DTD before 6:00 pm to escape the crowds, we hopped off of the bus and was on our way.

We found the Customer Service location fairly easy and got in line (the first of many). It took us about 20 minutes to finally get to the head of the line and a CM quickly took care of activating our tickets and linking them to our magic bands. Magic bands were new to us and they worked perfectly.

Since we hadn't eaten since about 7:00 am we were starving. I remember seeing on here somewhere that Earl of Sandwich was good so we decided to eat there before touring some of the shops. And it was very good! I have begun a dining review http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?t=3358159 if you want more details on what we ate.

We toured a couple of shops, admired the Christmas ornaments and got some ideas of things to buy later in the week. We planned on coming back to DTD the following Saturday, our last day for last minute purchases. I did buy a peanut covered caramel apple in Goofy's Candy Shop but made the mistake of not eating it until two days later.

Since it was not too late yet, only about 6:30 pm, we thought it would be fun to ride the resort monorail. So we caught a bus to the Contemporary. That is an amazing resort! We went up to view the gingerbread house and check out the gift shop. There are actually mouse ears in all those pink ruffles somewhere. We did see one little girl wearing the same ears one day.

Then up to the monorail for a much needed load off of our feet.

After a resort tour we got off of the monorail we at the Magic Kingdom and took a ride on the ferry to the TTC just for fun.

We found our SOG bus stop and it wasn't long before a bus arrived. My daughter's ID was checked and since I was with her I didn't need any credentials at that time. I did have a visitor's pass which I had to keep with me but none of the bus drivers requested mine during our whole trip. I did hear though that some did require each of the passengers to have one, we just didn't happen to come across one.

We were hungry and ordered a pizza to go from one of the SOG restaurants. We listened to the MK fireworks from our room and then went to bed knowing that we would be up early the next morning for a MK rope drop.

Our week was supposed to be a relaxing one but the time we went to bed that night and the time we got up was the beginning of being on the go and getting little sleep for most of the week. We didn't go commando we just did a lot.

 

[Kirby]

Sunday

We were up bright and early for our first day in the parks. Our plan was to get to the Magic Kingdom at rope drop but it just didn't happen. We finally made it down to the bus stop about 8:30 and luck was with us, a bus was waiting.

We look a little tired here but we were actually wide awake. This was to be our one and only laid back day. We were so excited to be heading to the Magic Kingdom. We had no FP planned but found some later that day.

Upon arriving at the TTC we caught a ferry for the ride over.

Security went quickly and our MBs worked perfectly. We even checked on MDE to make sure that it was the one day ticket that was used for that day and it was.

As we entered Main Street we had a feeling of coming home. Carol stopped to have a picture taken with the horse drawn trolley.

And there is was, Cinderella's Castle! We decided to forego looking through the shops for the time being and took quite a few pictures with the castle in the background. I won't post them all, just my two favorites.

We headed to the left towards Liberty Square instead of Fantasyland like most. There was hardly anyone in that area of the park.

We headed straight towards the Haunted Mansion since it was closing for maintenance the next day. It was good starting the day with this ride. Next was Peter Pan, my favorite. The interactive areas were not up and running but I've heard that they are really good. We then walked across to It's A Small World, a definite must ride for us.

After that we just sort of moseyed along, looking at the changes to Fantasyland from our last trip 12 years before. We wanted to see and do things that we hadn't seen or done before. We watched the Sword in the Stone show, we had never seen that before. Then walked over to our first character meet and greet. Of course the wait for Anna and Elsa was insane but the wait for Cinderella and Aurora was only 20 minutes. We got in line and this began Carol's spur of the moment princess quest. I was called "My Queen" so many times during our trip that I was beginning to think that I truly might be one.

We took a look at the entrance to Be Our Guest and noticed Belle's Story Nook (I can't remember exactly what it was called). We waited about 30 minutes for this attraction which turned out to bet he longest time we waited all week for an attraction. Belle is Carol's favorite Disney princess. We highly recommend this show to families with children.

At this point we were getting a little hungry. We had discovered Columbia Harbor House on our first trip in 1986 and have eaten there for lunch on each of our trips. This time I was a little disappointed in the food, it was not what I remembered.

After lunch we retraced our steps and headed deeper into Fantasyland. Lo and behold there was Gaston's Tavern. We just had to stop there and try that cinnamon roll that we had read so much about. It was huge!

After gorging ourselves we found a meet and greet spot for Gaston just outside the restaurant. The line was short, I think that a lot of people walking by thought we were all waiting for someone in the bathroom since it was close by.

Gaston was a hoot and by far our favorite character to interact with besides Peter Pan on our trip.

While we were sitting eating that huge cinnamon roll we got on MDE and picked out a couple of FP. Our first one was for the Little Mermaid. It was a nice little ride. Another new one struck off of our list.

Ariel's meet and greet beckoned us and we met another princess. This was another first for us. She combed Carol's hair with her dinglehoffer.

To be continued.......

 

[heaven2dc]

What a fun trip report! Shades of Green looks so pretty! I don't think I've seen pics of it before - so relaxing and peaceful looking. Love the interaction with Gaston and Ariel

 

[Kirby]

What a fun trip report! Shades of Green looks so pretty! I don't think I've seen pics of it before - so relaxing and peaceful looking. Love the interaction with Gaston and Ariel

Thank you! Shades of Green is really nice. I had always wanted to stay there and with Carol's husband being in the military it gave me an opportunity to do so.

We loved Gaston and Ariel! They were so much fun! Thank you for joining in!

 

[kirrrby]

I'm tagging along. We're headed to SOG in May. We love that resort!

 

[Kirby]

I'm tagging along. We're headed to SOG in May. We love that resort!

Thank you for joining in! I hope to get back to my TR soon!

 

[CruisingKate]

Enjoying your TR. We are hoping for a December trip this year; looking forward to hearing more about visiting WDW in early December. I have a 24 year old daughter who loves Disney as much as I do.