Ah, Mickey!  We miss you already!!!  Disney is such a magical place.  I’m so glad that we had our new camera to capture as much of the magic as we possibly could!  I took over a thousand picturesduring our week away, and that’s not counting the pictures from the photo pass!

The photo pass…

We couldn’t figure out where to even get the silly photo pass card, until we took our first shot with Mickey, and the photographer himself actually handed us one.  The photo pass is cool, but it is even better that the photographer’s helper was always willing to grab our camera and take a family shot of us, if we wanted to be part of the picture too. Surprising if you think about how much money they are trying to make off those photos.  Their prices are RIDICULOUS, but I guess that’s not a big shock, huh?

You can pay $15 for 2 5×7’s,  though that isn’t as high as the prices of the pics they take of you on the ride.  I noticed Test Track let you scan your photo pass card to grab the crazy shot, but most of them did not.  You had to actually buy it immediately after the ride… for $18!  If it was a good one, I just snapped a pic of the screen with our camera.  Not as good of a picture, but at least I wasn’t shelling out $18.. not that I would ever do that in a million years.

We were thwarted by rain on our way to ride Test Track and joined the throng of other wannabe riders getting wet waiting under the overhang in front of the ride.

We decided to go wait it out in Innovations, and when we came out, it had cleared up and the ride was open!  Wade really loved this one in true Wild Wade fashion.  I mean fast cars?  Oh yeah!  He liked it so much that he was mad when it was time to get off!

I read a good tip too about the photo pass cards… when you first get it, take a picture of the back of it with YOUR camera.  That way if you lose it, you’ll still have the number to access the pics online.  :)

In all our character signings, I think we ended our SIX DAYS with Haylee’s book having only about three empty pages, so to me that is a success… even though we didn’t get everybody she wanted to.  The rain threw a wrench in the plans a few days, and the characters are only out certain times at certain places at certain parks, which makes it a nightmare to try to plan for.

Wade is my little stinker when it comes to taking a picture, and he is ever evolving in this challenge.  Lately his thing has been crossing his eyes…

…and altogether striking a super hero pose with fingers pointing out in opposite directions and legs and feet poised just so.  It makes it especially hard to take a family shot since we can’t always see what crazed pose he was sporting until AFTER the moment or shot is over.

Whoa!  You know it’s bad when GOOFY is looking at you like you’re weird.  :)

It was pretty funny to see how fascinated he was with most of them.  He covered Pluto’s eye, pulled on his whiskers, and was unable to resist honking poor Minnie’s nose.   Not to mention grabbing to give Tigger’s tail a good yank.

He also did his best to imitate Donald’s stance with arms just so and one foot pointing up in the air.

When we were in line to see the Princesses {Cinderella, Belle, & Aurora} I leaned down and told him he needed to smile so pretty for his picture with the princesses.  I was SHOCKED at the amazing smiles I got.

Maybe if I carried around a Cinderella costume everywhere I went ready to throw on, I could get some decent smiles out of that silly boy.

The shows…

The shows were really a GREAT break from the heat or from the walking!  They provided a place to sit down, sometimes some refreshing cool air, and MOST of the time were actually REALLY good and very entertaining!  And I am a tough critic when it comes to stuff like that.

{For instance, I found the cast member/tour guide on The Great Movie Ride (at Epcot) and on The Jungle Cruise (at Magic Kingdom) to be quite, quite annoying. :)  It is my opinion that not everyone should attempt to be funny.  We are not all comedians, you know.  I’d much rather you just play a recording of an actual funny (or not) person guiding me than having to listen or ignore your oh so painful jokes, ok?!}

Here are the shows we saw in order of Least Fave to Most Fave… though some of these probably aren’t technically shows, BUT… they are a place to sit and sometimes cool off!

Magic Kingdom	Epcot	Animal Kingdom	Hollywood Studios
Mickey’s Philharmagic	Turtle Talk	Bug’s Life	Indiana Jones
Hall of Presidents	Monster’s Laugh	Lion King	Disney Junior
Wishes			Lights Motor Action
Fireworks			Beauty and the Beast
			Fantasmic

The Lion King was awesome, although we did have to trek across Africa, er… Dino Land, to make it in time.

We were definitely ready to sit down for a minute and breath!  It was a really good show, and let me tell you, the diva that sang Circle of Life was unbelievable.  Wowsa, she had some pipes.

The big, closing show at Hollywood Studios was Fantasmic.   It was very cool, and we managed to make it through the whole show without getting poured on.  It was looking pretty dicey, so our hero, Chris, ran a mile back to our stroller to grab our ponchos, just in case.  :)

Wade really loved the Disney Junior show, and I think my favorite was Beauty and Beast.  I pretty much have the whole show recorded just in the pics I took.  :)

With those little shorties in mind …

Disney is a park made for the kiddos so there were SO MANY rides for Wade to ride.  SO MANY!  He was RIGHT AT one of the BIG cutoffs of 40 inches. He was just BARELY tall enough.  So much so that  one of the cast members even commented that he was like a shoe in a shoe box standing under the height stick.  He was SO close to it, that we were often measured TWICE on each ride.  Once at the entrance and then once more as we were getting on the ride.

He wasn’t afraid to ride anything! {The first time, at least! He did NOT want to ride Tower of Terror or Dinosaur twice!}  He had no fear while his big 8 year old sister was quite another story.  :)

I think we must have ridden Splash and Thunder Mountain at least 4 or 5 times each! They loved them!

Wade would blissfully raise both arms high in the air going down the big hills, while Haylee would have a death grip on your arm.  :)  She did get braver and put her hands up some too, probably because she didn’t want to be shown up by her 3 year old brother.  :)

They both even rode Tower of Terror at Hollywood Studios and it was kind of crazy to see him so little sitting there next to us ready to get DROPPED!   The Tower is made to seem like you’re in an elevator and when it drops it goes down several stories and then back up and then free falls back down again over and over.  Most of the time you are in the dark, but when you’re at the very top there are windows to see out on the park letting light in.

Our pic shows that when it was light we were all looking over to see how Wade was doing! Even the people behind us were saying, “Look at him!” I don’t think I’ll ever forget his terrified look!! His desperate look seemed to say, “What in the world is going on here???????”  :) When he we got off, he told Chris, “Dat was WEALLY scary!”

It did help his little stamina {and the rest of ours!} to pack a STASH of little snack size bags of things to munch on whenever the need struck.  Haylee and I made a whole BUNCH of them before we even left home… pretzels, cheddar popcorn, small tortilla chips, and animal crackers. Plus we also had fruit snacks, granola bars and gogurt.  It was often a BIG lifesaver to be able to pull out a little snack of something out of our backpack almost like the magical bag of Mary Poppins wherever we happened to be!

You do have to get your bags checked, but we had our bags FULL of stuff and had no issues at all.

We also brought a small cloth cooler to keep our drinks plus a few other things cool for the day.

Two of the days we followed a tip from an earlier commenter saying to freeze PB&J for a quick lunch, and it was perfect.  Chris made them up in the morning {with PB on each side, of course} put them in the freezer until it was time to go.  Then we stuck them in our little cooler ready to pull out when we needed some nourishment!   The cooler option was only possible though because we had a stroller to carry it around in.  No way we would be toting that on our backs too!

We thought we had it all decided that we would BRING our stroller instead of renting one at $13/day {$15/day for a single day only}, and we thought we wouldn’t have to worry about the $14/day parking fee since our resort had a free shuttle! BUUUUT… alas, we got there and saw three glaring words on the shuttle info page… NO STROLLERS ALLOWED! 

What????

Basically, we were then left to decide if we wanted to pay $13/day for a stroller and ride the free shuttle, OR pay $14/day to park and bring our own stroller.

We opted to pay to park and bring our own stroller since the rented ones did not have a storage compartment AND this way we would not be at the mercy of the shuttle schedule.

As if ticket prices weren’t high enough, they get you again and again with Parking and Strollers!  Ah!

Good thing they are so awesome.  Cuz regardless of all the negatives, I still wanna go back right now!!  :) 

 

One more Disney installment coming next week!  :)

 

You can also check out…

Disney Activity Countdown

1 Week to Disney

Our Countdown Culmination

Disney Debut Part 1

Disney Wrap Up Part 3

 

Don’t forget, the Amazing Gift Card Giveaway with THREE winners ends Thursday!!  So go enter now!