Today was a rough day for me. After 4 straight days of barely any sleep, ridiculous humidity and heat, more walking than I have probably EVER walked and my super sore feet, I did not wake up in a very good mood.
While putting on my shoes I noticed that I had a HUGE blister on the bottom of my big toe. Fabulous. Luckily Kendall had some awesome blister band-aids for me to use. They were a huge help.
We needed to get to DHS in time for rope drop so we left the hotel bright and early.
It was already shaping up to be a super hot day, which was only adding to how cranky I already was. Plus, it was Kendall's last day with us.
We got to the park and they hadn't started to let anyone in yet. Of course when they did, we were totally in a slow moving line. I hate when that happens. Once inside the gates they held us all before the hat for about 30 min. We used this opportunity to take some photos and map out our plan of attack.
Since Heather is the speed walker of the century, she was gonna go ahead of us and grab fast passes for TSM while Kendall and I got in the stand by line. Once that rope drops, it is complete madness. I have never seen that kind of craziness in a Disney park. Luckily, they have CM's kinda leading the heard towards TSM slowly to try to control the crowd. I could just imagine the chaos that would be going on if they let us just head over there on our own. I probably would have been trampled.
This is my "I can't believe what we just went through to go on this ride" face.
Luckily once at TSM, Heather jumped in line with us and we didn't have to wait very long at all. Plus we had our FP's to be able to go on it again later in the day.
After the madness of the morning, we headed to Starring Rolls to grab some breakfast. It was pretty busy and took a while to get a table. I grabbed a vanilla latte and a blueberry muffin. The vanilla latte was so yummy that when I finished the first one I went back and got another one! I really needed the coffee today.
After breakfast we headed over to the Streets Of America to meet Phineas & Ferb. This was a lot of fun! They had just started doing meet and greets shortly before our trip so we knew we were gonna have to meet them! I loved the area that they met in and they were super fun and friendly.
Right around the corner from their meeting area you were able to meet Lightning McQueen and Mater! So we stopped to do that as well.
I really liked the Streets of America area, but the only problem was that is was really hot so I wasn't too sad to get out of there asap.
We headed to Star Tours for Heather first ever time on the ride! and took photos along the way of course.
I really loved the outside of Star Tours here. The Inside was pretty much the same as at Disneyland, but the outside was awesome!
I love the giant Walker statue they had. So fun!
I am so glad that Heather loved the ride! We did so much talking her into it that she probably would have hated us if she didn't like it!
After the ride we headed back to the hat to get some last photos with Kendall before she had to leave. It was a sad goodbye and I almost teared up a little bit, but I had to suck it up because Heather and I still had lots to do!
We headed over to the hat to get some close up shots and then went to The Great Movie Ride. Oh man. I liked the ride, but it was super cheesy. With some updating, it really could be a great ride. I liked it enough though.
When I was little I remember my cousins going to WDW and being so jealous of them getting to play in the Honey I Shrunk The kids playground, so I made Heather take me over there so I could get photos. Boy was it humid, stinky and full of screaming kids. I took my photos fast and we got the heck out of there!
Next up was a meet and greet with Sully and Mike! This was super exciting! I had met Sully before but not Mike! They didn't come out at the same time so we had to meet Sully and then get back in line and to wait for Mike to come out.
From there we walked through Pixar Place to get some photos and stopped in One Man's Dream.
This was such a neat area. All the memorabilia and models were awesome. Walt's story is such a special one and it is pretty awesome to see it all laid out in front of you. We didn't see the movie since we had to get to our lunch ADR, but I took a ton of photos.
We headed over to Sci-Fi Dine-In for our lunch ADR and checked in. This meal was the meal I was most excited about on our whole trip! This was one of those restaurants that I always remembered seeing in the travel videos. The idea of it is just soo cool! It was just as awesome as I thought it would be. It was dark and cool and we got to sit in a car and watch the fun drive-in movie screen. It was seriously awesome.
The food was REALLY good too! I got the spinach artichoke dip and the BLT soup. The soup was one of the best things I ate on our entire trip. It was soo good! It was so nice in the building that I almost didn't want to leave. But back into the heat we went.
Next we headed to the Animation Building. First we met with Sorcerer Mickey! I loved the "Hollywood" backdrop for the photos.
We chose not to wait in line for the Pooh characters, but I took photos of their meeting area because it really was just too cute.
We were going to do the Animation Academy, but it would have made us miss when the random characters were coming out so we decided to skip it. Mr. Incredible and Fro-zone were meeting the whole time in their area so we took some photos of them, but not with them.
Then the random characters started to come out! It was so exciting because you don't know who is going to be there. In order, we got to meet: Pocahontas & Meeko, Jasmine, Gepetto & Pinocchio, Mary Poppins & The Penguins and Belle. It was awesome!
After the characters we took some time to look around the building and take photos both inside and out.
Once we left I snapped a couple photos of The Little Mermaid ride and we walked on our way to ride TSM again.
Since we had the FP's we only had to wait a couple minutes for TSM. After that we did some walking around and taking photos of the random street atmosphere.
I really like the view around the Echo Lake area.
Once we were done with our photos we headed out of the park. Overall I like DHS. I think there were some things that were a little cheesy, but nothing some gradual updating couldn't take care of! The park has some really great rides though.
Out in front of the gates they had Lightning McQueen and Mater topiaries! Soo cute! We got some photos of those before we hopped on a bus to Port Orleans: French Quarter and Downtown Disney.
Since there was not a bus from DHS straight to DTD, we thought it would be fun to look around POFQ and just catch the boat they have there to DTD. I am so glad I got to see this hotel. New Orleans is one of my most favorite places ever and this hotel totally has the same look and feel. I loved everything about it.
The pool was super fun and I love that there is a nice little playground area for the kids.
All the room buildings look like buildings straight out of New Orleans along with the streets and the street signs! So fun.
After we wandered around a little bit and took photos, we headed over to get in line for the boat to DTD. The line was pretty long and took forever since the boat stops at Port Orleans Riverside before where we were, which meant that sometimes they could only take a couple people at a time. We did eventually get on a boat after a couple rounds and headed off to DTD.
It was already dark out and the boat went through some SUPER dark areas of wilderness. One of the cool points was when we were passing by the Treehouse Villas at Saratoga Springs resort. I wish I could have gotten better photos of them because Chris would have loved them! Even though they are kinda out in the middle of nowhere, they look like such a fun place to stay.
Pulling up to DTD was gorgeous! You get a good look at the whole area since it comes into view at one end and the boat drops you off on the complete other end. The lights and the people all reflecting on the water! I loved it!
Once we got to DTD, there was so much to see! Lots of shopping and restaurants.
We stopped in the pin store so I could pick up a couple pins and a vinylmation.
We stopped in almost every store we came across to browse and take photos while we were deciding what we were going to get for dinner.
Our original plan was to go to the Earl Of Sandwich, but i just wasn't feeling in the mood for a sandwich so we decided to go to Wolfgang Puck Express.
It was really good. I had the Margherita pizza and Heather had some sort of chinese chicken salad that was pretty awesome too.
We finished up dinner and headed back to catch the bus to take us to our hotel. By this time it was already after 8pm and we still had to get everything packed and ready for the morning.
Stay tuned for our final day!
1 - Finally Being Able To Scrap A Album
17 - Tomorrowland Transit Authority
20 - Splash Mountain & Space Mountain
22 - Finding Nemo The Musical
26 - Country Bear Jamboree
30 - Earl Of Sandwich
31 - 1st Visit & Happy Birthday Pin's
34 - Animation Academy
38 - Meeting Heather & Kendall
39 - First Vacation On My Own
