More Shows, Rides and Pictures

I love the Beauty & the Beast show. I remember watching this when I was 10, so I'm surprised it's been around as long as it has.

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My girls were really into this show. Even the baby was clapping, pointing, and dancing to the music. We will have to try for closer seats next time we go!

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I had carefully planned our day to see as many shows as possible at Hollywood Studios. Our next show was the 4:50pm showing of the Little Mermaid. This is one of my least favorite shows, just because it feels so much dated than all of the others. And this is saying something, considering Beauty and the Beast has been running for at least 22 years.

After writing that, I had to do a quick google search - Beauty and the Beast opened in 1991 and Voyage of the Little Mermaid opened in 1992.

Anyway, at this point, I realized the toddler was not a fan of shows inside dark rooms. And of course, I did not remember how scary Ursula could be, especially when we were sitting so close.

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She did not really like this show. Which is sad, because she likes to watch The Little Mermaid at home. The baby kicked off her shoes during the show, so we had to scramble to find them when the lights came back on!

We stopped for some Photo Pass pictures after this (wanted to get our money's worth of Memory Maker!), but some of our party was starting to fade. The toddler and my dad were pictured-out.

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We had a 5:15pm FP to ride Toy Story Mania again. It is such a fun game! The baby went with my parents this time, and the toddler rode with me. She didn't want to play, so I think she ended up on my lap most of the time.

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After this ride, it was time for another outfit change for the girls! Did I mention I went a little overboard on their outfits? I had coordinating outfits for most characters I knew we wanted to meet.

We found a bathroom to change that was right across from Star Tours. The wait time for Star Tours was only 10-20 minutes. I didn't have the ride on our itinerary because 1) I didn't think we would have time, 2) Only my mom and Pat are Star Wars fans, 3) Pat said it was not a must-do for him, and 4) My dad gets bad motion sickness and would not have been able to ride. And while I would have been willing to ride it, I'm not a huge Star Wars fan (I've only seen the original 3 movies - I know I'm behind!), and was okay with skipping it too.

I needed time to change diapers and outfits anyway, so I suggested that Pat, my mom and my MIL ride it while the line was so short. The timing worked out well!

Stay tuned to see what character (and outfits) were next!
 
Anyway, at this point, I realized the toddler was not a fan of shows inside dark rooms. And of course, I did not remember how scary Ursula could be, especially when we were sitting so close.

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She did not really like this show. Which is sad, because she likes to watch The Little Mermaid at home. The baby kicked off her shoes during the show, so we had to scramble to find them when the lights came back on!
I could see how Ursala would be scary. We only saw this once.

Beauty and the Beast is a great show! We don't see it each trip but it is great.
 
Olaf!
My girls are both fans of Frozen, and especially love Olaf. As soon as I saw pictures of other people with him, I knew that meet had to be high on our list.

I changed the girls into their matching Olaf dresses, and we hung out in his courtyard for a little bit while we waited for the rest of our group to finish Star Tours. The baby was so close to walking on this trip! She started walking less than a month after we got back home.

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We had a short wait, I want to say it was about 10-15 minutes. The girls were still nervous about characters at this point, and there may have been a few tears. But the toddler still talks about how she got to meet Olaf!

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I was a little disappointed that he couldn't sign our autograph book, but I totally realize his hands are not made for that. I just hadn't thought about that until we were there with him. They gave us a sticker with his autograph instead, but the sticker is just a little too big to fit nicely in our book. I wish they would make the stickers sized to fit the pages of the typical books. Oh, well.

After our meet, it was time to head toward Fantasmic! I had planned for us to do a quick service dinner at Rosie's All American Cafe, but we were all still stuffed from lunch. I have no photo evidence of what we ate, but I do remember we picked up a few snacks on our way to take in with us. I know I got a pickle for me and a cup of grapes for the girls. I think my husband got a frozen lemonade, which we also shared with the toddler. I had packed snacks for the girls too, things like puffs and goldfish, so they probably had some of those as well.

Up next, Fantasmic - and the girls' reactions!
 


Fantasmic
As I mentioned before, we picked up a few snacks to take with us to Fantasmic. We had done the Fantasmic dining package at Mama Melrose's, so we had tickets from lunch. I don't remember how early they told us to be there, but we got there around the recommended time and probably should have gotten there earlier.

It was nice to have reserved seating in the central area, but we were still quite a ways back. I had read that Fantasmic might be scary for the kids, so I thought it was fine to not be too close to the front.

Of course, as soon as we sat down, one of the kids had a dirty diaper. So I headed back out, and quickly asked the cast member taking tickets if I would be allowed back in. She said of course (I think I still had my ticket), and I was happy to see there were bathroom really close to where we were. We hurried back, as the show was supposed to be starting any time.

This was my first time seeing Fantasmic and I loved it! And even better, neither of our girls seemed too scared by it. My pictures didn't come out great, but here are a few:

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Watching the characters float by was probably the toddler's favorite part. By the end of the show, we had one sleeping baby - I told you the girls would sleep anywhere when they were tired enough! Being held by Grandpa probably helped.

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As we walked out, we saw some fireworks from the Star Wars show going on. They were offering traffic to either head to the exit or to the fireworks. We followed the majority of the crowd toward the exit. We were all exhausted after our first park day, and had another early morning coming up.
 
I love the toddlers face in this picture. She is staring Olaf down, like she doesn't trust him... why does a snowman move and talk?!?

Great family Photo!

I was a little disappointed that he couldn't sign our autograph book, but I totally realize his hands are not made for that.
Sadly this is becoming the norm.... There are a handful of characters that don't sign for one reason or another.

I wish they would make the stickers sized to fit the pages of the typical books. Oh, well.
How big was the sticker?

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Watching the characters float by was probably the toddler's favorite part.
Probably being a little farther away helped. It's a great show! We loved it!


So cute. I miss the head on shoulder baby phase....
 
I love the toddlers face in this picture. She is staring Olaf down, like she doesn't trust him... why does a snowman move and talk?!?

Sadly this is becoming the norm.... There are a handful of characters that don't sign for one reason or another. How big was the sticker?

Both kids weren’t sure what to make of Olaf! It took a few days before they really warmed up to most characters.

The sticker was a circle and it just goes outside the page in our autograph book. We have those books where the character signs one page and I put in a picture of the meet on the other page. I’ll probably cut it so it fits, it just doesn’t match the rest of the pages. I think it has a blue background and a white background would have blended in better.
 


EMH Fail / Safari

We had an early morning planned for our second day. AK had EMH starting at 8am and I wanted to be there at rope drop to try to ride FOP. I couldn't get a FOP FastPass for this day, so we got one for Na'vi River Journey instead. We had another AK day at the end of our trip, and I was able to get an evening FP for FOP that day, but we didn't want to wait that long!

I was so proud of us. We had all 7 of us to the bus stop by 7:13am according to my pictures. We had to wait longer than I expected for a bus, but we made it to the entrance of AK at 7:54am. We're OK, I thought, the park doesn't open for 6 minutes.

Well when we walked up to the entrance, the line to get in was fairly short, and we realized that they had let people in earlier. We walked at a fast pace to find the ride, and as we walked, several people literally ran right past us. As you can see, we were following a fairly light crowd at this point. Warning bells should have been going off.

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I should have known. Before we even really entered the Avatar section, we were met with a line. I started asking what people were lined up for and my fears were confirmed - this was the FOP line already. Already, the sign at the end said 2 hours. There was no way we were going to wait that long - especially not with a 9:25am FP to Na'vi River Journey. Given we had FPs for later in the week, we made a quick decision to bail on this plan.

I was so bummed. I couldn't believe I hadn't prepared more for this morning, but there was no way I was going to have our whole crew out of the hotel before 7am even if I had known. I read later that we should have been lined up outside 1-1.5 hours before park opening. You are waiting 2+ hours at that point anyway, right? I guess you're at least saving park hours that way? But now we had almost an hour and a half to burn with no game plan.

Well our first priority at this point was caffeine. I absolutely love the Starbucks at AK. I was even more excited when I realized later in the trip that I could order WHATEVER I WANTED and it was only 1 snack credit! That felt like a good value. I think I just had black coffee this day.

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We decided to take advantage of EMH to ride the Kilimanjaro Safaris. I was worried we would have to finish our coffee before riding, but there was only a 5 minute wait, and I didn't want to end up in a much longer line. I can't tell you how relieved I was when we came up to the entrance and the cast member informed us that we could take our coffee on the ride since it had a lid! Also, we got to take our stroller through the first part of the line. They had a CM take it from us closer to the front of the line. We had no wait at all and basically walked right on. The day was getting better already!

We sat at the back of our Safari vehicle. It was nice to be able to bring my coffee, but it did spill a bit on the bumpy ride.

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I don't think I had seen the wild dogs out before!

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The girls both loved this ride! The baby pointed to all the animals and the toddler enjoyed seeing some of her favorites like the elephants and giraffes. I knew we would be riding this one a few times on our trip.
 
Na'vi River Journey

We finished our Safari around 8:45, and our FP to Na'vi River wasn't until 9:25. The Gorilla Falls trail was right there, so we decided to explore it first. I was so proud of myself for being flexible and going off-script from our plan for the day!

My husband loves birds and enjoyed talking to this CM for a bit.

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I'm a big fan of meerkats, and the girls loved them too! We talked to a CM about the meerkats for awhile before moving on. They are fascinating and she was able to answer all of the questions we had.

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I couldn't wait to see the gorillas. There was a baby gorilla when we came back in 2012 or 2013, and they were so active then. This guy (in the background) wasn't too active this morning, so we took a quick picture and moved on.

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It was finally time for our Na'vi River FP! I was so distracted by the 2 hour line earlier in the morning, I hadn't even looked around the new land. I was in awe!

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We watched Avatar for the first time shortly before our trip and I liked the movie a lot more than I thought I would. I was so excited for the new rides!

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I was *almost* disappointed we weren't waiting in line to explore the queue more, but was thrilled when we basically walked right onto our boat. Almost none of my pictures from the ride turned out well, but here is one:

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All in all, it was a peaceful, relaxing ride through beautiful scenery. But not life changing, like I had heard FOP would be. I was glad we had a FP because it was worth seeing, but would not have been worth a 1+ hour wait in my opinion.

We had Festival of the Lion King planned next, but we were really flexible this day. We went in search of bathrooms first, and the girls both fell asleep... before 10am... right next to a drum performance!!

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I told you, when they were tired on this trip, they slept. We decided to walk the Discovery Island Trail while they napped, and planned to catch a later showing of Lion King.
 
Following along! I love that all the grandparents came and could hand off baby duty!

I loved it too LOL! It made a big difference for us being able to really enjoy our favorite rides too. We said at the time that we don’t want to go to Disney without grandparents! We were too spoiled :). And it was great for the girls to have that time with their grandparents. Special for us too, as our parents had taken us on our first trips when we were younger.
 
Discovery Island Trail & Lion King

I think this was my first time on the Discovery Island Trail. I was a little disappointed by how little there was to see, but it was cool to see the Tree of Life up close.

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We were surprised when we ran into a crowd of people coming out of It's Tough to Be a Bug, and then realized we were at the end of the trail. I was surprised by how short it was, and how little there was to see. We decided to go get in line for Festival of the Lion King a little early. I think we got to the show around 10:40 for the 11:00am showing.

Twenty minutes was a long wait for the toddler. I was so thankful for this little boy who entertained her with his bubble wand. It calmed down what was about to become a toddler tantrum!

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The toddler did not want to see another "show" - "show" was a bad word at this point. I think "show" to her meant it was going to be dark and scary inside. We picked up on this and started to use other words to describe what she would see. She was skeptical, but was so excited when they rolled out the animals at the beginning of the show. Both girls loved the music!

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I absolutely love this show. It gives me chills! And it was even more special to see how much my girls were enjoying the show.

Next up... lunch!
 
Lunch

Despite moving our plans around, we were right on time for the noon lunch I had planned. The girls and I are vegetarians, but the rest of our party eats meat. I had read that Flame Tree BBQ was a must (for the meat eaters), so I suggested that everyone else get BBQ while I walked to Restaurantosaurus for veggie burgers.

I went off on my own while the rest of the group got in a long line for BBQ and my mom went in search of a table for us. This was my one concern in not having sit down dining reservations. It was a really hot day, it was crowded, and I wasn't convinced we'd find seating in the shade. But my mom came through!

I walked the short distance to Restaurantosaurus and realized there were plenty of tables we could have eaten at there. I think I texted to see if they wanted to meet me, but my mom had already found a table under cover at Flame Tree BBQ.

I got one kid's meal for the girls to split and loved that it came in a toy bucket.

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I got a veggie burger with fries, and struggled just a little bit to carry the food and drinks back to Flame Tree. I got back just as the rest of our party was coming to the table with their meals, so the timing worked out well.

I loved the black bean burger! It came with an avocado spread, and I cannot wait to get another one on our next trip. Maybe I was just too hungry, but this was one of my favorite QS meals of our trip. I shared the fries with my girls.

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I unfortunately did not get pictures of what everyone else ate! I clearly was not thinking about writing a Trip Report on this day (or much of the trip) - I was too focused on keeping our group on task :-D I think my dad got a free dessert because they had gotten something wrong with his meal and he had to wait... I can't remember what it was, but I know we all shared it! Maybe key lime pie?

After lunch it was time to split up again... my parents with the kids, and my husband, MIL and I off to ride Expedition Everest!
 
I walked the short distance to Restaurantosaurus and realized there were plenty of tables we could have eaten at there. I think I texted to see if they wanted to meet me, but my mom had already found a table under cover at Flame Tree BBQ.
Way to go mom! Restaurantosaurus can be super busy.

That baby wants that bucket.

I got a veggie burger with fries, and struggled just a little bit to carry the food and drinks back to Flame Tree. I got back just as the rest of our party was coming to the table with their meals, so the timing worked out well.
Sounds like it worked out. I find this the issue with counter service for us. There seems to always be one person in our family that doesn't want something at the place that the rest of us want to go to.
 
Sounds like it worked out. I find this the issue with counter service for us. There seems to always be one person in our family that doesn't want something at the place that the rest of us want to go to.

That's my issue too. I love having reservations where we know we have a seat, indoors, stress-free. But it can also take a lot more time to do TS vs. QS! We got lucky with the timing this day.

I haven't caught up on everything yet but I'm joining in. You have a beautiful family :)

Thank you, glad to have you here!
 
The Boneyard & Expedition Everest

While Pat, my MIL and I headed off to Expedition Everest, my parents took the girls to The Boneyard for some play time. While we were waiting in line, they texted me a picture of the baby going down a slide for the first time... by herself... arms and legs flailing! And she looked like she loved it.

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She must have loved it, because she apparently tried to crawl right back up the slide to go again. She is my daredevil!

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Our standard picture with Everest in the background.

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We had a FP for 12:35pm and it was already 1:05pm. I was hopeful that if the line wasn't too long, we'd be able to ride it twice in a row. We scanned our badges and almost walked right on! This is one of my favorite rides in all of the parks. I was so excited to see the Yeti again!

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When we walked off the ride, the single rider line was really short - I want to say 10 minutes or less. We decided we had enough time to ride again on single rider, so we jumped back in line. It went quickly and then we headed back to find my parents and the girls at The Boneyard.

We were running a little behind, but we were still well within our window for our next FP, scheduled for 1:40pm. It took a little bit of coaxing to get the toddler to leave the playground, but we had a very important date to make!
 
OMG, too funny! She looks a little scared but clearly she loved it!

I love Everest, but sadly my youngest is not a fan of the yeti. I think she would like the ride if it didn't have the yeti. Sigh...

We were running a little behind, but we were still well within our window for our next FP, scheduled for 1:40pm. It took a little bit of coaxing to get the toddler to leave the playground, but we had a very important date to make!
It always amazes me how the playgrounds are just as fun as the rides. Getting the girls out of these play areas is horrible sometimes. This one, is a little easier because it is so Hot in there. My girls LOVED the Honey I shrunk the kids one... that one we always dragged them out crying.
 

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