Don't Blink, You Might Miss It! Our Super Quick MNSSHP 2012 Trip - PassPorter - A Community of Walt Disney World, Disneyland, Disney Cruise Line, and General Travel Forums
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Don't Blink, You Might Miss It! Our Super Quick MNSSHP 2012 Trip
Hello! I wasn’t sure whether or not I should do a TR since this was such a quick trip, but I decided since it covered some things that I’ve seen lots of people asking questions about/being interested in lately (such as AoA and MNSSHP) that I should go for it! I hope you all enjoy reading along. Let’s get to the introductions!
Our Party: Me – Ashli (32); DH – Kyle (33); DS – Aleksander (11); DSis – Jennifer (she might kill me if I announce her age in public…but I will say she’s my older sister. Hehe!); DNiece – Elaina (12); DNephew – Caleb (10); DExBIL – Steve (35)
Our Journey: Thurs 9/27/12 – Sun 9/30/12; Driving down to MouseTown!
Our Lodging: Disney’s Art of Animation – Little Mermaid rooms!!!!!! for Thurs and Fri….will we get to extend our stay there for Sat as well?
Special Plans: MNSSHP!!!! Basically our family’s favorite thing at WDW. This will make our 7th year in a row!
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MNSSHP 2015: DH (Bane), Me (Batgirl), Genie, and our friends
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I just love the excitement of waking up to the day you are heading to WDW, don’t you? This day started out quite early, as I had to get DS up and ready for school as usual. I didn’t want him to miss two full days now that he’s in middle school, so we decided that he’d go to school and we’d pick him up at 1:00pm so he’d only miss his last two classes. He’d already discussed it with his teachers and taken his spelling test that was supposed to be today, yesterday. So up and at ‘em we were as usual, and he headed out the door at 6:20 to get the bus. Then what did I do? Went back to sleep, of course!
Kyle’s alarm went off at 8:00am, and we both got up. We’d packed all our bags and loaded them into my car so that was one thing we didn’t have to worry about this morning. DH got dressed and took the dogs to the kennel. (4 big dogs and 1 man in a Honda Civic hatchback…I’m glad I didn’t have to go! ) I did my exercise DVD and was in the shower when Kyle got back (our kennel is about 35 min away, so no, it wasn’t the world’s shortest exercise video LOL!). DH worked out while I vacuumed and cleaned up a bit (love coming home to a clean house!). Before we knew it, it was 12:30 and time to head out to pick up DS and hit the road for WDW! I did a quick luggage double check to make sure we had everything, and then we were off.
We got to DS’s school just before 1:00, and it only took a matter of minutes for the front office to get a hold of his teacher and have him sent down to meet us. We all hopped in the car, DS changed his shirt, and then we hit the road. (DS wears a uniform to school and who really wants to start a vacation in a school uniform? So I brought him his Rainforest Café shirt to change into.)
The drive was pretty uneventful. We listened to Halloween song cds to get in the mood for our Halloween trip. We zipped right along until we got to about Sanford, FL which is when the deluge started. It was raining HARD. My sister had left a little before us and she had called to let us know that the rain was coming. Fortunately, it didn’t just rain continuously. We’d drive through some hard rain for about 5-10 minutes, then it would be all sunny for about 5 minutes, then rain again. On the up side, we saw a bunch of beautiful rainbows, and even one double rainbow! We hit some traffic in downtown Orlando (which we weren’t entirely unprepared for since it was about 5:30pm after all), but it wasn’t terrible for too long. We’d arranged to meet my sister and her side of the party at Sweet Tomatoes for our annual arrival night dinner. We LOVE Sweet Tomatoes having grown up in the Tampa area, but sadly don’t have one here in Savannah.
After our delicious dinner (and fortunately it stopped pouring right before we left so we didn’t get soaked going out to the car!), we headed to our resort – Art of Animation – to check in. As we got out of the car, we noticed yet another rainbow, just over the AoA sign.
(You can see it if you look directly up from the "IO" in ANIMATION.)
A good omen? I think so! There was only one person in line in front of us at check in, so it didn’t take any time at all. Our CM was very friendly and enthusiastic. The lobby of AoA is beautiful with a rainbow theme. I wish I had taken some pics, but I was just so happy to be there that I forgot all about my camera right then. After the quick check-in, our CM said “Sketch ya later!” and we were off to our Little Mermaid room. (Don’t worry, it was dark by the time we were heading to our room so I didn’t take any outside resort pics this evening, but I took a bunch of pics on day 2!)
The Little Mermaid room was AWESOME! It was just perfect. We had also been granted our request of connecting rooms, so my sister’s family was just a door away. My favorite thing about the whole room I stupidly did not get a picture of. It was the inside of the shower. It is designed to look like Ariel’s cavern where she keeps all of her human treasures and it is SO cool. I probably wasted a good 10 minutes every time I took a shower just staring at all of the things on the walls!
The curtain that seperated the sink area from the rest of the room
Shower curtain (which you can buy at the AoA store if you wish)
After we brought our luggage in and got situated, we all decided catch the bus down to Downtown Disney and do a little shopping. The bus didn’t take too long at all, and we were on our way. We got off at the Marketplace stop and while there were people down there, it wasn’t too horribly crowded. We wandered along in and out of the shops.
Aleksander, Elaina, and Caleb
Steve, Kyle, me, Jennifer
We spent quite a while in the Lego store for Dnephew (he LOVES Legos and spent all of his money he’d saved up in that store) and quite a while perusing World of Disney.
Me playing around at WoD. I loved this hat, but since I never wear hats, I didn't get it.
I just love WoD, and I was also on a mission to find a little something that a friend had requested. I found it! I also found a Dole Whip shirt that I thought was great – being a Dole Whip addict as I am – but decided not to purchase it tonight. At about 10:00, we decided to head back to AoA and get some sleep. We were all excited for tomorrow to come – MNSSHP day!!!
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MNSSHP 2015: DH (Bane), Me (Batgirl), Genie, and our friends
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Great start Ashli! I wish we lived a closer driving distance to WDW. Love the Little Mermaid room, thanks for you sharing the pictures. I really am a sucker for themed rooms.
Sounds like a great start to your trip! The pics of the room are awesome, too bad you didn't get one of the inside of the shower. I love that your family has an arrival night dinner tradition. We have one too. We always eat dinner at Kouzzina on our first night.
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The room looks wonderful! Geat way to spend your first night-- a little shopping at DTD. (I got curious about seeing the details in the shower and watched the new video at allears.com. VERY cool!)
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Great start Ashli! I wish we lived a closer driving distance to WDW. Love the Little Mermaid room, thanks for you sharing the pictures. I really am a sucker for themed rooms.
And now you have me wanting Sweet Tomatoes.
I love themed rooms too! And I'm glad I'm not the only one who can appreciate Sweet Tomatoes. Sorry I made you crave it though! Do you have them where you live?
Quote:
Originally Posted by num1DVCfan
Sounds like a great start to your trip! The pics of the room are awesome, too bad you didn't get one of the inside of the shower. I love that your family has an arrival night dinner tradition. We have one too. We always eat dinner at Kouzzina on our first night.
I've heard good things about Kouzzina, but haven't been there yet. I'll have to try it one of these trips!
Quote:
Originally Posted by bsblady01
more please
Coming right up!
Quote:
Originally Posted by lauriep
The room looks wonderful! Geat way to spend your first night-- a little shopping at DTD. (I got curious about seeing the details in the shower and watched the new video at allears.com. VERY cool!)
Neat! I didn't know they had a video.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MayraLR
The room is so awesome! I love the colors and the shower curtain is so cute.
I loved the colors too. I loved the calm light blue of the walls especially.
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MNSSHP 2015: DH (Bane), Me (Batgirl), Genie, and our friends
I woke up bright and early this morning at 7:20 am because I had a mission. The first part of my mission was taking a shower and drying my hair really, really well. This can take a very long time because my hair is long and thick. I almost never waste the time to blow-dry it all the way, but I needed to make sure it was completely dry or the next part of my plan wouldn’t work. A little explanation here – my costume for MNSSHP this evening was going to be Bellatrix from Harry Potter. She has crazy, crimpy hair. I have straight as a board hair that despises crimpers, curling irons, and basically laughs in their face with its straightness. ( = my hair when it sees a curling iron) Anyway, the only time I’ve ever seen my hair resemble anything remotely crimpy is when I’ve had it in braids all day and then take it out. I figured it was worth a shot, so as soon as my hair was completely dried, I separated it into about 7 or 8 sections and braided away. Would it work? No idea, but I had a bottle of megahold hairspray to assist me later. Fortunately it didn’t end up looking as ridiculous as it did in my mind when I was planning, so I wasn’t completely embarrassed for the entire day.
By the time I finished with my hair and got dressed, it was almost time for us to head over to Whispering Canyon Café for breakfast. We had a 10 am ADR. Steve decided to sit this one out, so he stayed back at the resort. We took a few minutes before we went to the parking lot and took some outside pictures of the resort. It was so sweet, and the attention to detail was insane. The plants all looked like plants you would actually see underwater. It was so neat!
A view of the Lion King section from the Little Mermaid section
And some closer pics of the LK section
We hopped in our cars (I love the Disney buses, but when going from resort to resort the time wasted can be crazy) and headed to Wilderness Lodge. We got there about 15 minutes before our reservation time and checked in. We were told it would just be a couple minutes. Less than five minutes later, we were at our table. We’ve been to WCC twice before for breakfast and we love the food AND the antics. I’d heard a bit since the last time we went that the antics had somewhat died down, but was really hoping that wasn’t always the case. Turns out, it wasn’t! We had such a blast! Our waitress’s name on her nametag was Stephanie, but she said to call her Sidetrack Sue because if we kept yelling out Stephanie, her family was bound to hear and start wanting her to do stuff for them too! She was a riot. She hammed it up with all of us, and even made DH walk around the restaurant with her singing “If You’re Happy and You Know It.” (She did that to get back at him, because he was playing with her and calling her stuff like Sidesaddle Sue and Sidecar Sue instead of Sidetrack Sue.)
Elaina's tiny "refill" and my giant "non-breakfast" Diet Coke
Sidetrack Sue told Elaina she drank her juice too fast so she brought her this "refill" so maybe she would take her time this time.
I love that my DH is always such a good sport and up for funny things like that! He never gets upset or embarrassed and is always willing to play along. Our food was absolutely delicious as always!
My banana bread French toast - YUUUUUUUUUM!!!
DH's breakfast platter (formerly known as the skillet)
After we’d spent about an hour with Sidetrack Sue, we paid our tab and left WCC. We wandered around WL for a few minutes, just because we all love the resort and had such fun memories from our trip there a few years back. My Dniece ended up getting a charm for her charm bracelet (Dniece, DSis, and I all have one that we’ve been collecting charms at WDW for over the years) at the gift shop in WL. Then, we decided to head back to AoA for some pool time.
To be continued…
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MNSSHP 2015: DH (Bane), Me (Batgirl), Genie, and our friends
Funny about your hair. I have the same problem, although mine is very limp and fine. Nothing stays in my hair and just like yours, it laughs at curlers or the curling iron.
The resort shots are great! And that breakfast looks very yummy.
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This day started out quite early, as I had to get DS up and ready for school as usual. I didn’t want him to miss two full days now that he’s in middle school, so we decided that he’d go to school and we’d pick him up at 1:00pm so he’d only miss his last two classes. He’d already discussed it with his teachers and taken his spelling test that was supposed to be today, yesterday. So up and at ‘em we were as usual, and he headed out the door at 6:20 to get the bus. Then what did I do? Went back to sleep, of course! 
DH got dressed and took the dogs to the kennel. (4 big dogs and 1 man in a Honda Civic hatchback…I’m glad I didn’t have to go! 
) I did my exercise DVD and was in the shower when Kyle got back (our kennel is about 35 min away, so no, it wasn’t the world’s shortest exercise video 
LOL!). DH worked out while I vacuumed and cleaned up a bit (love coming home to a clean house!). Before we knew it, it was 12:30 and time to head out to pick up DS and hit the road for WDW! 
I did a quick luggage double check to make sure we had everything, and then we were off.
So I brought him his Rainforest Café shirt to change into.) 
We zipped right along until we got to about Sanford, FL which is when the deluge started. 
It was raining HARD. My sister had left a little before us and she had called to let us know that the rain was coming. Fortunately, it didn’t just rain continuously. We’d drive through some hard rain for about 5-10 minutes, then it would be all sunny for about 5 minutes, then rain again. On the up side, we saw a bunch of beautiful rainbows, and even one double rainbow! 
We hit some traffic in downtown Orlando (which we weren’t entirely unprepared for since it was about 5:30pm after all), but it wasn’t terrible for too long. We’d arranged to meet my sister and her side of the party at Sweet Tomatoes for our annual arrival night dinner. 
We LOVE Sweet Tomatoes having grown up in the Tampa area, but sadly don’t have one here in Savannah. 
(and fortunately it stopped pouring right before we left so we didn’t get soaked going out to the car!), we headed to our resort – Art of Animation – to check in. As we got out of the car, we noticed yet another rainbow, just over the AoA sign. 
There was only one person in line in front of us at check in, so it didn’t take any time at all. Our CM was very friendly and enthusiastic. The lobby of AoA is beautiful with a rainbow theme. I wish I had taken some pics, but I was just so happy to be there that I forgot all about my camera right then. 
After the quick check-in, our CM said “Sketch ya later!” and we were off to our Little Mermaid room. (Don’t worry, it was dark by the time we were heading to our room so I didn’t take any outside resort pics this evening, but I took a bunch of pics on day 2!)
It was the inside of the shower. It is designed to look like Ariel’s cavern where she keeps all of her human treasures and it is SO cool. I probably wasted a good 10 minutes every time I took a shower just staring at all of the things on the walls!
I also found a Dole Whip shirt that I thought was great – being a Dole Whip addict as I am – but decided not to purchase it tonight. At about 10:00, we decided to head back to AoA and get some sleep. We were all excited for tomorrow to come – MNSSHP day!!! 
The first part of my mission was taking a shower and drying my hair really, really well. This can take a very long time because my hair is long and thick. I almost never waste the time to blow-dry it all the way, but I needed to make sure it was completely dry or the next part of my plan wouldn’t work. A little explanation here – my costume for MNSSHP this evening was going to be Bellatrix from Harry Potter. She has crazy, crimpy hair. I have straight as a board hair that despises crimpers, curling irons, and basically laughs in their face with its straightness. (
= my hair when it sees a curling iron) Anyway, the only time I’ve ever seen my hair resemble anything remotely crimpy is when I’ve had it in braids all day and then take it out. I figured it was worth a shot, so as soon as my hair was completely dried, I separated it into about 7 or 8 sections and braided away. Would it work? No idea, but I had a bottle of megahold hairspray to assist me later. Fortunately it didn’t end up looking as ridiculous as it did in my mind when I was planning, so I wasn’t completely embarrassed for the entire day. 
We had a 10 am ADR. Steve decided to sit this one out, so he stayed back at the resort. We took a few minutes before we went to the parking lot and took some outside pictures of the resort. It was so sweet, and the attention to detail was insane. The plants all looked like plants you would actually see underwater. It was so neat! 
We had such a blast! 
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