περιπλάνηση: WDW 2002

So the once in a lifetime trip became a tradition about 5 minutes after we left in 2000. We started plotting our tradition: every even-numbered year at Christmas until the kids were out of school, we would make the trek back to Florida for our Disney fix.

Of course, we'd saved up for several years, with me just working part-time and Bob still at TDCJ in Hunstville. The semester of the 2000 trip I finally got on full-time and in 2001 Bob made the jump to Texas A&M, so two years seemed reasonable.

Plus, we'd done a short trip the first time because of finances and weren't able to see everything we wanted to. We never even got to Animal Kingdom that first year and spent just half a day at Epcot. So the 2002 trip was designed to correct these errors. We stayed twice as long, from December 18-26.

Christmas Day to New Years Day is the largest park attendance for WDW of all the weeks of the year. Parks will get so full, they have to close the gates until some people leave to let more in. But we were game and figured by those last two days, we could take it easy and just enjoy being there, without needing to stand in line for rides or shows.

This was back in the day of regular old film cameras and I hadn't gotten nearly as many pictures as I'd liked on trip #1. Nick was telling me this morning he has a distinct memory of seeing me line up film canisters across the top of the TV cabinet in our room at the Boardwalk, all the way across the top. I think I shot close to 30 rolls all told over 8 days. And then you just had to send them in and wait to see what you got. It took me a month to scrapbook all those pictures and it wasn't until years later that I trucked the box full of negatives up to Walmart to have them digitized.

Which brings us to this blog. Since they were just randomly scanned and then I worked them in editing and saved them by name, I have a giant folder full of digital pictures from this trip that are all over the place. It made putting them into this blog challenging. We hopped back and forth from park to park, so recreating the days isn't feasible without spending hours pouring over the video we shot and trying to match up clothing and places for a timeline.

Add to this that it wasn't until about halfway through the ridiculous photo upload process blogger has in place (you have to individual browse and select each picture and can only upload five at a time) that I remembered each five superceed the previous five, and we will be starting with the end of the alphabet here and working our ZYXs of WDW down to the letter A.

I actually started with character photos and then gave up and started grabbing them five at a time as they are listed in the folder, so it's even more jumbled. Maybe at some point I'll try to rework this into a coherent narrative. Until then, hang on for the ride!

At the back of the alphabet, under "Us"

At Liberty Tree Tavern

WDW "S"

Spectromagic was new for us this year, replacing Main Street Electrical Parade. The clown things on the front float with their glowing faces freak me out.

Liberace Mickey in Spectro!

Also under "S" for Silly:

We have video of Sammi directing the composition of this shot. Autograph Hound Pluto here will show up in a lot of photos. Note he is relatively unsigned here, since this was our first day of the trip. Sammi had spotted him on the 2000 trip, at the very end. He's designed for autographs of the characters. So I had promised her if we came back, we'd get one at the start and get all the cahracters to autograph him. She called in that promise on Day 1 and he hung around with us, getting filled up all week long.

"S" for Sci-Fi Diner dessert, another tradition we've done each trip.

Skipping forward in the alphabet, we come to "P" for the Pooh ride. Those nametags you see were bought and delivered to our hotel room on the day we checked in in 2000. We've worn them faithfully every trip. Mine is Pooh, Bob is Tigger, Nick is Mickey, and Sammi is Minnie. They stopped making these not long after I bought ours (all except the Mickey, who was discontinued just two years back) and for the past ten years we are continually stopped and asked where they came from and why we are Honored Guests.

"P" is also for Pan!

Ok, I know, this should have come earlier under "T" except when I was eiditng and saving I was thinking in terms of parks, so the file is named "MKteacups." You'll start to see that our favorite parks are Magic Kingdom and MGM (although not called that anymore except by us -- officially it's Hollywood Studios now).

Mk Main Street, Sammi poses with one of the trolley Clydesdales.

MKSpace Mountain. Sammi was still too short to ride the big coasters, and still not too sure she wasn't happy to be too short to get out of them, so Nick got to ride a lot of things twice, with Bob and I swapping off.

This year we used Dreams Unlimited to book our dining reservations and our agent manged to score us a seating at the Castle Breakfast again this year. This picture is unusual because the princesses are under orders not to do group shots. They space themselves out and stay out of each others shots. So I was surprised when Sleeping Beauty, looking like she was heading for her break, stopped to say something to Cinderella and posed with her.

This Belle was the best we've ever seen. She had not only the look but the attitude and personality to match.

This trip we also asked our servers to pose with us after each meal.

The crew down in the lobby of the castle by the Christmas tree. After last year's all out princess-a-thon with the sparkly dress, my seven year old decided she liked being a tomboy and chose this decidedly un-princessy ensemble. Tomboys ROCK!

Main Street singers performing "Right Down the Middle of Main Street U.S.A."

This was the 100th year of Walt Disney's birthday (actually, it was 101, they started the celebration in December 2001 and carried it though the end of 2002). But when you see all the "100" signage, that's why.

MK empty the day after Christmas right at opening in the very back of Frontierland.

Also new this year (meaning it wasn't there in 2000) was the Magic Carpets of Aladdin. It was cold that day, so I was grateful they had the water spitting camels turned off that morning.

The whole crew on the first day at the MK front.

Nick attempts to raise the sword in the stone.

Love the joy in this picture.

See? All over the place. Here we are back on Aladdin on another day.

Splash Mountain -- Sammi was tall enough to ride this year and did so with a lot of persuading. She wouldn't put her hands up on the big drop and insisted I hold her, but she made it!

The Castle, the night the the Christmas party. Back then, you had to have dinner reservations to be in the park before the start of the event, otherwise you had to exit the park and wait at the gates. We ate at Liberty Tree and when the magic hour arrived, we got to walk through an almost deserted park for the first few minutes before the throngs worked their way in.

Daisy and Donald together at the front of the MK. Post 9/11 park crowds and travel in general was down, so they pulled out a million characters that hadn't been in circulation in 2000. A lot of those lesser known characters appear at the end of this blog.

One of my very favorite pictures from this trip, on Christmas morning, riding Goofy's Barnstormer, the smaller kiddie coaster Sammi was fine on by herself. She's hollering to me that she wants to ride again. I think they did this one four times in a row without any wait, once without even getting out. Again, Christmas is packed, but if you are willing to get there at the crack of dawn and go on things that aren't the major attractions, you can have a great morning. Your luck will run out by about 11:00 though when you pretty much can't move.

I love this one thanks to the genius work at Walmart. I also wasn't enough of a genius to know how to use the editing software to flip it. And now, I kinda like this way better :)

Nick was so excited that I relented and went on the Indyland speedway. It's loud and smelly and seemingly pointless when there were so many other DIsney rides to enjoy. But to my 9 year old, this was going to be the pinnacle of his night, getting to drive a little speedster around the tracks.

They got a dud for a car and, even with the pedal to the floor, had to creep around the track at the slowest pace imaginable. Poor guy.

Waiting for the next show at the Hall of Presidents. This is the only trip we've done it.

Christmas decorations at MK are spectacular. Sadly, they've cut back on these over the years, too.

At dusk, they have a show at the train station and light up the park and the tree in the square. This was the year the mayor was so horribly off key everyone winced in unison.

Yes, we are STILL in the "M" pictures... Minnie's house

And here is the other "M" park: MGM

Lilo and Stitch had just come out on video and we were big fans. Yes, we are posing with the inflatable ad.

Nick does his Singing in the Rain impression on the Backlot streets.

But this is, by far, the best picture of the entire trip, for so many reasons. Nicholas (as he was still called then) was not a joiner. He was quite happy to stay in his little corner and let the world go by without bothering him. He hated any change in routine, new places, new people, etc. So imagine our absolute shock when the character who was warming up the crowd for the afternoon parade asked who was the biggest Lilo and Stitch fan out there and our shy little boy jumps up and starts waving his hands madly. She picked him and Sammi to come out and answer some trivia about the movie.

Just watch the first 40 seconds of this video. You would NEVER believe this kid wouldn't even raise his hand in a crowd before that moment:

At the exit of the Muppet Vision show:

With Sorcerer Mickey

New this year, finally, a tribute to Walt Disney himself.

MGM's Stars and Motor Cars parade, also now mothballed.

This was the first year for the giant Sorcerer hat at MGM.

Sci-Fi!

Tower of Terror, a new ride for Sammi who was willing to do it exactly ONCE this trip.

We got in line for Fantasmic before they opened the gates and were able to get front row, just about center to film the show. We'd come in 2000 only to discover they'd changed the show times and had to squeeze in the back right section. There are two drawbacks to front row center seats:

1. You are going to have to hang out on these benches a looooong time before the show.

2. If it's cold that December night, be prepared to freeze, especially when the wind picks up and pushes the water wall spray over you.

Back when I was uploading video to YouTube, they had stricter limits on file and size and length, so I had to chop the show into four parts. Here's the big finish:

The big discussion in the YouTube comments concerns the failure of the dragon to disappear due to mechanical malfunction, which meant Mickey walks off instead of disappearing down the trap door.. Still a great show. We never miss it.

Sammi was still willing to hang out in a stroller if it meant not have to walk miles and miles everyday. I put my foot down on the next trip though (she was 9!!) and made her hoof it with the rest of us.

Herc and Meg, memorable mainly because Hercules kept complaining that Dopey had signed on "his spot" on our Pluto. I was hoping for a Hercules/Dopey smackdown, but no such luck.

This is as close as Sammi would get to Cruella.

The Snow White and Seven Dwarfs topiaries at MGM

The hat at night.

OK, believe it or not, that was the END of the "M" files!!

On to "L"... for Liberty Tree Tavern, with our server:

As I mentioned in the 2000 blog, we ended up at the exact same table as the previous trip in the Ben Franklin room. We were even disappointed when we didn't get seated here in 2004.

And there is "E" for ESPN Club, also a first for us this year.

Nick was in football heaven.

"E" is also for Epcot, as in the other Princess breakfast they started to try and take some of the pressure off of trying to book reservations at the Castle. (Didn't work.) Most of the princesses are the same, except for Mulan. The breakfast is in the Norwegian plaza of Epcot's World Showcase, but right down the walk is China, so I guess it...kinds... makes sense?

We also booked Le Cellier on the Candlelight Pocessional package, which is designed to get you preferred seating at the popular evening Christmas choir pageant. This will only work if you give yourself a TON of time between dinner and your selected show time, including a long wait in the "preferred seating" line. We didn't and ended up squeezing in on the front row left of our show where we pretty much couldn't see squat. Just not our thing. Dinner at Le Cellier, however, was fantastic, as were the desserts!

Sammi got the smores and Nicholas ordered the Chocolate Mousse (get it?)

See how close I am when taking this picture? That's because my back was against the stage. Sigh. Hi lady behind us, forever immortalized in our picture. Smile!

We also spend Christmas Day wandering through World Showcase being silly. This is the Living Statues show in France.

And playing on the drums in the African Outpost:

In Canada, facing the sun:

And playing on the Vkiking Ship in the Norway pavilion:

We tried the Tapestry of Dreams parade on a very wet Christmas Eve afternoon:

Gone is the 2000, in its place "Epcot", just in case you might forget where you are.

On to "D" as in Dumbo!

The two of them don't fit too well these days side beside in this little elephants any more.

D is also for Donald, Bob's favorite:

And D is for Downtown Disney, which we also didn't get to in 2000. Yes, I am posing with Grimace at the McDonalds. I love him. But why isn't he purple??

Some of these are shots that we now take every year to compare how much bigger the kids are on each successive trip. Those comparisons will be their own blog posting eventually.

Got my box of Mr. Potato Head Disney World accessories there.

And now "C" is for castle! (and also Cookie, always cookies)

To this day I ask Nick, why didn't we get this picture on our first trip? But so be it. The comparison height shots with Casey at the hot dog place will have to start at 2002.

C is for Cinderella's Carrousel, too:

And B is for Boardwalk Inn, where we stayed this year thanks to a fantastic code deal. This is the biggest and nicest room we've every had in our stays at WDW.

The lobby all decked out for Christmas:

B is for big brother:

And believe it or not, this was taking in the morning. Yes, we really were up before dawn to get to the 7:00 a.m. opening of Magic Kingdom.

Since we were staying through Christmas Day, we sent a tree, decorations, and presents ahead to the room before we arrived.

One of our favorite spots along the Boardwalk:

And back inside the hotel:

The little day bed was perfect Sammi size.

And it was warm enough part of the trip to take in the pool.

But why oh why do they have this creepy clown slide??

Sitting out on the veranda of the lobby overlooking the Boardwalk.

B is also for BUZZ Lightyear!

And Barnstormer!

I'm not sure why Pluto was riding Goofy's Barnstormer, but Sammi got asked if he could ride with her. When she shook her head no I just about shoved her out of the coaster. (She changed her mind.)

Finally in my alphabet soup, A is for Animal Kingdom -- the park we didn't get to in 2000.

They do Christmas big at WDW.

We also took in a character breakfast at AK that was really good. That's on our 2010 plans again.

With our safari guide on Kilmanjaro:

And finally, the first pictures I uploaded and just am too lazy to copy and paste in their respective sections, are more character shots:

Cinderella, who hogged a whole half a side of our clean Pluto Autograph Hound with her carriage drawing.

Kermit, whose flippers make it only possible for him to "stamp" his autograph (cha-CHUNK_ which did take a little of the fun out of it.

Loveable Eeyore and Nick

Lilo and Stitch!

And the Mouse himself. We only encountered him once in 2000 at the Garden Grille, but this year, he was everywhere.

One of the Country Bears:

And playful Meeko who kept taking Nick's hat off.

Our favorite pirates!

Jafar was really tall.

And on Christmas Day, right outside the castle, stood Uncle Scrooge McDuck, who until these past few years was only ever brought out once a year. It was an autograph hound's holy grail.

Goofy and Goofy Bob at the Barnstormer

Baloo and King Louie on Christmas morning. I think they had the characters together to draw some of the crazy crowds away from ride lines, since you rarely see them together for photo ops.