The Log Dog Blog: Boo to You!

I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge that this trip -- correction: ANY trip -- would not have been possible without our phenomenal Fairy Dogmother...thank you to my mom who is not only always willing to care for our five little friends, but happily spoils them rotten whenever we are away.

We spent the last few days of September at our favorite place and in addition to attending Mickey's Not-So-Scary Halloween Party at Magic Kingdom, we were able to enjoy the International Food and Wine Festival at Epcot. It was a beautiful weekend and the fall decorations really made us feel like autumn had finally arrived, despite the high temperatures and humidity.

Downtown Disney

Before I get to a few of the highlights of the trip, I must share something I am so excited about (and if you were not convinced of how much of a nerd I am, perhaps this will do the trick)! So those of you who have stayed at Disney resorts know all about the refillable mugs. A major pet peeve of mine was witnessing people using mugs at the soda stations that they had clearly not purchased on that trip - blatant theft, in my humble opinion. The argument had always been that it wasn't worth Disney's time to try to stop these people and they they didn't want to cause a scene or have some kind of public confrontation with guests. I never thought that was an appropriate response because it silently condoned that behavior and was clearly unfair to the majority of the guests who followed the rules. Well, it appears that Disney has come up with a solution:

You'll notice that the mugs now read Rapid Fill. The soda machines have been upgraded for the new system and ONLY these mugs work at the refill stations! When you purchase the mug, you pay for the number of days you want (1 day, 2 days, 3 days, and length of stay were the options, if memory serves). A chip in the base of the cup controls the refills and the soda stations have screens that indicate the date your mug "expires." If you don't buy the mug and choose to get a disposable cup, the same system is in place - your number of refills in limited in terms of time and frequency (something like three refills over the course of an hour - don't quote me, but you get the idea).

All I can say is that it is about time this type of system was put in place!

Port Orleans Riverside Resort

On to the trip itself...we stayed at Port Orleans Riverside and the resort is beautiful. We used the MagicBands I previously posted about, and other than mine not working on our hotel room door, we loved them. Since C's band worked on the door, we didn't bother going to guest services to get mine reset. The fast passes worked perfectly and we were even able to select different times using our phones when we adjusted our plans that day. Super convenient!

We spent Friday at Hollywood Studios, Saturday at Epcot, and Sunday at MK.

The best part of Friday was when we rode Toy Story Mania. The stand-by line was 75 minutes; our wait time with fast passes was five minutes! While that would have been great enough, just as we were about to board, we saw an elderly couple coming out of the end of the ride and they were holding hands and smiling and laughing like they'd just had the time of their lives. It was awesome to witness that kind of love and joy. Here is our score card - I can never beat C in terms of points (although this is the closest I have ever come!), but I take great pride in getting a better accuracy score than him every time. He sweetly indulges my bragging about accuracy, even though his score is 100,000 points or more better than mine most of the time. :-)

The International Food and Wine Festival was wonderful, but as a result, the World Showcase was pretty crowded. Despite our aversion to crowds, I admit that it was nice to wander to each country and sample treats from different nations. In terms of attractions, we finally tried the new Test Track, and I was very pleasantly surprised! We never understood why people loved the old version and always avoided it whenever we were at Epcot. Since it has been upgraded, the lines have been ridiculous, but we decided to select it for one of our fast passes. We were fully prepared to be let down, but it is vastly improved over what it used to be! (I think this speaks to the power of low expectations!) Not sure I would ever waste a lot of time waiting in line for it, but if I had a fast pass, I would definitely ride it again. Saturday night was dinner at Beaches and Cream (a must-do for us on each trip) and an evening at Jellyrolls - as always the pianists were amazing.

Sunday finally arrived - the day of the Halloween Party we'd been looking forward to for many months. Having attended this party a number of times, we knew it was going to be great. That afternoon, we experienced something for the first time - Push, the talking trash can, who roams around in Tomorrowland. We thought it would be fun to watch as he interacted with guests, and he ended up rolling over and chatting with us for a minute or two. He was hilarious!

Train Station Decorated for Fall

Beautiful Cinderella Castle

Tony's Town Square Restaurant

Lady and Tramp's paw prints outside Tony's

Rapunzel's Tower

Gaston's Tavern

Prince Eric's Castle

Dumbo

Perhaps the strangest event of the evening was when we were stranded inside The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh because the ride broke down. We sat for about ten minutes while the ride was evacuated. We were right near the end, so we had a very short walk as compared with some of the other guests. The following three photos are where we were stopped and while we waited, I read the pages aloud with delight (those of you who know me understand my intense love of Pooh Bear).

The Halloween Party was awesome. That's the most fitting word I can come up with. Very short lines, creative costumes, fantastic theming, spooky lighting, amazing fireworks (entitled HalloWishes), and the best Disney parade, Boo to You! There was also a dance party with many characters from Monsters, Inc./Monsters University, which was super fun. I have a suspicion that the target audience is the 12-and-under age group, but I had no shame in marching right over to the characters and dancing with them. Sorry to disappoint you, but I will not be posting any of those particular photos!

A fantastic moment of the parade came when Cruella DeVil spotted a service dog in the crowd and went over in a dramatic fashion. Unfortunately, this was across the street from us, so we could not hear what she said, but I imagine it was something about what a beautiful dog it was and how she wanted to take it with her because the owner was shaking her head and the people in the area were laughing. I love watching the characters interact with people! Generally speaking, we never seek out characters, but I have been known to freak out if I spot Pluto and I am more than willing to wait in line to get a photo with him.

Welcome Sign

Parade

One of the many light post decorations

After arriving back at our hotel around 1:00 am, we had to stay up until 3:30 am so we could watch the Breaking Bad finale (sidenote - amazing), and once it ended and I finished crying about it, we did not get to sleep until about 5:30 am. Monday was therefore a very long and tiring day, but we had an exciting appointment in the afternoon that I will write about in another post. As is typical, I was asleep on the plane Monday evening before takeoff and did not wake up until we were landing. We are, of course, already looking forward to our next trip in December!