TCD's Weekend Update- May 14, 2011

Part of the TCD gang made a one day blitzkrieg visit to WDW on May 14, 2011.

Naturally, there are photos to share and news to report.

As some on you may know, I have been working on a trip report from a visit three months ago. It is a bit difficult to post about events that happened three months ago.

I will be finishing that trip report up soon.

But, let's take a little detour and look at some things that are very current.

Like two days old.

This was an unplanned trip.

Mrs. TCD is a pre-school teacher.

One of the activities she does each year is to use a stuffed animal which each student gets to take home for a week. They are required to take photos and write a report with their parents' help. On Friday, they get to share their report with the class. It is kind of liked controlled show and tell.

Well, at the end of the year, Mrs. TCD gets to take the animal home and give a report to the class. She always wants to do something that will be interesting for the students.

Well, this was Mrs. TCD's week.

The TCD twins suggested a visit to WDW.

I'm always up for that.

So, early on Saturday morning, May 14, we headed east.

We started our day at Animal Kingdom for rope drop.

There was no rope drop ceremony, and we were standing outside of Expedition Everest at just before 9 am.

This is Jack, who was along for the day:

Here is Jack on EE:

Here is Jack on Dinosaur (he is the blurry blob in the back row-look for the Ray's shirt):

Jack with the Tree of Life:

After EE and Dinosaur, we were going to take a safari ride, but the wait was already 40 minutes. So, we headed to Rafiki's Planet Watch. It had been a while since we have visited there.

My DD's always enjoy the mask making station that is set up in Harambe Village:

After that, it was about 11, and we decided to bolt and go get some lunch.

Since we were at AK, we decided to eat at AKL. We all love the Mara.. While there, my DD's ran into a friend from school who visits WDW about as much as we do. They had just hopped from Hollywood Studios, and were on their way to AK. The girl's father had three Toy Story Midway Mania Fastpasses that they were not going to use, and he offered them to me. Sweet.

While at AK, one of my DD's loaded a new app on here phone called Gowalla. I am not sure what this is exactly, but it was mentioned in the latest passholder's newsletter. There, we learned that you could use this app to check in at certain places in WDW, and earn a pin. She had checked in at certain places in AK. She was taking a look at it during lunch, and saw an announcement about a celebration of Pixar's 25th anniversary at Epcot which was taking place on Saturday, May 14. I had not heard anything about this, but it was all there on her phone. There was a guidemap and everything. We decided to make Epcot our next stop.

And here we are!:

This Pixar thing was pretty cool.

They had events, which were mostly character meet and greets, throughout Epcot.

And, they also had the old Millennium Village opened up, with a bunch of character meet and greets in there.

On the way in to the building, they had interesting displays like this:

Here are some of the characters the girls got to meet. A lot of these are what you would call "rares," and this was a big deal to a lot of folks who were there. We had never seen some of these characters before, like Mr. Potato Head:

We even got to meet Duffy:

And, we even spotted a celebrity!

Do you remember the pregnant man from a few years ago?

He/she was even on the cover of People magazine.

I wonder what ever happened to him/her?

Well, guess who we ran right in to at Epcot?

Him/Her!!!!

Look!:

This would be a good time for me to post a warning.

If you are a pregnant man and you go to WDW, chances are your photo will end up in a TCD trip report.

I am sure that you have all seen photos of the Lotso topiary which is up front at Epcot for the Flower and Garden festival.

Well, did you know that they have strawberry plants planted all around it?

Look here, you can see the strawberries:

At Epcot, we purchased a new outfit for Jack the bear.

And, then we hopped over to Hollywood Studios, where Jack got to meet the Big Cheese himself:

We used our Toy Story Midway Mania Fastpasses here.

Jack got to visit New York on this trip:

Since Jack had a Buzz Lightyear costume now, I suggested that we go over to the Star Wars attraction and take his photo with something Space Related.

To our surprise, the Star Tours attraction, which had been closed for a major renovation, was open!

Its grand opening is not scheduled to take place until May 20th, but here we were, and it was open.

So, we had to check it out!

The only problem for our story is that there was no photography allowed. It says so right here:

There were castmembers stationed throughout the que warning people not to take photos.

I checked my camera to make sure it was off, and I accidentally took these photos while I was trying to put it away:

This is in a big room when you first enter the que.

The ship and the robots are not new, but this big screen is:

The cue is a lot cleaner and more futuristic looking than the old:

The big change in this attraction is the fact that it is now 3D. And the 3D glasses are really cool!:

The new Star Tours is way better than the old version!

We also noticed that a huge stage has been set up right in front of the hat for the Star Wars weekends which will begin this coming weekend:

We took Jack on Tower of Terror:

And then it was time to bounce to our next destination.

Which was . . .

Did you guess MK?

Not yet.

We headed to the Fort.

And saw some interesting things there.

Which you will see in the next installment.

TCD