Almost First Anniversary of Trip & Album almost done

My niece, age 9 at the time, and I went to WDW last July. We had a great time and between us and the park PhotoPass people, I had a lot of photos of our trip. I’ve been sifting thru all those photos and making album pages in PhotoShop. Since I want the album to be as perfect as the trip was, it’s taken me all this time to create. Now I have a deadline. My niece is coming for a visit THIS July and I want to have the book to give her. (Picaboo.com is a great thing!) (Like the trip being almost a year ago wasn’t enough of a deadline! Okay, I procrastinated just a bit!)

I had read all sorts of blogs before we left that because of travel discounts, there were huge crowds. And lines for all the major rides were several hours.
We were lucky and had no more than 25 minute waits for most every ride in the mornings.
Many mornings, rides waits were less than 5 minutes.

Disney had PhotoPass photographers throughout the park to take photos in front of special places like the castle. It was a great way for both of us to be in the picture.
Nicolette got a bit tired of stopping every time I saw a photographer. But I could have as many photos taken as I wanted since I prepaid. And I got a lot of great photos.

So with the album pages three-quarters of the way done, here is our trip.


(if photos are clipped off on right, click on photo to see whole picture)


Since my niece & I don’t live in the same state, I had to plan extra time to pick her up. But within 24 hours of leaving home, I was at WDW. Yeah!

I have a timeshare thru RCI, I noticed back in January of last year that Disney timeshares would be available thru RCI.

Afraid that they would disappear fast, I called my sister immediately and asked to have Nikki 4th of July week.

I was very happy with Old Key West resort. We ate breakfast in the room. The bus system is great between airport, resort and park so didn’t have the expense or bother of renting a car.

Nikki couldn’t understand why I was telling her to stand in the middle of the walkway and hold her arms above her head. Then when I showed her the photo she thought it was “cool”.


The quiche at the France Pavilion was soooooo good. When I got home I started searching and experimenting with recipes until I found one that was close.



FastPass was great for avoiding lines in the afternoon.






We only saw fireworks one night. We were too exhausted everyday to stay that long.

I didn’t know if we’d be able to meet any of the characters on our trip so I book breakfast with Mickey & friends at the Contemporary hotel. This was so worth it. We got to meet who I feel is the “Fab Five” and the food was good too.



Donald was reluctant to take a photo with me in my mouse ears. So after the first photo I took them off.

You never know who you’ll find hanging out in a back corner.



I’d been told about the Tinkerbell photo but it took a few tries to find someone who did them. Not all the photopass photographers have the camera set up for it.

An hour and a half line! For Tinkerbell! Mickey was only 20 minutes!
But TB was a must-see on her list so we waited.



The Buzz Lightyear ride was so much fun. And both mornings we were at the park, there was no line to speak of until about 11am.





On Stitch’s Great Escape there is a point where everything goes pitch black for about 2-3 minutes. This scared Nikki so bad I thought I was going to have to interrupt everything to take her out of there. Luckily at about the time I was thinking of doing just that, the lights came on and she was okay.



The race cars was good old fashioned fun. And some whiplash for me!





We had to go on the tea cup ride. I had fond memories of making my parents dizzy on this ride.
Nikki & I tried to see how fast we could get the tea cup spinning.




Mickey & Minnie!





Lots of princesses. Nikki wanted an autograph from everyone.






There were so many parades


Next to meeting Mickey, happening upon Pooh, Tigger & Eeyore unexpectedly and with no line was fantastic and so typical of our week at WDW.



I guess it was me but I didn’t find all that much interesting to see at Animal Kingdom. I much preferred the Magic Kingdom.



Although I did enjoy the safari. And as several sources suggested, we went straight there when we got to the park minutes after opening. The line was less that 20 minutes and all the animals were up ad about.
One of the photos (top left) I took caught us in the driver’s rear view mirror. I enlarged that mirror like a “zoom in” so it could be seen.






Next to meeting all the characters, Nikki’s other favorite thing was the Mt Everest rollercoaster.
We got a fastpass for it and wandered around so the wait wasn’t bad. On the ride, it was a lot of slow long ups and short downs. Not too bad for someone who barely tolerates roller coasters. Then we got to the top and went back down in reverse.
What! No way!
All those slow ups were now fast downs and backward!!!!
I was holding onto the bar for dear life and Nikki was laughing having a good time!
I didn’t kiss the ground when we got off but I felt like it!
And of course Nikki’s response was “Can we go again?”
“NO!!!!”
“Awww, why not?”
“Because Auntie Ann was screaming like a little girl, that’s why!”
So we went on the raft ride and got soaked instead.

We had a lot of rain that week but it was better than the extreme heat they’d had before we got there.

The one thing I wanted to make sure we did in Epcot was take the behind the scenes tour of the hydroponics garden. For me, that was so interesting and well worth the extra cost of the tour.