Katman1356...Jason

the problem is that eventually she gets me talking that way

No Nicki! Don't give in to the Dark Side. (unless they have chocolate...then its okay.)

mesa no thinksa. my dd, age 8 had been talking like jarjar binksa for daysa

I am so sorry Nicki.

They are the same thing. They are also in Episode 1 too, they take shots at the pod race drivers.

Best Regards,

Norm

I knew i was forgetting an appearance. Thanks Norm.

OK- thanks- I remember them now. But weren't the people who attacked Luke and C3P0 sand people? Are they the same thing?

TCD

Yes they are the same thing. I will help as much as I am able but I know they include characters from the Star Wars Clone Wars cartoon on the Cartoon Network and I have yet to watch that.

I know I have seen these Tusken Raiders somewhere- where do they show up in the movies?

TCD

They are in 2 of the movies I believe. In episode IV they are the creatures that attack Luke and Threepio when they are tracking Artoo just before they meet Obi-Wan.

And in episode II they are the ones who captured Anakins mother.

Wow I am a geek.

On the way, we ran into some Jawas:

I know i am going to regret showing my scifi geekdom but...thats not a jawa. That is a Tusken Raider. Jawas are the little guys in brown robes with glowing yellow eyes. Now back to your regularly scheduled TCD trip report.

I'm in. Glad if was a cheap fix.

I'm in. Did I make it in time for page 1?

Edited to add. Yes...Yes I did...woohoo

ps- sorry for the threadjack here!

I have heard it said its not really a Fort Fiends thread until it gets hijacked!

No to Space Mountain here too! Or Mission Space. Or Star Wars. And hell NO to ToT.

And I only did Yeti as a fool with my God Devil.

But I WUVS Thunder Mtn and somewhat love Splash Mtn.

I will do Mission Space but only on green. My second time trying orange I almost blacked out. Star Tours I can do all day long. I rode it 13 times in a row at Disneyland on my early entry.

When I last left you I had just boarded a train in FantasyLand and was headed over to Frontierland to get Splash fastpasses. With the fastpasses in hand I headed to meet the girls over near Pirates. I think the ride had been down temporarily cause the wait time was close to 50 minutes and that is more than I am willing to wait. The girls decided they wanted to get Dole whips.

While they were enjoying there snack I decided to run over to Pecos Bills and get a burger as has been about 8 hours since I had eatern anything (not including my Mickey Bar). We relaxed and ate our food over by Aloha Isle watching the world go by. With food in our stomachs and now rested we headed over to Fantasyland to hit some rides. The girls really wanted to go on the Carousel and there was little wait for that so we hopped on.

It was neat having a friend along on this trip. We got some nice pictures of me and Silvia that we usually don't get. Our friend is also a photographer and like to take shot from different angles like these.

I tend to go for the bigger picture.

After riding the carousel it was off to my wife favorite thing in Fantasyland. Mickey's Philharmagic!

As usual it was a wait for the show and walk on in. We enjoyed it as always.

At this point our splash Mountain fastpasses were ready and here is where I have to interrupt our story for a little side story.

I am deathly afraid of rollercoasters. I am deathly afraid of heights. Until My wife and I came to Disney on our honeymoon 4 years ago I had never been on a fullsize rollercoaster. I decided then I was a big boy now. I was married and I wanted to do these things with my wife. So I decided to try riding my first rollercoaster with my wife. Unfortunately I was not as informed about Disney as I am now and picked the one I thought would be the coolest. I waited in line to ride Space Mountain. I Thought the line was kind of neat and i enjoyed checking out all the old school ideas of spaceflight. And then we got ready to board and I realized I was hearing noised from above my head and looked up. And realized this was going to be in the dark.

AAAHHHHH.

But I was determined I was going to ride. Silvia thought I knew it was in the dark and thought my reaction was incredibly funny. I proceeded to ride and spent the ENTIRE ride screaming/mumblin/saying over and over again. ohmygod, ohmygod, ohmygod, it has to be over soon, ohmygod, ohmygod, it must be almost over. just repeat that the entire ride. I got off and walked to a bench and put my head down and waited for the world to stop spinning. I am happy to report I did not hurl. I am even happier to report I have never been back on Space Mountain. I think if I could at least see what was happening I would be a little better.

Since then I have ridden Thunder mountain and am starting to enjoy that ride, of course it was down this trip. I had only one mountain left to conquer in the magic kingdom in order to feel like maybe I have a small shred of manhood.

And now back to our story.

Splash Mountain. Today would be the day that I would try and tackle this ride. I figured I had the fast pass so I would not be able to get my self worked up in the line. If I got to the boarding point and couldnt do it I could take the chicken exit. I decided to do it. About 10 seconds into the right I looked at my wife and said, "What am I an idiot. I sooo should not be on this ride. Is it to late to change my mind?" Well with the lap bars I couldnt have escaped if I wanted too. I made it through but I have to admit I was almost in tears by the time the ride was over. The scenery was very nice, what I remember. The drops killed me. I thought there was only the one last drop. I was unprepared for the others. By the time the last one came I thought I was going to have a heart attack and die at my happy place. I survived of course. This isn't a ghost writer after all, but that will be my first and last trip on Splash Mountain.

After I collected my thoughts we headed over to something much more my speed. The Haunted Mansion, followed immediately by It's a Small World, and Snow White. At this point ti was time to head out to the Contemporary. We were having dinner at Chef Mickey's and didn't want to keep him waiting.

Sorry for the delay folks. Had to throw a birthday party for Silvia and her rather large italian family. now that I am all done cooking and can start relaxing again, I will upload some more photos and hopefully get another post up in just a little while.

I would love one of the frozen bananas......

I haven't tried one of those yet. Guess I am a creature of habit.

Well Sylvia has the technique down for eating Mickey bars, but you don't. Everybody knows you bite each ear first, you never bite and ear and work down the side.

I usually do but this was a damaged one. When I unwrapped it it was cracked all over the place. It was either take the chocolate and eat it or loose it. I was not loosing it. Besides she cheated. She took her cues from Marc Summers.

Sorry for the delay. When I left us we had boarded one of Disney's wonderful buses to the Magic Kingdom. I will say we had very good luck with the buses this trip but I still missed my car. It was great seeing our friend light up as we went though the gates. It had been over 10 years for her and she couldn't wait. We headed on through security and into the park and one of the first things we encountered we had to stop and listen too.

The Main St Philharmonic! Yeay! All three of us are musicians and the two of them marched in the magic kingdom in high school so we always stop and watched the musicians out of respect for what they are doing.

After they finished there show we continued up the street and made a right. Had to get the girls fast passes for Space Mountain. Despite the fact that it was around 1 at this point the fast pass times were less than an hour from then. While the girls were grabbing there fast passes I grabbed my treat. Everytime I come to the park I have to have one from the first cart I notice selling them.

And now you know what we all look like. From left to right you have me, my wife Silvia, and our friend Liz. This was taken by Liz later in the week but it was the only shot I have with my Mickey Premium Ice Cream bar as I am usually to busy eating it to bother with pictures.

While waiting for there fastpasses to come ready we decided to hit some other attractions in Tomorrowland. So we walked over and to took the moving walkway up to the People Mover. We love taking a spin around Tomorrowland on this so it usually happens a couple of times a trip.

These pictures were taken by Silvia. You can usually tell when shes taking the pictures. They are crooked.

This one is foreshadowing.

After are ride through tomorrow we headed over to another favorite. Yep "There's a great big beautiful tomorrow." The Carousel of Progress. I got in trouble on this one a few trips ago. I apparently missed the announcement about no photography. I got a couple of pic before they came on to tell me to knock it off. Unfortunately I can't find them at the moment. If I come acrross them I will come back.

At this point their fastpasses were ready so I grabbed their tickets and headed for the recently re-opened Fantasyland Train station by the little back pathway figuring I would grab a quick train around to Frontierland for fastpasses to Splash Mountain. It wasn't quite as quick as I wanted as there was a long line. Apparently they were adding a train so as soon as that big empty train showed up we were on our way.

I think I will break here for now. I need to upload more pictures.

Non-Pictorial Update -

We are headed out of Tennessee soon (Bob and Dave... we will be back. Threat or promise? You decide) tomorry or Saturday. We are taking the Stream aka Minerva in for some new legs(axles) in Baltimore. On Monday, the plan is to meet our reservations at a Jellystone in South East PA. We won't be there for a weekend though. Then we are headed up to the Greater Boston area. Any fiends in the Greater Boston Area?

I am up here in NE. right outside of Hartford but if your in New England you pretty much in the Greater Boston Area.

Welcome to all my readers and my one non-reader and Thanks for the advice TCD!

Picking up our story where we left off. After getting to bed at a not to bad hour I found I just could not sleep. To save money we had gotten 1 room for the night for the three of us with two double beds. I have trouble sharing a bed to begin with but in a double it was horrible. Normally I would have just gotten up and read a book or something till I was tired enough to fall asleep, but with Liz with us I didnt want to disturb her. So i laid in the bed and stared at the ceiling. After a couple of hours I did finally fall asleep and get an hour of two before the alarms started going off at 4 am.

Now no offense to those of you who like to get up early but I don't I would much rather be going to bed at 4 than getting up at 4, but there was a plane to catch. So I got up quickly and raced into the bathroom to get ready first as I would take the least amount of time (remember I am traveling with 2 girls, one of which confessed to having a morning routine that is usually a 1 hour affair). Once out I started repacking teh few things we had out and getting ready to leave.

Amazingly we were ready to go by 5:20. After a short 7 mile drive over to ACY we left our car in the economy lot and made the long horrendous walk to the terminal. Ok I exaggerate, it was like 2 minutes with stopping to tie a shoe. This is a small airport with only 7 terminals and 3 airlines that fly out. We checked out bags and headed over to the dreaded security lines. As a small aside I don't fly very often. I am afraid of heights and have issues with not having any control over my fate, add the security checks and I would much rather drive. All in all though at 5:45 am at a small airport Security was quick and relatively painless.

All 3 of us were through in about 15 minutes from when we showed out id's to putting my belt back on before my pants fell and caused and incident....oops didn't mean to type that. Oh well I did so you can all live with it. Eventually it was time to board our luxurious Spirit airlines flight to FL and we made it on without any issues. Our flight was supposed to be from 7:25 am to 9:50 am. We must have caught some killer airflow though casue we were there by 9:25 and by there I mean in the magic express line. This is where I think Disney is genius at its best. They prepare you for a week of being in lines. "oh your going to Pop head right over there and follow the ropes." Oh your in line for Pop Ok stand in this line while we board your ride vehicle" Really it just forshadowing.

After a short ride and a stop at Caribbean Beach we were finally at our hotel!

We had done Online checkin but our friend was a noob at this and I forgot to mention it so she had to stand in the line. While she was standing I had a mission. I added some more days to our park tickets and then said goodbye to my wife. I had something I had to get. Some of my readers I think are already aware of this but I was on a mission to get a case of water and not give the mouse anymore of my money than necesary. I headed out to the bus stops and hopped on one headed to DTD. Once at the Pleasure Island stop i headed out on what looked on line to be a slightly more direct and shorter walk to the Hess across the street. I probably could have cut some distance but I had cast members walking with me and didn't want to get a talking to on my first day at Disney. Quickly my mission was accomplished I had a case of water for $5.99 and headed back to the Pop bus stop.

As I walked up to the bus stop I saw a bus pull in. Oh No was i going to miss the bus back and have to wait for another one. Not if I could help it. I hoisted that case of water up on my other shoulder (first one was tired by this point) and started running to get there. I made it no problem. Whats that? Oh you waiting for you assignment. You don't know where your headed. Ok I will just go sit on this bench and catch my breath. Doh! It took another 10 minutes but finally a bus came around and I was on my way back to Pop. Alot of people on the bus were looking at me weird for carrying this case of water onto the bus. Except this one dad I was sitting next to. He asked me where I got it and how much it was and if there was soda or beer. I explained it all to him and suddenly his trip seemed brighter. He could afford more sodas for his kids, and beer for him when they finally pass out. He thanked me for the information and said he would be heading over to do the same thing himself.

Once back at Pop i got the lovely text that our room was ready so I headed straight there with our case of water. My wife and her friend has decided to eat at Pop so they were still there and met me at the room. Those new fridges at Pop are nice and they get the water nice and cold too. I fit almost the entire case of water into it. For those who would like to know by the way I did the math. An equivialent amount of water bottles from Disney would be 24 x $2.50= $60. I just saved us enough money for dinner for the two of us. Yeay. Now if only my arms weren't so sore..hehehe.

We all grabbed a bottle of water and headed out to our first park of the trip Magic Kingdom. This park one by virtue of the fact that with extra magic hours it was going to be open until 3 am.

I think I will take a break for now. I will pick this up in the Magic Kingdom shortly.

Another reader!

WooHoo!

Yeay my first reader!

I am going to make my first attempt at a trip report here. I apologize now if it takes a while to get it all up on here.

This trip was a different one for me and my wife SIlvia. We have never been in April and had only had a couple along with us once before. This trip my wife's friend Liz is joining us on. We were lucky with the timing on this trip as the school where my wife teaches scheduled their April vacation not around Easter as they usually but for the middle of April. This meant cheaper room rates for us.

We stayed at Pop Century again for this trip. It's the only value we have ever stayed at and it is the one we stayed in for our honeymoon so it will always be special to us.

Usually we drive down to FL from CT but since we were tight for time with school on either side I looked around and found us some affordable flights, Provided we were willing to drive to Atlantic City to fly out. Since we saved $1100 doing this I had no problem doing this. Otherwise drive it would be.

We said good bye to our dog and cat, my sister would be over later to spend the week taking care of them, and headed out to our friend Liz's house to pick her up as she liked saving a bunch of money on flights also. It was around 2:45pm when we headed out from her house towards Atlantic City and other than one stupid traffic accident it was smooth sailing and we arrive a little

We actually stayed at the Travelodge Atlantic City Bayside in West Atlantic City. It was a nice enough place especially considering I paid for it with points so it was free for us.

We had dinner at a local Italian restaurant called Jo Jo's Italian Grill. This was a really great place to eat and I love good Italian food.

After that we called it a night pretty early as we needed to take showers and get to the airport for 5:30 for our flight.

I promise there will be pictures in this trip report but we never took the camera out that first day.

more to follow....

Hey-

You probably did see the TCD twins!

That sounds like when we came by the Pop for our car.

You should have said something!

The twins love it when they get recognized from one of my TR's.

Not.

TCD

Even funnier is we spent the day in Epcot Friday afternoon till 6 and in the MK saturday till we headed back to POP., after a brief first visit to the Fort so I could check it out for the first time.

Really?

What time was this?

We were at the Pop early in the evening on Saturday to retrieve my car.

I wonder if you really saw them?

We were there from 4:30 -6:30 waiting on the bus.

I was sitting in POP Saturday evening waiting for our Magic Express Pickup time and thought I saw the twins. Doh! This close to meeting TCD. Oh well maybe next time.

Thanks for the awesome Trip Report TCD. I am getting more and more excited about my first trip in July!

Here is my Cocker Spaniel Jedi with my grandmother. She loves him to death, always brings treats when she sees him.

And here is my cat Azreal. Funny thing is Grandma was always petrified of cats but came to fall in love with Azreal. Course the car loves everyone who comes over because they are there to see her.