photogal06...Sommer

I didn't know that about not making payments directly to the travel agency.  Good info.  When we had DD's dance trip last year, all payments were made to the travel agency and had to be by check (no credit cards accepted), and the final payment was due 5 months in advance of the trip.

I was very uncomfortable writing those checks, knowing that we had no recourse if they turned out to be scammers, and hoping beyond hope that the dance studio had done their research before signing on with them! Luckily it all turned out fine for us.  I was nervous right up until check-in though, wondering if everything would go as promised.

Can't wait to hear about your time there.  We waved as we drove by, headed to Maine and PEI this summer.  We wore sweatshirts on that trip, too...toward the end of July!

Granted, I skimmed through in a hurry, but I didn't see the American Dream on that list.  How can that be?!  That baby is heaven in a cup!  I do love LeFou's Brew, too.

Aw, fun!  We haven't been back to the nature center in ages, but it looks just the same.  They do good work.  We took two super tiny baby bunnies there once when our dogs "borrowed" them from their nest.  We searched but couldn't find the nest anywhere, and the dogs had never left our fenced yard, so the nest had to have been somewhere in on our property.  I also call them whenever I see an animal doing something odd...we had a very young raccoon wandering around our front yard (we're in the city) in the middle of the day in early spring, and they were great with info.

We liked the sandwiches and cupcakes at Starring Rolls and didn't mind the pizza and salad at Pizza Planet. I haven't had a pretzel dog at DHS, but we had them at one of the waterparks (no mustard for DD or me), and they were good.

FYI...the author of that book, Julee Meltzer, runs a great facebook group called Camping & RVing with Pets.  I've been a member for awhile now, and it's a nice group of people who share some good info :)

Totally worth it IMO!  DD was older when she went (10) so we just did the hair/nails/makeup.  She loved all of the attention.  She ended up with two fairy godmothers in training, because her hair is super long and it took the first one a long time to get it done, so another stepped in to do the nails and makeup.  I won't tell you how long I let her leave her hair up...an embarrassingly long time, LOL!  There seemed to be a dedicated photopass photographer for every 2 kids, so if you do photopass, you'll get tons of photos; or you can take a bajillion yourself, like I did.  The BBB is one of our favorite memories from those years :)

We ended up having to reschedule our Out East trip to accommodate horse camp and dance intensive, so we're gone at the end of July now.  Since we don't have a vehicle to get around with once we park the moho, we're out for the casino trip anyway.  Casinos aren't our thing, and we need to be able to walk or bike to activities or do some hiking at the campground or something....otherwise we get bored and start snarling at each other, lol!

So happy for you!  We love mid-November at the Fort!  Our last trip was just last year, but we won't be back again until 2015....it's going to be a long wait!  Hope you have a great time :)

I'm so glad for the allergy info!  I had to go gluten free for medical reasons a couple of months ago (and this bread lover went kicking and screaming, let me tell ya!)  It will be so great to be able to plan out safe meals ahead of time.  I generally don't pay attention to nutrition info as far as fat and calories and such, but I'm kind of gobsmacked at the amount of sodium in some of those meals!

Ah nuts!  I never got to try to steak sandwich!  That was next on my list.

 

But Brandy says the roast beef is good.  So it must be.  I'll give it a try next time I'm there.

 

TCD

The steak sandwich was really......chewy.  And unlike any steak I've ever had, lol!  The roast beef has to be better!

DD did this once.  It was fun and it turned out ok.  When we did it, they only had shirts in kids sizes, and I wanted an adult size so she could make it for me (because I knew she'd never wear it.)  So she ended up making a kids XL, and I think she proved me wrong by wearing it exactly once.  It's not any different from any other tie-dye experience, so if you've done it before, it's no great shakes.  It was the first time we had ever done it though, and we had fun.  If you do it, make sure you wear old clothes, because the people around you might not be so careful when squirting their dyes!  They gave us gloves and a plastic apron, but we had a near miss with the overzealous person across from us, lol!

We might be interested!  That weekend is open for us, and we'll have had time to rest up after our big Out East trip.  I'm not at all familiar with the area---are downtown or Lake MI within walking or biking distance from the campground?

My 12 year old daughter first told me about Miracle Fruit. She found it fascinating and wanted to try it, so we ordered some Miracle Fruit tablets online and had a Miracle Fruit party. We at the tablet and then tried all kinds of foods that are normally sour or bitter...lemons, grapefruit, green apples etc. They tasted sweet like candy. It was a fun little experiment.

That is a fun experiment....we may try that, too!

And there's nothing like "hey, I'm going to go pick some salad for dinner."

Absolutely! We don't have a huge garden, just a couple of beds in the side yard. We love to go pick a salad....we usually grow a few varieties of leaf lettuce, some cucumbers, some tomatoes....yum!

13.1......we didn't make any advance reservations for the tour....just walked up to the reservation desk in the Land when we arrived at Epcot that morning and asked what they had available for tours that day. It turned out they had 3 spots left on the next tour that morning, so we bought our tickets and asked for the Disney Visa discount right then...no problems at all. I bet your DD will absolutely love this tour!

Carol---loved the Legoland photos! It will be many years before we make it back to FL, but that will definitely be on our to-do list when we return. It was nice meeting you, too!

I think the Ariel Ride may be not be a must do for us since my boys are older, unless it is a short stand by.

The under-the-sea scene with all of the creatures playing instruments will more than make up for any not-so-interesting parts...make 'em go on it :)

You should never ask me for pictures---I'll post way too many and take forever to do it, lol! Here are a few from our night at the Hoop-Dee...

Yes, it's the mat outside the door!

And the garland outside

Excuse this guy's head, but this is where we sat...in the center center, with no one to the side of us or behind us.

From the show...

Chorus line kicks!

Not because I want to show off our half-eaten food, but look at the empty space behind us!

Six Bits was hilarious---I liked him so much!

The ladies--all awesome!

The guys---also awesome. Johnny Ringo was an amazing dancer, and the other one (whose name I forgot) an amazing singer.

These two were a riot together!

Loved the banjo player so much

I didn't remember the servers having to go up on stage, but that was fun to see

Our server didn't appear to be having the time of her life, but she was trying :) She was also from very close to our hometown, so it was fun to chat with her.

I pretty much loved everything about this show!

If you have a chance, go see it!

Some photos from our tour....

Our guide, Mary, is an intern there. She's on her 2nd or 3rd career, and she's incredibly excited about what she's doing.

Here, she's showing us how to pollinate flowers. If I'd known that last fall, I could have saved my pumpkins!

Each intern has to do a project before leaving, and a former intern made this mold, which is used to grow Mickey-shaped cucumbers. We got to sample a cucumber grown there, and it was amazing! I don't like cucumbers, but I did like this one...it was very watery, with a light crisp flavor....almost fruity.

Three people were selected to release ladybugs, part of their natural pest control program. The ladybugs are stored in the cold, so they're inactive at first. The instructions were to hold the vial of ladybugs in your hand, and by the time we reached the release point, they'd be anxious to come out. That's a fact! It didn't take long at all for them to warm up and start banging against the sides of the vial.

The release

And, they're off...

A Mickey head pumpkin mold, designed by the same person who did the cucumber one

The red light is kind of annoying here, but we got up close with the gators

Saw a hidden Mickey between the gators and the tilapia

And fed the tilapia

The Miracle Fruit is a berry that makes things taste sweet....it's being used in patients who have that horrible metallic taste that comes with some chemotherapy....very cool!

We were given random vials of herbs and spices to sniff and see if we could identify them. The answers were on the table and in the plants in the area. Most were pretty obvious, but we got allspice, which was somewhat challenging!

Darn...it was the Brew that shows up at the bottom of the photo, not the cinnamon roll. Maybe my memory is faulty, but I'd swear it didn't look like the MSB ones. I was perfectly satisfied with the Gaston's roll, until we went to MSB late that night and were blown away by theirs, fresh from the oven!

We had an entirely different experience with the cinnamon rolls at Gaston's! Ours was hot and huge and the best one I've ever tasted!

See, ours didn't look anything like that...it didn't look like the MSB ones at all. It looked like something you'd buy off the shelf at the grocery store. I think it shows up at the bottom of one of our photos from Gaston's....I'll look for it later and post it.

Just wanted to give a heads-up.....we did this tour on our last trip, and it was fantastic! Also a great value, especially with the Disney Visa discount...I think the 3 of us went for about $45 total.

I'd read mixed reviews of the tour, and the consensus was that it all depends on your guide. Ours was fab-u-lous! She's an intern there and was so excited about what they were doing that she could have kept us there forever, talking about it. We learned a lot and got some great ideas for improving our garden at home this year.

If you're at all interested in gardening or just seeing what they're up to over there in The Land, it's a fun way to spend an hour!

The only one of those I've tried is the one from Captain Cook's, and it is delish!

The pork shank is great! But is is very salty and very greasy. So if you have issues with either of those things, think twice.

The article had a link to another article where they compare Gaston's Cinnamon rolls to Main Street's: Cinnamon Roll Throw Down Gaston's Tavern vs Main Street Bakery Their conclusion is that the rolls are similar, and either place is a good choice. I strongly disagree. The Main St. rolls are baked right there, and are always hot and fresh. The Gaston rolls are baked somewhere else and kept in a warmer. Late in the day, they are dry and lukewarm. While I like the Disney Food Blog, I can't remember them ever not liking something. In this case, they are dead wrong in saying that the Gaston's cinnamon rolls are just as good as the ones you get on Main Street. And, the bad news is, soon they will only be available at Gaston's when they close down the Main Street bakery to make it into a Starbucks.

TCD

No way---I didn't find the Gaston cinnamon rolls to be anything like the Main Street ones. The Gaston ones are ok, but the Main Street ones are awesome---hot and huge and so tasty. The Gaston one we got (around 10:30 or 11am) was definitely dry and only warmish and not nearly as large as the MSB one. Makes me glad we ate 2 MSB ones on our last visit. And our Gaston one looked totally different from the MSB ones...it was much more uniform and generic looking.

One thing I loved at Gaston's was Le Fou's Brew....we got it twice, and it was excellent! (We even got the souvenir stein and the souvenir goblet....I about choked at the price, but we're actually using them here at home!)

Can't wait to read more! I can't believe you have all your photos uploaded already---you're crazy fast!!