mouseketab.....Carol

I read somewhere that the permits were done quickly before those workers that actually filled out the permit requests were furloughed. That way the approval process could be underway.

I just booked Site 69 - Friday - Sunday

I just booked Site 69 - Friday - Sunday

Disney XD is having a marathon of the new Mickey Mouse shorts today. Thought I would check them out......
welll, I didn't last 5 minutes....
So bad, so spastic, and I hate the new animation.

Works for me 🙂

Sorry, can't turn down the Grand Marnier Slushie at Epcot

Retired cast are blocked out of HS through April and I won't be surprised if the blocking goes all summer.  I want to give a big THANK YOU to the WWz who got together and bought me a ticket to HS so I could join them last Saturday.  I had a really good time and was thankful for the ones with experience and fast phones so we were able to ride.  I look forward to the days when WDW gets the ride working consistently and has something newer to draw people away from HS.

The Womenz rode Saturday. We were all in the park 30 minutes before opening. We got into the masses and also parked ourselves near one of the Blue umbrellas guest experience staff. We did manage to get 7 of the  8 of us in a backup boarding group. For some reason, person number 8 wasn't on our list. We then turned to the Blue umbrella person and they were able to add our number 8 person. We then proceeded to Smugglers Run and then the rest of our day. Our boarding group was called about 3:30 pm, but we were in Muppets, so when we left Muppets, we headed over, and the ride had shut down. Instead of waiting near the entrance like lemmings, we decided to go to Rontos Roasters for a snack and a seat. Once it started up again, we went back over and had about a 90 minute time in line due to about 8 boarding groups showing up at once. The ride was amazing, but it was stressful. My 2 year old Note 8 never even showed the button to register for a boarding group. In the future, I'm going to park myself near the Blue Umbrella, hand them our Magic Bands, and let them put us in a group. 

One thing though, is if you do online checkin and get your site number sent to you, Camper Rental Adventures will go ahead and set up once you give them the site number. That's what we did last year when the Womenz rented from them. I was at Wal-Mart picking up groceries when I got my text, and I let Camper Rental Adventures know my site number, and they had it set up before I arrived.
 

One thing though, is if you do online checkin and get your site number sent to you, Camper Rental Adventures will go ahead and set up once you give them the site number. That's what we did last year when the Womenz rented from them. I was at Wal-Mart picking up groceries when I got my text, and I let Camper Rental Adventures know my site number, and they had it set up before I arrived.
 

One thing though, is if you do online checkin and get your site number sent to you, Camper Rental Adventures will go ahead and set up once you give them the site number. That's what we did last year when the Womenz rented from them. I was at Wal-Mart picking up groceries when I got my text, and I let Camper Rental Adventures know my site number, and they had it set up before I arrived.
 

Also, while you are in the park waiting for park opening, try and find one of the blue "guest services" umbrellas/tents and park yourself near it. If for some reason the system doesn't see that your entire party is in the park, they will have to add you to the boarding group on their system. Being close to them will speed up that process.
 

When I was work traveling to Orlando extensively, I learned quickly that my work was all the way over by UCF, and any company I would want to work for was over there by UCF. When traveling for work, that was a lot of miles and tolls across 417 to get to Disney.
We seriously considered relocating to the I-4 corridor about 3 years ago. Did some house hunting, and tiny lots (meaning a two story house to get any SF), with high prices, and high HOA fees, high property taxes, (plus too much stucco and no brick), really turned us off. Plus the salary being offered were less than here in N. Alabama with larger lots, lower home prices, low property taxes, etc. Yes, we have a state tax, but everything else offsets that.
We decided to stay put.

I got some of those for Rick when he was at the rehab center cause the beds there were terrible, and he said they helped. Anything's got to be better than the bunk in the camper we had.

Looks pretty cool
https://www.motor1.com/news/385308/rv-toll-pass-nationwide-coverage/?fbclid=IwAR1UNPIlp_13jnFxad2jW5sFJWZmccpQtLJfE3cJN9VK1HPURRjCxcJdCkE

Welcome!!! Transferring reservations is almost impossible. The better solution is to have a travel agent continuously look for you. [email protected] is excellent at dogging the reservation system and finding what you need 🙂

Welcome!!! Transferring reservations is almost impossible. The better solution is to have a travel agent continuously look for you. [email protected] is excellent at dogging the reservation system and finding what you need 🙂

I checked out the pin display at the Meadow and saw some fairly new pins (still no Musket Mickey) and found this one.


Had to have it. 
Found out a couple of days ago that they were supposed to go on sale on 11/11, but I guess the Fort jumped the gun.  They have them for all of the WDW resorts, also California, Hawaii, and Paris.
No Musket Mickey pins, but they still had the 51 cent Musket pressed penny!
We decided to walk down to the Settlement and look around.  It was pretty sad to see all of construction fencing up and the beach blocked off.
Nothing new at the Settlement Store.  We looked around some more then headed to the bus stop.
Some Reflections pictures thru the construction fence at the bus stop.

New Barn?

We got back to the site and had lunch.
Everyone was happier being fed, and also that it warmed up and the sun dried out the tents indoor swimming pool! That's my two oldest girls and youngest granddaughter.

We hung around the site for a while listening to the neighbors blaring music and barking dogs.
I repaired the tetherball 3 times, and that was in addition to maintenance coming out in the morning and replacing the ball because the loop on it was broken.  I wonder if the kids riding on it while their parents looked on (and at their phones) was why it kept breaking?
Got changed and headed to  the MK.
Had a nature show at the 2000 bus stop


Got down to Pioneer Hall and the little store/kiosk across the walkway was open.
Found this

Picture doesn't do it justice.  This was the 8th picture I took, just couldn't get a good shot.
I had on my Country Bear shirt and the CM said she really liked it.  She asked me if I collected pins and I said ones that mean something to me.
She pulled this out of a bag and said they weren't out yet and gave it to me.

I got Pixie Dusted!!
Headed down to the boat and saw these.

Turns out they have been doing the team building contests all week. I read somewhere after we got home that they ran until 11/14?
MK was typical weekend MK. Crowded, but at least the temp and humidity was down and it felt a little more Christmassy then walking around in 90 degrees and 95 % humidity.
They were filming a bunch of different acts all around WDW for multiple specials.
Here are some pictures from the park and the MK filming.





If you've ever been there or anywhere else while a show/movie was getting filmed, you know nothing goes right on the first take or the 15th. We had gotten a note at the campsite alerting us about fireworks going off up until as late as 12:45. Now we knew why.  A lot of the re-takes involved fireworks going off behind the performers, a whole lot of times.
My wife and I decided to head back towards the campground.  We walked to the Contemporary to look at the gingerbread house. Again is was really nice walking around and not dripping sweat all over.
After the gingerbread house we went and caught the boat to the fort then the bus.
Arrived back to the site to blaring music, dogs barking and kids yelling.  But you can't say anything because it would ruin their "magical " time. At least the tetherball was still in one piece!
Sunday, a trip to AK.

Hopefully Imgur is going to co-operate and I'll be able to add some photos to this report.
Some of you may have seen some of my other posts looking to purchase a T@B.  We found one about 6 weeks ago in Atlanta, and this was going to be our maiden voyage in it.  Previously we camped in a tent then moved up to a old 1986 Coleman PUP.  The T@B is in another universe all together.
We went to the Fort over Veteran's Day weekend.  I worked a 1/2 day Friday, so we left Tampa around noon.
I had hitched up the camper Thursday night, and used my wife's car Friday to go to work.  While I was at work, she loaded 3 tubs and the tent in the bed of the truck and the suitcases in the back seat along with our snack bucket.  When I got home, I filled the ice chest and tossed it into the truck and we were off.
It was an uneventful trip, other than trying to avoid the numerous potholes on I-4 and keeping from getting run over by semis and idiot drivers.
We were able to check in as soon as we arrived, but then hit our first snag. 
We were assigned to the 2000 party loop or as some people refer to it Miami North.  We tried to get a site in 1500 but they said it was full. 
They did allow us to pick our site in 2000 and we picked 2030.  We got over to the site which was just about at the upper part of the loop.  It was a nice site and we had the big grassy area behind us which led to the comfort station.
I attempted my second time backing the camper.  It went better than my first time into our driveway, but I ended up unhitching on the road and pushing the T@B back into the site.  We arranged the camper enough to get my truck off the road and then started setting up the tent for my daughters and our screen room.  We worked on those first because the sky was getting darker by the minute.
We were able to get those set up and the camper and it still hadn't rained.

 
My daughters and granddaughter showed up around 5 and we had dinner.  By then it had started to sprinkle.
We decided to catch a bus to Disney Springs and go to the Christmas Tree Trail.  It rained on and off while we were there, sometimes pretty hard and other times just a mist.
We saw some trees



Had a frozen eggnog fortified by Captain Morgan.
We walked around to a few stores but as usual, Disney has done a wonderful job promoting themselves so everything was packed.  The kids decided to stay and my wife and I caught a bus back to the Fort.
 

Jessica's latest painting. She plans to give this to her dad for Father's Day.

As I stated in another topic, this weekend was our swan song for our annual passes. Being a huge Star Wars fan, I had to check out Galaxy’s Edge before our passes expired.  I did not get my hopes to high from what everybody said about the land itself and smugglers run not being the best thing since sliced bread.  I’ll have to say, a lot of time and imagination went into the area, but I did not feel like I was immersed in a Star Wars world. It felt more like walking through a wider animal kingdom then stumbling upon  some Star Wars stuff all shoved together in the back corner.  The shopping area is way to small with a lot of dead space in the land where it all should have been built.   The food choices are horrible and the $8.00 for a tiny glass of frozen blue (or green) milk is a great way to throw your money away. The “to scale” ships and speeders are awesome, especially to a person like myself that waited my whole life to see the falcon in person, but you can’t touch them. It was also said there would be a ton of characters walking around to bring you into the Star Wars world and interact with you   Wrong.. only saw 2 storm troopers  who were talking to each other.  Must be a union thing.
Smugglers run is cool, except the story for me.  Unless you watched Rebels, you would have no clue who Hondo is and there is so much going on in the movie on the cockpit screen, you end up just pushing buttons with no clue on what your doing or what the heck is going on. Forget about taking in the sights of the cockpit because the Next thing you know, the cast member is yelling to move and get out in some kind of friendly way. 
I guess I’ll say, I was not disappointed, but I can say you can tell Disney built it and not George Lucas.  It could have been so much more.  I would have at least expected more to the entrance to the land at both entrances. Again it feels like 50% Animal Kingdom and 50% Something kind of out of Star Wars. Rise of the resistance is supposed to be ground breaking, but I’m not disappointed we won’t be going.  I do have to say, we rode slinky dog for the first time, and that was the highlight of the day. Never thought I’d say that. 

Monday from All Star Music we bussed to Disney HW studios, Skylined to Epcot, had lunch in France and boated back to Disney HW studios bussed back to All Star Music.  

Its so much fun.

I have a couple of spares in the truck already.

I will be there!! Most likely it will be just me.