BEL13VE in Magic: The TCD Gang Rings in 2013 at The Fort

[Nicki aka Rebelstand 272]

All I'm going to say is my mother's maiden name was Arcenaeux.

That maiden name doesn't spell very redneckish... that name looks strangely Cajunish.. (prounciation Arsono?)

My mother's people changed the original spelling from DeMouche.... so they could fit in better with the rednecks (my theory)

[magnoliafig 51]

That maiden name doesn't spell very redneckish... that name looks strangely Cajunish.. (prounciation Arsono?)

My mother's people changed the original spelling from DeMouche.... so they could fit in better with the rednecks (my theory)

That name is a misnomer. I declare shenanigans somewhere. Pronounced Arseno. But they live in the far North East corner of Louisiana. That is all very rural, somewhat poor farming community. His grandfather was a farmer. How on earth a Cajun name landed there, I haven't a clue.

[Nicki aka Rebelstand 272]

That name is a misnomer. I declare shenanigans somewhere. Pronounced Arseno. But they live in the far North East corner of Louisiana. That is all very rural, somewhat poor farming community. His grandfather was a farmer. How on earth a Cajun name landed there, I haven't a clue.

Perhaps like my French (non cajun) ancestors in the north west corner....

I always wondered if the Cajun population had more fun than the rest of us

[YENSIDCAMPER 66]

You can also see them dancing in the video.

I guess I am due for some payback.

TCD

It also looked to me at the very end of the video there was a creepy guy, bald maybe, with a 35mm camera taking pictures of your daughters dancing.

Stranger Danger!!

[Lou... 3,118]

Notice how it says the Main Street Bakery will "continue to serve Disney favorites like cookies, brownies and seasonal cupcakes." They could have said cinnamon rolls there too, as in the comments many guests ask about these specifically. But, they point out that they're available at Gaston's Tavern. I think they are avoiding the issue, and that the cinnamon rolls are not coming back.

They could have said it but they didn't. So even if you can't get the stupid cinnamon rolls at the bakery, sooooo what? Walk your butt over to Gaston's Tavern and pick up a damn roll. Does it matter where you get them?

The bottom line, less the roll controversy, is that the bakery will reopen as the Main Street Bakery and not Starbucks, according to that statement.,

[DaveInTN 3,247]

They could have said it but they didn't. So even if you can't get the stupid cinnamon rolls at the bakery, sooooo what? Walk your butt over to Gaston's Tavern and pick up a damn roll. Does it matter where you get them?

The bottom line, less the roll controversy, is that the bakery will reopen as the Main Street Bakery and not Starbucks, according to that statement.,

You're just an apologist for the cartel. Are they paying you in Caramel Macchiatos?

[Lou... 3,118]

You're just an apologist for the cartel. Are they paying you in Caramel Macchiatos?

I wish.

[BradyBzLyn...Mo 2,023]

All I'll say on the bakery/Starbuck's topic is that any deal involving the replacement of NesCrapé with real coffee can't be all bad.

Awesome shot.

[thegooftroopfla 18]

Maybe it's to kill the yellow flies or it could be a spaceshi

[Momof6....aka Marty 769]

Maybe it's to kill the yellow flies or it could be a spaceshi

I wonder if this post is missing its last letter because the poster got beamed up by the alie

[DaveInTN 3,247]

I wonder if this post is missing its last letter because the poster got beamed up by the alie

:rofl2:

Good one, Mart

[magnoliafig 51]

The truth is out ther...

[momof3kids-Yvonne 594]

Before this I didn't really think much about alien abduction, but now I am not so sur

[Nicki aka Rebelstand 272]

that is Yuri's secret, the aliens send him down to spy on TC.....

[Nicki aka Rebelstand 272]

TCD was kidnapped by aliens marsqaurding as Hippies when he was a chil.......

[momof3kids-Yvonne 594]

Yuri got distracted by MD's cooler full of bee

[nutters4wdw......Amy 5]

I so almost snorted my coffee reading thes

[Nicki aka Rebelstand 272]

TCD will resume this TR when the aliens return hi....

[BuckeyeFortMama 43]

Dude. The BF Family was literaly walking to the barber shop while you were taking your 3:29 pic on Main Street. We watched the 3:30 Christmas parade from there while the boys got their hair cuts.

Mark my words, TCD, mark my words. Someday I will meet you and your girls. I swear to God I will.

Since before THE FLUSH-we have made the 800 mile trip a few times a year and never at the same time each year and for some crazy reason it is always at the same time as TCD trip. We were spiked a number of children ago, but

I am truly convinced that he is a ghost!

Oh, and thanks again for the Spike!! Still think Lou is an imaginary fiend...Keep hearing that he was "just here"....yeah, ok...

He must be completely imaginary and I am quite certain I will walk on Lou's bus before the Buckeye Fort Family meets the TCD crew.

I should mention at this point, we don't ride the bus.

All I'll say on the bakery/Starbuck's topic is that any deal involving the replacement of NesCrapé with real coffee can't be all bad.

Amen! Preach it! Finally real coffee brewed somewhere other than my camper or at the Rose and Crown

[Tri-Circle-D 2,059]

Wow.

I think we have a couple of hijacks going on here at the same time.

Funny stuff!

Seriously, good job!

But, we need to move on.

And, so we will.

There are a few comments I need to respond to first:

I thought they were put there so the "big wigs" at the Four Season could flip us the bird. :parrot:

LOL!

Good one!

That picture is just too fuzzy to tell for sure. I will be back next month so My mission, and I have chosen to accept it, is to investigate this unknown cylinder and report back exactly what it is.

Thanks.

If I get back there first, I'll help you out. I'll turn on the tank and light a match. At least that will tell us whether or not what's in the tank is flammable.

Holy cow! That looked like a Christmas gift to me, so I looked real close at it. I'm not completely sure, but it looks like there is a tag that says "Merry Christmas America, Love, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad".

Run for the hills everyone!

OMG.

I'm glad I didn't get any closer than I did!

God help us all.

LOL!

I love it when we have a married couple both posting here!

It was wise to hold onto the camera during the entire dance session.

The cylinder is actually the time capsule that explains secrets such as where Walt's frozen melon is being held, why the river country panther has only been seen by human eyes once, and why the calliope music still plays at the TCD barn......amongst other things like who the second gunmen was on the grassy knoll.

Wow, Aaron, do you think so?

Maybe it will also explain the blue tanks at River Country and why they put up that barbed wire fence on the dam?

I'm going to have to go back and get that capsule!

Native Louisiana Redneck…. with a strong professional interest in hazardous materials.

(Family business is a speciality chemicals company.)

Hmmm.

Having had the pleasure of meeting both you and Jody, I am not buying the redneck thing.

It also looked to me at the very end of the video there was a creepy guy, bald maybe, with a 35mm camera taking pictures of your daughters dancing.

Stranger Danger!!

Yikes!

They could have said it but they didn't. So even if you can't get the stupid cinnamon rolls at the bakery, sooooo what? Walk your butt over to Gaston's Tavern and pick up a damn roll. Does it matter where you get them?

The bottom line, less the roll controversy, is that the bakery will reopen as the Main Street Bakery and not Starbucks, according to that statement.,

Great One-

If you read the comments on that blog link, you will see that guests are having conniptions over the fact that cinnamon rolls may no longer be available at the bakery.

Yes, it does make a difference where you get one. At the Main Street Bakery, your cinnamon roll is served from the baking sheet on which it was baked, hot and fresh. At Gaston's, they fish it out of a drawer under the counter where it has been kept luke warm for hours. No comparison at all.

Since before THE FLUSH-we have made the 800 mile trip a few times a year and never at the same time each year and for some crazy reason it is always at the same time as TCD trip. We were spiked a number of children ago, but

I am truly convinced that he is a ghost!

He must be completely imaginary and I am quite certain I will walk on Lou's bus before the Buckeye Fort Family meets the TCD crew.

I should mention at this point, we don't ride the bus.

Amen! Preach it! Finally real coffee brewed somewhere other than my camper or at the Rose and Crown

It's not my fault we haven't met.

I've met your inflatable Brutus a couple of times.

Y'all are never at your site (or cabin). Good job on that, but it makes it hard to meet you.

Your Brutus is a nice fellow for a Buckeye.

And, I agree with you about the coffee. I am sure we will spend plenty of money at the new Starbucks. I just wish they didn't decide to mess with the bakery.

TCD

[Tri-Circle-D 2,059]

Before we move on, I have a correction to make.

I made a mistake in the part of my report discussing the evening of Saturday 12/22.

There was a detail that I got wrong.

It is how we got from the Fort to the MK that evening after our visit.

My photos showed that we were at the Contemporary, and took the monorail to the MK. My mind filled in the blanks, and I said we took the resort boat to the Contemporary. That didn't make sense to me, but it looked like that is what we did.

But, now I remember.

And I wanted to share this because it might be useful information on a cold or rainy night.

When we got back from the 700 loop, we noticed that a bunch of buses were parked at the Settlement Bus Stop. These are the buses they use to take guests back to their resorts after the Hoop Dee Doo. There was bus there showing that it was going to the Contemporary, Polynesian and Grand Floridian. We were cold, and the bus was calling our name. So we hopped on. The original plan was that we would take it to the Grand Floridian, where we could check out their Christmas decorations, and then hop the monorail to the MK. But, after we sat on the bus for a while waiting for it to load, the driver came on to announce that we would be stopping at the Contemporary, TTC, Poly, and then the GF. That would take forever. So, we hopped off at the Contemporary, and caught the monorail from there.

If you ever find yourself at the Settlement after one of the HDDR shows, remember that there are some interesting transportation options open to you.

TCD

[Tri-Circle-D 2,059]

Sorry, but one more back-track before we move on.

I really do want to know what that mystery tank is doing there over by the golf course.

I went back to the TCD archives to find some photos I took of another contraption I found in the woods back in 2010.

This is it:

It was easy to figure out what this was. They were kind enough to include this sign:

The contraption in these photos looks much newer than the one with the rusty tank.

But, I do think the one with the rusty tank is some kind of insect trap.

Aren't mosquitoes attracted by carbon dioxide? Could that be what's in the tank?

This one with the battery seems to use heat to attract the bugs.

I guess we will have to wait for a future trip to solve this mystery.

So, with that, let's move on!

TCD

[Tri-Circle-D 2,059]

Has everybody had enough alien abduction discussion?

Good!

Let's get this thing back on track.

To re-cap, it's the morning of 12/31. We have taken a look at the Four Seasons Resort and had a visit the DaveInTN gang.

Now, it's time for waffles!

Before going to bed the night before, we had agreed that we wouldn't try for a rope drop anywhere this morning. We planned on being up late, and we needed the sleep. For a long time, we have wanted to try the waffles at WL, so the plan was that we would bike over to the Lodge, have breakfast, and then take off for a park from there.

But what park?

By late morning, they would all be packed, and MK would probably already be at some stage of closure.

So, it had to be Animal Kingdom.

Nobody likes Animal Kingdom.

Except for us.

That was a great plan.

So, we headed off on the bikes.

It was actually fun having the bikes instead of a golf cart.

On the way to the Lodge, we passed Mary Ann/Millermouseketeer crossing the road from 400 to the 100 loop CS. I stopped to say hello, but the twins kept going. They wanted their waffles! So I told MaryAnn Hi and Bye, and on I went.

You see those two little spots way ahead in this photo? That's the twins:

Here's the Settlement Bus Stop:

It was 9:57 when I took that photo. Remember that. We'll check the time when we get to the Lodge and see how long it took.

There's the barn:

And here's a purple bus stopping to let the twins by:

I tried to catch the twins on my rusty old bike, but they stayed well ahead of me:

And, just like that, we're here at the Lodge:

I took that photo at 10:02.

That's five minutes.

Not bad.

And, I probably could have gone faster. Heck, I'm old and fat and my bike is rusty. Just think how much faster you could get there.

People always say they wish the Fort had a quick serve restaurant.

I say get a bike.

I would have parked the bikes right by the WL bus stop.

But, the girls rode on up to a covered area where we have seen folks park bikes before, and we parked there:

I brought a bike lock for each of us, but I just used one cable to lock the three bikes. That would be good enough. None of those bikes are expensive.

There were other folks who parked bikes here, and we have seen bikes here before, so I guess it's OK:

As I mentioned earlier, DaveInTn had described in great detail the waffles he liked to get at Roaring Forks. He said they had syrup, nuts and whipped cream. All his slobbering convinced me that this was what I wanted. INC said she liked the Bananas Foster waffles. Those sounded good, but I was going to listen to Dave.

But, when I studied the menu, I didn't see anything that fit the description I had been given by Dave:

So, I went with the Bananas Foster. The twins each got the Stawberries and cream.

I think that is a bowl of nuts there in the bottom right corner of the photo they had on display, but there are no waffles with nuts on the menu:

We got the waffles fast, and they looked great. The only problem was we had to wait in line to pay for longer than it had taken us to bike here and get the waffles on our tray:

But the wait was worth it.

Those Bananas Foster waffles were the bomb dot com.

And the girls loved the Strawberry waffles.

That was a win.

Definitely worth the bike ride over.

After breakfast, we headed out to the bus stop. The plan was to leave the bikes for later- we would ride them back to the Fort when we got back.

The bus stop was kind of busy.

I was surprised by how many people wanted to go to AK.

I thought nobody liked AK.

We got the last spaces on the bus, standing by the driver, and we were about to leave.

Until and obnoxious family came running up and gestured to the driver to open the door.

They asked where the bus was going.

The driver said AK, like the sign says.

The dad told everyone to get on.

We had to smoosh back for them.

They really wanted to go to Epcot.

But the genius dad thought he was doing them all a favor by hopping this bus.

I got to hear him explain the plan to his group.

What a dummy.

So, we headed out.

I couldn't remember if the AK bus is shared with the Fort, but we didn't head there.

We headed straight out, past the TTC and Poly, and took a left.

There was a big commotion near the Hess station, and CM's in orange vests directing traffic.

What was this all about?

The MK parking lot was closed, that's what.

All the guests arriving at the entrance were being directed to pass through and turn around.

You can see in this photo that traffic was backed up at the entrance plaza:

That's nothing. Check out the long line of traffic backed up behind those folks:

That's nothing. As we drove on, we still saw the back-up:

That's still nothing. As we kept on driving, we saw that cars were backed up as far as we could see:

You see that building with the fish on top of it in that last photo?

That's the Dolphin Hotel.

You know, the one by Epcot?

Traffic was backed up all the way back to there!

Oy Vey!

That must have been an hour wait from there to the MK entrance plaza, only to be told to turn around.

And this was at 11 am!

What if you were towing your trailer on your way to the Fort?

And you had to wait in that?

Remember how yesterday we breezed right through there at about the same time?

They aren't kidding when they say NYE is busy at WDW.

I'm glad we weren't heading to the MK.

We were going to AK, where we would have the place to ourselves.

But first we stopped at Blizzard Beach.

It was still pretty cool, and I was surprised to see that the parking lot was almost totally full.

We soon found out why.

There were a bunch of charter buses there, and signs saying that this parking lot was for Hollywood Studios Castmembers.

I've never seen that before.

They were having the Hollywood Studios CM's park here, and were shuttling them over to the park.

Finally, we made it to AK.

This sign told us that MK was full:

I was surprised to find that AK was very busy.

Actually, I wasn't surprised.

But, it wasn't bad.

We checked the tip board.

EE was an hour.

The Safari ride said 20 minutes.

So we headed there.

We had to walk slow behind this gang of slow walking hat wearers:

Sorry, but I have to make a little Troll Rant^tm here. Why do groups of people who walk slow think it's OK to block sidewalks in theme parks like this? How ignorant can you be? If you want to walk slow, fine, it's a free country. But, why don't you have the courtesy to make sure other people who have places to go and things to do can walk by? Thank you. Oh, and your hats look stupid.

There, now I feel better.

We got to the safari and saw that the line was all the way out the entrance. The sign said Stand-by was 20 minutes. I said no way that 's 20 minutes.

The Fastpasses were good for a return time in 45 minutes.

I said let's get Fastpasses and do something else rather than stand in line.

So that's what we did.

We went on the trail there next to the safari. We should do that more often. It's pretty nice.

We got a good look at this Okapi:

There was a CM there spouting Okapi facts. This lady knew her Okapi facts. I think we had heard them all before, but it was interesting listening to them while looking right at this Okapi. The most interesting one to me is that the white man never laid eyes on one of these until some time around 1901. That's an amazing fact. For all those years, these creatures managed to remain hidden. Now, just over a hundred years later, this one is on display in the Happiest Place on Earth^tm . Kind of an amazing story. Eventually, the CM ran out of Okapi facts, and she asked if we had any questions. I asked what they tasted like. She didn't think that was a funny question. What a grump.

Continuing on, we entered the bird area. These bird nests were pretty cool:

Here are some fish:

We stopped a long time to watch the monkey family. I have lots of photos, but one will do. This one shows the momma, baby and daddy:

Oh, word to the wise- don't call them the monkey family. The CM's get all bent out of shape at that kind of talk.

After enjoying the monkeys lowland gorillas we continued on.

We were looking for something.

A few years back, someone gave me a Hidden Mickey book as a gift.

Somewhere in the book, the author said that people always ask him which Hidden Mickey is his favorite.

He said his favorite isn't even a Hidden MIckey.

He likes something he calls Jafar rock.

Which is along this trail somewhere.

The girls said they think this is it- that the rocks up top look like Jafar's hat:

I guess that's it. The Hidden Mickey author said the sight of it would take my breath away. I say that guy must have been drinking some of Dave's magic Russian beer.

That's all I have from the path.

We still had about 20 minutes before our Fastpasses would be good.

We consulted a times guide.

We saw that the Lion King show was going to start in about 20 minutes. We could watch that, and then be back here for the safari before our Fastpasses expired. So that is what we set off to do.

TCD

[DaveInTN 3,247]

One of the greatest disappointments of this trip was the elimination of the Wilderness Waffles from the RF breakfast menu. Idiots.

[BradyBzLyn...Mo 2,023]

Hey, I like Animal Kingdom - a lot actually!

Then again, I can stare at tigers and monkeys gorillas for a really long time and find them fascinating, all while DH gets antsy and starts drifting towards the bar...

That traffic is I-N-S-A-N-E! I was keeping tabs on crowd reports over the Christmas-New Years week, and had read how backed up it was and that they'd moved parking around once MK got full, but seeing it is something else.

NOTE TO SELF: if I ever lose my mind and go to the Fort this week, be sure to get there BEFORE the masses arrive!

Until and obnoxious family came running up and gestured to the driver to open the door...

What did genius dad do when they got to AK?

Oh and I'm pretty sure Okapi tastes like chicken. Doesn't everything?