Melissa's WDW Trip Report and Gumball Rally Play by Play!

[TDLFAN]

Great trip report! I do not think I got to meet you when we were at the Noodle station... Hmmm..

[Craigroy8287]

Great Report and pics

[DonDuck]

Fun report! Keep it coming.

[SummerInFL]

Summer, next time I am in Orlando I will treat you to your first experience at Beaches 'n' Cream!

You got it!

[nursemelis374]

Day 2 Part Deux
We headed back to the room to rest since we were going to the Halloween Party that evening. We wanted to eat at Kona Café so we headed there before the party. We had no ADR so we had to wait about 45 mintues, no big deal. We walked all around the resort and even bought a shirt and a dress in their store. Kona is so good and did not disappoint this time. We headed to the party around 7:30. I have been twice before and felt it was much more crowded this time. You used to be able to pretty much walk on every ride but we had waits for a quite a few things, even if the waits were only 20 minutes. It made it hard to get in everything we wanted to do and we didn’t even do any of the candy stops. This is also the only parade I will actually sit and wait for so that eats some time too. I do not think I will attend this again. 50 dollars is too much for what you get. We got back to the room around 1 after closing down the park.

This is my I-love-Swiss-Family-Robinson-Treehouse Dance


Christine found a poster with her peeps on it.


Christine sold Ice Cream to pay for her trip.


This is what happens to you if you break the rules on MC!


I Heart the Boo to You Parade!

[nursemelis374]

Day 3
We were pleasantly surprised when we arrived and looked at our tickets to see that we had one plus option included! We decided to hit Typhoon Lagoon since we think the water rollercoaster is mega fun. There will be no pictures from the water park! We had a great time there though and stayed for about 2 hours before heading back to the resort and deciding on some more pool time.

I had been considering buying into DVC so we went to the presentation in the afternoon of that same day. I love how low pressure the presentation is and even though I am 95% sure that I will buy in, I still want to be smart about my finances and wait a bit. We also got 3 free Fastpasses which we were very excited about and then ended up almost not using them! After that we headed for dinner at Wolfgang Puck express in Downtown Disney and some walking around. We ended up seeing Nick and Nora’s Infinite Playlist before returning to our room early. We wanted to get a good nights sleep for the Gumball Rally!

Dreaming of the DVC!


We miss The Adventurer's Club! So unique.

[nursemelis374]

Working on the Gumball Rally update now!

[nursemelis374]

Gumball Rally Day! - Part 1
This will be a looooong update as I try to recap exactly what we (the winning team ) did.

We woke up nice and early on Saturday morning and prepared for the Rally, which would be starting at Epcot. I was kind of nervous to meet some of the Micechatters for the very first time but of course everyone was very nice and welcoming. We kind of shyly sat there at first and everyone came up and was introducing themselves to us. It made us feel so good and excited to be a part of this site. It is ironic that my first meet was all the way in Florida considering that I live 30 minutes from Disneyland! You can bet that I will be at another meet soon! We also felt relieved at how low stress and simple this was going to be. The rules are fuzzy, but I do remember something about being able to taser other teams. Darn! I had left my taser with TSA back in Ontario! We got our instructions and we were off! We received a packet with 4 attractions in each of the 4 parks. We decided to hit Epcot first since we were already there and then we would try to figure out where to go next later. We immediately went to go ride the Nemo ride, actually we went to the bathroom first. This may be TMI but I think we only took 3 bathroom breaks all day! I will make a disclaimer here and say that although we are die-hard Disneyland fans we have only been to WDW 4 times now so names and locations of things may not be 100% accurate but you get the idea!

This is how you look BEFORE you start racing through 4 parks in hot Orlando weather!


Team Dunder Mifflin ready to go!


Badges!


We thought the Nemo ride was adorable but this was probably the hardest question to answer. We had to find numbers on a submarine and the numbers were very faint and it was dark in the room. We put down what we thought we saw and figured the judges would be reasonable (they were). Next we headed to Spaceship Earth. We LOVE the new ending on Spaceship Earth! Seriously, it was cracking us up. This was one of my favorite things about the rally, you were still able to enjoy the rides while you were competing! On that ride we had to list the names of the cities on the wall in the radio scene. We easily found that and moved on to the next thing. We decided to do Maelstrom first and then headed to that Mexican boat ride thing with Donald. At this point we had a big decision to make, go to Animal Kingdom or Hollywood Studios (which I called MGM about a million times). We decided to do the Studios first because we thought it would make more sense from a transportation standpoint. We decided to walk to the Yacht and Beach Club and take the boat to the Studios. This is one thing I would do differently. We underestimated how far of a walk that was and how long it would take us to get to the Studios, we should have just taken a bus. Oh well.

Clams - So cute!


Yeah for Spaceship Earth's new ending!


Still smilin' and looking good!


We had to identify what sign was immediately past the donut on the Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster so we decided to do that first. We were allowed single rider on that so we took advantage of that. We got on very quickly after having a lively debate over Steven Tyler and the other number of odd men that I am attracted to (Jon Malkovich, Gabriel Byrne, etc.). We exited the ride and ran into the Disney Divas, we would continue to see them throughout the day but really didn’t run into any other teams. It made us feel much more competitive when we saw other teams and helped keep us motivated!

It was pretty warm at this point so I was very grateful to do The Great Movie Ride. We waited about 20 minutes for this and enjoyed it for the second time. Here we had to identify the type of whiskey on the left side of the car in the gangster scene. After that we remembered that One Man’s Dream closed at 3 so we thought we better go there first and then do the Backlot Tour. We had to say what Walt was holding at the end of the movie. I was getting hungry at this point so we grabbed 2 pickles and a Diet Coke and got in line for the Backlot Tour. We would normally not even bother with this but went on it anyway for the points! We had to identify the numbers on the plane nearest the costume warehouse which was easy enough. One thing that was cool was that we got to see a ton of action going on in the warehouse, a lot of people working on costumes and they were also working on the new High School Musical 3 float. We finished up here around 3 and headed to Animal Kingdom. We had only seen one team so we were a little worried, wondering if we had made the right decision in going to the Studios first. Oh well! We just kept going and trying our best.

Single rider for RNR Coaster



We used Special K Bars as rations for the day.


Not only am I a Disneyland/Disney World nerd but I also love Star Wars! Deal with it! I think this is the skiff.


At this point I got really tired and stopped taking pictures, so there won't be as many from here on out!

[DonDuck]

Pleeeeeeeze, just a bit more. Great updates.

Star Wars rocks, BTW. Waiting ever so patiently for Star Tours updates.

[WheresMickey]

Nice report, can't wait for more!

[Hakuna Makarla]

very interesting !! looking for more !!

[sealsm]

Nice job! I'm looking forward to part II.

[MAL]

Great job on yuor first trip report. Looks like you had a great time. wonderful pictures.

[nursemelis374]

Sorry it took me so long to update, real life strikes! There are a lot less pictures as I got more tired as the Rally progressed!

Gumball Rally-Part 2

As we headed into AK we noticed how much warmer it was getting. I was starting to get really hot and really hungry! We were going to do single rider for Everest but decided to grab Fastpasses and come back. We rode Dinosaur. Why the heck is that ride so scary? I mean, I am a grown woman and I practically want to close my eyes the whole time! We always enjoy hearing “Not our dino” over and over though and we listened for our answer. Here we had to give the name of the dinosaur eating a crocodile in front of us. This was pretty hard since it is only in the audio but we managed to get it. We finished up there and grabbed a chicken fingers meal to split before doing the jungle trek. We had to answer a question about some bats when we were on that trek and it was a quick find and then we waited a few minutes for our Expedition Everest ride. I like this ride but unfortunately I get really sick on it but I decided to brave it for the quest anyway! We had to identify what was right next to the track on the lift hill. It was some sort of an idol which we quickly identified and then were able to enjoy the ride. After that we quickly headed over to grab the train to Rafiki’s Planet Watch. I was so hot and sweaty at that point! We were looking forward to a bit of sitting down on the train. We arrived just as the train was leaving and were able to quickly hop on. The journey was pretty short and we ran into the Disney Divas while there. We found the item we were looking for in the mural and then headed back. Now all we had left was Magic Kingdom! We really wondered how everyone else was doing because we had only seen one other team at the Animal Kingdom and Hollywood Studios. Was this a good sign or a bad sign? We went to wait for the bus to the TTA which took forever! Seriously, I debated taking a taxi and I think that if we would have we would have finished 30 minutes earlier! Oh well, we enjoyed the nice, air conditioned ride to the TTA and then took the Monorail over to the Magic Kingdom.

Dinosaur

We welcomed the cooler air as we approached the MK and commented that it seemed like it would rain soon. We first decided to complete the task in the Hall of Presidents and went over there. We got there with about 20 minutes to spare until the next show I thought it might be better to go to Mickey’s Philharmagic instead. We were greeted there by an extremely large line. We saw the Disney Divas ahead of us and as we moved and approached the entrance we didn’t make it into the next show. I was so frustrated, which was magnified by the fact that I thought the Divas made it into the show. I later found out that they just left! We counted the number of flowers thrown at Mickey at the end of the show and were on our way. We went back to the Hall of Presidents and then yet AGAIN decided to go to something else. The Hall of Presidents is hard because not only are there only shows on the half hour but the show is pretty long. We decided to leave and pretty much walked right into Stitch. This was hard for us because 1. We know little about Stitch so the clue was a little more work and 2. I hate this ride. We got our clue though and thought we would try to squeeze in Carousel of Progress and then make the 7 pm showing at the Hall. We had to be finished by 8, otherwise we would have to do the 7:30 show. We walked right into Carousel, but were not out until 7:05. I was so sad because I figured that the Divas would beat us. We stopped by the ending location on our way to the Hall and saw quite a few teams there. We were so sad, assuming they had all finished everything before us so we clearly had not won. We wanted to be able to say we had finished though so we went ahead and did the Hall of Presidents, making us finish a little before 8.

One of the best parts was being greeted by everyone with cheers and clapping! It made you feel like such a part of things and so glad that you had done this. I can not say enough how nice everyone was! Someone asked us how we had done and when we told them we had finished everything, they told us we were the first team that had! We were totally shocked! We couldn’t believe other teams hadn’t finished, we had thought we were maybe last place! We at least thought the Disney Divas would beat us. They arrived a few minutes after we did and informed us they had gotten stuck in the Carousel of Progress otherwise they would have been back 20 minutes ago! We couldn’t believe it; they would have won otherwise! The awards ceremony began and we very humbly and happily accepted first place along with 2 fifty dollar gift cards! Sweet! We took a lot of pictures and hung out for a while. We were starving though so we tiredly went back to our room and ordered pizza. It was a great ending to a great day!

Dusty conducted us all in a song before we started the awards.


The Disney Divas!


Very tired but happy at the end!

[JafarFarAway...]

1st place! Cheers 2 you! It's lonely at the top