WDW Tips

Sig Hansen, captain of the F/V Northwestern will be making appearances at the Norway pavilion at EPCOT from July 10-13th. Sig and his brothers will be appearing at the Puffin’s Roost each day to pose for pictures and sign autographs. link

I think this is pretty cool. My husband and I love watching the Deadliest Catch and this would be something we would both love to be at.

Well, what can I say other than “this sucks!” I know that there had been rumors of this happening, but I honestly thought they would leave Adventurer’s Club alone. Unfortunately that is not the case as it was confirmed today that it too would close on September 27th. Distant Creations has some concept art while The Disney Blog has the press release.

I am just sick over this. We loved going to the Adventurer’s Club on each trip. We would spend most of the night there taking in as many shows in the Library, Mask Room, or Trophy room as we could. We loved the personal interaction with the Pamela, Hathaway, and Emil to just name a few. I am so sad that I will not be there before it closes to have one more Kungaloosh. This was truly an unique experience for Disney and one that will be missed by many, many guests.

We’ll we’re 2 months + away from the family vacation.  I have a few observations:

• OKW was not near as enjoyable as I remembered.  The resort is HUGE.  We were in the same building as last time. There was really nothing bad about it but I think that unless we get an amazing rate I don’t know that we will stay there again. I really, really just enjoy the monorail or EPCOT resorts so much better. We had no problems with transportation but relying on Disney buses is just not as enjoyable as the monorail or boats.
• The parks were pretty crowded.  It was clear Disney was not prepared or staffed for the crowds.  We saw very few Photopass Photographers in comparison to what we saw in Jan/Feb.
• The Flower and Garden Festival was pretty neat.  I wish we had been able to spend more time enjoying it.
• The fireworks cruise was amazing.  We were on the Breathless, which beforehand I was upset about but in retrospect it was perfect.  My husband, dad, and brother all fell in love with that boat.
• We also did a photo session at the Grand Floridian. We ended up with about 80 pictures from our 30 minute session.  Our photopass CD finished up with about 600 pictures once all the edits were made.  You can now convert pictures into black and white which is a neat feature.
• Magical Express worked well going back to the airport, however we had to wait almost an hour to leave the airport to get to OKW.  We arrived around midnight and they waited until the bus was about half full before we left.  Luckily we were the first stop.

All in all it was a most incredible trip. The pictures are up on our flickr account. There are many, many more but that gives you a good overview. It was very overwhelming at first to be there with my family who I had not been together with in so long. I hope it is not the last family vacation we take. Disney Cruise anyone?