Pre Trip Excitement and Flashbacks from last time!

[Chrissy&Tayen]

sci fi you need to make ressies.. its super ez.. go to the disney website and you can do it there.. you may call when you get there and be able to sneak in on a cancellation

[Chrissy&Tayen]

oh and i do the pressed pennys too.. and i have a pin lanyard.. but i traded once with a CM and once at the poly on there trading pin board.. so im not very good with pin trading this feb i wanted to do a lil more.. but it was so cold everyone had coats on and your couldnt see their pins

[petals3485]

As I said above Day 4 was Disney...
Our dance teacher had arranged a bus or two for us all to visit the park so we all got the boat over to Magic Kingdom and then split up at the gates lol! I think there was a special Princess and Pirates event on while we were there as well cos there was some nice Princess Minnie and Pirate Mickey Toparies at the transport centre:

BTW I don't know about you but when I see this

I lose a few years from my life and go back into child mode.. Love Disney sooooooo much! I also only noticed tonight on that picture you can see the wire Tinkerbell flies out along.. We missed Tinkerbell the last two years so must watch out for her this year!

Anyways we arrived fairly late to the park as well because the parade was jsut starting when we arrived so we changed first.. it had been a very cloudy morning and cold so we wore longer trousers but by the time we reached the park the sun was out and clouds gone and it was hot hot hot so we had brought shorts in cause and changed before the parade so we didn't melt away Then grabbed a spot for parade and I took video and pics this time




Personally reading all the forums on disney I think my mam and I miss alot of the park in Magic Kingdom we tend to stay around Fantasyland most of the time we walked over there through Discoveryland but didn't try any of the rides there. I think there was a Monsters inc laugh floor and something to do with Stitch as well we weren't sure what they were so we didn't wait but headed for our favourite rides instead...
first Winnie the pooh:

then Snow White's Scary Adventures:


The Mickey's Philharmagic. That was another thing we hadn't done in 2005 because we didn't know what it was so we went to it this time and loved it.

After there was a choice between Small World

and Peter Pan

Peter Pan won over though. The queue was 45 minutes long or something so we said we'd get the long queue out of the way first and then do Small World on our dance day so we waited in the queue for Peter Pan. I've also learned recently that fast passes are free so next time we'll be availing of those. We thought they cost extra last time so we didn't use any but definately going to use them for the longer queues this year.
Anyway after Peter Pan it was getting late so we headed out to Main Street to pick a spot for the parade and fireworks and then we were home after so we went down close to the gate so we wouldn't have to fight our way through the crowds to get out of the park after:




Meant to say as well since Paddy's Day was our first Dance Day on Day 6 we just went to one of the outlets for some Shopping

[petals3485]

sci fi you need to make ressies.. its super ez.. go to the disney website and you can do it there.. you may call when you get there and be able to sneak in on a cancellation

Think I'll do it before we go over to make sure cos it looks cool.

oh and i do the pressed pennys too.. and i have a pin lanyard.. but i traded once with a CM and once at the poly on there trading pin board.. so im not very good with pin trading this feb i wanted to do a lil more.. but it was so cold everyone had coats on and your couldnt see their pins

I have tonnes of pins. Got loads in the parks and then more off ebay.. Going to get some off ebay this time to bring with and trade but may get some I already have or else I'll want to keep them lol!
We learnt something about pin trading last time as well cos some CM'S have lanyards and I think they can trade with everyone but then others only have a blue or green rectangle and I think one of those is for under 11's and other is for resort guests only or something like that I know people with rectangles can't trade with everyone. But we did get lucky with some of the cm's and got nice pins. I think the best time to trade with CM'S is early in the morning though.

[Chrissy&Tayen]

i would ask the experts about the rectangles??? cause i wanna know the rules before i get there..

[petals3485]

good idea.. Nearly sure it was something like that though.. I know one of them was for under 11's anyway cos it had a pin I wanted

[Chrissy&Tayen]

aw.. the thing with me is.. most of my pins i like and wanna keep..lol

[petals3485]

aw.. the thing with me is.. most of my pins i like and wanna keep..lol

Same here that's why I'm getting doubles of what I already have off ebay to trade the doubles otherwise I'd keep what I get lol

[Chrissy&Tayen]

i have a thing for the lil cutie looking mickey and minnies.. and then i have a couple pins i won during the year of dreams

[petals3485]

i have a thing for the lil cutie looking mickey and minnies.. and then i have a couple pins i won during the year of dreams

How did you win them?
I have to many going to put pics of them on flickr and will link it when I do! I love them all.. have one though from the first year we danced in Magic Kingdom they gave us and exclusive Magic Music days pin and t-shirt that you couldn't buy in shops.

[Chrissy&Tayen]

i mailed in post cards everyday for a year...lol

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/...500_AA300_.jpg

this one and another that has goofy and donald just like it

and this one

http://allears.net/tp/yomdtinkpin.jpg

i gave one to a lil girl i knew who was going to disney for the first time

[Chrissy&Tayen]

oh that top one came with the lanyard too

http://eventservices.disney.go.com/files/190831402.jpg

[petals3485]

i mailed in post cards everyday for a year...lol

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/...500_AA300_.jpg

this one and another that has goofy and donald just like it

and this one

http://allears.net/tp/yomdtinkpin.jpg

i gave one to a lil girl i knew who was going to disney for the first time

Aw cool!
I think Disney is brill the way they do little things like that with the take and give tinkerbell badges... Although I never got one of those But it still makes it that extra bit more magical when they do things like that. Like my mam and dad brought me in 1995 for the first time when I was ten and aside from sleeping on the scary rides the thing I remember most was getting an invisible dog lead and a CM coming over to me telling me dogs weren't allowed in the park and I would have to leave.. I was kind of scared because I thought he was serious but then he took the dog lead and held it up and said if you hold it like this you'll be fine because we allow Giraffes so it was funny after!

[Chrissy&Tayen]

AWWWWW.. thats too sweet

[petals3485]

Lol I still remember that. I think yer man scared me at the time cos I thought he was giving out and then said about the giraffe I don't know but it was funny looking back.. lol

Anyway continuing with the flashback.
As I said Day 5 we went shopping we couldn't really go fair as we had a dance rehearsal that night for our St. Patrick's day show so we just went to one of the outlets and back ontime for our semi dress rehearsal!

Day 6 then was the first of our dance days. It was St. Patricks Day and we were performing in Citywalk Universal. I think the show was about 10am or something we went over fully dressed and for some of us that was as banshees, leprechauns or fairys while others were in Irish dance costumes. Our show was 25-30 minutes long and afterwards we got some group pictures with Universal Ball and Hard Rock cafe in the background. They also gave our dance teacher a little award type thing for us performing. (If ya want to see pics of this I can add you to my facebook)
After the show we went back to the hotel to get changed out of the costumes and make-up and put on our Irish gear then we headed back to the Universal Parks. Mam and I took a walk around Islands of Adventure as we hadn't seen it before. We didn't have a lot of time so we didn't do any rides just literally walk about to see the different areas and I took a few pics as I went along:






That night the whole group had dinner together for St. Patricks Day in the Hard Rock Cafe in Citywalk Universal and made a bit of a presentation to our dance teacher for arranging the whole trip. It was also one of the dancing daddy's birthday so Hard Rock made a bit of a fuss over him made him stand on a platform gave him a free ice cream sunady and got the whole place to sing Happy Birthday to him After that we did a mini Irish dancing performance around the cafe twice once downstairs and once upstairs. We had done this in 2005 and they went mental for us and same again in 2008 was brill!
This pic is of the downstairs bar in the cafe I think..

When we went back to the hotel we met a group of Salsa dancers so it ended up being a bit of a dance off in the Lobby they showed us some Salsa dancing and we showed them how to dance Irish style! Was definately the best St. Patricks day ever!!