Live report, Dec 28th - Jan 4th, omgwheeeeee!

[Shir Kahn]

Hi all! I'm starting this a bit late, so I might not remember everything from the first few days, but I'll try. I'm going to be typing this entirely on an iPad, so I'm sure auto-correct will be adding a wonderful spin on some otherwise, completely normal sentences.

The cast of this trip is my DW Tammy and myself, Jason. We've been Disney fanatics for about 11 years now, since we got married, and we've been coming down to both WDW and DL pretty much once or twice a year. We were last down for Star Wars Weekend in May, which was fantastic! If you haven't been to SWW, definitely give it a try! Unless of course you don't like Star Wars, and if that's the case, bleh to you!

About a month ago, I got an unexpected bonus from work and decided to surprise Tammy with a Christmas trip to WDW. I managed to get us into our favorite hotel, Pop Century! We both love this place and almost always stay here, although I must admit I did try and sneak us into Art of Animation this time. Apparently 3 weeks before the trip is a bit of a short notice to book an entirely new and desirable hotel! Whodathunkit? I was able to get reservations at some of our favorite restaurants though! We've got the Rose and Crown, Tusker House, Sci Fi, Akershus (this one is a new one for us and we want to try them all eventually), Garden Grill and LTT. I actually did find one opening for Le Cellier......a day before we would be in the parks at the very earliest. Oh well, maybe next trip!

So Christmas morning, Tammy unwrapped one of her presents, which turned out to be our old Pal Mickey with a note saying that he had to go home urgently and that she had one day to pack! She works for one of the school divisions and had the next two weeks off anyway, but she thought she'd be spending them relaxing at home! Turns out she was pretty ok with giving up her relaxation time and at 6am the next morning, we were off!

 

[Shir Kahn]

Just a side note here, when we get home I'll be adding in a lot of pictures. We're only on day 4 of our trip and I've got over 700 pictures on my camera and Tammy has quite a few more on hers as well. .

So Tammy and I live in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, which is just about 2100 miles from WDW, so naturally we drove down, seeing as we're so close and all! The plan always starts out with me saying that I'd drive as far as I could and then she would take over. What always really happens is that I drive until I get tired and then we stop, sleep and then I continue driving! I seem to have a wee bit of a problem giving up the steering wheel to anyone! I ended up driving 19 hours the first day before we stopped at 1am in Marion, Illinois. The gas prices are amazingly good compared to what we're paying back home. We currently pay 105.9 a litre, which equals about $4.26 a gallon. The total cost of gas on the way down ended up being $240.00. We also stayed in a hotel one night for about $50. Flying down was going to be about $800 a person, so even with wear and tear and food, we saved a bundle there. We both love the road trip too, especially in the winter when we can watch the snow recede! However, we were in for a bit of a shock once we made it to Marion! They had more snow than we did back home! Apparently we just missed a huge snow storm that hit the day before we arrived.

We ate at Culvers on the way down, I had the Prime Rib Mushroom Melt, OMG was this good! I think we'll definitely be stopping at Culvers on the way back! We also stopped at Hardees, which was pretty decent, and we tried Chik Filet. I know they spell the name differently but I can't remember how exactly right now. The spicy chicken burger I got there had nothing but pickles on it and I can't even remember what the side was. Very unmemorable. I am taking pictures of the food, but I think I missed the road food we had.

The wifi connection here isn't working too well, going to try submitting this post again for the tenth time, hope I don't end up having to type this all out again!

 

[Shir Kahn]

It's 1am now and we're getting up at 7am to head to MK, so that's enough of the catch-up posts for tonight. I'll probably do a few catch-up posts tomorrow while we're in line for various things, as well as the actual live updates. Goodnight all!