2 Disneymoons (Oct. and Dec. 2007) and 1 Anniversary Trip (Sept. 2008)--Updated 2/20

[TLC371]

This is my second attempt at a trip report, hopefully this one will work out a bit better for me!

My DH and I just got married on October 6, 2007. We got engaged on September 21, 2006 at Epcot, with Belle, The Beast and Princess Aurora watching:

We wish we could have had a Disney wedding, but between the cost and the fact that we knew it would be hard for us to get a lot of our family to come down to FL for our wedding, we opted for a wedding at home.

The day we got engaged, my now MIL told me that she was going to give us one of her timeshare weeks to move to whenever we want for our honeymoon, and my DH said he wanted to bring me back to Disney at Christmas time since I wanted to see it done up at Christmas. So before we even had a wedding date, we had our honeymoon at Disney in the planning stages. Added to that, my MIL has her timeshare in October 2007 as well, so that meant 2 trips for us. I like to call them my pre-Disneymoon and my Disneymoon.

Our October trip was from October 27 to November 3, 2007

Our December trip was from December 8th to the 15th, 2007

Editing to add in that our September trip was September 20th to the 27th, 2008. We decided to make this trip our first anniversary trip, and we were there for the second anniversary of us getting engaged.

A little about us:

I'm Trish, I'm 36, the vacation planner, fan of all things Disney, loves phototgraphy, loves scrapbooking.

DH is Roy, he's 32 and supports my obsession with Disney.

For our October trip, we are also joined by Roy's 10 year old son Riley, MIL (Jenny), FIL (Bob), Roy's aunt, uncle and cousin (Candy, Felipe, and Anthony), and Roy's brother, his brother's girlfriend and their daughter (Donnie, Mikki, and Savannah)

For the December trip, obviously it was just me and Roy.

For the September trip, it was me, DH, my 16 year old stepdaughter Brittany, and my MIL and FIL.

We stay off Disney property, at MIL's timeshare. It's Star Island, it's on 192 near 535. We don't spend all our time on Disney property, we like to venture out and see other stuff in the area. Although one day I would love to stay on Disney property and just spend the whole time there. I'm working on DH with that. Maybe I can talk him into it with one of our big anniversaries.

Anyway, that is about it with the jist of us. I'm going to share some wedding pictures in the next post, but I don't know when I'll start on the actual trip report until maybe tomorrow.

 

[TLC371]

My favorite candid shot from my friend's camera:

And some of our professional pictures:

 

[Richard Bruvofetc]

Some wonderful photos.

 

[TLC371]

Some wonderful photos.

Thank you so much!

 

[TLC371]

So, when I started my trip report the other day, I had completely forgotten that I hadn't resized any of my pictures yet. I had uploaded them to Photobucket but didn't resize, so they were huge! So I finally got a chance to resize some of them, I started with the October trip, so I could start my trip report!

So here goes!

Saturday, October 27, 2007

We got up at 5 am and got ourselves ready to go. We did most of our packing the night before, but there's always that last minute stuff, so we finished packing, made sure everything was good with the house, things turned off and all that jazz, as well as made sure that everything was there for my best friend, who was watching the house for us while we were gone. We pulled out of our driveway at 6:15 am for the long drive to Florida. Sometimes we do the drive in one day, sometimes we do it in 2 days, depending on if we've got some place to stay when we get down there. This year, Roy's aunt and uncle had their timeshare (Friday to Friday timeshare), and they had room for us, so we drove down in one day and stayed with them for the night.

Oh my gosh, the start of the drive was horrible! It was raining so hard! If it had been light enough, I would have taken pictures, it was nasty! DH had a hard time seeing when he was driving between it still being dark out and how hard it was raining, but he managed to get us through it safely! We stopped in Emporia, VA for breakfast at Hardees before getting on I-95 for the drive south. We didn't stop again until we got to the cheesy tourist trap they call South of the Boarder. It's so cheesy, but we always stop there when we are driving down, so this time was no different. We walked around for a little bit, stretching our legs and goofing around before hitting the road again. Our next stop was in Savannah, GA for lunch at a Cracker Barrel and more time taking a break from the car.

It was then that we realized we had to push it to make sure we got to the FL line and the welcome center before 5. It's a tradition, I have to go and get my little bitty glass of orange juice. We made it though, but with only a few minutes to spare!

After the orange juice, we had to do our yearly pictures in front of the Welcome To Florida sign:

We had to remind Riley that if you are taking a picture in front of the Welcome To Florida sign that maybe you should actually get the sign in the picture too, so we tried again:

We hit the road again and were on the home stretch! We hit a bit of traffic on I-4 when we got into Orlando, the only traffic we hit on our drive, but we got through it pretty quickly and in no time we were pulling into Star Island, our home for the next week. We got there about 7:30 or so. Not too bad. We've made better time before, but we weren't trying to overdo it and took pretty long breaks when we'd stop.

We got to where we were staying for the night with the aunt and uncle and visited for a little bit before heading out to find something for dinner. I think we all were pretty beat from the long day and pretty soon after dinner, the 3 of us decided to go to sleep.

Up next, Downtown Disney

 

[TLC371]

Sunday, October 28, 2007

We got up that morning and got ourselves ready for the day and had breakfast. We were meeting a friend of mine from another message board at Downtown Disney at 2, but we wanted to get there earlier so we had time to walk around and such.

We started off at the West Side, like always.

We went to the spot where we get our picture taken every year to do pictures:

When we were walking around, I saw the Guest Relations booth and I told DH that we needed to get our Just Married pins to wear. He said it wasn't our actual honeymoon, just our vacation. I told him that we were Just Married like the pins say, and this was our pre-honeymoon, so darn it, we were going to get those pins and wear them! So I walked up and got our pretty Just Married pins and we put them on. I had been waiting so long to finally be able to wear that pin, so I was so excited to really have it on! We walked over to Mickey's Groove to look around right after we got our pins and we got our first "Congratulations" from someone that worked there. I was so excited! After walking around on that side, we went back to the car and drove over to the Marketplace side to walk around for a bit. First thing we did was go to the McDonald's to grab a quick lunch, since we weren't sure what the plans for dinner were for that night, other than we were going to dinner with my friend, her DH and their daughter, but we didn't know what time we were going to do that. After we ate, we went to walk around the World Of Disney store. It was so packed in there, it was hard to really look at much, as well as the lines were long, so we kind of looked at what we could to get an idea of what we wanted to get and decided we would go back later in the week and do some real souvenir shopping.

We left that store and Riley had to get a picture:

It was starting to get closer to the time we were supposed to meet my friend and her family, so we started walking towards Once Upon A Toy, where we had agreed to meet at and sat down to wait for them. I saw them when they came up, so I walked over to them and tapped my friend on the shoulder as she was trying to call my cellphone to see where we were at. It was great to see my friend again, we had spent a day with her and her husband the year before at Sea World and we all got along so wonderfully. And this time I got to meet their baby girl that she was pregnant with the last time I had seen her.

We walked into Once Upon A Toy and looked around for a bit, since Riley had money that was burning a hole in his pocket. I was standing talking to my friend and her DH when Roy came up and said "Look, it's the old ball and chain"

He's so funny!

Finally, Riley made his decision on what he was going to buy--a Jack Sparrow toy figure. I'm thinking now that he was pretty happy that we didn't let him buy that oversized sombrero at South of the Boarder, because if we did, he wouldn't have been able to get his Jack Sparrow toy.

Here he is with his prized possesion of that moment:

When we finally left Once Upon A Toy, we went over to the Days of Christmas store. I wanted to see if I could find a Disney Just Married ornament for our tree. We wandered around the store for a little bit and finally found an ornament we liked, one that we could add the year to. We were going to put the wedding date, but we opted to just do the year. We thought we were going to have to leave it there and come back later in the week for them to do the personalization, but the girl who checked us out said she was going to find someone to put it on for us and to hold on a minute. So we only waited a few minutes for it and then were on our way. We found a spot to sit down for a few minutes to chat and then we headed to the scrapbooking store. I always go in there with high hopes, and then leave disappointed. They could do so much more with their scrapbooking selection of stuff. Oh well....one day maybe they'll shock me when I walk in there and have a bigger and better selection. I did get the pirate punch set and a princess kit, so I didn't walk away totally empty handed.

When we left there, we decided that it might be too crazy trying to get into any of the restaurants there at Downtown Disney, so we thought it would be better to find some place else to eat. They said we should go over to the Crossroads Shopping center and there were quite a few places there to choose from so that's where we went. We were going to go to Jungle Jim's but it was closed down, so we headed to Friday's instead. We parked and waited for our friends. When they pulled up, and got out of the car, my friend had a nice little present for me, she had gotten me a Disney scrapbook with papers and stickers and all of that in it. So cute! I needed a book to do that trip, so I was excited to have something now! We had a nice dinner and visit with our friends, and before long it was time to go. We went out to the parking lot, and we wanted to take some pictures together. We were about halfway through taking pictures when we realized that of all the backgrounds we could have chosen that day to do pictures, all the spots we could have gone to at Downtown Disney, and here we are in a parking lot, with a rusted out, beat up old Ford Bronco behind us! Too funny!

I'd post pictures, but out of respect for my friend's privacy, since she's not on this board, I won't.

Anyway, we left there and headed over to the outlets near where we stay at. I always like to go check out the Old Navy outlet. I was pretty disappointed with their selection. We headed to the Disney outlet there next, and again, disappointed with what we say. Oh well, at least the disappointment was helping my wallet!

By this time we decided to head back to Star Island. My MIL was there by now and had checked in. Since she split her unit for our honeymoon week, she was able to get a second unit for this trip and she gave that to me and DH for the week so we wouldn't have to stay with the rest of the famil, so we had to get our room key from her. Luckily we were in the same building as Roy's aunt and uncle so getting our stuff from their villa to ours was no problem at all!

Anyway, when we got back to Star Island, the welcome party was going on. This is the one thing that drives me crazy about staying there, the welcome party is so boring and I'd just rather skip it, which I thought we had managed to do, but no such luck. We got there and the rest of the family was up there already. Roy decided we both needed a frosty beverage, and who was I to argue!

We stayed to drink our drink, got the key from MIL, then headed over to Target to get groceries for the week before finally going to the place we'd be spending the rest of our week at. Since we only had half of a villa, I was happy to see that it was the big half. We had a full size kitchen, living room that had a sofa with a pull out bed for Riley, two bathrooms, and our bedroom had a king size bed and a jacuzzi tub. Riley was a bit annoyed because he didn't know we didn't have the whole unit and he tried to go into the other side and couldn't get in. Oh well! Anyway, after we got our groceries put away, we went to get our luggage from upstairs at aunt and uncle's place and settled in for the night. We were hoping to go to Sea World the next day, but we weren't sure if it would happen since the forecast looked pretty nasty for the next day.

 

[Hillary12.8.07]

Subscribing!!

Funny, I remember reading your TR from your engagement months ago, but somehow I don't think I ever finished. CONGRATULATIONS though, a little late on getting married!

I love your pictures on the beach, SO pretty. You both look so happy!

And how cool, we were there during the same time for our honeymoons in December, we were there from the 10to 17th. And I miss it already!!

Can't wait to read more!

 

[TLC371]

Subscribing!!

Funny, I remember reading your TR from your engagement months ago, but somehow I don't think I ever finished. CONGRATULATIONS though, a little late on getting married!

I love your pictures on the beach, SO pretty. You both look so happy!

And how cool, we were there during the same time for our honeymoons in December, we were there from the 10to 17th. And I miss it already!!

Can't wait to read more!

Hi Hillary! So glad to see you here!

That's ok that you didn't finish the last TR, I didn't finish writing it! Not that I had much left on it anyway! Thank you for the congratulations!

The beach pictures are my favorites!

That is so cool that we were there the same time on our honeymoons! I bet we passed each other at some point or another!


***********************************

I majorly slacked off on my TR...but I guess that's ok...all those views and no posts

My mom's been in and out of the hospital, so I've been busy with all of that. I think she's finally on the road to being healthy again!

I'm going to try to work on my TR this afternoon, looks to be a slow day at work. I'm getting ready to head off to have lunch with my DH in a few or else I would start now.

 

[TLC371]

Still no visitors?

Oh well...I'm sure there are some people reading that just haven't commented, so I'll continue on...

Monday, October 29,2007

Sea World!

We woke up that morning to rain! Yuck! And the forecast for that didn't look all that promising either! Just wonderful! We sat there, trying to decide what we were going to do, and we ended up deciding that if we were going to sit around all week and wait for the weather to clear up, then we'd be spending our whole vacation sitting in our villa. No fun! We had some nice, cheapo rain ponchos that Roy's aunt picked up and gave to us, so we decided, what the heck, let's go. We went to wake Riley up and he was annoyed that we were going to the park anyway in the rain and couldn't we just wait until a day that it wasn't raining. Um, this is Florida, not going to happen! And really, it's Sea World, there's water all over the place anyway!

So, we got ourselves ready and headed over to Sea World:

We pulled into the parking lot and found a place to park, oh my goodness, did it start to POUR! To the point where I wondered if we had made a mistake in deciding to go. I mean, after all, we did have season passes, we could go back anytime during the week if we wanted to, right? But we sucked it up, put on our trash bags, um, I mean rain ponchos, and headed in! Once we got through the gates, it seemed like it was hardly raining anymore, thank goodness. We decided to look at the show schedule and see what was showing first to go to. We saw they were doing a Clyde and Seamore show soon and since that's our favorite, that's where we headed. We went in and found seats, we sat all the way up at the top, in the back row. While we were waiting for the show to start, we had lots of fun watching the mime, he's always so entertaining! Roy's phone rang while we were waiting for the show to start, it was his mom. Apparently the family was all going to go to the Capone's Dinner theater show that night and did we want to go too? We go every year, not the greatest show, but it's affordable and we like going, so we said that we could go.

Anyway, the show started, and it was fun as always:

 

[TLC371]

After we left the show, we headed right over to where you can feed the sea lions/seals. That is our favorite activity when we are at Sea World, so much more fun than feeding the dolphins! They have such fun personalities. We love when they are sitting there all calm and quiet, and then when they spot someone with a tray of fish, to see them start "talking". I went and found a spot, one under an umbrella, and Roy and Riley went to get some fish. I'm glad I found that spot when we did, because when they came back and we started feeding the sea lions in front of us, boy did it seem like the bottom fell out of the sky and it started raining again! It wasn't long before we had a bunch of other people standing under that umbrella with us! The rain finally slowed down, then stopped, and so many of the people around there started to leave, we hung out some more, just because we love that part of the park.

Here we are, modeling the finest in cheap rain poncho wear:

We finally decided to leave the area and head towards the Penguin Encounter, another one of my favorite areas, and of course it started raining on us again. Just wonderful! All I could do really is laugh, and make sure my lovely poncho didn't fly up or anything. And of course Riley decided that he needed to go to the bathroom, and there was no bathroom right there. So I went and stood under the cover outside the Penguin Encounter while Roy ran off with Riley to find a bathroom. Thank goodness it wasn't raining as bad when they came back! They got back to me and off we went in to see my favorite little animal, the penguins! I swear, I could spend hours in there, watching them!

Here I am by the penguin mural

 

[TLC371]

Once we left there, we decided to head over to the manatee area, we always love watching them. They are so gentle and so sweet looking.

When we left there, we headed over to where the dolphins were at. It was feeding time, so it was a cluster of people over there trying to buy food to feed them as well as bunching around to actually feed the dolphins. Too crazy for me! We stopped for a half a second to look and then kept on going, heading over to the sting ray area.

Riley really wanted to feed the sting rays, but we told him that he didn't really need to feed them, but he could try to pet them if he wanted. So while we were standing there, this nice couple from the UK came up to us and asked if Riley wanted to feed the stingrays. They had bought food to feed them and the girl couldn't touch the food as she was allergic to fish and couldn't touch the fish to feed them, but could Riley feed the sting rays and they would watch. I thought it was so nice of them to give us the fish for him to feed them. We weren't sure how to feed them, and of course we didn't see the sigh for the correct way to feed them until after all the fish were gone, so he did the best he could and the couple enjoyed watching him, so that was good. I made sure to thank them, and made Riley thank them when he was done.

 

[heaven2dc]

Wonderful pics! Your fiance did a great job of picking the perfect spot for your engagement - how romantic! Am so happy for you and also am enjoying your report (an avid fan now!)

 

[TLC371]

Wonderful pics! Your fiance did a great job of picking the perfect spot for your engagement - how romantic! Am so happy for you and also am enjoying your report (an avid fan now!)

Thank you so much...I'm glad you here...and looking at your ticker, so jealous you'll be heading down to WDW soon!!!

I see you are in Virginia...what part?


**************************************


I got pulled away at work yesterday afternoon so I didn't finish our day at Sea World, I'll probably work on that some more tomorrow!

 

[sunlver]

Hi there fellow Va Beach Neighbor.. I remember reading your TR last year.
Congrats on the marriage. I am enjoying your TR and the great pics.

 

[MousekaMaddi]

fun report, nice wedding pix,congrats !!

 

[KimAshton]

Beautiful wedding pics. cannot wait to read more.

 

[TLC371]

Hi there fellow Va Beach Neighbor.. I remember reading your TR last year.
Congrats on the marriage. I am enjoying your TR and the great pics.

Well hey there neighbor! Good to see ya again!!

fun report, nice wedding pix,congrats !!

Thanks so much! I'm so glad you are here!

Beautiful wedding pics. cannot wait to read more.

Thank you so much! I'm so glad you are here! Hopefully I'll be better at adding more to this one!!

 

[TLC371]

I have a free bit of time and thought what better to do than add to my TR!

Let's see....I left off with feeding the sting rays...

When we were done there, we decided it was time to find something for lunch. We looked at the map and found a place we thought we'd try over by the waterfront area. Couldn't tell ya the name of the place we went to eat off the top of my head and I don't have a map in front of me. But it was standard theme park fare, we had burgers and fries. It was pretty good though.

Actually, I have to go back, because on our way over to where we decided to eat, we made a pit stop at the dolphin nursery. I think this is one of those secret little places that no one realizes it is there because it is never crowded. We love going there and watching the babies and their mommas!

Ok...after that, then we went and had lunch!

After we finished eating, we decided to head over towards Shamu stadium. Here I am on the bridge on the way over:

Since we still had a bit of time before the Shamu show started, we went to go look at the underwater viewing area. There was one whale there that provided us with a lot of entertainment as we were taking pictures!

Me and my stepson:

DH:

This is either a Ta-Da picture or one that says "I caught a fish this big!"

After a while, we decided to go find seats for the show before it got too crowded. We went in and found a good spot in the upper area--definitely no splash zone for us!

We thought the show was just ok, wasn't that great, wasn't that bad either. I think it focused more on the trainers than on the animals, but that's just my opinion. I don't know if it was because we didn't see the show the year before when we went because they had a baby killer whale born and weren't doing the show, added to that the hype of the show and us having to wait so long to actually see it, I guess we were just expecting more. But that's just us!

 

[TLC371]

When the Shamu show was over, we hightailed it over to the Wild Artic area. We wanted to beat the rest of the crowd over there that were leaving the Shamu show also. Since I'm a ride chicken, I went in and did the By Land transportation, while DH and SS went and did the By Air part and we met up after we were both done. I got through my side quicker, so I stood and watched the Beluga whales while I was waiting for them. They had 3 of them and they were being so playful! We walked through the rest of the area, looking at the animals, but my pictures never turn out that well when I am in there, plus this time it was so crowded, we didn't really get a good look at anything. Oh well!

I think at this point we had decided that we were almost done with Sea World, but we still wanted to see the dolphin show, which would be starting soon. So we decided to head over in that direction.

We found this really pretty picture spot on our way over there. It's funny how some people would walk right by it and not notice it but as soon as we started taking pictures there, other people were lining up because they wanted to do the same thing!

Not the best picture of me but isn't the background beautiful?!

We made our way over to where the dolphin show was at and found a place to sit for it, again, we went up higher so we didn't have to worry about being splashed!

We love the dolphin show, it's such a good balance of showcasing the animals and the trainers/divers and all that goes on. It's just such a beautiful show!

After that show, we called it a day at Sea World and made our way to the exit. We did stop to trade in Riley's ticket for the free second day return ticket, in case we decided to go back later in the week if we had nothing to do and the weather got better. We ended up not going back, but it was nice to have that option anyway.

 

[TLC371]

As I mentioned before, my MIL had called about us going to the Capone's dinner show that night. So we headed back so we could rest a bit as well as get cleaned up and get dry clothes on before we went out that evening.

We hung around for a little bit, just relaxing and got ourselves ready and met up with the rest of the family to head over to Capones for the show.

Thank goodness it had stopped raining, because we got there and had to wait outside for a bit before we could go in.

When we went in, they did our family group mug shot:

Then we were taken to our table. After our waiter came to take our drink orders, we went up to the buffet to get our dinner. The food is ok, typical Italian buffet food.

Here we are at the table:

Before the show started, the main lady in the show (Miss Jewel) came around and asked if anyone was celebrating anything, and Roy's mom and aunt both said that Roy and I had just gotten married. So she came over and took our names and said that they were going to sing a little song for us. She was joking around that we were on our honeymoon with the whole family and the kid, but not to worry because they would distract the family so we could sneak out the back door later. So, anyway, right before the show started, they sing to everyone celebrating birthdays, and then do a song for those celebrating anniversaries, then they announce that we just got married and they sang to us. It was cute, but we both hate too much attention like that and we were both a bit embarrassed. But it was still fun.

Here they are on stage, getting ready to sing to us--Miss Jewel and Bunny June:

(and Miss Jewel, the dark haired girl, might look familiar to some who went to WDW in December, as we saw her doing the Hanukkah story at Epcot when we were there on December 10th!)

Anyway, the show was good, they had changed it since the last time we had seen it, so it was nice to see something different. I guess Riley was worn out from our day at Sea World, and he fell asleep at the table:

Miss Jewel saw me taking a picture of him sleeping when she was walking around and tried to take a picture with him, but he woke up and she looks weird in the picture! I decided it might be nice to her to not post it!

We got back to our timeshare I guess it was about 10:15 that night and called it a night since we were goign to be heading to MGM the next day.

So, up next, hopefully soon! Our day at MGM...back when it was still MGM!