Sorry for taking so long between updates! This wedding is sure draining all my free time! But I had made several notes just after the trip to help me remember the details of each day, so I'll make sure to bring all of them here to you!
January 25th - Celebration & Gatorland
Time to leave the Clarion Inn and finally enter WDW! We made an early check-out and headed off into the morning fog to Pop Century!
We checked in to find that we did indeed got a 70's room as I requested in the online check-in, but it was not a lake facing room though! The room was very nice, pretty much as I remembered the All Stars rooms we stayed in the past (I thought the beds were a bit smaller this time, but last time we arrived in Orlando after a few days in a tiny room in NYC, so it is probably just a bit of perspective!)
After settling in and retrieving the packages I had received from Amazon we set out for the Animal Kingdom Lodge to use our first Quick Service Credits on our breakfast at the Mara!
AKL is a very beautiful resort. Last time we entered it for dinner at Jiko's but it is even more impressive during the day! Too bad we didn't see the animals at the savannah as it was still very early!
Our breakfast at the Mara was pretty good and we even got some Zebra Domes (one of the reasons for going to AKL in the first place!)
Status of the DDP:
4 QS and 1 SC used - 84 QS and 43 SC remaining
After breakfast we went to Celebration, a town based on Walt Disney's plans. DFi and DMIL went into a bridal shop (Casa di Bella) where we had made an appointment and I went for a stroll around town with DBIL.
It is a very beautiful little town and we walked a bit along a stream and then to the lake waterfront filled with shops and cafes. Then DFi called us saying that they had found it, they had gotten her wedding gown! But that it would need to be fitted, of course, and for that we would have to go to Winter Park!!!
I drove the car over to the shop, they put the dress in the trunk and off we went across Orlando to Winter Park!
Again me and DBIL waited a little bit while she had her dress fitting (for which we would have to return on our last car day!) and of we went. By then it was about 1-2pm so we decided to grab lunch at a nearby McDonald's before continuing to Gatorland!
We arrived in Gatorland at about 3pm when there is a special 50% off promotion as you'll only enjoy it for a couple hours. Great!
This is a hidden gem in Orlando's theme park scene and is worth a trip by anyone in the Orlando area which could spare a half day! The park is beautiful, with natural floridian swamp settings while being in safe pathways to see all these magnificent beasts!
There are a couple shows: Gator Wrestling which we seems a bit cruel to the gator and the Gator Jumparoo where they try to make Gators jump out of the water to get chickens (worked just once in our show, probably because of the cold weather!)
We managed to see the whole park in those 2 hours, but it was rushed! We could all have taken some extra time to just relax and stop longer at some of the exhibits. I also wish we had been there in time for other cool activities like the Screamin Gator Zipline or the Adventure Hour, where you get to feed the gators without fences or glass between you and them!
One of their strangest gators are the white alligators (not albino! they have blue eyes!), something that I'd never even heard of (before starting to read about Gatorland, because it is listed in their website).
After leaving the park we went on our first (of many) Downtown Disney visit! We went straight into DisneyQuest, enjoyed several games like CyberSpaceMountain, Magic Carpets and Astroblasters, and of course, our favorite: Pirates of the Caribbean: Battle for Buccaneer Gold!
After this we crossed the whole Downtown Disney to go to T-Rex as we had an ADR! We tried to be seated a bit earlier, but on a Friday night that was a no-go!
We went to Team Mickey to grab our Photopass+ card and lanyard! This was a great buy and we got several great pictures throughout the week both with photographers and in rides!
We then browsed the LEGO store (loved the new Disney inspired LEGO sculptures and that they kept my favorite of the old ones: the cute Sea Serpent!) and came back a bit before our time and finally got directed to a table in the ocean part of the room.
T-Rex is loud, but a lot of fun and the food was incredible, specially our dessert (Ice Age Indulgence I believe)!
We did have one problem though: I asked for the check and our waiter got it for us, handed my pre-paid debit card (with currency fluctuations and extra Brazilian taxes if we pay on foreign currency on international credit cards we decided to do most of our charges to US Dollars pre-paid cards) and he brought back my receipt for me to sign, only what came with it wasn't my card!!!
It was a plain white card for a store membership or something like that!!! We looked for the waiter and he was nowhere to be seen! We called another waiter and said we had received the wrong card, suddenly he reappeared and took my card from an apron pocket and handed it back to me! 
We left the restaurant but were worried he might have copied some info of the card or something. We returned and asked for the manager which said he was very sorry for that and that he would talk to the waiter about it. I might have been an honest mistake, but you never know! The manager also asked us to check our card statement over the next few days to see if no unexpected charges showed up and to come back if there was any problem (thankfully no problem showed up on my statement!)
After this we returned to Pop as we had lots of Amazon packages to open!
January 25th - Celebration & Gatorland
Time to leave the Clarion Inn and finally enter WDW! We made an early check-out and headed off into the morning fog to Pop Century!
We checked in to find that we did indeed got a 70's room as I requested in the online check-in, but it was not a lake facing room though! The room was very nice, pretty much as I remembered the All Stars rooms we stayed in the past (I thought the beds were a bit smaller this time, but last time we arrived in Orlando after a few days in a tiny room in NYC, so it is probably just a bit of perspective!)
After settling in and retrieving the packages I had received from Amazon we set out for the Animal Kingdom Lodge to use our first Quick Service Credits on our breakfast at the Mara!
AKL is a very beautiful resort. Last time we entered it for dinner at Jiko's but it is even more impressive during the day! Too bad we didn't see the animals at the savannah as it was still very early!
Our breakfast at the Mara was pretty good and we even got some Zebra Domes (one of the reasons for going to AKL in the first place!)
Status of the DDP:
4 QS and 1 SC used - 84 QS and 43 SC remaining
After breakfast we went to Celebration, a town based on Walt Disney's plans. DFi and DMIL went into a bridal shop (Casa di Bella) where we had made an appointment and I went for a stroll around town with DBIL.
It is a very beautiful little town and we walked a bit along a stream and then to the lake waterfront filled with shops and cafes. Then DFi called us saying that they had found it, they had gotten her wedding gown! But that it would need to be fitted, of course, and for that we would have to go to Winter Park!!!
I drove the car over to the shop, they put the dress in the trunk and off we went across Orlando to Winter Park!
Again me and DBIL waited a little bit while she had her dress fitting (for which we would have to return on our last car day!) and of we went. By then it was about 1-2pm so we decided to grab lunch at a nearby McDonald's before continuing to Gatorland!
We arrived in Gatorland at about 3pm when there is a special 50% off promotion as you'll only enjoy it for a couple hours. Great!
This is a hidden gem in Orlando's theme park scene and is worth a trip by anyone in the Orlando area which could spare a half day! The park is beautiful, with natural floridian swamp settings while being in safe pathways to see all these magnificent beasts!
There are a couple shows: Gator Wrestling which we seems a bit cruel to the gator and the Gator Jumparoo where they try to make Gators jump out of the water to get chickens (worked just once in our show, probably because of the cold weather!)
We managed to see the whole park in those 2 hours, but it was rushed! We could all have taken some extra time to just relax and stop longer at some of the exhibits. I also wish we had been there in time for other cool activities like the Screamin Gator Zipline or the Adventure Hour, where you get to feed the gators without fences or glass between you and them!
One of their strangest gators are the white alligators (not albino! they have blue eyes!), something that I'd never even heard of (before starting to read about Gatorland, because it is listed in their website).
After leaving the park we went on our first (of many) Downtown Disney visit! We went straight into DisneyQuest, enjoyed several games like CyberSpaceMountain, Magic Carpets and Astroblasters, and of course, our favorite: Pirates of the Caribbean: Battle for Buccaneer Gold!
After this we crossed the whole Downtown Disney to go to T-Rex as we had an ADR! We tried to be seated a bit earlier, but on a Friday night that was a no-go!
We went to Team Mickey to grab our Photopass+ card and lanyard! This was a great buy and we got several great pictures throughout the week both with photographers and in rides!
We then browsed the LEGO store (loved the new Disney inspired LEGO sculptures and that they kept my favorite of the old ones: the cute Sea Serpent!) and came back a bit before our time and finally got directed to a table in the ocean part of the room.
T-Rex is loud, but a lot of fun and the food was incredible, specially our dessert (Ice Age Indulgence I believe)!
We did have one problem though: I asked for the check and our waiter got it for us, handed my pre-paid debit card (with currency fluctuations and extra Brazilian taxes if we pay on foreign currency on international credit cards we decided to do most of our charges to US Dollars pre-paid cards) and he brought back my receipt for me to sign, only what came with it wasn't my card!!!
It was a plain white card for a store membership or something like that!!! We looked for the waiter and he was nowhere to be seen! We called another waiter and said we had received the wrong card, suddenly he reappeared and took my card from an apron pocket and handed it back to me! We left the restaurant but were worried he might have copied some info of the card or something. We returned and asked for the manager which said he was very sorry for that and that he would talk to the waiter about it. I might have been an honest mistake, but you never know! The manager also asked us to check our card statement over the next few days to see if no unexpected charges showed up and to come back if there was any problem (thankfully no problem showed up on my statement!)
After this we returned to Pop as we had lots of Amazon packages to open!
