A Not So Scary Disneymoon w/ Pictures!

[Eoywin]

Charaters:

Me - I'm a 30 year old admin. assistant who has been dreaming of going back to Disney World since my last trip - which was 14 years ago!

DH - 32 year old machinist - This was his 5th trip to Disney World, though his last trip was also 14 years ago.

Backstory: We got married September 30th, 2006. We live in NC but all our family is in Michigan, so we opted to get married up there. Because of the time we had to take off for our wedding we had no time to take off for a honeymoon.

In July 2006, my DH (then DF) asked me if I would rather go to Vegas (where we had planned on going) or Disney World. It took me less than a second to decide. Disney World of course!!

So, I've been planning this trip (DH really didn't put in any input) since right after the wedding. So I was super excited when it was time to go!

Friday, September 28th - Arrival Day!

We got up very early on Friday morning, ran a couple of errands (Todd had to go to the bank and we got breakfast at McDonald's), and were on our way.

The journey itself was rather uneventful - it's very easy to get to Disney from NC. It's nearly a straight shot.

Unfortunely we hit Orlando just at rush hour, so it took us longer than it should have to get to our resort. I amused myself by taking pictures of the disney billboards.

Finally we made it through the traffic and we entered Walt Disney World property!

We managed to find our resort, CBR, and found the place to check in. The line to check in was kinda long but moved quickly.

When we got up to the counter, I was very excited, so I told the lady who waited on us that we were on our honeymoon. She gave us pins that said 'Just Married' (which isn't exactly true, but we guessed that it was close enough *L*). I was a little surprised when DH put his on right away. I, of course, did too

We got our 'Keys to the World' and our room number, so we headed to the room.

Our section of the resort was Jamaica - which I was pretty geeked about because I had read that it was one of the best 'islands' to be in. We found our room with ease, and we unpacked and vegged out for a bit.

Here's some room and resort pictures!

After we got unpacked we headed to the building that had the food court, gift shop, and the sit down restaurant, Shutters. It was called 'Old Port Royale'. I didn't make reservations for this night because I wasn't sure how we'd feel after that 9 hour drive. We asked if we could get into Shutters without a reservation, and they said we could, but it would be a 45 minute wait. We decided to wait and it gave us time to browse the gift shop.

Once we got seated, our server noticed our pins and said congratulations - we got a ton of people saying this throughout the week. Mostly cast members, but some regular guests too.

We got sparkling wine for free, because we were on our honeymoon, which was neat (though it made me a little tipsy). We were on the dining plan so we got an appetizer, an entrée, a dessert and a drink. That is a lot of food!

Our dinner was very good - we both had prime rib, and we were so stuffed we had to take our cheesecake back to the room (we did have a mini fridge so it didn't go bad).

We went back to the room, vegged out, and went to sleep fairly early.

Next time - Magic Kingdom and Ohana!

 

[KimAshton]

Do I get to tbe the first to comment? Eeek.

Congrats on your wedding. I hope you had fun on your disneymoon. cannot wait to read more.

 

[Eoywin]

Do I get to tbe the first to comment? Eeek.

Congrats on your wedding. I hope you had fun on your disneymoon. cannot wait to read more.

Thanks!! We did have a lot of fun

Hopefully I'll get to post the 2nd installment later today - but it's Sunday and my DH is on a fantasy football league, so I might not get a chance today

 

[LMO429]

Looking forward to more!

 

[Eoywin]

Saturday - September 29

Because I have been active here on the Disboards, I knew a couple months ago that DH's favorite ride, BTMRR, was going down for rehab on Oct. 1st. Our plans had us going to the MK for the first time on Oct. 4th near the end of our vacation.

When I went to Disney last time, we had gotten 4 day tickets, but didn't use the last day. My mom said that I could have two of the tickets, and my sister could have the other two.

We decided to try and use these tickets because a half day at the park was much more affordable at 1993 prices. We drove, partly so we could ride the monorail, and partly so we could trade the tickets in for current ones.

We were able to trade in the old tickets with no problem. I again mentioned we were on our honeymoon, and we got another set of pins. DH put his on, so he had two pins on.. I ended up putting my extra pin on my bag.

I got my first glimpse of the castle as we rode the monorail to the park. It made me a bit teary-eyed. Soon we were at the MK, and walking down Main Street, which was all decked out for Halloween/Autumn!

We started over in Adventureland, and our first ride was the Jungle Cruise. We kept going around and went on Pirates (no wait!) and ended up over at BTMRR, which is why we were there that day. There was less than a 10 minute wait so we rode it twice! I can understand why it's DH's favorite because it was a lot of fun!

Here's a couple of pictures - DH while waiting in line, and then a picture of me

We kept going around the park, mostly riding things that had low waits. We didn't feel the need to ride everything because we'd be back later in the week.

Finally we got to my favorite ride - The Haunted Mansion. It had just been rehabbed, and it was awesome!! Still my most favorite Disney ride!!

After the Haunted Mansion we stopped for some lunch, then rode a few more things before deciding to head back to the room. We had dinner reservations at Ohana which is location in the Polynesian Resort.

My travel agent had told me, after I had told her that I wanted to eat at Ohana that you can see Wishes from the restaurant, and they pipe in the music so you get the whole experience. So, we had a bit of a later reservation.

When we got there, there was a rather long line to check in. Once we checked in, and got the buzzer thing that would let us know our table was ready we went downstairs and checked out the Poly's gift shop. It didn't take too long, and we were seated at a table near the big picture window. We could see the castle and we knew we had a perfect spot for Wishes.

Ohana has no menu - it's family style with lots of meat. The main course is brought out on skewers. Everything was very yummy! Though we were getting the main course as Wishes was going on, and our servers freaked me out because I didn't notice him come up behind me. I jumped when I did notice him

It was extremely romantic and the perfect end of our first full day. Ohana is now one of our favorites!

Next: Epcot, Anniversary and the Day of a Million Dreams!

 

[Eoywin]

Sorry I haven't updated this - we had a bit of a scare with my DH last week which resulted in him being admitted to the hospital for a couple of days.

Sunday - September 30

September 30 was our first wedding anniversary. So, I wanted us to do something special/romantic that day.

We orginally were going to see the Cirque show, La Nouba, but they don't do performances on Sunday. So, we opted to go to Epcot.

Even though it is the "Year of a Million Dreams", I didn't expect to win anything, but I was proved to be wrong on this day.

We got up and got moving fairly early and we got there maybe a half hour after the park had opened. We had looked at a map the night before and came up with a very loose game plan. The first ride we headed to was Soarin', though we stopped to take some pictures along the way.

Soarin was an awesome ride, and we were heading over to where Test Track and Mission:Space were. We had looked at a map and were going to cut through one of the Innovations buildings on our way. When we got closer to the Innovations building, we saw and heard a group of people yelling 'Yay'. Since we were heading that way anyway, we continued to go toward them.

When we got closer, I saw who they were and what they had. They were the Dream Team and they had Dream Fast Passes! I was so excited!

So, we headed to Test Track (which DH loved) and Mission:Space and used our Dream Fastpasses on those rides. I made DH ride the chicken version of Mission:Space, because I didn't want to get a migraine... but the chicken version was really dull.

We got stopped by a family at one point, who said that they would take our picture if we took their's.

Then, since we had the fastpass for it, we went back over to Soarin and we also did the Living with the Land boat ride, and got some pictures on there.

When we were coming back, we were passing by the place were we got our Dream Fastpasses, and the Dream Team was there again! This time they were passing out dream lanyards that had two special dream pins on them! They remembered us, and teased us that we were going to keep coming by for stuff. DH made jokes that we were stalking the Dream Team the rest of the day, even though we didn't see them again.

After we finished with the rides in Future World, we headed over to World Showcase. We did a lot of shopping in World Showcase, especially in Japan.

But first, we got another Dream in the American Adventure show. We were a little early for the show, but decided to go inside because it was very hot out. There was a cast member inside the lobby who came over to us and asked if we had gotten a call from Disney today. We looked at each other, confused like, and said no.

So, he brings us over to this phone and tells us to call this 3 digit number. I dial it, and listen - on the other end, is Mickey and Minnie congratulations us on our wedding It was a funny little thing (Mickey is very interesting in the wedding cake), and I had DH listen to it after I was done.

While DH was listening to it, the cast member came over and gave us a Dream Certificate in honor of our honeymoon!!

He then led us to a special elevator that took us up to the balony where we got to be the First Family for the show. We also got to sit down, and watch the Liberty Singers do a little show before we went inside... and they did a little song for us in honor of our honeymoon too

Here's a picture of DH as we listened to the music:

From there, mostly we shopped, watched some movies in the different countries, and just walked around.

As we were wandering around, I saw Mushu from 'Mulan' - most of the characters we had seen were mobbed by people but Mushu was alone, so I asked for a picture.

Since the Disney Photopass photographer was there, DH got in the picture too

Our dinner reservations that night were at "The Rose and The Crown". We didn't eat here because we wanted English food, per say, but because it has a great place to see Illumnations, Epcot's fireworks show, from.

They have tables on a patio that you can see Illumnations from, which is what I had wanted, but it didn't happen. But we were able to go outside and stand on the patio when it was time.

Our waitress was really great - she gave us crowns in honor of our honeymoon, a Dream certificate, and a light up Tinkerbell and Captain Hook!

We had finished all of our dinner except for dessert when it was time for Illumnations. We told our waitress what we wanted for dessert and she took us outside to were we could watch the fireworks from. We were one of the first people out there, so we got to be right by the rail and had a wonderful view!

It was a beautiful fireworks show, and I got a little teary-eyed because it was a really wonderful way to end our really Dream-filled 1st anniversary.

We went in after it was done, had our dessert, and then headed out. My batteries were dying in my camera, but I wanted to get a picture of Spaceship Earth at night.

We made it out, and found our bus stop with no problem (this was our first day using the bus system from our resort), and got back, and fell into bed. It was really a very lovely first anniversary!

Next Time: Universal Studios!