A trip to begin the WDW obsession... 12/10-12/16

[beachta1]

Hello DISers! I've been following the boards for awhile and reading a lot of trip reports. Although my trip was awhile ago, I still love reliving the memories. I thought I'd do a TR to share my story with you and how I came to love all things Walt Disney World.

I'm Tricia, I'm 28 and live in Maryland. I work in higher education, more specifically, college admissions. I travel a fair amount for work and meet a lot new people through my job. I am in love with Pinterest and have been cooking my little heart out since finding that site. I also like to run (training for another half marathon this year), Dave Matthews Band, the beach and the sun! This trip was my first trip since middle school and I remembered very little of the parks.

My escort on this trip was my DB, Jon. Jon is 27 and we live together! He is from Pennsylvania and is a PSU Alum *WE ARE* He is an engineer. We've been living together for 1.5 years now. We met at a bar of all places He plays rugby, and loves all things sports. I knew he was a Disney fan but he knows his songs and movies. I was very impressed! He had been to Disney a few times growing up, the most recent was high school.

We had been talking about going on vacation and I had the dream of going to Disney. Neither of us had been in years and I figured it could be a great time. I spent hours on the disney website, allears.net and easywdw.com to absorb all of the information I could get. I also bought the Unofficial Disney Guide book. I really wanted to do this vacation smart, and I knew the best way to do that was research. I plan events for my work and overall I really enjoy planning. Putting together this trip was no different. DB sort of laughed at all of my organization and all of the conversations I forced him to have about what he wanted to eat, what rides he wanted to go on, etc. He changed his tune though when we got to WDW and never waited more then 15 minutes for any of the rides.

We decided on early December because we knew the Christmas decorations would be up and from reading online, I knew it wouldn't be crazy. Neither of us had a major desire to go to the water parks so I knew that wouldn't be an issue (although we did get to swim!). We decided to stay at the CBR. We could afford more then a value hotel and knew that the deluxe was a little out of our league. The reviews I had read online of the CBR were nice, and I knew that we'd spend most of our time at the parks and less at the hotel.

I hope you'll join me as I relive the memories!

 

[beachta1]

Saving this space for chapters.

 

[beachta1]

Saturday, December 10th: We flew into MCO and landed at MCO at 12:35pm and waited at least 30 minutes for DME.

Although we waited awhile, our line for the CBR was not as long as some of the value resorts. We got to the hotel around 2pm and thankfully our room in Aruba was ready. I was happy we were staying there ; it was a close enough walk to Old Port Royale if we needed, but not close enough where we’d hear people by the pool and food court. Our room was on the 1st floor and we had a view of our little courtyard so it was very nice.

We freshened up and made our way to the bus for Epcot! I knew we weren’t going to hit any of the major attractions but thankfully we were able to accomplish a lot at Epcot!

As soon as we got there and got over the initial shock of OMG WE’RE HERE, we headed to Sunshine Seasons for lunch. I had the tofu noodle bowl and DB had the Mongolian beef. My meal was a little more like soup then I was hoping, but it was definitely delicious. I was really bad and didn't take any pictures of food, I apologize for that!

From there we hoped on Living with the Land since it was right there and there was no wait. We didn’t even look at the return times for Soarin, I knew we would fit it in another day.

Where will we head next?