~A Very Merry Happy Trip~ (Completed)

[Whit64130]

~A Very Merry Happy Trip~
Hello All!
Welcome to my first ever trip report! My name is Whitney. I am your average Disney addict. I have been obsessed since I was 5 when I took my first trip. I did do a Pre-Trip report if you would like to find out a little more of how this trip came about the link is in my signature.

Lets just go ahead and jump right in!
Mandatory Introductions...


Me:Whitney
Favorite Meal of the trip: Hands down BOG dinner
Favorite Ride of the trip: Everest or new Soarin'
Favorite Character of the trip: Fairy Godmother or Joy and Sadness


Chelsy: she is my cousin and fellow Disney travel partner
This is her 8th trip in a row. She loves Rockin Roller Coaster. Her favorite meal of the trip was Liberty Tree Tavern.


Miranda: she is Chelsy's sister (yes no relation to me) and my co-worker at the hospital.
She has been to Disney once when she was smaller and barely remembers so a lot of new experiences for her!
Her favorite park was Hollywood Studios with her favorite ride being Tower of Terror.

Ok ok now to the trip!!!
We were scheduled to leave late Sunday night on the 13th of November. I slept on and off on Sunday and we were just waiting on Chelsy to get off of work to head out. We have a 10 hour drive from North Alabama.

This is a picture of the decal I made for my car. (I am a huge Tangled fan and I always feel like I have to Disney-fy my car when we go. I also had my sorcerer Mickey antenna topper although it wasn't pictured.)


Anyways..Chelsy met me at my mom's house. We loaded up the car and headed to pick up Miranda. We got to Miranda's house and stuffed the car some more and were on our way.



We topped the car off with gas prior to getting on the interstate at 10:15pm our time. The drive was pretty uneventful. Miranda slept most of the way. Chelsy helped me navigate and only dozed a few times. When I did get kind of sleepy I called work and talked to my fellow nightshifters for a little bit. We only stopped 3 times in the whole 10 hours.
This was about 150 miles away.. Miranda was still snoozing. I mean how can she not be excited?!?!?!
This would eventually cause me some problems later on in the trip. Anyways by 9:00am we were driving through these magical gates



We had a few request on our reservation prior to check in. Knowing that they are not always granted we wanted to go to the front desk as soon as we arrived so we could have a chance of getting what we requested. We had a room only reservation for Monday night and hoped to stay in the same room when we checked in for our free dining package. The lady at the check in desk seemed really enthusiastic. She checked us in without problem but to be able to get the same room for the duration we would have to wait. We were completely ok with that because in the long run it was better to have the same room than close our exhausted eyes at the time.
We set off for the Disney outlet on Vineland. Shopped around for awhile and ate a quick lunch. Just as soon as we got in the car to head back on property we got the text our room was ready!
Being fairly new to the Dis-ing, I did not take any pictures. It is just your standard All-Star Music room. We were in the Broadway Section, room 8437. It was ground level and an easy walk to the parking lot which we had hoped for! Also the noise level was low! Finally a nap!
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[ariane37]

I must have ESP or something, because I just decided to jump on for 5 minutes before waking Chris for school and I found you! AND I get to be #1
Looking forward to hearing about your whole trip!

 

[MissMaryQC]

Following! Travel sounds good, pretty uneventful, which is great while traveling! Lol!

Glad you guys were able to stay in the same room. It would have been a pain to change rooms after one night.

Can't wait to hear the rest!

 

[Whit64130]

I must have ESP or something, because I just decided to jump on for 5 minutes before waking Chris for school and I found you! AND I get to be #1
Looking forward to hearing about your whole trip!

Perfect timing! Glad you found me!

Following! Travel sounds good, pretty uneventful, which is great while traveling! Lol!

Glad you guys were able to stay in the same room. It would have been a pain to change rooms after one night.

Can't wait to hear the rest!

Glad to have you along! Yes travel was good but the issue came later unfortunately!

 

[Whit64130]

A Little Shut Eye and a Whole Lot of Animal Kingdom!
After a quick power nap, we woke up to our alarms going off at 2. We hurried to get ready get out the door to the front desk to see about activating our tickets a day early!

I sent this picture to Nick back home telling him we were headed to the park. His reply was and I Quote "You actually wear those in public?" Why yes of course I do It is the norm down here.
We had heard you could without problem but also heard otherwise. But first we had to stop by package pick up at the gift shop. I had ordered a few things on Saturday I knew I would be buying anyways that were on sale and noticed they had resort delivery option available. They found my order no problem but Chelsy had other issues. She had apparently submitted her order twice, one home delivery and one resort. Well she spoke with the CM at the gift shop and they were unable to locate it. She was advised to call the shop parks app help line. Long story short they ended up canceling both orders. The people at the desk at the gift shop were super helpful and took her info and promised to get everything straightened out while we were in the parks.
Here is a basic picture of the All-Star Lobby I did happen to snap.

We stopped by the front desk and was soon helped by the CM Nick. (I only remember because it is my husbands name) He was super helpful and was able to activate our tickets and upgrade to 8day PH for the conveniently low price of $10. We chatted with Nick for a bit while he handled our transactions. We got to telling him why we were there and what we were celebrating. Finally after all were upgraded we were on our merry little way to Animal Kingdom!


After snapping some pictures in front of the Christmas tree we headed to guest relations to upgrade to an AP ! After standing in a short line we were helped by another great CM. We had no issues what so ever upgrading and were soon headed to the turnstiles.
We made some FP+ reservations (not knowing we wouldn't even need them) and headed to DinoLand. I was on a mission to meet some of the characters in their Christmas getup and just happen to see the short line for Donald.


And I am going to stop here for the night. Dis is acting up since it will be going down in about 30 mins for maintenance.

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[ariane37]

Glad you had no problems upgrading to your AP's! We never have either, but some of those horror stories
Love the picture of the girls jumping on the way to the bus lol.
Um, I've worn my Minnie Halloween ears to Chris's school on Halloween........and I've worn ears around the house when I'm cleaning No judgement Nick, no judgement!

 

[Britbrie]

Awesome start to your TR! I can't wait to hear more about y'alls trip!!

 

[Whit64130]

Glad you had no problems upgrading to your AP's! We never have either, but some of those horror stories
Love the picture of the girls jumping on the way to the bus lol.
Um, I've worn my Minnie Halloween ears to Chris's school on Halloween........and I've worn ears around the house when I'm cleaning No judgement Nick, no judgement!

I've never wore them while doing chores. Maybe I need to try next time to see if makes me happier while mopping the floor

Awesome start to your TR! I can't wait to hear more about y'alls trip!!

Thanks for following along! Hope to be able to update soon!!

 

[emilyindisney]

Hi Whitney! Following!

Fellow night shifter here so I feel your pain on the night sleeping/day sleeping flip flop- only works good until suddenly it doesn't and you either can't get up all day, or are awake all night! Sounds like crowds were low at Animal Kingdom- great way to start your trip.

 

[DVCGloria]

Looks like your having a great trip. Love the sparkly mouse ears .

 

[MissMaryQC]

Day one is starting off great!! You three looks super excited!!

 

[Whit64130]

Fellow night shifter here so I feel your pain on the night sleeping/day sleeping flip flop- only works good until suddenly it doesn't and you either can't get up all day, or are awake all night!

Exactly! I literally slept maybe 4 hours. the excitement had set in for sure!

Looks like your having a great trip. Love the sparkly mouse ears .

Thanks!

Day one is starting off great!! You three looks super excited!!

We were beyond excited!

 

[Whit64130]

Shutting Down AK
Picking up where I last left off in DinoLand...
After a few pictures we headed toward Primiveal Whirl. I had never done this ride so I was slightly nervous. We had a tough choice to use our fast-pass or get in the non existent stand-by line

It wasn't really what I expected or bad at all. Anyways we had a mountain calling our name!
Off to Everest.

We were expecting to have a wait or even have to do the single rider line. We walked right into the non existent line and onto the train! The first ride this trip made me a tad uneasy just because it had to been a year since I rode it. But of course I loved it.
By this time we were getting ready for a snack. The girls stopped for some soft serve ice cream and I opted for one of these treats from the Thirsty River Bar!

Excuse the bite out of Mickey's ear.
Our next fastpass was at Kilimonjari Safari. I was very excited to see this at dusk since I had never been to AK past 4pm. We walked through the fastpass line and past the 20 people in the standby and onto the truck.


Some of the very few pictures I took because it was so dark. All in all we had a better safari later on in the trip but the lions on this safari were AMAZING! They were super active and loud, which is something I've never experienced. After safari we made the unanimous decision to head back to Everest. We rode it 5 times this go around. Here is a picture to prove it.

The guy sitting next to me was a cast member who worked at Saratoga Springs. His fiance worked Kali River Rapids and he was killing time until she was off of work.
Our snack was wearing off at this time and we made our way back around to Flame Tree BBQ to use our new AP discount since our DP had not started yet.
Closed.
Bummer! Actually pretty much everything was closed and it was just after 6 pm. We made the mental note not to forget to eat for the rest of the week!
After walking around for a few minutes I was getting HANGRY. The girls suggested we do a Bug's Life before heading out. So we walked the path to the show without meeting anyone in line until we got to the theatre.

There were around 15 of us total in the show. The exhaustion and lack food was kicking in x 100. After the show we all agreed to head towards the exit since the park would be closing soon.

Then I seen this! I was in awe of the Tree at night! Absolutely why I love AK soo much!



I absolutely love the night time and decorations here!
We Finally made it to the front where we took our Christmas Tree picture

and headed for the car.
We decided to head for the food court. Nothing spectacular just the plain chicken nuggets and fries. It was very less than appealing. Apparently had been setting out for hours. But I was just ready to eat, shower and go to bed.
After I had a little food in my tummy and a shower so I did decided to decorate our window. It wasn't anything fantastic. Just a little touch of Christmas!


Now off to bed for us because we have a very Early Morning of Magic planned!​

 

[MissMaryQC]

What a blast! You guys did quite a bit; glad to hear the crowds were manageable!

I love AK so much, at night it's really a beautiful place. I can't wait for the further expansions to be in place!

Sorry about the food situation though! You'd think they offer something decent, nit old stuff. I mean if you're serving it, it should be tasty!

Your window is so cute!! I love seeing those at the resorts!

Hopefully you girls get some rest for your next day!

 

[ariane37]

I also love AK at night, and I wish they'd get ROL up and running so it could truly be a park people spend evenings in. However I agree the safari at night isn't the best, except the lions! It seems every report I read says the nighttime safari was a bust but the lions were active and vocal
I cannot handle Primeval Whirl, it makes me feel but I'm glad you liked it. Now you just need to get back on TOT!!!
I really can't believe how lucky you got with crowds this day!

 

[Whit64130]

Early Morning with Punzie

We started off bright an early this morning . We grabbed breakfast bars in the room and called an uber. We didn't want to chance the bus system to make it to the MK entrance by 7:45. Our uber driver was awesome and dropped us off as close as he could. Here is a selfie from the Uber ride.


After a short walk to security at MK we could finally see the entrance! Ahhh that moment you first see the gates of MK!


We breezed through security and were directed to the ADR line. I was a little unsure of how the routine worked. It was super simple. they had several CM with ipads scanning bands to confirm reservations. It was around 7:20 by this point.

The wait breezed by as we snapped several pictures!

The weather was perfect (which is the them for this trip).
Finally they let us in and we were off! We got several great pictures in front of the castle.




Then we headed straight to Mine Train of course! I know this isn't the best ride by far as thrills go. BUT I LOVE the theming and detail and hate the wait. We had decided a few months prior to try this out. Who wouldn't want a semi empty MK and a good breakfast?!?! It was good to try once. I am guessing we rode Mine train around 12 times without wait. Chelsy and Miranda did break off to go ride Pooh and Peter Pan. I figured I would catch them later on in the trip.




Finally around 9 when they started letting the rest of the park in to ride we headed over to Princess Fairytale Hall. All three of us grew up in the Great Princess Prime of the 90's. So this was a must. I know what you are thinking though, Rapunzel wasn't a 90's princess. I guess it is more of any princess in general that we love.
Anyways, I had my I'm so glad I left my tower shirt on that I made and just had to meet her while wearing it .Of course it was a hit. HA. Tiana was pretty good too! I think her movie is so cute!



After PFTH we headed over to Pinocchio Village Haus for Breakfast. I was actually impressed. I did over do it with breakfast because the oatmeal bar just didn't last long. Here is my plate . I call it "the sampler".


I blame this meal on my new found addiction to French Toast. The ham was also tasty and the breakfast potatoes was by far my favorite on property. I think it was the fresh peppers and onions they cooked with. The cinnamon roll was to die for! My only complaint was the Juice and the rest of the drinks were warm. I had to ask for a cup of ice but that was no issue. All in all I was happy we tried it because of the great start to our first day and the breakfast was yummy.
My notes are a little fuzzy at this point but I'm pretty sure we headed over to Buzz to ride. It was a very short wait. I did not even download my picture from this because I had a horrible look on my face and had was not paying attention to where the camera was.
We headed over to Liberty Square and in passing couldn't resist a Tangled Tower Picture!

Then we stopped by Haunted Mansion for a little ride with the spooks!

Next was Pirates, which is a favorite of mine too. This is one of the rides I remember from my first trip way back in 1994.

It was finally time for our first FP+ of the day. Splash Mountain here we come! We strategically planned to do this right before we headed to the exit for a nap. It was just a good as I remembered. Then when we got off and see the wait was only 10 mins so we decided to go again!

Finally we headed to the front where Chelsy went to package pickup to deal with her missing order ordeal. They had to search for her items so we waited and waited. We decided to take a few pictures in front of the tree.

Still no package.
We headed over to visit Tink. I wasn't really impressed with her. Not what I pictured Tink looking like. I did love the theme of her room! So cute!

Finally back over to Package Pickup and they had found our package! I guess as an apology they had included two Olaf trading pins to go along with her Olaf MagicBand order.
By this time it was going on 1ish. We had planned to already be back in the room and napping by this point. We caught a bus and headed to the resort. We had to stop by the front desk to activate Chelsy's new magicbands. I also had a package pickup waiting. Chelsy was still resolving MB issues and me and Miranda headed on to the room to close our eyes.

Next up...Very Merry Christmas Party and a little Jaywalking....​

 

[ariane37]

I don't think I knew you did EMM but that's cool! Every review I read of it is positive. If it included BTMRR and Splash or Space we'd definitely give it a try!
You know I've never met Tiana and I want to. Of course nobody else is interested in meeting her so I have to do it myself and I'm better with non face characters if I'm alone. One of these days I'll have to meet her though since I've met every other Princess
Did you make that shirt?

 

[Whit64130]

I don't think I knew you did EMM but that's cool! Every review I read of it is positive. If it included BTMRR and Splash or Space we'd definitely give it a try!
You know I've never met Tiana and I want to. Of course nobody else is interested in meeting her so I have to do it myself and I'm better with non face characters if I'm alone. One of these days I'll have to meet her though since I've met every other Princess
Did you make that shirt?

I couldn't remember if I had told you or not. I would probably do it again if my family wanted to. If they are still doing the After Hours during our next trip I wouldn't mind doing that either.
She was sweet! I've actually met her twice one this trip. And yep I made it!

 

[Whit64130]

Very Merry Christmas Party and a Little Jaywalking

We were only able to get maybe an hour nap. We had a 3:45 reservation to get to. So we all got up and got moving. We got dressed in our Christmas Party attire. (Christmas Light necklace included!) We decided to Uber to the Contemporary and walk over since we were running behind. All was well and good until the sketchy Uber Driver showed up. His car was beat up and he didn’t speak English. So we started out trying to explain how the man earlier dropped us off at the Contemporary. The language barrier was real. He did not understand at all. Heck for all I knew he didn’t know where he was taking us. Let me set the scene… Chelsy was riding shotgun. Miranda was sitting behind her and I was behind the driver. We all discussed that since we were running late we weren’t going to try to explain to ol Uber driver where we wanted to be dropped off and were going to wing it by hopping out at the red light at the Contemporary. We even discussed a tuck and roll option if he didn’t stop. Ha! Anywho, we were stopping at the light we let him know we would be getting out. So we all jump out of the car with the girls being the first to get out and I followed. I am not sure what Miranda was thinking but she jetted out of the car before I even got to the side to get out. Chelsy and I stopped at the curb at the light and waited for the pedestrian signal. Miranda was no where to be seen. She had jumped out of the car and went behind the car and then crossed 4 lanes of traffic plus turning lanes. We finally spotted her as we were walking across the street in the walkway. Just as she jaywalked again to cross to the Magic Kingdom walkway we were getting yelled at by Disney Security. We tried to explain our driver had a language barrier and was not sure where he was dropping us off at. They were concerned about how Miranda has just ran through the traffic. Eeek. She said she had just misunderstood the plan. We chalked it up to being a learning experience for all of us.

Anyways the main gate was a walk through while the party entrance was packed waiting on 4pm to get in. We skipped right over to Crystal Palace to check in. As always it was a wait. Not exactly sure where Miranda and Chelsy went off to at this point. Maybe the bathroom? I was sitting out front playing on my phone when a CM stopped to chat. I was asking her where inside the park we could get our bracelets for the party. She whipped out some special pamphlet that only CM had with more specific times, locations and character info than the regular Guest Park Map had. She said she was going to lay it beside me and if I happened to snap a picture while it was unattended then she would never know.

Finally we were called to our table. First off, I am not a fan of CP dinner and hate I just didn’t do a QS this day. I still want to try breakfast. For some reason the characters were on a weird rotation we were at the tail end of it. We ate our whole meal before we even got to see a character.
So finally some pictures...



A nice family beside us offered to get some group shots of us after we done the same for them.
We ended up missing our FP+ for the Jingle Cruise. Right before Eeyore (our last character) they had the parade and he went on break. So we just decided to leave and go start Christmas partying.

We stopped on Main street and snapped a few pictures.




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[Whit64130]

Part 2....

Then we headed to Fantasyland to use our FP+ for 7DMT. Yes we rode it several times this morning but we wanted to do it at dusk/dark too!




We headed over to ride the Ariel ride since it was a short wait.




The over to Tomorrowland to get our party bands. We decided to go ahead and shop for our party souvenirs. I purchased the long sleeve shirt and a passholder pin. I had them both shipped back to the resort. I used this option several times during the trip. It was great not to have to keep up with bags all day. The girls were still shopping and I am not exactly sure why we decided to split at this point but I headed to Adventureland. I had a character M&G in mind. I hopped in the short line for Aladdin and Abu. They were great considering I was a solo adult. Abu was obsessed with my Christmas light necklace and insisted I let him wear it. He wore it around his head and pretended to be a belly dancer. You can even see him wearing it in the picture.




I headed back over to meet up with the girls. We decided to wait in line for Christmas Minnie and Daisy. This was probably the longest line we stood in for the night. I kind of wished we would have skipped but once you’ve already waited so long its hard to get out of line.




After a quick pictures with the girls we stopped for some Apple Cider and Sugar cookies. No picture but they weren’t very good. I was hoping for the yummy cookies like the bakery had. Anywho. Miranda and I headed for Space Mountain since she was wanting to ride it. We maybe waited 10 mins. Most of that was walk time. He is our obligatory photo to prove we were there.





Then we headed over to try another cookie. I got hot chocolate and Snickerdoodle. A lot better than the last. At least it was a real cookie!


We walked around to see the Christmas sites and headed back around the backside of the new Fantasyland and found a photopass taking a special magic shot for the party. It turned out pretty cute. Although I wish you could see our faces a little better.




Walked by Ariel and her wait was only 5 minutes so we hopped in line to cross that off of our list.




After Ariel we made our way around Fantasyland to find a spot for Wishes. We found the perfect spot on the curb where everyone around us sat. I love this photo because you can see several sets of Mickey ears.




We headed down Main Street to stake out a spot for the parade. There was not a ton of people lined up yet so we decided we needed a snack from Casey’s.



Yes this looks gigantic but rest assured I barely ate half of it! So yummy!! We walked right out and got curb side seats for the parade. I loved the way it snowed and they had everything lit up! So magical!














By this time it was getting late and I had one more thing on my agenda to do. I wanted to meet Flynn Rider! Yeah Yeah Yeah I know I had already met the girls earlier in the day. And that was only because we did not wait and I had on my Punzie shirt. The girls opted to do something else at this time. I got in the 10 min line. Luckily I wasn’t the only adult in this line. First up Tiana and Naveen. They were very fun and went on about my green shirt.




Next over to Rapunzel and Flynn. One of the best interactions of the week. Actually we had a lot of good ones. Long story short. They noticed my wedding ring and asking why I was alone. I basically said I left my prince at home to work while I spent his money! They got a kick out of that and Flynn said he usually has a witty comment but he was speechless. You can even tell in this picture he was still looking for words.





We said our goodbyes and I went to meet up with the girls.

We made our way out of the park and on to the bus.



Next Up Soarin' over EPCOT
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