Babymoon Trip In Search of VINYLS! Jul/Aug TR - UPDATE 11/20 Rest of DHS-TR COMPLETE!

[khertz]

Hey y'all! Welcome to my second TR, which is being compiled from a VERY unexpected and unplanned Babymoon trip! Our previous trip was in December of 2009 was supposed to be our last pre-baby trip, but apparently we didn't get Disney entirely out of our systems. You can read the PTR for that trip HERE and the TR HERE if you are interested. I hope you'll join me for my first time at the World while pregnant!

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Intro Post

Friday July 30th
DAY 1: Get me to Disney!
DAY 1: Exploring Downtown Disney
DAY 1: Exploring Downtown Disney Continued...

Saturday July 31st
DAY 2: Good Morning, Magic Kingdom!
DAY 2: Off to the Land of Fantasy & We Missed You, Donald!
DAY 2: Oh Boy! Meeting Mickey with a Bonus!
DAY 2: Jungle Cruisin'
DAY 2: Summer Nightastic
DAY 2: Main Street Electrical Parade

Sunday August 1st
DAY 3: Hollywood Here We Come!
DAY 3: Heating Up at DHS
DAY 3: Out of This World Lunch! and DHS Wrap Up

Extras
LIFE UPDATE: Baby Is Here!
TR Wrap Up​

 

[khertz]

INTRO

WHO?
The participants in this TR will be myself and my DH! Here is a picture of us from our December trip with Mickey Mouse.

This is my 8th trip to Disney World, and my 4th trip with DH. He came along once while we were dating on a family trip, we spent our honeymoon there, and in December we decided to go on one huge trip where we took our parents with us. As you can tell from the title, this 4th trip for us was what I like to call our Babymoon trip because I was 25 weeks pregnant at the time of the trip with our first son. I work as a pediatric nurse with co-workers who are very much aware of what a Disney NUT I am!

DH has been to Disney World a total of 7 times now, three times when he was younger, and the four times listed above. He puts up with my Disney obsession, and has a few of his own, like Donald Duck. He loves Disney World too, but I think my crazy obsessive planning can get on his nerves sometimes. However, we both love visiting the Mouse, and always have an AMAZING time when we visit the World together! He is an engineer and works offshore (well, he did until the moratorium!), so luckily our schedules can be pretty flexible when it comes to taking last minute vacations!

WHEN?
This trip was a very short weekend trip. We drove to Orlando on Friday July 30th, spent Saturday July 31st and Sunday August 1st in the parks, and drove home on Monday August 2nd (so that I could be back in time to work 2 twelve hour shifts on Tuesday & Wednesday )

WHERE?
DH and I are owners with Wyndham, a timeshare with locations all over the country. We have stayed at their resorts in Washington D.C., Las Vegas, and Hawaii, and on our most recent Disney trip, we stayed at their incredible Bonnet Creek resort smack in the middle of Disney property with a fireworks view.

Because this trip happened VERY last minute, Bonnet Creek was not available for our dates. We found two nights open at another Wyndham resort in Kissimmee called the Cypress Palms. It was not available on our arrival night, so we stayed the first night at the Destiny Palms Hotel. More on that in the TR.

WHY?
Ah, the most important question. WHY did we decide to take this trip when 1) we had just been to Disney in December 2) I'm 25 weeks pregnant & can't take much time off of work because I have to save all my paid time off for when the baby comes and 3) it is HOT HOT HOT in Disney World this time of year!?!

It started brewing on our December trip when DH toyed with the idea of starting a Vinylmations collection. I convinced him not to, because he only liked certain designs, and the whole point of the Vinyls is that you don't know what you are getting when you buy them. He started looking into them again recently, and found out that the stores in Disney World now have Vinyls out on display on the counters that you can trade if you buy a Vinyl you don't want or one you already have, similar to pin trading with CMs. He joked that we needed to go back so he could buy some Vinyls and start trading. I didn't think he was serious, of course, but I told him if we could work it out, we could definitely go!

Let me just paint a picture of how last minute this trip was! On Monday, DH started saying we should really try to make this trip happen. The only time he could go would be that upcoming weekend because he has a lot of things with work coming up soon. On Tuesday, I asked one of my co-workers if she would be able to switch with me at work and work my shift the following Monday in order to give me a 4 day weekend IF the trip were to end up happening. On Wednesday, DH had to find out from work if he would be able to have the weekend off or if work was going to get in the way. That afternoon, we found out the trip was a GO! I got home from work that night and packed up all my clothes for the trip. On Thursday while I was at work, DH took the car to gas it up, did laundry, cut the grass, booked our rooms, and got the house and cats ready for us to be away for 3 nights. And on Friday we got in the car and headed for DISNEY WORLD!! So in less than a week, we decided to go, booked everything, and rolled out. How is that for last minute?!?!

THE PLAN
Our basic plan was to get 2-day base tickets for this trip. We would start driving early Friday morning and spend Friday afternoon/evening in Downtown Disney. Saturday would be spent at Magic Kingdom. Normally I like to end a trip on MK, but this worked better for our schedule. We planned to be there for rope drop, and to stay for the Summer Nightastic fireworks & Main Street Electrical Parade that night. Sunday would be spent at DHS. Again, we planned to get there for rope drop to join the TSM stampede. Then we would leave for home early Monday morning.

So now that the basic info is out of the way, onto the Trip Report!

 

[khertz]

DAY 1: Friday July 30th

As the title states, this trip was pretty much about two things: getting one last Disney fix before the baby arrives, and helping DH start his Vinylmation collection. A few days before the trip, he ordered some online to start the collection and hopefully have a couple to trade when we got to Disney. Here's the ones he got in the mail:

So because we wanted to maximize our time in Disney and have enough time to shop Downtown Disney on our arrival day, we set our alarm clocks for the ungodly hour of 2:15 am with a plan of being on the road by 3 am.

Of course, I had trouble sleeping even though I should have been dead tired after working a 12 hour shift that day, but I was too excited to sleep! I didn't fall asleep until after 11, woke up a couple of times fidgeting, and finally woke up at 2:15 for the alarm.

We had pulled out our travel clothes the night before, so it didn't take us long to get ready, and all we had left to pack was our toiletries and the ice chest of cold drinks we were taking with us. Once we had all of our luggage, snacks, and drinks packed in the car, and we made sure everything with the cats was settled, we got in the car and started our journey to Disney World!

We actually left a little earlier than planned!

Just to mention, the reason we decided to drive this trip was purely a budget issue. The flights were a little more expensive than we are used to paying for flights from New Orleans to Orlando, and once we got there, we'd have the added expense of a rental car. So we opted to drive instead.

DH took over the wheel first since he had napped the day before and actually gotten some sleep that night. I tried VERY hard to sleep in the car, but of course, I was still too excited! I did eventually catch a cat nap just in time to take over for DH when he started getting too tired. We also stopped to grab a very healthy breakfast at Burger King around 6:30 am.

Getting through Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama was a breeze. I got to so something I hadn't done in awhile, that was tradition on our family trips growing up, and that was...

...holding our breath in the tunnel!!

Pretty soon we were stopping at the Florida Welcome Center.

Getting into Florida was exciting, but of course, that doesn't mean much since getting into Orlando is the longest leg of the trip! At one of our rest area stops, we made some sandwiches and ate while driving instead of stopping and spending more time getting food. We had done this on our trip to Washington D.C. and it seemed to make the drive go by just a little faster.

We got to our hotel by 3 pm local time, so the drive had only taken us a little more than 11 hours. We checked into our home for the night, the Destiny Palms Hotel.

It was only $35/night, so you can imagine what kind of hotel it looked like right? Actually, it wasn't awful. The room was nice, but the bathroom was just terrible. The walls were dirty, the shower door didn't stick shut so it would float open while showering, and somewhere between the time we checked in and the time we checked out, the toilet stopped flushing and we had to lift the lid off the tank and pull the chains to flush. Oh, and the walls were paper thin. We spent most of the time we were there whispering because we were sure everyone in the halls would hear us if we talked at normal volume! It was ok for one night, but I'm glad we were moving on to bigger & better things in the morning!

We freshened up, changed clothes, and put on some sunscreen so we could head out for an afternoon at Downtown Disney!

We hopped in the car and it wasn't long before we were out of the touristy area of Kissimmee and started seeing some signs of Disney life!

I let out a big squee when we came upon this!

I have to say, staying offsite it was nice to drive under that sign every morning.

Seeing some Disney busses!

DH, the happy chauffeur!

UP NEXT: Downtown Disney

 

[dhertz]

Vinylmations!!!

Always the Happy Chauffeur when driving to Disney stuff, and I was ready to get out of the car and walk around for a little while.

 

[dvcminnie]

Congrats on the baby and the quick trip. can't wait for more

 

[khertz]

Vinylmations!!!

Always the Happy Chauffeur when driving to Disney stuff, and I was ready to get out of the car and walk around for a little while.

Haha And I'm always happy to be the navigator!! Even though I'm rarely good at it.

Congrats on the baby and the quick trip. can't wait for more

Thanks for commenting! I'm hoping to make another update Monday or Tuesday!

 

[stacikristine]

OH MY GOODNESS! You really did take a last minute trip!! HOW FUN! That's so awesome that you're close enough to drive in less than a day. Louisiana was our 1st night's stop when my family would drive.

Ew. That hotel sounds lovely. It's a good thing you were only there for a night!

Aaaaahhhhhh, I would love to be driving by those signs right now. I can't wait to hear about your time at DTD! And I hope that Dustin found some great Vinylmations!

 

[khertz]

OH MY GOODNESS! You really did take a last minute trip!! HOW FUN! That's so awesome that you're close enough to drive in less than a day. Louisiana was our 1st night's stop when my family would drive.

Ew. That hotel sounds lovely. It's a good thing you were only there for a night!

Aaaaahhhhhh, I would love to be driving by those signs right now. I can't wait to hear about your time at DTD! And I hope that Dustin found some great Vinylmations!

It was SUCH a great idea!!! We definitely needed it & I think it made us both just that more excited to bring little Paxton on his first trip!

I'm hoping I can make an update Monday or Tuesday about our DTD time!

 

[heaven2dc]

Congratulations on your pregnancy!! I can't wait to see the Vinylmations your hubby gets too!!

 

[khertz]

Congratulations on your pregnancy!! I can't wait to see the Vinylmations your hubby gets too!!

Thank you!

He got & traded a ton...and we have several pictures of them, the first of which should be in the update tomorrow.

 

[mandas08]

Loving you TR so far..although I'm not sure I should be reading it due to my recent baby fever lol. Last minute trips seem to always be the best

 

[khertz]

Loving you TR so far..although I'm not sure I should be reading it due to my recent baby fever lol. Last minute trips seem to always be the best

Thanks for reading & commenting! I understand about baby fever for sure. There are 2 other girls at work pregnant right now too, so a few of the other girls are catchin' the fever also!

I was so panicked at the thought of a last minute trip with no time to plan a thing, but it ended up being totally amazing anyway! In the past our "last minute" trips to other locations were a month and a half out. This trip put a new spin on last minute!!

 

[khertz]

We got to Downtown Disney around 4:45 pm and parked down by the West Side. DH wanted his first stop to be a Vinylmation store called D Street that is a newer addition to DTD.

The Characters in Flight balloon was flying, and we both really wanted to try it. It was something we had planned to do on our December trip, but we only ended up at DTD for one night and it was pouring down rain. But, when we went over to check out the price, it said expectant mothers shouldn't ride. :-( I tried to convince DH that I would be ok if he wanted to do it without me, but being a good DH, he said he didn't need to do it if I couldn't.

So our first official stop was D Street.

The decor inside was really cool, so I had some fun snapping pictures while DH went immediately to the shelves full of Vinylmations.

There was a huge table where kids could design their own Vinylmation. The table was completely covered in Vinyls with a glass top over it. So cool looking!

DH shopping for some Vinyls.

He picked out about 5 that he wanted to buy and we went to check out. They even offer to let you open your boxes at the register after you pay for them to trade right then and there if you want, but DH decided to wait on opening them. I snapped a couple more pictures while I waited for him to pay.

We left the store with his first purchases and then headed out to wander DTD some more.

It was cool seeing different performers out. We had never really spent much time at DTD to see that.

Our next stop was my personal favorite, the World of Disney store!

I always get myself lost in that store just wandering from room to room. And they literally have everything there! We were able to do a lot of our souvenir shopping that afternoon, which was nice. We quickly found ourselves in the Infants section and found some VERY cute stuff for Paxton!

He had to try it on first. lol

We ended up getting him that onesie, pair of pajamas, some socks, a Donald plush, and a cute little book. They had Duffy (Mickey's teddy bear) on display with some little books about Mickey taking him on some of the rides at MK, so we got it to get him ready for his first trip to Disney! I took pictures of everything later, so it should be in the next post.

We were both a little disappointed in the selection for infant boys. There was TONS of cute stuff for girls, but slim pickins' for the boys. So we got him pretty much one of everything that was cute!

Continued in next post...

 

[khertz]

After paying for all of Paxton's goodies, we hit up a few other stores like Tren-D, Team Mickey Athletic Club, and Once Upon a Toy, but didn't end up buying anything else.

The train inside the toy store

DH's favorite Donald outside the pin shop

By that time, we were starting to get pretty hungry. Luckily, we were right next to Earl of Sandwich, and there wasn't a huge line to get food!

DH got the meatball sandwich with Baked Lays, and I got the kids turkey & swiss sandwich with a mixed fruit cup. The sandwich was delicious! The fruit was good too for the most part, but I'm not crazy about cantaloupe and honeydew melon, so I mostly ate the pineapple and strawberries. Very refreshing.

While we ate, DH decided to open all of the Vinyls he had bought. He got a few good ones, but set a couple aside for trading.

Our next stop was the Art of Disney store.

We found some really great art pieces that we could never afford, so we snuck some pictures of them instead.

While we were there, DH saw one of the Vinyls he wanted, a Chip & Dale on from the Have a Laugh series in the trading box on the counter, so he made his first trade! They also had the blind box, which we did several times throughout the trip. It was a big box with 24 numbers on it and each number had a different Vinyl behind it. You picked a number, and that was the Vinyl you got if you still decided to do the trade. You could reject the trade or exchange the blind trade for one of the visible ones on the shelf. The lady doing the trade was great. She asked DH what kinds he was interested in and gave us hints on what numbers we should choose. DH ended up trading for one he had really wanted!

We figured we were pretty much done with DTD after that, so we started the trek back across to get back to where we had parked, intending to stop one more time at D Street for a t-shirt DH wanted.

On the way we stopped to watch another interesting group of performers.

When we got back to D Street, we saw something I had only ever seen in other posters' trip reports!

CM sidewalk water art!

DH bought his t-shirt from D Street, and we headed back to the hotel for the night to shower and get everything ready for our busy morning. Before packing everything up, we made sure to get pictures of our purchases!

DH's first haul of Vinyls from his purchases and trades

Baby Paxton's socks, pajamas, onesie, Donald plush, and book

DH's t-shirt

For anyone not familiar with Vinyls (which I wasn't at all until this trip!) the Chaser is the "mystery" design in each case. Every case has 2 of each design shown on the box and 1 Chaser, which just shows up as that question mark design on the box. If you follow Vinyls online though, you pretty much know what the Chaser is. It's usually the "best" one of the bunch, like the Kermit one in the Muppets series, etc. I thought the shirt was cute, so I made him get it, and he was happy he did.

UP NEXT: Good Morning, Magic Kingdom!

 

[mandas08]

What cute purchases I'm thinking i may end up buying way too many things. Great review so far

 

[heaven2dc]

I need to start working some overtime - need more spending $$!! I love the lime green Vinylmation - they are all too cute!

 

[stacikristine]

What a great shopping day! I've never understood the Vinylmations thing, but your explanation at the end helped a lot! They're really cute, but I'd be afraid that I'd never get ones that I wanted.

Aw, your purchases for Paxton are adorable!!! He'll be the cutest little Disney boy! I've found that there are never as many cute boy clothes...which really stinks. GAP has really cute baby boy stuff, by the way!

Oh--and your baby bump is so cute! You definitely have an addition from your last trip!

 

[khertz]

What cute purchases I'm thinking i may end up buying way too many things. Great review so far

We were surprised that we didn't spend that much on souvenirs with the exception of Vinyls, but we had a set budget for those. Most of what we bought was for the baby! We each got a t-shirt, and we bought a magnet since we always get a new one for every trip. Not nearly as much as last time we were there, but we had just been, so there wasn't much that was new. It is easy to go and spend a LOT though!!

I need to start working some overtime - need more spending $$!! I love the lime green Vinylmation - they are all too cute!

I know what you mean! It is easy to spend that $$ in Disney!

I think the lime green on is DH's favorite since that is his favorite color!

What a great shopping day! I've never understood the Vinylmations thing, but your explanation at the end helped a lot! They're really cute, but I'd be afraid that I'd never get ones that I wanted.

Aw, your purchases for Paxton are adorable!!! He'll be the cutest little Disney boy! I've found that there are never as many cute boy clothes...which really stinks. GAP has really cute baby boy stuff, by the way!

Oh--and your baby bump is so cute! You definitely have an addition from your last trip!

I never understood it at all before DH started getting into it and explaining it to me. They are more fun to trade that I thought! It's almost worth it to buy them and get ones you don't want so you can trade them later! Haha

Thanks! We bought all the cute Disney stuff we could lay eyes on, even though there unfortunately wasn't that much. We just got a 6 piece Mickey set in the mail today that was on sale on the Disney store website and was basically half price! He will have lots of cute Mickey stuff to wear!

And thank you again! I'm excited to watch the bump grow. Going pregnant definitely got us hyped up to take him on his first trip when he arrives, so the next trip might not be as far off as we thought!

 

[khertz]

DAY 2: Saturday July 31st

Saturday was a very early morning, because we had a lot to do before we could even consider stepping foot inside a Disney park. First, we had to get up, get dressed, and get all of our toiletries packed back into our suitcase. We grabbed a sad breakfast from the hotel to get us going. On first glance, it looked like they had a great spread of pancakes, waffles, boiled eggs, muffins, cereal, milk, and orange juice on their website. But then we got down to the actual room for breakfast and found notes saying to heat the waffles or pancakes in the microwave for so many seconds. Yuck. So I ran back to the room to get one of the muffins I had packed with us to eat, and had that along with a boiled egg and milk. I think DH ate some cereal and a couple of the tiny muffins provided.

After eating and saying goodbye to that fabulous hotel, we had to navigate our way through Kissimmee to find our home for the next two nights, the Wyndham Cypress Palms resort. We never did take any pictures of the resort or the room, so here is a couple I stole from their website.

Since it was so early in the morning, we of course couldn't get into our room yet, but we were able to do a pre-check-in and store our luggage and ice chest so that everything wasn't left to bake in our hot car all day. After getting all of that settled, getting our parking pass, and declining to do the owner's update, we headed out towards WDW!

Never get tired of passing under that sign!

It was only about a 10 minute drive from the resort to the TTC/MK parking lot. Not bad!

Because we got there so early, we were able to park on the first row behind the handicapped parking. We walked straight to the monorail, very happy after seeing the line at the ticket counter that we had gotten ours in Downtown Disney before with no wait! The line was already crazy to buy them and to pick them up from will call, which I had thought about doing before.

Riding the monorail!

We walked through the turnstiles at 8:25 am for the 9 am opening. We grabbed a map and a times guide, and tried to find a place in the shade to wait for the opening show.

I saw a couple that we had actually seen at breakfast at the hotel that morning taking pictures of each other in front of the train station, so I offered to take their picture, and they took one for me & DH as well!

We found a spot in the middle instead of at the ropes on either side because our goal was to see the opening show, not to make a beeline for any rides or FPs. It was great at first, but then as the sun kept getting higher, our shade started disappearing. We were just roasting in that heat!

We took a few more pictures to pass the time.

DH's favorite color monorail, the lime green one!

Finally, it was time for the show to start and the Magic Kingdom to open! I have never ever seen this show, and I really wanted to on our December trip, but it never worked out with our schedule. I had thought I wouldn't have the opportunity to see it until we take our kids, which I knew would be awhile. So I don't know if it was that fact, or that we were there on such a snap decision, or the pregnancy hormones, or all of the above, but I couldn't stop crying through the whole thing!

First, the Main Street performers came out.

Then came the train with all of the characters!

The family of the day was also from Louisiana!

We didn't get confetti, but we got streamers!

And then it was time to wipe up the tears and go into the park!

We entered on the left side under the train station and joined the mass of people rushing down Main Street. I tried to move a little slower and just take it all in. After all, we were in the Magic Kingdom!

The herd of people ahead of us.

CM's waving good morning!

What a sight for sore eyes! :-D

Continued in next post...

 

[khertz]

One of the first things we noticed was that we were able to walk through the Castle! Every other time, they have already been set up for the castle stage show, so it was roped off. We decided what better way to get to our destination of Fantasyland than to go through Cinderella Castle?

Walking up the ramp

Our view of Main Street

Since we never come this way, we also were never sure where the Sword in the Stone was! So since we happened upon it, DH wanted to try and remove the sword from the stone.

I guess it's in there pretty tight. lol

You might be wondering why Fantasyland was the first place we were headed. Our game plan was simple. I really wanted to ride Peter Pan's Flight, and as we all know, that line gets crazy long! So I wanted to save time and a FP by riding that first and getting it out of the way. And since I couldn't ride all of the "big" rides and we had just been to Disney seven months before, we weren't trying to cram in as much as possible, but just enjoy being there instead.

The wait time for PPF was only 5 minutes by the time we made our way over there. That's the shortest I have ever seen it, for sure! We walked right on.

After flying to Neverland with Peter Pan, we decided (well, I decided and DH submitted) to ride It's a Small World next since we were right there, and it was the only other ride I definitely wanted to do in Fantasyland. We had said we'd do Winnie the Pooh & Snow White if we had time, but we never did end up riding them.

The only other thing we for sure wanted to do in Fantasyland was Mickey's PhilharMagic, but we knew we could do that later in the day without having to wait long. So we headed off to Frontierland to get DH a FP for Big Thunder Mountain, his one must-do that I couldn't do. I definitely didn't want him to miss out on his favorite ride just because I had to!

As we were making our way into Frontierland, we saw Donald out for meet & greets! Besides Mickey, this was the one character we had been looking out for. He's DH's favorite character, and we met 5 different ones (regular Donald, Chef Donald, Woodsman Donald, Fiesta Donald, and Park Ranger Donald) while on our December trip. Also on our last trip, we had drawn Donald in one of the animation classes we took at DHS. So DH got the idea to bring our drawing and have Donald sign it this time so that we can get in framed and hang it in the baby's room.

He hardly had any line, so we jumped in, and the CM cut it off right behind us. Perfect timing!

As soon as we got up to Donald, he got very excited to see that DH was wearing his Donald Duck t-shirt.

Then, DH pulled out the animation for him to sign, and he got even more excited!

I love this picture of Donald signing the drawing because it looks like they are having a secret meeting with each other! lol

UP NEXT: Oh Boy! Meeting Mickey with a Bonus!