Birthday Fun & Pixie Dust! May '14 TR | What I bought update!! 7/1

[ArielLunchBox]

I am loving this TR so far! I love your collages and photos!!! Also, I'm a vegetarian too so it's cool hearing about the food options you guys chose! Can't wait to read more!

 

[CarlaLovesDisney]

Those kid pizzas actually look like a great size! It might because it is dinner time and I am starving, but man, they looked good!

TSMM is a great ride. I just wish the lines weren't so crazy! Build another ride HS, so this one eases up a bit!

They tasted really good too. Now I just wish they were 3x the size And, yes, it is a great ride. I'm so glad I got to ride it this trip. The last two times I went the lines were impossible.

 

[CarlaLovesDisney]

Looks like such a fun trip so far! I really am enjoying your photos. You said you were commissioned to take some WDW photos? That's really cool! Can't wait to read more!

Thank you! I was commissioned by a travel agent to take pictures for her company's website. It was A LOT of picture taking, but still really fun. In the end I had almost 2500 pictures on my memory card, which is almost triple what I have done on previous trips. Thanks for reading!

 

[CarlaLovesDisney]

I am loving this TR so far! I love your collages and photos!!! Also, I'm a vegetarian too so it's cool hearing about the food options you guys chose! Can't wait to read more!

Thank you!!

 

[CarlaLovesDisney]

Hello everyone! After two days of parks, Grant and I were ready for a break. So I'll break up this day in two very short updates. We slept in and it was glorious. We woke up around 9:30 am and had breakfast in the room. We ate some cereal that we had bought. Around 10:30 we left for a morning walk around the grounds.

I'm telling you, this is exactly what Louisiana looks like. It's crazy. After hanging out around here for a bit, we decided to go for some mini golf! I don't know why, because we both suck at mini golf. But we had never done it before! So why not? We went to the Fantasia Gardens and chose the "hard course" because we're crazy and because it looked more like a "real" course. Aaaannd we did horribly. But just look at this thing:

How were they expecting us to do that? Doing this has given me so much more respect for pro golfers. There was an old British couple behind us that were really good and they were laughing at us. There were a lot of re-dos. And there was a moment where I had to jump under a little bridge to get the ball back because I hit it into the huge lake.

I took a few pictures with my iphone of the scenery and the "easy" course. That one looked more like a classic course with the Fantasia theming.

This day was as hot as all get out, so as soon as we finished we went back to the hotel for a little break. We ended up taking a nap. I was loving this whole staying on site thing.

At 4 we headed to Downtown Disney for an early dinner. We wanted to beat the rush at T-REX. I actually completely forgot to take pictures here, but it looks pretty much exactly like the Rainforest Cafe, but it has dinosaurs instead. Again, I was kinda disappointed that there was a lack of vegetarian options. The menu online was different from the actual one. Oh well. We made do with some of the appetizers.

Afterwards, it was time for the Lego Store! Like I said, we are complete geeks. We may or may not have spent 40 minutes building little Lego characters. I built my own, Grant built his own and then we built one together!

Grant picked the gangster, I made an astronaut, and we both made a warrior! I love how they turned out.

Next time: The rest of Downtown Disney! Thanks for reading!

 

[RachelNinja]

Haha, I had to laugh at the "holes of doom" part of your picture! I too am horrible at mini golf and haven't played in AGES. I can imagine it'd be fun with someone else who is equally as bad though!

 

[CarlaLovesDisney]

Haha, I had to laugh at the "holes of doom" part of your picture! I too am horrible at mini golf and haven't played in AGES. I can imagine it'd be fun with someone else who is equally as bad though!

If you haven't tried that course yet, you definitely should! It was very fun! Next time, though, I think I'll try the "easy" course because it looked so adorable!

 

[CaliBear]

Hi Carla! Your pictures are ridiculous. You really have a gift. We hope to stay at POR next time we go to WDW, which will be years from now, but very inviting. You're making me wish we could go sooner.

 

[CarlaLovesDisney]

Hello everyone! Thank you so much for reading!

Continuing where I left off: Downtown Disney! After spending waaayy too much time at the Lego Store, we decided to continue on. First up was ice-cream, obviously.

I love the Ghiradelli Shop. Ice cream and gourmet chocolate. What could go wrong? Nothing, that's what. It was glorious.

After that we decided to browse through World of Disney. Honestly, I never know why I go in here. For some reason I've never bought anything here but I love looking at all things I could buy. And I love looking at all the characters hanging from the ceiling. I think that's my favorite part.

After we walked out of there, however, we noticed something we had never seen before. Once Upon A Toy! I have no idea why I've never been in there. Both Grant and I were five seconds away from building our own light saber, but I noticed something that was way too amazing.

Build your own droid?? Don't mind if I do! Grant and I made them together and made similar ones, but we opted for different hats.

So. Much. Fun. Although we made sure to keep our time here shorter than at the Lego store. Our plan was to stay at stores for 15 minutes tops. But I immediately messed that up. At the Disney's Days of Christmas Store.

So many Christmas decorations and so little time. I surprised myself by not buying anything. But I did browse around for 30 minutes. This is the biggest Christmas store on Disney property, I think, so there's a lot to look at.

Across from the Christmas Store is Goofy's Candy Company. Even though we were stuffed, we figured we could get something for later. While browsing, we found one of these things.

Haha!

And then I spotted chocolate covered marshmallows. They had milk chocolate and white chocolate. And I couldn't pick.

Naturally, I got both. Remember that whole "pick up something for later" thing? Yeah, that never happened. I totally ate these, and Grant helped.

Afterwards, we spent a little bit of time walking around and taking some photos. I was practicing taking photos at night.

I've always thought that Downtown Disney is so pretty at night. I got a few shots in but the other 20 pictures I took came out blurry. Still learning over here. We left around here at 8:30pm and headed straight to bed.

Tomorrow was our last day of Disney fun and we were excited to spend it at Magic Kingdom and Epcot! Thanks for reading!

 

[CarlaLovesDisney]

Hi Carla! Your pictures are ridiculous. You really have a gift. We hope to stay at POR next time we go to WDW, which will be years from now, but very inviting. You're making me wish we could go sooner.

Thank you!! POR is beautiful! I love it so much! I think it's good for the price. The grounds are beautiful and the rooms are wonderfully decorated. When are you going back?

 

[ElenaJane]

Amazing pictures again! I think the less planned non-park days are sometimes the best! So, I think 2/3 of Dinosaurs were Herbivores, so uh, where are the Vegetarian options?!

 

[CarlaLovesDisney]

Amazing pictures again! I think the less planned non-park days are sometimes the best! So, I think 2/3 of Dinosaurs were Herbivores, so uh, where are the Vegetarian options?!

So true! I was really upset that everything was so carnivore themed. The thing that was really annoying though was that I checked the menu online three days before and it was completely different. But yes, I'm really glad that we had a "chill" day. It was so fun.

And thank you for liking my pictures! I'm hoping that I can get better equipment so that I can get good pictures on the first try and not the fifth.

 

[horse11]

Just coming aboard but I wanted to say I love your parade pictures!

 

[CarlaLovesDisney]

Hello everyone! Thanks for reading! Today was the actual day of my boyfriend's birthday. I felt really, really bad for making him wake up early for Magic Kingdom. But we managed to do something I never thought we would ever do. After eating cereal and fruit in the room for breakfast we pretty much flew to Magic Kingdom. I really wanted to see the welcome parade, but we were cutting it way too close. So… we cheated just a little bit. Instead of parking at the TTC and parking and tramming and then monorailing, we parked at the Poly and took the monorail to MK from there. Honestly it saved us a lot of time. I don't think I'll ever do that again, because I don't want to take up the spots of people that are, you know, actually staying at the Poly. Next time, we'll just force ourselves to wake up earlier.

Actual proof that we made it before 9. We actually missed the welcome parade which upset me a lot, but I'm still calling it a rope drop, darn it!

I took some pictures of the crowds. It was crazy and I was a bit scared. Even though we were at the front of the line, it was a very slow moving line, and it took us about 15 to get into the park.

Once we got into the park the crowds dispersed. I wanted to take the opportunity of the light crowds to take more pictures. But first: coffee. I squealed when I saw a Starbucks. Yes, I am one of those people. I was glad to see that the Starbucks still looks like “Disney.” It’s not out of place at all.

Yum!

Grant was happy to have his birthday coffee while I spent some time taking pictures. Magic Kingdom is so beautiful.

And we caught a bit of these guys:

So dapper!

Hello horse friend!

I found the the Anna and Else entrance:

It was 9:40am when I took this picture. Someone behind me said, "5 hours? Let's do it." I will admit, though, that a part of me was trying to rationalize the wait, but we decided against it.
Then Grant ever so patiently tapped me on the shoulder and said, “shouldn’t we be going on rides?” Yeah, the hour of low wit times was slowly slipping away and I was wasting it on pictures. This is why people don’t travel with me.

We didn’t have any fastpasses we checked to see what the wait times were like. The Winnie the Pooh ride was at only 10 minutes and we had never done it before, so we were a little excited. I've always loved Winnie the Pooh.

This ride was so adorable and so well done! I can't believe I never rode it before. This part though:

I did get a little freaked out This part scared me when I was a kid, so it caught me off guard.

After this ride, we checked the MDE app for ride times and found something that I really, really, really wanted to do but I didn't know if Grant would want to wait 20 minutes for. Next time, I'll let you know what it is! Stay tuned! And thanks for reading!

 

[CarlaLovesDisney]

Just coming aboard but I wanted to say I love your parade pictures!

Thank you!! I wish I had taken more, but I'm still a novice and those dancers move quickly!!

 

[CarlaLovesDisney]

Hello all! Sorry I haven't posted in a couple days. Time to reveal what I convinced Grant to do with me: Meet Ariel!! We don't usually meet characters because Grant doesn't like it and he feels awkward, so it's never worth the wait for him. But I love Ariel, she was my first favorite Disney princess. So he agreed.

The line ended up being about 30 minutes long. In the middle of waiting I got a crazy idea.

Me: What if I ask her for a selfie?
Grant: Does she know what a selfie is?
Me: Good point. I'll ask her.

I know. I'm weird. But at that moment I knew I was going to have to make this happen. I felt really nervous for some reason. I kinda felt like I was meeting a celebrity. So I went right up to her, sat down and gave her a hug, asked her if she was breathing ok up here, and she asked me why there are so many humans wearing mouse ears. And then:

Me: Do you know what a selfie is?
Ariel: I'm afraid I don't. What it is?
Me: It's basically taking a picture with this thing here called an iphone.
Ariel: That sounds amazing!
Me: Yeah, technology is crazy. Wanna take one?
Ariel: Yes!

And this was the result:

The photopass guy was giving me this look that read, Are you kidding me? That kinda make me feel very awkward, so I gave her a good bye hug and that was that!

After Ariel, we went and rode the Barnstormer because the line was at 5 minutes. It went by so fast, I didn't really take any pictures! It was a really, really, really short ride. So we checked the MDE app again and saw that Haunted Mansion was at 10 minutes! We were getting pretty lucky.

The castmembers just MAKE this ride. I love how creepy they are. As we were getting out of the elevator part, one of the castmembers yelled out, "Congratulations on being alive, Grant." The guy at the end of the buggies creeped me out too (pictured on the left). He saw me taking pictures and then he STARED at me INTENTLY until we disappeared into the ride. I wish I had been able to take more pictures. I'm still really bad at taking pictures in the dark. But there was no time to be sad, because it was time for: DOLE WHIP!

It took us 20 minutes to get this but it was SO worth it. Yum!

While we enjoyed Dole Whip, we went to go check out Tom Sawyer's Island. Grant had vaguely remembered it from his childhood, and I had never been.

Can I just say: What the cuteness! I love this place. So relaxing. And such great views!

After this, it was time to go. We headed back to the monorail, back to the car and headed to EPCOT!

See you guys next time!

 

[ElenaJane]

I love the CM at HM! That is where I would want to work if I were a CM. Totally get away with being sarcastic and scowling at guests!!

You shouldn't feel self conscious for getting a selfie with Ariel!! Those are the best pics!!

 

[RachelNinja]

What a cute interaction with Ariel! I'm seeing selfies with the characters more often on social media these days, and I still think they're the best! I actually think they're more fun than the ones the PP people take, haha.

I love that picture of the doom buggies! I'm OBSESSED with ride vehicles and track pictures, and getting one of Haunted Mansion is something I've attempted many times.

 

[CarlaLovesDisney]

I love the CM at HM! That is where I would want to work if I were a CM. Totally get away with being sarcastic and scowling at guests!!

You shouldn't feel self conscious for getting a selfie with Ariel!! Those are the best pics!!

I love the HM castmembers too! I wish I could have taken more pictures of them but that line was moving too quickly. I know, a quick moving line is such a big problem to have . I'm still really glad I got a selfie with Ariel too. If the photopass guy hadn't been looking so annoyed I wouldn't have felt bad about it. But if could have all been in my head!

 

[CarlaLovesDisney]

What a cute interaction with Ariel! I'm seeing selfies with the characters more often on social media these days, and I still think they're the best! I actually think they're more fun than the ones the PP people take, haha.

I love that picture of the doom buggies! I'm OBSESSED with ride vehicles and track pictures, and getting one of Haunted Mansion is something I've attempted many times.

That's why I really wanted a selfie! It's the latest craze on twitter, and I gotta stay hip, ya know? It was fun "explaining" to her what an Iphone is.

On the HM ride I took a lot of pictures and that was one of the only ones that came out ok! It's so hard to take good pictures when everything is dark AND moving. Still learning over here! I hope I can do better next time.