"But WHY did you do it?" Our Annual Disney Christmas trip PTR/TR Completed 10-17-11!!

[Roxychica7]

Congratulations on the engagement!!! How exciting to have a Disney engagement story! Can't wait to hear all about it!

Thank you!! I'm getting started FINALLY tonight!

CONGRATULATIONS!!!!

Oh my goodness! I'm so excited for you!

I can not wait to hear the details!

Aw thank you!!!

 

[Roxychica7]

Here I am!! Finally off to start this trip report! Again, I apologize sincerely for the delay. Between Christmas, the crazy 14” snowstorm we got, catching up from the snowstorm, New Year’s, working on my Master’s project (I am FINALLY almost finished!), then now getting sick, I think I have about used up all the excuses I can. So what’s next? I owe you all some updates! And I PROMISE I will be much better about updating now that I am about caught up on life!


So where were we??


Tuesday December 14th.
It was a crazy week, but I was really excited to get going. I got off work fairly late and as you’ll see from my attire in the pictures coming up, it was cold and I was all over the place trying to finish packing! I knew florida has been crazy in December. We’ve had weeks where it was 85 degrees all week, 50 degrees all week, half 85 and half 50 and some were it even got down to 35! So we were ready and grabbed a little of everything: shorts, pants, tanks, short sleeve shirts, bathing suit (just in case), sweater and sweatshirt. It was freezing in VA Beach, so I knew I’d be wearing my heavy coat on the plane with my ugg boots and would bring tennis shoes for walking and a lighter jacket in my suitcase. Blake did the same thing, except no ugg boots for him….can you imagine that?!

So that night, we fed the fish, spent some time with Riley,

as you can see, she was ready to pack herself away,

and put our Magical Express passes on,

which thankfully the Pop century tags got to us in time! Here we are, with my beautiful attire of my work tshirt, zip up hoodie, candy cane fleece pants and a scarf on. Man, am I stylin’ or what?!

We went to bed fairly early, already doing our usual…”Ok, this time tomorrow, what ride are we going to be on?” Goodnight!


Wednesday December 15th. I had done most of my fish tanks on Tuesday, so all I had were 4 (Lynnhaven, Tropical, General Booth and Red Mill). I finished up about 11:30am. My original plan was to stop at home and grab Riley and take her to the vets for boarding since it was right around the corner from our shop, but..I felt bad and wanted to spend some time with her before we left. So, I went straight to our shop, worked on my shop stuff (topping off the tanks, feeding the fish, making salt water..you know…fish stuff!) I wanna say it was close to 1pm by that point, so I hit the road, and grabbed us a chicken carver sandwich from Boston Market, boy do I love their sandwiches! Blake was almost there, he had gone into work a half day and planned on getting home about 3. So I went home, it was 1:45 by then, ate, got a shower, packed all my toiletries away in my bag and brought everything downstairs. Blake got home and said that his friend David, who lives around the corner from us, was getting off from the Navy at 3:30 and would be there at 4:15 to take us to the airport for our flight.

I headed out the door, grabbed Riley and took her to the vets, and got back..I wanna say right at 3:50, so we kinda chilled for a few, but you know how it goes before you leave, “OH, I forgot this!” “OH, I forgot this too!” and wanted to make sure I got it all!

David pulled up at 4:25, we got in and thankfully we’re very close to the Norfolk Airport, so pulled in at 5:05. Last year we flew out, there was no one, I mean NO ONE in line and were through security quickly so we were hoping it would be the same deal this year. David passed the Southwest section, so we jumped out and walked back to it. Here’s Blake!

We checked the flight...yep, still on time!

Hmm…looks empty to me!

Checked in, threw the bag on the belt, showed our ID’s, went through security and were at the gate at 5:15pm! 10 minutes…now we have almost an hour to kill!

No biggie, we grabbed water, a bagel and boarding started at 5:45pm. We took off at 6:08pm, and thankfully, with the help of a xanex, it was a very smooth flight. Normally on flights to Orlando, Blake and I play Disney hang-man, but over the years he has gotten SO good, that we just chatted about what all we were going to do. It was very relaxing!

We landed 35 minutes early!! What a tailwind! Pulled in at 7:40pm, got to the shuttle...here's Blake!

And had to take a picture of the Orlando tree...this thing is so big and pretty! It was really starting to get me in the mood to see all the Disney decorations!

We got off the shuttle, and found the 3rd floor for Disney’s Magical Express. A quick blurry pic, which they didn’t make us stand in line for....empty again!

The CM signed our book and pointed us in the direction to line C and then row 6 for Pop Century!

At the end of row 6, the CM goes “Are you ready?!” And we say “YES!” so we’re on the bus 8:05pm, unfortunately have to wait about 15 minutes for some families, which ended up being about 7 in total including us and we hit the road at 8:20. Here we are!!

The driver told us it was currently 46 outside...definitely felt colder to me!

Blake took a power nap and the driver announced this bus would be stopping at Caribbean Beach, Pop Century, then Boardwalk and Beach Club. A little blurry, and dark but a picture none the less of the sign!

We stopped at CBR at 8:50pm, 1 family got off…we were off to Pop and pulled in at 9:03pm.

 

[Roxychica7]

On Monday, the 13th, I had done online check-in, so as we got to Pop, pardon me for the blurry pictures please, I was SO tired at that point and wasn’t taking the time necessary to get clear pictures of the lobby

We headed to online check-in. There was 1 or 2 people ahead of us, and got to the counter in no time. The CM told us we were in 7140 in the 80s building (YAY for 80’s!), were given the usual booklets and map and our Anniversary pins for our stay and went off in search of our room.

Now I don’t care who you are, but always the first few times of wandering off to find that new Disney room assignment, I always get lost. It must have taken us 15 minutes to find our darn room, which was in the very back of Pop. I could tell Blake was a little bummed about it. So I let him cool off for a few and I took some pics of our room.

Flat screen...pretty fancy.

You can tell Blake is concentrating hard on the map, trying to figure out where the heck we are.

This is the point to which we were trying to decide what to do. We always like to get to DTD at least once, so we risked it and dropped our stuff at the room and walked back to the bus station and got on the bus right away at 9:45pm. The thing that perked Blake up a little was the bus driver announced on the loud speaker that “a very special couple was celebrating their anniversary” and he looked down at his pin and said “cool” with a smile.

Wow, did not realize how far away DTD was from Pop, but we pulled in at 10:05pm.

We went straight to…..can you guess where?

Rainforest! Our favorite! We both plopped down at the bar, already exhausted, and ordered at once, since we already knew what we wanted without the menu, a Green Python for Blake, a Strawberry Daquiri made with Coconut Rum for me

and we each got a Chicken BBQ wrap, mine without cheese.

Each of the drinks were $7.50 well worth it and $14.99 each for the wraps. A little pricey, but we know they’re good, so we didn’t have a problem ordering them and knew as we were on the dining plan, there wouldn’t be many thing we would be paying out of pocket for. I jumped up and of course took some pictures of the fish tanks..I can’t help it!

The food came quick and we scarfed it down! Boy were we hungry. We stopped into the Christmas store quick before they closed and picked out a traditional Disney ornament, looked around at the Art of Disney store quickly, then decided that even though we would LOVE to look around some more, it was already late and we had lots in store for the next few days. So, we boarded the bus at 11:05pm, walked back from the bus station through the 90’s parking lot and found it was MUCH quicker to get to our room instead of going through the lobby, which made Blake tons happier.

All I wanted to do was put my pj’s on and call it a night. But, when we got to our room at 11:17pm, there was no luggage.

Hmmm…Blake called and they said, “oh yes, they’re just unloading it now, it’ll be there within the hour”
I ended up falling asleep like this

And our luggage arrived to our room at 12:50pm. Needless to say, if we take another late flight, rather one where we don’t go to a park for most of the day, we’ll be taking our luggage with us.

Oh well, lesson learned, no biggie, but we were ready to sleep and sleep we did….as the next day, we would be hitting…


EPCOT!!

 

[jenjolt]

YAY for arriving!!!! I don't know what you are talking about...you look cute in everything Jess!!

Riley is such a doll baby!! What a cutie!!!!

Love the Christmas decoration pictures!! So awesome!!! No one decorates better than Disney!!

YAY for no lines!!!!!

Yummy Dinner!!!!!! Now can't wait for the first full day!!!!!! EPCOT here we come!!!

 

[2xcited2sleep]

Perhaps it is because I already know the outcome but I can't help but thinking that Blake is a man with a plan to propose to his girlfriend in most of the pictures. What a grin he has on his face. Even though he knew you'd say yes, of course, he must have still been nervous. So cute. I can't wait until we get to that part of the story.

No luggage when you got back? That would have caused me to meltdown... glad you handled it better.

Looking forward to more.

 

[Roxychica7]

YAY for arriving!!!! I don't know what you are talking about...you look cute in everything Jess!!

Riley is such a doll baby!! What a cutie!!!!

Love the Christmas decoration pictures!! So awesome!!! No one decorates better than Disney!!

YAY for no lines!!!!!

Yummy Dinner!!!!!! Now can't wait for the first full day!!!!!! EPCOT here we come!!!

You are TOO cute Jen! I feel like you would be the best trip companion EVER, always so excited to start/carry on with each day!
But yes, YAY for arriving! wish we were still there arriving! And NO ONE can even come close to Disney decorations!

Perhaps it is because I already know the outcome but I can't help but thinking that Blake is a man with a plan to propose to his girlfriend in most of the pictures. What a grin he has on his face. Even though he knew you'd say yes, of course, he must have still been nervous. So cute. I can't wait until we get to that part of the story.

No luggage when you got back? That would have caused me to meltdown... glad you handled it better.

Looking forward to more.

You are so right C! He does have such a beter smile on his face than usual! I promise though, the next day at Epcot is THE day, so we are only a few posts away!
Yeah I was a little shocked about the luggage, they say give it 3 hours, but that was almost 6 by the time it had gotten to our room!

 

[jenjolt]

You are TOO cute Jen! I feel like you would be the best trip companion EVER, always so excited to start/carry on with each day!
But yes, YAY for arriving! wish we were still there arriving! And NO ONE can even come close to Disney decorations!


You are so right C! He does have such a beter smile on his face than usual! I promise though, the next day at Epcot is THE day, so we are only a few posts away!
Yeah I was a little shocked about the luggage, they say give it 3 hours, but that was almost 6 by the time it had gotten to our room!

Awww Jess...you are too sweet!!! I would love to meet up with you on a trip...too much fun would be had for sure!!!

But youu'd better not make us wait another week for THE day!! LOL well I guess if you have too LOL!!! I want the story LOL

Just glad you are feeling better, being sick is yucky!!!

 

[oOJulieOo]

Yay for arriving and arriving early! Boo for late luggage!

I can NEVER find my rooms at Disney World. NEVER. It usually takes me till day 2 or 3 to remember where the heck my room is!

Oh, I can not wait for the details of the engagment!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Charleston Princess]

We always wander aimlessly looking for our room at the Disney resorts! Glad we are not alone!

Both of you look so excited to be at Disney! Love it!

 

[Roxychica7]

Awww Jess...you are too sweet!!! I would love to meet up with you on a trip...too much fun would be had for sure!!!

But youu'd better not make us wait another week for THE day!! LOL well I guess if you have too LOL!!! I want the story LOL

Just glad you are feeling better, being sick is yucky!!!

We definitely need to meet up one day! I just remember seeing pics from yours and Leslie's trips, you holding up the front of the line with both thumbs up! You are too good!

Yay for arriving and arriving early! Boo for late luggage!

I can NEVER find my rooms at Disney World. NEVER. It usually takes me till day 2 or 3 to remember where the heck my room is!

Oh, I can not wait for the details of the engagment!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I don't know what it is...it's like you get there and this Disney maze quest begins!!

We always wander aimlessly looking for our room at the Disney resorts! Glad we are not alone!

Both of you look so excited to be at Disney! Love it!

You are so not alone..we got a little better by about the 3rd day, but I swear, there needs to be a thread just about conquering the finding of the room! We are/were so excited to be there..we took our "excited" pictures, but I decided not to post them

 

[MegansMom]

Besides no luggage and not being where he would have hoped at Pop, I think it was a lovely evening!! I agree with C that you can almost see it on Blake's face....how happy/nervous/excited he must have been every moment leading up to the big proposal! Can't wait for more sweetie!!!

 

[Roxychica7]

Besides no luggage and not being where he would have hoped at Pop, I think it was a lovely evening!! I agree with C that you can almost see it on Blake's face....how happy/nervous/excited he must have been every moment leading up to the big proposal! Can't wait for more sweetie!!!

I would have to agree! Defiitely would have liked to have been more awake, but it was wonderful!!

 

[Roxychica7]

Thursday December 16th 2010

Today was the day. Well…the first day in Disney, but also the day that Jess was oblivious to what today actually was.

We slept HARD, each taking our own bed and were fine with it! I think I ended up waking up at 4:30am, realized I was still dressed in my shirt/sweater/scarf combo from the night before and changed into my PJ pants. I went back to sleep until 7:30 and was already excited and wanted to get up, but I knew the week would take its toll on me, so I layed back down until 8:05am. Got a shower, and then tried to figure out what in the heck to wear.

Temp for today was supposed to be 74, with some wind, so I opted out for the shorts and put on pants, a short sleeved polo shirt with a tank underneath and my windbreaker. Good idea, layering.

We came out of the room, took a picture of the world around us.

Nice walk-man.

Btw, my dad still calls anything a walk-man (i.e. his cd player and now more recently his Ipod…funny man)

Bus line didn’t look too bad this morning…

I wanna say it was 9:15 at this point.
I knew what I wanted after looking at the menu briefly and got in line for a yummy Waffle

Here’s our choices. Blake got the Bounty Platter ($8.29) which had a little of everything (eggs, biscuit, french toast sticks, potatoes, sausage, bacon) with OJ and I got a Pop Waffle with Strawberry Topping ($5.69)and an OJ. We weren’t in the mood for anything sweet, so we opted for a water a piece instead of the dessert. We used the first of our 2 CS credits here, total was $24.88

Breakfast was delicious

and I ended up stealing most of Blake’s breakfast potatoes this week. Yum yum! We jumped on the Epcot bus, here she is in all her glory!

Within 5 minutes we were ready to go! Beautiful sights already!

Ah…the first sight of the Epcot ball!

Love all the poinsettias and topiaries! They moved a lot of the ones this year, normally they have the Mickey, Minnie and Pluto ones out front by the Epcot ball, but as we saw later, they were around World Showcase instead. Not really sure why..they were a great backdrop for the photopass!

Now this lady caught me off guard at first. I was like "holy crap! what's she doing!?" But, all was well. Apparently they had a very hard freeze, I took a picture somewhere, but a sign they had posted all over said that Jack Frost had visited them, and had caused a very hard freeze so they had to re-plant mostly all of the poinsettas. Crazy!

I was determined to try Soarin’ this trip, so we headed in the direction of...

You guessed it….The Land. The wait time was 40 minutes, heck no…so we grabbed our first fastpass of the trip and were informed our standby time was 1:24pm. While we were here, we jumped in the 5 minute wait line, which was more like a minute and a half wait line for the Land.

I always love this one. The theme ride. The Disney water smell. All the greenhouse sights. LOVE it. Some of the goodies.

Us biology geeks love this one. The fish are fertilizing the plants.

We emerged from our boatride in search of another ride.
Anyone else think the ball looks awesome from underneath? Such cool texture.

Next...we were off to ride....

 

[jenjolt]

WOOT WOOT another update YAY YAYAY!!! It's THE day!!! I'm very very excited!!!!

What a great start to the morning, that waffle looks absolutely delicious!!!!

Oh EPCOT at Christmas time, what a delightful site!!!!

OOOH SSE...I just love that ride!!!!

 

[oOJulieOo]

Yum! Your breakfast looks delicious.

I can't believe you slept so long in your clothes!

I'm so excited that it's the big day!

 

[Charleston Princess]

Breakfast looks yummy, and I always enjoy seeing Epcot pictures! I didn't realize the fish were fertilizing the plants there -- very neat! As many poinsettas as they have at Disney, that would be a lot of replanting!

Okay, you have your Fastpasses for Soarin', you've ridden The Land and SSE, keep going...I need you to get to The Story.

 

[Roxychica7]

WOOT WOOT another update YAY YAYAY!!! It's THE day!!! I'm very very excited!!!!

What a great start to the morning, that waffle looks absolutely delicious!!!!

Oh EPCOT at Christmas time, what a delightful site!!!!

OOOH SSE...I just love that ride!!!!

Oh I do love me some waffles at Disney! And now the breakfast potatoes too! Epcot...this year has totally made Epcot bump up to my 2nd favorite now

Yum! Your breakfast looks delicious.

I can't believe you slept so long in your clothes!

I'm so excited that it's the big day!

Thanks girl...I was SO tired, but of course Blake had to document the event! It's coming I promise!

Breakfast looks yummy, and I always enjoy seeing Epcot pictures! I didn't realize the fish were fertilizing the plants there -- very neat! As many poinsettas as they have at Disney, that would be a lot of replanting!

Okay, you have your Fastpasses for Soarin', you've ridden The Land and SSE, keep going...I need you to get to The Story.

Oh my gosh you guys are crazy..I'm getting there!!
But yes...The land..fish and plants, how cool is that?! A lot of the poinsetta displays were completely bare as we were walking around, I wonder if they ended up having to replace all of them?!

 

[Roxychica7]

We were off to Spaceship Earth! The line was about 5 minutes or so, you know how it can wrap around SSE, but it goes by quick because it’s constantly moving. Love this one. A few of my favorites.

Rome

The Renaissance

That groovy future chick with the go-go boots

The future at the end always cracks me up. Not really sure what Blake is doing...but a sample of our future!

After we got off, Blake went to find a restroom and I hoped into the Art of Disney store. Now I am going to smack myself for not remembering the Artist’s name, but one of the Disney lithograph/painters was in there signing his pieces, I wrote down “Bob” in my travel notebook….

Yes…that helps a lot?? Seriously Jess…more info next time.

Anyway, awesome pieces, some of them were like the 4 seasons of Disney, I remember one with mickey decorations on the beach…gosh darn it, let me know if you know the artist I’m talking about! It was cool seeing a real Disney artist though, I just LOVE the galleries all around the property!

So after I found Blake, we saw the gorgeous as always fountain,

and took a B-line for the Cool Club.

Now, Blake in past years was un-aware of Beverley, but this year, he was prepared, well…as prepared as he was going to be!

Ready to face her. Can't you tell how excited he is to be revisiting her?

And the end product.

My turn…

And...


just as bad as I remembered

I have a new favorite this year! The Apple Soda from Mexico…yummmmmy! You must try it if you haven’t before!

Next up…we jumped in line, the single rider line that is for Test Track. The wait was 40 minutes, and we have no problem getting split up on this one. In the “line” which took all of about 3 minutes.

The best part about the single rider line? You get to skip the video! Proof…Blake was behind me in the next car.

We headed on to World Showcase because we were getting snackish, but first, the pretty bright blue trees with the Epcot ball! They had a really cool Gospel singers thingy on that stage right after I took the picture.

We found them!

Continued in next post...

 

[Roxychica7]

We stopped into Canada, because we never have before

and found some nice soap. Beaver Butt anyone?

And some decorations.

Now off to England..I always like checking out the Tea Shop there. Now I love coffee, but I also love tea. So I stepped in to see if there was anything good. I REALLY wanted to go into the new shop at DTD, but alas, maybe next time!

The garden behind the tea shop is lovely. There’s lots of flowers and the little cottages are so cute!

Next, it was off to France. I never get a picture of the backdrop from this country in the daytime..

love when they turn the fountains on at night!
Who did we see???

MARIE!! How adorable is she?!

It was our first character of the trip, we grabbed our photopass

and then turned and saw another character! Aurora!

I will admit, she was our first “live” character, I’ve always felt a little weird about posing with a non-costumed character, but I didn’t care, we were trying new things this year. And she was too cute! If you ask Blake about her, he’ll tell you, “She asked me if I slayed dragons and waltzed with you” Funny boys!

And this little girl was too cute.

Aurora got down to this little girls level expecting her to give her a hug and the little girl just PLOPS right now in her lap! You could tell she was a little taken back, but as always she played it off very well!
It was a beautiful day. A few pictures of the lake.

Anyone notice this before?

I was taking a picture of it, cause it looked cool, the little fishing rod, bike and painting and then I looked up and said “oh…it’s THAT building across the water!” What a neat little touch!

After our walking, Blake decided he had made up his mind what he wanted his snack to be, and of course it was WAY on the other side of WS. But it was ok, because the weather, even with the wind, was great. We called back home and they had about 2 inches of snow, on top of 2 inches of ice on top of 2 inches of sleet. Um…we will definitely take the 74 with the breeze today!
What better time than to stop and grab a drink? I am a big fan of these Grand Marnier slushies!

Perfect!

Blake posing like Goofy!

We were on our way to get our snack, I figured I’ll drink while we walk….What country were we heading for??

 

[jenjolt]

LOL love your future too cute! Don't you just love a woman in gogo boots, doesn't every scientist wear boots like that LOL!!!

You have never walked around Canada LOL!! Glad you found the cute soap LOL!!!!!! I still say they need more hockey stuff around there LOL!!

Awww your picture with Marie is too cute!!!!!!!!

Okay....two more updates...and still no proposal...what are you trying to do to me Jess....LOL!!!