Chunkymonkey and Chubbyhubby eat for free! WE ARE BACK! Photo Teasers pg. 23!!

[YukiPhnx]

Mmmmmmmmm, those last two pictures made me so hungry, I just made myself a couple of sunny side ups with hot sauce, hehe

The Venetian looks incredible! Was that just a standard room?

 

[TokyoDina]

I think your copying me! I'm leaving for Vegas tomorrow morning. I'm ready! FIL lives there so we always go for the 4th I'm excited!

 

[annmarieda]

Thanks for sharing the pics. Food looks yummy! What a great picture of you as well. Are you wearing your wish necklace in it?

 

[chunkymonkey]

Wow! You stayed at the Venetian! My family went in august of 2007 and stayed at Circus Circus. We visited a bunch of the hotels and my mom fell in love with the Venetian. I'm hoping to surprise my mom and dad with a stay there sometime soon.

What? You were in Vegas and DIDN'T eat at a buffet??? *le gasp!* Haha, I'm jk of course

I should check out muji. Those mesh bags look awesome. I'm able to compact a lot of things in my suitcase, but it's just a mess finding everything cause I have small items crammed in corners and such.

I've stayed in Circus Circus when I was younger! My parents took me and my aunts/uncles there when they were visiting from Singapore. It was the happening place to be back then! The Venetian is awesome. There are great deals going on right now. We actually only paid for 1 night of the room. The other 2 nights were comped. That's why we got to stay at such a nice hotel LOL. I usually rather spend my money elsewhere in Vegas but The Venetian/Palazzo deal was too good to pass up.

Yup even I was surprised at no buffet this trip. I usually go to the Wynn buffet. It's the best on the strip, IMO. Much better than tht Bellagio buffet which I think has gone downhill in quality over the years.

Def check out Muji. It's such a cute store, and everything is so useful!

Sounds like you had a nice trip. I have never been to Vegas. We are on the west coast, but with kids it just has never seemed like a good idea. Now that most of our kids are getting a bit older we have been thinking about it. I am intrigued by the places you ate at. Never have I had a burger from In and Out...nor have I had one of those lattes.

BTW, cute shoes!

Thanks! If you ever need help with Vegas let me know. I go there once a year so am familiar with some areas. Although I know one end of the strip better than the other.

 

[chunkymonkey]

Mmmmmmmmm, those last two pictures made me so hungry, I just made myself a couple of sunny side ups with hot sauce, hehe

The Venetian looks incredible! Was that just a standard room?

Yup it's just a standard room with king bed. All the rooms in the Venetian/Palazzo have a separate living room, which is nice if you are traveling with a bunch of people, they have someplace to hang. We didn't actually use it much on this trip other than to plop our suitcases in, hehe. As I mentioned before, we got this room comped a few nights because of a great deal we had received from the hotel. So it was cheaper to stay here than at other resorts!

Mmmm, eggs n hot sauce. Yum.

I think your copying me! I'm leaving for Vegas tomorrow morning. I'm ready! FIL lives there so we always go for the 4th I'm excited!

Yay! Sooo lucky! It must be so awesome to be there for 4th of July. I can imagine what great fireworks they must have. Have a great trip!!

Thanks for sharing the pics. Food looks yummy! What a great picture of you as well. Are you wearing your wish necklace in it?

Thanks! Yes I am wearing the Wish necklace! I love it and I don't really take it off now. Only when I am wearing Mrs. Potts. Hehe. I am really digging the gold jewelry. I used to only wear sterling silver but I kind of am in a gold phase now.
The food was sooo good. Guess I need to go on a diet now, no more indulging!

 

[trickiwoo]

Sounds like you had a lot of fun in Vegas!!!

I've never eaten at In n Out before... but man does that burger look good! I'll have to go there next time I'm in San Diego!


I've never been to the Circus Circus in Vegas, but I stayed at the Circus Circus in Reno many times as a child!

 

[therussells08]

I'm glad you had a good time in Vegas! That food looks delicious!!

 

[flamestarrdust]

Vegas Recap:

We flew one of my favorite airlines, Jetblue, direct from JFK to LAS. The Jetblue terminal is fairly new, and they have one of my favorite stores, Muji.
www.muji.us/store/
For those of you who don’t know what Muji is, it’s basically a modern Japanese store that seels everything from luggage, housewares, to travel-size containers, stationary, and even clothes. Everything is very modern, clean, and functional. I really love their travel-sized containers that come in different sizes. So I buy them a lot. This trip was no different. I purchased two 2oz plastic bottles, a plastic pill case and a few packing cubes.
The cubes are nylon and mesh and look a lot like these from Rick Steve’s, but I bought 2 of them in the small size in burgundy, and 1 larger one in black

They are great for neat packing and also great to organize clean vs. dirty clothes. I may get a few more for DH too since I like them a lot.

Flight in Vegas was uneventful, and when we deplaned, we rented a car. We had to take a shuttle to the car, and the line at Thrifty was not that long but it was moving soooo slowly. There were only 2 people at the counter! Grr. I was a Blue Chip member which is their version of frequent flier miles, and usually you can use a kiosk, but after asking about 5 people where the kiosk was, they told me they didn’t have one. There was a separate line for Blue Chip members but when I went onto that line, I wasn’t sure if it really helped as there was only 1 person working on that queue!! Sigh. So after waiting about 20 minutes, we finally got into our car and drove off. Got an economy rental, but the car had absolutely no power. I drove at a snails pace on the highway because the car wouldn’t go any faster, LOL. I will probably not rent an economy car again.

We stayed at The Venetian, which is one of my favorite hotels. All the rooms have a separate living room and the bathrooms are bigger than our bedroom in our apartment, LOL.

Rather than go into a play-by-play of what we did in Vegas, I’ll just share what we did and the meals we ate:

In-n-out!!! I had the double double animal style. For those of you who don’t know, In n Out is the best fast food burgers you’ll ever have. The freshest ingredients, at a very low price. Animal style means it has grilled onions, mustard and special sauce. They don’t have this back in NYC.  We did get to go twice though, yay.

Hot N Juicy Crawfish. I saw this place on the Travel Channel and just HAD to go. I love spicy seafood, and this one was fantastic. Reminded me a lot of The Boiling Crab in California where they serve you the seafood hot and steaming in plastic bags. Warning: very messy! Me and DH split 2 lbs of shrimp and 1lb of snow crab in the Hot n Juicy special sauce. Sides of corn and rice too. We came here twice too since it was so good we wanted some more, the second time we only shared a pound of shrimp since we had to gobble our food to make it to our flight back home.

Bouchon for brunch and also for dinner another day. My favorite restaurant in Vegas, and pretty much the United States. Classic French cuisine done extremely well. For brunch, I had the boudin blanc n eggs, and DH had the Breakfast Americaine, which was basically eggs, bacon, sausage, pastry, coffee and juice. For dinner, I had the croquet madame, which is basically a ham n cheese sandwich with a fried egg and mornay sauce. It is the best sandwich I have ever eaten! Served with the best fries ever. DH had the pork loin which was good too. I *heart* Bouchon. I have never had a bad meal here.

B&B which stands for Batali and Bastianich. An Italian restaurant by famed chef, Mario Batali and Joe Bastianich, a restauranteur. It was delicious. I got the linguine with pancetta and clams, and DH had a steak. Although after the dinner, we felt a little ill. We weren’t sure why though since the food was really good.

Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf for my favorite drink, English Breakfast Tea Lattes. They also don’t have this in NYC, so I drink it all the time when I am out on the west coast. I’d get 2 tea lattes a day. An iced on during the day and a hot one at night. 

LAVO for some drinks and clubbing. Me and DH are not big club goers at all (well, I was in college but that was eons ago!). But our friend was celebrating her birthday and so we all had a night out. I wore heels out for the first time since my wedding, and boy did my feet hurt! It's bi-level and the lower level is a restaurant as well. We didn't eat here by my friends did and they said it was OK.

We went to see Jersey Boys. I am not really much of a musical/broadway person. I have seen my share when I was younger and I am not too interested as an adult (unless it's at Disney!). But our friends went to to se Cirque du Soleil's O, and we didn't want to see it so saw this instead. I must admit I really liked it and highly enjoyed it. We purchased the cheapest seats in the back row mezzanine but and usher kindly upgraded us to orchestra!!! That was probably why I enjoyed the show so much, hehe.

Did a bit of gambling, but didn't actually win anything! But spent a lot of time by the pool, a LOT of eating, and did some shopping. Although I didn't buy anything big, I did get a pair of these flipflops on sale:

They are super cute and are metallic-y shimmery which make them slightly dressier.

Overall, a fun trip with lots of food. It was nice to just chill and walk around. However, me and DH kept losing our key cards to our room. It was a pain to keep walking back to the front desk to get them replaced. Hope it doesn't happen at WDW too often! I will post a few pics later tonight. I didn't take too many since I didn't have my DSLR and most places we went to were too dark to get anything decent.

Your trip sounds so fun! I have never been to Vegas but I really want to go one day and your mini TR makes me want to go even more . By the way, I didn't get to mention this to you yet but I read your Honeymoon TR and I loved it . That place is soooo beautiful! A new addition to my wish list of places to visit and that bungalow was just AMAZING!

 

[Cat0727]

Vegas sounded so much fun! My friend went to Vegas last year and he said all he did was eat, mostly at buffets, LOL. I never knew such a large part of going there was eating. I used to think it was all gambling and entertainment.

Your food pics are making me sooo hungry lol. Bouchon looks great. If I ever go to Vegas I'd definitely check that place out!

 

[topdog]

Here's the double double animal-style burger from In n Out:

Now that's a burger. Yummmm...

DH racing go karts

We have those here in PA to but I never went to one. Looks like a lot of fun.

I just discover Sony now has a new mirrorless camera call the NEX-5. It's even smaller than the 3/4 camera and it can still perform like a DSLR. Very interesting. Pricing is only about $100 less than the GF1 but the lens seems to fall short a little. I still like the GF1 a little better.

I finally had a chance to play with the Olympus EP1 yesterday at Best Buy. I do like the size of it. Can't wait until I get my hand on the GF1.

 

[BippityBoo]

Sounds like you had a GREAT trip!!! The food looked AMAZING Your room was beautiful as well

 

[HeatherBelle614]

What a fun trip!!

The food looks fantastic!

 

[tinacaplan]

Hi! I thought I had subbed to this a LONG time ago, but apparently not. Your trip to Vegas looked like a lot of fun. And I have to say, after seeing a lot of them, you take AMAZING pictures.

As for your dilemma with your resort choice, I have faced the same one each tme. We really want to stay at CR, but there is simply no way, deal or no deal, to justify a thousand dollar jump in price (which is abou what i've usually priced it out a). POFQ looked beautiful when we walked through it in February. I am sure you'll have a great time there.

 

[chunkymonkey]

Hope everyone had a fantastic 4th of July weekend! I have a mini-update planned including pics of our new bathroom! We finally moved back this weekend after month-long stay at home, and although I miss my parents, it's great to be back home with all my stuff and all my clutter, lol. Here's a first set of some replies for ya. Will write more tonight!

Sounds like you had a lot of fun in Vegas!!!

I've never eaten at In n Out before... but man does that burger look good! I'll have to go there next time I'm in San Diego!

I've never been to the Circus Circus in Vegas, but I stayed at the Circus Circus in Reno many times as a child!

You have to go to In-n-Out at least once! I swear you will be a changed person, LOL. I honestly was not a huge burger fan until I tried In-n-Out and now, I've become a bit of a burger snob.

I'm glad you had a good time in Vegas! That food looks delicious!!

Thank you Joni! My belly is proof that we ate too well in Vegas..

Your trip sounds so fun! I have never been to Vegas but I really want to go one day and your mini TR makes me want to go even more . By the way, I didn't get to mention this to you yet but I read your Honeymoon TR and I loved it . That place is soooo beautiful! A new addition to my wish list of places to visit and that bungalow was just AMAZING!

Aww thank you! The bungalow was fantastic! I def want to go back one day.
I think Vegas is great for an adult-getaway. Although we did see a lot of kids around. I am not sure how they managed to pull that off since it's actually quite smokey and there are slot machines EVERYWHERE in the casinos that I am thinking it's better to leave the kids at home?

Vegas sounded so much fun! My friend went to Vegas last year and he said all he did was eat, mostly at buffets, LOL. I never knew such a large part of going there was eating. I used to think it was all gambling and entertainment.

Your food pics are making me sooo hungry lol. Bouchon looks great. If I ever go to Vegas I'd definitely check that place out!

Yum, yes buffet is a big part of Vegas. I found that it's truly worth it for people who enjoy eating different things though, like seafood, meats, shellfish, sushi, etc. I have friends who are picky eaters and all they ate at buffets were potatoes and salad.

Def check out Bouchon. There is the original one in Napa Valley too, but they are both really good.

Now that's a burger. Yummmm...

We have those here in PA to but I never went to one. Looks like a lot of fun.

I just discover Sony now has a new mirrorless camera call the NEX-5. It's even smaller than the 3/4 camera and it can still perform like a DSLR. Very interesting. Pricing is only about $100 less than the GF1 but the lens seems to fall short a little. I still like the GF1 a little better.

I finally had a chance to play with the Olympus EP1 yesterday at Best Buy. I do like the size of it. Can't wait until I get my hand on the GF1.

Ooh nice! I have to check out the NEX-5 too then. Mirror-less? That's pretty neat. Even more gadgets to play with! Let me know when you get the GF-1. I can't wait to see your shots with the camera!

 

[chunkymonkey]

Sounds like you had a GREAT trip!!! The food looked AMAZING Your room was beautiful as well

Thank you!! The Venetian/Palazzo ranks as one of the best rooms I've stayed in. And I used to travel for work and stay at the Four Seasons in London, so that is saying something!

What a fun trip!!

The food looks fantastic!

Thanks Heather!

Hi! I thought I had subbed to this a LONG time ago, but apparently not. Your trip to Vegas looked like a lot of fun. And I have to say, after seeing a lot of them, you take AMAZING pictures.

As for your dilemma with your resort choice, I have faced the same one each tme. We really want to stay at CR, but there is simply no way, deal or no deal, to justify a thousand dollar jump in price (which is abou what i've usually priced it out a). POFQ looked beautiful when we walked through it in February. I am sure you'll have a great time there.

Hi Tina! Good to have you back on board! I have to catch up on your PTR too! Thank you so much for the compliment! I enjoy taking pictures and sharing and seeing everyone elses's pics too.

That was exactly my feeling, that the huge jump in price point for the CR vs Moderate was just not worth it, especially since we rarely use resort facilities, like the pool, or spend much time at the resort. But I too think POFQ looks really pretty so I'm pretty excited to walk the grounds and take pictures!

 

[chunkymonkey]

So I've been reading a lot about everyone else's top 10 lists and I thought I should make one, or a few, myself. This list is the top 10 things I am most looking forward to this trip!

Top 10 Things I am Most Looking Forward to on This Trip:

10) Staying On-Property! We have never stayed on property before. This will be the first time. So we are super excited to be totally immersed in Disney Magic!

9) Doing ME for the first time, unfortunately not for our trip there, since we arrive too late, but def on our way back.

8) Doing Free DP!!! We have never done a DP before, let alone Free DP LOL. Sooooo looking forward to this, and this probably was the trigger for the decision to make a trip this year.

7) Epcot. We are Epcot fiends. nuff said.

6) Bringing my DSLR to WDW for the first time! I wonder if this will slow me down or make me run at a frenzied pace to keep up with everything...

5) Trying Tonga Toast. It just looks sooooo good. I want to eat everyone else's picture of it.

4) Traditions. We have WDW traditions, like heading straight for Tomorrowland the minute we enter MK, and getting a FP for Space Mountain before going on Buzz Lightyear over and over again.

3) Beating DH in Buzz Lightyear....it rarely happens, but it has happened before, so I am going to go on this ride over and over until I beat DH....grrr

2) Writing a TR!!! I am having so much fun with this PTR that I can't wait to share my experiences with a TR after our trip is over. It will definitely keep the magic prolonged for weeks after the trip is over. I've really enjoyed this journey on my PTR with all of you, and it's so much fun making new friends on the DIS Boards!!!

1) Planning the next trip!! Yes, everytime I go to WDW, I always think about what I want to do on the next trip down! Either a missed attraction, a cancelled show, or a forgotten parade...I keep thinking about my next trip!!



So that's it for this list! I definitely want to make more lists as they are super fun. And also I do like lists in general.

And as a side note, while digging around snapfish.com for old pics, I came across our pics from the very first trip to WDW that me and DH took in 2003. We had only been dating about 10 months at this time. I can't believe how young we look! Also back then, digital cameras were pretty bad so I apologize for the poor quality of these pics.


Here's us at afternoon tea at the GF:

A pic in a store, I think in DTD. I like how the mirror is framing DH!

A pic of DH at the Princess Storybook Breakfast at Norway Pavillion:

He did really well with the princesses:

This is me with Mulan. She was really cute:

With Tigger and Pooh! Think Tinacaplan has a very similar pic on her PTR!!

And here's us at CRT!! What a nice meal that was!

Anyways, it was so funny seeing those pics again, I thought I had lost them in a computer crash several years ago but thankfully I had saved them on snapfish, whew!

To be posted later on...a pic of our new bathroom and a pic of my new camera strap!

 

[YukiPhnx]

Ooooh, everyone makes a list? I want to make a list too! There are SO MANY THINGS I'm looking forward to too!

I wanted to try free DP this time too, but the extra cost of buying tickets from Disney and no discount on the room didn't make it worth it. Mostly because I had already bought my tickets from Undercover Tourist.

I think your DH looks aged....but you don't look that different

 

[chunkymonkey]

Hope everyone had a great 4th of July! We had a mini-gathering of some friends, and we got to reveal our new bathroom. It was quite the weekend because I ended up spending all night Saturday and all day Sunday cleaning the place, which had a thick layer of renovation dust all over everything. So it definitely was quite a chore. It's good to be back home though after staying a month at mom and pop's place, but I do miss my parents!

Anyways, here's some pictures of our new bathroom. I don't have any old before pics, because, well, it was so damn old and ugly I couldn't take pics of it before, so just imagine the ugliest bathroom ever and that was our bathroom before.

This is the bathroom right when it was finished. We're expecting glass sliding doors as well which will be installed shortly.

Here's the bathroom with all our "stuff"

Here's a soap dish I purchased from target. It came in a set of 3 including a small wastebasket and larger container. So cute!

Here's a close-up of the tile work around the sink area

It feels so good to take a shower now! It's a completely different feeling than before. It's been super duper hot in NYC this past week and taking 3 showers a day is quite enjoyable.


On a side note, here are pics of the camera strap I purcahsed from Etsy:

And the Disney Outlet was having a sale so I purchased this t-shirt for DH for 5.99!

It super soft! All the t-shirts were in such large sizes, and this was the only one I saw in DH's size, otherwise I would have bought more!


Anyways, that's it for now, I really want to work on another top 10 list...I am thinking a top 10 list of Disney Traditions? Meaning what me and DH do everytime we are at WDW!!

 

[trickiwoo]

So I've been reading a lot about everyone else's top 10 lists and I thought I should make one, or a few, myself. This list is the top 10 things I am most looking forward to this trip!

I've been thinking about my top 10 list, but I'm having a hard time narrowing it down to just 10 things!!! Haha, I'll post mine soon!

10) Staying On-Property! We have never stayed on property before. This will be the first time. So we are super excited to be totally immersed in Disney Magic!

I've never not stayed on property, so I have nothing to compare it to... but I loved staying on property! Even at a value! It really is all Disney all the time! And oh so convenient!

9) Doing ME for the first time, unfortunately not for our trip there, since we arrive too late, but def on our way back.

Aww! It's a shame you don't get to ride it there! It's way more fun to ride it going to Disney than leaving Disney! Though I guess it's a nice little bit of Disney magic to end your trip!

8) Doing Free DP!!! We have never done a DP before, let alone Free DP LOL. Sooooo looking forward to this, and this probably was the trigger for the decision to make a trip this year.

Me too!!! I'm really curious to see if the DP is something we'd consider paying for in the future. It's nice to be able to test it out for free to see if it's something we like!

7) Epcot. We are Epcot fiends. nuff said.

I am definitely most looking forward to Epcot! Last year we really only had time for Future World. So this year I'm really looking forward to checking out the World Showcase!!!

6) Bringing my DSLR to WDW for the first time! I wonder if this will slow me down or make me run at a frenzied pace to keep up with everything...

Me too!!!! I can't wait to see all the photos I take! But I am worried of getting more tired from carrying around a heavy camera. And I'm also worried about annoying The Boyfriend by stopping every 2 seconds to take a picture!

5) Trying Tonga Toast. It just looks sooooo good. I want to eat everyone else's picture of it.

Oh, I've never tried it, but I want to so bad! Sadly The Boyfriend isn't a breakfast person, so we decided not to make any breakfast ADRs. Maybe one day...

4) Traditions. We have WDW traditions, like heading straight for Tomorrowland the minute we enter MK, and getting a FP for Space Mountain before going on Buzz Lightyear over and over again.

We've only been to WDW together once, so The Boyfriend and I don't have any traditions... so this trip will be the trip to make traditions!

3) Beating DH in Buzz Lightyear....it rarely happens, but it has happened before, so I am going to go on this ride over and over until I beat DH....grrr

I didn't like that ride at all! But I love Midway Mania!!!

2) Writing a TR!!! I am having so much fun with this PTR that I can't wait to share my experiences with a TR after our trip is over. It will definitely keep the magic prolonged for weeks after the trip is over. I've really enjoyed this journey on my PTR with all of you, and it's so much fun making new friends on the DIS Boards!!!

I look forward to reading your TR!

1) Planning the next trip!! Yes, everytime I go to WDW, I always think about what I want to do on the next trip down! Either a missed attraction, a cancelled show, or a forgotten parade...I keep thinking about my next trip!!

Hahaha... I don't need to be in WDW to plan future trips! I'm already thinking about what I want to do on my next trip... looking at how much it would cost to stay at different resorts, looking at menus for restaurants I'm interested in trying, thinking about what time of year I want to go (I really want to go to the Food and Wine festival!!!!)


Awww! I love the pictures!!!! That's so exciting that you found those!!!! My parents have no idea where their old photos are of us at Disneyland in the 80s and 90s. I would love to find those!!!!

The bathroom looks fantastic!!! Love it!

 

[YukiPhnx]

That's your bathrooom??? At first when I saw the pictures, I thought you were going to talk about a hotel you stayed at!

Wooow, it's really beautiful.

$6 for disney shirts? I envy the States.......

That strap is really cute! But wouldn't it get too hot in the summer around your neck?