Cue the Music: How we MADE money and slept with Ariel! Done!

[Caretames1]

Your John sounds like my John, not a great picture taker. Lol I don’t even bother asking anymore. You’d think wanting full heads in the picture was uncommon.

Yay you’ve arrived!!

 

[mickeystoontown]

I am really enjoying your report. We are thinking of staying at a value resort next time.

Thank you! We that it was a value resort at all. The only issue that we had was the wear and tear of the room.

LOL! We know those shelves well. We used them for lining up the boys little figurine toys and bottled water.

Oh I can totally see little figurine toys lined up on those shelves!

Oh how we loved this about the DDP. We did this every chance we could.

I like how they are a bit more lenient with the dining plan now!

We couldn't agree more.

Looking forward to reading more!

Hope to have another update posted soon.

Your John sounds like my John, not a great picture taker. Lol I don’t even bother asking anymore. You’d think wanting full heads in the picture was uncommon.

Yay you’ve arrived!!

Poor John, he tries but he usually doesn't succeed. Or he takes pictures with the phone and I end up with a "burst" set of about 10 pictures 'cause he holds the take button down too long.

 

[StarWarsMomofGirls!]

I am following along! Can't wait to her how your adult only trip goes!

We returned from our 2016 two week WDW trip and found out that my boss died, John's place of employment closed the same day and, well, everything seemed to go downhill after that.

Oh man! That sounds horrible!!!

I also wanted to tackle some sewing projects for myself. I made a cute little purse.

So cute! Sounds like you keep yourself busy! Lots of Etsy shops and a regular job! Man. I am tired just reading it.

Your dive sounded not too bad. Nice that you can drive down. We live in New Jersey and I know some folks make the drive but we would never survive the trip.

John's cupcake was a spice cupcake with an apple pie filling. There were nuts scattered about on the outside and it was topped with a chocolate square. This was amazing too.

Yum!

Can't wait to hear more about the trip!

 

[mickeystoontown]

Let's spend some of this free money honey!

When we got back to the room, I hung up our shoe organizer that I brought. I put all of our bathroom supplies, hairbrushes, electric razor, etc. in two hanging organizers. It is so nice not to have our things scattered all over the place. And, with the countertops in the value resorts being scarce, the hangers were great. They were a little bit long but it was okay. I didn't take a picture of the hangers in the room but they look similar to this:



After getting the room a bit more organized, I checked my emails. First, my travel agent email to make sure that none of my clients needed me. Second, my personal email. There was an email from Disney and it had a $80 e gift card! Woo hoo! Free money! I'll make my bed and take out trash for $80.00.

It didn't take us long to fall asleep that evening. We had clocked 14 1/2 hours of driving and almost 820 miles over the last two days. We had unpacked all of our things. Walked from one resort to another (okay so it wasn't that far but still). Excitement had our adrenaline flowing but now we were pooped. We realized that we hadn't even turned on the television and watched any of the Disney specific channels yet. We both fell asleep with Disney on the mind.

The alarm chimed the next morning and I hit the ground running. Notice I said "I". John never gets up as quickly. Some of that has to do with taking so many epilepsy meds. I gave him his "wake me up" medication before I hopped in the shower. Before moving on, I'd like to say something about John and his medical condition. Many of you may already know but I'll post it anyway.

John was hurt at work many many years ago...like 25 years ago. He fell and the back of his head hit a cabinet all the way down. He stopped breathing but, thankfully, one of our friends who was a detective/policeman at the time, was there visiting John's boss and he jumped in and performed CPR. They rushed him to the hospital and, after many many tests, came back and told me that he had a bruise on his brain as a result of the fall. We have battled epilepsy for 25 years now. Unfortunately for John, his seizures aren't completely controlled by medication. He still has facial twitches and muscle spasms. They have to change his meds every so often and it's always a stressful time because seizures like to sneak up on you when there's any transition. At one time, he was taking 31 pills a day. He's now down to 19 pills a day. Because he is so medicated at night, they gave him a pill that helps him get up and going in the morning. It takes a little while but the pill does help... a lot. And, then we have his "magic medicine". Those are the pills that we put under his tongue every 15 minutes when gets an aura and facial twitches.

I thought that I'd include that in the report because epilepsy does rear it's gosh darn ugly head at one point in the trip. And, it also factors in when I am planning our itinerary that's in a binder....with dividers....and tabs.

Okay, let's get back to our first park day. I gave John his "wake me up" pill and hopped in the shower while he took his time in waking up. When it was his turn in the bathroom, I stepped outside to take a picture of our view.


That's the Rock Inn across the way. We finished getting ready and were ready to hit up a park!

Today, we were going to our first park of the trip. Normally, we choose Epcot as our first park of most trips. However, things were a bit different this time. There was a new park area in town. Pandora! Like everybody and their great grandma, on my Fastpass selection date, I was frantically trying to snag Flights of Passage Fastpasses. Annnnnnnnd, zippo, zilch, no Flights of Passage Fastpasses. But, I was able to get Navi River Fastpasses. (The next day, I was able to find a Flights of Passage Fastpass for another one of our Animal Kingdom days.)

Like I was saying before, Caribbean Beach Resort is our home away from home. We like the fact that no matter which building you are assigned to, you are never far from a bus stop. We have never minded that there are multiple stops within the resort either. Having said that, we loved the fact that there was just one line and one stop for each park at Disney's All Star Music Resort. The lines have chains around them and they weave back and forth much like those at the theme parks. Unlike at the resorts that have multiple stop areas at Caribbean Beach Resort (and many others that we have visited), guests are much less likely to break in front of you in line at All Star Music Resort. Why? Well, they'd have to "excuse me...excuse me" their way through the line or they'd have to hop over or under the chains to get in front of you. In all of our ten days at Disney, we never saw anyone do this.

Here are borrowed internet pictures that I found of the bus stops at All Star Music Resort:





We waited about ten minutes for an Animal Kingdom park bus to roll up. Oh another thing that I like about the bus stops, you pretty much know whether or not you're going to get on the first bus or have to wait for another. At the resorts with multiple in-resort bus stops, you never knew if the bus that came next would be full. We were close enough to the front of the line that we had no problem getting on the bus and even had a seat.

Most of our Fastpass selections started during the 9 o'clock hour so that we had time to take it a little slower in the morning should John need extra time. On this day, our first Fastpass was from 9:30 to 10:30 a.m. We were at the park, through bag check and going toward the turnstiles at 9:40 or so. We had plenty of time to get to our first Fastpass for the day. The park sign was decorated for the holidays.



Because the value resorts don't have coffee makers in the room and I'm not about to tote around refillable mugs all day, a stop for coffee was in order for John. We joined the line at Kusafari Coffee Shop and Bakery.




I loved the Christmas wreaths in the park. This one that was adorning the window of the bakery had dried grasses and feathers.

Coffee in hand, John was a happy man. I popped over to the nearby bathrooms while he was having his cup of java. Then, we were on our way to our first Fastpass of the day. Kilimanjaro Safaris. The stand by line was 55 minutes.




**Continued in next post​

 

[mickeystoontown]

Let's spend some of this free money honey! continued

Thanks to Fastpass, we were queued up and our safari truck was coming for us in no time at all.



Even though it was pretty busy, we were allowed, as a part of just two, to have a seat to ourselves if we didn't mind taking the very back seat. Um, we are fine with that! Now that I'm posting the picture below, I noticed that I got a man's whole face in the shot. Oops!


Rhino!



I shoulda taken a picture of the animal finding guide so I could tell you the name of this hooved animal. I shall name them the brown white lined horned animal.



We have been on the safari many many times and I can't remember ever seeing the hippo out of the water.



We saw someone crossing the Wild Africa Trek bridge but they were the only one that we saw.




It was time to enter the beautiful savanna:






**Continued in next post​

 

[mickeystoontown]

Let's spend some of this free money honey! continued

Up ahead, we could see some of the stars of the safari. Giraffes! Or, as Hunter named them years and years ago "Lick a bus!". Back when Hunter was about two or so, a giraffe came right up to the safari vehicle, stuck his head inside and licked the top of the truck. Hunter immediately squealed "lick a bus!" and thus giraffes were given a new name.

I know that John didn't do a bang up job on taking pictures during the drive but I do have to give him credit for these. The giraffes were on his side of the vehicle and he did a good job with these pictures.





We left the giraffes behind and entered elephant territory where we saw lots of pachyderms.





It was time to move on and past the Mickey shaped island where the flamingos live:



Up on the hill to our left were the white rhinos just snoozing away the day:



**Continued in next post​

 

[mickeystoontown]

Let's spend some of this free money honey! continued


Lounging seemed to be a theme today. The cheetah was just lounging and looking.


As we rounded the next turn, I was anxious to see if the lions were out and about. They were but they were being lazy today as well.





Warthogs a/k/a Pumbas


These ostrich were coming right for our vehicle


Another hooved animal. The horns were so long!



All too soon, our safari was over. I always love Kilimanjaro Safari and this one didn't disappoint.

**Continued in next post​

 

[mickeystoontown]

Let's spend some of this free money honey! continued

I forgot to insert the safari pictures that I took with my phone. I'll do that now since I can't edit the posts above due to picture limitations. I'll insert them here and then move on.








Alrighty, after the safari, we made another pit stop and I was done before John. I logged into my emails, again to make sure that no clients needed me and then my personal emails. There was another email from Disney and it had come less than an hour after the first one. This one had a $70 e gift card attached. What? I scrolled back up and there was the $80 e card and now a $70 e card. That made a total of $150! I started counting it up in my head and thought, well, maybe they gave us $15 a night credit and actually gave us the first night credit too. That would be $150.00. Yeah baby! More free money!

John met me in the store next to the bathrooms and I excitedly told him about the second gift card. Right then and there, we decided to do something fun with the money. One of the fun things was spending it on two little boys that John's co-worker took into his home. His single parent brother had died and he and his wife took in the two little boys. Money was already tight for them but how could they turn way the little guys? I would have done it too. So, we wanted to spend some of the free money on them and we started looking for things that they might like. The other money, we would spend on ourselves doing something "different and fun".

One of my Dis friends, Dee, had gone on one of the new tours being offered at Animal Kingdom park. It was the new Caring for Giants tour. It was something that I was really interested in and Dee had given it a solid two thumbs up. John isn't an animal kind of guy though. Don't get me wrong, he likes animals but as far as spending time at a zoo or aquarium just looking at animals isn't his cup of tea. When I mentioned it to John, he said that it sounded like something we would enjoy. We found the desk to sign up and, using our gift card, we paid the $30 per person fee. We were set to go on the tour on our second Animal Kingdom day!

**Up next: Tumble Tumble! Remember that time the guy's hair caught on fire?
​

 

[Mopedmom1]

The Kilamanjaro Safari is one of my faves. Love the pictures!

How sweet to think of those boys. What a nice bonus. Kinda like finding a $50 bill in a little used purse!

 

[BellaBaby]

Joining in! Great start so far!!

 

[CarolynK]

Enjoying your report!! DH and I have never been without our kids...someday!

 

[krr126]

You're so sweet to think of the little boys! and I'm jealous seeing your warm sunny AK pics. It was cold, rainy and windy for our AK day earlier this month. Can't wait to read more!

 

[MiracleCream]

All the free disney money, I love it! So sweet of you to get those boys something. What a fun treat to get a tour as well! I can’t wait to read about that. Loving this report so much already

 

[bluejasmine]

WOW $150 free Disney money!!

 

[mickeystoontown]

The Kilamanjaro Safari is one of my faves. Love the pictures!

How sweet to think of those boys. What a nice bonus. Kinda like finding a $50 bill in a little used purse!

I love the safari and could do it time and time again.

I was so surprised to see the extra gift card!

Joining in! Great start so far!!

Welcome! Thanks so much. I hope that you'll continue to enjoy and post.

Enjoying your report!! DH and I have never been without our kids...someday!

Thank you so much! This was our first trip sans kids and it was so odd. I kept wanting to look back to see if we had everybody with us.

 

[mickeystoontown]

You're so sweet to think of the little boys! and I'm jealous seeing your warm sunny AK pics. It was cold, rainy and windy for our AK day earlier this month. Can't wait to read more!

We were lucky with the weather. We had many days of sunshine and just a couple of dreary ones.

All the free disney money, I love it! So sweet of you to get those boys something. What a fun treat to get a tour as well! I can’t wait to read about that. Loving this report so much already

I'm so glad that you are here and enjoying the report! Free Disney money is THE best!

WOW $150 free Disney money!!

I know! Isn't that crazy! $150 to make my bed and take out the trash. At home, I do it for nothin'.

 

[rdkeim]

I'm glad I found your new TR! Better late than never. Couples trips are nice - my DH and I were there early Dec. We had a great time and enjoy being able to just go with the flow.

 

[rteetz]

Great Safari! Giraffes never seem bother by the trucks as they always walk right up to them.

I am looking to do Caring for Giants on my next trip also due to Dee's recommendation so now I am interested to hear your review!

 

[mickeystoontown]

I'm glad I found your new TR! Better late than never. Couples trips are nice - my DH and I were there early Dec. We had a great time and enjoy being able to just go with the flow.

Glad to have you here! It was so weird feeling to be there as a couple but we really enjoyed it!

Great Safari! Giraffes never seem bother by the trucks as they always walk right up to them.

I am looking to do Caring for Giants on my next trip also due to Dee's recommendation so now I am interested to hear your review!

I love the giraffes as they do seem to get really close to the safari trucks.

I'll go ahead and tell you right now that we really really enjoyed the tour! Even John!

 

[BarbieGal457]

I am so happy to hear you enjoyed your tour, and can't wait to hear about it! I am planning to do it on my next trip!