Duck Squared!! - A "Dance the World" Birthday Celebration - updated Sept. 2

[ellajeansmom]

Welcome!!

Here are the quick details of our trip:

Who: Me (Lara) and my daughter Catie (formerly known as Ella on the disboards)

**DH (Ian) and our other daughter Amanda (formerly known as Jean on the disboards) did not join us but they will be mentioned from time to time**

When: June 25 – July 1, 2015

Where: All-Star Music and Carribbean Beach

Why: To celebrate Catie’s 13th birthday and for Catie to participate in the Dance the World event

Here is our WDW history in photos:

May 2009 – Port Orleans Riverside (trip report in signature)


November 2011- Coronado Springs / Swan (trip report in signature) We brought the grandparents with us this time, that's my Dad with us in the picture


February 2013 – Pop Century – no trip report for this one, my SIL and I ran the Princess Half-Marathon and my parents came to cheer us on:

My SIL, my mom, and me


One of the best parts of the race (others were running through the castle and the finish line!)


Had to stop for this photo op!


Showing off my medal with my dad


May 2014 – Boardwalk Villas (rented points for a studio room) – again no trip report but here are a few pics:

One of the few times the girls agree to wear matching shirts these days


Amanda does highland dance so she was showing Merida one of her dances - Merida was very impressed that she managed it in flipflops!



Catie loved the details at Maurice's cottage, especially in the garden.



Next up some background on this adventure!

 

[ellajeansmom]

So, how did this trip come about? A couple of years ago we decided to carry on a tradition that started in my family, that one year the kids could have a birthday trip instead of presents. Now the tradition started in my family because way back when I was turning 11, Prince Charles and Princess Diana’s tour of Canada coincided with my birthday, in fact they were going to be in Ottawa on the actual day. So that was my present that year, Mom and I made the 6 hour drive to Ottawa, spent a couple of nights in a hotel, and spent a day on Parliament Hill waiting for the royals to arrive. We had a fabulous time, on that day Mom shook hands with Pierre Trudeau, then Prime Minister of Canada, and we both shook hands with Prince Charles. The next day we found out that the royal couple was scheduled to have lunch in the hotel where we were staying. This had not been released widely in the Ottawa press, Dad found out from the Toronto news; so we went down to the back entrance of the hotel in the late morning and sure enough there was a red carpet laid out and fancy crowd barriers. We waited with maybe half a dozen other people and soon they arrived, this time it was Princess Di who shook our hand. It was quite the couple of days. When my brothers each turned 11 it seemed only fair that they should get some sort of trip, and so the tradition continued.

By the time we decided to carry on the tradition for our girls Catie was almost 11, so we thought that 13 would be a better year to do it – gave us some time to save, plus it makes kind of a big deal about becoming a teenager. Catie toyed with various places she would like to visit but when it came to decision time she couldn’t resist a mom/daughter trip to WDW…part of the idea of the trip is that just one parent goes so that the birthday girl has one-on-one time and not having to share “their” trip with her sister. We started to plan a trip for some time near her birthday and ended up deciding on late October 2014 to take advantage of the YES learning program, and to see the Halloween decorations. Then in March 2014 she brought home a letter from dance – the studio was looking into participating in the June 2015 Dance the World event. Well, that just seemed too good to pass on…the opportunity to have a practice session with Disney choreographers and dance down Main St?! We couldn’t do both trips, so goodbye October 2014 trip and hello June 2015 trip!

The dates of the base package our studio decided on were Sun. June 28 – Wed. July 1, mainly so that no one would miss any school. Our group decided to stay at Caribbean Beach and the package came with 4-day park hoppers. You had the option to add on more nights to the package either before or after. Catie and I knew we would add at least one day and opted for before as we wanted to avoid the buildup of crowds going into the July 4th weekend. Since this was being purchased as a tour group package, we were not able to add extra nights without also adding extra park tickets. This trip was already costing more than our planned October trip and we had some plans outside of the parks, so to keep our costs from getting way out of control we decided to spend our first night at ASMu and just add one night to the package. Around Christmas Southwest released their summer flights and we were looking at an early morning flight out of Buffalo on Friday June 26. By the time I decided to go for it and book them, the outbound flights had jumped $50 per ticket. Looking at the flights for the Thursday evening I realized it would actually be cheaper to fly down Thursday night and spend 2 nights at ASMu - we would have been staying at an airport “park ‘n fly” hotel on the Thursday night so the cheaper flights more than offset the increased cost of the Disney hotel and the airport parking. Disney math at its best!!

That sums up the background, on to the fun of the actual trip!! Sorry for the lack of pictures in this post, I promise there are lots to come!

 

[ellajeansmom]

Day 1 – Thurs. June 25

Catie made sure she was completely packed before heading to school – her last day of elementary school, next year it is high school! Her Gr.8 graduation ceremony had been the night before, here is a picture of her and Amanda



Anywho, the girls were off and I headed to work. I left work at lunch time and came home and very quickly packed my own suitcase, then went and picked Catie up from school. We stopped for gas, then stopped at Wal-Mart to print a picture we wanted Ariel to sign for us, then we were on the road for the 2+ hour drive to Buffalo. We thought at first that we had totally lucked out at the border, only 3 or 4 cars in front of us, but then 2 of the cars took almost 10 min each. That caused some nervousness but we got through with no problem. There was some traffic between the border and the airport, which was expected as it was shortly after 5pm by that point. We found the economy parking and soon enough the shuttle was dropping us at the departure doors. We had our boarding passes already so went straight to security and were through fairly quickly. It was once we were through that we saw on the boards that our flight was delayed from 7:30 to 9:00. We grabbed some dinner and went to the gate area to wait. Turns out the delay was due to thunderstorms in Orlando.

Finally though we were able to board. I had booked our tickets as 2 separate transactions so because it looked like Catie was flying alone as a minor she was in boarding group A, while I was in group C. They readily let me board with family boarding between groups A and B, and Catie had got us seats up near the front of the plane, so that worked out well. We could see lightning at various times throughout the flight, but it was overall a relatively smooth flight considering the storms we seemed to be flying around. As we only had carry-on, we headed straight to the Magical Express and boarded a bus right away. We waited for another 10 minutes or so and then we were on our way. They let guests off at Coronado Springs and then we arrived at All-Star Music. We quickly checked in and made our way to our room in the Broadway section. Very tired after a long day, we fell asleep pretty quickly.

Day 2 – Fri. June 26

After the later than planned night before, we didn’t set an alarm and just got up when we were ready. I starting moving first and walked back to the main building to get milk for our cereal, when I got back to the room I realized I had forgotten spoons so back I went again! It was only 9am and felt dreadfully hot!

Once ready we headed out, stopping first for a photo op outside the building as a good friend of Catie’s had recently played the lead in her school’s production of Little Mermaid.



The wait for the bus was not too long and we were on our way to Downtown Disney, although the bus ride itself felt long as we stopped at Typhoon Lagoon first, and then the bus went around through Sarasota Springs so it felt like we were going the wrong way. We arrived and headed for one of Catie’s must-do’s: Goofy’s Candy Co. where she chose a Mickey cake pop



We wandered across the bridge to the former Pleasure Island area. We just missed seeing one of the Boathouse amphicars coming back on to land – it drew quite the crowd. We wandered in and out of stores until it was my turn for a snack. I knew I wanted to indulge at Vivoli Gelateria when the opening was announced. My goodness was it yummy! Looks like we forgot to take a picture but we ordered the medium cup and were allowed 3 flavours. We chose strawberry, mango, and salted caramel. It was a nice size for us to share.

We headed back over towards the Market Place. We had some fun trying on hats in World of Disney







Going back outside we listened to a choir performing at the theater and then continued on. Next important stop was Marketplace Co-op. I had birthday money that wanted to be spent on a Dooney &Burke We looked around the other areas before making our way to that section. After a fair amount of deliberation between patterns and styles I finally settled on this one



It is the 2015 Flower & Garden pattern, but I figured that was fine because a) I liked it and b) we had been to the 2014 F&G. Catie had continued browsing while I was deliberating and thought the athletic line was too cute. We texted this pic home to Amanda wondering if her hockey coach would go for this outfit for the team!



We were starting to get hungry but knew we should have a light lunch to leave room for our later meal. I had read some many positive reports about Wolfgang Puck Express that we planned to go there so that is what we did. We decided to split the chicken Caesar salad and a fruit cup.



It was all good and nice to sit down in an air-conditioned space. Very glad that we split the meal as even with the 2 of us we didn’t finish the salad!

We were also on a mission for a friend at a home to find some tsum-tsum’s, which I had never heard of before. We did not have any luck earlier at WoD, so we headed to Once Upon a Toy. According to the CM we chatted to in here, this is the only place on Disney property that is currently selling tsum-tsum’s which sounded odd to me but we didn’t see any others the rest of our trip so she must have been right. Anyways, they didn’t have a huge selection but they did have the mini’s of the Inside Out characters which were on my list. Mission accomplished!

Next we went into Little Miss Miss-Match where we found some smelly socks (in a good way!) for Amanda. They smelled like fruity candy, which after several washes has diminished but they don't stink yet like her socks normally do!!

We also went in the Christmas store and I picked up some ornaments - now I can have a small Disney Christmas tree in our front room!



Our plan was to take a multi-transportation route to our next destination so we made our way to the resort dock and got on the waiting boat. We had a lovely boat ride to POFQ...we both just sat back and enjoyed the trip and neither of us thought to take any pictures. I especially enjoyed seeing the Treehouses along the way – I think though you would definitely want a car if you stayed in one of them and they certainly seem far away from the main resort area.

We disembarked at POFQ for two reasons, first because we had never been to that resort before (stayed at Riverside our first trip) and second because I didn’t want to wait through multiple bus stops at Riverside. The wait for a bus at POFQ unfortunately was one of the longest ones we had, although it was around 3:00 so not really a prime time for going to the parks, and really it was not longer than 15 or 20 minutes. The bus for MK did finally come and as we got off we realized the one flaw in our plan…we were walking right past the entrance and knew we wouldn’t be going through the entrance until the next evening Trying to focus on the present we boarded the resort monorail and were soon at the Grand Floridian.

Up next...the birthday celebration!

 

[Tink loves Olaf 64]

My daughter's dance studio has just sent out info about possibly doing dance the world next summer. Curious to know what was all included and the cost of the different packages? Did the girls get much Disney time or was it more dancing time?

 

[ellajeansmom]

My daughter's dance studio has just sent out info about possibly doing dance the world next summer. Curious to know what was all included and the cost of the different packages? Did the girls get much Disney time or was it more dancing time?

For costs, the information I saw gave us 3 options for resorts - Pop Century, Caribbean Beach, and Swan/Dolphin. The minimum you could book was 3 nights with 4 days of park-hopper tickets, every additional night's stay came with an additional day of tickets. So you had to get park-hopper tickets, and you could not do an extra night without getting an extra day of tickets. This kind of sucked for those that had morning flights as they had a day of tickets that couldn't be used. There was an option for a quick service meal plan but none of our group did that.

When I priced out our dates on the Disney website for hotel and park-hopper tickets, it came out to almost exactly full rack rates - being in Canada they also added a margin for the exchange rate. As an avid planner I found this part annoying as I could have booked the exact same thing myself for much less once room discounts came out, and you would think with the number of guests that do this program they could offer a discount....our studio director was told that in total, over 2 weeks, they had approximately 10,000 dancers!

Our group had lots of time for the parks...follow along and you'll see!! The dancers had a rehearsal on the Sunday evening that took up 3 or 4 hours (including transportation which was provided). Most other groups had performances at Hollywood Studios on either the Monday or Tuesday - our studio opted not to do this, but I talked to another studio that did and they said it was very well organized and only took a couple of hours out of their day. Then there was the parade itself, which took 3 hours out of that day; again this included transportation in a coach bus for the dancers, and we were surprised with buses for the families as well. So really there is 2-3 hours out of 3 days for dance stuff and the rest of the time is your own.

Hope that helps, please ask more questions if you have them and I will do my best to answer. One of the reasons I decided to do this trip report was because I had trouble finding any information from previous years so I am more than glad to help out!

 

[ellajeansmom]

Day 2 cont'd

We enjoyed the sights from the monorail and arrived at the Grand Floridian. Our timing had worked out almost perfectly, we had time for a restroom break (laughing to each other about how much nicer the GF restroom was compared to the DTD one we had been in a couple of hours ago!) before checking in for our ADR at the Gardenview Tea Room.

This meal was Catie’s 13th birthday celebration meal; we had planned this for the original October trip and we made sure it carried over to this one. We were told they would be ready for us shortly so we went to wait on one of the nearby sofas, enjoying the pianist – he was entertaining some preschoolers with Itsy-Bitsy Spider and they were in awe that he knew the song, so cute!

A few minutes later the greeter came to collect us and showed us to our table. Such a pretty room! I was facing back in to the lobby area and Catie was facing outside to the gardens. Because the “windows” to the lobby have no glass in them the piano and orchestra provide lovely background music. Our server came over and explained the menu to us then left us to make our selections. Catie decided on (from All Ears):

The Cheshire Tea
First Course
Selection of exotic fruits and imported cheeses
Second Course
Medley of Finger Sandwiches accompanied with Berries, Cheese and Lavosh
Third Course
Buttery Scone and Jam Tart
Finale
Choice of delicate House-Made Pastries, Strawberries and Creme, or English Trifle

I decided on “The Bedfordshire Tea”, which was the same as Catie’s but did not include the first course of fruits and cheeses (she did agree to share hers with me ). Catie chose the Princess Breakfast Tea and I chose the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party. If I remember correctly, both of these are exclusive to the Gardenview Tea Room, they cannot be served or purchased anywhere else.

Our tea arrived in nice-sized pots with lovely warmers around them and soon after the fruit and cheese plate arrived



The cheeses included, brie, blue cheese, a special cheddar and something else. The fruits were pineapple, mango, passionfruit and starfuit. The orchid was edible, and the little glass bowl contained a honeycomb. Catie developed a taste for cheese while on an exchange in France this past winter so she was delighted with this course. My sampling was yummy

Next was the sandwich course, our plates were identical. I forgot to say that our server identified and explained every item for each course as she served it – not that I can remember it all now!



This was more filling than it looks to be – probably helped by the generous triangle of cheese that you see, plus another one underneath the cracker. I know one sandwich was egg salad, another was cucumber, the open face one I think was cream cheese with fruit on top? Plus the grapes and an onion tart.

The third course is the one you think of for afternoon tea, the scones!



This was served with a jam tart and in the dish is apricot jam, whipped butter and Devonshire cream. Delicious! We were pretty full by this point but we still had the finale. Catie chose the Pastries – it included a chocolate covered éclair, a puffed pastry swan, and a white-chocolate dipped strawberry



I chose the English Trifle.



It was all fantastic but we both left about half of it on our plates, we were just too full.

Our server presented us each with a rose and was kind enough to take our picture to commemorate the occasion



We sat a bit longer finishing up our tea and enjoying the atmosphere. It was a wonderful meal and most definitely a great way to celebrate Catie’s birthday! The whole experience was about an hour and a half. We never felt rushed and never felt like we were waiting too long for anything, so our server had excellent timing.

We decided to explore the GF a bit more before heading out so we wandered in and out of the various shops. Slowly we made our way back to the upper entrance and the monorail. A quick ride to MK, where we once again sadly walked by the gates and found the bus for All-Star Music.

We changed into our swimsuits and headed for the pool. This was one of the times that Catie missed having her sister along as she had no one to play with in the water – I’m kind of boring that way as I just like to float, but we managed. It felt like the pool was getting crowded so we decided to see if the main pool was better. When we got there it was closed, so that probably explains why the smaller one was crowded.

I took this pic on the way back as the sun was hitting the fountain at a pretty angle.



We debated whether to hang at the “quiet” pool some more or just pack it in, and decided to pack it in after another photo-op for our Little Mermaid friend,



and some more heading back to the room.





It was getting close to 8:00 and we knew that we had a long busy day ahead of us so we got straight into our pj’s and watched the premiere of Teen Beach 2 – a bonus for us since we don’t have the Disney channel at home! It was cute but the ending twist was kind of hard to follow. A successful first full day was at an end!

Next time...we finally hit the parks!

 

[jane2073]

Enjoying the report so far!
I remember your "Minnie Hat" report from a couple of years ago. That was a fun read too!

 

[buzzrelly]

Joining in! Love your trip report so far! Your daughter is a very lucky girl! I plan on taking each of mine on a solo trip to WDW someday but the timing just hasn't been right just yet.

We did Dance the World in June 2014 with my DD's dance studio. The girls really seemed to enjoy that trip. We stayed at POP, which I liked more than I thought I would. They did the whole, dance down Main Street and then a show in DHS. Our dance school just announced that they will be doing DTW again in July 2017 and we will be staying at Caribbean Beach this time. I've stayed at CBR once and honestly would prefer POP, but I am not running the show! They also told us that we will not be doing the Main Street parade next time either. I think it was just too hot, and that was in June! I cannot imagine them doing that in July! But it does make me a little sad they aren't doing that because it was really fun to see.

Anyway, I cant wait to read more about your trip and Dance the World!

 

[ellajeansmom]

Enjoying the report so far!
I remember your "Minnie Hat" report from a couple of years ago. That was a fun read too!

Welcome!! Thank you, we have very fond memories from the "Minnie Hat" trip the grandparents would love to join us again but even just 4 years later we would have to go at a much slower pace.

 

[ellajeansmom]

Joining in! Love your trip report so far! Your daughter is a very lucky girl! I plan on taking each of mine on a solo trip to WDW someday but the timing just hasn't been right just yet.

We did Dance the World in June 2014 with my DD's dance studio. The girls really seemed to enjoy that trip. We stayed at POP, which I liked more than I thought I would. They did the whole, dance down Main Street and then a show in DHS. Our dance school just announced that they will be doing DTW again in July 2017 and we will be staying at Caribbean Beach this time. I've stayed at CBR once and honestly would prefer POP, but I am not running the show! They also told us that we will not be doing the Main Street parade next time either. I think it was just too hot, and that was in June! I cannot imagine them doing that in July! But it does make me a little sad they aren't doing that because it was really fun to see.

Anyway, I cant wait to read more about your trip and Dance the World!

Welcome, and thank you!! Yes, she is lucky Really, we had a great time together and it was nice for her to have that time and not have to make concessions to what her sister wanted to do.

How cool your daughter did this as well, our girls all enjoyed themselves. I stayed at Pop for my Princess Half Marathon trip and I liked it. CBR was fine but it is much larger than the value resorts and that could be a factor for some people (spoiler - we were happy with our room location!). It was hot , our group had their parade on June 30 - I don't know how much hotter it gets through July.

 

[mjmstd1]

Can't wait to read more! My daughter and her dance studio are doing DTW next summer and I am so glad I found your trip report.
The tea at Grand Floridian looks amazing and looks like a great way to create memories to last a lifetime.

 

[ellajeansmom]

Can't wait to read more! My daughter and her dance studio are doing DTW next summer and I am so glad I found your trip report.
The tea at Grand Floridian looks amazing and looks like a great way to create memories to last a lifetime.

Thanks for joining in! How exciting that your daughter is doing DTW, it is a fabulous experience!!

Yes, our tea was wonderful...wonderful service, yummy food and the right atmosphere

 

[ellajeansmom]

Day 3 – Sat. June 27

We were switching from ASMu to CBR this morning and wanted to be at Epcot for shortly after rope drop. This would have been very ambitious if we had the whole family but with just the 2 of us we managed alright. We were up and dressed and had our breakfast and out front of ASMu by 8:00!



A kind CM waved over a taxi (one of 3 or so that were sitting in the nearby parking lot) and we were on our way to CBR. While it seemed busy at the Custom House it was more of a bustling busy, we were able to walk right up to a CM to check in. She had some trouble actually finding our magic bands (being Canadian we have to pick ours up at check-in, they can’t be shipped to us) which would not have been an issue as we had our ones from ASMu. She did finally find them – apparently things had been re-organized – and made sure that we were properly set up and ready to go, including credit card privileges on mine.

Small aside here, on both our 2014 trip and this trip the setting up of the credit card privileges did not work on our first night. Both times we checked in after midnight so I have no idea if that has something to do with it. Both times when we checked in to the next resort in the morning there was no issue.

Anyways, as anticipated our room was not ready, although the CM told us we would be in Aruba, building 51, and pointed out to us that the Jamaica bus stop would actually be closer for us than the Aruba bus stop. We took our luggage back outside and checked it with bell services then walked over to the Barbados bus stop to wait for the Epcot bus. After a short wait we were off to Epcot and were soon walking to the entrance. There was no line at bag check and since we only had one mesh bag we barely broke stride! There is definitely something to be said for entering the park just after rope drop – as long as you aren’t trying to get to a popular ride first! It was very relaxed and while there were groups of people taking some morning photo ops the crowds had dispersed and we strolled right through and over to the Land. We had a FP for Soarin’ but it wasn’t valid yet so we walked on to our own personal boat to tour Living with the Land. Yep if you arrive at 9:15am, even on a Saturday in late June, not only is there no line, you get a whole boat to yourself!



When our boat ride was over it was time to use our FP for Soarin’. We chatted in line with some folks who are local and she even works as an occasional CM but they had never been on Soarin’…crazy! They said it was that ‘never explored your own backyard’ type of thing. We told them they were in for a treat as this experience was amazing, and they had the best seats in the house – middle of the top row! We never tire of this ride, and so excited that they are updating to an around the world version!

As we left the Land we were on a quest to find some chipmunks – I wasn’t sure which side of the Character Spot building they would be on – and we found them right away, just to the right as we came down the ramp from the Land pavilion. This was a duo we had never met so they were on our must-do list and they did not disappoint! Big hugs all around and then Dale kept playing with Catie’s ponytail trying to make it look like a moustache! Unfortunately that didn’t get captured in the photos but these are still fun:





Except for the usual crowd at Soarin’ we didn’t feel that the park was very crowded still. We had plenty of time before our next fast pass so we decided to go visit Nemo. I think walking through the queue may have slowed down a few times but we pretty much walked on and came out singing about the big blue world! Catie wanted to see the dolphins but neither of us can remember now why we didn't Anyways we exited and stopped for some photo ops outside the Seas:





We still had a bit of time before our next fast pass so we found a photographer on the backside of fountain – the poor guy, as we approached we saw 3 separate groups ask him for directions or information but no one wanted their picture taken! We got him back on track!





Our window for Mission Space was now open so that is where we headed next. We could have done this standby as the posted wait was only 10 minutes but I wanted to use up our 3 FP’s in case we wanted to get more in the evening. We did the green side as I can’t take spinning and both of us had different roles than before so that was fun. Next up was a new for us attraction, Ellen’s Universe of Energy, a perfect attraction for a hot day! We enjoyed it, I wouldn’t recommend it for younger kids as it is quite long.

It was lunch time and we were getting hungry. We knew exactly where we were going – we had planned this lunch since I first read about this booth, the Taste Track was serving gourmet grilled cheese! Catie had cheddar with apples on raisin bread



I had guyerre with bacon on sourdough. Oh my goodness were these ever good!!



Next time...more fun at Epcot and is our room ready?