"Excuse me, your child can NOT go on stage with Mickey":Jan 2013 TR! updates x 3! 6/5

[lvcourtneyy]

Hey everyone! So I've read a million TRs on here and decided I really want to try to do one of my own!

So here's our story!

WHO:

Me: Courtney- I'm 22 (will be 23 next month! ). I graduated from college in May 2012 with a BSN in nursing and unfortunately am waiting for the hiring freeze of new grad nurses in NYC to end! In the meantime, I work at a dog groomer nearby. I'm obsessed with all things Disney and am a stuffed animal collector! My favorite Disney character is Ariel and it has been since I was 2!


DSCN2707 by RN Courtney, on Flickr

Here's a picture of me (on the right!).

DBF Chris: He's 23. We have been together for 4.5 years now. He is in school studying business. He enjoys bodybuilding and works as a diet consultant. He hopes to become certified as a personal trainer and is in the process of deciding his long term career path! He loves Disney also, although is not quite as obsessive as I am. He doesn't particularly have a favorite Disney character but is fond of Lion King, Aladdin and Nightmare before Christmas.


DSCN2035 by RN Courtney, on Flickr
This is a picture of the two of us at my college graduation!

 

[lvcourtneyy]

Ok, I posted that first to make sure I was doing this right before I continued too far!

Anyway,back to the who. It was originally planned as a trip just for the two of us but his sister heard our plans and she wanted to come too! So she, her husband and their 2 year old came as well.


DSC06341 by RN Courtney, on Flickr

Here's a picture of all of us at Presley's first birthday party. All the way to the left is Rick and all the way to the right is Jen. Clearly the baby is Presley.

Jen is a stay at home mom. They live in Pittsburgh and have a zoo in their house: 2 dogs, 3 birds, some fish, some frogs and a tarantula! Rick works as a tattoo artist.

WHAT, WHEN, WHERE and WHY:

An 8 day trip to Walt Disney World from January 3-10. We stayed at Pop Century!

Chris and I went to Disney last January from the 3-9th but stayed offsite. Both of us had been once before as kids. My family went with Make a Wish so we stayed at Give Kids the World Village and his stayed at Shades of Green. So it was my first time onsite and I don't know if Shades of Green counts as onsite!

Jen had been twice before, as a kid with Chris obviously and once on her honeymoon for her first marriage but I have no clue where she stayed. This was Rick and Presley's first visit!

Anyway, after our first trip together last January, we really wanted to go back again! We thought our first trip would be our last for a really long time as we were both in school but when we ran the numbers we realized we could afford to go again!


Photo0156FourBySix by RN Courtney, on Flickr

This is us on our first trip last January!

 

[lvcourtneyy]

Anyway, I hope people will read this! Let me know if there's anything else I should have included so far before I continue on!

Chapter Links:

Intro 1
Intro 2

Arrival Day
Arrival Day
Pop Century!
Downtown Disney
Downtown Disney pt 2

Day 2: Epcot
Jan 4: Day 2
Epcot part 2
Epcot part 3
Epcot part 4
Epcot part 5
Epcot part 6: posted 2/3!
My Birthday! 2/5
Epcot part 7 posted 2/6!
More Epcot Fun posted 2/11!
Illuminations part 2 and more! posted 2/11!
End of Epcot! posted 2/11!

Day 3: Hollywood Studios
Hollywood Studios! posted 2/19!
Character Meeting at DHS posted 2/24!
Wandering in Circles at DHS posted 2/25!
Beauty and the Beast pictures posted 2/25!
More Wandering in DHS posted 2/28!
Toy Story Mania posted 3/4!
More DHS posted 3/4!
Everyone Meets Buzz and Woody at DHS! posted 3/10!
The Confused Update! posted 3/17!
Fantasmic! posted 3/27!
Fantasmic and Osborne lights! posted 3/27!
End of Hollywood Studios posted 3/27!
Real Life Update: Munchkins and another trip! posted 3/30!

Day 4: Magic Kingdom
Magic Kingdom day and the Welcome show! posted 4/3!
Fantasyland Expansion! posted 4/3!
Tomorrowland posted 4/12/!
An Update of Characters! posted 4/12!
Storybook Circus! posted 4/24!
More Magic Kingdom posted 4/24!
Princesses and Garbage Cans! posted 4/24!
Celebrate a Dream Come True posted 5/6!
Celebrate a Dream Come True part 2 posted 5/6!
Celebrate a Dream Come True part 3 posted 5/6!
Dream Along with Mickey and Almost Getting Kicked Out of MK posted 5/19!
Dream Along with Mickey posted 5/19!
Meeting Tink and Periwinkle posted 6/6!
PTR Link! posted 6/6!
Wishes and Celebrate the Magic posted 6/15!
Wishes and Celebrate the Magic part 2 posted 6/15!

Day 5: Animal Kingdom
A Freezing Cold Morning at AK! posted 6/22!
A Freezing Cold Morning at AK part 2! posted 6/22!
Stuck on Everest! posted 6/30!
Dinosaurs and Characters! posted 6/30!
Wilderness Explorers! posted 7/11!
Presley Photo Shoot and Character Greetings! posted 7/11!
Donald and FOTLK! posted 7/28!
FOTLK and Tusker House! posted 7/28!
Conservation Station! posted 8/7!
End of AK day! posted 8/7!

Day 6: Universal Studios
Islands of Adventure! posted 8/23!
Universal Studios! posted 8/23!

Day 7
A Fancy Breakfast! posted 10/6!
Characters Galore! posted 10/6!
Storybook Circus! posted 11/23!
Adventureland/Frontierland! posted 11/23!
Celebrate a Dream! posted 5/2!
Wishes! posted 5/2!
Wishes part 2! posted 5/2!

Day 8 (Departure Day )
Final visit to the Magic Kingdom! posted 6/5!
Final visit to the Magic Kingdom part 2! posted 6/5!
Final visit to the Magic Kingdom part 3! posted 6/5!

 

[jenniferreich]

You're doing a wonderful job! Thank you for sharing your trip! I look forward to reading more, and I hope you're having a great day! Jennifer

 

[jasonflk]

Keep us updated, as your dates are similar to when we plan to go next year so I'm intersted how you found crowd levels and the rides.

 

[GrumpyFamilyof5]

carry on

 

[lvcourtneyy]

You're doing a wonderful job! Thank you for sharing your trip! I look forward to reading more, and I hope you're having a great day! Jennifer

Aw thank you!! I'm so excited to have people who want to hear about it!

Hope you're having a magical day as well!

Keep us updated, as your dates are similar to when we plan to go next year so I'm intersted how you found crowd levels and the rides.

I love going in January! As I said, we went two years in a row, pretty much the same dates. I think 2012 was less crowded than this year, but crowds definitely got lower as the week went on and I guess some kids had to go back to school!

carry on

Will do! I want to wait to get my photopass CD to start the park days but I can do arrival day until then!! I took 1300 pictures this trip and we preordered photopass + so we had 650 pictures before edits so I'm going through and deciding which to include!

 

[MK2010]

Very cool! But out of curiosity, what's with the freeze on new grad nurses? Come to Texas baby and we'll put ya to work!

 

[lvcourtneyy]

Our flight was scheduled for 6:45 AM! I'm not a morning person at all but when it comes to Disney I am! I love the idea of having a full day on arrival day and at this time, our flight was $90!

My alarm went off at 3:30 AM but I was awake before it! In fact, I barely slept cause I was too excited! My dad volunteered scratchin ok maybe he WAS volunteered) to drive us to the airport and my little sister (who was in the first picture I posted of myself) was home on break from college and doesn't go to sleep until 5 am came along for the ride.

I brushed my hair and teeth, packed my last minute items, ate some cheerios and a banana, loaded my luggage into the car and stopped to pick up DBf (who only lives 30 seconds away) and we were on the road by 3:50


IMG_20130102_145825 by RN Courtney, on Flickr

There's my luggage all ready to go!

We got to the airport by 4:20, which if anyone is familiar with NYC, we had to go from Staten Island to JFK in Queens so it was a minor miracle to get there that fast! Although at that time, we only saw a handful of other cars on the road!

We flew Jetblue which is the only air carrier I want to fly anymore (free first checked bag, free TV, unlimited snacks and drinks and it's always pretty cheap from here!). I had checked in the day before and printed our boarding passes so we just had to go to the luggage counter. There were maybe 5 groups in front of us when we got there but a guy came around to make sure everyone in the line had a boarding pass already and no one else in the line did and had to switch to the other line! So we were next and done in about 5 minutes!

We made it through security in about 20 minutes with no trouble (except the guy made a smart comment about my giants sweatshirt )! anddd it still wasn't even 5 AM! So we looked around the newsstand which was just opening for any good magazines, made a stop at the bathrooms and stopped at Au Bon Pain so I could get a Coke and a chocolate croissant. Then we went to our gate to wait!


20130103_050735 by RN Courtney, on Flickr

This is the screen the greeted us at the gate! Rain and 68 was fine with us since it was about 30 degrees here!


20130103_053233 by RN Courtney, on Flickr

Here we are waiting! I took it with my phone so it isn't the best picture! They started boarding at 6:15 and we were so excited that the wait didn't even bother us!

Before we knew it, we were on the plane!

20130103_094555 by RN Courtney, on Flickr

I was really excited I was able to get a Coke so early on the plane. I have a bit of an addiction. The flight went without incident, except that a bunch of the TV channels weren't working which kinda sucked but whatever. We mostly slept and I listened to some music on my ipod and we were there in no time!


DSCN0039 by RN Courtney, on Flickr
A picture from the plane!

My ears hurt terribly when we land every time, no matter what I do but other than that it was uneventful. We took the fake monorail over to the ME area and were lead to the line and didn't wait 2 minutes before we were led to a bus! We boarded the bus and were on our way! It was around 10:15 by this point.


DSCN0040 by RN Courtney, on Flickr
We were amused by the ME video,as we hadn't seen it last time cause we stayed off-site. I know the bus stopped at one other resort, I wanna say it was CBR. But soon enough we saw


DSCN0041 by RN Courtney, on Flickr

Sorry the screen on the window interfered with the picture but it's the thought that counts! It was 10:56 when we pulled into Pop! I had done online check-in and we ran into Classic Hall and were the first ones on line! In no time I had our packet and our room keys and our room was already ready!!! I had requested 50s lakeview and close to Chris' sister. We were in 50s building 2.

Side note: Jen, Rick and Presley were coming in today as well but they flew separately since they were coming from Pittsburgh and their flight didn't get in until 5:30 PM I asked the guy if he could tell me if our rooms were close to each other and even had her confirmation information but he said he wasn't allowed. As it turns out they were in building 3 but it wasn't a big deal.

We walked to our room and were instantly in love with the resort! We got to our room and thought it was perfect for our needs!

DSCN0042 by RN Courtney, on Flickr

I guess he was tired because we pulled into Pop at 11. It was probably 11:15-11:20 when we got to our room and my iPhoto says this picture was taking at 11:37

So I called my mom to tell her we were safe and took some pictures!

DSCN0043 by RN Courtney, on Flickr

cont in next post! I hit my picture limit!

 

[lvcourtneyy]

DSCN0044 by RN Courtney, on Flickr


DSCN0048 by RN Courtney, on Flickr
The view from our room!

I let him rest for a bit and at 12 we headed out to the main building. I was hungry and we had shipped water and Coke ahead of time and I wanted to find out how to get it. On the way, I of course took some pictures!


DSCN0049 by RN Courtney, on Flickr


DSCN0050 by RN Courtney, on Flickr


DSCN0052 by RN Courtney, on Flickr


DSCN0054 by RN Courtney, on Flickr

Our room was in the building to the left of the jukebox.

DSCN0055 by RN Courtney, on Flickr


DSCN0058 by RN Courtney, on Flickr


DSCN0060 by RN Courtney, on Flickr


DSCN0061 by RN Courtney, on Flickr


DSCN0064 by RN Courtney, on Flickr


DSCN0069 by RN Courtney, on Flickr

We got to Classic Hall and went to the concierge desk and asked about the water and Coke. It took the lady like 15 minutes to find it and she carried them out to the desk. This was our first non-helpful CM at Pop! She brought them to us and said "Ok anything else?" We politely asked if there was a cart we could use to bring them to our room as they were heavy and it was a bit of a walk! She looked annoyed and called someone from luggage services and told us to wait. 20 minutes later someone came. The man who came was very nice and helpful but I told him we just wanted to borrow a cart and could do it ourselves but he insisted. So we walked back to the room with him and dropped the cases off and found out our bags had already been delivered from the ME!

We now walked BACK to Classic Hall and went


DSCN0071 by RN Courtney, on Flickr

to get some food. I got some chili cheese fries and Dbf ate some protein bars. Because of his bodybuilding, he had been dieting for 16 weeks already and was not going off the diet until later that night so he'd been having a rough day of protein bars

Afterwards, we went back to our hotel to relax for a bit and unpack.


DSCN0074 by RN Courtney, on Flickr

All my stuff unpacked around the sink!

Around 2:30 we headed to the buses

DSCN0077 by RN Courtney, on Flickr

to go to DTD!

This is where I'm gonna leave off for now! Next time we'll continue with our DTD experience! Thanks anyone who's reading!

 

[lvcourtneyy]

Very cool! But out of curiosity, what's with the freeze on new grad nurses? Come to Texas baby and we'll put ya to work!

Ahh it's so awfulll! I don't mean to be obnoxious or brag or anything but I went the college of nursing at NYU and graduated with a 3.8 GPA and can't find a job to save my life!!!

One of the big hospitals in the city closed a few years back and there's a surplus of experienced nurses without jobs and so little money for hospitals apparently that a lot of them cancelled most of their new grad orientations last year. It's so frustrating. I'm definitely looking into relocating right now!

 

[katt789]

I'm here!!

Looks like a pretty decent trip for you guys so far!! I have to say that I love Pop, for a value resort, it's pretty awesome, we're staying there in Feb, and I'm excited!

Excited to read more about your DTD adventures!

 

[Janet B]

Hi Courtney!

Followed you over from the POP FAQ thread! Love all your pictures so far! BTW, I love coke too (but Diet Coke). I always get my money's worth out of the refillable mugs!

I was in Disney from 1/9-1/13 (met up with DIS friends) and the weather was beautiful wasn't it??

We usually head to DTD as well on our arrival/departure days. Looking forward to reading more about your trip.

P.S. You mentioned a wish trip for your sister years ago -- hope she is doing well.

Good luck wiith hearing soon on a nursing job!

 

[ilovedisney1982]

Have fun on your trip! And I wish you the best of luck with your nursing career!

 

[CleKait]

Excited to read your trip report! I'm staying at Pop in 4 days!

 

[VeronicaBride]

Great report so far. We are off to Pop on Feb 1st so loving the build up!

 

[MK2010]

Ok, so I have to admit, it was really late the other night at work when I was reading your TR and somehow I happened to miss that you were staying at Pop! That's where we want to stay in Oct.! So why did you choose the 50's building? Just curious. And if your looking for a job, I'm pretty sure we're going to have a PRN position open at my itty bitty surgery hospital! Lol! (Only 3-4 patients per night. Its easy nursing!) Anyway, I'm here and enjoying your TR. Love the pictures!

 

[lvcourtneyy]

I'm here!!

Looks like a pretty decent trip for you guys so far!! I have to say that I love Pop, for a value resort, it's pretty awesome, we're staying there in Feb, and I'm excited!

Excited to read more about your DTD adventures!

Pop is definitely an amazinggg value for the price you pay! We absolutely loved it and will definitely stay again! Thank you for coming over

Hi Courtney!

Followed you over from the POP FAQ thread! Love all your pictures so far! BTW, I love coke too (but Diet Coke). I always get my money's worth out of the refillable mugs!

I was in Disney from 1/9-1/13 (met up with DIS friends) and the weather was beautiful wasn't it??

We usually head to DTD as well on our arrival/departure days. Looking forward to reading more about your trip.

P.S. You mentioned a wish trip for your sister years ago -- hope she is doing well.

Good luck wiith hearing soon on a nursing job!

Aw thank you soo much for coming over to my TR!! I learned so much about Pop before we went from that thread, I would've been lost otherwise!

Coke is definitely one of the major staples in my life!

The weather was definitely amazing our last few days! It was a little cold and rainy the first few days but it got so nice! We were so happy to swim in the bowling pin pool

Thank you for the well wishes for my sister and the career! She is doing amazing. She's 26 now and still has pretty serious medical issues but she's stable and happy

Have fun on your trip! And I wish you the best of luck with your nursing career!

Thank you so much! Love that your daughter's name is Courtney!

Excited to read your trip report! I'm staying at Pop in 4 days!

I'm glad you're here! Ah that's so exciting! I'm sure you're gonna love it. Let me know if you have any questions about Pop, I'm happy to share what I know

Great report so far. We are off to Pop on Feb 1st so loving the build up!

Thank you! Glad you're here! Ah you're getting so close! You're gonna love it. If you have any questions, I'm happy to share what I know!

Ok, so I have to admit, it was really late the other night at work when I was reading your TR and somehow I happened to miss that you were staying at Pop! That's where we want to stay in Oct.! So why did you choose the 50's building? Just curious. And if your looking for a job, I'm pretty sure we're going to have a PRN position open at my itty bitty surgery hospital! Lol! (Only 3-4 patients per night. Its easy nursing!) Anyway, I'm here and enjoying your TR. Love the pictures!

Pop is amazing! I chose the 50s section because I heard wonderful things about it on the Pop FAQ thread here on the boards. We knew we wanted a lakeview room (which are considered standard rooms at Pop!) and we wanted something that was close to Classic Hall for the food court and buses but not noisy. After reading about where others stayed on that thread, I chose 50s and was very happy with it! We were in building 2 which is the furthest building in the 50s section from Classic Hall but still not a long walk at all. The view was gorgeous (there's a picture of it in my first post!), it was very quiet and the 50s section has the bowling pin pool which was right in front of our building!

Let me know if I can answer anything else!

That job does sound amazing but I don't think I can convince Dbf to move as far as Texas!

 

[petals]

joining in. I love POP.

 

[lvcourtneyy]

joining in. I love POP.

Glad you're here! We absolutely loved Pop!