Hanging up my running shoes-Update on ZellyB

[rteetz]

Happy Birthday!!!

 

[SarahDisney]

Happy Birthday!!

 

[FredtheDuck]

Oh man I missed your birthday! Happy belated!!! By the time you see this I hope you’re en route to Disney. Well-deserved vacation with everything you have going on, I hope you have a blast!

 

[ZellyB]

And after a 2 hour PITA Chris and I are in for the 10k and full. It's a bit surreal to register for marathon weekend while at Disney. I might have a problem.

We are having an AMAZING trip so far though which is why I keep coming back for more!! We’ve done DHS, Typhoon Lagoon, Epcot and MK so far all (mostly) without a hitch. A badly needed rest day today. .

It’s crowded but manageable so far and none of us want to kill each other yet. My girls turned 15 and we spent their bday at Epcot. Wonderful time!! I’ll post a mini trip report when we get home.

 

[rteetz]

And after a 2 hour PITA Chris and I are in for the 10k and full. It's a bit surreal to register for marathon weekend while at Disney. I might have a problem.

We are having an AMAZING trip so far though which is why I keep coming back for more!! We’ve done DHS, Typhoon Lagoon, Epcot and MK so far all (mostly) without a hitch. A badly needed rest day today. .

It’s crowded but manageable so far and none of us want to kill each other yet. My girls turned 15 and we spent their bday at Epcot. Wonderful time!! I’ll post a mini trip report when we get home.

Can’t wait to hear about it!

 

[FredtheDuck]

Can’t wait to hear about it!

Ditto!

 

[Keels]

I CAN'T WAIT TO SEE YOU AT MY 10K BOOZE STOP!!!!!!!!

 

[ZellyB]

We are back from Disneyworld!!!

It was an amazing trip and I'm still trying to cope with re-entry.

We managed to run just twice. It was difficult to do and we had a tight schedule, so we just had to give up and figured we'd get back on track this week. Mini-trip report to come!!

 

[ZellyB]

Disneyworld Summer Trip 2018
It was EPIC!!!
Day 1
​

So, this was a trip we decided to take a few months back to celebrate our girls', Paige and Sophie, 15th birthday. Of course, per usual, the trip was as much for me as them.

We headed out from Springfield on Friday, July 13, on a late afternoon flight on Allegiant. I know. I know. They have a horrible safety rating, etc, but we still flew with them anyway. For some reason, Sophie decided she needed to wear a sweatshirt to fly to Florida.



this pose of Paige's will become very familiar to you. She's self-conscious about her smile and braces, so to compensate she does this weird open mouth thing. smh



It has been a pretty stressful time in our lives lately, so Chris and I were ready for an escape too.

We arrived in one piece in Sanford and got our rental car picked up easily and drove to Shades of Green, the military resort on Disney property. Seriously, this place is a steal. In little time, we were checked in to our newly refurbished room and it was huge and really nicely done.







Our view from our patio was of the 1st tee box of the golf course. It was lovely and quiet!



One of the complaints about Shades of Green is that it isn't very Disney in its decor, which is very true. This fellow in the lobby is about as good as it gets.


But aside from that, it really is a lovely resort. We frequently saw wild turkeys and deer (the turkeys would walk right up to our patio door and look in at us) and one day even saw this pretty peacock.



By the time we settled into the room, it was around 10 PM, so we headed off to sleep ready to start our vacation.

 

[ZellyB]

Disneyworld Summer Trip 2018
Day 2 - July 14
​

This was a pretty long trip for us, so I had some easy days built in. This was one of those days. We knew we needed to do a Target run to pick up some items but Chris and I wanted to get a run in as well. So we were up early and headed out of our room to try and run on the golf cart paths. Well, at 5:30 AM on that golf course, it's REALLY dark. We had some starts and stops and turn arounds and finally at around 6:15 we were starting to see some golfers getting ready to head out, so we called it quits at 3 miles. Not a very successful run, but at least it was something.

We got back and headed for a breakfast buffet at the resort. It's very pretty here.



After breakfast it was a quick trip to Target where the girls modeled the recently discounted 4th of July attire options.



And then it was back to the hotel to unload. This is the area down by the bus station.



Next we decided to take advantage of our Park Hopper Plus tickets and try our hand at Mini-golf. We headed off to Fantasia Gardens and along the way, Sophie discovered special Snapchat filters when you are on Disney property.



Cute, yes?

So, once at the mini-golf course, we got our clubs and headed off to try out our skills.



Our skills stink. As did we after golfing 18 holes in the heat, but we had a great time. It's a very cute little course. Then back to the hotel for a quick break including a refreshing drink for me and Chris on the patio.



That evening we headed off to Disney Springs for dinner at Homecomin'. We had a very nice meal. I got us the Fried Green Tomatoes for the appetizer and loved them.



Chris and I had the fried chicken which was great, but we totally should have shared the meal. Neither of us could finish it. I don't remember now what Sophie got but she liked it a lot and Paige got a side of kale and collard greens which none of us liked, so she helped out some with the fried chicken instead. Overall this was a good meal and we enjoyed the atmosphere a lot.

We strolled around a bit, but left fairly early as we had a big day with a very early wake-up planned for our next day.

 

[ZellyB]

Disneyworld Summer Trip 2018
Day 3 - July 15
​

Hollywood Studios!!!

I'd been reading about the best strategies to manage Toy Story Land in Hollywood Studios. I hadn't landed a FP+ for Slinky Dog, so knew our best option was to rope drop during early EMH. For this summer, that means getting there well before 7 AM. EEK!! I'm happy to say though that we managed to get 2 sleepy teenagers up and out of the hotel a bit before 6 AM for the drive over. We were parked and lined up behind the rope near Starbucks around 6:15 AM.



They announced that they were opening just the TSL portion of the park at 6:30 and we were walked over to the new area. It's really cute and the theming is great. We were on Slinky Dog in a matter of minutes.







Very cute little coaster. Next up was Alien Swirling Saucers. Chris opted out since spinning is not a favorite of his. We walked right on.



Again, very cute little ride, but not sure I'd bother riding it again.

Next was Toy Story Midway Mania. Always a favorite of ours and another walk on. By 7:15 we had ridden all three rides and were headed out to the rest of the park. WOW!



We headed straight to Rock n Roller Coaster and again walked right on. Didn't even stop for the pre-show. We rode it twice both times walk-on.



Then on to our favorite ride...Tower of Terror!!!

Again straight on to the pre-show and the ride. Whee!!!



We rode this twice in a row as well with no waits. Incredible!!

Photopass time!



We headed back to TSL for our FP+ for TSMM. FACES!!!

After that we spent some time wandering through One Man's Dream which we'd never done before. This was so nice although we didn't watch the film. We did meet this little guy though.



Somewhere in here we rode ToT and RnR again with FP+ and all of this before noon! The park (outside of TSL) was really not very crowded at all. We had lunch at 50s Primetime and then headed back to the hotel for a break for a couple of hours.

We headed back around 4 and headed for our dinner at Brown Derby. No pictures I don't think, but we had a great meal as part of our Fantasmic! dining package. After dinner, I was easily able to score same-day FP for the girls for RnR again and the family for ToT (x2 I think) and Star Tours. Eventually we headed in to get ready for Fantasmic!



The girls hadn't seen this since they were like 4, so they had no recollection of it and they enjoyed it a lot!



After the show, we headed off for one more ride on ToT - which brought our total number of rides on ToT to 8! for the day. LOL

We left the park a little before 10 and headed back happy and exhausted to bed!

 

[SarahDisney]

I'm glad the early morning TSL strategy worked for you guys! It's really crazy how much you can get done when you show up early.

 

[ZellyB]

I'm glad the early morning TSL strategy worked for you guys! It's really crazy how much you can get done when you show up early.

For sure! We started calling it "The Fastest Pass". It's tough to do it on vacation, but so worth it.

 

[ZellyB]

Disneyworld Summer Trip 2018
Day 4 - July 16 ​

Since I had known the Hollywood Studios day would be a long one, I planned for today to be a bit more relaxing, so it was going to be our first time trying out a water park, Typhoon Lagoon.





Chris loves to be out by water, but is also a man who wants some shade, so we splurged and rented a Beachcomber cabana for the day!



After settling into the cabana (which overlooked the wave pool), we rode a couple of the tube rides before heading off to the wave pool and HOLY COW! They aren't kidding about it being a WAVE pool!



We had a BLAST in that thing. It's insane and so much fun. We spent the majority of our time in that pool although we also spent a little time in the Lazy River (or people soup as I like to call it).

We did manage to order some delicious pizza and some good drinks with our mugs





before some thunderstorms shut things down for a bit. Our cabana doubles as a storm shelter though so we could ride it out from the comfort of our little home away from home. After the second thunderstorm passed things were pretty deserted. Around 6 PM or so we called it quits and got a quick picture taken by our cabana attendant, Louisa.



It turned out to be a really fun day.

 

[ZellyB]

Disneyworld Summer Trip 2018
Day 4 - July 17
​

Happy 15th Birthday to my little lovelies!


We headed off for rope drop at Epcot bright and early.



After getting through the tapstiles we were lined up nicely to get ready to head for Test Track. It was a beautiful morning.





Paige and I beat out Chris and Sophie with our beautiful and speedy vehicle.

Next it was over for Soarin on standby and we were on within a few minutes. The girls hadn't seen the new film and we got lucky and scored Section B row 1, so no distortion for them. They loved it. We rode Living with the Land and then wandered around some to do some shopping and I found this!



I was so excited. I'd first seen it at Hollywood Studios, but when I went back to buy it, they were out. I was happy to find it at Epcot. I love my Mode Tote!

We rode Soarin a second time with FP and this time ended up in section C, so the girls got to see the difference and the warping.

We headed for Spaceship Earth for our next FP and found the line was way backed up. Our first encounter with a huge tour group who just had bloated the FP line. Sigh. But, what can you do? Still I think it took close to 20 minutes to get on the ride. The girls and I rode Mission Space with a FP next, but Chris doesn't do well with that so he waited for us. Then back to Sunshine Seasons for a quick lunch. I usually like their food, but this time it wasn't so great.

We did a quick ride on Nemo and then headed back to the hotel for a break. We had a nice little nap and relaxed before driving back over. I think we rode Nemo again and the girls messed around.



Then we headed over for dinner and took the boat since we were tired.



Dinner was at Via Napoli (because we needed more pizza). But, it was just as good as we remembered from our last trip.





And a treat for Mom



And then a special birthday treat for the girls



I think I managed another same day FP for Test Track after dinner and then maybe Soarin as well and then we rode SSE again. We were having great luck with same day FP. Then it was time to watch Illuminations! In all the times I've been to Disney, I've never managed to see the show...until now!





It was a great show. We really enjoyed it. Epcot had late EMH and we had watched the show from between Mexico and Norway, so we headed straight for Frozen Ever After and only had to wait about 10 minutes or so to ride it. This was the girls first time on it and they really liked it. Next a quick ride on the boat ride in Mexico and we called it a night.



But, one final family shot as Tinkerbell wished the girls Happy Birthday.

 

[PCFriar80]

First off, you really know how to crank out a trip report! I know you're not even halfway through your trip, but great recaps of the days and pictures! We'll see you at the BC/BCV in January!

 

[KSellers88]

Apparently I need to get my booty out of bed and to TSL at the crack of dawn in October! Loving your trip report so far and glad y'all had such a good time!

 

[Bree]

Great trip report! I loved Toy Story Land. It has been a favorite movie of ours forever and ever. My DD collects the toys from the parks.

 

[ZellyB]

First off, you really know how to crank out a trip report! I know you're not even halfway through your trip, but great recaps of the days and pictures! We'll see you at the BC/BCV in January!

Well, I crammed what I could in yesterday knowing I wouldn't have much time today. Plus, I had done daily updates on Facebook during the trip, so I had a lot of the pictures and details already set up from that. Just got back and can't wait for January!

Apparently I need to get my booty out of bed and to TSL at the crack of dawn in October! Loving your trip report so far and glad y'all had such a good time!

It was a pain getting up that early, but sooooo worth it!

Great trip report! I loved Toy Story Land. It has been a favorite movie of ours forever and ever. My DD collects the toys from the parks.

Thanks. We loved the new land. Super cute and so well-themed.

 

[rteetz]

Shut the front door you had never seen Illuminations before this?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

That's my favorite nighttime show! And soon enough it will be going away...