How do you show her you love her? An engagement celebration

[DisneyLifer87]

3 more days left to cover and 12 days till it all becomes real!

Day Six, Magic Kingdom pt. 2
After our parade and firework day of magic and romance wizard we will be heading to Magic Kingdom again to finish it up. Today is filled with Tomorrowland, Fantasyland, and Mickey's Toontown. We also have a morning ADR at Chef Mickey's which I'm super excited for. I just hope I'm not the only adult hugging the mouse without children by her side. Ridemax... do your thing.

9:05am - Space Mountain
9:17am - Buzz Lightyear
9:30am - Winnie the Pooh
9:37am - Snow White's Scary Adventures
9:43am - Grab a Peter Pan's Flight FASTPASS
9:45am - Leave the Kingdom for Chef Mickey's
10:10am - Chef Mickey's ADR Breakfast
11:05am - It's a small world (maybe.. I'm not sure I want to put myself through this song.)
11:25am - Use Peter Pan's Flight FASTPASS
11:34am - Dumbo?! (if I can convince DF)
12:00pm - ToonTown and other autographs
3:15pm - Monorail to Epcot
4:10pm - Coral Reef ADR Dinner
5:30pm - Back to MK!
6:23pm - Mickey's PhilharMagic (I'm so excited to do this!!)
6:59pm - Monsters, Inc. Laugh Floor
7:35pm - Stitch's Great Escape
8:00pm - Astro Orbiter (or after since they may not let us during Wishes. But wouldn't that be AWESOME if they did? )

This is our last official park day so we're going to make the most of it. Tomorrow is our catch-up day where we park hop for a bit and then cap it all of with a tour of the world.. complete with drinking and eating

 

[DisneyLifer87]

Now relax, let us pull up a chair, while the itinerary proudly presents....

Day Seven, the final full day of fun
There is not scheduled plan for this day, really. DF and I will be heading to DHS to finish up the four attractions we missed out on in the early morning. I calculate that to take us to about noon when we will return to Epcot and tour the world. He will be eating the entire time and I admit I may too (using up those snack and CS credits) but I will focus on spending my remaining money on drinking the world! Haha.. 21 has so many advantages.

I hope that this day we can park hop to revisit our favorite attractions, but we may be so burnt out that we want nothing better than to eat all day and sleep all night. There is one ADR today which is:
6:40pm - Ohana's
Afterwards we will probably sit on the "beach" and watch Wishes from Poly one... last.. time

If I wasn't already engaged.. I'd say this would be a prime opportunity too bad, so sad for me.

Another option tossed around for today was using our free round of mini-golf voucher and paying a little extra to play. But.. I'm not the golfing type so we'll see how that blows over. Stay tuned for the next post which is our final travel day back home... followed by my thoughts on the whole ordeal.

 

[DisneyLifer87]

And finally... it all comes down to...

Day Eight, travel day pt. 2
Our flight leaves Orlando at 11:35am arriving back in Minneapolis at 2:01pm. The early flight was more convenient since we have a 2.5 hour travel journey back home but I hate to leave such a magical place!

The itinerary is a rough estimate of what we'll do in a day. I used it as a guide but I highly doubt we'll follow it strictly. Maybe for the first day! I'm a hardcore planner but I'm more relaxed in the park having fun. As long as we see enough and do enough to make us happy.. then I'm happy. Thanks for joining me on my pre-trip ramblings. But do stay put because we have 12 whole days left of countdowns and chitchat to keep my sanity before the trip.

I'm going to make a packing list. Any tips?

 

[lilyfrog73]

Great read so far!! I wish we were going so soon.

 

[DisneyLifer87]

So it's almost single digit dancing time.

I'm trying to think of inexpensive and romantic things to do for my DF while down there. I was going to do the Coral Reef diver, but lo and behold they stopped doing it with the end of the year of a million dreams. Anyone know of something to do?

Created my packing list and my shopping list today. I don't know when I'll hit the store to grab the essentials... but I feel comforted having it done. I'm ready to make my "before we leave" list and to write the note to my house/cat sitter. but perhaps not tonight.

 

[DisneyLifer87]

I gathered all of my travel documents in one neat pile on my desk then decided to fan them out to show what I intend on packing on my carry-on. Or, well, part of what I intend on... the important part!

That's my mousekeeping and dining envelopes already stuffed , my trusty passporter, an autograph book I made, a trip planner and travel journal I made and of course the customized maps.

For close-ups of the items I made I took more pictures.

Autograph Book:

Trip Planner:

Travel Journal:

Mousekeeping Envelopes:

Dining Tip Envelopes:

9 days to go and I feel a bit better prepared. But I will have shopping and packing yet. My least favorite parts about a trip!

 

[DisneyLifer87]

I ordered some tshirts today for DF off of the disney shop site. They have some awesome clearance deals
I just hope they come in time!

Not much else to report for the day. Packing is not started yet because I feel I'd be way to anxious if I started now!

 

[DisneyLifer87]

Woo a week to go! I feel so prepared... for now. I know I will be anxious and totally nervous come this time next week. Actually, at this time next week I will be an hour before our flight which means I'll probably be sitting and trying not to freak out over my excitement!

Less than a week from now I will probably have the anxious nervous freak out

 

[DisneyLifer87]

I've lost my readers but mostly due to how this is more a countdown than a pre-trip now.

6 days remain. I've started the note and list of numbers to leave for my house/cat sitter as well as made a list of things that need to get done this week. Mostly cleaning the house and shopping! I'm excited to be so close!

 

[michellem1118]

I just found your pre-trippie today... I can relate to your feelings of failure at pre-trip reports... mine is failling miserably right now too, so I'll commiserate with you over here.

 

[DisneyLifer87]

Ah well perhaps my trip report will attract more attention. I just hope I don't procrastinate on that one, too!

 

[DisneyLifer87]

Reading "Brisngr" in the Eragon trilogy. Means I have 5 days to finish it because it's hardcover and much too heavy to take on a plane

 

[DisneyLifer87]

Cleaned the house today top to bottom! Also did a little bit of laundry and began to pack. I can't believe two days!

This pre-trip is officially over.. thanks for the journey! Be sure to check out my trip report when it debuts.

 

[TinkyCheeks]

I'm late for this one but have a GREAT trip! I'm looking forward to the trip report!

 

[dundeehunter]

Can't wait until you get back and read how your trip went. We arrive at Pop 2 days after you leave. Hope Pop was a good experience and the crowds and weather were tolerable!

 

[DisneyLifer87]

This is my first trip report... but it's my first trip [sort of] so that makes sense! I won't waste your time with a cast of characters because I feel you can just jump to the pre-trip report a few pages back.

As I have before, I shall attempt to maintain a table of contents here in the first post. If anyone knows how to create links to individual posts, please do share. I'm not that tech savvy on the boards yet! But enough idle chitchat... let's begin.

The title behind this trip report is a dedication to this trip. My fiance Matt (further referred to as DF) and I have been struggling to maintain our relationship due to work and school. I'm a full-time senior and he works evenings. We thought Disney World would be a perfect way to celebrate our engagement as well as rekindle our relationship! Let me be the first to say that it did. Disney World is how you show her you love her

Now that you have been introduced to the trip report to come, we will begin! The trip was last week (1/11/09 - 1/18/09). I did not make a dining review in photos, but I will be reviewing our eateries in this report. Just without the food porn. Scandal! I know. Alright. Brace yourselves. This could be a looooong ride.

The Introduction ----- post #36
Travel Woes ----- post #40
POP and Downtown Disney ----- post #43
Disney's Hollywood Studios/ Boardwalk Bakery/ Iluminations ----- post #47 and #49
Animal Kingdom and Downtown Disney ----- post #53
Epcot Future World ----- post #59

 

[OhMari]

Hi,
I can merge your pre-trip here. Otherwise it just slips away in the pre-trip boards.
OhMari

 

[DisneyLifer87]

Yay! Merge away!

 

[crzyred]

I'm jumping in here!

 

[DisneyLifer87]

1/11/2009 ~ Traveling

We woke up at 7am to do a small bit of last minute packing before driving down to the cities. I had it in my mind that we would leave by 9am at the latest in order to make up for any potential traffic. Well, needless to say that did not happen. I feared the worst this morning as everything began great, but slowly headed downhill. Beware... a chaotic trouble awaits you if you continue on...

The alarm went off as set and I rolled out of bed feeling slightly green from only 2 hours of sleep and stress/nerves. My stomach was in knots and I was just not a happy camper. I guess I should be relieved to have even managed 2 hours of sleep! Well I proceeded to get ready and pack my morning essentials, letting the DF have a bit of a lie in because he only needs to throw clothes on and brush his teeth to be ready. someone explain to me why guys are able to do this?? Anyway, I finished packing my things around 7:45am so I woke up DF and then set about to do a few things around the house; litter box cleaning, taking out the garbage, feeding the cats, cleaning some last minute dishes, etc.... DF started complaining that he was hungry and would we have time to make breakfast. Uhh.. no? Duh? He decided to use the "free-time" before we left to go get breakfast while I cleaned. Typical... but what can I say? He'd probably just slow down my system anyway! I started running the sink full of soapy water when DF ran into the kitchen in hysterics. He couldn't find his check card. We both tore apart the house but by 8:15am we had no luck. He set about calling to cancel while I scrambled to finish the cleaning that I now had a significantly less amount of time to do. The card was canceled.. no worries, right? RIGHT?

We finished the chores, kissed the kitties goodbye and loaded up the car around 8:45am with me antsy as could be to hit the road. DF was in a funk over his card, but it couldn't be helped. I pulled into a gas station for some breakfast of diet coke and beef jerky (oh yeah.. great on the anxious knot of a stomach) and then we were off for the cities. The ride down would have been smooth if it weren't snowing... and icy... and salt dumping trucks were slapping my car more than half the way down. But we luckily pulled into my mother's driveway at noon... a good 3 hours and 46 min before our scheduled flight. We parked and carefully got out of the car avoiding the salt stains (though my luggage is still white...) and loaded up her car with the suitcases. She offered us some pizza for lunch and we were on our way to the airport shortly after.

My stomach was still crazy anxious about getting through security (would we have packed too much? Were our carry-ons filled with something they wouldn't allow?!) but it went smoothly. We got to our gate with an hour and a half to spare. We sat and relaxed.. snappy goofy shots of each other:

The flight itself was about half empty. I counted 6 kids total (one of which was right behind me and insisted on slamming the tray up and down before takeoff). But who cares, we were going to Disney! I read a bit and even dozed off a little in flight. We arrived early touching down at 7:30pm instead of the estimated 8pm. We breezed right onto a Magical Express bus which did not have the video sad1 but hey, we were in Disney! Needless to say the bus ride calmed my knotted stomach but it only made me realize I was starving. Next up.. the resort and Downtown Disney!