How many more days until I get a tie-dye cheesecake?!? AUGUST 2011 PTR!!(Finished)

[StephaniexMarie]

Hi everybody! First of all, thanks a bunch for coming along for the ride! This is obviously my first trip report, well, pre-trip report
We're leaving for the World in 48 long days. We'll be at Pop Century, hence the tye-dye cheesecake in the title.

But before I get started, let me introduce myself This is me:

My name is STEPHANIE and I'm 14 years old. I live in New York with my awesome parents! My life pretty much consists of Disney. My first trip to WDW was when I was 9 years old, which makes this my 6th trip. We will be reaching 7 before the year ends though, but let's get through this trip first!

Now I want you guys to meet my lovely mommy

She's my best friend and Disney is our favorite place for our annual girls getaway. She has been to WDW 5 times already with me and 3 times with her friends when she was younger. She works in media and loves reading, Lifetime movies, and watching QVC like there's no tomorrow.

Now that we finished our introductions, I shall give you a little history of our Disney trips

Like I mentioned before, our first trip together was in July of 2006. We stayed at POP and loved the place so much that we stayed there for the next 3 summers! Last year though, we decided to try something new and we stayed at CBR. We really enjoyed it there. It was nice having a hot tub and a really deep quiet pool by every section. I personally loved the tropical music on the bus rides home from the parks. This year, we are returning to POP because 1) We've missed it! and 2) We are making another trip on Thanksgiving till the Saturday after later in the year and we're staying at POP for the first 3 days and then switching over to the Poly Our first deluxe resort! But we'll get into that later on, now we're focusing on our August trip!

We will be at the world from August 3rd - August 13th. We have free dining so we'll be doing a few new restaurants! I love Disney planning, so I made all them for us. Here's what we have planned:

August 3rd- Crystal Palace at 7:15pm
August 4th- Le Chefs de France at 7:30pm
August 5th- Cinderella's Royal Table at 10:00am
August 8th- Boma at 7:35pm
August 9th- Via Napoli at 6:20pm
August 10th- Spirit of Aloha at 5:15pm
August 11th- Le Cellier at 12:15pm & Biergarten at 6:45pm
August 12th- The Plaza at 1:10pm

Everything is booked and my mom actually payed off the vacation today!

Thanks for reading I hope you'll all join us for the ride and I think I'll post an old WDW pic everyday to make time go faster! Here's one for the road..

 

[StephaniexMarie]

*If you're reading, please feel free to comment! I'd love to talk to some people. *

So here are our plans as of now...I think we'll be sticking to them because I've lost track of how many changes I've made to this trip

August 3rd - This is arrival day! Our flight is set to land at 11:24 so I'm assuming we'll be at Pop by 1:00-ish. We'll do the usual and drop off our bags and get something to eat (a tye-dye cheesecake for me ) and maybe even start shopping! We'll hop on the bus to the MAGIC KINGDOM when we're finished with that and stay till after Wishes!

August 4th - Epcot day! I don't think we're doing RD today but we'll see how tired we are from the day before.

August 5th - Full Magic Kingdom day. We'll probably do a mid-day break because they're open 'till 2 am! This trip we wanted to do a few less night EMH so we can be up earlier, but I think we'll end up doing MK's 2am ones anyways.

August 6th - OMG! I literally just went to check DHS's hours and I saw that they added Fantasmic! for every night in August!! When they first announced they were adding more they only added them in July & Sept.
Well this made my day
I think today we're going to sleep in after that EMH and head to DTD and then DHS later on to catch Fantasmic! We missed it last year because of the limited shows so we'll be sure to see it twice this year!

Eh-hem...back to our itinerary

August 7th - Magic Kingdom again. Can you tell what our favorite park is? They have late EMH again but I don't think we'll stick around until 2am because the next morning is EMH for AK.

August 8th - I think we'll take advantage of our Park hopping feature on the AP's and go to Animal Kingdom in the morning and then head over to DHS after we're done touring!

August 9th - Epcot has EMH's tonight! Online it doesn't say that Epcot has EMH for the Thursdays that we're there and it didn't last year either but when we got there there were so maybe it's just not listed again? But anyways, we'll probably do rope drop or be there by 10 at the latest.

August 10th - Animal Kingdom has EMH in the morning again so I think we'll be heading over here for a half day because at 5:15 we'll be at the Polynesian Luau!
I must admit, I was never the most pleasant to be around in AK because the day we decided to go seemed to always be the hottest of the trip. I was just one cranky girl. But now since we're going at 8am it will be a little cooler that getting our start at 12pm (I know, I know. We slept in wayyyy too much....)

August 11th - Awww, today is our last Epcot day. I think we'll do RD and do a mid-day break then stay until it closes. We really love Epcot!

August 12th - Our final MK day until November! The last park day is always difficult but this year knowing that we'll be back in 103 days will make it much easier. We'll obviously be here until they have to kick us outta the park.


That's all for now! Here's another picture....

 

[StephaniexMarie]

I think I'm gonna do a mega-post with a lot of pictures from last August!
I bought a nice Nikon D3100 in February (With my own $600!) so this summer's pictures will be much nicer.

The Nemo stuff in the room...very blurry.

A few from walking around Epcot on our arrival day...

What an AWFUL picture! I'm going to re-take this with the DSLR this year and I WILL get a better picture!

Thats all I have from that day. Well, there are others of me but I lost about 20 pounds since that trip so I don't really wanna post them.

 

[Disney9.9.10]

Hi! I will follow along! I know what it is like to have a wonderful mom who is also a great friend - lucky girls, we are! Pop really is fun, and when you do get to stay there, you will love the Poly! You guys have some great ADR's picked out, it will be a great trip!

 

[ddstratton]

I'm reading along! We loved CBR when we stayed in October 2008. Funny thing -- our pictures of the Nemo wallpaper border came out blurry too!

 

[StephaniexMarie]

Hi! I will follow along! I know what it is like to have a wonderful mom who is also a great friend - lucky girls, we are! Pop really is fun, and when you do get to stay there, you will love the Poly! You guys have some great ADR's picked out, it will be a great trip!

Hello! Thanks for following along. Yes we're both very lucky, indeed!

I'm reading along! We loved CBR when we stayed in October 2008. Funny thing -- our pictures of the Nemo wallpaper border came out blurry too!

Hi! Thanks for reading along! I wonder what it is about that wallpaper.

 

[StephaniexMarie]

Hi guys! Sorry I haven't posted in a couple days, but there is nothing new to say about the trip other than the fact that I'm counting down the hours. Yes, the HOURS. It's sad, I know. But I cannot wait until I get back home!

Yesterday I went into the city to meet a friend who is actually from Mississippi and is on vacation here in NYC. We stopped by all the touristy locations and it was very fun! Of course we stopped into the Disney Store. Here are a few pictures...

Mickey Mouse!

A picture of the new feature they just added where characters and other things fly by to the side of the escalator. Very cute.

I spotted this ad as we were walking from 5th ave back to Times Square.

Here are some of us just being teenage girls. We tried to get the mirror projections to work but nothing was happening so we decided to just take pictures of ourselves.

Here are some more, but they're not Disney related..

Toys R Us

American Girl They have the best pink lemonade!

Walking down 5th Ave

That's about it for today. Only 42 days left!

 

[AnnieBelle23]

Hey! I'm going to follow your trip planning. Hope that your trip is amazing, and I'm looking forward to reading your TR.

 

[lindap1]

Joining in! Love the pics and love that Fantasmic is going to be "5 Nights" when we go Sept 25 - Oct 1. I also recently bought Nikon 3100 and I love it!! Can't wait to hear more of your plans!

 

[Disney9.9.10]

I love your NYC pictures! I would love to go shopping there!

 

[StephaniexMarie]

Hey! I'm going to follow your trip planning. Hope that your trip is amazing, and I'm looking forward to reading your TR.

Hello!
Thanks a bunch! I'm so excited that we're already under 40 days.

Joining in! Love the pics and love that Fantasmic is going to be "5 Nights" when we go Sept 25 - Oct 1. I also recently bought Nikon 3100 and I love it!! Can't wait to hear more of your plans!

Thank you! Isn't it great that they added more Fantasmic performances? I'm still so excited over that.
The camera is lots of fun to use! I can't wait to take pictures of practically everything in the World with it!

I love your NYC pictures! I would love to go shopping there!

Thank you! It really is fun.

 

[StephaniexMarie]

Exciting news! We received our Magical Express tags today!

I love how it still says "POP - Classic" even though they're already building AOA.

This means we're one step closer to being back home!
Of course the first thing I said was "So this means we should start packing, right?"
I wish. 36 more days!

 

[spartankid34]

I'm reading along Heading to POP with just my mom too this August, after you guys though Hoping to get some ideas from you, and I might just start my own PTR!! Have an awesome time with your mom!!!

 

[StephaniexMarie]

I'm reading along Heading to POP with just my mom too this August, after you guys though Hoping to get some ideas from you, and I might just start my own PTR!! Have an awesome time with your mom!!!

Yay! Welcome.
Too bad we won't be there the same time, it would be cool to see fellow Dis-er's, haha! Have you guys ever been to Pop before?
You definitely should start your own PTR. I'd subscribe!
And thank you!

 

[spartankid34]

No, this our first time at POP. Last time I went I was 8 and we stayed at All Star Sports. Really looking forward to POP this year!

 

[StephaniexMarie]

No, this our first time at POP. Last time I went I was 8 and we stayed at All Star Sports. Really looking forward to POP this year!

Ohh I see. POP is great - you and your mom will love it. Here are some things that I really enjoy on each trip...

- I don't know what it is about Pop, but on the bus rides home from the parks after Extra Magic Hours the adults just have so much energy and they LOVE to sing to all the old songs playing. It's pretty funny. Also we've had really nice bus drivers at Pop who sing happy birthday to kids with birthdays. Very fun!

- I'm sure you've heard about the tie-dye cheesecake after being on these boards. I myself have never had one because I didn't really become a fan of cheesecake until last year, but I'm looking forward to trying one of these babies as soon as we check in!

- Pop has these unique luggage carts!

- Be sure to spend some time in the lobby checking out all of the wall displays. My mom and I spent quite a bit amount of time doing this on one of our previous trips and we had fun pointing out all the neat things we saw to each other!

- If you are in the 80's or 90's, it's a long-ish walk to Everything Pop (When I was younger I remember my mom would walk over in the morning while I was still rolling out of bed so we could speed things up a little bit, and she said it was difficult carrying two mugs plus a tray of food) but by taking a few shortcuts the walk is not bad to the bus stops. This year we have a preferred room (Hopefully 60's with a pool view!) and this is the first year I've been in super planning mode so I'll be up bright and early everyday going to get breakfast with her!

- Many people decorate their windows here! If you get any towel animals from mousekeeping or buy any stuffed animals while you're there, join the fun and display them in your window!

You will have such a great time at POP.

 

[spartankid34]

Ohh I see. POP is great - you and your mom will love it. Here are some things that I really enjoy on each trip...

......

You will have such a great time at POP.

Thanks so much for all the little tips...like I said before this is really my first trip since I was a kids so I'm SO excited! I'm going to try and start a PTR to help me pass the time before my trip, haha!

 

[StephaniexMarie]

Thanks so much for all the little tips...like I said before this is really my first trip since I was a kids so I'm SO excited! I'm going to try and start a PTR to help me pass the time before my trip, haha!

No problem! I had fun thinking of all of them. I wish I had more pictures but like I said in my previous posts, I didn't have a great camera before and never really took interesting pictures but I'm hoping that all changes this year when I use my Nikon!
Doing the PTR is an excellent way to pass time. Your magical express tags will arrive before you know it.

 

[StephaniexMarie]

When I first started this PTR, I said I'd post a picture everyday as a countdown type of thing. Silly me forgot about that until now.
Here's one for 35 more sleeps!

The Philharmagic gift shop.

 

[StephaniexMarie]

34 more full days!!
When it gets in the 20s time will go by even faster.