KellyJo18's Planning Journal - WP/LS/UK - June 21, 2007

[KellyJo18]

I've been productive lately when it comes to wedding planning and thought it was about time I posted a planning journal. I have been occasionally posting on the boards since January when I found out it existed but never properly introduced myself. I figured it was about time I started sharing some ideas instead of just stealing all of yours

How we met
My DF (Mike, 25) and I (Kelly, 24) met during our sophomore year of high school through mutual friends. Actually, the first moment we met I had just finished working at a fish fry fundraiser, definitely not looking or smelling my best I'm sure. I'm surprised that didn't scare him off Over the years we became good friends with him occasionally asking me out and me continuously claiming that I just wanted to be friends. The night before we both left for separate colleges I remember feeling a lot more upset than I had expected. We still talked even though we were at schools nine hours apart but the conversations slowly died down during our first semester away. We found ourselves at the same party over Christmas break of our freshman year and our friendship quickly got back on track. We started talking constantly once we returned to school and a month after Christmas break Mike decided to make the nine hour road trip to visit (the first of many). Now it's five years later and we are finally ready to say 'I do' with our own DFTW.

The proposal
If four years at separate schools hadn't been hard enough, Mike decided to stay at school for another two years to work on his Masters degree, which meant our long distance relationship would continue. After completing my year long student teaching internship I wanted to celebrate and decided to visit him at school. Towards the end of my visit we went to a nearby beach on Lake Superior. This wasn't a typical beach with sand but with a shore completely covered in rocks. Mike and I sat down to wait for the sun to set and we began looking at some of the rocks knowing that some rare stones can be found along the shores in the area. I had no idea how to tell one rock from another so I kept showing Mike different stones asking "what about this one??" After about an hour of sitting there talking the sun began to go down. Mike turned to me and asked "what about this one?" but instead of one of the rocks from the beach, as I was expecting to see, he was holding a ring in his hand.

So here we are, engaged since August and only a few months left until we are Mr. and Mrs. :

 

[DVCGirl49]

Wow, that is an awesome engagement story! Can't wait to hear more about the plans for your big day!

 

[StephSFL]

CONGRATULATIONS!
Thank you so much for sharing your story- it is wonderful.
Where in the UP did he propose- I lived there for 5 years? Did you go to school there?
Congrats again!

 

[KellyJo18]

Our Site Inspection Tour
We flew down to Orlando over Thanksgiving this year and met with Cathy from DFTW. Mike was not completely sold on the idea of a Disney wedding – he had only been to Disney once before and it was 13 years ago when he was in the seventh grade (who knew people vacation places other than Walt Disney World ). I warned Cathy that she was going to have to help me convince Mike of how great it would be... seriously, how hard could it be??? It's Disney World! The day before our site inspection we had tried to make it to all four parks so I could show him all of the things I knew he would like. I should have known better... all four parks in one day??? I must have been crazy We ended up going on about 2 rides per park and being way too exhausted to completely enjoy it. I was beginning to worry that Mike would veto the idea of a Disney wedding

Well... I got lucky! Mike is a big fish person and the moment he saw the first venue during our site inspection tour, the Living Seas, he was sold. We were so excited about the location that I forgot to take pictures Even though we knew we wanted to find a date that the Living Seas was available Cathy suggested we still take a look at the other locations we had asked to see. During our original time frame for the wedding the Living Seas was booked solid and we thought we would end up using Ariel's instead. In the end we decided to move the date of the wedding up one week in order to be able to use the Living Seas.

If my first attempt at posting pictures turns out here are some of the pictures from our site inspection tour:

The entrance to Ariel's

Sorry this one is blurry but I was using a new camera and it took me awhile to realize the flash wasn't on

The Whitehall Room at the Grand Floridian. I thought this space would be perfect for a smaller group especially with the connecting patio that could also be used. It's hard to tell from my great photography skills that it is a round room that they often set up one large round table for all of the guests to sit at.

If I remember correctly this is the ballroom across the hall from the Whitehall room at the GF. They were setting up for a reception and were using long tables that I loved but are impossible to use at the Living Seas. Again, not the greatest picture, the long table I liked ended up looking like a wood floor.

And, of course, we had to check out the wedding pavilion

It's so gorgeous I think it's almost impossible to take a bad picture of it

Originally we (or maybe it was just me ) had our hearts set on using Sea Breeze Point for the ceremony and we went off on our own to see it after the site inspection tour was over. We were told that holding our ceremony there in the June heat would not be the smartest idea... I was upset about it at the time but am now extremely glad that Cathy convinced us to use the Wedding Pavilion.

Once we got back to Michigan we called to confirm our date and location. It was finally official!! June 21, 2007!

 

[KellyJo18]

Hmm... I'm going to have to learn how to do the quote thing.

StephSFL - To be honest I can't remember the name of the beach he proposed on... that's probably something I should know I do remember that it was just outside of Calumet, MI.

I have a ton more to post but since I now look like this and with daylight savings happening tonight I should probably continue this tomorrow.

Next up... dresses, wedding newsletter, guest bags, and more!

 

[Kashmir104]

How exciting! When did you do your site tour? I'm afraid I will overwhelm them with questions! Did you find it really helpful?

 

[PrettyInTink]

Great start! Can't wait for more.....

 

[KellyJo18]

How exciting! When did you do your site tour? I'm afraid I will overwhelm them with questions! Did you find it really helpful?

We flew into Orlando a few days before Thanksgiving (2006). We spent one day at the parks, the next day was our site inspection.

I did think the site inspection tour was extremely helpful to us since we had not yet decided if a Disney wedding was what we wanted. When we first arrived to Franck's Cathy took us into one of the conference rooms to answer any questions we had and also to discuss what we were interested in seeing during our tour. I was probably the most excited about getting to go through the back entrance of Epcot. She warned us that some people do not pick the Living Seas because of the fact that you have to use the back entrance. She said you lose some of the Disney "magic" by seeing it behind the scenes but I thought it was really neat and figure our friends and family will love the opportunity to see what is usually off limits to guests.

I know that without the site inspection Mike would have hesitated to agree to a Disney wedding and I would have had to do a lot of convincing. I think if we hadn't gone on the tour we would have picked Ariels for our reception location since the Living Seas was booked for our original date. After seeing the Living Seas in person though we knew we had to find a way to make another date work so we could use it. There is just something about that space that cannot be capture in pictures.

In my opinion, I would say that if you can find a time to go on the site inspection it really is worth it. Seeing all of the venues in person really helped us make our decision. I don't think it is possible to overwhelm them with too many questions, they are used to it. At the time we were still trying to decide if we wanted to move to Florida so we were not only asking wedding questions but random unrelated questions as well. She went out of her way to be extremely helpful... telling us what it was like to live in Florida, what to expect, the reputations of different areas we were looking at, etc - on top of all of the wedding related information!

 

[KellyJo18]

My Dress
It took me forever to decide on a wedding dress. I ended up ordering a dress that was the exact opposite of what I wanted. I swore I wanted a dress that had a lace top with a ribbon around the waist and full bottom. I looked for months and finally decided the dress I wanted did not exist. I tried on a few dresses that I would have loved if I could have torn them apart and put the top of one on the bottom of another. I finally found one that was somewhat similar to what I had been picturing and hated it once I put it on... go figure I was somewhat relieved though. I think not liking that particular dress made me feel better about some of the other styles I was leaning toward.

I found the dress I wanted a few months before I actually ordered it. I kept putting it off thinking that I might find something else I liked better. We drove an hour and a half to a bridal store near the college I had went to... the year before my sister had a bad experience getting her wedding dress and I knew I did not want to go through that. If anyone is in Michigan I highly recommend Lett's Bridal in Lansing, the service so far has been amazing and my dress is coming in two months early!! Anyway... the day I went to order my dress there was a flyer in the window advertising a one day only sale of Jasmine dresses, this was definitely a sign. I wanted to try it on one more time just to make sure. The second I put it on I got that "this is the dress" feeling and knew I was making the right choice.

Here it is:

They let us take a few quick pictures in the store even though we weren't supposed to, they were pretty nice about it since they knew I was ordering it. Somehow I was making goofy faces in most of them but here is a picture of the back.

Have you all noticed how the sizing on wedding dresses is off? I swear they just do it so we leave feeling lousy and more motivated to work out.

The Bridesmaid Dresses
For some reason, I let Mike pick the color of the wedding. I was undecided and had narrowed it down to a few options. He really liked the olive green wedding I had found pictures of online. Little did we know, olive green dresses are almost impossible to find. I knew what kind of style I was looking for but could never find it in the right color so my grandma volunteered to make them. I figured this would be a great way to save the girls money since they were already having to buy plane tickets. I ordered the fabric for less than the cost of ordering one dress... the only problem is is that when you order fabric they only have small swatches of the material for you to look at. When the order came in the color was not the olive green I was expecting but a bright (and I mean bright) green Needless to say, I was freaking out. It didn't look all that bad in a dark room but out in the sun it started to glow . After many restless nights I decided to go to another fabric store and reorder. This time when it came in the color was perfect... luckily.

I went to visit my grandma last weekend and saw her practice attempt with the dresses. I was really nervous about seeing it. Now don't get me wrong, I knew my grandma was a great seamstress but I also knew that if I hated them I probably wouldn't have had the heart to tell her. The dress turned out to be exactly what I had been picturing, I'm really excited about them. Here they are but I have to warn you that she used the bright green fabric to practice with so she wouldn't waste the good stuff. The real fabric is a much more subtle olive green.

The front

The back

This is the flower girls dress that she will make out of the same green as the three bridesmaids but she will also use the matching shear fabric for some of the panels.

And here is what our ring bearer is going to wear, although we probably won't use the hat and he is going to be wearing a green tie to match the groomsmen

 

[DisneyFairy19]

Congratulations... I love your planning journal.. Thank you for sharing it with us... Would love to hear more and I love your pictures

 

[KellyJo18]

This is the newsletter I sent out to the guests just this past Friday - much later than I had hoped to be sending it out. Thanks to all of you that helped by posting or emailing examples, they were incredibly helpful.

This is the first page, I stole a lot of the wording on the bottom half from Jonette - thanks again! .

The second page

I also had two more pages but am having problems posting them. They answered a lot of the questions people have been calling and asking us about. I included information about the extra magic hours, fastpass, the June park schedule, photo pass, magical express, places to eat, room information, etc. I'll work on posting those sometime soon.

 

[orangetiggs]

I love your newsletter, we a relooking at holding our reception at epcot but we just cant maek our minds up

 

[JJClemson]

KellyJo, your wedding is only 4 days before mine I'll actually be in WDW during your wedding. Which resort are you staying at? I'd love to meet another DIS bride!

Everything looks great so far! I love your BM's dresses. I know all about having a difficult color. My colors are peach and orange and it took us forever to find peach BM dresses.

I'm one of the brides who is making my guests come to SBP in the June heat We're having a morning ceremony so I'm hoping it's not too bad!

 

[KellyJo18]

KellyJo, your wedding is only 4 days before mine I'll actually be in WDW during your wedding. Which resort are you staying at? I'd love to meet another DIS bride!

Everything looks great so far! I love your BM's dresses. I know all about having a difficult color. My colors are peach and orange and it took us forever to find peach BM dresses.

I'm one of the brides who is making my guests come to SBP in the June heat We're having a morning ceremony so I'm hoping it's not too bad!

I'm jealous you are using Sea Breeze. The wedding photos I've seen taken there are gorgeous! Did they give you a hard time about it? I was pretty much told it wasn't an option, although, we had never looked into doing a morning ceremony. I bet she would have responded differently to that. I'm really hoping that the end of June isn't too terribly hot. As long as we don't hit any record highs

For our complimentary night we are staying at the Polynesian Resort but we are still trying to decide where to stay the rest of the time. It's looking like we might pick Port Orleans Riverside. We leave in a couple of days (Tuesday) for our planning session and are hoping to find time to check out some of the resorts while we are there so we can finally make up our mind. Where have you guys decided to stay?

 

[JJClemson]

I'm jealous you are using Sea Breeze. The wedding photos I've seen taken there are gorgeous! Did they give you a hard time about it? I was pretty much told it wasn't an option, although, we had never looked into doing a morning ceremony. I bet she would have responded differently to that. I'm really hoping that the end of June isn't too terribly hot. As long as we don't hit any record highs

For our complimentary night we are staying at the Polynesian Resort but we are still trying to decide where to stay the rest of the time. It's looking like we might pick Port Orleans Riverside. We leave in a couple of days (Tuesday) for our planning session and are hoping to find time to check out some of the resorts while we are there so we can finally make up our mind. Where have you guys decided to stay?

Yeah, I'm sure SBP would be really hot in the afternoon. Hopefully it isn't in the morning! I definitely wanted an outside ceremony and I want a beachy theme, so it was the most logical choice

We're staying at Port Orleans Riverside the first 2 nights we're there, June 20 and 21. Then we're moving to the Beach Club for 3 nights, and then 5 nights at the GF for our disneymoon. I'm so excited Our weddings are so soon! I remember when my ticker said 15 months!

Have fun at your planning session! The cake tasting is sooooo good

 

[KellyJo18]

I thought I would post my planning session trip report within my planning journal since so many of my photos have to do with planning for the wedding. I hope that is okay

We were in Florida for a week and just got back a couple days ago. We had soooo much to get done while we were there - engagement photo session with Randy Chapman, house hunting for our upcoming move, a day in the parks, and finally on our last day we met with Michelle Shumate for our menu tasting and planning session.

Day One - We're in Florida!
My plane got into Orlando two hours before Mike arrived. We were flying in from different locations and I had my first solo plane ride. To be honest I am not the best when it comes to flying, I tend to get really nervous at any little bump, so boarding a plane alone was a huge step for me. Anyway... I was extremely antsy waiting for Mike's plane to arrive because I knew that was the only thing holding me back from being at Disney! I spent my time at the airport checking out the Disney stores and trying to come up with an idea for a wedding favor. I had to hold back and not buy anything because I knew I would find so much more when we got to the parks.

After Mike got in we headed downstairs towards Magical Express. This was our second time using this service and I love it. Somehow both times we got extremely lucky with catching the bus right before it was about to leave so we didn't have to sit around and wait in any lines. I have heard bad things about it from some friends who got stuck waiting for quite some time and they refuse to ever try it again. Mike isn't exactly Disney's biggest fan (and this trip didn't help, I'll explain that later) and if he had to sit around for hours waiting for a bus he'd probably be wanting to cancel the wedding

We even got lucky that no one on the bus was staying at one of the hotels so we only had one stop before getting to our resort. We decided to try to save some money this trip and were staying at the All-Star Movie Resort. We have never seen any of these properties before and I was excited about getting to check them out (especially since we recommended this one for the wedding).

When the bus pulled up Mike remembered our last trip and the huge lines that we got stuck in since everyone gets off of the Magical Express at the same time and heads for the lobby. So trying to be sneaky he told me to go get in line while he grabbed our luggage . I got up to the front desk pretty quickly (even though they only had two people working and a long line) and began to ask the woman if it would be possible to get a late check out the next day. We were only staying at Disney this one night and then renting a car drive to our future town to look for a place to live since we are moving there a few weeks before the wedding in June. She wasn't very helpful at first but I started to explain that we were having our engagement photos taken at the Grand Floridian the following morning and wouldn't make it back to the hotel until around noon. She got extremely excited for us and started asking tons of questions (sorry if you were stuck in line behind us ). She wanted to know when the wedding was, where we were having it, how we liked the DFTW team, told us about the weather in June, etc. All of a sudden we can have a late check out even though moments earlier she acted like we were speaking a different language when I asked . She then turns back to her computer to work on what would be our first wedding pixie dust... she tells us that she was able to upgrade us to a preferred room!

We were told that the room wasn't quite ready so we decided to go check out the pool area while we were waiting. It turned out to be a horrible idea since we were still pulling our luggage around with us. Here is my attempt at taking a picture of the pool... it turned out to be a better view of the trash cans though.

The lobby

Mike was really hoping we'd get to stay in the Toy Story building because he thought the Bucket-O-Soldiers was the greatest thing ever. I always get excited when he seems excited about something at Disney. It's not that he doesn't like it (we obviously wouldn't be getting married there if that was the case), he just wasn't raised on it like I was. I can barely sleep when I'm there because I'm so excited and ready to go do anything and everything that I can possibly fit in during the trip.

After waiting around for an hour I decided to call to see if the room was ready. We had just been sitting around the food court trying to waste time. The room was still not ready... not a big deal, right? I mean, we were getting a nicer room out of it. We took turns watching the luggage while the other one of us went to look at the gift shop, use the bathroom, etc.

After this it took two more hours before the room was ready and by this time we were very tired and frustrated. If we would have known we'd be waiting so long we would have ditched our luggage with the bell service and gone to Downtown Disney. Oh well... when we did finally get to the room we realized that a "preferred room" only means it is closer to the lobby. For a longer trip that would have been great but we really weren't needing any specific location. By this time Mike was mad we just didn't take the original room. We had originally planned on taking a quick nap since we had both been up since 4 am and it was now about 5:30 pm but a friend of mine from college that now works for Disney was picking us up at 6 to go out to dinner. She started out as an intern and was offered a permanent position while we were there (yay Ana!) . Since we are going to be living about two hours north of Disney Mike was nervous I would constantly be dragging him to the parks. We are both excited that I can always just meet up with Ana when I am needing my Disney fix and he has too much work to come along.

Our room

After a power nap, Ana called to tell us she was out front. She said she was craving Carrabba's which isn't on Disney property but is very close to Downtown Disney. It was nice to see her and she had tons of questions about the wedding for us. It turns out that she has been in charge of an upcoming conference in the Living Seas so I got to ask her a bunch of questions about the space since she said she's been spending so much time there. She offered to let us ship things to her place before the wedding so we wouldn't have to worry about traveling with all of our favors, guest bags, etc. I have a feeling it is going to be really nice to have her nearby during the wedding. All of our college friends that are flying down for the wedding are getting a free place to stay and she is letting them use her guest park passes. I was starting to feel bad that it would be such an expensive trip for them but Ana helping them out certainly saves them a lot of money. I am going to have to find time to go hang out with them at her place. I worry that all of our friends and family being there at once will make it hard for us to decide who to spend time with or that we'll be pulled in tons of different directions.

When we were done with dinner we went to check out the west side of Downtown Disney since Mike had never been. We didn't go into too many stores but just walked around checking things out and talking. Ana was telling us tons of stories about her first time to DisneyQuest... she had a blast which made Mike think this might be a good thing to do with his groomsmen before the wedding - although he is also thinking they'd have a lot of fun taking the surfing lessons offered at Typhoon Lagoon. The one store that we did have a lot of fun going into was Starabilias. I love how all the memorabilia they have is constantly changing so you always get to see something different when you're there. After that we walked through Pleasure Island and Ana told us about each of the clubs. I thought it was funny that one of the clubs has a revolving dance floor - if you've had a lot to drink I'm sure that could get pretty interesting .

We called it a night around 10 since we still had to go back to the room and pick out what we were going to wear for our engagement photos the next morning. Since we weren't in the same city before we left for Florida I just went out and bought a bunch of shirts I thought Mike might want to wear so we had options. I know if I would have just packed the one shirt I wanted him to wear it wouldn't fit or he'd hate it and we would have ended up making Ana take us to the mall to franticly search for something that would look nice. Luckily he only rejected two out of the four shirts I brought so it wasn't an issue .

Up next... we finally get to meet Randy but are we any good at being in front of a camera?


***I'm realizing now that I didn't take nearly enough pictures. I did end up taking tons at the menu tasting and in Franck's - I'll get those up in the next couple of days ***

 

[StephSFL]

Great TR! Thank you so much for sharing. Can't wait to hear about the pics!

 

[KellyJo18]

Day Two - Engagement Session with Randy Chapman

We were supposed to meet Randy in the lobby of the Grand Floridian at 10 am. I woke up around 7:30 because I was extremely worried about not having enough time to get ready. I had ironed our clothes the night before so I wouldn't have to worry about it when we were rushing to get out the door. I was stressing out and kept telling him he needed to get dressed. He finally explained that he knew the second he changed he would end up with orange juice down the front of his shirt. I felt bad pestering him and realized he was probably being smart. We were out the door five minutes later than I had been hoping and Mike stopped giving me a hard time about waking up so early.

We headed toward the lobby to wait in line for the Magic Kingdom bus. Just as we turned the corner we saw it pulling away. Mike sprinted and luckily the bus driver saw us coming and stopped. The last time we tried to get to the Grand Floridian it took us almost an hour so we were worried about being late since we basically had exactly an hour to get there. I got the last seat on the bus and Mike had to stand but at least we were on a bus and not wasting time waiting around. When we got to the Magic Kingdom we headed straight for the monorail. I got so excited seeing everyone heading toward the gates, it felt so weird being there without having any intention of going to any of the parks.

We boarded the monorail with 40 minutes left until we needed to meet Randy. Mike was complaining that he could have slept longer but I was extremely happy that we weren't going to be late. We ended up having 30 minutes before Randy was supposed to arrive which was perfect. We had enough time to go freshen up and also check out the gift shop at the Grand Floridian. I had heard that this was one place at Disney that sold wedding products but we didn't really see much when we were there. They were down to their last bride ears so I figured maybe they were about to restock. Mike doesn't like drawing attention to himself so I knew he wouldn't agree to wearing the wedding ears. During our site inspection tour in November we were waiting in line for Mickey's PhilharMagic and saw a couple wearing the "Just Married" pins. Mike was actually the one that spotted them and then shocked me by saying we need to wear them in June. So during this trip I didn't want to push him by trying to get him to agree to the ears. My sister says she's buying them for us so he feels like he has to be polite and put them on but I doubt that works.

After wasting time checking out the Grand Floridian we decided to find a spot to wait near the door so we could watch for Randy. I had seen what he looked like in one of the photos posted here but I figured we wouldn't miss the big camera he was carrying. The second he walked in we felt comfortable with him even though we were extremely nervous about getting our pictures taken. Personally I just don't feel like I'm very good at posing so I was worried our pictures would turn out horrible.

It started off a little rough probably just because we weren't totally comfortable yet but Randy was good with directions. For the first photo he simply told us to hold hands and walk toward the end of the dock that is behind the GF. Then he started giving us the basic "look left... no, your other left" directions . He made it really easy though and after awhile we had the hang of it. The only issue at first was that the clouds were moving so fast that he would get us in one location and all of a sudden the sun was right in my eyes... I have the most sensitive eyes for some reason and they water really easily (Randy even asked if it was because of contacts but I don't wear contacts or glasses). So hopefully I don't look like I'm crying in all of the pictures!

Once we were feeling more comfortable being in front of the camera the wind really started to pick up and I mean really pick up. This was when we were heading to the beach. Walking down the beach in flip flops wasn't the easiest thing to do so I kicked mine off to the side. Now that I've looked at other people's engagement photos on his website I see that most of you carried yours.... sooo cute! I wish I would have done that instead of just throwing them to the side. Randy asked us to roll up our jeans so we could play in the water which I had really been wanting to do... Mike is a lot taller than me though so he got to go in the water and I stayed near the edge since the sand was higher there. He asked me to give the water a kick so I did but the water flew a little more than I expected. I probably have a startled look on my face in that picture... Randy yelled at me "I said a kick, not a cannonball" which made us both laugh (so hopefully we look happy in those pictures and not scared about being photographed). The wind was so bad during the rest of our session, I just know my hair is going to be all over the place in the photos. I was afraid to look in the mirror afterwards and told Randy he was going to have to do some PhotoShop work to make us look better .

After getting some shots of us on the GF beach we headed over to the grassy area by the WP but Randy's plans didn't work out. The sprinklers were on! He said that in all of the sessions he's done there the sprinklers had never been a problem. So instead we just went back down by to the beach that is near the WP and took more photos at a different angle with a different background. There were a couple ducks there that kept chasing us around. Wherever we moved on that beach they followed us. I'm guessing that they get fed a lot and were hoping we had a treat for them. When we were posing for these shots a group of women walked by and we got a bunch of "awwww"'s from them. I think Mike was a little embarrassed. Whenever people were watching us he'd point them out to me like we should stop until they went away. I'm sure Randy got a bunch of pictures of us talking to each other... opps.

We were pretty much done at this point. We walked back into the lobby and he had us come out front to do the last few shots on the bench near the entrance of the hotel. I asked him a few questions about when I should send him our last payment and then he told us when we should expect to hear from him again (although I don't really remember what he said, a few weeks before the wedding maybe? ). Then we were off to reboard the monorail and make our way back to Magic Kingdom. When we got here we were walking against a huge crowd of people trying to get into the park (it was around 11 am) and we were getting weird looks from people probably wondering why we would already be leaving even though the park had just opened.

We had to wait quite awhile for our bus to come but it wasn't really a big deal. We stood around talking about Randy and how we thought the photos would turn out. While we were waiting a duck came up from behind us started picking at a piece of gum that was stuck to the sidewalk. At first we thought it was just eating some of the popcorn that was on the ground but all of a sudden he started opening and closing his mouth really fast. He was chewing the bubble gum! After we got over our concern for him (bubble gum can't be good for ducks, can it?) it turned out to be really funny. He would open his mouth and you could see the gum sticking on the top and bottom of his mouth... he really looked like he was chomping on it, I kept waiting for him to blow a bubble. After awhile he went back and tried to get more gum off the sidewalk. He was pretty entertaining and seemed to be okay after eating it.

We finally made it back to the hotel and called Alamo right away. We were renting a car that afternoon to look for a place to live. We had about 40 minutes before they were going to come get us and take us to the Disney Car Care Center so we decided to get lunch at the food court. We finished with enough time to just quickly grab our bags and head for the lobby. Luckily we already had everything packed and ready to go. They were a few minutes late and we were glad not to have made them wait for us. When we got on there was another family who had the cutest kids. The mom was trying to get one of the boys (they had twin boys) to take a pill for motion sickness. The dad was telling us that his son gets car sick easily but he still insisted on sitting in the back of the van. I felt so bad for the poor boy, you can't get sick when you're at Disney!

Up next... fast forwarding past our house hunting journey and onto our return to Orlando!

 

[PrettyInTink]

Great TR! The duck chewing gum is priceless!

 

[KellyJo18]

Great TR! The duck chewing gum is priceless!

I wish I would have had a camera with me... I tried taking a picture with my cell phone but you couldn't tell he had gum in his mouth. It would have been great to get on video.