Last minute Birthday trip!

[lilpatty19@aol.com]

Hi! Welcome to my last minute birthday pre tip report. While this is not my first trip report, it is my first one in a long time if you can count my first trip report as such. As usual let me start by telling you a little bit about myself and my trip partner Angel.





My name is Patty, I am elementary music teacher. I will be turning 31 on this trip. I wasn’t always a Disney addict. I went on a few trips as a kid but my addiction started when I was 18. I went on a trip with a friend of mine and then went on a few solo trips and found myself going every time I could. In 2006 I applied for the college program and got accepted. I was there from Jan –May working in Main Street Ops which included parade control and being a conductor for the WDWRR which I loved! Once I graduated college and moved out on my own it became harder to afford going to the world. The last time I went was 2010.


Angel – My 29 year old boyfriend of 8 years. He is a private music instructor. We met in college and actually began dating after a trip to Disney together. Angel doesn’t quite share my Disney addiction but he is the best boyfriend around and has joined me on many Disney trips and I’m sure he secretly has a blast while he is there. As I am typing this he just said Ohana to me in a silly voice which means he’s gotta have at least a little love for Disney somewhere right lol.


Here are some pics of our trips in the past and my experience on the CP.












Ok so more about the trip. For a long time I have been planning my Disney Dream Vacation which would be at least a week where I could actually get up without an alarm and visit a park at my leisure without worrying that I wouldn’t have time to see and do everything I wanted to do unless I was in a hurry. Well after budgeting for that trip I found it to be way over my budget. Instead I decided to do a shorter birthday trip, since I have always wanted to go on my birthday. We got the MYW package with 3 day passes and the QS dining plan which I have never purchased so that should be interesting.The plan is to leave on Dec 18 in the morning around 9 and drop of my dog Lucky at the animal hospital where he will be boarded.





After that we will get back on the road towards All Star Movies resort where we will stay till 22nd. Here is the breakdown of the days. Oh by the way just got the word that our Magic Bands have been shipped!!!





So here’s the Plan
Dec 18 - Check in and relax. Do a little hotel hopping as I have wanted to just look at some hotels and enjoy their scenery. At night we will go check out the boardwalk.
Dec 19 – My Birthday at Epcot!
Dec 20 – Magic Kingdom – with EMH till 3 AM
Dec 21 – Upgrade tickets to park hoppers and split the day between AK and will always be known to me as MGM lol.
Dec 22 – Check out. Maybe go to DTD and pick up my dog on the way home.

As things happen and the trip gets closer I will keep you updated! Hope you stick around!

 

[lilpatty19@aol.com]

Just a little dining update....

We didn't have any special dining plans, but this is a special birthday trip so why not add a nice dining experience to change things up a little as we will be doing a lot of QS meals with the QS dining plan...so where will we be eating ?!?

I just made a reservation for the first day we arrive at the Spirit of Aloha. We have been once before and still continue to talk about how much we enjoyed it. Something new that we will be trying is Boma. We have a Boma reservation for our last night there. Now I'm not very adventurous with food but it should be fun to try. My Bf on the other hand loves trying new food so he's excited.

What do you think of Boma...would love to hear your opinions.

 

[ursalita]

Hi! I just have to say that I love that you and Angel are both Elementary music teachers. Very important job you have!

Lucky is very sweet. Is he wearing a seatbelt? I wish my girl could ride in the car with me, she gets car sick.

We had dinner at Boma on our second trip. I can't remember all the specifics but I do know that it was my favorite buffet at Disney.

 

[lilpatty19@aol.com]

Hi! I just have to say that I love that you and Angel are both Elementary music teachers. Very important job you have!

Lucky is very sweet. Is he wearing a seatbelt? I wish my girl could ride in the car with me, she gets car sick.

We had dinner at Boma on our second trip. I can't remember all the specifics but I do know that it was my favorite buffet at Disney.

Thanks so much, my job usually goes unappreciated. Lucky was wearing a harness. He is a silly dog, he has gotten car sick and it was not a pretty site that day. I will miss my little guy during the trip.

I hope I too will enjoy Boma as much as you did.

 

[lilpatty19@aol.com]

So my MBs have arrived which means my trip is getting closer!



Can't wait!!!

Since my last small update, my Bf and I decided that we should try the behind the seeds tour. See my boyfriend loves gardening. He composts and helps his dad garden. They have a lot of fruits and veggies in their backyard and I too am now growing green onions, cilantro and rosemary, so it should be fun. We will be going on our Epcot day!

 

[ursalita]

Yay! I love your Magic Bands with Christmas colors.

I love the sound of that tour. I should take it by myself. I'm taking some free gardening classes at our local library in preparation to try a veggie garden in the spring. It amazes me how much there is to do in Disney. I would love to hear how it goes, please share.

 

[lilpatty19@aol.com]

Super excited! I leave in 2 days and there is a lot to do. I am still in the long packing process. I am trying to figure out what to wear for the cool weather I will experience and I also have to pack all my doggy's meds and various things for his stay. I have been making various packing and to do lists that I hope will all get done on time!

So let me update you on what has been added to the trip and what I am looking forward to doing for the first time. So I had been worried that my Spirit of Aloha ADR might be cancelled due to the cool weather so I called Disney Dining to see if they thought if I should just go ahead and cancel and look for another ADR. The lady told me to just hold onto it and that Disney would make sure to let people know as early as they knew about cancellations. So I kept my reservation and as a back up plan made an ADR at La Hacienda de San Angel for my birthday! After thinking about it I thought why not have a special dinner on my birthday so I am just going to be keeping all the ADR's and hope my luau isn't cancelled.

Now what am I looking forward to doing for the first time?.....well a lot of things but mainly capturing my trip on video. I always take pictures here and there but never video. A few weeks ago my mother had asked me what I wanted for Christmas. I mentioned that I wanted the new gopro hero 4 but never thought she would get it because of the crazy price but she got it! I have seen a lot of people's trip videos on youtube and am going to attempt to make my own this year Not sure how great it will turn out as I will be picking up the camera tonight and have only a day to figure out how it works but I am excited to document my trip on video!

So now let me tell you the plans for the trip!


Thursday
* Get up earlyish maybe 7:30 and get all things packed in the car and drop of my dog at his boarding facility. I'll miss him but it will be nice to have a break. Then get back on the road for a 4 hour drive to the ASM where I hope to check in. Well I have already done the online check in but I hope they will have a room ready so that we could drop off our bags. After checking in we plan on going to Disney Quest as we got 2 vouchers with our MYW package. We have also never done DQ so it should be fun. Maybe we will eat lunch at DTD and then head back to the hotel and relax before our hopefully not cancelled ADR at SOA.

Friday (EPCOT day! My BIRTHDAY!)

When I go to the parks I never plan ahead of time what I want to ride or anything so its a bit weird having the fast passes ahead of time and having to make plans around that. We have FP's for TT a character meet and greet as well as SE. The other two things planned for today are the Behind the Seeds tour and our ADR at La Hacienda.

Saturday (MK day)
Not a single thing planned except maybe try the main train as I know the line will be nuts ( couldn't get a FP). The other thing I must always do is ride the WDWRR and say hi to old coworkers!
Oh we have FP's for:
Space Mountain
Under the Sea ~ Journey of The Little Mermaid
Big Thunder Mountain Railroad®

Sunday (AK & HS)
We have to add a park hopper to our ticket this day and then the plan is to visit the two parks
Fast Passes include:
For the First Time in Forever: A Frozen Sing-Along Celebration
Star Tours
Toy Story Midway Mania!

Then we have a dinner ADR @ Boma

Monday
Head home

Hope you are enjoying my report!

 

[ursalita]

Your plans look great! I hope you get to do the Aloha show.

So exciting!

 

[lilpatty19@aol.com]

Just got back from my trip..can't wait to tell you all that we did. While I gather my pictures and video I will let you know we had a blast. I also had some interesting stories to tell about great food, guests and cast members and the not so great guests... oh and did someone pee themselves on the bus on the way to MGM!? Not me of course... How did recording things with my new gopro go? 4 parks in one day!? Yup we did that..How? You will have to wait to find out.

 

[lilpatty19@aol.com]

Sorry it has taken me a while to post. With the holidays and some days where I just didn't feel my best I was delayed on my TR writing.

So as I mentioned our trip was full of lots of fun and some interesting happenings here and there. So here is how it all went! This will be a very picture heavy TR. I’m not the best photographer but I hope you enjoy the pics!



The night before we left I tried to finish packing but I was just too exhausted and didn’t get it all done. I stayed awake till about midnight but I just couldn’t do it so I knew that the next day when I woke up I would have a lot to do before we got on the road.

Day 1 (Thursday Dec 17)​

I had taken the day off of work and while we still woke up somewhat early
(7:30 AM) it doesn’t feel like a pain when you are heading to Disney. So after waking up I hurried to get ready and finish packing all that I hadn’t finished the night before. Packing for me and my dog in such a short amount of time felt a bit overwhelming. I know what you’re thinking, packing for a dog overwhelming!? But he is special needs and requires a lot of stuff like medication, 4 individually packed bags of food per day, bedding, typed instructions for the nurses to follow etc. Well after getting everything ready to go we finally left my apartment around 9AM. We had to drive about 30 minutes north to reach the animal hospital where my little guy would be staying. Once we got there I thought that checking him in would take about 10minutes and we would quickly be back on the road but it wasn’t till an hour later that we finally headed out towards Orlando. Oh and I forgot to charge the new GoPro so all the pics taken that day were either taken with my phone or ipad.


So we were now on the road and it would only take us 3 hours till we finally saw our exit! And I was happy!








Then this happened! It’s a video, click on the picture!





So we made our way to our resort (All Star Movies). Once there we checked in and made our way to our room to drop off our bags. I was pleasantly surprised to see how close our room was to the main building with the food court and buses. We were right next to it in the Fantasia, sorcerer Mickey building!

This is the trail from our car to our building





After putting our bags in our room we headed over to DTD West Side to play some games over at Disney Quest.


Here are some pics of our room not exactly on this day, they were actually on our last day as we were packing the car but hey it will give you an idea of what it looked like








Here we are waiting for the bus to DTD!




Continued in next post..

 

[lilpatty19@aol.com]

DAY 1 Continued

When our bus arrived at DTD I had no idea the bus would drop us off on the total opposite side of DTD. I was not too happy because just the day before my BF had hurt his foot and now had a long way to limp to our destination. He refused to let me push him on a wheel chair that day or any day on the trip. He just limped his way around the parks with a purple toe.


One inside DQ I was excited to play Fix it Felix Jr. while my BF was excited to play some pinball. Guess what we found first!




After playing and losing several times we played Aladdin which was very claustrophobic and hot for me, I was happy when it was over. We then began looking for the pinball area, which took us a while. Once we found it my BF played for a while and then I managed to pull him away for a bit so that we could try the Jungle Cruise game. We looked so silly. I rowed so hard but I don’t think my oar was working since we weren’t going in the direction we were aiming for but it was a lot of fun. We also then tried the giant pinball game where you stand on this thing that moves, I can’t remember what it was called. After this game it was time to make the long limp back to the buses because we had an 8:15 ADR for Spirit of Aloha. Along the way there were lots of picture taking opportunities. Here are some!


I love just about anything with Christmas lights, so a random pole with pretty lights made a good photo opportunity for me.





I had to have the BF jump in the photo and you’ll begin to notice that he loves to make silly faces in most of the pictures.




We found a scary dragon



Dinos too!






After about a 20 minute walk we made it to the POLY bus and boy was it packed. We were sitting down towards the front of the bus and I had butts in my face, and my boyfriend sat next to a lady that had her giant backpack all in his face. It was not a pleasant ride but we made it to the POLY with about 10 -15 minutes before we were whisked to the luau tiki huts. The area before they hold you in before they send you to the tiki hut area was so beautifully lit with Christmas lights. There’s something about Christmas lights that just makes everything prettier.



My

BF in the trees

 

[lilpatty19@aol.com]

More to come from day one a bit later today

 

[lilpatty19@aol.com]

I was surprised the show had not been cancelled because it was quite chilly that night I felt bad for the dancers who came out wearing such a tiny amount of clothes. The menu seems to have changed a bit since the last time we came, but the food was still delicious. I did not take pictures of all of the food sorry. Here are just a few pics I took.




This is one happy hungry guy




Super delicious Pineapple bread pudding. I wish I could have had a doggie bag it was so good.













The Luau as a whole was yummy and the show was great.
I have never really taken time to check out the resorts on property. I regret not doing it while on my college program. I had been looking at a lot of pictures on-line before the trip and decided that if time allowed that I would take the time on this trip to do a little resort hopping and check them out since we really could probably never afford to stay at most of them anyway. The first resort we would visit on this trip would be the Wilderness lodge. So after we left the luau we headed back to the monorail to head back to MK and grab a boat to the WL.

On the way to the boat we saw the electric water parade and I had to take some pics of the MK entrance






Here are some silly pics of us on the boat.

Did I mention it was cold outside






BF being weird




View from the boat.




While on the boat my BF was so excited to have seen a deer. He had actually been talking about it while on the car ride to Orlando that he had wanted to see a random deer. You don’t see any deer in Miami so when he got to see one while on the boat he was really happy. Sorry no pic of the deer, it was too dark. We did get to see another deer later on the trip.


When we finally arrived at the WL we walked around, took some pics, and tried to go to the top floor but quickly realized that we could not get there as it was a private floor. We called it the forbidden floor. The lodge was gorgeous. I especially loved the mossy trees by the dock. I told my BF that I wished we could stay there. I pretty much said that at every resort we visited and ones we just saw from a distance lol.


Here are just a few pics.


Pretty tree

[/URL

[URL=http://s19.photobucket.com/user/LiLpatty19/media/883783bc-72a3-4c5d-8e9c-f62f3fe47272_zps71546c4b.jpg.html][/URL

Continued to next post

 

[lilpatty19@aol.com]

Loved the totem pole/beam in the distance



Cute lamp in the hallway



Loved this part of the lodge







Fitting in the our surroundings




It was time to head back to the boat so that we could have time to make it to the monorail and off to the GF. I had watched a holiday resort special many years ago and knew they made a giant ginger bread house and that is what I had hoped to see on this visit. So off we were back on the boat. We were the only ones on the boat as MK was closing soon. It was nice to have the boat all to ourselves. Then we were on to the monorail and at the GF in just a few minutes!


When we arrived at the GF we were met with this beauty.



Pretty Decorations




I do not remember at all why my BF has his hands up but it looks silly




The tree was pretty! As soon as we walked in we saw the ginger bread house in the distance and quickly got on the elevator to the first floor. The elevator was cute. We like see through elevators. Once in front of the ginger bread house it was nice but for some reason I thought it would be bigger…it was pretty large so I don’t know how much bigger I thought it would be, but everything looks bigger on tv lol. Here are some pics of the house...oh btw it had cute golden hidden Mickeys. See if you can find any in my pictures.















Being the camera woman I notice I am not in as many pictures as the BF. Here he is checking out the house.





We had fun looking around. We enjoyed the GF but I think we decided that this resort was just too fancy for us. After looking at the house and checking out the resort we rushed back to the monorail. While waiting around for the monorail the attendant noticed my College Program sweater and started asking me questions about the program and if I had known certain people he knew. It was fun to just start up a conversation with random people about my program. After a few minutes the monorail came and we headed back to the buses at the MK. We were so exhausted. We finally made it back to our hotel around 1 AM and quickly went to sleep

I hope you enjoyed our first day. It was lots of fun and tiring. All of our days on our trip were like this. We never went to bed before 1 AM.

 

[ursalita]

Welcome back! It sounds like you had a fun trip. I love the pictures of the holiday decorations at the resorts especially WL. Thanks for sharing.