Our Magical Disney Honeymoon ~Sept. 7-15~ Mini Update 11/17

[happenin2you]

OK, so I've decided to try and do a trip report about my honeymoon. This is my first so bear with me.

I guess we should start with a little background info. My husband and I went to the same high school, he was a year ahead of me. We didn't know each other then, but we had a lot of the same friends. After we all went to college, we happened to be at the same party where everyone who had gone away to school had come back for spring break and was catching up. We didn't start dating at that time, but consistently ran into each other at this type of get-together more and more often.
Finally, just after Christmas 2005, we went on our first date. I don't think it was love at first sight, but we both felt like this was it. We discussed it later, that in hindsight it feels like we moved really quickly, but we both agreed that we knew we would someday be married. We went to Disneyland for spring break 2006 and returned talking about how great it would be to do a disney honeymoon (we hadn't even talked about marriage yet, just straight to the fun stuff). I guess we did it a little backwards. That summer we started looking at selling his house (that he shared with his best friend) and buying one of our own. By the end of summer, we had a down payment and paperwork started on a condo and had signed contracts for our venue and several wedding vendors, and I bought a dress!
Then, one year after our first date, two days after Christmas, he proposed. See, backwards... Many things happened after that. We had a crazy year, my dad was in a horrible car accident, which left him on disability for almost a year. He had been paying for my wedding and still had almost $5000 left to pay, which he couldn't do on disability and we couldn't do either. With a month to go, we cancelled all of our wedding plans and did a $99 wedding on the Las Vegas strip. I later found out that some of his co-workers thought we did it because I was pregnant. This was not the case. We have no kids, yet. Had they not been paying attention, they had already been invited to the cancelled wedding... Anyways. I hated my Vegas ceremony. Spending most of my life in this town, I swore that I would never get married at one of those places, but life throws curveballs. There's nothing wrong with doing it that way, it just wasn't part of my plan. At first, I hated the little ceremony on the strip so much, I swore we'd never do it again (the new plan was to do the quickie wedding because I needed to get on his insurance/ we wanted to get married and had the dress/ the license would expire before next year and then do a nice big wedding the next year on the same date, 2007 was a thursday so my 2008 wedding could be a saturday).
The more I thought about it though, the more I realized I was missing out on my first dance, father daughter dance, cake cutting, garter toss, etc... and we booked a new wedding that we could pay for ourselves. So on Saturday September 6th, 2008, I "married" (renewed my vows) and had a gorgeous wedding ceremony and reception with a proper shower and everything beforehand. And after that whole thing, we changed out of our formalwear and headed straight to McCarran Airport and boarded a redeye to WDW!

 

[happenin2you]

here is one from the first wedding, which was a 6pm on a thursday, this is infront of the famous las vegas sign. after the ceremony we stopped here before going to dinner with family and the friends we had asked to be our bridal party.

I will put up some more another night, I didn't realize they weren't loaded into my computer and they are taking For- ev- er!!!

I think it might be time for bed now...

 

[Raider82]

Sounds like all things worked out all things considered. Can't wait to hear and see more from your honeymoon.

 

[happenin2you]

ok, i finally got a pic from the second aka real wedding

after that magical moment, we finished up all the wedding festivities and got on to what we considered to be the most important part, the honeymoon! We took a redeye flight from las vegas to nyc (way out of the way, right) to orlando. we landed in florida about 9:30 am on sunday. we were high on adrenaline; goodness knows we didn't get much sleep on the plane. from the second we stepped of the plane we were engulfed in magic. we quickly got to the side and pulled my folder full of all notes and reservations and facts out to find our map to ME. We got down there quickly and were ecstatic to find that there was NO LINE! I went straight to the counter while DH hung out with the carry-ons and was quickly directed to our line. we had about a 10 minute wait for a bus and boarded with people also going to POP and CBR and our own AKL. We were dropped off last, which I was excited about because I was hoping to see some of the other resorts.

When we reached AKL, DH waited for the bags while I booked it check in, hoping to beat any lines. When I walked in, everyone greeted me and I felt like I was in a movie where everything slows down and you get the 360 view of the room. It was amazing. I walked right up to counter, because there were several available people to check me in, and was welcomed home. DH came up behind me and the CM presented us with a very nice DFTW honeymoon certificate, which I've been meaning to get a frame for to put near our wedding photos and handpainted art from the original wedding mini honeymoon to DLR. We were given our KTTW, checked our carryons, and were off to try to make our first ressie, lunch at the LTT in MK which was set for 1pm.

We were about 30 minutes late as much trouble as I had getting all the ADRs I wanted, I thought for sure we were not getting in. The hostess joked with us a bit about being late, and then sat us right away! We hadn't eaten since our chicken parmesian and london broil at the wedding reception the night before, so we were ready to eat! I had the mozzerella sticks, which were just ok, and the turkey dinner with mashed potatoes and stuffing, which was so good! I can't remember what DH had... At this point, we had warm, full bellies, and were sleep deprived, not to mention not showered from the day before (I specifically asked my hair dresser to give me wedding style that would still look good the next day in the parks and hold up to the Florida humidity, and she did!) so we were ready to crash. But we kept pushing and did some rides, our room wasn't ready yet anyways.

The very first thing I wanted to do though was buy a pal mickey. I'm so glad we did because he was very helpful and had plenty of random information. Next, we did the haunted mansion, which I think was better at DLR and the Hall of Presidents, which my DH, who really wanted to see it and is into history more than anyone I know, fell asleep as soon as the lights went down in. After this, we did splash mountain, which is was better at WDW, because I thought the splash of water would revive us. Boy was I wrong. After standing in that line, nothing could motivate us. And I figured I really needed a shower and to get all the stuff out of my hair (little girls kept asking me if I was a princess because of my tiara) It was past 3 and we went back to check out our room. DH fell asleep on the bus...

We had booked a pool view room with a king bed, I wanted to upgrade to savannah view at check in, but I was so distracted by the hotel itself, I forgot to ask if they had one. It was a short walk to the room, not close enough to be bothered by the noise of people from the lobby, but not so far that we had to walk forever.

When we came in, this is what we saw first

next up: do we sleep the day away?...

 

[jessters7]

I'm in! Can't wait to hear more!

 

[Docter419]

keep going, honeymoon stories are great. My wife and I spent a week at DL for ours. It was fantastic

 

[happenin2you]

Thanks for joining in Jess and Doctor!

Jess, when is your Disneymoon?

Doctor, I love honeymoon stories, too! Thanks for the support

 

[happenin2you]

after discovering that awesome towel mickey head, DH also notices that his bags have not been delivered to the room, but mine have. he thinks this is so they would have to be brought up while we were there and could tip. does anyone have any thoughts or experience with this? he was kind of irritated because he thought it was a money grubbing scam, but I laughed at him and got in the shower to wash out the 3 tons of hair spray left over from the day before. when I came out of the bathroom, DH was passed out on the bed... no surprise there i debated about just crashing beside him, but we had a reservation for Tony's Town Square for dinner and I really didn't want to miss that one. So, now that his bags had been brought up, he showered and we were off to MK. Fresh and clean, we had a second wind.

When we arrived at Tony's, we requested the patio and were told that it was probably not going to be available and it would be a 45 minute wait. I wasn't falling for it. I told them it was our honeymoon (which should have been reflected in their computer considering I noted it on every reservation to see which places do special stuff) and that we would happily wait. The host seemed irritated by this, but we ignored her and sat in the waiting area. It was about 20 minutes and we got the patio! SCORE They must not have wanted us out there for some reason, because when we got out there, there were plenty of tables (as we also noticed when we had been approaching from the park entrance). This was our only encounter with a rude CM on the whole trip, so that was fine with us.

This is us with our Pal Mickey when we sat, so happy to be here

DH (Chris) with the menu

and us with some of our fave dogs, Lady and The Tramp

Dinner was good here. I had Caprese salad to start (fresh mozzerella, basil, tomato, and balsamic viniagrette), Chicken parmesian, and creme brulee. Next time I will take pictures of the food, because I'd love to share it and I can't remember what Chris ordered anywhere Oh well.

The fireworks were going off while we were at dinner, which was good and bad. Bad because we couldn't see them very well from where we were, but good because the park was closing to regular guests. It was an extra magic hours night and by the time we were done with dinner, the park was pretty empty and we were free to roam minus the crowds!

That's all for now, I've got to get back to work

Up Next: Closing the park

 

[Nicole786]

Awesome so far! Were you staying Club Level at AKL? The bedspread looks like it!

 

[jessters7]

Thanks for joining in Jess and Doctor!

Jess, when is your Disneymoon?

Doctor, I love honeymoon stories, too! Thanks for the support

January 3-10! I can't wait to hear more about your trip!

 

[happenin2you]

Awesome so far! Were you staying Club Level at AKL? The bedspread looks like it!

We actually weren't club level, we stayed in a regular pool view king bed room. I think we may do club level for a future anniversary trip, maybe 5 year? Have you stayed club level?

 

[happenin2you]

I'm going to San Diego for a lil vacation with my BFF (it was my birthday present ) so I'll post more when I get back. My DH seems to have "misplaced" our Photopass CD and I was hoping to use those in this thread... If it's not back when I get home, I'll just have to continue without it. For now, I have to get ready to go relax by the water!

See you all very soon

Deanna

 

[lovemyzoe]

Just found your TR and now you've got me thinking about doing a honeymoon TR too. We had two weddings too...set one date and found out the minister we wanted was no longer able to legally marry people since he was retired...so we went to the courthouse a few months before to get the legal part out of the way. Did the first wedding all by ourselves in t-shirts and jeans, LOL!

Can't wait to hear more about your trip! Have fun in SD!

 

[happenin2you]

Sorry it's been so long, I just had so much work to do to make up for my lil vacay.

So we left off at dinner at Tony's...

We were able to catch the end of the fireworks from the patio where we were sitting, which was nice. When we finished our desserts, EMH had started and the park was pretty empty We were able to walk on to all the rides in Fantasyland!

and we were able to sneak in this lil photo op =)

at this time, Chris was falling asleep on the rides again... so we finished up in fantasyland and made our way back to the hotel. we had a big day planned for the next day, starting with breakfast ADRs at Chef Mickey's.

up next: Day 2- starting with breakfast

 

[happenin2you]

Just found your TR and now you've got me thinking about doing a honeymoon TR too. We had two weddings too...set one date and found out the minister we wanted was no longer able to legally marry people since he was retired...so we went to the courthouse a few months before to get the legal part out of the way. Did the first wedding all by ourselves in t-shirts and jeans, LOL!

Can't wait to hear more about your trip! Have fun in SD!

It's funny, the more I share my "two weddings to the same guy" story, the more I find that it's not that uncommon. You should do a TR, it's fun reliving your story and hearing what other people have to say about it. In any case, thanks for joining in and I look forward to hearing about your trip as well!

 

[happenin2you]

After all of Chris' compulsive sleeping on the rides at MK, I never would have thought he would wake right up with the alarm and get ready while letting me sleep in a bit. He's pretty sweet. Soon, we were on our way to the bus stop and to the Contemporary.

I thought this picture was cool because you can see the moisture in the air.

and us on the bus excited to see "the mouse"

When we arrived at CR, we were early for our ADR, so we decided to wander around a bit. The Atrium is very cool and seeing the monorail glide through periodically is fun.
It was peak breakfast time, so when we did approach the podium, we were told it would be a few minutes wait, which we didn't mind. We were brought in less than five minutes and they gave us these special placemats to designate our honeymoon.

During the "party", we were brought these cupcakes for our celebration. All the food was good, I love disney breakfast buffets, the characters all made their way over, and the cupcakes were good, too.

after breakfast, we caught the bus over to DHS for the day. when we walked it, we snapped this lil beauty =)

and this one before jumping on the TOT

We saw the Indiana Jones show, which we really liked and rushed over to Lights, Motors, Action which was starting immediately after. I do not reccommend this to anyone. Try to fit these two shows in seperately from each other, it was way to chaotic trying to rush from Indy to LMA and get a seat anywhere before the show started, and it was only two of us, not a whole family. At any rate, the shows were great. After this we went on the backlot tour, which seems like an obviously bad choice, but the sign said 20 minutes. And I think we made it in like 15. Personally, this rude was very boring. If you've ever been to Universal Studios Hollywood (I haven't been to Universal Orlando to compare) and done their backlot tour, it is exponentially better. In the future, we'll skip this one. We had lunch at the Sci-FI Drive In and we loved it. We had to wait about 10 minutes to be sat, we were in the back of a car on the right rear side of the parking lot. I started with the spinach and artichoke dip and had the pastrami sandwich for my entree. Chris had the onion rings app and the reuban. All the food was really good, it's hard to find a decent pastrami sandwich in vegas, and we loved the atmosphere. After this, we walked through most of the attractions around the backside of the park. We saw the Little Mermaid show and Beauty and the Beast. The shows were fun with detailed costumes and stage scenery. By this time, our ADR at 50's Prime Time was approaching. We got some evening pics on the way over.

The Prime Time Diner was packed with people. We waited about 30 minutes for our ADR. While we were waiting, we had some drinks at the bar. I was a big fan of the year of a million dreams glowtini. We had the PB&J shakes and I had the fried chicken, which was great since the only fried chicken I've ever had came from KFC and we finished off our lovely dinner with smores! Aside from the long wait, dinner was great and the place was fun. When we left here, it was EMH time again, so we rode the Rockin' Roller Coaster and Toy Story Mania, both of which had pretty long lines. We really loved Toy Story and will be really happy to ride it again next time we go, assuming the excitement has died down and there are more reasonable wait times, and fast passes aren't gone by 1100am. The coaster was awesome too, it was just kinda short for the 45 minute wait it took to get on it. After this, it was almost closing time, so we headed back to the busses and back to our comfy room for some rest and a dip in the pool (gotta love that 24 hour pool at AKL!). Speaking of rest, I think it's time for bed.

Next up: Day 3- EPCOT

 

[happenin2you]

On the third day, we didn't have an ADR for breakfast, so we went down to the Mara in AKL and picked up some milks, juices, apple slices, bananas and muffins for breakfast. They were all counted as 'snack credits' on our DxDP which was great because we hadn't yet used any snack credits, we hadn't felt the need to with all the meals we were having. It was a healthy little breakfast that kept us more than satisfied until our lunch ressie in Morocco. We jumped on the bus over to EPCOT, and our park day was under way.

We took some fun pics when we got inside the gates. This is my favorite from the entire trip!

World Showcase was just opening when we got there, so we skipped past the Future World on our way back there. First stop, my DH's homeland (we joke about our homelands and people, mine being NY), Mexico! He absolutely loves Donald, who is incredibly hard to come by in DLR, so when we saw him, in Mexico of all places, Chris was ecstatic. It was Pato Donald, as they call him in Mexico, in a poncho and sombrero! Can you see the joy eminating here? He never really smiles in pictures.

After that special pic, we walked through the countries at a leisurely pace until we came to Morocco. I noticed there was a good view of the pyramid temple in Mexico, so I took this picture of Chris pointing to it.

We were a bit early for our ADR, but we had arrived in Morocco ahead of schedule and were dying to get inside with some air conditioning, it was getting very hot and humid outside. So we told them we were early for our res but could they take us any earlier and they said no problem and brought us right in! The dining room had a really large capacity, but there were only about 5 other tables seated and eating. I was amazed at how difficult it is to get ADRs to some of the restuarants in WDW, but here I got what I wanted and it seemed like no one else really wanted this. The atmoshpere in Marrakesh is spectacular! Everything is very detailed and intricately designed with small tiles and tapestries. There was live music the whole time we were in there and a belly dancer came and went periodically. The service was great and the food and drink was even better. I had a Watermelon Delight to drink, which was watermelon, cranberry juice, and orange water in a very nice keepsake glass. It was very tasty, I had not had watermelon juice in a drink before, and refreshing. To eat, I started with the Harira soup. I hadn't had lamb before and I know a lot of people who don't like it, so I was a little nervous, but the upside of having this huge dining plan was being able to try so much new stuff. I was pleasantly amazed. I loved the soup! If I had to pick the single best thing I ate in all of WDW, it would be this soup. For my entree, I got the Sultan's Feast, which has beef brewat, chicken bastille, cousocus, and chicken brochette. It was really good. I love the way they incorporate so many different spices into their entrees that americans don't typically use in that way. This is definitely a place that will be a must on our next visit.

From here, we continued out walk through the countries and got to UK just as the Fab Four was about to go on. DH absolutely loves the Beatles, so we had to check this out. He grabbed a bench while I went to go find a restroom. To his surprise, I came back with a nice cold treat for him to enjoy.

a nice, cold beer in a UK souvenir cup! he was pretty excited. I'm not a beer drinker, but I know he loves a cold beer on a hot day. He got a kick out of the Fab Four, they were costumed in attire from the Beatles early days and played songs from that era. When the show ended, they told us that they do x amount of shows per day, and starting with the one we saw, each show progresses to the next style of the Beatles up until the end. DH immediately wanted to come back for every show the rest of the day, but I was like as great as the Beatles, or their tribute band, may be, we're here to explore the park! If have time in the end of our trip and have seen everything, I'd be happy to come back and watch all 5 shows in the day, or however many. We weren't able to see everything in the parks, so we didn't make it back for that. But then I promised him it could be a priority for our next trip nice way to get him to agree to another while we were still there!
of course they have a red phone booth in the UK, so I had to take a pic there!

from here, we made our way around to the Future World, where we went on all the rides and saw everything except Innoventions. Next time I go, I'd like to look around in there some more. We loved test track!

After all of the excitement from the rides, we went back to Japan for our ADR at Teppan Edo. We were really excited for this because we love Teppan-yaki style dining. It was excellent, as our teppan experiences always are, and they presented us with a special dessert to celebrate our honeymoon.

It was a delicious, green flan. I can't remember if it was green tea, or pistacio.. At any rate, it was great, and I'd reccommend it to anyone.
When we left here, Illuminations was starting. We decided to make our way to the exit and beat the crowds to the bus home since we were planning to see that show a different night. Magically, our bus was pulling up when we got to the area and we jumped on and had a quite ride home, where we spent some time checking out the animals on the savannah with night vision goggles and hanging by the pool some more.

Next Up: Day 4- AK

 

[happenin2you]

On day 4, we wanted to get to the Animal Kingdom Park at opening because I had read that the safari is best early morning or late afternoon. We got there a little after opening and went straight back to the safaris where the line was about a 15 minute wait! Score! The CMs saw our honeymoon pins and put us in the front of the jeep and let us have our own row to ourselves! Score again! The animals were awesome, a lot more variety than I expected.

This is the banner in the jeep identifying the animals on the savannah and the entry sign.

And the animals

Baby giraffe!

The safari was really fun and seemed to last a very long time, which we liked. We saw more animals than we expected, by far, and I think we will try for the evening safari next time.

Next: AK-cont...

 

[happenin2you]

After we got off the safari, we discovered a small walking tour animal exhibit. The gorillas were super cute!

Next we found the tree of life and got some pictures there.

Then we went over to visit with pooh and friends. I love how the photographers start snapping pics as you walk up. If you have kids, I would imagine this gets their excitement in a candid way before they are posed for their pictures. I love this one, I didn't know it had been taken until I saw my photopass pics online! A 24 year old child

After being dragged away from Pooh so that the actual children could have a turn it was perfect timing for the Nemo show. The stage and costumes involved in this show were far beyond anything I expected. I would recommend this to everyone! Getting out of the extreme heat and humidity were just an added bonus. After the show, we wanted to do Expedition Everest and Kali River Rapids, but the waits were long and we had an ADR coming up at Yak +Yeti. We killed some time in another self-guided walking tour of some animals and getting this picture, check out those clouds!

I didn't get any pictures of the animals because it had started raining at this time and I didn't want to risk getting the camera wet and missing out on pics from the remainder of the trip. Lunch at Yak + Yeti was delicious. Chris had the lettuce wraps as an app, I remember this because he still talks about them being some of the best lettuce wraps he's ever had, and he loves lettuce wraps. I had the pot stickers appetizer and the sweet and sour chicken while Chris had the Crispy Honey Chicken. Both were good. The fried won-ton dessert was great, it overshadowed whatever the other dessert we got was that I can't remember... yum!
At this time, we had set up an appointment to go to a time share presentation, which was perfect because the sky had just opened and was dumping rain on us like you'd NEVER see in Las Vegas! We were loving it. People were putting their ponchos on and taking cover while we strolled along to our car to the timeshare with no protection from the rain. We were soaked and laughing and people were looking at us like we were crazy. You have to understand, when it "rains" in Las Vegas, it's like someone has spit on you. Not ever enough to get your car completely wet.
We had a great time at the DVC thing, and really were on board with the whole thing, but the down payment would have soaked up most of our spending money, so we told them next time, and I'm glad because I am learning more about and will be able to make a better decision when we actually go through with this. The nice this about DVC, is after the presentation, they take you by car anywhere you want to go within WDW. We went back to our hotel to freshen up and get ready for our dinner at CRT.
Our dinner table was decorated with confetti for our honeymoon, nice touch.

We had the BLT salad, which we good. We loved the bread they brought, pretzel I think. I had the tortellini and I think DH had the prime rib. The food was good, not great, and warm, not hot. For dessert we had a cream cheese buckle. I think next time we will try this one for breakfast and see how that goes.
On the way out, Chris couldn't resist challenging the armor to a duel... or something =)

Forced perception or not, that castle is tall

That was it for our big day, we went back to the hotel and relaxed and got to bed for the next morning.

Next up: Day 5 AK and more!

 

[Dizney_Luver]

Great Trip Report so far! Waiting to hear what happened next! My Wife and I got married on the Strip in Vegas too, Little Chapel of the West. That was 30 years ago this November. Congrats!