Resorts, Relatives & Restaurants - and a 3 day cruise!

[MAGGIED]

Sheree what a fabulous trip report.... the photos and the details are great.... I can't wait to read more.... (just waiting up for the kids to come home now...) Sounds like the beginning of your trip was wonderful!

 

[ladybugmom]

I LOVED the resort tour!! What a great idea--I'll have to remember that for our trip! I can't WAIT to see pics of AKL all decorated for Christmas!!

 

[Lady Lallie]

I was a couple of updates behind but I have caught up this morning.

Wow, look at all that driving you did! That is so awesome. It gives me hope for when Marc & I decide to drive down.

The Swan looks beautiful! I would totally stay there someday. Gotta love all those light fixtures too.

Love all the Christmas decorations, that is something that I would try to do if I ever get to go on a Christmas time trip.

 

[JoBird]

Hi Sheree~~

What a wonderful job you're doing with your TR!
I especially enjoyed seeing the resort pictures-- it's helping to pass the time in this cold weather we're having.

Looking forward to seeing where you ate!

 

[praisehisname]

You did an awesome job driving straight through!

The Swan looks beautiful, and those beds are huge!

Thanks for the picture tour of the Epcot resorts--we are huge Beach Club fans!

Can't wait to read about checking into AKL!

 

[Momof2Disneyboys]

Great update Sheree!

How fun that you got to tour the BW area resorts and see all those Christmas decorations. I think we missed them by a week or two. Thanks so much for sharing your pics! I just love the BW area.

Can't wait for the DTD update ~ Another one of my favorite places!

 

[disneylovin24]

Great trip report so far!!! I cn't wait to read more once the family comes and joins you!!

 

[Mndisneygirl]

Sheree what a fabulous trip report.... the photos and the details are great.... I can't wait to read more.... (just waiting up for the kids to come home now...) Sounds like the beginning of your trip was wonderful!

Thanks! I hope you didn't have to stay up too late! I'd say most of our trip was wonderful!

I LOVED the resort tour!! What a great idea--I'll have to remember that for our trip! I can't WAIT to see pics of AKL all decorated for Christmas!!

It was fun to see all those great decorations! AKL will be coming soon.

I was a couple of updates behind but I have caught up this morning.

Wow, look at all that driving you did! That is so awesome. It gives me hope for when Marc & I decide to drive down.

The Swan looks beautiful! I would totally stay there someday. Gotta love all those light fixtures too.

Love all the Christmas decorations, that is something that I would try to do if I ever get to go on a Christmas time trip.

Yeah, that driving thing... UGH. But it is definitely doable. We've done it many times. I hope you get a Christmas time trip - it was quite magical for me!

Hi Sheree~~

What a wonderful job you're doing with your TR!
I especially enjoyed seeing the resort pictures-- it's helping to pass the time in this cold weather we're having.

Looking forward to seeing where you ate!

Glad I can help with that weather issue! Lots of yummy food will be discussed in this TR!

You did an awesome job driving straight through!

The Swan looks beautiful, and those beds are huge!

Thanks for the picture tour of the Epcot resorts--we are huge Beach Club fans!

Can't wait to read about checking into AKL!

Yeah - it was all DH on the driving - got to give credit where credit is due. I was probably the worst traveler in the family, but I just kept thinking we would get to WDW faster!!

Great update Sheree!

How fun that you got to tour the BW area resorts and see all those Christmas decorations. I think we missed them by a week or two. Thanks so much for sharing your pics! I just love the BW area.

Can't wait for the DTD update ~ Another one of my favorite places!

Oh that BW/BC/YC area is so wonderful!! Someday I'm going to stay at all of them! DTD is always so fun! Maybe it's because I get to shop!!

Great trip report so far!!! I cn't wait to read more once the family comes and joins you!!

Oh, it does get more interesting when the rest of the gang shows up!

 

[Panotchr]

Your tour of the resorts is the best. I want to do that next Christmas!

 

[Mndisneygirl]

We decided we would drive to DTD from AKL thinking that would be quicker and easier. We still had our car loaded up with our luggage, but I figured we could throw our shopping bags on top of the kids! LOL
So we followed the handy signs. Once we got to the first parking lot, we noticed a lot of traffic and the lots were pretty full! We went all the way down to the one nearest the bus stops for marketplace. BAD IDEA!!!
There was a jillion people!! Lots of cars trying to find a non-existent empty spot! So we promptly left that parking lot and went back to the middle section near Planet Hollywood.

We entered DTD near Raglan Road, which I had never actually seen before! We usually don't walk beyond the Marketplace.
We saw some cute decorations and found this guy:

They had the store windows decorated all cute with Christmas decor too.

I had decided (yes I was the dictator on dining plans, remember?) that we would try to have lunch at Earl of Sandwich. I hoped it wasn't too crowded, but thought we should wait until later to eat to avoid the crowds. So we wandered around a bit. Since it was chilly we thought a hot chocolate might hit the spot. Ghiradelli was calling! We went in - HUGE line!! They were sampling some yummy peppermint chocolate something so I got that and left the store with the girls while Dave waited in line. I can't imagine too many people were getting ice cream that day!
Sorry no pictures of our yummy rich and creamy hot chocolate!
(man, that sounds good right about now!!)

Once we had our hot chocolate in hand, it was shopping time!! I really wanted to hit TrenD and of course I had to find a Christmas ornament. Then I wanted to go to Basin and get some soaps for gifts (and maybe for us too).
It didn't seem too crowded at first, but it was a cool Saturday 3 weeks before Christmas, at lunch time no less, so it did get busy. World of Disney was crammed!!

Sarah was trying to have Stitch spit on her despite her mother's warning that it was a bit cold to get wet! Didn't happen anyway.

Santa was seeing children behind this little house near Basin. At one point the lines weren't very long and I wanted to have the girls go see him, but they wanted to wait and see him back home at "our mall". Of course, we managed to do that about a week before Christmas after standing in line for over 30 minutes! ARGH!

Okay, off to shop! TrenD is a cool store - lots of peace sign stuff, so Sarah was happy. She'd been wanting the Hidden Mickeys book and found it there. But I made her wait and get it at World of Disney since we got the discount with our Visa.

I must have been distracted shopping while he did this!
There was so much cool stuff there. The girls wanted every piece of jewelry with peace signs and I was eyeing some cute handbags. But we walked out having not purchased anything!! Can you believe it?

We hit WoD next. I had to buy an ornament for my mom to give to her neighbor. Found a cute Mickey head with the flag on it. Perfect since their son is in the military in Afgahnistan. Of course I found a few things for us too. Dave spotted this - Paige liked it too!

It's made of jingle bells!! Yup, we bought it!
I was also looking for some CDs. I wanted Four Parks One World, but they were out. I figured I could find that somewhere else. So I ended up buying the wreath, the Wishes CD, the Hidden Mickey book, a set of red, white, silver and green Mickey head ornaments, a mirrored Mickey shaped ornament that says 2009 and some jewelry that the girls picked out to give to their respective best friends.
I did take pictures of all these things, but haven't got them into photobucket, so that will be forthcoming.
We then headed to Basin!! Oh, how I love the smell of this place!
At first one of the girls looked at all the bath bombs and thought it was food. (I can't remember which kid! Probably Paige)
We spent at least a half hour sniffing all the soaps and ended up buying a bar of soap for each of the girls' teachers, two for us and one for grandma (Gardenia). We also let the girls pick out a bath bomb. I don't know the name of the scent, but it's fabulous! We smashed it into smaller pieces so they could each use some - a little at a time- to make it last longer.

We still hadn't gotten the text from AKL, so we headed to EOS for lunch.
I got the Italian, the girls each got PB&J and Dave got a kids turkey & swiss. we shared a soda and a bottle of water. Total was $23.54 with tax and we paid OOP according to my receipt. (yes I saved all of them!)
Here's my sandwich

OOOH, that was so yummy!! Really quite simple, but delish! Must be the Italian dressing and that it was warm. I didn't take pictures of the others. They're kind of boring.
We finished lunch, hit the memories store - I bought a journal since I didn't remember to bring one from home. Then we went to the Christmas store and got Santa hats with Mickey ears. Well, Dave did, the girls and I got the Minnie ones with the bow in front!!
Then FINALLY after 3:30, we got the text that our room was ready!! WOOHOO!
We high tailed it to the parking lot. But there was a small problem...

 

[Mndisneygirl]

I forgot one more thing about DTD - when we were in the memories store (where you can make ears and t-shirts, we wandered to the Art of Disney. We saw Robert Olszewski signing pieces! If you are a podcast listener, you know Pete is a big fan. His stuff is really amazing, but we did not buy any. He does figures of Disney stuff and makes little pill boxes. Very cool.

Okay - have to go eat dinner. I'll finish this DTD and head to AKL tonight!!

 

[Lady Lallie]

Shopping in DTD.

I love that Mickey Jingle Bell Wreath! It's so great!

 

[MAGGIED]

what was the problem..... you can't leave us hanging.... where are you....lol...

 

[Mndisneygirl]

Okay, I won't leave you hanging. I had to eat you know!

We had a little trouble finding our car. I remembered that we entered near Planet Hollywood. But I sort of forgot that we had walked about half the length (or would it be width?) of the parking lot first! We knew Dave had stopped by a trash can on the sidewalk before catching up to us, so we wandered back that way and eventually found Pearl.

Now, when we first were driving to AKL, Sarah seemed less than thrilled with our surprise resort. But when we went to our room and saw the bunk beds and view of the savanna, she changed her tune pretty quickly!!
We only brought up our overnight bag and one other bag since we were only staying one night. All our shopping stuff also stayed in the car. Which meant my journal stayed in the car. I had been keeping a lot of notes in my iPhone and on a random sheet of notebook paper in my binder.

Paige leading the way in!

Our Room 4467

Look what was waiting for us!

More room pics

cool shower curtain huh?

A little FYI aside - Angel Soft toilet paper!!! And fabulous H2O toiletries in the bathroom too!


My favorite part of this room:
Our BALCONY!!!

Coming in next post - the view from said balcony

 

[manntra]

Fun time in DTD! Congratulations on getting making it out of TrenD without spending any money. I wasn't so lucky!!

Great idea with the bath bombs at Basin! I can't wait to hit that store up again!

Your sandwich looks yummy even though I just ate! That is the second TR I have seen EOS pics on today making me hungry!!!

Tracy

 

[Mndisneygirl]

Anyone from Anita (wigdoutdismom)'s TR will notice that we did not have an African safari sunset scene in our bathtub tile, nor did we get a BIG jacuzzi type tub. That's only for those special DVC folks! LOL!

So here's what we saw from our balcony

Those fellas were a ways away from us - I had to zoom in to see them.

The giraffes kept walking back and forth along the path.

We took all these before we decided we were hungry and wanted to explore the resort. So we started toward the lobby - which is so cool - camera in hand. Sarah had studied her Hidden Mickey book to know that there were some in the lobby in a light fixture - LL, are you listening?? - and in the vines outside the lobby. So we went off looking and working our way toward Mara for some dinner.

Overlooking the lobby

Looking over at Boma (I'm pretty sure) and Victoria Falls bar

behind the check-in desk

If you can see the time stamp on the pictures, some were taken the first time we arrived at AKL and checked in.

Do you love the hole in Sarah's pants??? I can't believe I let her go out like that! HA! I promise she gets another pair of pants the next day!

They had a craft station in the lobby where the girls could make ornaments with painted pieces of ostrich egg shells.

more pictures in next post

 

[Mndisneygirl]

I forgot a few pictures from DTD I wanted to include

The girls acted out the scenes in the windows! Crazy kids!

finding a hidden Mickey on the manhole cover before we discovered we didn't remember where the car was!

Of course, this one was supposed to go with the picture of my yummy sandwich!

Now back to our regularly scheduled AKL picture programming...

 

[Northern Disney Girl]

WOW!!! What an amazing day! And it isn't even 6pm yet! Cruising the Boardwalk, Beach and Yacht Clubs, checking in at a surprise resort, lunch and shopping at a DTD and then Christmas crafts at the AKL!!! My kids would be exhausted from the sheer excitement of that day! What an awesome fun exciting day!

MORE? Please!

 

[Mndisneygirl]

More AKL pictures

I love how they carved animals in the "walls/railings" up above the lobby. And the ornaments on that tree were SO COOL!!

This one's for you LL!!

We made our way over to Mara and finally got some dinner around 7:00. We didn't have the DDP until the next day at BLT, so we paid OOP. We got the girls some Chicken nuggets and fries, mac and cheese and I had a chicken pita. Of course, I had to try the infamous Zebra Domes!!! We paid $24.88. The food was pretty good. The ZDs were YUMMY!!! We scarfed those babies down in about 5 minutes! I would definitely recommend trying these treats!

We hit the gift shop after dinner and Dave found that he wanted something special to remember AKL by. He bought a cute little basket that now sits on our front hall table and holds keys. Don't know where the picture is. I'll have to do a souvenir post later with all those pictures.

I also bought an AKL Christmas pin, some autograph books for my friend to give as Christmas gifts, and the girls each bought a postcard to send home to their class.
The CM at the counter was so nice - he told us where to mail the postcards and we noticed he was wearing a Happy Birthday button that said "Walt". Not the CM's name. It was Walt Disney's birthday!

Later we went outside to see if we could use the night vision goggles to see some animals in the dark on the savanna. It was difficult, and there were a couple laying in the grass. Not too much movement. There were only about 2 other families out there, so we had plenty of time. Dang sleepy animals!

We finally hit the sack. It was a pretty busy day with lots of walking - considering we didn't go to a park!! We were planning a leisurely morning around AKL before check out and more animal watching from our balcony. Then we had a lunch reservation at Kona before we met up with the rest of the family! They'd been calling and let us know where they stopped for the night. I also heard that Shawna finally arrived at WDW!! YAY! When would our first DIS meet happen??? It was a surprise to me!!

 

[praisehisname]

Can't wait to see all your souvie pics! AKL is so pretty and you had an amazing view from your room!