Seattle Goobers' January '12 Trip! UPDATE 1/30: The TR has begun! :)

[danimaroo]

You've got some great choices! Raglan Road is one of our favorites, and Teppan Edo is on our must-do list because my kids all love it so much. The food is good, the staff is so incredibly polite as only the Japanese can be, and the show is quite fun.

Totally love Raglan Road... It'll be hard not to go there twice again in one trip! Maybe if we cancel Coral Reef, hehehe.

Glad to hear about Teppan Edo! It sounds like it'll be a fun show with good food. Definitely something new and different which I am all about trying! And good service can go a LONG way.

 

[poisonapple_PRINCESS]

Hahaha yes it is! I just thought I was going to have to secretly plan and be excited about our trip, since my husband is definitely excited, but worries about getting burnt out on thinking about Disney World... Plus he doesn't want us to forget about the holidays since they're important to us.

So while I DO talk to him about it sometimes, majority of the time when I need to just get in some reading about Disney, I come here.

Oh I know exactly how that is. I talk to my bf about Disney occasionally but he doesn't want to talk about it all the time! (I do!)

Sounds like you have awesome ADR's! I loooved doing mine but it was so hard to choose!

Can't wait to see your Disney shirt! Everyone loves Disney shopping!

 

[danimaroo]

Oh I know exactly how that is. I talk to my bf about Disney occasionally but he doesn't want to talk about it all the time! (I do!)

Sounds like you have awesome ADR's! I loooved doing mine but it was so hard to choose!

Can't wait to see your Disney shirt! Everyone loves Disney shopping!

Haha. My husband is hit or miss. He either wants to talk about it and gets really excited, or gets mad that I'm talking about it because he feels like I'm forgetting about being excited for the holidays. I've gotten a bit better about yapping away about it since our resort was officially changed to Beach Club, and our flights are taken care of, along with our DDP. So now I sometimes let him bring up the trip, and then feel like if he brings it up I can just talk all about it, haha.

It is REALLY hard to choose ADRs! We wanted to do a mix of places we knew we love with places that we've heard are good. I think we did a great job of that! Coral Reef is the only one I'm on the fence about, as while I enjoyed my meal, I thought the overall experience there was just okay. The tank was neat for sure, but I don't know. My husband really wanted to eat there again so I figured that was okay with me! Gotta compromise.

I'm planning on posting the t-shirt this week for sure! I haven't had a chance to put it on but it's pretty awesome. I've been keeping an eye out for other good shirts, both for myself and my husband. And it's great because it's a shirt I will wear outside of WDW!

 

[danimaroo]

Apparently my post decided to double post! So just pretend this isn't here. You saw nothing, ya hear me?!

 

[danimaroo]

Aaaaand I'm back! Thought I'd be able to squeeze in an update this weekend, but that was a definite no-go. Saturday we had our Annual Pumpkin Patch trip that Matt and I coordinate every year. We had a much bigger turnout than normal this year which was great! I think there ended up being 10 of us, 11 including our friend's 9-month old. So that took up our whole Saturday, and by Sunday I was totally fried out and exhausted. I think we both ended up spending the whole day in pajamas and watched The Princess and the Frog, Modern Family on DVD, and other random shows. We'd never seen The Princess and the Frog but LOVED it. Matt even suggested that before our trip we should watch a bunch of Disney movies to get in the spirit. What's funny is that I had thought of bringing it up myself, but didn't want to annoy him with ANOTHER thing about our Walt Disney World. But nope, he did it, not me!

Anyway, I know I promised a photo of the first shirt I picked up for our trip. BUT I haven't had a chance to put it on and take a picture! I'm thinking some night this week I will. Since I try to squeeze in photos whenever I can (because photos always make a post a little more fun!), I thought I'd show off our Disney art/photos we have in our upstairs hallway/landing area (which, by the way in the photos looks like a really weird color. It's more of an earthy kind of green, and not some weird yellow).

It all kind of start with us putting up these custom drawings we had made for us a year ago. We waited an hour and a half in line for these, and they were totally worth it to have them drawn by Disney animators (for free!) We are big video game dorks and went to a big convention called PAX that they have here in Seattle every year. Disney was promoting the game, Epic Mickey, and in turn you could get a custom drawing from actual animators. I chose Mickey with a paint brush, Matt chose Oswald (as he is a big part of the game)... We immediately got them framed and put them up, and so that kind of started a theme in our hall.

(Don't mind the crack in Oswald's frame; we're waiting for Target to have more of those frames in. Stupid car ride home it cracked. )

Next we decided to put up photos from our honeymoon!

Then, my mother and father-in-law asked us if we wanted a bunch of old school Disney movie posters they'd had for years but never put up. We said absolutely, as we could fill in more space next to our honeymoon photos. We framed them all and I think they look AWESOME:

What is funny is we actually have much much bigger version of the Goofy and Wilbur one in our downstairs bathroom, so it's kind of funny to have two sizes of it around our house, but we don't mind.

I promised I'd actually post about our Day One plans, and so I will! But first I wanted to share how Matt made fun of me.

I'm kind of a big fan of Excel spreadsheets. They make things organized and pretty. So I figured once we had our ADRs, why not make a spreadsheet of dates, our restaurant, where it's located, time, best parks to visit on that specific day (according to easyWDW.com), parks we plan on visiting that day, and what park has EMH. This is how it currently looks:

Just a quick note. A really awesome thing you can do with spreadsheets is upload them into Google Docs, and then "share" the document with someone else (if you want). This works really well for us, as Matt and I can both see the document at the same time and make edits, then save the document. Matt went in and started working on Day Two (finally got him on board with my dorky spreadsheet)... It's a really fun way to share the document and make edits, even though you're on two separate computers. We totally work on this sometimes when we have a free moment at work and we're talking online.

I showed it to Matt and he of course called me a total planning dork (says the man who made a spreadsheet of all our Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas specials/movies that we want to watch. ).. I think because I'd gone so far as to list the "best parks" and had a column for where we planned to be, he just thought I was a total dink. He also voiced concern that he was not interested in planning out every single day of our trip.

See, on our honeymoon, we didn't plan at all. We woke up when we want to (which was usually around 8:30-9ish), opened up the app on my iPhone and based on line times, picked a park to head over to. This worked out really well in our favor most times. I agreed with him that we wouldn't plan past the first few days, and he thought it was a good idea to have a plan at first, but then after that, nothing. First few days you really want to do as much as you can, so then later on you can relax and float around from park to park. This is why I love January so much; you have the ability (for the most part) to just go wherever you want and not have to worry too much about lines.

That being said, he DID agree that planning at least our first and second days would definitely be a good idea and also a fun one!

DAY ONE

We arrive in Orlando at 6:55am. Last year when we took this flight we got in at around 6:30am (hoping for this to happen again!), and we'll make our way down to the Magical Express. Last time it was only us and one other couple on the bus, so I'm hoping that happens again since it'll be so early in the morning. We'll arrive at Beach Club hopefully around 8-8:30ish, and check in.

We're not going to do online check-in as they don't take into account any room requests that you've previous made with Member Services (or at least from all the reading I've done, it seems like online check-in sort of wipes that out). BCV is not known for amazing views, which is fine by us since we don't spend a ton of time hanging out on the patio. However, I did request to be on a higher floor (as I have a feeling that the noise level on the first floor is not ideal), and also am planning to request that we have a poolside view. I considered asking to face Epcot in hopes that we'd catch the higher fireworks of Illuminations, but that also runs the risk of having to deal with road noise. I'd much rather face the quiet pool from a higher floor.

SO! If we can score a room with those requests but it's not ready, we'll just go out and play in the parks until our room is good to go. We're willing to wait for a room that is within our requests vs. taking whatever is available, if it means having a bit of quietness.

If our room is immediately available, the plan is to get settled in and take a short nap, since we'll have been flying the red-eye overnight and I'm sure will be somewhat tired. My hope is that I'll be able to sleep on the flight (I'm thinking flying in first class will help this!) so we can just not worry too much about a nap (and to prevent myself from having a meltdown).

If our room is not available, our plan is to head over to the Boardwalk Bakery for some tasty breakfast. If the bakery is crazy busy, we'll just grab some breakfast at Starring Rolls at Hollywood Studios, as the plan is to spend the morning there. We'll take the boat over and I'm thinking because it'll be so early, we'll maybe just miss RD (or maybe make it, who knows?), but the crowds shouldn't be bad at all for RnRC, ToT and Star Tours, which are the big three rides for us to check out. The only way we'll go on TSMM is if the lines are 5 minutes. We both found the ride to be underwhelming (especially since you can play this at home on a Wii!) and not worth the crazy wait times.

Depending on how long we spend at HS and when our room is ready, we might grab the boat back and walk to Epcot from the boardwalk and spend some time there. If our room is ready in the late morning, we'll probably head back and lay down for a bit, then stroll through Epcot over to the monorail and do Matt's favorite thing...

Apparently when he was a kid, one of his favorite memories was taking the monorail around and stopping off at all the resorts on the monorail. We did this first thing last year, right after we arrived at Grand Floridian, and even though I was SUPER grumpy, it was a fun little thing to do. We toured the Contemporary for a bit, then checked out the Polynesian, and of course we'd already seen the Grand Floridian. Matt wants to do this again, so we figure we'll do that on our way to our ADR at MK.

Though MK is not the recommended park (as it has AM EMH), we do have a 5:35 ADR at Crystal Palace, then we figure we'll hang out there for the evening. My hope is that some of the crowds will taper off during the evening since the EMH are in the morning. From there, we'll head back to BCV and get some rest for Day Two! If it's not too cold out, we might go for a night time swim, as it would be kind of fun to make it a tradition to go nightswimming on Day One.

So those are our plans for Day One! I think they sound pretty awesome, but are also flexible depending on when our room is ready. I'm thinking Epcot might not happen, outside of literally walking through it to make our way over to the monorail, but that's okay because we'll have PLENTY of time to spend in Epcot (and it's always a 5 minute walk from our room!)

 

[poisonapple_PRINCESS]

Looove all your photo's you have on your wall! I cannot wait to hang photo's from my Disney trip! I actually have a digital frame...so I'm going to display them ALL! I love the game Epic Mickey! I think I might have to play through it again....good game!

 

[danimaroo]

Looove all your photo's you have on your wall! I cannot wait to hang photo's from my Disney trip! I actually have a digital frame...so I'm going to display them ALL! I love the game Epic Mickey! I think I might have to play through it again....good game!

Thanks! Yes, having photos up from the trip is nice. They're right near our bedroom so it's nice to see them whenever we go to bed. Makes me really happy for our trip in January! Good idea on the digital frame. We have one downstairs that I should probably make better use of.. It's had our wedding photos on it for awhile. Maybe after our next trip.

And yes, my husband really enjoyed Epic Mickey. I did a lot of watching while he played.

 

[danimaroo]

Just a little life update, pretty short one for today, with a CHANGE to one of our ADRs (with some questions).

I'm sick. Everyone in my office has had this stupid cold, and I share an office with my manager, who is still getting over her cold. After running myself ragged this weekend at the Pumpkin Patch, I'm pretty sure I made myself sick with a head cold. Ugh, not fun at all.. and unfortunately I'm saving all of my PTO for one day off after Christmas and then our Disney vacation, of course.

So, I'm stuck at work, being a sick Whiny Wendy. I would kill to be at home snuggling with my dogs right now. To make things worse, Matt is away for work until Thursday night, so I'm stuck taking care of myself. I don't know about you, but being sick and having your husband out of town is a total bummer! I can deal though, just keeping up with my cold medicine, drinking tea, and getting to bed early each night.

Anyway, enough of my whining... After doing some reading around, I asked Matt if he'd be interested in doing Les Chefs de France for lunch on the 26th instead of Coral Reef for dinner. Main reason for it? REMY! Like I said before, Matt's favorite Pixar movie is Ratatouille, and so I thought it would be most excellent to have an opportunity to see Remy in person! Matt thought about it and decided it sounded like fun, so I canceled our reservation at Coral Reef. Oh and we're doing lunch because I've also heard that the lunch at Les Chefs is much better than the dinner. (I'm more than happy to hear anyone's insight on this though!)

I read that Remy comes out at certain times, one of which is 1:40. I also heard that Les Chefs is known for either getting you seated on time or making you wait a bit, and I worried that people would hang out extra long at their tables to see Remy. So I booked our lunch for 12:50, with the thought that we'll be there at 1:40 to see Remy towards the end of our meal. I originally had a 1:10 reservation, but a few people on the Disney Restaurants board said at the latest they would do a 1pm reservation, so I switched it to 12:50. Does anyone have any experience with this at all? Please let me know if doing a 12:50 is a bad idea, as right now the times for ADRs are very flexible (again, yay for January being slower!) and there were a lot of openings when I looked yesterday.

I'm really excited to see little Remy on our trip (unless of course there are technical difficulties).. I told Matt that if some restaurant had anything involving Wall-E he best understand that we would be going there.

That's about it from me for today. Day Two plans should be up sometime this week! I'm hoping this PTR doesn't become too boring for you guys and you keep reading along. I plan on turning it into a TR after our trip is done (oh that thought just kind of made me sad )... So we'll see where this PTR leads us!

 

[Twoboysnmygirl]

Oh good change! I think it was a wise choice! I don't know anything about times, but it sounds like you will get to see him. We have a ADR for lunch as well, but I put Remy out of my mind b/c I thought he was pretty sporadic in showing up and didn't want to have the expectation of seeing him and then not! So, it will just be a surprise for us. I'm guessing you won't have any trouble if January crowds are anything like people are saying!

 

[danimaroo]

Oh good change! I think it was a wise choice! I don't know anything about times, but it sounds like you will get to see him. We have a ADR for lunch as well, but I put Remy out of my mind b/c I thought he was pretty sporadic in showing up and didn't want to have the expectation of seeing him and then not! So, it will just be a surprise for us. I'm guessing you won't have any trouble if January crowds are anything like people are saying!

I thought it was a pretty awesome change. The more I thought about Coral Reef and our underwhelming experience, the more I wanted to do something else. THEN I read about Remy and thought, what the heck? That sounds like a fun meal, the lunch menu sounds REALLY good, and Matt loves Ratatouille, so if we get to see Remy he will be delighted!

And I totally hear you on putting him out of mind... but that's hard to do! From all the research I did, in terms of his "times" that he comes out, I figure at this point we've set ourselves up as much as we can to see him, and barring technical difficulties, we should! Fingers crossed though that we see him; if not, maybe we'll just have to try to squeeze in another lunch. And yes, getting ADRs last minute isn't too awful in January! There were a select few that we couldn't get into (Le Cellier) last January, but we found a place to go every day with no problem!

 

[danimaroo]

Tonight I'm picking up Matt from the airport!! He's been in NYC this week for work, and so it's just been me, the pups, and our kitty. This time hasn't been too awful as I've adjusted to him being out of town once or twice a year for work. I still miss him while he's gone though and often have a more difficult time sleeping. Plus, the dogs get super sad without him. The first night he didn't come home with me from work, Milo sat on our ottoman (which he never does; he is always snuggle with Matt or me), staring out the window in hopes that Dad would be coming home any second.

It was the saddest thing! Anya gets really sad, too, then goes into total brat mode and acts out by chewing things she shouldn't. That's the not-so-fun part of Matt being gone.

Anyway, it feels weird to have most of our trip planned. At least the big stuff anyway! I'm still working on Day Two of our trip, but I thought it might be kind of fun to post some of the things I want to do while we're there that I either didn't know about last trip or didn't get a chance to do!

1. Pick a Pearl!
I had NO idea about this, even though we visited and walked through Japan. When I heard about it here on DIS, I immediately knew I wanted to do it. I told Matt about it and he seemed to get equally excited about picking out a pearl for me. I'm thinking of getting a cage for the pearl on eBay ahead of time to save some money. Not sure I totally love the Cinderella's carriage one (I was never really into the princesses growing up, all about Mickey and the gang for me!), so I'd like to find something that showcases the pearl and is totally "me". It'll be nice to have a necklace to switch out with the one I currently wear:

2. Eat at Beaches and Cream!
This one I am totally excited for! Matt talked about how much he LOOOOVED this place, but unfortunately we never got a chance to make our way over to BC last trip. I am a total sucker for good ice cream and onion rings, so this will be a great meal! No Kitchen Sink for me though, unless I want to go into a sugar coma.

3. Ride Soarin', Test Track and ToT!
Can you believe that I've never been on any of these rides?! It's terrible, I know. But! Every time we thought about Soarin' and Test Track we just... never went on them. The lines always seemed like they were too long, and I couldn't tell you why we never just grabbed FPs. So I told Matt we are riding both this time and he was more than happy. Neither of the rides were his favorites as a kid, but he's happy to go on them.

ToT is a different story. I was terrified of the Twilight Zone theme song when I was little; so much so that I had to cover my ears, but had no problem watching the show. Add to that that I was deathly afraid of elevators (and I can attribute this to that terrible Bill Cosby movie "Ghost Dad") and anything haunted and well.. yeah, no riding for me. Even last trip I just felt like it would be too scary.

God only knows how, but I've somehow decided that I'm okay with ToT and I will ride it. I have no idea if I'll love it or hate it, but either way I'm going on it... and that will probably be the first day! I will definitely have what will more than likely be a hilarious TR involving this ride. If I scream at all like I did when I rode Space Mountain for the first time ever last trip, ToT CMs may end up calling the police because according to Matt, I sounded like someone was murdering me the entire ride. Yup, I'm a screamer!

Anyway, these are a few to start, but I definitely have more I'd like to add to my "bucket list", if you will. Hopefully I'll have another update this weekend about our Day Two plans! OH AND! I would love love love it if people have suggestions of fun bucket list items/fun things to do that aren't necessarily well-known to the public. I am so open to learning and experiencing new things and have learned a lot from the DIS boards thus far.

 

[poisonapple_PRINCESS]

I want to do Pick a Pearl SOOOO bad!! It seems so fun!

 

[Twoboysnmygirl]

I'm with you on ToT! I'm SO scared! I love roller coasters for the most part, EE is my fav, but drops are NOT my thing, so I'm afraid I'll get sick and then feel bad all day. I guess I could grab a FP and then just wait until the end of the day, but that might ruin our dinner ADRs if it makes me sick???

 

[danimaroo]

I want to do Pick a Pearl SOOOO bad!! It seems so fun!

You should do it! I definitely am going to, and it really does sound like a lot of fun. Plus, it gives you a relatively inexpensive special souvenir! Definitely am going to do this one, hopefully I'll get a really beautiful and unique pearl to take home.

I'm with you on ToT! I'm SO scared! I love roller coasters for the most part, EE is my fav, but drops are NOT my thing, so I'm afraid I'll get sick and then feel bad all day. I guess I could grab a FP and then just wait until the end of the day, but that might ruin our dinner ADRs if it makes me sick???

Let's make a deal. If I do it, so can you! It's funny because EE is my absolute FAVORITE ride as well! We rode it 10 times last trip, 7 of those rides one after another (Matt wasn't too happy with me by the end of it ).. Anyway! Drops are okay with me if I know when they're coming. Problem with ToT is I have no idea when the drop will happen, so I'm sure the anticipation of the drop is going to just destroy me. But I just want to give it a shot so I can say I went on it.

I have no idea whether or not I'll love it or hate it; I was terrified of Space Mountain the first time I went on it, because I couldn't see a darn thing and felt like I was going to fly out of the rocket ship! By the end though, I had so much fun and wanted to ride it again. I have a feeling I will be terrified on ToT but love it... Matt has been on it before and said the first time he didn't enjoy it since it was one massive drop. When they changed it to being multiple smaller drops, he said it was a lot more fun. I'm doing it, and so should you! We both have to report back on our experiences!

 

[poisonapple_PRINCESS]

You should do it! I definitely am going to, and it really does sound like a lot of fun. Plus, it gives you a relatively inexpensive special souvenir! Definitely am going to do this one, hopefully I'll get a really beautiful and unique pearl to take home.

I think I HAVE to do it! I really want an odd colored one! I just cant decide what I want to do with it...necklace....ring....get two and make earrings?!? (possibly get a twin pearl! ) So many choices!

 

[danimaroo]

I think I HAVE to do it! I really want an odd colored one! I just cant decide what I want to do with it...necklace....ring....get two and make earrings?!? (possibly get a twin pearl! ) So many choices!

I'd love to get twinsies! I'd also happily take anything, though the pink and greenish/black ones are super pretty, too! I cannot wait to do it though!

 

[Lady Lallie]

I'm here!! I tried to read this today at work to get caught up and didn't finish so I came home and finished. Yay me!

You and your husband are the cutest. You remind me of my husband and I, we watch tons of Disney movies to get ready for a trip and my husband has turned into as much as a Disney enabler as I am.

YOU HAVE TO RIDE SOARIN. YOU MUST MUST MUST. Get yourself multiple sets of fastpasses and ride, ride, ride!

 

[danimaroo]

I'm here!! I tried to read this today at work to get caught up and didn't finish so I came home and finished. Yay me!

You and your husband are the cutest. You remind me of my husband and I, we watch tons of Disney movies to get ready for a trip and my husband has turned into as much as a Disney enabler as I am.

YOU HAVE TO RIDE SOARIN. YOU MUST MUST MUST. Get yourself multiple sets of fastpasses and ride, ride, ride!

Oh yay! I'm really happy you're here. I totally read every single page of your PTR, plus other TRs, so I feel like I should know you in real life or something. I also realize that sounds kind of creepy...

I think that's what caught me about your PTR; you guys reminded me of myself and my husband! Total Disney enablers unite! I am REALLY excited to ride Soarin'! We changed our Day One plans a bit (as mentioned in my upcoming post that should be here within the next 15 minutes!), so I'm hoping for a little Soarin' fun first thing! I think we will take advantage of FPs a bit more this trip as well, since last time we didn't know that you can totally return after the time window (just not before) listed on the FP.

Anyway, so glad you are reading along!

 

[danimaroo]

Hi everyone! I hope you guys and gals had a good weekend. We had a very relaxing and Fall-y weekend that was absolutely perfect and totally necessary. Matt worked from home on Friday, and so when I walked in the door after a long day at work, I was delighted to see that he'd cleaned the downstairs and lit a Bath and Body Works candle (we're obsessed)... and also surprised me with some fun gifts! He called it a "cozy pack", which included a cookie monster pajama shirt, pajama pants, a new pillow (mine got really floppy), the movie Horrible Bosses, and some fun little Lego guys that we've been collecting. My husband can be pretty cute.

Friday evening we snuggled in, built a fire and watched Poltergeist. We have a list of horror movies that we watch every year around Halloween. I think next weekend will be The Shining, and maybe a few others. Saturday we woke up early, did a weigh-in (in which we both lost around 2 pounds! I'm now at 57 pounds lost, Matt is sooo close to 80 at 78 pounds!), then went out to our absolutely favorite breakfast spot. We go here around once a week, Saturday mornings, and adore it. It's a cute little bakery in our area that makes some of the best omelets I've ever had in my life!

After breakfast, we did some shopping at Target and picked up a few necessary items, along with trying on fun hats. I tried to convince Matt he should get this one because he looked cute, but he said he had too many.

I totally saw, for anyone interested, REALLY cute Mickey and Minnie Christmas stuff in the Home section. I took some photos... They had really cute Mickey Mouse-shaped plates, serving dishes, glasses, tumblers, etc. I kept showing everything to Matt and he dragged me away.

We hit up the grocery store for the last few items I needed to make an apple crisp, then headed home to relax. Matt played a video game for awhile, and we also watched Horrible Bosses which was pretty funny. We also watched one of our favorites (especially Matt's), Nightmare Before Christmas. That movie is so so beautiful on blu-ray. We had dinner and I made a super tasty apple crisp for us. There's something about cooking/baking in the Fall that I absolutely adore. Sunday was full of more relaxing (I may/may not have spent the entire day in a t-shirt and sweatpants. )

Anyway, weekend was awesome, and now being back at work isn't much fun... But that's okay. It pays the bills and allows us to take really awesome vacations to Disney World.

I made some changes to our ADRs and also a pretty big change to our day one plans. ADR-wise, we switched Raglan Road and Chefs because we decided we wanted to see Remy earlier in our trip. I also change the reservation from 12:50 to 12:00, as I realized that the 12:00 will be right as Chefs opens for the day, and Remy comes out at 12:20. We won't have to spend an eternity at lunch waiting for Remy, but shouldn't have a problem being seated pretty quickly since they open right when our ADR is.

The other ADR change I made was Crystal Palace breakfast. We originally we going to eat at 9:30, but I asked Matt if he'd be interested in doing an 8:30 reservation so we could see Magic Kingdom before it opens. I waited for a big fat, "I'd really rather sleep in," but was pleasantly surprised by a, "Sure!" So I made that change for our ADR, and I'm pretty excited to see the park when it opens, and then also get to hit up the rides bright and early, as it's a recommended park for that day.

In regards to our Day One plans, we've decided that we're going to go to Epcot for the morning instead of DHS. Reason being is, Epcot is not recommended on Day Two, while HS is (again). To us, it's REALLY important to go to Magic Kingdom on Day One, but Epcot is also up there. There's something about those 2 parks that are soooo Disney it just feels right to go there!

Epcot is also the most recommended park for that day, so I'm hoping we can get on TT and Soarin' pretty early (since we'll be ready to tour Epcot pretty early upon arrival). We figure we'll hang out there for most of the morning, maybe until our room is ready, then get settled in our room, head over to MK and do the monorail loop of all the monorail resorts, do our ADR at CP, then play in MK for the night!

Day Two is our day to play in the other two parks. We'll get up at a decent hour and head over to Animal Kingdom first thing. We'll probably ride EE a few times (I'll be exploding with excitement to get back on my favorite ride!), explore some other areas of AK, then head out as we tend to spend a few hours at a time in AK then make our way out as it starts to get crazier in there, as it's not a recommended park. From AK we'll head to DHS, since it'll be the only park we haven't seen yet and also is on the recommended list. We'll probably get lunch and hang out there for most of the afternoon until our ADR at Cape May. As of right now, after dinner we have it planned to go over to DTD, but we're pretty open to whatever. I figure we'll either do DTD or maybe head to Epcot to catch Illuminations and walk around World Showcase since it's EMH that night. I have a feeling I'm going to be a VERY big fan of staying at an Epcot resort as it's so close to 2 parks, it gives us that option to just stroll into Epcot whenever we want to. We may be so pooped that we decide to relax in our room or by the Boardwalk, so I'm kind of leaving our evening plans wide open for this day.

I've gotta be honest, I'm not sure I'll have plans for the remaining days of our trip! Like I've said in the past, we are very much NOT super planners after the first few days. I think at first we most definitely are; it's hard not to be when you have SO many things you want to do and go on ASAP... but after that? It's time to enjoy things at whatever pace you want. Well, at least since we've been going in January and you can be a bit more relaxed about your daily plans.

So I'm a little nervous as to where things will continue with my PTR, but I'm thinking I'll have plenty more to add to my bucket list, plus I'm sure I'll think of other fun things to yap about around here. I just hope enough people care about my babblings as it encourages me to keep going with my updates instead of letting this fall by the wayside. I plan on doing a TR after the fact, of course!

Next post will have more bucket list items, and hopefully I can finally get a decent shot of my new shirt for the trip! I tried last night but it looked bad and you couldn't really see it... I'm also thinking about doing some fun little Disney crafts for our trip, like making luggage tags for us since we don't get any as we book through DVC.

Hope everyone has had a good Monday! Mine started off rough due to our commute, but it's shaping up to be not too shabby.

 

[danimaroo]

Quick and short update! Disney-related? Yes. Trip-related? Nope.

I just wanted to show off how much of a goober I am. So I was at Costco the other night, just strolling over to get the dogs some puppy treats and myself chicken noodle soup, when I spotted the biggest Mickey and Minnie plushes I have EVER seen. They were so freakin' cute and HUGE! And from what I remember, they were totally reasonably priced, I want to say around $20-$25 a piece?

Then of course I sat there staring at them and thinking about how I would love to buy them and surprise my future children with a trip to Disney World, and how they'd come down the stairs and see these giant Mickey and Minnie holding a big sign that we're going to Disney World.

I'm a total dork but I definitely have these moments of planning in the future and this prompted the "OHMYGOD I WANT THESE FOR LIKE IN 5 YEARS!" But then I talked myself down as I realized if I strolled in the door with these massive plushes, Matt would think I was utterly and totally insane.

BUT! For those of you with kids, this might be a fun idea, whether you want to surprise them or just as a Christmas present, and it's SUPER reasonably priced.