Summer & Steven's Fairytale Wedding TR, 20th Aug SBP Baby Pics!!!

[meryll83]

Welcome back Summer!

 

[Kirsteen]

Hi Summer, giving yourself some time to think about what you want is a great idea and a Disney trip is a great, great, great thing to have to look forward to woop woop. Can't wait to hear more on your honeymoon

 

[dizneyfreak]

Summer is back!!! Summer is back!!! Summer is back!!! Happy dances all around!!! I was worried you forgot all about us over here on this side of the pond...I should have known you wouldn't do that! I'm so glad that you decided to finish your report and I have to say that I love, love, love your descriptions of everything...however, I think I speak for everyone when I say...we want pictures too girl!!! Let's see that beautiful face of yours!
I am very sorry about your grandma. I lost mine a long time ago, but still feel the pain frequently. My prayers are with you.
I'm also glad to hear that you get to head back to Disney soon. It's good to give yourself time for the move and family and all. My husband and I are in the middle of giving ourselves time as well.
I can't wait to hear more! We missed ya!

Anna Marie

 

[Summer-Caitlin]

Thank you ladies for the kind thoughts, it has been a pretty horrible year but we are trying to look on the positive side and think of Disney (our happy place)

I definitely didn't forget about you, I just knew I had left it so long that I thought it might be best not to post, I didn't want to offend anyone and as my wedding was almost 2 years ago, I thought people may have lost interest! Shame on me!

So my return trip to WDW is booked but as usual I am having second thoughts on the accommodations. We had wanted to book POFQ, but it works out cheaper with the DDDP to book either SSR or OKW. We have booked OKW but I now think that SSR might be the better choice. Location to DTD, newer resort, spa on site and better food court options. As we have the DDDP we will be travelling quite a lot to different resorts for meals and I like the fact I could use DTD as a hub and just get a bus to a resort from there if I wanted. Plus I had been told that SSR has a lot of winding paths through the resort which would be very romantic at sunset So girls, give me your opinions, is OKW better for us or SSR. I am going to call later today to change my booking if SSR has the winning vote.

As for my next instalment, I am currently working on it. Unfortunately I don't have many pictures at all in the next instalment as coming up we have...

Disney Quest and PIRATE AND PRINCESS PARTY

I do have quite a lot of pictures of the fireworks, and yes I will even post a picture of me in my pirate outfit...you have been warned!

 

[dizneyfreak]

Hello darlin!
IMO you are making the right choice with switching to SSR. The resort is absolutely beautiful and it's so close to DTD. It's really located right in the middle of everything. OKW is really off to one side and takes forever to get to. Plus, you were right in thinking that SSR is new and looks a lot nicer. It's not so dated. It is so nice to be able to take a boat to DTD and just stroll and shop or EAT!!! Just think of all the late night stops you could make to the Ghiradeli shop! Plus, did you know that there is now a hot air balloon ride you can take at DTD...so cool! You will love SSR...good choice girl!!!

Anna Marie

 

[Kirsteen]

SSR gets my vote to just because it's so handy for DTD. Looking forward to your next installment Summer - can't wait to see your P&P photos.

 

[zalansky]

Summer - SSR is definitely the way to go! We're members so we have stayed at both a few times now. For all the reasons you mentioned SSR to be the better choice, you're right. The decor in the rooms is definitely dated at OKW, its nice having newer rooms at SSR. The pools are wayyyy better at SSR as well as the food court. You will appreciate that food court. And yes, there are many winding paths that are very relaxing and romantic throughout SSR. OKW is very pretty but its not the same. Trust me, you will adore it!

Sorry about your grandmother. Losing a loved one does put things in perspective.

You and Steven will have adorable kids - so I hope thats the plan for you both when you come back from your next Disney trip!

 

[Summer-Caitlin]

zalansky - Glad to hear I have made the right decision As for kids, our plan is that this is our last big vacation just us two so I intend to make it count. I am hoping that we come back with a disney souvenir, but at the moment I am trying to get myself into shape so that is possible. Back on my healthy eating plan, well after our anniversary anyway

 

[Eeyore's Tailfinder]

Hi Summer! It's great to see you again No way have we lost interest! I always think of you as one of my 'friends' from when I first came on the boards and lurked on the wedding forum! I'm so so sorry to hear about your Grandma

It's great that you are planning another WDW visit - I can't believe it's your 3rd anniversary... I remember *almost* bumping into you in Raglan Road in 2007! Crazy. It looks like we'll just miss each other! We'll be there Aug 8-30 I think - our wedding is hopefully on August 11, I find out a week today!

Hopefully it'll make things more clearer with what you want! Hope your studies are going well! It's exciting to think that this might be your last vacation, just you and DH!!

 

[pjstevens]

Summer, so glad to see you posting again. I also did not lose interest in your TR. I love how detailed you are. So excited you've booked a return trip. I've heard good about both of those resorts, but I do think SSR may be the better one for you with the dining options and DTD so close. Can't wait to hear about the Pirate and Princess Party!!!

 

[Pooh_Girl]

Welcome back Summer!!! Can't wait to read more!!

 

[The Charmed One]

Hi Summer, It's great to see you back posting on your TR, I enjoyed catching up and I'm looking forward to reading more, as if we'd lose interest, your a great writer and we love reading all about your trip.

Sorry to hear about your grandma and your move to Canada.

Great news about your anniversary trip next year and I love the disney souvenir bit hasn't time flown since you got married, my dh and I are just under 2 weeks away from our 3rd wedding anniversary, we're spending Christmas and New year at disney and were also hoping to come back with a little souvenir ourselves.

Take care, it's been lovely reading and seeing you both again.
Wendy xxx.

 

[AbbyPan]

Thank you ladies for the kind thoughts, it has been a pretty horrible year but we are trying to look on the positive side and think of Disney (our happy place)

I definitely didn't forget about you, I just knew I had left it so long that I thought it might be best not to post, I didn't want to offend anyone and as my wedding was almost 2 years ago, I thought people may have lost interest! Shame on me!

So my return trip to WDW is booked but as usual I am having second thoughts on the accommodations. We had wanted to book POFQ, but it works out cheaper with the DDDP to book either SSR or OKW. We have booked OKW but I now think that SSR might be the better choice. Location to DTD, newer resort, spa on site and better food court options. As we have the DDDP we will be travelling quite a lot to different resorts for meals and I like the fact I could use DTD as a hub and just get a bus to a resort from there if I wanted. Plus I had been told that SSR has a lot of winding paths through the resort which would be very romantic at sunset So girls, give me your opinions, is OKW better for us or SSR. I am going to call later today to change my booking if SSR has the winning vote.

As for my next instalment, I am currently working on it. Unfortunately I don't have many pictures at all in the next instalment as coming up we have...

Disney Quest and PIRATE AND PRINCESS PARTY

I do have quite a lot of pictures of the fireworks, and yes I will even post a picture of me in my pirate outfit...you have been warned!

Summer! yaye! I am so glad that you and Steven will be able to celebrate your anniversary in wdw!!

I have to go with SSR, I definitely prefer it over OKW...location, newer resort, great eating options, nicer pool, imo...just overall, I would recommend this resort if you can't do POFQ.

Sorry about the move to Canada, and I'm even more sorry to hear about the flood! I feel like you both have been through it all and still continue to beat the odds --go girl!

I miss chatting with you and can't wait to hear more about your plans on the anniversary trip!

Love, Abby

 

[Summer-Caitlin]

Hi everyone

I haven't been on this site for a long, long time. I also let my TR slide and have only just started on it again. I thought that it had been so long that there really wasn't any point in finishing it, but I had promised myself that I would as I really do hope to get it published as a memento.

I can't access this site at my work andthat is where I used to do the majority of my posting and ummm surfing, so that has made it difficult for me to find the time to continue.

However for those that are still interested I will continue to post my TR as I would just love to see it finished. I have set myself a target and I aim to stick to it.

Now that our anniversary trip is less than 6 months away, I am really looking at getting this finished asap as I have so much planning to do.

I apologise profusely to those that followed this TR, I had not intended for this to continue for so long, I mean I am not writing Lord of the Rings here...

 

[Summer-Caitlin]

We awoke to a glorious day and although I had planned for us to go to Disney Quest this day, one look out the window and I could literally see the Magic Kingdom calling! As you all know by now my plan is almost always set in stone, but I decided that as we were so close to MK we could always go for a few hours and then go to Disney Quest if the mood took us.

I didn't have anywhere booked for breakfast and had pretty much always thought we would go to Gasparillas again while staying at The GF. However because we were staying in the concierge, we decided not to waste our CS credits and instead go upstairs and see what was on offer.

It didn't disappoint! There was fruit galore, melon (honeydew, cantaloupe and watermelon)kiwi, apples, oranges, pineapple, grapes and bananas. There were assorted yoghurts, cereals, danish, croissants, fruit juice and coffee and the best thing about it was you could go back for more if you wanted to!!!

Steven grabbed himself a big bowl of fruit and poured the yoghurt over it, I on the other hand grabbed myself a couple of Danish pastries and a croissant (not all for me I assure you). Although I do like fruit, I am not a fruit sort of girl, I do really love soft melon, bananas and grapes, but when there is a choice between cinnamon Danish or a piece of fruit, well this girl has to follow the cinnamon trail.

The Danish was huge. It was soft, flaky and sweet, exactly as I had hoped and although I did offer Steven some, which he did take, I kinda wished I hadn't LOL. I could have gone back for more but I didn't want to start my day off with being too full. I had a few cups of coffee as this stuff was da bomb!

Steven loved his bowl of fruit and said he could have eaten it on a daily basis, it's a pity that fruit is so damn expensive in the UK (decent fruit anyway). He loved the cheese Danish but he didn't get to try the cinnamon one, what I had the whole thing? No way!

Steven mentioned that as we had saved on credits, it always meant that we could go to Peco Bills. Yes dear, I guess it does! I started running through the CS restaurants in MK and tried to work out whether there would be anywhere else worth visiting. I didn't think that anything would come close to Peco Bills, well not for Steven anyway, although now I come to think of it, I was supposed to go to Casey's Corner at some point during our trip (this didn't happen). So Peco Bills it would be.

After a wonderful breakfast we gathered our things from our room and headed out towards the monorail station to make our way over to MK. The sun was high and I could already see this was going to be one hot day!

Coming up...

The Enchanted Tiki Room... who was taking what when they made this??? I demand to know!

 

[DisneyLaura]

Yeah Summer's continuing!

I'm back on the bandwagon for your TR for sure. We had a rough last year as well, my mom got sick and passed away in October from Pancreatic Cancer. We were supposed to go to Disney in December 2009 but then she got sick so we canceled it. But we're going in April, only a couple of weeks now.

Welcome back to the boards Summer. Missed you.

 

[Summer-Caitlin]

We arrived at MK and it was already pretty busy. I thought today we could leisurely walk around MK, try and convince Steven to go on Splash Mountain and Big Thunder, and of course visit Peco Bills again. Our dinner tonight was going to be at California Grill and this was one meal I was not willing to cancel. I had read wonderful reviews of California Grill so I was really excited to be eating there during Wishes so I hoped it would live up to my expectations.

It was nice to be able to stroll, not power walk around MK and to actually take in the sights.

There was a show going on but to be honest I didn't really find it of interest. Steven got a few pictures though before we made our way to Adventureland.

So I saw that a show for The Enchanted Tiki Room was going to start in 10 minutes. Figuring this was luck we decided it would be worth having a look. We were the first ones to arrive so Steven tried to get a few pictures of me with the waterfall in the background. It was quite dark so I don't think the photos turned out to be much good.

We waited for what seemed like forever for the waiting area to fill up, in hindsight I think this might have been a clue!

Now I knew that this show included a cast of over 150 talking and singing birds, flowers and inanimate objects so I don't know what I thought I was going to see really, I just hoped it would be worth the wait.

We took our seat along the benches as the place grew dark. It was nice to be out of the heat but when the show started I would have gladly walked out in a heavily padded coat and boots, anything to escape the show.

It seemed to be neverending and I had to laugh as I couldn't get over the fact that I actually stayed to watch it, well that and they actually shut us in here with what appeared to be no escape. I am not sure if it was the singing, the dancing, the storyline or the noise that I particularly disliked, I just didn't get it and I whispered to Steven that whoever thought of this show must have been smoking something that night, and we are talking the hard stuff here! Maybe I didn't enter with the right frame of mind, but all I knew is I would have gladly kicked one of the many parrots off their perch if I could just to shut them up.

As you can quite clearly gather, this 'attraction' is not one of my favourites and when the doors opened I actually ran out! I vowed to never step foot in there again, it was 30 minutes I was never going to get back.

So to rid myself of the images of fluffy parrots, I decided to go on something I knew we liked. We headed over to Pirates of the Caribbean. As we visited this attraction with mum, I won't describe the ride in detail again. However we enjoyed this just as much as the first time and I will say it still remains one of my favourite rides at MK.

We approached Frontierland so the begging from me started. I really wanted to ride Splash Mountain and I honestly thought Steven would like it. The stupid drop at the end was the thing that was the deal breaker however and no amount of begging or promises could get him to try it. I mean come on, this is a guy that went on Jurassic Park ride at Universal in Hollywood, THAT is a huge and fast drop, Splash Mountain in comparison was tiny AND it had the Jungle Book characters (something I thought might convince him, but didn't ). I stared at Splash Mountain and sighed longingly and although he said he would wait for me if I wanted to go on it, it just wasn't the same to not share it with someone. I decided to pass and start begging for Big Thunder Mountain Railroad instead. This ride on the surface didn't look as scary, but to be honest I knew it was faster and Steven would like it less than Splash Mountain. However I was willing to try to get him on any of them so if happened to choose the faster of the two, then that wasn't my fault! Still, even after all my pleading, puppy dog eyes and pouting, he would not budge and I said goodbye to Thunder Mountain too. I am pretty sure if people hadn't been screaming above us, he might have said yes!

He mentioned that we could maybe go to Peco Bills as we were in the area and I looked at him as if he were crazy. It was only a couple of hours since we had breakfast and I couldn't understand how he could be hungry already, the fries were on his mind apparently, but I said we should go see a couple more things before we sat down for lunch.

We ventured over to Tom Sawyer Island but there isn't that much to say about it. I could imagine it being great if you had kids with you, well if you didn't mind losing them of course, but for two adults it was just a cute walk. We spent about 30 minutes here though .

Peter Pans Flight didn't seem to have that long a wait so Steven agreed that we could do that and then we would get a burger! W had been on Peter Pans flight before at Disneyland and I don't know why but I always had a soft spot for this ride. I know there are no great special effects and the ride itself isn't even that good, but I just love riding high above the city and looking down at the lights.

The queue moved steadily and we were on in less than 15 minutes. The queuing area wasn't great as for a while we were just standing in the sun, but it did move quickly and soon we were in our flying ship.

I find this ride quite romantic too. It was nice to be sitting alone with my husband staring out over moonlit London. It isn't a long ride and actually seemed a lot shorter than I remembered it, but it was nice all the same. We reached Neverland and met some residents and before long we were back to reality. This will always be an attraction that I will make time for when I visit in the future.

So as it was nearing lunch time we headed back to Frontierland and into Peco Bills. We ordered exactly the same as we had before, burger and fries and the peanut butter brownie dessert and paid for them with our CS credits. I must admit the fries here were the best I had ever tasted, they were so crispy on the outside and fluffy on the inside, I wish I knew the secret recipe!
As I was still quite full from breakfast I didn't manage to eat all my burger or fries. Steven seemed to like that and helped himself to the remainder of my meal. He polished it all off and still managed to eat most of his brownie, despite him not even liking peanut butter. I could only manage half of mine, despite my love for it!!!

There was a parade due to start and Steven wanted to get some photos of it. Although I am also not a parade person, I thought we might get some good photos so we headed towards Main Street USA.

We found ourselves a good spot towards the entrance/exit to MK, it was getting really hot and we spoke about possibly going on the speedboats again after the parade. Being near the exit was a good idea as people do tend to leave after parades I noticed.

We sat down for about 20 minutes before the music started up.

I thought this was a cute photo...

Pinocchio, a movie I am yet to see

Snow White another movie I...ahem...am yet to see

I want to say Ariel, but I am actually not sure, yup, you guessed it, it's another movie I have not seen

Ummm, wicked people from a selection of Disney movies that I too haven't seen, you noticing a trend here?

Awww Pluto

I enjoyed the parade but it is so hot out there that I was really glad when it was over. We headed back to The GF as it was still early enough to have one more go on the Sea Raycers!!!
The water was calm and although we didn't get it for free this time, it was well worth it.

A view of the GF from the water

We paid for an hour again and had a wonderful time. This was the last time that we went on the Sea Raycers during our stay but if I could I would have loved to do it every day. It was one of the most relaxing things I did all vacation. We have said that it is something we bank on doing when we go back. I note OKW has a marina so roll on September!!!

Coming up...

Dinner at California Grill

 

[Summer-Caitlin]

Yeah Summer's continuing!

I'm back on the bandwagon for your TR for sure. We had a rough last year as well, my mom got sick and passed away in October from Pancreatic Cancer. We were supposed to go to Disney in December 2009 but then she got sick so we canceled it. But we're going in April, only a couple of weeks now.

Welcome back to the boards Summer. Missed you.

Aww Laura I am so sad to hear that your mother passed away last year. Last year just seems to have been awful all round. I hope your mother didn't suffer and went peacefully. I am sure she is watching over you and your family all the time, she willalways be with you in your heart.

I have missed coming here too, I am glad I haven't lost everyone.

 

[Maddiesmum03]

Hey, Summer, it was good to see your name pop into my inbox again after so long, please finish your report, I for one will be reading.
I must admit I haven't been on the wedding boards for ages, last time it was just to copy and paste my report so I can keep mine for ever and ever!!!

 

[blondie7]

Welcome back Summer. Great to see you are going to finish your report. It has been a year of changes for me aswell. I am now living in the UK. For how long is still to be determined. I am getting married in October at SBP so I may be asking you some questions about planning a wedding from the UK in the near future. I am really glad you are back!

Hugs
Debbie