The "We never had a honeymoon" trip report! Couple's TR with LOTS of photos!!!

MandaBean

Earning My Ears
Joined
May 19, 2008
Messages
19
Hello DISboards! I've been lurking and sometimes posting here for several months now, so I'm still pretty much a noob..BUT that's all about to change! ;)

I am Amanda, age 29, from Georgia. I'm married to Julian, age 25, formerly from San Diego, California. Like all perfect relationships :rotfl: , ours started out online in early 2000. No...we weren't members of eHarmony, Yahoo! Personals or any other dating websites. We actually met in a Yahoo! game room while playing a card game. He turned out to be pretty great, so I snagged him up and he's been here in Georgia with me since early 2001. :love:

Here's a recent photo of us on my 29th birthday in August..
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Our (MY) Disney history isn't very extensive. I've been to WDW once when I was a teenager. I have NO photos from that trip because they were tossed out when I failed to pick them up from the K-Mart photo kiosk. *sucks* SO, I had to rely on my memory to take me back and I actually DO remember some things and places during our trip. I've also been to Disneyland once last year when we were out visiting Julian's family.

Julian, or Jules which I will most likely refer to him as, grew up in southern California, so he knows Disneyland like the back of his hand. He was one of those fortunate children who grew up around that magic. I would have loved Disney as a child! :sad1:

So, that's a little about the two of us. We were married in August of 2005, so we just celebrated our 2 year anniversary. We've been planning this trip for several months now and I keep saying it's the honeymoon we never had. It also falls in between my birthday and Jules birthday, so we can go ahead and say we're celebrating those occasions as well, right? :laughing:

The DIS has been such an awesome part of our trip planning! We have loved reading the trip reports, seeing the photos and videos of everyone's favorite rides and MOST of all..the food porn! Lord, I love it! So thank you DIS and all your fellow DIS'ers for making our first trip together a VERY well planned out one.

Now my fellow Disney lovers, I present to you, our magical trip report!


Sept. 14 - Day 1:


We were up bright and early at 5am on Sunday morning, with lots of anticipation and excitement built up for the trip ahead of us. Since we were driving down, I wanted to carry one of our favorite WDW books, ‘The Complete Walt Disney World’, so that I could do some last minute research; not to mention, the amazing photos in that book just helped to hype me up even more!!

The drive was smooth and it didn’t seem like it took too awfully long to get there. Jules does really well when we take road trips, he just drives, doesn’t complain and gets us where we’re going in a safe and timely manner. He’s a great chauffeur. J We did have some entertainment along the way. Seems like once you hit a certain part of southern Georgia, the “spa/massage” billboards start popping up every couple of miles. Now, don’t get me wrong..I’m no prude by any means, in fact, I’m extremely open-minded, but come on..spa? “Truckers Welcome”..uh-huh? I think it would be a little less silly if they called it something else, like “Happy Time Pit Stop”. Anyway, on to Disney!

We passed through the Disney World entrance shortly after 2:30 in the afternoon. I was all goofy faced and trying to take as many pictures through our bug splattered windshield as possible. I kept looking at Jules, trying to get a smile out of him, and he grinned a little. We’re dorks. Look at the splatters!
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We followed the signs to Coronado Springs Resort, which looks absolutely HUGE from the street. We weren’t sure if they would let u check-in before 3pm, but we went in and had no problems at all. When I made our reservations, I requested a Cabana room, but I guess those weren’t available. Our room for the week was in Casitas 3, 3490. It was kind of confusing to find the room since everything is so massive, but we finally made it up to the 4th floor in a corner room.

First impressions were that the resort was beautiful, with lots of really great landscaping , and that it was huge. I was pretty surprised that there were only 2 elevators for our area, but we managed, even with all our luggage, to get settled in by 3pm. We took a walk around and I snapped a few nice shots of the resort.
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Our room was just like I expected it to look from seeing so many pictures on the dis. We had 2 double beds with lots of fluffy pillows. The beds were kind of hard, but believe me, after a long day at the parks, I wouldn’t be complaining. There was no microwave which was disappointing since I had planned for oatmeal in the mornings, but it was OK. I may have even read somewhere about there being no microwaves, but I don’t remember.

Since we are serious planners, we knew where we’d be going as soon as we arrived; The Pepper Market! We were both hungry, so we got our stuff settled in and freshened up, then walked down to eat some yummy food.

The restaurant is massive, with food stations all around you. It’s a beautiful place to sit and eat after a long day of driving.
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I had salmon and tilapia tacos. These were so delicious! The fish was flavorful and juicy. There was a sauce drizzled on top, but I’m not sure what it was exactly. I didn’t really bother with more than one taste of the cabbage. It was just a regular coleslaw with no dressing, so I skipped it. Black beans and rice were also included in the meal, but again, I was so into the fish that I gave my extras to Jules. I picked up some sour cream, corn and black bean salsa and guacamole at the condiments bar as well.
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Jules had the wet burrito. This was a really beautiful plate of food, and he liked it OK. I tried some of it, and it just had a really heavy tomato flavor that didn’t do much for me. I know there are raves about it on the dis, but neither one of us would order it again.
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For dessert, I picked up a piece of cheesecake and Jules got some churros. The cheesecake wasn’t great. I rarely let cheesecake go to waste, but it was just OK. It tasted more like a Jello no-bake deal to me than true cheesecake. Jules has one churro and took the other 2 back to our room for breakfast the next day.
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All in all, we enjoyed our lunch and we would definitely go back to The Pepper Market again. We spent 2 CS credits for this meal which included a beverage, entrée and dessert each.

#2: Next, we head to the Magic Kingdom for some sweaty good times!! Stay tuned. :woohoo:
 
:yay: :cheer2: I'M THE 1ST TO POST!!!! Welcome to the DIS Board!!!:welcome: :welcome: I'm enjoying your report!!
We were at POP Sept. 1-10th!! We had a wonderful time!!

Come read my Report!!
Thank you,
Kathy
 
Continued from the original post...

After lunch, it was time to drive to the Magic Kingdom! It just took a couple of minutes to get there from our resort, which was cool. One thing that was NOT cool however, was the temperature. I don’t know if it was just because it was our first day and we (actually just ME) aren’t used to all the walking around and sweating, but yeah…SO H O T!!

I tried to get a couple shots of the framed posters hanging in the entrance area, when a CM jumped in front of me and posed. Goofy dude. You like that hidden Mickey action? Well..kind of.
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We noticed right away that MK wasn’t very crowded. Jules is used to Disneyland crowds, and he noticed right away that it was pretty mellow. I was oohing and ahhing at all the cute Halloween decorations, especially my favorite sassy scarecrow that is just inside the entrance…love her!
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First off, we took a Jungle Cruise. The wait was 5 minutes, although it seemed like we just walked right onto the boat. We had a pretty funny guide and it was nice to chill for a few minutes and just soak in how hot it really was. :)
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Next up, we rode POTC, Haunted Mansion, Big Thunder Mountain, Snow White, Buzz’ Space Ranger Spin. We also took a break on the Transit Authority and watched the super amazing Philharmagic 3D show. I pretty much decided after the Jungle Cruise that I would pack the camera up for the evening. Since we would be spending all day on Monday at MK, I felt comfortable not taking pictures of every single thing that day.

When it was time for dinner, we had originally planned to use a CS credit and have fish and chicken at Columbia Harbor House, but they closed at 8pm. Our next choice was Peco’s Bills, so we headed over there and had some tasty taco salads. There was an awesome toppings bar with sautéed mushrooms, cooked onions, salsa, nacho cheese sauce and lots more. Jules and I both really loved the taco salad. Sorry, no pictures of this meal since it was getting late and we were just ready to take a break and eat. We spent 2 CS for this meal which included a beverage, taco salad and pre-packaged carrot cake.

So after dinner, we wanted to walk over to Peter Pan and see if the previously 45 minute wait had died down a bit. On the way over, we were walking behind 2 older men and one of them was attempting to unscrew the lid on a bottle of Coke. Apparently he had taken it with him on a wild ride beforehand because just as that first whistle of carbonated air let loose, that Coke sprayed all over the place, including on me. Now, I get that mistakes happen, but this guy didn’t even bother to turn around and see what a mess his fizzy explosion had made. No..”Oh, I’m so sorry about that!”..nothing. Pretty rude, annoying and sticky.

Anyway, back to Peter Pan. We get back over there and the wait is still pretty long; 30 minutes now. What the heck? Every other ride in the park was basically walk right on, except Peter Pan. Wild! So, we skipped it and went over to take a seat by Mrs. Pott’s. I got a Smart Water and we watched Wishes. We hadn’t planned to see Wishes until our last day, so this was just a little bonus. We still planned to see it on Saturday night, so there was no pressure to get a great spot in front of the castle…we just chilled.

Once the crowds thinned out, we headed back to our resort for some much needed sleep and air conditioning!

*LOTS more photos coming from this point on!*

Tomorrow, we head back to MK for a full day. I’ll have Columbia Harbor House and Whispering Canyon photos and reviews, as well as an embarrassing “Woody” moment, an emotional episode and what I thought about the famous Dole Whip float.
 

Great trip report so far! I have to ask what camera did you use? Your pics are some of the best I've ever seen.
 












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