There & Back Again: A 1st-Timer's Tale--1/6-1/14/2010 @ FW Cabins: 3 more days!

princessbee

There's a great big beautiful tomorrow!
Joined
Oct 28, 2009
Messages
272
Hi, everyone! :yay: This is my first trip report and I'm VERY excited. :) I'm Bee, a twenty-year-old college kid originally from near Anaheim, CA, currently going to school near Philadelphia, PA. I've been to Disneyland too many times to count and (although the title of this PTR suggests differently), I have been to WDW before. Once, for the annual senior trip my high school does--and I completely adored it. However, nobody else in my family has gone before, and they're all Disney freaks like me so ever since I came back from the trip gushing about all the awesome fun I had, my mom and I have been wanting to plan a family trip... and now we finally have the chance to go! We'll be going January 6th until January 14th (the marathon is right in the middle!), and staying in the Ft. Wilderness Cabins! Because I'm the only one who's been before, and also because I just happen to be the one most obsessed with learning as much as I can about WDW, my parents have left a lot of the planning to me (although everyone definitely gets their own say in the trip). :woohoo:

THE CAST:
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Me (on the left), with my two oldest friends in the world! K is on the right and S is the one in the middle--guess what? She met the man who is now her husband at Epcot in Disney World that week! :D S and her husband actually have plans to meet up with us at one point during the week we're there, since they live in FL now. My mom arranged it so that my "celebration" while at WDW will be my graduation... funny, because I'm only a junior and I'll have a whole year and a half left to go! :eek:

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My siblings during a trip to Disneyland this past year (my family all went while I was at school; so unfair! :rolleyes:)--Ariel (16) on the left and Stitch (13) on the right. They'll both have their birthdays in December, so they'll be 17 and 14 when we go. We're celebrating their first time!

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Mom! She's pretty much my favorite person in the whole world :lovestruc, and she's the mastermind behind a lot of our trip (she says that I'm only in charge of PART of the planning because she wants there to be a lot of surprises--I'm excited! :thumbsup2) She's actually been to WDW before, too, but she says she was so young--I think she went around the time of the grand opening--it doesn't really count. She'll be celebrating her birthday the Friday of our trip.

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And last but certainly not least, Dad (on the right)! He pretends he's not into Disney as the rest of us are... but we all know the truth. ;) We're celebrating his first time too!

Well, that's it for now--I'll post more details soon!
 
Thank you so much & I hope you enjoy the rest of my PTR! :)
 
I feel like I'm so late on the ball just starting my PTR now... I've been lurking around the DIS since about last April, but I never registered/started posting until last month. :rolleyes: Oh well, at least I'm here now! (I linked the thread to my mom as well... perhaps she'll register herself on the DIS too and we can be co-authors. ;) Not that I'm hinting anything to anyone... :rolleyes1)

I called my mom earlier today to double-check which ADRs we've made already. We're not on the dining plan; or at least, we haven't decided that yet--I think the answer is leaning heavily towards no, just because one of the main reasons we decided to go with a cabin is because of the kitchen. Of course, that doesn't mean we can't enjoy SOME of the delightful places there are to eat at WDW! Especially since last time I was there, I had no idea about any of the restaurants and though we were all on dining plans (all 72 people in my class... plus all our chaperones--who decided it was a good idea to unleash so many seventeen- and eighteen-year-olds into WDW, I will never know! :rotfl:) my friends and I didn't try to eat at any of them. Too bad!

The way we have it set up is that everyone in my family gets their choice of one restaurant they want to eat at. Here's our current list (probably subject to change, if everyone else's PTRs are any proof!):

1/8:
Ohana @ 7:30AM (Sister's choice! Her favorite movie right now switches between the Little Mermaid and Lilo & Stitch--sometimes she pretends she's Lilo and calls me Nani. I'm totally fine with that, because L&S is one of my favorites too. :lovestruc)
Sanaa for Mom & Dad @ 7:55PM (It's my mom's birthday! Plus this is when I get to spoil my entire family after being away for half a year--I don't go home from school any time except at winter and summer breaks!)

1/9:
50's Primetime Cafe @ 11:25AM (Dad's choice!)

1/11:
Biergarten @ 5:45PM (My choice... I'm not quite sure why I picked it except for I really like the idea of everyone being in dirndl and lederhosen :laughing:)

1/12:
Sci-Fi Theatre Diner @ 12:30PM (Brother's choice!)

I'm so excited!
 

Every so often I like to go back and look at all of the pictures of my friends and I at Disney World--unfortunately, my camera broke partway through, so I don't have as many pictures as I would like, but I still have enough!

We were there for five nights and six days (and unfortunately that first and last day were not park-going days!), so we really had just enough time to go to every park at least once. However, what ended up happening is that we went to Epcot all day the first day, Hollywood Studios the second day (it was still MGM then, and we were all cranky by that point... not a good day! :sad2:), Magic Kingdom the third day, and then on the fourth day we went to Animal Kingdom just long enough to ride Expedition Everest--and then back to Epcot we went! So I have TONS of pictures of Epcot and not many at the other parks... I'm pretty sad I have so few of the MK, actually. My day there was probably the most magical of my life. :lovestruc (I remember when we were walking in, there was a show going on at the end of Main Street in front of Cinderella Castle, and K looked at me and said, "I know it's lame, but I really feel like I just stepped into something actually magical." :cloud9: For all the flak Disney gets for being too expensive/commercial/whatever, no matter how old you are, it really does feel like a magical place! It's totally not my fault I may have shed a few tears when we left :rolleyes:)

Here are a few pictures from Epcot with my friends in April 2007!

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What's that over the horizon? It's...
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China! I will always get a kick out of the fact that Disney is really the only place where you can stand in Canada, look out over the water, and see China. ;)

I'm a big tea fan, so visiting the UK's tea shop was a highlight for me:
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I ended up buying two or three boxes of tea! :laughing: I'm still going through the last of it to this day... what can I say, I'm addicted to tea!

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My friends and I are INCREDIBLY silly... after we saw this sign, we called things we liked "Morockin'" all day. Example: "Did you see Fantasmic? It was MOROCKIN'!" :rotfl: It's not even that funny, but even now when I'm talking to K or S and someone brings it up, I get the giggles.

One of the best parts of our trip is that we were just in time for the Epcot Flower & Garden Festival!
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I was more interested in topiary like this, but K has approximately nine million pictures of flowers and the like... she's in school for photography so she was particularly interested in getting good pictures of it all! They're beautiful... hopefully I can get her to send me some and I can share with you all!

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We spent a lot of time in Norway... we took this picture because when I first saw the troll after we got off Maelstrom, it startled me and I kind of screamed. :rolleyes: They made fun of me for it for the rest of the trip.

What I really love about Epcot, though, is its sheer beauty...
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:)

Maybe next time I can post other pictures from my WDW trip, and probably a few more family DL pictures! Right now, I'm looking online for a good camera... the one I had before broke but it's absolutely NECESSARY I have one before we leave for WDW in--count 'em--48 DAYS!
 
It's been a couple days, but of course that doesn't mean I've been able to stop thinking about Disney and more particularly our trip. When I was on the phone with my mom two days ago, I told her how many days I have until I go back home from school (right now it's 23!) and then how many days until WDW (44!), and she replied, "I guess you're getting excited about this trip, then..."

To which all I had to say was, "Am I getting excited? Me? Even my friends are probably tired of me talking about Disney all the time!" :rotfl: And it's pretty true--one friend noted a few days ago how a lot of my conversation seems to be about Disney Wolrd... I didn't mean for it to happen, but it did!

We're at the point where we're trying to really finalize our itinerary--we know when we're getting where, which parks we'll be at on which days, and where some of our ADRs are... what else should we be worried about, do you think?

Until the next post!
 
I'm here! You posted over on my PTR and I just saw you started your own...hope you don't mind another reader. :)

If you don't mind me asking where do you go to school? My dad, sister, and I went to Philadelphia last May actually. It was a lot of fun!
 
Sounds like your going to have a great trip!! I love the idea of staying in the cabins at Ft. Wilderness ... If I wasn't by myself this trip I would have thought about it ... I just know I would NEVER use the kitchen LOL and it's a much bigger space for just me.. I have to make a point to NOT stop at the tea place in the UK anymore (born and raised in UK) I am so addicted to my morning tea I always spend a fortune in that store :love:
 
I'm here! You posted over on my PTR and I just saw you started your own...hope you don't mind another reader.

If you don't mind me asking where do you go to school? My dad, sister, and I went to Philadelphia last May actually. It was a lot of fun!

I never mind more readers! :thumbsup2 And I go to a very very tiny women's college just outside of Philadelphia... it's so tiny, I don't think I want to say on an open forum. I do love it though! :D I love Philadelphia in general although I'm aching to go back to CA.

Sounds like your going to have a great trip!! I love the idea of staying in the cabins at Ft. Wilderness ... If I wasn't by myself this trip I would have thought about it ... I just know I would NEVER use the kitchen LOL and it's a much bigger space for just me.. I have to make a point to NOT stop at the tea place in the UK anymore (born and raised in UK) I am so addicted to my morning tea I always spend a fortune in that store

I'm so excited to go to Ft. Wilderness! I've been a camp counselor for three years now and I've always loved camping... not that FW means I'll be roughing it but at least I can pretend! :) And I know what you mean about tea... I already plan to take a couple of boxes of tea with me so I won't be as tempted to buy more when I go to Epcot. :goodvibes I hope you enjoy the rest of my P/TR!
 
We're at 42 days and counting... it still seems so far away! :scared1: That isn't stopping me from reading as much as I can about everything WDW! I learn something new everyday. Today it was just exactly how Disney's Magical Express works (useful: I was under the impression that SWA, which is what we're flying, is one of the participating airlines, so we could check our baggage at FW at the end of our trip--not so! But we can still take the ME back to the airport, and we will), and also all about afternoon tea at the GF (not so useful: we don't have any ADRs there and anyway I don't think anyone else in my family would be interested in going with me... :rolleyes:).

I'm hoping to learn even more over the weekend! I'm staying at school over Thanksgiving weekend, sadly enough (it's just too expensive to fly between home and Philadelphia too often--fortunately a few of my friends are in the same boat, and we all plan to cook dinner together, so it won't be that bad at all), so I finally caved and bought a copy of The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World! I think it's the only WDW touring book besides Passporters that I haven't read yet... as soon as I finish my homework--and there's a lot of it, ugh finals :sad2:--I plan to get out my highlighter and pen and annotate it all over. :laughing:

You know what else I'm really excited for besides the WDW trip? THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG! :yay:

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I keep listening to the soundtrack (it's on iTunes now if you care to buy it!) and watching the trailer... it's so beautiful and I think it's going to be the Disney movie I've been waiting for. :) Sadly, one of the things I've learned in my eager perusal of Disney-related websites is that while Tiana and everyone else are currently celebrating at DLR and WDW with her own show and parade, it won't last past January 3rd... just three days before I get there. :( I'm crossing my fingers that it will be so popular Disney will keep it longer... but I'm not keeping my hopes up. :sad1:

Stay tuned... I'm going to be posting our (so far) official itinerary next!
 
Ahhh I can't wait for The Princess and the Frog either! I was listening to some of the songs on the Disney Records site and it sounds pretty good. I want to see the movie first but I might ask for the soundtrack for Christmas. :thumbsup2
 
Ahhh I can't wait for The Princess and the Frog either! I was listening to some of the songs on the Disney Records site and it sounds pretty good. I want to see the movie first but I might ask for the soundtrack for Christmas. :thumbsup2

I definitely don't recommend listening to the soundtrack before seeing the movie if you don't like knowing what's going to happen... unfortunately, I feel like I have a pretty good idea of the plot now. If only I had been strong and decided to wait like you! :sad2: (That said, if you DON'T mind--the music is AWESOME.)
 
Hey I bought some (10) cheap (78 cents each) rain ponchos. Can you think of anything else we should buy now? You didn't post the itinerary yet? Well 1 of my plans kinda fell through. I wanted to do a picnic in Animal Kingdom,you can buy a little picnic lunch, but I guess they only do it in the busy season:confused3

I went to Disneyworld in 1979 I think. My dad bought one of those tiles and put all our names on it. I will have to try to find it when we go back.
 
Oh my goodness, school is so busy (it's finals time and I only have twelve more days until I LEAVE, thank goodness!) that I haven't really had time to hang out on the DIS. I'm happy to see akchrist here, though--hi Mom! A lot of people on the Disney World Tips board say we should buy Bodyglide, moleskin, pop-up hampers, and loooots of socks. They all sound like good ideas to me...

I seem to have lost the little index card on which I had written all the days we're going to which parks--not to fear, I'm 100% sure my mom has it all written down at home--but I think we're changing one of the ADRs anyway, so that'll probably change the way we'll operate (I think we're going from the Sci-Fi Dine-In Theater to Whispering Canyon Cafe--I'm excited I hear WCC is REALLY fun).

Hang on tight! As soon as school is over and I have more time, don't worry; I'll be updating this thing like crazy. Especially since by that point it'll all be last-minute type things.

33 Days! :yay:
 
You are getting so close!!

We LOVED Whispering Canyon Cafe and we will definitely be going back. My DH kept saying... "Man I wish we needed some ketchup." lol So I told him, "don't worry, when we bring the girls, you know we will need ketchup!"

Another on our list is Ohana. We didn't get to try it out last time, but I am pretty excited :) I have plans to make dresses for my girls to wear.

As far as things you need to bring along... I found that the "shoe organizer" was the best invention ever!

DH saw me pull it out and put it up, didn't say a word. A few days later he tells me, "I have to admit when I saw you pull that out, I thought you lost your mind, but this thing is great!" He works on the road and spend the week at hotels, so i asked him if he wanted to bring it with, to work. He declined, lol.

So good luck on your plans! :wizard:
 
You are getting so close!!

We LOVED Whispering Canyon Cafe and we will definitely be going back. My DH kept saying... "Man I wish we needed some ketchup." lol So I told him, "don't worry, when we bring the girls, you know we will need ketchup!"

Another on our list is Ohana. We didn't get to try it out last time, but I am pretty excited :) I have plans to make dresses for my girls to wear.

As far as things you need to bring along... I found that the "shoe organizer" was the best invention ever!

DH saw me pull it out and put it up, didn't say a word. A few days later he tells me, "I have to admit when I saw you pull that out, I thought you lost your mind, but this thing is great!" He works on the road and spend the week at hotels, so i asked him if he wanted to bring it with, to work. He declined, lol.

So good luck on your plans! :wizard:

If we go, we definitely plan on asking for ketchup... if anything, my sister will definitely ask for it. She's a huge ketchup fan :rolleyes: Also, the shoe organizer! That's what I forgot! On the wall next to my desk, I have a bunch of post-its with lists of things that I need to bring to WDW... I'm adding a shoe organizer right now. :D
 
I've been doing SO much work the past couple of weeks... :sad2: I just finished my last final, but I still have a paper and a half to write. I'm operating on very little sleep and a loooooot of caffeine. Has any smiley ever been more useful than this?: :surfweb: Let me tell you, though, things get a lot easier when I remember that I'm going home tomorrow, and that the World is only 22 days away! :banana:

I thought I'd take a little break to share some more pictures from my senior trip. Just looking at these make me smile so much it's almost ridiculous. :)

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Epcot is so beautiful, I can hardly stand it. The picture on the left is from the Italian pavillion (K, S, and I spent a lot of time there looking at the beautiful buildings and giving our feet a rest), and the picture on the right, stolen from K's Facebook, is of the World Showcase Lagoon at sunset... GORGEOUS.

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On the left is the statue of Walt and Mickey near the entrance of Cinderella's Castle, and behind them is the stage show that was going on when we first entered Magic Kingdom and caused K to comment that WDW really is magical. On the right is a picture from one of my favorite moments at WDW... my friends and I messing around in one of the photobooths at DTD. :rolleyes:

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These are from another one of my favorite parts of that trip: sitting on the curb, eating giant turkey legs and watching Spectromagic(?)!​

I'm sorry the pictures are so small! I think it's because I stole almost all of them from Facebook or because Photobucket doesn't want me to have bigger ones. I promise that when I'm posting pictures of the actual trip the pictures will be bigger...I might start a Flickr account for the express purpose of holding WDW pictures!

In other news, another one of my friends has agreed to go to WDW with me in October of 2010, right before my 21st birthday! I'm WAY excited--she's as Disney-obsessed with me and she'll be the perfect companion for a trip.

Until next time (i.e. after all this schoolwork is OVER AND DONE WITH :woohoo:)!
 
Oh my goodness--I got home on the evening of the 16th, and ever since it's been pretty much a whirlwind of catching up with family and running errands. I missed home a lot though, and it's nice to be back! :)

Today my mom and I FINALLY sat down and worked out which parks we'll be visiting and when. I have a beautiful color-coded spreadsheet with everything we'll need to know. Here's the final result:

Wednesday, January 6th
- Our plane takes off at 8:35AM, and we land in Orlando at 5:25PM! (Lots of flying... :sick:)
- We'll check in, then go straight from the Reception Outpost at Ft. Wilderness to Downtown Disney, where we'll have dinner, and then I'll hang out with my siblings while my parents take a cab to Walmart for groceries (has anyone done this, by the way?).

Thursday, January 7th
We're spending our first day at Animal Kingdom, but because the park closes at 5PM that day, we're heading to the Boardwalk after dinner to hang out and try out a surrey bike.

Friday, January 8th
My mom's birthday! First we're having breakfast with Lilo & Stitch at Ohana, then we'll spend the day at the Magic Kingdom (making sure to catch the parade), before my parents split off to go to dinner at Sanaa.

Saturday, January 9th
Because we have an 11:25 ADR at the 50's Prime Time Cafe, we're spending the morning at Disney's Hollywood Studios, then we'll go to Epcot, touring Future World until it closes at 7, then catching dinner in the World Showcase just before Illuminations. :)

Sunday, January 10th
This is our major rest day. We'll probably sleep in, then hang out at either Ft. Wilderness or touring a few of the other hotels, then hurry over to Magic Kingdom around 5PM to get a good spot for Fantasmic. After that, we'll probably walk around shopping until the fireworks.

Monday, January 11th
Epcot! We'll not have spent a lot of time at the World Showcase by this point, so we'll sleep in a bit (since the WS opens at 11AM) and then spend a lot of the day here, at least until our 5:45PM reservation at Biergarten. If we're tired of the World Showcase by then, we'll either ride a few repeats in Future World or we'll go to Downtown Disney.

Tuesday, January 12th
This day is pretty open, too. We have a 12:30 ADR at the Sci-Fi Dine In Theater, so we'll probably spend the morning at Hollywood Studios and then go look around some of the hotels that we missed before. We're going to try to catch the Block Party Bash this day, too.

Wednesday, January 13th
Our last full day (:sad1:)--we're spending the morning at Animal Kingdom, until about lunchtime, then we'll go over to the Magic Kingdom for the last time (we want to see Spectromagic).

Thursday, January 14th
Our plane is leaving Orlando at 4:20PM, and it'll be landing back home around 9:45PM. :( And then I have a day to pack and get ready to go back to school on Saturday the 16th--oy vey!

We have our Magical Express package, we're making lists of things we need to pack and things we need to buy, and checking the weather over in Orlando daily... we're so close I can taste it! We're also working on a poster (complete with stickers that represent all the parks!) that will say where we'll be on each day, so we can roll it up and take it with us and hang it up in our cabin. We made one back in June when we thought we'd be going in October, but now that we're so much closer it will be a lot easier. 16 more days, guys! :banana:
 
Joining in! Sounds like you have a fun trip planned.

Glad to have you, Native NYer! Question: your signature says you have eight months until your next trip. Which trip will it be for you, or is it first? I'm just curious! :)
 












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