Valentine's Day in the World

[katman2540]

Ok so I started 1 other trip report before. It didn't go very far. My wife and I have decided to try writing this one together. So while I will be typing this one Silvia, my wife, will be contributing her points of view as well.

On to the fun part. The who, what, when, where, and why. On this trip it will be primarily just the two of us. Some of my wife's family will join us for dinner one night but more on them later. You might be wondering at this point what we look like so let me throw a picture up here for you to see.

Now on to the when. We started our trip on Saturday Feb13th. Before leaving for Florida we dropped our dog off with some friends in RI and then started driving to Atlantic City. I had found a great deal flying Spirit Airlines out of Atlantic City for only $371 Round trip for both of us. Usually we drive down to Disney World so the 4 hours to Atlantic City were a breeze. This was our first time flying down to MCO and using Magic Express. When we arrived at Atlantic City it was smooth sailing getting through security. We already had our boarding passes. I was amazed that from parking our car, to checking our luggage, to going through security took us only 35 minutes. On the downside I now had lots of time to think about our upcoming flight. I haven't flown very many times in my life and in fact am quite afraid of flying. I have driven all over the country for weeks but flying for 2 hours freaks me out. We made it through our flight quickly and got right onto a Magic express bus. We both found the video they showed on the bus was very cute.

We arrived at our home for the next week at Port Orleans Riverside. I had done Online Check in so I was expecting to buzz through the check in process quickly. Boy was I wrong. There was only 2 people in front of us but there was a person at the counter who apparently had a problem. They finally were moved down the counter to apparently speak with a manager. The next person seemed to need to know everything there was to know about Disney right then and there. Finally it was our turn and I was prepared and had no questions so we were on our way. We were hoping to get a room in the mansions but ended up in building 39 in Aligator Bayou. I had paid for a King room and that is what we got, but we got a nice surprise with that. A corner room! Yeah for lots of windows.

I haven't uploaded the pictures of the room yet so I will post those later. I think I will stop here for tonight. More to come tomorrow.

 

[katman2540]

New post coming tonight.

 

[noahdove]

I am in for the trip

 

[katman2540]

Yeay a reader. Thanks for joining us. I have some very nice pictures to share as well. Hopefully it will be a good time for all.

Jason

 

[dawnbu40]

Looking forward to hearing about your trip! Love the pic with Alice and the Rabbit we've never seen him!

 

[DVCRon]

We were visiting the same week.

Looking forward to reading more.

 

[PolynesianLily]

Excellent start!! Love the picture of the White Rabbit, I have never seen him before.

Looking forward to reading more!

 

[Queenofallthings]

I'm in too We were there just before you arrived....we left for home on the 7th....I'm interested to see if your weather was better than what we had!!

I also can't wait to see your room pictures....I've always wanted to stay at Port Orleans, but never have!!!

 

[Girlie1]

I'm in. Can't wait to read the rest of your trip report. Getting psyched for our trip in April.

 

[katman2540]

Sorry I didn't get a post up last night but one of my rare migraines Took me out last night. Feeling better today so on with the fun. I promised some room pictures so here you go. I noticed that most of the pictures I have seen online are for the 2 double bed rooms but since it is just the two of us we had a nice big king bed.

with a nice corner window. Please ignore the mess. We had been there for a couple of days at the point these pictures were taken. Already the pile of receipts is growing.

I am used to POP so having a fridge in room and a hideaway TV was nice.

And the 2 sinks meant not having to fight over space. I need to install this at home.

So there is the room. Our view out the windows was beautiful.

And I couldn't help taking the camera with me one morning when I went to get Silvia some breakfast.

I even walked down to the lobby so I could get a picture of that.

Including the area for kids to watch Disney cartoons while the parents are taking care of Paying Mickey.

Of course that's what Silvia was watching too while I was taking care of paying Mickey.

Cont. in next post.

 

[katman2540]

So now we have covered the who, when, and where so on to the why. Well it's Disney so that was simple. Just kidding. A little back story first for the why. When I started dating Silvia back in 2003, I knew pretty quick that she was the one for me. I decided for our first Valentine's day we would go all out. I Bought us some bus tickets for an overnight on Valentines day in NYC. Silvia is Italian and I thought it would be sweet so I booked a hotel room at an italian hotel right in the city not far from the Empire state building. Paid way more than it was worth. I got tickets to Beauty and the Beast on Broadway. Took her on a carriage ride in Central Park. Booked a Very expensive 4 or 5 star meal for dinner that left us hungry enough to eat at a diner 2 hours later. and I pre-bought tickets to go to the top of the Empire State Building.

Needless to say she was impressed with everything as it unfolded. I told her though that this kind of thing wouldnt happen every valentines day. I told her every other valentines day we would do a nice getaway and the off years I would make her a very nice dinner and take her to a movie or a show or something.

Well 2 years ago would have been our last trip but all our money was tied up in a little thing i like to call "A Day of Picture Taking I Thought Would Never End." She calls it our wedding day. It was beautiful, she was gorgeous (sp?) and I hate posing for pictures. But because of paying for that I couldnt afford to take her away for Valentines day. We said we would just go next year. Plus we were going to Disney for 10 days for our honeymoon. Thank you Grandma!

Well fast forward to next year and her cousin in Tampa is getting married. We decided since we were going down there we would go to Disney for a couple of days and that was tying up the money for a trip last year. Granted her cousins wedding was the day before our anniversary so we got to celebrate our first anniversary In disney world. But again no valentines trip.

I felt really bad that I hadn't kept up my end of the bargain. She means the world to me and I really wanted to take her away for Valentines day this year.

Well she is a teacher in CT and her vacation happened to fallen on Presidents week. Which was also when Valentines day was, SO despite everything I had heard about Presidents week in the World I decided I would take her down for a couple fo days. Disney proceeded to offer the 4,3 deal on Mod's so I decided to take her in style.

I was really trying to wait to tell her till Christmas but my computer is hooked up to the TV in the living room and she saw somethings and asked some questions. I told her and she was ecstatic that I would put somethign like this together for her.

Sorry for the long back story but I felt I had to tell it and since she is at least reading along and throwing in things from time to time I figured it was another way to show her how much I love her.

OK. Enough with the mushy stuff. We all came here for Disney! We were staying for a full week with the regular Dining Plan and had lots of nice reservations. I will start our actuall time in Disney in the next post.

cont. in next post.

 

[katman2540]

We had a nice full day of stuff to do on Valentines Day. Including making up for a meal we skipped out on last trip because we wanted to sleep.

We headed out to the front of the hotel for 7 am and got a taxi to take us to the Poly for breakfast. We had 7:30 reservations at Kona Cafe for breakfast. Silvia loves her coffee so I convinced her to get the French Press Pot of Kona Coffee and she loved it. She also had the Pinapple Macadamia nut Pancakes.

I even remembered still at this point to take pictures of the food. Sadly I would forget as the trip went along.

I had the Big Kahuna breakfast so I could try a little bit of everything.

The breakfast here was great. The pancakes were light and fluffy. The eggs were cooked just the way I wanted them and Silvia loved the coffee. We will definitely return here for breakfast anytime we are in the World. I don't drink coffee so There was enough left for Silvia to take a cup to go with us.

So with full belly's it was time to head to a park. For us, and for many others I am sure, Its not a trip to Disney World till we see that Castle. So we hopped on a monorail and headed off to the Magic Kingdom. Since Breakfast was so early we made our first Rope Drop at MK and we got a big kick out of the welcome show. I even took some pictured of the family of the day to If anyone knows the family of the day from 2/14 I will be Happy to send them the pictures I have. Heres a couple of the show not including the family.

I have more If anyone want to see them. It was a really cute show after which everyone piled into MK. We took our time and let them all run like crazy. As we walked in we saw Pinochio headed back inside. I guess his legs were to cold as it was only about 40 degrees that morning so we Followed him back into Exposition Hall and had our picture taken with him.

A smal background on pictures with Characters. I really wanted to take some on our honeymoon but Silvia thought it would be weird since we weren't kids. Well after finding the DIS and showing her all the pictures of adults with characters she was in so we got a bunch last Summer and we got even more this trip. Even one I have never seen on the boards. But thats a later post.

After our picture with Pinochio we headed over to the hat store to see if I could replace my beloved hat from our honeymoon. It went missing sometime in the fall and I was hoping to find another one I liked since I figured th eon I bought was long gone. I didn't like any in the hat store so we headed off to Space Mountain to get Silvia a fastpass.

By the time we got there it was only about 9:45 and the fastpass was for 11:20 so not so bad so far. Thanks to the boards I know ToonTown is going away and we really wanted to take some pictures of Mickey and Minnie's houses so we headed that way and just missed rope drop for ToonTown.

While everyone there headed for the princesses we headed for Mickeys House.

We lvoed all the details put into these and its a shame that there is no word on moving them elswhere. Since we knew we might not see them again I took a bunch of pictures.

Mickeys kitchen is quite the mess but I guess thats what you get when Donald and Goofy are doing the work.

After stopping by Pluto's doghouse, we had to get a picture for our dog Jedi at home, we headed on into the judges tent where there were ony about 5 familys in line ahead of us. That met our wait tiem threshold for character pictures so we watched the cute cartoon on teh screen and waited to go see Mickey. I was unaware that it would be a two for the price of one deal as when we went in we got Mickey and Minnie.

Sorry its a little dark.

After seeing that fabulous pair I lead Silvia off to where the Princesses and Fairies are. If the lines were short enough I figured we could go see the princesses. Well only 5 families in front of us again. Score! When we got in we saw Cinderella and...wait is that...it is. Yes! Score again Silvia's favorite princess, Belle! We decided to just let the photopass photographer get the pictures of us so as soon as I get those pictures in I will add them to the report. Silvia was really glad we did this as she had not seen Belle before outside of a parade.

We proceeded on to Minnie's house which was much more crowded than when we went into Mickey's house.

We did a lot today so I think I am going to take a break there. I might post some more tonight.

Jason

 

[Queenofallthings]

Great post!! Love the pictures of the room, I will have to remember to request a corner room, love all the windows. Double sinks.....heaven!!!

Glad you guys took pictures with the characters, we're all kids at heart after all.\

Can't wait for more

 

[dawnbu40]

Lovely resort pics and those breakfasts look delicious!

 

[Echo queen]

Great report, thanks for sharing. I'm in.

 

[burly]

Hi, I'm in and following along.
Great room pics, i think my sis and i are staying there our next trip this fall.
Also love the Kona for dinner. Never went for breakkie and i think we may try this time.
We love getting our pics with the characters, becuase when we are in Disney all our cares fly, and we are just kids having fun!!
Looking forward to more.

 

[katman2540]

Hi Folks! Sorry for the delay. Silly life getting in the way of Disney. Anyway on with the show. When last I left off we had just seen the lovely princesses. After this we figured Silvia's fastpass for SPace Mountain was ready and I had an appointment with some Space Rangers. We headed back to Tomorrowland and went our separate ways.

I headed over to Buzz Lightyear and breezed right through thanks to the fastpass. I think if I hadn't ridden TSM I would be ok with this ride. I love video games and such but this ride bugs me. The lasers are never aligned with the gun so it takes me a little bit to adjust to that. This ride is just ok to me and if I couldn't get a fastpass I would probably skip it. Since the ride went so quickly I had to wait for Silvia. We had said we would meet outside of Mickey's Startraders but I knew it would be a bit so I headed over to Space Mountain to wait for her.

Silvia meanwhile was taking her first ride on Space Mountain since it was refurbished. She is a Huge rollercoaster fan. If it goes fast sign her up. She was very disappointed that this was closed last July when we came. Since she had her fastpass she zipped right through past the millions of people in the standby lign. Once inside she spent a moment checking out the new line queue and thought it looked cool but she was on a mission. She hopped into her rocket car and sped off into the blackness of space. She feels the ride is even darker lighting wise than before. Overall she loved the ride.

When she came out there was a huge line just to get a fastpass.

I was really glad we did this early enough so she could get a fastpass. From there we headed over to the "People Mover" as Silvia calls it still. Since I never knew it as this I call it the TTA. It was a nice ride around tomorrowland and I even snagged some nice pictures like the one above. I especially like this one of the castle.

From the TTA we headed out to Adventureland to try and get a fastpass for Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. I had decided I was going to try and ride this for the firs time. Well as wegot closer and started seing the ride running around on the rails I decided I wasn't ready.We had moe ays in MK this week so I decided t try it later. Silvia got her fastpass and we headed out to the Haunted Mansion. I took some different pictures along the way.

Well the line for the Haunted Mansion was all the way down to the dock for the riverboat ride so we figured we would wait and try it later. We proceeded over to Columbia harbor house to get some lunch. This was a first for us and we were looking forward to trying it. I had the Anchors Aweigh tuna sandwich. This was great, one of the best tuna sandwiches I have had. Silvia got the Fried Fish basker and says it was yummy.

We relaxed talking for a while and came to the mutual conclusion that we were beat. We got to the hotel at 10pm the night before after leaving our house at 8:30 in the morning. Then our luggage got messed up and didn't get to the room 2 in the morning even though our plane landed at 8:45. Plus we got up at 6 so we could make it to breakfast. So we decided to head back to the hotel to relax. We knew we were coming back here later that night anyway since it was EMH till 3am and we figured we better be rested.

We caught a quick bus back to the hotel and bought ourselves our refillable mugs. Filled em up and headed for bed.

Cont. in next post.

 

[Echo queen]

Glad your back, I took got some good shots from the TTA too. Maybe I will post some.