We Miss the Flowers! An April 2016 PTR

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Hello All!

For those of you who don't know me, I'm coloredimage, normally go by the name Elle!



I'm 27 years old, live in Massachusetts, and work as a 7th grade ELA teacher and write in my spare time. Disney was the first trip I was able to take after having open heart surgery at age 11 and it's held a very special place in my heart ever since. My favorite ride is a toss up between Big Thunder Mountain and Small World. My favorite princesses are Aurora, Tiana, and Merida, and my favorite park is Magic Kindgom.

I also have another PTR going right now: A Tale of Two Castles: A Summer PTR which is about my summer trips to WDW and DLR (as well as South Carolina), which a couple of you may have seen.

I figured instead of mucking that one up with information about this trip, I'd just make a separate PTR, since it will keep going on long after those trips have ended.

Anyway, I'd also like to introduce you (re-introduce a couple of you) to Jey:



Jey is my absolute best friend. We've known each other since we were sixteen, lived together for two years, and she's basically my sister. We've gone to Disney World together six times and she and her mother are coming with me this summer when I go to Disneyland for the first time! She works at a children's boutique. Her favorite ride is Star Tours, her favorite princesses are Ariel, Rapunzel, and Cinderella. Her favorite park is a toss up between Magic Kingdom and Epcot.

You may have read our last Trip Report, Explosive-o's! I'll get into some other stuff in another post about our Disney relationship and such but for now I just wanted to introduce myself (ourselves?)

Hope you guys follow along and I'd love to get to know some of you!

 

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The Land of Flowers & Gardens!

If you read my last TR you know that last year we went to Walt Disney World during the summer. This was the first time I've gone in the summer in about four years, and the first time going in August in about ten. A lot of the choosing of August for our trip last year (and the trips I'm taking this coming summer) have to do with the fact that I'm a teacher, and it's difficult to do trips during the school year, especially considering we normally don't start planning until January. Which is actually exactly when I started planning my trips this summer.

Originally, Jey and I were trying to convince my aunt that we should do a girls' trip - my aunt, myself, our cousin (who is a huge Disney person and one of my aunt's best friends), and Jey. However, it turned out that our cousin was away during the time (the joys of being retired; she gets to go on the best trips!) and my aunt really wanted it to be just the two of us. Since I'm the one who definitely pushed for her to go on this trip I agreed. Jey and I were both bummed, but I think it worked out for the best because the day we come home is the start of a big weekend at her store that she can't miss.

Anyway, for the past few weeks we've been talking off an on about going back to Disney together. Obviously not this year. Jey said she didn't want to go during the summer again and I could definitely agree on that front - for one, it's too hot; for another, our friends (who we're going to South Carolina with this summer) have thrown around the idea of cruising next summer so I'd like to keep the summer calendar free for that.

So, last week I suggested we go during my April vacation next year. Jey suggested we stay as cheaply as possible, but still do a dining plan just because we find that, for us, it's a pretty good deal. We haven't set anything in stone yet, but this is our plan:

April 16-23, 2016
Where: Right now we're thinking All Star Sports, since it's the only AS we haven't stayed in. If there is a great deal that makes another resort cheaper we'll look into it but for now it's ASSp

We're even crazy enough to make a list of the places we definitely want to try and get ADRs at once we've booked and hit the 180 mark. We're just way too excited to actually get to plan (which we kind of can't for DLR) that we just had to make a mock-up idea. These are the places we're pretty sure we want to eat at:

1. Akershus

2. Tokyo Dining

3. Tusker House

4. Sci-Fi

5. Liberty Tree Tavern

6. Prime Time

7. Chef Mickey’s

8. San Angel Inn

This could very easily change, but we just wanted to make a preliminary list so we could play around with it over the next few months.

 

[Asellus]

following

 

[Molly812]

Following!

 

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following

Following!

Yay! Welcome!

 

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Ears!

Last night, BibbidiBobbidiBrooke opened up her shop.

This is a big deal for me. I've loved her adorable custom ears on Instagram for ages but I've always missed the opportunity to pick up a pair because of other obligations that have made it so that I either wasn't home or had crashed out on the sofa already (I know, I'm a big party animal), so a few weeks ago when she announced that her store would be open last night I was determined to get right in there.

And....I did! I bought Jey and myself each a pair of adorable ears - hers are the Off to the Ball ears while mine are Mint & White Chevron. Hers are definitely supposed to be Cinderella ears, mine remind her of Beaches & Cream but I bought them because they remind me of 90s Daisy.

It'll take about 6 weeks to get them. We'll be wearing them when we go to Disneyland this summer but since it won't be as destructively hot as it normally is in the summer time I'm excited to get to wear these beauties around WDW with her next April!

 

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Guess Who Forgot She Had A PTR?

Heeeeeeeey, my name's Elle and I fail at remembering that I have this PTR going.

To be fair, I had another PTR going at the same time. And then summer I was traveling across the country. And I had two TRs going. And then my computer crashed.

These are totally excuses.

I just forgot about this thing.

Oops.

Anyway! I got my Bibbidi Bobbidi Brooke ears that I mentioned in my previous post:


Love me some chevron <3

I went to Disney World with my aunt which was..., well, you can read about it here and my Disneyland TR is still going strong over here.

Now I'm focusing on going back to Disney World!

Not much has changed. The usual suspects are still going:

(that'd be Jey and I, aka the usual suspects) I honestly thought we'd have to cancel this trip until last week because Jey just got a "new" job - she's still with the same company, but it's a much better job (9-5, Monday thru Friday, better pay, overall a great promotion) and kept pestering her to double check because I didn't want us to have to cancel. But she finally have me the OK to book last week.

And we've officially made our reservations for April 16-23 at All Star Sports. Trying to find a decently priced plane ticket and we may actually have to *gasp* do a layover (we never do layovers! Except when we went to California, and I used to do layovers going back and forth from grad school)

I actually made our meals before I put down our deposit, because I figured we'd want to be safe. We still have one meal that's up in the air but besides that here's the (current) list. As you know we tend to redo it at least once so, be prepared:

Sunday, April 17:
- Arkershus @ 12:35 pm
- Chef Mickey @ 7:50 pm

Monday, April 18:
- Be Our Guest @ 1:20 pm

Tuesday, April 19:
- Tusker House @ 8:10 am

Wednesday, April 20:
- Tokyo Dining @ 3:20 pm

Thursday, April 21:
- Via Napoli Ristorante e Pizzeria @ 4:15 pm

Friday, April 22:
- San Angel Inn Restaurante @ 11:50 am

Saturday, April 23:
- Liberty Tree Tavern @ 11:55 am

I actually just changed that Arkershus ADR as I wrote this out because I realized that there wasn't really enough time between lunch and dinner. We don't have anything planned for the day we show up just because we have no idea what time we'll get there.

Things are starting to come together! Now let's see how the next five months go! lol

 

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This Ever Happened To Anyone Else?

Hey, has this happened to anyone else? My hotel reservation is showing up on my MDE online, but none of my ADRs are. On the MDE app, my ADRs are showing up but not my hotel reservation. It won't let me link my ADRs to the online version of MDE because I get this message:
"The Reservation Contact has linked this reservation to his or her account. To make any changes to this reservation, please ask the Reservation Contact."

Never happened before. Just wondering if anyone else has seen this weirdness. I did everything myself.

 

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Elle: The Queen of Changes

This is so ridiculously true though.

Let's take a step back, shall we?

So, on Sunday I was looking at flights and realized that the prices going out of anywhere near me on Saturday morning were ridiculously priced. So I did some hunting on a suggestion and found that it was nearly $200 cheaper to come in Friday night after Jey and I got out of work. So we'll be exhausted going down but we'll just head to a hotel instead of going out into a park.

Of course that meant I had to find us a hotel room for the night. I told Jey I'd put down the money for her birthday so I got us a hotel room at Port Orleans: Riverside. While talking about it I told Jey I wasn't going to tell her where we were staying as a surprise and she made a comment about how it was fun not knowing. I said in passing if there was a good price I'd change our hotel for the week to someplace different from All Star Sports.

So....I changed our hotel.

For the entire week!

We're staying at Port Orleans: French Quarter the rest of the week, which she doesn't know. She just knows I changed it.

I'm really excited but it's going to drive me crazy the next three months not being able to tell her or talk to her about where we're staying.


I also bought four head bows from Magical Ribbons (on headbands because I have short hair) and a new pair of ears from Bibbidi Bobbidi Brooke! I can't wait to get them all!

And I have a Merida Disneybound planned so I'm so ready (may have done a casual 'bound to work today....oops)

 

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I want to stay at FQ sometime! You're keeping the streak alive of being my info source, LOL!!

I got more ears from EarBowtique for our next couple of trips, too! I could never wear my Brooke ears in the parks because they are too top heavy and uncomfortable so I'm too scared to buy any others from her. I may have to investigate that shop for headbands...hm...

 

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I want to stay at FQ sometime! You're keeping the streak alive of being my info source, LOL!!

I got more ears from EarBowtique for our next couple of trips, too! I could never wear my Brooke ears in the parks because they are too top heavy and uncomfortable so I'm too scared to buy any others from her. I may have to investigate that shop for headbands...hm...

Haha I'm glad I could help! I can't help it, I'm so bad at planning and keeping my plans! This is the second time in a row I've done this with an All Star resort too!!

I need to look at EarBowtique - I always forget to. That's sad about your Brooke ears mine are very comfortable and didn't give me any problems all week in California. Hopefully my other pair keeps the streak going for me....fingers crossed! Haley's (Magical Ribbons) bows are usually on barrettes but my hair is too fine (I couldn't even wear barrettes when I had very long hair because they'd come out within a half hour!) so I chose the slightly more expensive option ($11-13 over $9-11) to get them all put on headbands. My friend Liz wears them constantly whenever she's not at work and I couldn't resist them after I saw them in person - they're too adorable!

 

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Tickets

We got our tickets for the plane yesterday. They were ridiculously expensive but they are bought! Like I said before we added a day at the beginning so our plan of action right now is:

- I'll get out of work at the normal time (3 pm) and either head straight home or stop to pick up any miscellaneous things for the trip at Walmart or Target near work
- Jey'll get out of work a little earlier than normal (around 4:30)
- Leave my house around 4:30
- Pick J up around 5:30
- Get to Logan for 5:45-6 (she doesn't live too far away from Logan we just don't want to leave her car there)
- Flight out at 8:10
- Get in at 11:20, get our luggage, head to Magical Express

The one thing that could change is where Jey lives. I think her lease is up in a few weeks and her current roommate is moving in with his girlfriend so she may be moving closer to me. If that's the case, we'll need to fix our plans a little because she'd be getting home from work at 5:30 not 5.

 

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Pretty Things!!!!

I have been so dang busy buying up cute accessories for Disney! I haven't bought cute clothes for Disney yet for two reasons:

1. I want to go through what I already have for dresses and shirts and see if I have enough comfortable things to wear before I buy and realize I overbought
2. I started exercising again. Which is astonishing, but for the first time since graduate school I've gone back to exercising daily - walking for about an hour a day on the treadmill. It's a slow start but something I've gone into detail on my blog so I figured I don't need to really hash it out here but! Since I've started last month I've lost a jeans' size!! I've bought one new pair of jeans in the new, smaller size but I don't want to buy another pair until I have to, if my favorite pair of dark jeans become too big to wear. So in that department I'm going to wait it out and see if I lose another significant amount before I plateau.

My original goal was to lose 2 jeans sizes, so I'm halfway there! I'd love it if I managed it before Disney but who knows? 10-15 lbs in 60 days seems reasonable since it's what I achieved so far but I'm not putting the cart before the horse. My biggest goal is to just be healthier in general. Though I've been teasingly telling Jey that I'm "running for Disney" - even though I'm not at "running" yet. I tried for about a week, doing 10 minutes of walking, 1 minute of jogging but I haven't built up the endurance to do that yet. I cut back to just walking for 1-2 hours at a leisurely pace. My goal is to cut the time but go back to the walk/jogging by mid-March.

Um, anyway, we're talking Disney and accessories. Pardon the tangent.

Yes!

Accessories!

So firt:
- Magic Band: I'm a bit obsessed with chevron. I have my first pair of ears in chevron and I have a chevron computer bag and a chevron keyboard cover on my laptop, etc. So when we were getting new magic bands (we had a weird issue where it created a new MDE log in for me because I used my emails (same as I use for MDE) instead of a username so our old MBs won't work on this trip) I figured I'd go to where I'd bought my coverbands last year to buy one I remember seeing in chevron.

Except the chevron was gone.

So I went to etsy and found a seller that made chevron. I just wasn't sold. They weren't what I was looking for. But they did have a quatrefoil pattern in a pale lavender (they called it rosemailing pink. I've grown up surrounded by rosemailing thanks to a mother brought up by Scandinavian immigrants and have never seen a specific pink before but whatever, it's pretty and fit my needs ). It's a bit more heavy-duty than what I had before, and cheaper too! I also bought a little mini Mickey cupcake decal to put somewhere from another Etsy seller, which is just adorable.

- Ears & Bows: Like I said, I bought ears from Brooke and got some Magical Ribbons hair bows. I got my Magical Ribbons bows today and omg they are adorable!

Notice the green pattern? It's not my favorite color but it definitely goes with my hair and the stuff that I usually wear.

I've also bought myself two wigs (when my hair's long it's a terror to try and do anything with it because it's so thin) - one in the closest I could get to my usual hair color and one in lavender gray. I also have a scarf coming from Brooke that I can't wait to get! It's a perfect F&GF scarf.

So yeah, I'm getting really hyped for Disney using pretty things like these and hoarding them.

 

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I love those bows!! I checked out her website and am considering ordering a few...how long did they take to get to you?

 

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I love those bows!! I checked out her website and am considering ordering a few...how long did they take to get to you?

I adore them, they're adorable! It takes about 2-4 weeks depending on how many orders she has and how many you buy. You can get them placed in multiple different places on a headband or you can get them on a barrette clip like the small red one My friend Liz swears by these things

 

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More Pretty Things!!!

Yesterday I got home and I had a package from DHL. This was completely shocking, since I had gotten an email saying it had only just been shipped on Tuesday! I bought these things from Korea and they were shipped from Hong Kong so I definitely didn't expect them to get here this fast!!

And what did I get?

Oh, yes, my wigs! I can now have my normal short hair if I want or (as I feel I want more often nowadays) I can have long hair!! Long hair with lesser maintenance? Glorious!

So these are my wigs:

Can't wait to wear these babies out! Especially in Disney!

 

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OMG, those are so cute on you!! The red one looks like Ariel hair, and I love that smokey violet color

 

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OMG, those are so cute on you!! The red one looks like Ariel hair, and I love that smokey violet color

Thanks! I'm going to have such a blast with these! I can't wait to wear them around in the parks!

 

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One Month Away!

Man, a lot of things have happened since I last updated!

First of all, we are one month away! Well, technically I'm 43 days away, but technicalities!

Since I last posted my parents have officially bought a new house, which means that I will be (hopefully) renting to own theirs by the end of the year - once construction on both the "new" house and the "old" house are finished. I say that with quotations because the house my parents just bought was built in 1743 and the house my parents currently live in was built in 1920. So, you know, it gets confusing. It's a beautiful old farmhouse one town over from the town I grew up in, and it's 5 miles from their current house. It adds about 10 minutes to each person's commute but that's not all that bad, really. And the house is worth is - big back yard for the two dogs, gigantic house (seriously, going from a 20th century Cape to an 18th century farmhouse is like upgrading to three extra houses) and a lovely neighborhood. I'm a huge fan of old houses so I've been just as obsessed with this house as they have - in fact, I found it for them! And we're all fans of Fixer Upper so I sometimes get ridiculous texts and emails from my dad that start with "As Chip/Jojo would say..."

Anyway, Disney.

I'm really hoping Tiffin is open for reservations by the time we're there. I saw that they put it up on the website this morning so I'm hopeful they'll be some information about ADRs soon afterwards! We have changed one ADR already, though. We were originally going to Chef Mickey's on what was originally our first day before we had to come in on Friday night but we have Arkershus earlier in the day for lunch and two buffets seemed like too much - I know Arkershus isn't actually a buffet, just the appetizers, but I also know myself and Jey and we are going to gorge ourselves on cured salmon and jarlburg and we'll probably both end up getting the kottebulle which we decided when we went there for my 23rd birthday we should just share but we're both too stubborn to (seriously, we're going for the food, the princesses are just a thing that'll be there). But anyway, we'll probably be rolling ourselves out of there so we got rid of Chef Mickey. We were originally just going to change it to a later date but it was all booked up and we decided that we didn't really need another character meal anyway so we changed it to a late Sanaa which will be a nice change.

This is a long way of saying we'd much rather try Tiffin then go to Tusker House. As much as we love it, we already have a character meal and we love trying new things so we'd love to change it to that!

I've finally figured out my packing situation - all thanks to my mum of all people!

...Which is something I hadn't posted in my PTR yet, have I?

Oops.

To make a long story short, I haven't been able to figure out what I wanted to use for carry-ons because we're going to have to grab our luggage in Orlando and it's just too hard to walk around with a rolling suitcase and a rolling carry-on. I did that every holiday of graduate school and I really don't want to repeat the process - it was hard enough in Heathrow, let alone MCO!

Well, my mother was wonderful and was able to find a great sale on Vera Bradley bags so she bought me a duffle bag for my usual summer beach road trip (last year was Myrtle Beach, this year it's Virginia Beach), a medium-sized backpack, and a tote bag all for under $100! They're not Disney Vera, but that's fine with me! It's helped me figure out which bag I'm using for Disney - my black Vera saddlebag that I got for Christmas which'll hold everything I need. It won't hold a sweater when I need to take it off but I'll just do what I did in March when I needed one and will just put it around the strap of the bag.

Two minor bummers so far:
- Jey's wigs haven't come in yet so she's having mini anxiety about that
- Last night Jey had to finally log in to pay for part of her portion when her check didn't make it to me (it's been sorted and canceled so all set there) so she had to log in to my account to make a payment and saw where we were staying. She was excited though!

So yeah, this is where I am right now. Hope everyone else's planning is going well too!

 

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Magic Bands! & More!

So, for those of you who haven't noticed (omg the font is weird and I ca't fix it so we're living with this for now, okay? Okay!) I've been a bit....insane when it comes to buying stuff online recently? Well, it's been 99% for Disney so that's how I'm justifying it, alright?

Anyway, A couple more of my order have come in. The first? My scarf preorder from BibbidiBobbidiBrooke, whose ears I love!

It came in on Thursday and I'm wearing it to work today (when I finally leave for work, since it snowed last night so we have a 2 hour delay and I don't have to be at work until 9:30 this morning) for Spirit Week (today's challenge is pastel). I preordered a pair of ears from Brooke just after I bought this and those will be here this week - I got the shipping notice last night. They're cute, if a bit more subdued than my other Brooke ears, so it'll be a good trade off.

The other thing I got in the mail? Drumroll please....

Magic Bands!!!

And look, a purple one!

I know I got the pink last year and gave it a Daisy skin but I wanted the Daisy luggage tag! And those did't come out until after I had gone last year. But purple's my favorite color. No luggage tags with those two, since they're attached to our Room Only reservation. I'm going to put skins on them once I figure out how, since the skins I bought are from a different company this year and work a bit like Jamberry appliques (which I cannot for the life of me put on myself). That was going to be my pre-work puttering job for the day but I decided to sleep instead. Oops.

I also go a shirt that says "It's called a hustle, sweetheart" on it. Because I don't know if I've mentioned this here (I haven't, I know I haven't), I saw Zootopia the night it came out and I'm kind of in love with it. Specifically Nick, because I've always been obsessed with foxes and his entire demeanor just clicked with my usual love (I mean let's be honest, I love Daisy, Tiana and Meg, so Nick kind of fits right in with that personality type). I even bought myself a medium-sized Nick tsum at Target last week when I was having a really bad day. I mean, he's probably coming with me to Disney, let's be honest. I'm just having

I want to get a new Disney phone case before I go (my current one is subtle Ravenclaw blue with a nice silver stripe. It bothers me that it's not gold, but aesthetically the silver looked better), and maybe some Disney jamberry nails and retry putting these babies on because they'd be so much less stress than fake nails. The woman I buy them from is having a manicure party but OF COURSE it's the day I leave, and it's after school so there's probably no way I could squeeze it into my schedule before I head to the airport, but dang it I can try!