Would You Like a Little Sweat with Your Free Dining?! Update 9/29 - Day 2 Continued

[twenty3curls]

Welcome everyone to my Disney Trip Report!! I just returned from a wonderful week in the World....my fourth trip in less than two years! Yea...obsessed

So I guess I should start by introducing myself and my travel buddy a bit. I'm relatively new to the Boards. Found them earlier this year when I began researching a Disney wedding. My DF and I are super excited that we will be married at Sea Breeze Point on the Boardwalk next March The Boards have been incredibly helpful in planning the wedding and getting a feel for the ceremony location.....but I had just had to see it for myself. In all of my trips to DW, I have never been to the Boardwalk! So, when free dining was announced, I convinced my DF that we needed to do some wedding scouting....and take advantage of free dining.

So who are we?!? Well, I'm Emily. I'm 28, I live in the metro Detroit area. I working on my teaching certification and Master's degree in education...while working full-time. Yea, I've been pretty busy lately, so this trip was much needed and appreciated! My DF, Jeff is currently in culinary school, while managing and bartending at a really nice seafood restaurant. He also own his own custom furniture business on the side. He's been in putting in 70-hour weeks lately, so he also needed this break!

Here is a picture of us from our trip last June.

If you want to read about some more background and our tentative itinerary/plans, you can read my fairly brief PTR here. I'm apparently much better at dreaming of my plans than writing them down!

We were at Disney from Sunday, August 16th until Saturday, August 22nd, but we drove down so there is a day on each end.

Coming up: Day 0.5 and Day 1

Table of Contents

August 15th & August 16th - Part 1: That's one long drive and our arrival at the World!
August 16th - Part 2: Hey, wait! How'd we end up here?!
August 16th - Part 3: Is that view included in the dining plan?! AND It's About Time You Had Room For Us, BTMRR!
Bonus - Photopass Pictures: How'd that get in my hand?!?!
August 17th - Part 1: Who sleeps in at Walt Disney World?!
August 17th - Part 2: No, seriously....This amount of sweat does NOT pass for a glisten.

 

[Raecheal]

Great Start.. I can't wait to hear all about your trip!!

 

[twenty3curls]

As I mentioned my previous post, Jeff and I drove to Disney World from Detroit. If we make a good trip and weather is on our side, it's about 18 hours straight through. We both like road trips, so while the trip is long, we enjoy it!

Our plan was to leave around dinnertime on Saturday. I had a busy week at work the week prior and I was going to spend Saturday doing some final packing and prepping. Then my boss asked me to work on Saturday What?! No...I had too much packing to do! I'm too big of a procrastinator to pack early. The Detroit area has an event called the Woodward Dream Cruise, which takes place on a historic avenue that runs from downtown Detroit to the North suburbs. Thousands of people bring out their old/classic cars and cruise Woodward Ave., which was apparently a popular thing to do on Friday and Saturday nights back in the day. I think it's boring and a traffic nightmare...but the people love it! My boss has a sports & entertainment memorabilia business he runs on the side, so he sets up a stand in one of the 'burbs and sells Dream Cruise photos, t-shirts, etc. A couple of people backed out, so he was short staffed...so that left me. He offered to pay me twice my hourly rate, if I agreed to work on Saturday until 4ish. Couldn't really turn that down, especially with the money I'd be spending the following week! As Jeff said, "Think more pins!!!" Here's a picture of the Dream Cruise...this is actually right across the street from our stand.

So I left the Dream Cruise at 4, rushed home, showered, threw the last things I needed in my suitcase and we were off! I traded cars with my dad on my way home, so we were driving down in his Explorer Sport Trac. I have a lease car and can't afford to put 3000 miles on it in one week! We ended up leaving Detroit around 7:00 p.m.

We made it to Ohio in less than an hour.

Hitting Ohio is always the worst. Not only is it a pretty boring state visually (at least down 75), the speed limit is low. You go from Michigan where the speed limit is 70 (but 80 is the norm) to Ohio where it drops to 60. It goes up to 65 fairly quickly, but cops are way more anal in Ohio, especially with Michigan drivers, so we have to careful. I shouldn't complain about the view in Ohio, though. You do get to see this little gem:

This whopping huge Jesus is six stories tall. I think it's a bit overkill, but who am I to judge?!

Ohio was the last state sign I was able to snap. It was dark for Kentucky, Tennessee and Georgia. (plus I was asleep!) and I was driving into Florida and was trying to deal with a slow car in the left lane and missed it. Oops!

Just a short 18 hours later, we arrive here....

What a great view, huh?!?

Our trip was pretty pain free and quick. Since I had worked all day in the 92 degree heat, Jeff took pity on me and drove the first 10.5 hours. I brought us home to Disney for the final 7.5.

We made our way through the Magic Kingdom gate on our way to the Wilderness Lodge. Yes, I was driving, but I managed to snap these.

We made it to the Wilderness Lodge by 1:00 p.m. on Sunday...almost exactly 18 hours. Perfect! I had done the online check-in before we left because I feared a mass crush of free diners packing the lobby. Plus, since we planned to arrive well before 3:00, I was hoping online check-in would help our chances of getting a room that was ready when we arrived.

We were in luck!! Our room was ready and we were able to unload the car and head right up. We had a big night planned, so I was relieved we were able to get our room and relax a bit before beginning our evening plans.

We were given room 6096, which turned out to be a handicapped room. I thought the bigger bathroom and king sized bed were a nice "upgrade." Jeff found the chair in the shower to awkwardly placed and annoying. But, really that was his only complaint about Wilderness Lodge all week. We LOVED the place.

We helped the bellman load up a cart with our suitcases and cooler and headed up to our room. When we got to the room we found this little friend...

Here are so more pictures of the room and our balcony view. We spend so little time in the room, neither of us felt it was worth it to spend money on a "view." So, we got roof and parking lot! A we couldn't have cared less.

After getting settled and sitting on the bed doing nothing for a few minutes, we decided to look around a bit and buy our refillable mugs. Originally our plan was to nap before dinner, since neither of slept that well in the car. But, Jeff was hungry. He didn't really want anything from Roaring Fork, so we decided to take the boat to the Contemporary. I got some pictures on our ride over.

A view back at WL

And ahead to Contemporary and BLT

We got off the boat and headed up to the resort. My mom loves the topiaries, so I always try to take some pictures for her. Here's Mickey outside the back of the Contemporary.

This little guy was hanging out on Mickey's lip/mouth (do cartoon mice have lips?!)

We went up to the Contempo Cafe and Jeff decided he wanted to eat there. He got the Spiced Mahi Mahi sandwich. I forgot to snap a picture of it, but he really liked it. I wasn't hungry, so I just shared his lemonade. We had some time to kill and neither of us felt like napping, so we decided to ride the Monorail around once before we headed back to the hotel. Some how the Monorail ride led to this....

What?!! How did that happen?!?

More later on what we did at the Magic Kingdom and the rest of Day 1.

 

[twenty3curls]

Great Start.. I can't wait to hear all about your trip!!

Hey Rach! Glad you're here I'm still working on catching up with your TR (and all the threads I've missed for the last 9 days). But, I promise to post this week!

 

[wdwgirl03]

Oh my, getting married at Sea Breeze Point!! That is AWESOME!!!

Great start to your TR. I love the pictures of the WL, we just got back from staying there too. Can't wait for more!

 

[shordiebecka]

Love your TR so far!!! the WL has never appealed to me..but I hope to stay there one day so it can prove me wrong!

I bet as you got on the monorail and saw the castle, you couldn't resist going in!

 

[Becx N Gav]

This sounds like a good one - I love how you accidently ended up in MK

Looking forward to more

 

[Lynn5700]

YES you started!!!!

Your room looks like it was so nice. Tim and I are going to have to stay there one day!


HAHA love the lizard on Mickey's mouth lol!


Tim would have loved the car show!!! I'm going to show him our pics when he gets home.

Looking forward to more!

 

[twenty3curls]

Oh my, getting married at Sea Breeze Point!! That is AWESOME!!!

Great start to your TR. I love the pictures of the WL, we just got back from staying there too. Can't wait for more!

We are REALLY excited about the wedding...even more so after seeing the location in person.

Glad you're enjoying the TR, so far. How was your trip?

Love your TR so far!!! the WL has never appealed to me..but I hope to stay there one day so it can prove me wrong!

I bet as you got on the monorail and saw the castle, you couldn't resist going in!

We really loved WL. Jeff is really into hiking and that woodsy feel, so he was very into it. Plus, the the 6-story open lobby was amazing.

And yea, it went a little bit like that. How can you say no to the castle?!

This sounds like a good one - I love how you accidently ended up in MK

Looking forward to more

I wish I could accidentally end up in MK every day!

Welcome Glad you're on board!

YES you started!!!!

Your room looks like it was so nice. Tim and I are going to have to stay there one day!


HAHA love the lizard on Mickey's mouth lol!


Tim would have loved the car show!!! I'm going to show him our pics when he gets home.

Looking forward to more!

Hey Lynn! Glad you're here! The room was really nice! Bed was so comfy.

We got a kick out of the lizards the whole week. You just don't see them in Michigan!

Tim would probably LOVE the Dream Cruise. Every city along Woodward does their own thing, but they'll have classic car displays for people who don't want to drive their cars in the Cruise. And the various auto clubs (Mustang clubs, Corvette groups, etc) have meet-ups along the route. So all up and down Woodward you'll have parking lots full of old cars. He should google Woodward Dream Cruise and do an image search...there are tons of pics.


Going to try to do another update this afternoon!

 

[twenty3curls]

So when I left off, we had accidentally found ourselves in the Magic Kingdom!! How did that happen?? Well we were riding around the monorail and Jeff started joking that we should go. I wanted to be back at the hotel room around 5:30, so I could shower and change before our 7:45 reservation at California Grill. It was around 4 when the monorail pulled into the MK stop. I got up to get off and Jeff acted like I was crazy and we had no time. I told him, it was his idea, he got me excited and now we were going! So we headed into the park...and I officially felt like I was Disney World!

Here's the first shot I took when we walked in. (The shot I posted in my previous post was actually second, but I thought it was a better shot of the castle )

We walked up Main Street and headed to the left on our way to Frontierland. Neither one of us had said anything about it, but we were both heading to BTMRR to see if it was possible we could ride before we had to head back. This is our favorite ride and we try to get on it as much as possible. Unfortunately, the wait was 45 minutes. All FPs had been distributed for the day, so we couldn't even grab some for after dinner. Oh well... We had the whole week ahead of us, so we cheerily moved along to Jeff's second favorite ride...

We probably ride PotC more than any other ride at WDW, party because of Jeff's love for it and partly because there's never a wait, so we can always get on it. After coming off the ride, Jeff had to head over to the little boy's room. I spoted Peter Pan and Wendy and decided to jump in line to get my picture with them. Jeff came back from the bathroom and refused to be in the picture, but offered to take the picture. How sweet of him.

A little back story on Peter Pan... My dad calls my ex-boyfriend Peter Pan because he's a somewhat short (smidge shorter than me), red head who may never grow up. We dated my dad always warned me that he was going to hurt me because he was too attached to playing video games with the Lost Boys than having a girlfriend. Dad was right, but he's good guy and I wasn't exactly ready to settle down either. Jeff knows Peter Pan because we're still close friends so we always take pictures of Peter Pan things and send them to him as a joke.

So, moving on.... It was finally my turn. Holy awkward interaction Batman!!! Peter Pan is ... I don't know... weird! Their whole banter back and forth was just odd...kinda creepy, too. Plus, Wendy looks like she's 10 years older than me but talked in a baby voice, which I have always hated. Despite the weird conversation I was forced to have with them, the picture came out cute:

I have a new-found appreciation for the characters that don't speak! Hand gestures are good enough for me!

After that weirdness it was time for us to get going. It was almost 5:30 and we still had to make our way out of the park, take the monorail back to the Contemporary and then hop on a boat to WL.

Move it, Shake it, Celebrate it was just beginning when we left, so I quickly snapped a few pictures.

We running pretty late at this point, so we had to hustle our butts out of the park and back to the hotel. Practically running out of the park is when I realized it was going to be one hot and sweaty week! Woah! No more shirts with sleeves for me!


Up next: Dinner at California Grill and EMHs at MK!

 

[WanttobeaCMagain]

Popcorn........Check. MtDew...........Check. Let's get this thing going!!!!!

 

[shordiebecka]

That peter pan story is hilarious! I agree about characters being awkward in their interactions...it looks like peter pan is a teenage boy, and they're always awkward to begin with!!

 

[wdwgirl03]

We are REALLY excited about the wedding...even more so after seeing the location in person.

Glad you're enjoying the TR, so far. How was your trip?

Our trip was awesome as always...I just started my new TR!

 

[norybell]

Subscribing! Can't wait for more!

Plus - congrats on your engagement! I'm totally starting to fantasize about a DFTW, myself. If only my DBF (of 10 years!) would get his act together, already!

 

[Lynn5700]

HAHA Em I just read your title!! LMAO I love it!! You really crack me up girl.


OMG that is so funny about Peter Pan and Wendy LOL!!! It is a cute picture though!

 

[twenty3curls]

Popcorn........Check. MtDew...........Check. Let's get this thing going!!!!!

Hi! Glad you're joining in!

That peter pan story is hilarious! I agree about characters being awkward in their interactions...it looks like peter pan is a teenage boy, and they're always awkward to begin with!!

Yea, seriously! I had a hard time communicating with high school boys when I was in high school...not going to even try now! The fact that Peter Pan looked like he was 14 and Wendy looked 35 but sounded 4 really made their banter about getting married especially odd and creepy!

Our trip was awesome as always...I just started my new TR!

Glad to hear you had a great time! I'm looking forward to reading more of your TR. I'm jealous of your years of DVC membership...wish my parents had bought DVC...but that would have required them to stay married.

Subscribing! Can't wait for more!

Plus - congrats on your engagement! I'm totally starting to fantasize about a DFTW, myself. If only my DBF (of 10 years!) would get his act together, already!

Welcome! Glad you're here.

I hope you get your DFTW...sooner rather than later! You should just start planning the wedding and then send him an invitation.

HAHA Em I just read your title!! LMAO I love it!! You really crack me up girl.


OMG that is so funny about Peter Pan and Wendy LOL!!! It is a cute picture though!

Yea, it was one of my shinier weeks. Usually try to save that kind mess for a workout....thank God for overly air conditioned stores and indoor rides!

Seriously...I avoided face characters the rest of the week. Too hot and tired to fake another weird conversation.

 

[twenty3curls]

I should mention, while we were at MK we had some Photopass pictures taken by the side of the castle when we were headed to BTMRR. I'll post them when I get my CD. I ordered it on Tuesday night and had it shipped express. I'm hoping it will come tomorrow. According to UPS it's in Maumee, OH, which is just across the MI-OH border, about an hour away. So I think tomorrow's a realistic goal for UPS to set.

So back to the TR...
After hustling out of MK we headed back to WL to hose off and put on fresh clothes. Amazingly we managed to get back the room by 6:00ish. Our original plan was to take the boat to the Contemporary for ADR. But, we had done that earlier and it was a little time consuming because the boat stops at Ft. Wilderness first. We needed the extra time to get ready so we decided to drive.

We go to CR around 7:00, parked and made our way up to the second floor to check in. We knew we were pretty earlier, but we figured we could have a drink and take some pictures out on the catwalk. Well, we got in the elevator to head up to the 15th floor and our little thing-a-mabob started lighting up and vibrating! Niiiice. We had a requested a window seat, obviously with no guarantees. We were thrilled when they sat us right next to the window on the side of the restaurant closest to the MK.

Here are a couple of pictures of the view from our seats:

Zoomed in a little bit

Our waitress, whose name escapes me, came over and gave us our menus and took our drinks orders. While we waited for our drinks and bread, we went out on the catwalk and took some pictures.

(Umm...forgot to take the first one out of zoom)

A little blurry...we'll get this right one of these pictures

After taking a couple of pictures and enjoying the view we headed back inside. Our drinks and bread arrived quickly. We didn't order anything fancy to drink, so no pictures. Just water for me and Diet Coke for Jeff. It had already been a long, hot day. The last thing we needed were drinks making tired and dehydrated.

The waitress soon came back to take our orders. Although we were on the DP and apps were not included we decided we each wanted to get one and share them. Jeff ordered the Heirloom Tomatoes with buffalo mozzarella, red onion, micro basil and minus 8 reduction. I got the Sonoma Goat Cheese Ravioli - with sun-dried tomatoes, pesto, shiitake mushrooms and basil. These both came out pretty quickly and we knew immediately this was going to be a good meal! Here are our appetizers.

The Heirloom Tomatoes:

The Sonoma Goat Cheese Ravioli:

We're both tomato freaks, so the heirloom tomatoes were amazing. We especially loved the little ones that tasted like they had been soaked in olive oil and balsamic vinegar. And the ravioli was to die for. Again, we're big goat cheese fans so the ravioli was awesome...and the tomato broth it's resting in was delicate and delightful. Both were perfectly sized, too. Delightful but no so much that they'd ruin our meals.

For dinner we both ordered the filet. We talked about ordering two different meals, so we could shrare. But, we both love filet too much to pass it up. This did not disappoint.

Not sure if this one is easier to see...it's definitely brighter. Still playing with camera settings for food at this point in the trip. Surprisingly, I don't take pictures of my food at home.

We both ordered our filet medium rare and it was cooked to perfection. Bright pink and juicy...man, it just melted in your mouth. Honestly, I think we could have cut our meat with a butter knife. It was so good neither one of us wanted it to end. Although, we were getting pretty stuffed and we have a weakness of lava cakes, so we wanted to save room. I'll admit, I was a little worried about the sauce on the filet because I a big fan of filet on its own...but the teriyaki sauce was a nice compliment...not too overpowering. The meat definitely spoke for itself.

I should have taken a picture, but Jeff literally cleaned his plate. If I hadn't been sitting there, I would have sworn he licked it dry. I actually gave him the last few bites of my filet because I was getting stuffed.

After they cleared our plates, they took our dessert order. We both knew as soon as we saw the menu at the beginning of the meal that we'd be ordering the Valrhona Chocolate Cake and Cherries, which is warm chocolate cake with molten center, housemade cherry swirl ice cream and balsamic macerated bing cherries. (Although ours didn't come with the bing cherries...it was candied plums in whipped cream...and the menu stated that. I just don't have the wording here, so I had to refer to allears and it lists the bing cherries.)

Here's our lovely dessert:

SO delicious!! As I mentioned, we love a good lava cake....always order it, if it's on the menu. And they cherry ice cream was wonderful. I just realized recently that I actually like cherries (years of thinking maraschino cherries were real cherries ruined cherries for me lol).

All in all we loved this meal. We have been debating having our post-wedding dinner in one of the private rooms at Cali Grill and that's one of the reasons we made this ADR. We checked out the rooms and they both have great views - one of MK and one of Bay Lake. The only problem is they don't offer the filet on their catering menu, so that might lead us somewhere else.

After dinner we hopped on the monorail and headed over to MK for EMHs. It was about 9:00 at this point and Spectromagic was just starting when we walked in. We have a really bad habit of showing up at the MK in the evenings right as Spectromagic is starting...always a tough crowd to navigate. We walked through Tomorrowland to avoid the crowds. I wanted to try Buzz Lightyear, but there as a 30 minute wait so we decided to do it another time. (This will be a theme all week....neither one of us was really in the mood to wait for rides.)

We walked behind the castle on our to Frontierland. We always breeze right through Fantasyland because we're a little old for most the rides, but we decided to do them this trip. We did Snow White first, since it only had a 5 minute wait. Kind of a freaky little kids ride, huh? I know I'd have been creeped out as a kid! We did Peter Pan next. The wait was listed at 40 but the line didn't look so bad, so we jumped in it. I think we actually waited about 25 minutes. Wishes started while we were on Peter Pan, so we stopped to watch it for a few minutes when we came out. The view wasn't that great where we were standing, so we just kept walking.

Next we hit The Haunted Mansion. Love this ride! Jeff had read somewhere before we left that we should look up when we're in the room at the beginning, just before we exit the doors to get in line for the ride. We did and there's a body hanging from the ceiling. NEVER noticed that before! Shows how little I pay attention to detail sometimes. Funny thing happened when were in the room. When the lights went out Jeff and I both turned to the door since we were standing closest to it and would be first out of the room. When the lights came on I turned around to see if Jeff was behind me, but the CM was thisclose to my head. Scared the poop out of me!!! There were probably 10 kids under 7 in that room and I was the only one that jumped and yelled!

After HM, we made our way over to BTMRR in hopes the line wasn't long because Wishes had just ended. Unfortch, the wait was 40 minutes....BUT they had reopened the FP kiosks. We grabbed FPs with a 11:25-12:25 return time!!

I'm sorry...I didn't take many pictures during this period. We were kind of hustling from one thing to the next and I just kept my camera in my purse.

After grabbing our Thunder Mountain FPs, we headed over to Adventureland. We decided to do Jungle Cruise because the wait was listed at 5 minutes. Of course, while we were in line it jumped up to 25 minutes. But, we didn't have anything else to do so we just waited it out. Man, we were hot! I didn't realize how quickly we'd been moving around the park, but by this point I was practically dripping in sweat. I looked really pretty, let me tell you! We finally got on the ride and it's really cool at night. I've never done it at night but before but it has a much different feel...much more ominous. Our tour guide was really funny...really corny jokes that were right up my alley. After the Jungle Cruise we did PoTC again. Second time that day. Honestly, I think we rode it about 15 times that week.

After the ride I bought a cute bandana in the gift store right after the ride. You'll see it in up coming days, but it's pink and black with the skull and crossbones on it. Plus it's that wicking material...I thought it'd be perfect for my sweaty head, plus block my dark brown hair from the sun so I don't overheat!

Continued in the next post....

 

[twenty3curls]

Cont...
We did Thunder Mountain after that. LOVE that ride...and it's so much better at night. It's the only roller coaster Jeff will do, so that makes it even better because I don't have to ride alone. We decided not to get second FPs, though. The return time was late and we had had a long two days with little sleep in between. We decided it would be a long week and we didn't need to push it on night one. We started to head back toward Fantasyland. We saw Mickey and Minnie on the way, but there line was super long. Chip and Dale were nearby, too. Their line was pretty short, so we hopped in. But after two families, Chip and Dale needed a potty break, according to the CM and would be back in 5 minutes. We were tired so we gave up and moved along. I did take the chance to snap a picture of my favorite, though....

Next Jeff mentioned riding the Tea Cups. Now, I HATE spinning rides. Abhor! And they hate me. I told Jeff I'd go on but there could be NO spinning, absolutely none. He agreed so we got in line. Well, here wasn't really a line, so were able to ride the next time around. We got seated and the ride started and Jeff got an evil, maniacal look in his eyes.....and started spinning like the devil. Around and around and around...laughing and jokingly telling me to focus on him and I'd be fine. I started taking pictures in hopes it would distract me from the spinning.

See what I mean....crazy in his eyes!!

Thankfully he's stopped spinning by this point

I did not feel well after this ride.at.all. I wasn't going to throw up, but I was definitely unsettled, a little queasy, and starting to get a headache. I was also pretty pissed. Apparently, Jeff thought I was joking and exaggerating my dislike for spinning rides. I was not. And that was the first and last time we did Tea Cups. He promised he wouldn't spin again, but he had proven to be untrustworthy, so no more Tea Cups!!

I took some final pictures of the castle before we started to head out and call it a night.

You can see, I'm down right shiny at this point. Makeup? What makeup?!

Some pretty shots of the castle and the water...

When we got out of the MK, the line for the monorail was long so we decided to just walk. It only took us about 7 or 8 minutes to get back to our car. I really liked walking back...made me see the Contemporary in a whole new light!

We got back to the hotel and decided we had just enough energy for a late night dip in the pool. We spent about a half hour in the pool before we dragged our exhausted little bodies upstairs for a sound sleep!


Up next: Sleeping in, Epcot, Boardwalk and heat!!

 

[twenty3curls]

Hey everyone...just wanted to pop in and say sorry for the lack of updates the last few days. I attended a bachelorette weekend for one of my good friends this past weekend and just got back yesterday.

BUT...I uploaded a ton of photos last night, so hopefully I'll get an update in this afternoon!

Stay tuned!

 

[caseybruna]

Just tuned into your TR, I leave in 18 days so your trip report is getting me excited!!

One question; I saw that you requested a window seat at California Grill, did you just do that when you got to the restaurant and checked in at the front desk/podium thing?