Birthday Adventure in a Galaxy Far, Far Away: A Sept/Oct 2019 Adults Only PTR Update 9/15!

[Gina Starr]

We had a similar weekend! I also saw Toy Story 4 and loved it! I seriously think I'm going to be Gabby Gabby for our MNSSHP!

You have a really great first set of plans! It's great that you're open to a flexible schedule and things changing right now, and you have a pretty solid foundation to build off of!

Love the outfits in that Adventureland picture. You and your sister are style icons.

You should be able to book FP+ for both parts of your split stay on that first morning!

Ahh a Gabby Gabby costume would be so cute! And the dress would be totally re-wearable! I found Ducky and Bunny costume Tshirts on Etsy but they are $50 each! I think we may be making them...

We actually just discussed our tentative fp plans and honestly things just got more... tentative.

I thought I read they changed the policy for split stays but I might be wrong, or enough people complained that they changed it back. Thanks for the info!

Ah I’ve not seen Toy Story 4 yet but hopefully will do on the weekend coming.

A shame that you didn’t get the special cards or get to eat popcorn.

The Epcot Food and Wine festival sounds good the day after evening EMH.

MK on the last day is a good call as well. You are right, your sisters outfit would work now as well!

I was curious about FPs for a split stay as well so glad I know the answer now

TS4 was really good! I have read mixed reviews but I’m not emotionally attached to any of the older movies so I went into it with no expectations and really loved it.

We haven’t been to F&W yet so we are excited!

We pretty much always have to end a trip at MK! It just wouldn’t feel right.

Yea I thought I read that they changed the policy on split stays so I’m glad I won’t have to stress two separate days.

 

[Cloe Colton]

I was able to book for our whole stay in June so you should be able to do all of your fastpasses at once!

 

[missangelalexis]

The rest of your plans sound good! FP day is approaching!!

 

[Gina Starr]

Sooooo forget everything you have read. Something came up and we had to push our trip back. It’s just a week so no big deal but I’m sure our plans are going to change a bit. I’m going to focus of the positives instead of the negatives (really, there aren’t many other than having to wait a week more til we are home!)



(We went to Universal Studios! I don’t remember any of this but I’m sure I had fun!)

We don’t have a split stay- since we added a day to our last reservation, we were going to have a split stay even though it was at the same resort and the same room type. I dislike split stays so yay!

I will be home for my birthday and get to celebrate with my family. We always go out to eat or at least eat something nice at home for birthdays and if we went to Disney the original week we would have had to celebrate either super early or super late.

Donnie won’t feel bad that we are in Disney on my birthday but not his (which is in October)

There’s an extra week of Galaxy’s Edge being open to make our plan of attack.

It’s one week further into September which is hopefully one week further into Fall weather. (Yea, this is a stretch but just keeping my fingers crossed)

Unfortunately I did already buy MNSSHP tickets which are technically non refundable but I have read a ton of reports of people getting refunds. I think we are going to go Tuesday night instead of Sunday which I have read is less busy. I’m undecided if I will rebook Afternoon Tea at the Grand Floridian. I was excited to try it but it’s a bit pricy and I really only booked it because I felt obligated to treat myself on my birthday. As if a weeklong trip to Disney isn’t treating myself.

When our car was getting work done we planned our desired fp but looks like we will be redoing that. It should be the same general plans but maybe on different days.

So kind of a big change but not really. It’s going to pretty much be the same trip except 7 days later. We are hoping work will let us work 4 10s that week so we can drive all day Friday and stop on the way down instead of driving through the night Friday. I don’t really have any other planning updates at this time but still lots to talk about.



(What we did at Universal. Check out the awesome E.T. postcard. No idea what Murder She Wrote was... Google tells me it was a behind the scenes show. Makes me wish there was still a park like MGM or the old Universal.)
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[lvcourtneyy]

We loved Toy Story 4 also! I cried at the end.

Glad your plans only changed minorly. I think it'll be fun to be there right after your birthday too- it just prolongs the celebration. Plus you can both now celebrate your birthdays since you'll be there between the two lol.

We've called Disney and asked to change MNSSHP ticket dates before (maybe two years ago) and they were accommodating!

 

[Cloe Colton]

Even though it kind of puts a wrench in your plans it sounds like it will work out for the better! While its fun to be in Disney on your birthday, I feel like it also adds a layer of stress haha so probably will be nice to be home for your birthday!

 

[Gina Starr]

We loved Toy Story 4 also! I cried at the end.

Glad your plans only changed minorly. I think it'll be fun to be there right after your birthday too- it just prolongs the celebration. Plus you can both now celebrate your birthdays since you'll be there between the two lol.

We've called Disney and asked to change MNSSHP ticket dates before (maybe two years ago) and they were accommodating!

Thanks! It will work out perfectly now so I’m actually pretty happy about the change!

I need to call to have them move the party tickets but I haven’t yet!

Even though it kind of puts a wrench in your plans it sounds like it will work out for the better! While its fun to be in Disney on your birthday, I feel like it also adds a layer of stress haha so probably will be nice to be home for your birthday!

I agree! I feel like if anything went wrong on my birthday I’d probably have a meltdown so now there’s less stress to make it perfect!

 

[Gina Starr]

Hey everyone! Hope everyone had a great weekend/4th of July! Ours was good with some not so good thrown in. Last Tuesday night I noticed an abscess on my gum so I called the dentist Wednesday morning. Luckily they were able to get me in but unluckily I had to have the tooth pulled because it already had a root canal done so nothing else could be done. In order to get time off at work we had to work a ton of extra hours at work on Friday.

Now the good! We left bright and early Saturday morning to drive 4 and a half hours to get to Baltimore. I googled “what to do in Baltimore” about a hundred times before we arrived and everything kept saying The National Aquarium so our plan was get there around noon, go to the Aquarium, go to check into our hotel, then dinner, then the show. We park in the parking garage and go to the Aquarium and there is a HUGE line just to buy tickets. We try to buy tickets online but no matter what I do it won’t work. At this point I’m starving and sweating (I think it was like 95 at that point in the day!) and I said let’s do the Aquarium tomorrow and we will get lunch and see if we can check into the hotel early.



The parking garage we parked in had a sign for a restaurant called Miss Shirley’s Cafe and I remember seeing that restaurant on an app called Find Me Gluten Free that I use. But they had an hour wait! We abandoned that, paid our parking fee ($15 for doing absolutely nothing!!) and headed to our hotel. It was a cute little boutique hotel on the water and they said there was 16 check ins, and 8 rooms were cleaned and 8 were still dirty. It was 1:30 at this time and check-in was 4:00. Our room was ready! Yay our luck was turning around!



We parked the car and dropped our stuff off at the room and went out for lunch. There was a few restaurants on my list from my gf app and one was just a short walk away. We walked to Alexander’s Tavern and lunch was delicious! I had looked at their menu online and knew what I wanted. No pictures but Donnie got a crab cake sandwich which he said was delicious and I got sweet potato tots with bbq pulled pork. Yummm! It was so delicious! They had a really impressive gf menu and I was happy with the portion/price.

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While we were packing for this one night trip we questioned if we should bring the fire stick but thought we would be busy all day so we didn’t. Now we had a few hours to kill and nothing to do. We just put on a Harry Potter marathon and relaxed. We started getting ready and we planned on using Lyft to go from the hotel to the restaurant then to the theater. We were both more dressed up than normal and it was hot so we didn’t want to walk but when the Lyft took literally 2 minutes to get us to the restaurant and cost $8, we realized we could have walked.

We went to Points South Latin Kitchen for dinner which is a 100% gf restaurant. I looked at the menu online a whole bunch before coming but we ate lunch later than expected so I wasn’t super hungry. I got crab with avacado cream on a crispy yuca cake. It was really good but it was a quarter of the size of my lunch and double the price. Donnie got crab cakes again. We really felt the need to eat crab while in Baltimore. He said his was good but we both agreed we liked lunch better. I got bread pudding for dessert which was amazing! I can never eat bread pudding anywhere else so I was excited. Donnie got Creme brûlée which was good but he said Boatwrights at POR was better. I got to taste both his meal and his dessert! That never happens! (I asked what kind of soda they had the server said Pepsi so I assumed that meant all Pepsi products. I had a headache and wanted caffeine so I said I wanted Mt. Dew. Well she didn’t mean all Pepsi products and asked if Sprite was okay. Sprite is nothing like Mt. Dew but okay... I just drank water) We were pretty disappointed with dinner. It was good but the portions were tiny and the prices were high.





During dinner I had forgotten I wanted to bring salt and a cup to gargle some salt water for my tooth. We had plenty of time and I changed my mind on the Lyft. We decided it would probably be a mad house after the show trying to find our Lyft among 100 others. We walked back to the hotel which took all of 5 minutes. We got our car and drove to the Hippodrome Theater. What show were we seeing?



HAMILTON! Again! It’s our favorite and it wasn’t going to be anywhere closer anytime soon. While we were waiting for the show to start I started feeling worse. My headache started moving into my ear, cheek, jaw, and neck. And I, of course, started googling it and determined I must have a brain abscess. Anyways, we loved the show even though I was sure I was dying. A lot of the actors were the same as when we saw it in February. We sat in the very back row on the aisle, perfect for a quick exit after the show!



Sometime earlier in the day we bought tickets for the Aquarium for Sunday and they have you pick the time and we were ambitious and chose 9:30am so we went right to bed when we got back. We actually woke up and made it to the aquarium at about 9:45 which wasn’t bad. I was feeling pretty bad already- my face was really hurting but I no longer thought I was dying. More googling told me I had a dry socket from having my tooth pulled and using a straw afterwards. We got a map but it didn’t have the animals listed, just a map. We went through the first area of the aquarium which is kinda weird- it’s I think five or six levels and it just keeps leading you up. At the top indoor level there’s a Rainforest area with decks and steps and I didn’t want to go out there cause I was tired and sore. (Remember this) We had bought tickets to the 4D theater for some dolphin movie. It sucked. The end. We went over to the dolphin area next and lucked into seeing a dolphin feeding and they did tricks. That was my favorite part of the day! We also saw the jellyfish but they make me uncomfortable, they are so creepy.




(I actually liked these jellyfish. They don’t have the long stringy tentacles)

We then went to the gift shop and I saw a ton of sloth merch and was curious why so much sloth stuff when they don’t even have sloths. That’s when Donnie looked it up and found out there was sloths in the Rainforest area!! It was at the very top and I was just so tired so I missed them. Sloths are my very favorite animal and I relate to them so much! Oh well, I just really wanted to get home. There was so many restaurants in the area, a lot of touristy ones like Dicks Last Resort and Hard Rock Cafe but we went with good old Chipotle. It’s one “fast food” place I can safely eat and we were able to get on the road by about 12:30.

And I went back to the dentist today and they confirmed I have dry socket so gave me a treatment plan. Donnie gets his wisdom teeth (all 4) out tomorrow. So that’s our fun/crappy weekend. I didn’t mean to make it so long but oh well. I included some googled photos cause I took like two pictures on my phone.

Our FastPass day is two weeks from tomorrow so I guess we better start re-planning. I’ll be be back later this week hopefully! ​

 

[missangelalexis]

Ah I'm sorry about your tooth And that it affected your trip to Baltimore. But I'm glad you made the best of it and still did what you wanted to do! Feel better soon!

 

[Cloe Colton]

Sounds like a nice getaway!

Sorry about the dry socket!! I haven't had one but my brother did after getting his wisdom teeth out and he said it was not fun!!

 

[Newsies]

It sounds like moving your trip up a week is a good idea! I definitely recommend a Tuesday MNSSHP as opposed to a Sunday one!

Sounds like a fun trip to Baltimore, so happy you saw Hamilton!!

Sorry about getting the tooth pulled and having a dry socket Feel better soon!

 

[Gina Starr]

Ughh I have such a dilemma! Like I mentioned before we were kind of “settling” for All Stars Movies cause we were trying to do this trip on a budget. Now after having the reservation for a while we are both excited to stay there but yesterday when we saw the Visa cardholder promos I said I would call and if we could get into Riverside or Gran Destino for $200-$300 more total then we would switch. I didn’t call last night and then I woke up and saw they released all sorts of promotions this morning. French Quarter (aka HOME) had availability for our dates with the AP promo and it was about $300 more! I immediately booked it cause I know how fast rooms can go. I kept looking and found All Stars Movies also had AP rates for the preferred rooms. I did the math and it was about $300 LESS than our original reservation, making POFQ $600 MORE than this new rate. So I booked that too. I currently have three reservations (I can cancel the original one, just haven’t yet) and need to make a decision soon since FP day is next week and I don’t want to mess anything up with that. We obviously both really want to stay at POFQ but $600 is a lot of money and with having a trip planned for less than 4 months after this one we need to save as much as we can. I think I know what I’m gonna do but I had to come get opinions. What do you think? ​

 

[missangelalexis]

As much as I know you want to stay at POFQ, $600 is a lot of money to save and you can spend it on other things!

 

[Newsies]

Girl, I feel for you! It's no fun having to choose between a resort you really love and a resort that fits into your budget!

Personally, I think you should save $600 and stay at ASMo this time around. You have an itinerary packed with so much fun, and that $600 could be put towards new Food & Wine dishes, or MNSSHP merch, or a droid at Galaxy's Edge! POFQ will always be there for next time, but you have a really great deal in store for you this time around!

 

[Gina Starr]

Sounds like a nice getaway!

Sorry about the dry socket!! I haven't had one but my brother did after getting his wisdom teeth out and he said it was not fun!!

Thanks! We had a great time!

Yea my dentist sucks and didn’t give me any directions for what not to do so I apparently got it from drinking through a straw. I still have some pain but it’s slowly getting better!

It sounds like moving your trip up a week is a good idea! I definitely recommend a Tuesday MNSSHP as opposed to a Sunday one!

Sounds like a fun trip to Baltimore, so happy you saw Hamilton!!

Sorry about getting the tooth pulled and having a dry socket Feel better soon!

Thanks! I’m actually really happy with our new trip dates now!

We love Hamilton! And it was cool to see a new city.

Thanks- unfortunately I’m still having some pain so back to the dentist this week.

As much as I know you want to stay at POFQ, $600 is a lot of money to save and you can spend it on other things!

I know! That was my thought too. I pretty much already had that decided but still wanted to get opinions!

Girl, I feel for you! It's no fun having to choose between a resort you really love and a resort that fits into your budget!

Personally, I think you should save $600 and stay at ASMo this time around. You have an itinerary packed with so much fun, and that $600 could be put towards new Food & Wine dishes, or MNSSHP merch, or a droid at Galaxy's Edge! POFQ will always be there for next time, but you have a really great deal in store for you this time around!

Ughh I hate being a responsible adult! Haven’t done it yet but I’m pretty sure we will be cancelling POFQ. Thanks for the input, though! I was thinking the same thing- this time around it’s pretty much just going to be a place to sleep at night and if I crave beignets too much we will just drive over! And the merch, yea don’t get me started on the merch. We could easily spend that $600 just on merch! I may have already purchased something that was just released on Shop Disney...

 

[Gina Starr]

Wow. So just a few things have changed. Again. So due to things that came up at work, we had to shorten the trip. And move it out a week again. Sooo we are now at POFQ for four nights. I tried for All Star Movies but there was no availability. Neither of the other All Stars appeal to us, POP wasn’t available, and surprisingly POFQ was the cheapest moderate.

At this point I don’t know what else could change other than a total cancellation which I will not let happen! New fp day is July 30 and Donnie is going to take over the responsibility of waking up early to do them. We talked about “must dos” and I don’t have any that require fp. And honestly since we have been so often and will be back in January I don’t have many must dos other than Galaxy’s Edge, F&W and MNSSHP. So this trip will be laid back as far plans but I’m sure it will be jam packed since it’s shorter. That’s all I have for now! Next time I update it will be with FP plans and once I post those, it’s set in stone. No. More. Changes.

Have a good weekend! ​

 

[Newsies]

Yay for POFQ!!!

I can't wait to see your FP+ plans!

 

[disneyAndi14]

I totally get it, I constantly check and change resorts!

I booked a 4 night trip over Thanksgiving with the AP rates at AS movies, the price for preferred was good! We have never stayed at an AS resort. I thought with the refurbished rooms like Pop it would be okay!

I love POFQ, one of our favorites!

What are your January dates? We will be there 1/14-1/20 before our Disney Cruise.

 

[Gina Starr]

Yay for POFQ!!!

I can't wait to see your FP+ plans!

Thanks we are getting excited!

I totally get it, I constantly check and change resorts!

I booked a 4 night trip over Thanksgiving with the AP rates at AS movies, the price for preferred was good! We have never stayed at an AS resort. I thought with the refurbished rooms like Pop it would be okay!

I love POFQ, one of our favorites!

What are your January dates? We will be there 1/14-1/20 before our Disney Cruise.

We were actually excited to stay at Movies but it wasn’t meant to be.

Not sure on our January dates yet. I want to make sure we get to go to Festival of the Arts and our AP expires the 26th so maybe the 2nd or 3rd week? I’m going to wait til discounts come out which probably won’t be for another two months.

 

[Cloe Colton]

Sorry about your changes in plans but since POFQ is home I think it will be worth the change!