"Hey look! It's my girlfriends!" Sept 26-30th TR

[kanadar]

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Hello all and welcome to my first ever trip report! I have been lurking on the boards for years, and have contributed to the dining boards live thread but have decided to finally do my own trip report. So, lets get to cast of characters, and the details of our trip!

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Let's start with myself! I'm Kathy (26). I have been to Disney more times than I can count. I am currently an ESL aide at a small district near where I live in Central Illinois. This trip was for the Disney Fairy Tale Weddings Bridal showcase! Back in May my boyfriend proposed and we decided to get married at Disney! That is my now DF Jeff on his first trip to Disney with my family and I (only his 2nd time ever!) My favorite park is Epcot, favorite character is probably Mickey...he's just so cute! and my favorite ride is Tower of Terror.

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My partner in crime this trip was my sister Mary (29). She currently works at Arizona State University. She loves Disney just as much as the rest of us. She participated in the College Program, and later worked at Disney on the Dinosaur ride. She will be my Maid of Honor. Her favorite park is either Epcot or DAK, her favorite character is Mickey, and her favorite ride is Splash Mountain as it combines her two favorites: dropping and water!

When: We were there from September 26-30

Where: For this trip my sister and I would be staying at a new resort for us, AKL. We had been here several times for Boma, and last year for the first time we went to Kidani Village for Sanaa but we had never stayed here. So we took the opportunity this quick trip to try it out!

Why: For the DFTW Bridal Showcase! We also took this time to go to MNSSHP. I had never been and really wanted to go so my sister bought us tickets as my birthday present, it was a great surprise!

We had 2 magic bands this trip as unfortunately the room discount only covered part of our trip. So even though we were staying at the same resort, and had the same room, we had 2 bands. Before we left, we had decided to decorate our magic bands as many have done. It took both of us a while to figure out what we wanted to do but I think they turned out pretty well.

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This one was mine for the first few days which included the Expo, so I thought it would be fun to keep with that idea. The name on the back was Bride

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My family is from right by the University of Illinois so we are big Illini fans. Since my second band was orange I decided an Illini theme would be fun.

I think I only have one picture of Mary's as she ended up loving the design of it. And since all our bands are connected to our account she could use that one the whole time.

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Anybody get the theme she went with for this one?!

Since Mary lives in Arizona, she has found that taking the red eye to Disney is a great option. Most of the time the room is ready when she arrives early in the morning (like 6 am!) and she can catch a few zzz's before we arrive so it works out well. Plus she gets a full Disney day! Why not! Now my fiance's mom lives about 30 minutes from O'Hare so I decided to look into how much it would be to fly direct from O'Hare. It was much cheaper than flying from my local airport to O'Hare, plus I could get on the first flight out and be at Disney by 11, leaving Mary enough time to sleep a bit and then lots of park time! So, I was going to drive up to DF Jeff's moms place Thursday night and fly out Friday morning.

So that was our plan! Next up I'll tell you all about everyone's favorite...the travel day!

 

[kanadar]

Travel Day!
First Night at Disney!
Breakfast with some friends!
Bridal Showcase!
An Afternoon of Food and Wine
We're at Dapper Day!
http://disboards.com/showpost.php?p=52521632&postcount=17
"As soon as they open, I'm getting a drink!"

 

[mare1203]

I'm here!

Yay, excited to read the trip report and re-live all our fun!

 

[kanadar]

Its now time for everyone's favorite part...the travel day! This one is one for the books for me! So without further ado.

Thursday night I made the 2 1/2 hour drive up to DF's mom's house. I got a job a few weeks before the trip so to avoid Chicago suburb traffic I left around 5:30. I got up to his mom's place around 8, and his sister Angie and I headed to one of my favorite places to eat in the Chicago area. Portillos!

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Whenever we go up north, we try to make a stop here at some point! After eating we just headed back to their mom's place and just talking, then headed to bed. Since I was catching the first flight out, we needed to leave at about 5:30.

That morning I woke up to a text from my sister that she had arrived! She got there at about 6 am Florida time. So we got ready and DF's sister took me to the airport at about 5:30 (Illinois time). I wasn't sure how security would be at O'Hare on a Friday morning. I was glad when I got there, that I was there early. The line seemed to be about 30 minutes long. Then all the sudden while I was waiting, a TSA agent opens up part of the lane and starts asking people how many in their party. About every other group or so, he lets people through to the Pre-Check side. I got lucky enough to be allowed through. So within 10 minutes of arriving at the airport I was in the terminal on my way to the gate!! That never happens at O'Hare! I was so excited I decided I could wait in line for Dunkin Donuts!

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So I sat there enjoying my Dunkin Donuts, texting my sister a little. As it got closer and closer to the time to board I noticed the flight had been delayed. Not a big deal, until I get a text from DF Jeff's mom. She heard on the radio that the en route air traffic control center had a fire. She had no details on what happened, or how bad it was. So I tried to stay positive. Then they cancelled our flight! As well as many others. So I got on the phone with rebooking, the message said it would be about 35-45 minute wait. So I saved my spot and they would call me back when it was my turn. I also decided to get in line, this would eventually be my saving grace! When I finally got up to the counter the agent asked if I had been rebooked on the 3 o'clock flight. I had not, so she went ahead and booked me on that flight and put me on the standby list for the 10:40 flight. So off I went to the gate.

While sitting waiting for the flight, they make an announcement that all fligts before noon have been cancelled! I started to really worry, things were not looking good. I stayed optimistic, no flights were getting in or out so there was nothing I could do. After getting some lunch, I sat down at the gate area for the 3:00 flight. I noticed they were blowing up balloons, so I just thought they were doing something to entertain the kids. As time went on, they were bringing out more balloons and not just regular balloons. This is what I saw from where I was sitting.

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I sent this picture to my sister and she thought it could be for Make A Wish. Turns out it was! Once it got closer to boarding time, I went to the counter just to make sure I was on the flight. A representative was talking to a few people in front of me and she said that this was American Airlines Magic flight! She said she was on the phone when she heard about the cancellations telling them this flight would get out! She had been planning this flight for a year and there were 2 make a wish kids and their families flying so it HAD to get out. The families were going to be staying at Give Kids The World Village. I was glad when I heard that because there were still lots of flights being cancelled. They had so much going on at the gate for everyone. It was amazing!

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Yep there was cake for everyone! They even had a magician!

Buzz was even there too!

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Finally, after 8 hours at the airport, we were boarding a plane to leave! I was so thankful to finally be leaving! Had this not been a Magic flight, I don't know that we would have been getting out.

Next up, our first night at Disney! Did we decide to go to a park? Or did the rain scare us into staying at the resort for the night?

 

[kanadar]

So after having spent MANY more hours in the airport than I had expected, I FINALLY made it to Florida. There was an amazing welcome for the Make A Wish Families, I don't have any pictures because I forgot to take my camera out. There were a lot of people there to welcome them, cheering, clapping, and yelling their names. It was pretty cool.

I was lucky enough to be near the front of the flight, so I was able to get off the plane and out of the airport relatively quickly. Mary had rented a car and was able to pick me up from the airport. Unfortunately it had been gloomy and rainy all day in Florida, so as we were driving we were trying to decide what we wanted to do. We debated whether to risk going to a park, or just heading back to the resort and having dinner there. Finally, we made it to this beautiful sight...although at the time it wasn't looking pretty it was exciting!

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We had decided to risk it and head to Epcot. Although, we told ourselves if the rain hadn't scared off the locals we wouldn't stay long. It was a Friday and we know that F&W booths can get crazy Friday night and Saturdays.

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I hadn't eaten in a while and was really hungry at that point, so we headed straight for the World Showcase. On the way we grabbed a F&W map so I could decide which way I wanted to head first; left or right. After making our decision we headed for...

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Patagonia! They had one of my favorite F&W bites ever. The grilled Beef Skewer with Chimichurri Sauce and Boniato Puree. We each got our own and a glass of Terrazas Reserva Malbec.

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It was very good as always. Since we were able to find a table, and we saw our next stop close by, I ran over and got in the pretty much non-existent line! It seems the rain had scared off not only the locals, but a lot of the resort guests as well! None of the booths had a very long time. Jackpot for us!!

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We decided to get the Lamb Meatball with Spicy Tomato chutney.

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This was pretty good. We had it last year, so we knew it could do without the bread. The same held true this year. I think we each had a few bites with bread and a few without.

Next we were off to our next booth! Little did we know it was only about 20 steps from where we were

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Mary decided to carry our forks with her . Our next stop was...

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Here we had the Garlic Shrimp and the Grilled Lamb Chop with Mint Pesto and Potato Crunchies

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As you can see we enjoy the lamb chop. But both dishes were very very good. In fact, we really enjoyed the shrimp and will probably get both again when we go back in November for the Wine and Dine Half Marathon. So after eating our shrimp and lamb, we hit the next booth we wanted to eat at...

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Mary was REALLY looking forward to this booth! Here we got the shrimp taco, the sweet corn cheesecake, and a mango-strawberry margarita.

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Mary absolutely LOVES the shrimp taco, she could eat just these and be super happy. The taco was very good. And I was pretty excited that the margarita was on the rocks, I'm not a huge frozen margarita fan. After eating so much so quickly we decided to head take a break from eating and walk around world showcase. Eventually we decided to stop at the Italy Pavilion and shop a little bit. I decided I wanted a Prosecco, and Mary decided to have us share a shot of Limoncello. We got a VERY nice pour of the Limoncello! The bottle was almost empty so the girl asked us if we wanted to just take a sip and she would pour the rest of the bottle in our shot. Umm of course we will! So we took them outside and enjoyed them while sitting in the pavilion area.

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Once we finished our drinks we headed to get our dessert at...

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We got the carrot cake and Mary got some type of beer, I can't remember what kind. I tried it but I'm not a huge beer fan.

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The carrot cake was super yummy! Definitely a good dessert. We decided to move on, and I knew through instagram there was a fellow disboard member in the park. So we decided to try to meet up. So while we were on the look out, I decided I needed to make a stop to get another yummy drink!

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I got the La Passion Martini Slush. This drink was super yummy, and went down VERY easily! We ended up getting another one later in the trip. We walked around a bit more and finally found fellow disboarder, emmebear; Patty and her daughter Emme

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They were both so cute and it was nice to meet them. We decided to watch Illuminations together. I love this show, but sadly this time the globe was not working Once Illuminations ended, we parted ways and headed back to the resort. We had a early, long, exciting day ahead of us on Saturday!

Breakfast with some friends!

 

[Grumpy's Wife]

Joining in. So nice that you are vacationing with your sister. Looking forward to hearing more about your trip.

 

[kanadar]

Joining in. So nice that you are vacationing with your sister. Looking forward to hearing more about your trip.

Thanks for following along! It was great to have a sister trip! We go a lot as a family but it's so nice to spend time just the two of us.

 

[kanadar]

Well we are at the 1 year mark for our wedding! I can't believe it is here already! We won't hear anything about our date until Tuesday because they do everything on Monday if your 1 year mark is on a Friday, Saturday, or Sunday. A little disappointing but its ok, just a few more days to wait!

Now, on to more of the trip report!

So we got back to the resort around 11 or so. I decided to go ahead and take some pictures of the room. We had a great room! We had a savannah view, and across the savannah was Sanaa. Unfortunately getting there so late, no animal pictures yet.

Mary photobombing my picture of the wallpaper!








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Saturday was a big day for us! Not only was it the Bridal Showcase, it was also Dapper Day! We were so excited that we were at Disney for Dapper Day. So, we woke up early in the morning because we had a breakfast we needed to get to! We had a pre-park opening ADR at Crystal Palace! We were pretty excited about this. We got all dressed up in our dapper dresses and drove over to the Grand Floridian to park for the showcase. On our way we passed this pretty new sign!

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We LOVE the Polynesian. I'm excited to see everything once it's finished. So we arrived at the Grand and parked the car. We knew we had to take the boat the MK because our ADR was for 8:15 and the resort monorail doesn't start running until 8:30. So off to the boat dock we went!

Our transportation for the morning

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The boat took a while to arrive, so we were getting a bit nervous. We had time, but it was still nerve wracking getting so close to our ADR time. But we made it! Just in time for a few pictures on Main Street before we went to check in.

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So after having a bit of fun, we made it to check in at...

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We waited no more than 10 minutes before our table was ready. Now, Mary and I are not big character greeters. So we ordered our drinks and headed straight to the buffet! So much food to choose from!

Mary's first plate





My first plates. I like to dip my sausage in syrup, so I had to get a little bowl of it. Everything was good on this plate except the potato thing. It was just meh.



The only character we met.







The breakfast lasagna. I thought it was very good, Mary thought it was better the last time we had it.​

So not long after the park was open, we were finished eating. There were a few families around us who were trying to get out quickly (Mine Train or Anna and Elsa run?!) and still needed to meet one or two characters. They put on a bit of a show for us trying to get to meet them.

Once we finished, we headed out of the park (we were totally salmon swimming upstream). We decided to take the resort monorail back to the Grand to get ready for the Bridal Showcase!

Look! It's on the board at the Grand! Can you tell I'm excited?!​

And look who we ran into and HAD to get a picture with in our dapper outfits!

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Richard! He was so cute and sweet. He was hilarious while we were taking the pictures. I'm so glad he was there and we were able to get pictures with him.

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Then we continued on our way to the convention center. I'm going to stop here, but I will try to post another one later tonight with LOTS of pictures from the Bridal Showcase!

 

[kanadar]

Once we arrived at the Grand Floridian Convention Center, we checked in, got our swag bags and wrist bands, and then went to change. We had decided before hand that we wanted to change into more comfortable clothes for the showcase. I took a lot of pictures at the showcase, but I won't put all of them up here but if you would like to see more you can go to my Wedding Planning Journal. The link is in my signature.

So we changed and waited for them to open the doors. This year they had a different entrance than they used to. This one was a bit more plain.

Ivy entrance



Mad hatter table. This is typically done for tea parties for the bride and bridesmaids.



Mad Hatter cake with an Alice and Wonderland theme. Next I have a few pictures of the new cake image projection. This looked really cool!









There was a whole table of mini cakes and cupcakes with different themes. I'll just add a few of my favorites here.













This girl was decorating white chocolate figures. They were amazing!



They had several different mousses with some cake on the bottom for everyone to try. They were really good.



Tequila Key Lime



White Chocolate Oreo



Dark Chocolate. There was also a milk chocolate, an apricot, and I believe one other one but I can't remember. Mary really liked the apricot. We were going to share but she took 1 bite and said "I'm not going to be sharing this one". I was able to steal 1 bite and it was really good.



Really pretty cake



This was the funny Mickey Golf Cart they had.





Two of the tables they had set up showing the themeing they could do. The second on is their play on the Frozen theme.



The food they had set up to sample. We didn't end up trying any because we had such a big breakfast that morning.



And last but not least, the famous Cinderella's Carriage​

We attended a few seminars during this time. They were on floral and photography, and food. We found the food one to be more interesting. This could be because we love food, or because it was better organized and presented. We never decided which one was true haha.

The seminars we attended were pretty interesting, but the showcase itself was a bit of a letdown. It wasn't as impressive as I thought it would be. I thought it would be a lot bigger than it was. If we hadn't been attending the seminars and the food and wine tasting we probably would have only spent about 30 minutes there. I am going to stop this post here as I think I'm getting close to the photo limit. Next up, I'll tak about our Afternoon of Food and Wine tasting.

 

[mare1203]

Woot woot! Dapper Day was so fun! These pictures are bringing back some good memories

Looking forward to your next updates!

 

[Tigger's ally]

Love the Illini bands! Am from Windsor, which is a small town 12 miles from Mattoon which is about 40 miles south of Champaign. Big Illini fans here too!

 

[kanadar]

Love the Illini bands! Am from Windsor, which is a small town 12 miles from Mattoon which is about 40 miles south of Champaign. Big Illini fans here too!

I actually live in Champaign, I was going to school and living in Normal. I should probably change that in my location haha!

 

[kanadar]

After our last seminar ended we had a little bit of time to waste before our afternoon of food and wine began. Mary went outside to warm up a little bit because it was FREEZING inside the conference center. I went back in the room to ask if my wedding coordinator was there. Turns out she was headed straight for us, so I went and introduced myself. That's when I found out she was going to be sitting at our table! This was exciting for me! So after I found that out, I went to find Mary.

We headed back inside and noticed a table set up for check-in to our food and wine tasting, so we headed over in that direction. After we checked in there were people standing outside, so we decided to go outside too. That was when we noticed this!

So we enjoyed some

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I don't remember what it was but we enjoyed our glass of it. They had the waiters walking around with glasses, as well as bottles the whole time we were waiting (about 20 minutes). We knew there would be more to come so we declined a refill. They started to prepare for us to enter the room and brought out this cart.

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Once we were called into the room, we were handed hot towel to clean off our hands. This was a very nice touch! We took a couple pictures once we entered the room.

Very nice place setting.​

After a few minutes we were introduced to our chef and sommelier for the afternoon. They told us a little bit about the wine we would be drinking, and of course the food we would be eating.

Chef on the left, sommelier on the right.

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Our first glass of wine was a viognier. We had never had this type of wine before, but it was pretty good. Mary isn't a big white wine fan, but she enjoyed this one. This was paired with our first course, the soup course.

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This was a Lobster Bisque soup with a puff pastry top. This was SOOOO good! I'm not a huge tomato soup or a lobster fan, but I really liked this. It was extremely hot though! The puff pastry top definitely kept the heat in! Our second course was the salad course.

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This was a rocket and petite greens salad with roasted clementines, sriracha picked radish, and macerated tomatoes with a light lingonberry vinaigrette. And that delicious bite of food that you see at the top of the plate is a gorgonzola frosted pecan cupcake. The salad itself was a bit different for my tastes. I am very plain for the most part when it comes to my salad, and I don't like hot stuff so the radishes were not for me. Maybe my sister will comment with her thoughts on the salad. BUT that cupcake was oh so good! The gorgonzola frosting added a little something to the dish. Even my coordinator said, she knew there was a lot of food to come but she ate all of her cupcake! This was served with the Cambria Katherine's Vineyard Chardonnay.

Sadly, we forgot to take pictures of our next 2 courses I was just too excited for food to remember to take pictures. They were both really good, I apologize for the lack of food porn. The 3rd course, fish course, was a pan seared mahi filet with an early fall squash and sweet corn saute and and an orange saffron beurre blanc. This was very very good! And was a good size portion.

Our 4th course, the entree course, was a dual plate. This was a grilled filet of beef with a wild mushroom veal glace and an herb roasted chicken, gruyere cheese, leeks, and prosciutto with a raspberry veloute. This was served with duchess potato and crowned baby carrots. This was served with both a glass of the chardonnay and Cambria Julia's Vineyard Pinot Noir. Both of these entree's were so good! We discussed at our table which one we liked better but we couldn't decide! We would take a few bites of the beef and want to say the beef, but then we'd take a few bites of chicken and decide the chicken was better. But we couldn't decide for sure. The portion sizes of the food were not tasting sizes. We have been to Victoria and Albert's before and we decided this was like a mini Victoria and Albert's. The entree and fish were all probably about 6 oz portions.

I did, however, remember to take pictures of the dessert!

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This was a chocolate hazelnut dome with raspberry and vanilla bean sauce. This was served with another glass of the pinot noir. This was very chocolatey and very good. So for those who are not big chocolate fans this would be too rich for you. Mary had about 1 or 2 bites and was done.

Overall, this was a great meal. It was a lot more food than we were expecting. When we read tasting, we thought it would be a small portion of different foods. We were not expecting a full meal. The food was delicious though! Once we finished, we stayed to talk for a few minutes but ended up leaving pretty soon after as we had a very important date at HS for Dapper Day!

 

[kanadar]

When we left off Mary and I were changing back into our dapper dresses and heading to Hollywood Studios. When we got there we of course had to park in the back parking lot. We were pretty excited though because we saw people dressed in their dapper outfits all over! It was so exciting! People were looking really good! Once we got to the park we headed to our first FP+ reservation at

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It was time to check into our room. This is one of our favorite rides and it was exciting to go on it during dapper day. We were lucky we had a FP for this ride because one of the sides was down so the standby line was pretty long.

After checking in, we headed over towards our next FP+. We had decided to wear cute shoes to match our dapper dresses, this was fun in theory but walking around the parks in those shoes was not fun! We ended up hanging out on some benches for a while waiting for our time to come up.While waiting we did decide to wander through Wandering Oakens Trading Post.

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Our next ride was TSMM. For the first time Mary beat me at this ride, this made me sad I'll get my revenge next time! We laughed after we got off this ride because we realized we had been at Disney for 1 1/2 days (Mary 2 full days) and had only ridden 2 rides!! We had been to 3 different parks, yet 2 rides haha.

So after we got off TSMM, we headed over to the Great Movie Ride. Mary followed Dapper Day on instagram and saw that they wanted everyone to ride GMR at a certain time. So we thought it would be fun! We thought it would be a lot of fun! That is until we saw this...

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That was the end of the line! We had an ADR in about an hour and knew we wouldn't have enough time to get through the line and ride the ride. So we decided to join some of the other people we saw, just hanging out around the theater. There were so many dapper people in one place!

We matched, so we had to take a picture together!



Loved this girls poodle skirt!







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After taking some pictures and hanging out a bit, we decided to go check in for our ADR. Yes after our 5 course meal, we were going to eat dinner haha. Luckily our walk wasn't too far.

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We had to wait a short amount of time before our table was ready. At this point our feet were hurting a bit so the relaxation during dinner was welcomed! While we tried to figure out what we wanted to have for dinner we started with some drinks.

Mary had the Honey Darling martini. This is on the martini flight. She had the flight on one of our previous trips, and like this one the best. So she decided to order a whole martini.



I chose to try the Citizens Take Flight margarita flight. This was a pomegranate, mango, and a classic margarita. I think the pomegranate was my favorite but by the time I got to it, most of the ice had melted so it was a bit watered down.​

We knew we wanted to take our time with dinner so we kinda tried to stall the waiter a bit with making our decision. We knew we wanted to share something since we had such a big tasting only a few hours before. We knew we wanted to share the Cobb Salad, so that was an easy choice. Next we were trying to decide whether we wanted to try a few appetizers or share the lamb entree. So after much debate we made our decision. We had

The cobb salad. We ordered the appetizer portion of this, and realized when it arrived that we had made a mistake, we should have ordered the entree portion to share. The appetizer size was very small!



The Blue Lump Crab spring rolls. These were very good. There were 2 or 3 on the plate. Mary really like the spicy miso aioli on the side. I thought it was good but a bit spicy for my taste, so a small amount went a long way. And last we had



The andouille crusted prawn over black diamond cheddar grits, wilted greens, and ancho oil. This was really good as well.​

After receiving all of our appetizers, we realized we probably should have ordered a little bit more food. Our waiter wasn't the greatest we've had at HBD. He was nice enough, but I'm not sure he like when we ordered 3 appetizers to share. Little did he know we were not stopping there though. We decided to order dessert for each of us.

Dessert Menu picture



Mary chose to order 2 of the warm berry cobblers, and 1 double vanilla bean creme brulee's.



I chose 2 of the vanilla bean creme brulee's and 1 of the Banana toffee cake on cocoa crunch with strawberry banana pearls.​

Oh my goodness! That banana toffee cake was so good!! I was surprised when my sister didn't order one of these to try as she LOVED the banoffee tart that was served last year at F&W. She said she wasn't sure about the pearls. I let her have a bite or 2 and she thought it was really good too. Now we have been to HBD many times before, and were quite disappointed when they switched to pick 3 desserts. We have always loved the double vanilla bean creme brulee, it is what we rate all other creme brulees on!! (We think part of why we love this one so much is our mother always used double strength vanilla in everything, plus a little extra splash, so double vanilla is our normal vanilla haha) We wish they still had some offerings in a bigger size, other than the grapefruit cake.

Once our waiter came back, he did tell us a funny story. We've noticed those pearls are becoming more and more popular, and they were very good! He was telling us how they can make them whatever flavor they want! Well one day he came into the kitchen and their chef asked him if he wanted some pearls. He said sure! and grabbed a small handful and ate it. They looked just like the strawberry banana but they were far from it! The chef had infused the pearls with lamb flavor!! That would be a shock when expecting a fruity flavor!

The waiter then brought us our check, as he was laying it on the table he said he noticed somehow our desserts hadn't made it onto the check. He told us to not worry about it, he wouldn't charge us for them. That was very nice of him considering we had ordered appetizers to share. So we paid and headed out. Up next, we find out where the title of this TR came from! Hey look! It's my girlfriends!

 

[mjmstd1]

Following along! Nice to see a fellow Illini fan! Loved the magic band decorations!

 

[kanadar]

Following along! Nice to see a fellow Illini fan! Loved the magic band decorations!

Thanks for following along!! Good to see some Illini fans on here! Thanks, they were a lot of fun to make! I need to decorate my yellow one for our trip in a few weeks, just need to find the time and figure out what I want to put on it!

 

[kanadar]

I will apologize in advance, this post will be very light on pictures!

After a delicious dinner at HBD, Mary and I had decided to just head out of the park. It had been a very long day for us at this point, after a long travel day for both of us the day before! Getting out of the park proved to be a bit harder than we thought as the Frozen fireworks were set to start soon. The streets were PACKED with people everywhere. The CM's were sending those of us exiting the park through the shops. Finally we made it out of the shops and were making out way through the exit when the fireworks started. We decided to wait for the tram since there was one coming and with our feet aching, walking all the way to the car did not sound good. We were able to see some of the fireworks, and hear the music.

Once we got back to the car and were driving to AKL, we discussed what we wanted to do with the rest of our night. At this point, I need to back-track a little bit to our travel day. I realize I forgot to talk about Mary's travels as my day was so crazy! So let's go back in time for a minute shall we?

If you remember, Mary travels to FL from Arizona, and has found that taking the red eye works out really well for her. She arrived at about 6 am, picked up our rental car. At this point she realized she had forgotten to pack her swimsuit. So on her way to the resort she decided to stop at Wal-Mart to see if she could find a cheap one. She was unable to find a swimsuit but she did pick up something else.

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She found a 6 pack of Coke Zero and a 6 pack of water for $6 total. We don't normally do this but found this to be a great idea. We like coke zero best and it's somewhat hard to find at Disney, plus 6 bottles was cheaper than 1 bottle in Disney! So after purchasing our coke and water, she headed to the hotel to check in! After she had checked in and looked around a bit, we knew I wouldn't be making it to Disney anytime soon. She decided to go to an outlet mall nearby. Since Mary used to live in Florida she has an idea of where things are. Here she was able to find a swimsuit for a good price! She also met up with an old friend for lunch.

So now that we have that out of the way, lets fast forward back to arriving at the resort after our long day. We weren't ready to go to bed yet so we decided to grab some coke zero and spend some quality time in the hot tub!

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Now obviously this picture was taken during the day, but you get the idea. Mary had found the hot tub that was hidden a bit more, which was nice. I think there was a total of 4 other people in the hot tub while we were in. Our favorite was this adorable little 2 year old girl and her mom. The little girl was telling us all kinds of stories, while her mom told us either they didn't happen or happened several months ago! They were in Disney to celebrate her 3rd birthday the next day Eventually, they went to go find the girls dad, but as we were leaving to go to bed we saw this little girl once more. As we are walking in we hear her say "Hey look! It's my girlfriends!" It was the cutest thing! We got back to our room and discussed what we wanted to do the next day, we knew we didn't want to get up early though!

Next up, our morning of relaxation!

 

[kanadar]

After a good nights sleep, and getting to sleep in a bit too, Mary and I got up and decided what we wanted to do with our morning. We knew we wanted to get some breakfast, but first I had to look out and see if we had any friends! Lucky for me we did!

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This is the giraffe Mary named Susan. She was rather entertaining because she was chasing this truck around. At one point the truck stopped long enough for her to steal a branch off the truck!! The truck took off and quickly realized what happened, so stopped and took the branch away from her poor Susan, she just wanted to eat breakfast! Eventually we lost sight of both. That was our cue to head to breakfast ourselves at..

We looked around a bit before making our decision

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We both decided we didn't want a pastry, so we looked at the options from the grill. At first we weren't sure what we wanted to eat, and then we saw the specials!

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This was their breakfast pizza. It has gravy, cheese, scrambled eggs, bacon, and sausage on it. I somehow can't find the picture of the other special we decided to share, which was the biscuits and gravy. Both were very good, but the flatbread pizza definitely stood out!! We were only able to finish off about half of each. We realized we probably should have just shared haha!

Then we decided to head back up to the room to get ready for our morning of relaxation. We decided to spend the morning at the resort. So we changed and headed down to the pool!

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Sadly it was a bit cloudy, but it was still warm out. Mary decided to go down the water slide. It was a bit awkward because there was a group of about 4 or 5 dads hanging out at the bottom to catch their kids when they came down haha! So I jokingly went over to stand near them when Mary came down

While we were spending some time in the water, I looked over and said "As soon as they open the bar, I'm getting a drink!" So we debated over what time they would open, and about 5 minutes later we heard some noise and the bar was open! Time for some pool drinks!

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Mary decided she wanted a Yeungling and I chose a pool drink. I can't remember what kind it was but it was pretty good. We took our drinks and spend a bit of time in the hot tub. While we were sitting enjoying our drinks, we decided on lunch. Later that night, we had tickets to Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween Party so we knew we wanted a later lunch. Mary was able to hop on her MDE and make reservations for us! So after our time in the hot tub, we headed back to the room to get ready for our lunch with a view!

 

[mare1203]

Ah, Bill and Susan, the giraffe's. They were fun. I loved the pool at AKL, even if it was just a pool.

Plus, little Vivian Leigh was a good friend to make. A 4-year-old the first day and a 3-year-old the second. Can't ask for anything better than that at Disney.