‘Because we’re Disney veterans’ *Update 8/7: Saving the world, 1 drink at a time!

[AKL LOVER]

This trip was EPIC. And not just regular old epic, because that would be boring.



It was Disney EPIC.



And to be fair, an EPIC Disney trip really deserves more than one TR name. So this TR can also be known as:


‘We’re breaking all the rules! An April TR’.



And I was originally going to call this trip report:


‘If only the first CM had told me that! April '12’. So I’ll throw that one out there too, even though I changed my mind.




Regardless of the name, this trip was was destined to be EPIC from the beginning for several reasons:



1. We were going to Disney. Obvious, but definitely worth mentioning.



2. It was a girl’s only trip—4 of us reliving our college days, but at Disney. So basically it was like college without all that school work nonsense. Which leaves us with only the good parts of college to relive. Woot!



3. We had no kids, no hubbys, no worries and…...(hardly) no schedule *GASP!*


I know that you probably just let out an audible gasp right now. Admit it. I mean what good DISer goes to Disney without a real schedule?




Well this DISer thought she would try it...because, after all, we're Disney veterans AND breaking all the rules, remember?!?

 

[AKL LOVER]

Day/Night 1, Wednesday April 11th


I was super excited to be heading back to Disney and on my own. Even my phone knew I was excited. Want to know how?


As I was driving I turned my radio in my van to the bluetooth setting so I could hear the gps lady on my phone give me directions as I got close to the airport. Before the audio kicked in for the bluetooth, the craziest thing happened. My phone played this little Mickey clip. He was laughing and saying "See you real soon!"



WTH??? Even my phone knows that I'm going to Disney and how excited I was.



This is how I knew our trip was destined to be EPIC.



Oh and by the way, I have not been able to make my phone do this since that day. I can't find the sound clip file on my phone anywhere. It's so weird. I seriously think my phone has some sort of ESP and knew that I was going to see Mickey and just downloaded that just for me. See, my phone really IS smart!!




Back to the trip--


I met up with H at the airport and we caught our nonstop Jetblue flight and made it to MCO with no problems. We landed around 7ish. When we landed we got a text from D saying that her flight from NY was delayed so we shouldn't wait for her at the airport. She would just meet us later at the resort.


Our first ride of the trip: ME!

Complete with entertainment:

We waited quite a bit of time on the bus for it to completely fill up so we didn't pull out of MCO until almost 7:30. I guess this is because there aren't as many ME busses running in the evenings.



We made it to POP! Cute, huh?

After checking in we hiked over to the 50's section.

I had requested to be close to the bus stop and we were headed to just about the furthest building away from them. Oh well. But, we were excited to find out that we could see the new resort, AoA, across the lake from our building!

We made it to our room and snapped a picture:

Then I stick my room key in and.....it doesn't work. So I tried it again, thinking I pulled it out too quick. Nope. Still nothing. So I pulled out one of our other keys and tried that.


That doesn't work either.


So we double checked the room number to make sure we're at the right room. Yup, we were.


So I try at 3rd key. Nada.

By this time we're starting to get a little fed up, I won't lie. It was almost 8:30, and we wanted to get our stuff in our room so we could head to DTD before the shops closed. And we did not want to hoof it all the way back to the lobby.



All of a sudden, we hear a noise.



Coming from INSIDE our room....and some random guy opens the door. I was stunned. My first thought was, "Why is someone in our room?!?" It took us (and him) a second to realize what was going on. We obviously woke him up and he only spoke spanish, so I don't know if he even understood what we were trying to say. But it became apparent that he wasn't in OUR room, we were trying to get into HIS room. Opps.


We were super embarrassed and immediately headed back to the lobby. We explained to another CM at the desk and a manager overheard us so he came over to listen. A few clicks in a computer later and we found that that one CM wrote the wrong room number on our paperwork earlier in the day when they were putting it together and upon our arrival, the CM who checked us in did not verify if it was written correctly (we did on line check in).


So we were actually off to the 70's section. Which was alot closer to the bus stops. And our keys actually worked on this room, so that was good too!


Here's H at our ACTUAL room:

And here's what our room looked like:

We scored a room with a new fridge!

After a quick photoshoot of our room and depositing our bags, we high tailed it to catch a DTD bus.


continued in next post...

 

[AKL LOVER]

We made it to DTD by 9:15, which gave us plenty of time to duck in here for a snack:

My favorite treat in Disney is a Mickey Rice Krispie treat. Just plain, please. But I spied on someone else's TR one that was decorated with chocolate and oreo cookie crumbs. There were lots of good choices, but I stuck with my initial pick:

It was delicious! Very sweet though, so I only ate about half of it and wrapped the other half back up for another day.


I also snagged one of these badboys for later since I knew I wouldn't be able to eat it then, but I also couldn't pass it up:

It's a Mickey head cake pop. I went for red velvet covered with milk chocolate and drizzled with white. I actually didn't eat it until the day after I came home. It was still yummy and fresh and quite possibly the best treat I've had in a long time--it's going to be my new favorite Disney treat!! If you guys haven't tried one of these yet, it's a must. The ears are actually made out of homemade marshmallow and his head is the cake part. I would pay an obscene amount of money to be eating one of these right now. It was that good!


After our treat, H went into the Christmas store to buy some ornaments. I took a few minutes to call DH and check on the kiddos.


Then we headed to the World of Disney to find a certain shirt I was looking for. We asked a CM once we got there if they had it and she was like, well if we did, it would be in this section. We looked and didn't see it so I decided to ask another CM if she knew about it. She didn't, but she directed us back to the information desk in the store and said they could tell us if they did.

And here we have our second occurance (after the whole check in fiasco) of "If only the first CM had told us that!"

Turns out, the shirt I was looking for was discontinued. Oh well. I bought some postcards to send to the kids instead. When I was buying the postcards, I asked the CM about where to mail them, since I wasn't sure. She said that there was a mailbox outside the store, but I explained that I needed a stamp and asked her where I could get one. She wasn't sure.


On our way out of DTD I stopped at the information desk, and inquired about a stamp. Turns out we could've bought them at the information desk in WoD. Again, let's say together, "If only the first CM had told me that!" So back to WoD we went. Got the stamps, filled out the cards and dropped them in the box before we hit the bus back to POP.


While we were running all over DTD trying to figure out how/where to mail these postcards, D had texted us to say that she was on her way to the resort. We were anxious to get back and see her!


Not many people were headed back to POP as we had a bus to ourselves:

On the way back to our room, I snapped a few night shots of the resort:

We met D back at the resort, had a little mini reunion right in the middle of POP and I don't think we settled down to go to sleep until almost 1 a.m.

Our plans for the next day were to get up, head to Epcot for the morning and wait for L to arrive.



Up Next: an unexpected (but pleasant) change of plans.

 

[MiaBella05]

joining in

 

[teekathepony]

Joining!
Awww Pop Century! I miss it!
I'm seriously sensing a theme of poorly informed CMs lately. What's with that!?
Ironically I'd much rather be in the 50's than the 80's!

 

[Britard]

Joining In! I'm more excited than the guy who thought you were breaking into his room!

 

[TrinaLovesDisney]

Excited to read more!

 

[AKL LOVER]

joining in

Welcome!

Joining!
Awww Pop Century! I miss it!
I'm seriously sensing a theme of poorly informed CMs lately. What's with that!?
Ironically I'd much rather be in the 50's than the 80's!

You know, I think I would have rather been in the 50's section because it was right next to a quiet pool. But our room in the 80's section was closer to the food court which was nice.

Joining In! I'm more excited than the guy who thought you were breaking into his room!

Ha! Seriously, I don't know who was more surprised, us or him. And the poor guy was so confused. We felt so bad

Excited to read more!

Can't wait to post more! Stupid work getting in the way of my TR

 

[BennyFedora]

hmm...Disney without a plan...I think I could have fun with that, but Joyce would probably freak out

Checking in to a room with a sleeping dude trumps our checking in to the dirty but vacant room at the Poly Sounds like it was free sailing from there, though!

 

[Joyciemc]

Are you kidding me?!?!?! Ben beat me? That is crap.

Anyway, super excited to read about your EPIC trip! You did a good job selling that Mickey cake pop- gonna have to try to grab one of those next time.

 

[Lidian]

I am totally in!

 

[AKL LOVER]

hmm...Disney without a plan...I think I could have fun with that, but Joyce would probably freak out

Checking in to a room with a sleeping dude trumps our checking in to the dirty but vacant room at the Poly Sounds like it was free sailing from there, though!

I trumped your poly incident? Schweet! I always love a good Disney 'incident'! And you should talk Joyce in the whole no plan thing. I was freaking out before we left about it but I ended up LOVING it!!

Are you kidding me?!?!?! Ben beat me? That is crap.

Anyway, super excited to read about your EPIC trip! You did a good job selling that Mickey cake pop- gonna have to try to grab one of those next time.

Ha! That will teach you to be busy updating your own TR/PTR!

You won't be sorry about that cake pop. The cake part of it was SO good! In fact, I daresay it's some of the best cake I've ever tasted. Totally worth a trip to DTD just for that. But I'm hoping to find it somewhere in the parks since we didn't plan any DTD time for our family trip.

I am totally in!

Woot! Glad to see you

 

[AKL LOVER]

Day 2, Thursday April 12th


The next morning the 3 of us were up at a pretty decent time considering that we didn't get to bed til late. We were all showered, dressed and eating breakfast in the food court by 9.


After breakfast it was off to Epcot. H and D had military tickets since L's hubby is in the military. They got a sweet deal. I bought my ticket through Undercover Tourist because I was upgrading--to an AP!! Since we wanted to hit a park early and L wasn't joining us until later in the day due to her flight schedule, she had called and made the necessary pre-arrangements so H and D would be able to activate their military tickets without her.




We made it to Epcot...

...and got in a ticket line to activate the tickets. And the CM couldn't do it b/c L wasn't with us. She told us that if we went over to Guest Services someone over there might be able to do it for us. After standing in another line and explaining to another CM, we still were not having any luck. We were so close to getting in, yet so far! Guess going in and getting my AP was going to have to wait!



So we made a quick, but fabulous decision to ride the monorail and hit up all the monorail resorts.


I mean, we are Disney veterans, so of course we would come up with an awesome plan on the fly!




We jumped on a monorail to the TTC and we were going to take the resort monorail over to the Poly when we saw this:

But don't worry--we're Disney veterans! Did we wait in that crazy a** line? Heck no. We simply walked over to the Poly.

Sometimes it's great to know a lot and be a Disney freak--the short cuts are a plus!



We spent some time walking around, browsing in the shops and just enjoying the Hawaiin splendor.



We took a few pictures in the lobby,

(sorry about the blurry pics; the guy who offered to take our picture was sweet but not a good photographer)



found a hidden Mickey,

and checked out the pool!

It was while we were checking out the pool that I decided that the Poly will be the next place that my family and I stay. It's proximity to MK really is ideal and I really liked the whole feel of the resort. And my kids will LOVE the slide down the volcano.

And I LOVED the view from the pool. Well, minus the crane!

At this point it was around 11, but we all know that it was really 5 o'clock somewhere ...unfortunately the Poly didn't think so, as the pool bar wasn't open yet. Bummer.



So off we headed to the monorail to continue on our resort loop.




Up next: A fairytale right in the middle of the Grand Floridian?

 

[teekathepony]

Looks like you guys made a good morning out of it! The Poly is beautiful, I've never been there before at all! (unless I was sitting above it in a monorail!)

 

[AKL LOVER]

Looks like you guys made a good morning out of it! The Poly is beautiful, I've never been there before at all! (unless I was sitting above it in a monorail!)

We did have a good morning. We were determined that a CM in a bad mood who wouldn't let us into Epcot was not going to ruin our trip.

You are right about the Poly. I didn't realize how beautiful it was until I took the time to walk around and enjoy it!

 

[AKL LOVER]

Still Day 2 Thursday April 12th



Due to an unexpected glitch, we were touring the monorail resorts instead of living it up in Epcot. But no worries, because as we left the Poly and took the monorail to the GF we spotted something quite fabulous!!



We hopped off and quickly headed in to find out how we could get to the wedding pavillion. It was essential that we make it over there. After winding through all the construction, we finally made it and were treated to something you would ONLY see at Disney.





It's quite a lovely sight actually. Although now that I think about it, what isn't lovely at Disney?






Wondering what it was yet?

The CMs looked so cute dressed like this!



Yes, we were being stalkerish. That much is obvious from the look I'm getting from the CM in this picture:

But who wouldn't expect to attract attention when you have one of these?!? And like we're the only ones they have ever seen taking pics of them!


We finally spied the bride and groom. We were standing off to the side being considerate, so we didn't go all paparazzi on them. But we did make sure to say congratulations as they drove by

It was quite the sight and completely worth not being at Epcot to see that!




After paparazzing ourselves out, we decided we needed to refuel. With a tasty beverage of course!


Beverages in hand, we wandered until we found a nice a bench. We sat for a while, just taking pictures and chatting. It was so relaxing. The weather was beautiful and the drinks were refreshing!

Cute little birdie on the fountain:

I guess even birds bathing in Disney is magical!


While we were relaxing, L texted us that her plane had landed. So, we made our way to our last stop--the Contemporary. I didn't take any pictures here because this resort doesn't really interest me. Unless I'm eating at CG. And we didn't spend long here because before we knew it, L was texting us that she had dropped her stuff off at the room and was on her way to Epcot!

So off we went...


Up next: Almost 24 hours in Disney later and we're FINALLY in a park!

 

[Britard]

I would have stalked that carriage too!! How beautiful!

 

[DaveinFallsChurch]

Joining in a little late - loving your TR so far!

 

[AKL LOVER]

I would have stalked that carriage too!! How beautiful!

I knew I wasn't the only one!

Joining in a little late - loving your TR so far!

Welcome! You're not late at all. Even though it was an April trip, I just started my TR, so it's all good!

 

[Lidian]

I think any lady in WDW would have stalked that carriage! Glad to see you had some adventures, even if you couldn't get into a park!