Hello fellow Dis-ers! My best friend Linda and I have been going to Disney World together for a couple of years now, and I decided that, this time, I would try out a trip report since I know how much I enjoy reading other's reports when I'm gearing up for a trip down to the World.
So, I hope that this report turns out as entertaining as I hope it will be, and that all of you have fun reading it! (If you stay with me the whole time, of course!)
And, without further adieu: off we go!
Meet the Players! : This will be short and sweet as there were only the two of us Disney Junkies going this time around. (Actually, most times around. ) So, stick with me if you can!
1st) Linda!!!!!
Linda is my best friend in the entire world!!!! Linda and I met when we both worked at a Disney Store Outlet in the mall near both our houses in 2008. So, of course, we both knew right off the bat how much we both adored all things Disney. Linda's life dream is to become a pediatrician, and she's been taking this year off to study for her GRE and her MCATS. (And, by "taking the year off", I mean studying every single day like a crazy-person and working as a Scribe in an Urgent Care clinic.)
Unfortunately, neither of us work at that Disney Store anymore (so no more of those awesome employee discounts for our payday Disney Store binges - and no more free park tickets, but that (obviously) doesn't stop us from heading down as often as our stretched wallets will allow us to! )
Anyway, enough rambling and back to my best friend. Linda's favorite Disney character is none other than the Man himself: Mr. Mickey Mouse! (Side note: She absolutely HATES Minnie - really. With a fiery passion. - Mickey is Linda's boyfriend and Minnie should not exist, in my adorable friend's opinion.) Linda's favorite Disney movie is "Tangled" (so far), and, therefore, her favorite Princess is the lovely Rapunzel.
2nd) (And last: hope you're still hanging in there! ) Me!!!!!
My name is Laurel! And, yes, together we are L-Squared - actually: both of our last names begin with a 'T', so we're LT-Squared. No idea how it happened - we're just lucky and gruesomely adorable. I am a semi-working actress and work at a bookstore as well. I'm the trip-planner since I love research and planning things - literally, this trip was planned down what restaurant we were going to eat in each park on each day and exactly what (I, at least, was ordering), and has been since (very-nearly) the week we came back from our trip in March of last year (2013).
The trip, of course, got tiny tweaks every so often depending on FastPass times/Dinner Reservation times that cropped up during those super-early phone calls and online finger-crossing sessions. Of course, it also gets re-typed for absolutely no reason other than I'm bored and want to think about my Disney trip. And then there are the pre-packing lists/food budget lists/vinylmation trading lists/penny press location lists/character location lists... - I like lists. Not going to lie, I am an obsessive planner. So, needless to say, Miss Linda just hands the reins over with a few words surmounting to "I trust you, insane-lady - have at, and I'll go along with it."
I'm not entirely sure that there's much else you need to know about me, except my favorite Disney character/movie - Which is BELLE and "Beauty and the Beast", respectively. (I will say, though, that I also love "The Black Cauldron", but it does come in second place.)
So, yes, that's almost everything you need to know about the two of us. Another tidbit that you may want to know is: Linda is the more avid photographer (and has the MUCH better phone for picture-taking), but for this trip, I'm going to try to take more (and better) ones than I have in the past because I wanted to try out this trip report. But, I won't be at all surprised if most of the pictures that I post will have been shot by Linda.
Oh, yes, probably one more thing you should know... The dates of our awesome Halloween trip! - October 25th through November 2nd. Yes, that's right, we only just got back yesterday!
So, I hope that you all enjoy this trip report and find it as enlightening and helpful as I have found many of yours whilst I was planning! (And, of course, hopefully it's entertaining as well!)
The Countdown "Officially" Begins - September 30th, 2014
So, I'm starting this Trip Report off with a random tidbit.
The trips down to Disney that Linda and I have gone on together (all three of them now) have all started with a countdown. It's not really a physical countdown like some of those super-cute paper chains or dry-erase board works of art or anything like that. No, my countdowns are just fun/awesome Disney-related pictures that I send to Linda over text-messages since I'm crazy in love with funny pictures that I find on Pinterest. (While she was still in college, my life-goal was to send Linda a picture funny enough to make her laugh out loud in the middle of one of her classes so that the people around her would think she was crazy. Apparently, I almost got her once with something that was lion-king related. Unfortunately, I don't remember what it was. Maybe she'll remember and I can ask her.)
In reality, the countdown started a while ago. Like, there was the 100-Day mark, the 99-Day Double-Digits of Awesomeness mark, and then every ten days from then on unless something special happened - like the e-mail for our Magic-Bands being shipped out to us and another when I pulled them out of that sweet cardboard box. (Although, those were just pictures of MagicBands themselves, and not really anything funny.) And whenever I got our dining reservations, or Food & Wine Festival reservations.
But, the Official Countdown started on September 30th - 25 DAYS LEFT!!!! (To be perfectly honest, I very nearly started the daily countdown on the 30th day out, since I have SO MANY funny Disney pictures saved to my phone, but I decided that twenty-five was already obsessive enough.)
Don't worry, though. I'm not going to take you poor people through the entire countdown, because there was a lot. (There were also a lot of Disney Pocket Princess comic-funnies, and I've decided not to post them here because I know how much the amazingly-talented artist doesn't want her stuff to be re-posted. If you want to take a look through her super-funny stuff, though, here's a link to her Junk Drawer - and just know that I used quite a few of them since they are ADORABLE.)
(Side note: (Sorry, these WILL become a theme since my mind really likes going off on tangents.) This, as I said, started our Official Countdown - and what was I doing? Trying very, Very, VERY, VERY hard not to just go ahead and pack my suitcase. This time before our trip in March of '13 - guess who was already packed? Yeah, that's right. ME. OCD little me who does not follow a 'just pack and have done with it experience. No, I have a pack it all up and then every other day unpack it all to check off my already-checked-off packing check list that I've had planned down to the last bobby pin and band-aid for seven months now, and then re-pack it. SO, this time, I promised myself that I would not pack before the 7-Days to go mark. So, did I keep my promise??? We'll see.....)
15 Days till Disney!!!!:
8 DAYS, LADY!!!!!:
ONLY FIVE DAYS LEFT, DUDE!!!!!!!:
So, this one isn't really necessary for you to know, but I added it just so I could add this:
YES!!! I made it to FIVE days out!!! (I might even have made it longer, but my week was about to get pretty hectic with work and errands and hanging out with Linda and getting my hair done and... well... a lot of things going on.... Plus, I got really bored after work that day...) But still! Five days!!! I count that as a personal win!
Also, that's not everything that was needed to be packed, of course. Little toiletries were left, as well as the Halloween costumes, as A) I did NOT want those wrinkled, and B) I was waiting for Linda to bring me hers so that we would only need one garment bag. - Less space we take up in the car equals more space for SOUVENIRS!!! Yay!!
The Countdown "Officially" Ends!!!! - October 24th-25th, 2014
WE'RE LEAVING TOMORROW!!!!!:
(I chose this one for Linda because she is a Pineapple freak and LOVES Dole Whip.)
So, when I put in my vacation request at the bookstore when I planned this trip, I was smart and made sure that I requested off the day before we left and the day after we came back, so that I could settle into the 'Work Does Not Exist' mindset before we left. And, also, so that I could run a few errands and get a manicure before we left. (Working in a bookstore does NOT make for lasting nail-polish.)
I still woke up rather early that morning so that I could try to keep to a good sleep-schedule while we were down there, and totally vegged out for most of the day, watching Halloween movies.
After these, I figured that I should probably put on some real clothes (as opposed to my comfy pajamas), and run my errands. First stop? My manicure! Yay! Now, I'd had a bit of a dilemma, because I just couldn't decide whether I wanted to go for my usual golden Belle nail polish that I got from Hot Topic, or for a neutral color because of costumes... or if I just wanted to go completely funky Halloween themed.
Luckily, for some reason that morning, I'd had an epiphany that the second two could be sort-of combined if I did funky Halloween themed in a thin French line... So, that's what I did!
After this, it was time for the rest of my errands. I picked up a gallon of Sweet Tea from the Chik-fil-A down the street - because we all know that, for some reason, Florida doesn't count itself as really Southern, and therefore has no idea what sweet tea is. They either don't offer it at all, or they have 'sweet' tea that's got about one spoonfull of sugar. (<-- See what I did there?)
We'd tried to do this last March, too, but, like an idiot, I'd gotten the gallon jug the day before we left and then kept it in the car overnight. In March. In Georgia. (Not awfully smart, really.) So, when we tried it, it tasted all plasctic-y and gross from the heat and we'd had to throw it out. Not this time! Lesson learned - I would make sure that it went into the house with the rest of my bags and I'd load it up in the morning before leaving.
So, why the sweet tea, you ask? Well, Linda and I have a pretty staunch 'No Soda' rule - and, yes, that is sometimes broken, but we try. (She's far better at fighting temptation than I am.) (Also, if you're wondering, we saw nowhere in the World that served Dr. Pepper. Literally, even the gas stations only had Mr. Pibb. So, if the Doctor is your soda of choice (Like it is Linda's), you're out of luck.) So, sweet tea is our drink, and while Linda is usually okay with unsweet tea when she has no choice, I (who had it in my baby bottle almost as often as there was milk or juice), just can't. I'm sorry, I just can't. (And, no, sugar packets shaken into the unsweet tea just won't cut it for me either - they just don't melt right no matter how many you put in there. It's really very sad.)
So, sweet tea? Check. Manicure? Check. Next, was a stop by the bank. Linda and I were determined to keep most of our purchases regulated to cash, and we had both saved money to our Disney Funds this way, but I wanted to deposit some of my 'extra' money into my bank account just in case there was an emergency. (My 'extra' money was what I had saved on top of my acutal budget money in case there were any extra souvenirs that I wanted, or extra costs that I hadn't calculated.) I also needed change since most of my money had been saved in larger bills, and we would need smaller ones for tip money for Table Service wait staff and Housekeeping, and I wanted to go ahead and have these ready and set aside so that we wouldn't be scrambling for them later.
With this done, all of my errands were finished! Yay! Go me! So, it was back home to veg-out for a little while longer before Linda and I left for a Pumpkin-Carving Party at another friend's house. So, I watched a bit of NCIS from the kitchen while I put together the apple cider punch that I had decided on taking to the party, and packed together all of the Halloween pumpkin party cups and candies that I had bought, too.
In case you're wondering, the punch was just store-bought apple cider (that I doctored a bit by dropping an extra cinnamon stick and a few slices of a Honey Crisp apple into it and chilling it for a couple of days) mixed with chilled ginger ale. (About a 2/1 ratio, but really just based on your taste.)
Finally, it was 7:45pm and Linda was here! Yay! She'd brought her costumes with her so that I could pack them when I got home later, and then she and I set off to party! (This party, though on the later side than we both would really have liked before our super-early wake up call the next day, was, never-the-less, exactly what we both needed to keep our minds off of that ever-running track of 'We're leaving in the morning! We're leaving in the morning! We're leaving in the morning!')
The party was really tame, thank goodness. Just a few friends eating dinner, watching a movie, and carving awesome pumpkins. The food? Chili, cornbread muffins, apple pie, caramel apple pops, and caramel apple twizzlers. Also, in addition to my punch, there were frozen Strawberry Margaritas (which Linda and I only had a couple sips of since we had a LONG drive ahead of us in the morning.)
After dinner was PUMPKIN CARVING! Yay! Now, I had never carved a pumpkin before. Never. Not once. I had watched my dad do it on a number of occasions when I was younger. (And he's quite a good artist - so he would always free-hand everything he did.) Knowing that my own skills amount to never being able to draw a straight line - I researched on Pinterest (my go-to) and found some really cute Stencils and how to use them, and printed out my favorite.
I have to say - I didn't do too bad!!! I give myself several pats on the back for this one!!!
I don't know if you can tell, but it's the headless horseman. Here it is all lit up later!
And then... Linda happened... Fair warning - she did this all by just looking at a picture of it on her phone... I don't know what you guys would call that, but I'm calling it free-handing and I am both jealous and super-impressed!!!!!!
Yup, that's right. Further proof that my best friend is absolutely amazing.
Once we were done carving our pumpkins, we made our polite goodbyes (since it was a bit later than we had been hoping to leave) and headed for home! We got there about midnight, and after a super quick check that I had all of my toiletries and had packed up the costumes - essentially that everything was read to go into the car - I crashed into bed and forced myself to go to sleep.
Hello 5:30 AM!!!! You came so fast!!!! (Yup, that's right. Five and half hours of sleep... Hello long car drive. Thank heaven for coffee and 5-Hour Engery shots.) So, first thing? I got up and got dressed, and then packed up the car. Then, having said goodbye to my Mom and Dad, I set off for...
Oh yeah! It was a Starbucks morning! I got there JUST as it hit 6:00 AM on the dot and they were unlocking the doors. I ordered myself a Venti Pumpkin Spice Latte and a slice of pumpkin bread, and got Linda a Venti English Breakfast Tea. Afterwards, it was time to head over and get Linda!
We packed her things in the car as well, said our goodbyes to her Mommy, and got back in the car. It was time to head out to DISNEY WORLD!!! We plugged in the All-Star Movies address into my phone, plugged said phone into my stereo, and turned on the radio program that we had chosen for this trip...
If you've never heard this radio program... Go and get it from Audible. It is, quite literally, the funniest thing I have EVER HEARD. And I had to introduce Linda to it. (Well, when I say 'introduce', I mean that she's known about it since I started listening to it, but had yet to experience the awesomeness for herself, and she really wanted to listen to it on our way down.)
SO, without any further adieu... OFF WE GO!!!!!
And go...
And go...
6 1/2 Hours Later....
Happy happy girls!!!!!
It took us only a little while longer to get to our AWESOME resort... All-Star Movies!!!
We were here back in March of 2013 for our St. Patrick's trip, and we loved it so much! (Especially the price!!!) And we were back again!
We got there around 12:30-1:00 PM, and we were fully expecting to have to check our bags in since Check In wasn't supposed to happen until 3:00 PM, and that was the time that I had done our Online Check-In for. But, to our surprise, the lovely Cast Member behind the counter told us that our room was already ready for us!! Yay!!
We had gone for a preferred room so that we could be closer to the buses and the main building, and our room was SUPER close. We were in building 1 in the 101 Dalmations area.
Yup, that red circle right there is our room! Right next to Mr. Pongo on the first floor. It was a bit of a walk to and from the parking lot, but a MUCH easier walk to the main building and the buses. We didn't take many pictures of the inside of the room, but Linda was able to snap this one while we both took a minute to rest after unloading the car (and call our parents to let them know that we had arrived safely.)
After taking a few moments, we changed our clothes and headed out for the buses to take us down to Downtown Disney!!!!
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) So, stick with me if you can!
)
I am a semi-working actress and work at a bookstore as well. I'm the trip-planner since I love research and planning things - literally, this trip was planned down what restaurant we were going to eat in each park on each day and exactly what (I, at least, was ordering), and has been since (very-nearly) the week we came back from our trip in March of last year (2013).
Of course, it also gets re-typed for absolutely no reason other than I'm bored and want to think about my Disney trip. And then there are the pre-packing lists/food budget lists/vinylmation trading lists/penny press location lists/character location lists... - I like lists 
. Not going to lie, I am an obsessive planner. So, needless to say, Miss Linda just hands the reins over with a few words surmounting to "I trust you, insane-lady - have at, and I'll go along with it." 
