Walt Disney World 2016 - Day Two - Part One

January 6, 2016

We woke up on our first day at Disney around 8am. I know from reading a lot of trip reports that this is "sleeping in", but I am not a morning person, and we had a late night the night before with our luggage not showing up to our room until after midnight. We got ready and headed to Intermission Food Court at our hotel (All-Star Music). I'm not much of a breakfast person (I never eat breakfast before leaving for work, and I've been known to snack on chocolate bars and bags of chips at my desk in the mornings...) so I just used a snack credit and picked up some banana bread.

Luke on the other hand, eats breakfast every morning (he does start work an hour and a half later than me), so he picked up the breakfast platter with eggs, hashbrowns, sausage, bacon, a biscuit and a Mickey waffle, and he also picked up a banana. We also paid out of pocket for this meal, it came to $11.97. I would like to point out that the banana cost $1.69. Seriously, most expensive banana ever.

After eating, we stopped to take this picture:

and then we headed outside to catch a bus to the race Expo. It opened at 10am that morning, and we wanted to be there as close to that time as possible. We walked outside the hotel to a coach bus sitting there waiting, so we walked on and were off to the race Expo! This was our first Disney transportation (excluding Magical Express) and our wait time is currently zero minutes - I was so worried we were going to waste so much time waiting for busses...

Before long the bus dropped us off, we had a short walk and then we were seeing this:

I apologize, I didn't write notes or pay attention to the buildings we went into here. The entire thing was quite overwhelming, and unlike anything I've ever experienced. It also started raining shortly after we arrived, so I left my camera in my bookbag to keep it dry, and any pictures I did take here were with my phone (and I didn't take very many). 

Luke went and picked up his race pack in one building, and then we had to go into another building to pick up his race shirt. He also bought himself a Disney marathon weekend tshirt, and we looked around at some of the expo vendors. I loved the Ariel NewBalance shoes, but I couldn't justify the cost when it's not the brand of sneaker I wear (I love my Asics). I did end up buying Luke a Disney themed medal display, as it was something I had looked at ordering online, but the shipping cost to Canada was a little ridiculous. So when I saw the exact one I was going to order there, and I could take it home with me that day, I was sold! I don't have a picture of it, but it's this one in sparkly black: http://www.heavymedalz.com/Product/10OnceUponBlack.php Now to fill it I guess we'll just have to plan on more RunDisney events (which are already in our plans...).

We didn't spend too much time at the Expo, we had FastPasses to get to! We did see what we wanted to, and Luke had more than enough time to look at the official RunDisney merch, so we decided to head back to our hotel to drop off our purchases. But first, I made Luke pose for this picture:



We walked over to the bus pickup spot, and there was a bus sitting there waiting! Two for two today! We went back to All Star Music, dropped off our race Expo purchases and then headed back out to catch our first bus to one of the WDW parks! I might have been a little bit excited at this point...

xoxo,
Fallon

WDW Trip - Day One, Part Two

After snapping a picture of the airport Disney store, we set off to check in with Magical Express. We didn't have our Magic Bands yet, as they won't ship them to Canada, but I had my booklet from Disney with all of our confirmation information. It went very smoothly, and we joined the line for the All-Star Resorts. While standing in line, I remembered that I had forgotten to do online check-in, so that's when I did it. We stood in line for less than 10 minutes before we were directed onto a bus! We ended up sitting on the Magical Express bus for about 15 minutes waiting for more passengers before we started driving to Disney. We used this time to take our first selfie on our Disney trip 

We were staying at the All-Star Music Resort, so we were the third stop out of four (Coronado Springs guests were also on our bus). We had used the yellow luggage tags and I had checked in online from the airport, so after walking off the bus we were at the counter getting our Magic Bands and room number within 2 minutes. After receiving a map of the hotel with the location of our room, we decided to stop at the Intermission Food Court. We hadn't ate much all day as I really try to limit myself to what I eat on travel days (I have Crohn's Disease, so flare-ups on an airplane are not fun for anyone). It was late by this point, so the menu was limited but we didn't care. We activated our refillable mugs - I chose blue and Luke grabbed a green one for himself. Luke ordered the chicken nuggets with salad and I had the make-your-own pasta with penne, a chicken breast and marinara sauce with a breadstick and salad on the side.

For this meal, we paid out of pocket as we didn't want dessert that late at night, and we didn't even think about saving it for the morning. Total cost was $20.10. We were both pleasantly surprised at the quality of the meal, especially for the cost. It was nothing fancy, but it really hit the spot after a day of travelling!

After eating, we set off to find our room. It really surprised us how large All-Star Music was! We were in the 7th building, Broadway themed. We found our room and tested both of our Magic Bands to make sure they worked. No issues there, so we settled in to wait for our luggage to arrive. It ended up being a pretty late night, our bags didn't arrive in our room until 12:20, but we were asleep within 20 minutes of it arriving.

I also forgot to take pictures of our room when I first got there, and didn't actually take these pictures until the morning we were checking out...oh well! Here's our room!

Next up: Race Expo and our first day in the parks!

xoxo,

Fallon

The beginning of the WDW Trip Report....

Now that our trip to Walt Disney World is over, and our weekend trip to California (which Luke won!) is over, it's time to start my trip report of Florida! I apologize now, this post is lacking on photos, but I will more than make up for it in future posts!

The day before we left, we woke up extra early to drop our dogs off at the kennel before going to work for the day. We take them to one that is about a half hour drive away, and they are only open during certain hours, so we knew there wouldn't be time after work while we were trying to finish packing, and our flight left early the next morning so no time then either. I'm always sad saying goodbye to them, but I was just so excited that I was going to be in Disney by the next day!

On our travel day, our alarm went at 4am. I am NOT a morning person, but that morning I had no problem getting out of bed - we were going to WDW! We had most of our packing complete the night before, so we were on the road by 5, and had a very quick and easy drive to the airport. Traveling can sometimes be a bit of a risk in January, but lucky for us there were no storms in the forecast! We checked our car in at our preferred parking lot by 5:30, and waited less than two minutes before a shuttle bus to the terminal had pulled up. We had decided to splurge and reserve valet parking, so it's the last stop and the bus was full by the time we got on, so we had to stand. We were the only ones on the bus going to the US Terminal of the airport, so we were the last ones off the bus. Luke had checked us in online, so we used the kiosk to print off our baggage tags, went to the desk to get our boarding passes, and off to customs! Security was really quiet, we were the only people in our line. Once we got to customs there was only one other person using the electronic kiosks, so we walked right up to one. Once it printed off our receipt, we took it up to an extremely friendly customs agent who made a few jokes with me about my hair colour, and then we were through! While we were looking around the duty free store, I remembered that I had forgot my headphones at home, boo! So I had to go to the tech store and spend my first $20 of the trip. Oh well, such is life.

We decided to grab some Quiznos for breakfast - turkey, swiss and ranch on white bread for me and a honey chicken club on whole wheat for Luke. Sorry, no pictures of that meal. By the time we finished eating it was still only 6:30 - our flight didn't leave until 8. We were expecting security and customs to take a bit longer...but better to be early than risk missing the flight. While we were waiting, Luke went to Starbucks with a gift card we had found on the weekend to get himself a coffee and a Very Berry Hibiscus for me.

Our flight to Minneapolis/St.Paul left on time, even with de-icing. The flight offered free Wi-Fi and had a decent selection of free movies to watch, so we watched the original Jurassic Park (which I had never seen...). 

We ended up landing early in Minneapolis, so we had plenty of time to get to our next gate (we were originally worried we might be cutting it close). Our next flight was to Detroit, and it was packed. It left a few minutes late, but made up the time in the air and ended up landing early as well. We had trouble getting the Wi-Fi to work on this plane, so we just played games on Luke's iPad. I was really impressed by the Delta Terminal at the Detroit airport, I thought it was really nice! I was way too entertained by watching the mini-monorail thing inside the terminal...

Our flight from there to Orlando was close to full, but not 100%. There were actually less children on it then I thought there would be. The flight left on time, and arrived in Orlando on time. We spent our time on that flight getting into the Disney mood by watching Brave (we're big Pixar fans). 
After our quick ride on the fake monorail, we saw our first sign of Disney - the Disney Store in the airport!

I'm going to finish this post here! My next post will cover our arrival at our hotel (complete with pictures!) and our first meal at Disney!

xoxo,

Fallon

What The Hell Is A Pre-RD ADR @ BOG?!

After we had our dates set, I started reading about Disney World and I quickly realized that it was very different from Disneyland. We were able to fly by the seat of our pants when we went to Disneyland - zero planning was involved (we decided to go to Anaheim on a Monday afternoon and landed there Thursday afternoon). This time was going to be different - good thing we had 8 months to plan!

We didn't book our tickets for our flights until mid-August, but I spent many hours in May, June and July reading articles and blogs about Disney World. One thing I kept noticing were the abbreviations that kept being used. Disney people are pretty intense about their abbreviations, let me tell you! At first, I had no idea what people were talking about, until I found this handy little website: http://allears.net/tp/abrev.htm 

So, what exactly is a Pre-RD ADR @ BOG? In simple English, that is a pre-rope-drop (before the park opens) advance dining reservation at Be Our Guest (a restaurant located in Magic Kingdom). These blog posts are essentially a PTR - a pre-trip report. Once we get back from our stay at ASMu (All-Star Music Resort), I'll be writing a TR (a trip report) about our experience with PH (park-hopper's) and FP+ (fast-pass plus).

Did all of those abbreviations make your head spin? I personally avoid shortening words whenever possible (I am the person who will text "y-o-u" instead of "u" every single time). Going forward with my planning posts about our Disney trip, I will try to use real words instead of letters, but you will see a few. If you're ever curious about what I'm trying to say, just leave a comment!

xoxo,
Fallon

Disney Fever has struck us...

If you read any of my posts about our trip to California, you know that our reason was not to visit Disneyland, or even Los Angeles. We are extremely Canadian - we went for NHL playoff hockey. Disneyland was just an added bonus - something we knew we wanted to do at some point, but we figured we would have children before we ever made it there. As it happens, we ended up loving Disney! 

Luke had mentioned before that he would like to run a Disney race at some point in his life, so as soon as we returned to Canada we started looking into it. There was a Marathon weekend in January 2016 at DisneyWorld which had a full marathon, a half, a 10km and a 5km race. Luke has run 5 different 10km races, a half marathon and numerous 5km's in the 2 and a half years we've been together, so I knew he'd have no trouble with the training. He ended up deciding on the 10km - long enough to feel a sense of accomplishment, without putting himself out of commission to recover from a half marathon (which would have meant an entire missed day in the parks, and I just wasn't having that!).

Luke signed up and paid his registration fee at the end of April - this trip was going to happen! It was time for us to start looking at the length of our trip and where we'd like to stay. The 10km race is going to happen on January 8th, so we knew we'd want to be there by the 6th (sitting in an airplane for the entire day before a race didn't seem like a good idea), and my birthday is on January 13th so that gave us a starting point of dates to work with. 

We figured we would book the cheapest flight available, and then book everything else accordingly. Neither one of us is loyal to any one airline company - if flying within Canada we try to stick to WestJet, but international flights are entirely based on price! I've flown Alaskan Airlines (to Anaheim and to Las Vegas), American Airlines (from Anaheim to Edmonton), United Airlines (last time I went to Miami), and Air Canada (to Philadelphia, Puerto Plata and numerous domestic flights), as well as Lufthansa and Air Austria when I went to Europe years ago. We finally settled on Delta (who I don't think I've ever flown with) because they had the cheapest flights by a couple hundred dollars. The connections sucked, especially on the way there with 2 layovers, but money talks! So we now had our dates set: January 5th - 16th, 2016!

Check back soon for my next post: What the hell is a pre-RD ADR @ BOG?!

xoxo,
Fallon

Disney's California Adventure Park - World of Color Dining Packages

Before heading to California, we did very little research on Disney. Neither one of us had ever been to any of the Disney parks before (and to be honest, we didn't really think of it as a high priority - just a "maybe someday once we have kids?"). Turns out we should have had this at the top of our list - we both loved it!

Even if we had wanted to research like crazy for this trip, the quick turn-around from booking flights to actually landing in Anaheim would not have allowed for it (we decided to go on the trip on a Monday, and flew down on Thursday that same week). I did however take some time to talk to a few co-workers who I knew had taken their families to Disneyland within the past few years. The one thing I was told over and over - don't miss World of Colour at California Adventure Park. One co-worker mentioned that he really regretted not booking a fastpass or a dining package for preferred viewing - so I went online and looked into it. There are three restaurants that participate in this - Ariel's Grotto, Carthay Circle Restaurant and Wine Country Trattoria. Ariel's Grotto appeared to serve a lot of fish (go figure), and anything that comes from the water is disgusting and I refuse to eat it. L also has a slight shellfish allergy, so that eliminated that restaurant. The Carthay Circle Restaurant had a weird menu (I'm extremely fussy and bland with my palate) so that left Wine Country Trattoria. When you book the World of Color dining package, you can not just order from the normal menu. You select from a pre-determined menu at a set price per person, but your meal will include an appetizer (such as soup or salad) as well as dessert. The menu changes from each location. Check out the Ariel's Grotto menu HERE (dinner only), the Carthay Circle lunch menu HERE and dinner menu HERE, the Wine Country Trattoria lunch menu HERE and the dinner menu HERE.

I made a dinner reservation (I didn't spend enough time researching to know that lunch at Wine Country costs only $29.99 while dinner costs $42.99), but I also would not have cared about that. For our starters, L chose the salad (there's not a single thing in that salad I will eat, gross). That left me asking for the soup selections - they had minestrone that day which is something I will eat! For entrees L chose the chicken breast, which he really enjoyed. I went for the filet mignon - but of course I insist on all meat being cooked well-done. I prefer my steak to not still be mooing on my plate, thank you very much. (I take so much heat for this all the time - "You just ruined a great cut of meat!"). The first time they brought my steak out, I cut into it and it bled all over my plate so I of course asked to send it back (I try not to send things back at restaurants very often, it's pretty much only steak). I then had to wait over half an hour before they brought it back out to me (so L was finished his meal before I even started eating my filet mignon. When I did finally get it back however, it was cooked perfectly! 

Then came dessert - and omg. It was fantastic! It was a sampler plate with 2 of each of the following: European macaroons, cream puffs, tiramisu and panna cotta. We were both full from our meal, and weren't able to clean off the dessert plate, but we did make sure we sampled everything. 

To make up for the long wait I had for my steak to be re-cooked, our waitress offered us a fast-pass for the Radiator Springs Racers which we gladly accepted (they didn't have to offer anything, and The Cars ride had by far the longest waits of any ride in the park - and was also one of the most impressive). We paid our bill and headed over to use our Fast-pass, only to find out the ride had broken down :( A cast member directing people told us we could come back the next day to use the fast-pass, but we weren't coming back so it ended up going to waste. Oh well! We decided to just head to the reserved area for World of Color even though it didn't start for another 45 minutes. Turns out we made the right decision - we ended up being front and centre for it! We could actually feel the heat off the flames and some of the water from the cannons ended up landing on us. 

The show itself is not to be missed - it is incredible. I was so caught up in watching it I ended up not taking a single picture of it (which is totally not like me at all!). For almost half an hour I just stood there in awe of what I was watching. The price of dinner was well worth having the best reserved viewing area - you can get fast-passes early in the day for the show, but the views are not as centred. 

Next time we go back to Disney's California Adventure Park I will absolutely be booking another dining reservation for World of Color! I highly, highly recommend it and am so glad it's the one thing I booked in advance!

Our day at California Adventure:
Part One
Part Two
Part Three

xoxo,
Fallon