WDW Spring Break Trip

I’ve been asked about our recent trip to WDW, so I thought I’d share our adventures for those who might be interested in reading them.  Given that we were there for a week, I could literally write pages, but I will simply highlight our favorite moments.

We left our house at 1:15 am on Saturday.  Anyone in our area can appreciate the insanity that is I-95 South, and we will do just about whatever we can to avoid driving on it.  C drove most of the way, as I am prone to extremely long naps in the passenger seat!

We arrived around 3 pm on Saturday and checked into the Art of Animation resort, which opened last year.  We’ve stayed at every WDW resort hotel, and with Art of Animation being new, we needed to check it off our list.  Mission accomplished!  The theme of our room was “The Little Mermaid”…loved it!

The resort's logo

The resort's check-in area...very rainbow-y...loved it!

On Sunday, we went to Magic Kingdom around 8 pm, just in time for the castle show and for “Wishes.”  Even though it was a busy time of the year, MK was open to resort guests until 3 am.  Typically the park really thins out after the fireworks show, and this was no exception.  Once the park cleared out a bit, we watched the Main Street Electrical Parade from what we like to think of as our own personal seats (although surely hundreds of others are under the same delusion!) which are two rocking chairs on a front porch at the exit of The Hall of Presidents.  The spot is so perfect and tucked away from the hustle and bustle of everything else!  We love it!  We spent the remainder of our time visiting many of our favorite attractions, and those in the know will appreciate how empty the park was for our final few hours that night when I reveal that in addition to other rides, we went on Peter Pan’s Flight twice, with no wait, rode the Mad Tea Party tea cups with only a handful of other people, and had the entire Prince Charming Regal Carrousel to ourselves.  We wandered over to the new Fantasyland area and enjoyed some time in Gaston’s Tavern, in which the instrumental version of the soundtrack from “Beauty and the Beast” is played.  I was “entertaining” C by singing along to several songs (you know I know all of the lyrics!) before I realized that the people at the next table were listening to me and smiling at my lunacy.  Embarrassing!  We ended the night at 3 am walking from Cinderella Castle down Main Street, USA to “Married Life” from “Up” serenading us.  Perfection.

There are no words.

We spent other days in the parks as well – including Friday, when we thought we would do something we’ve never done before:  all of the parks in one day.  We went to MK for the rope drop and spent some time there, then we went to Disney’s Hollywood Studios, Animal Kingdom, Typhoon Lagoon, and Epcot for a few hours each.  Our day concluded back at MK until midnight.  A long day, but we really enjoyed finding all of the special topiaries on display for the Epcot Flower and Garden Festival!

Cinderella and Prince Charming

We spent Tuesday night at our favorite non-park location at WDW:  Jellyrolls.  It is a dueling piano bar with the most amazingly talented piano players I have ever seen.  They will play just about anything the audience requests, from any genre or any decade (Queen, Coldplay, The Beatles, REM, Guns N Roses, Taylor Swift, Billy Joel, Duran Duran, Backstreet Boys, Wham, Katy Perry, Elton John, U2…the list goes on and on).  My favorite guy even played an impromptu medley of songs from “Mary Poppins” because someone jokingly requested it!  One time someone requested “Enter Sandman” by Metallica and one of the pianists learned it backstage and performed it an hour later!  They are incredible.  A trip to WDW is not complete for us if we don’t spend one night there. With it being a Tuesday night, it was relatively quiet, and the pianists were able to interact even more than usual with those of us in the audience.  I again put my “singing ability” to good use and more than once received a loud “Thank you, Virginia!” from the stage.  So fun!

Food is another thing to be enjoyed at WDW.  In addition to our staples (beignets from Port Orleans French Quarter, popcorn from Main Street, Dole Whips, Nutella waffles, Mickey ice cream bars), we discovered a new treat that we cannot believe we didn’t know about before:  the carrot cake cookie.  It is actually two large, cake-like cookies with a layer of cream cheese frosting in between.  Indescribably delicious.  Once we discovered them on Monday, we went back to The Writer’s Stop at DHS three additional times just to get these cookies.  No joke!  That is how insanely great they are!

The carrot cake cookie...this photo does not do it justice!

We also ate at a few restaurants that are worth noting:  Tony’s Town Square Restaurant in MK (awesome minestrone!), Kona Café at the Polynesian (Tonga Toast!), Whispering Canyon Café at Wilderness Lodge (banana bread french toast!), and Via Napoli in Italy at Epcot (fantastic margherita pizza!).  I highly recommend them all!  Our favorite was Be Our Guest...in a word, unbelievable.

Stunning.

A final confession is that I wore purple Mickey ears the whole week.  It's hard to tell in this photo, but they had feathers and a purple crown on them!  Need I say more?

Happiest people on earth at the happiest place on earth!

Sadly, the week came to an end and on Saturday we headed north again. Although we had missed our lovely dogs so much while we were gone (a HUGE thank you to my mom for being the greatest dog grandmother on the planet!), we were still sad – as always! – to leave.  A reassuring thought was that we will be back soon!

Happy Tails to you!