WDW Birthday Trip #1

Both C and I have May birthdays, and while we have been there twice before to celebrate his birthday, I have never been there to celebrate mine (although I did spend my 25^th birthday in Disneyland, which was awesome!).  Since mine is always around Memorial Day, I have never been able to take time off before or after the holiday weekend.  We decided to take advantage of the fact that I am not teaching this year, and planned a trip for the end of May.

What C did not know was that I was secretly planning a trip for his birthday, which is at the beginning of May.  I was forced to reveal that surprise a few days early because of a scare with Gunni (this is chronicled in another post), but it was nonetheless a surprise.  I was so pleased with myself because those of you who know us understand that C is the trip planner and I just tag along for the adventure.  So the responsibility of planning a trip that he knew nothing about was daunting.  Hotel, car rental, dining reservations…I was worried he would see an email, get an alert on his phone, or find something in the mail if he got to it before I did (which was the case at least three days a week because of my class schedule).  I couldn’t believe I actually pulled it off!  As is customary, my fabulous mom took on the role of fairy dogmother and happily tended to our herd while we were away.

We flew down to Florida on C’s birthday, which happened to be a Friday.  We had to get up extremely early because our flight was out of BWI at 6 am.  The excitement and anticipation of the trip did not make it too difficult to rise at such a crazy hour – even for me, and those of you who know me understand that every morning I resemble a hibernating bear emerging from its den in the spring.  The flight was quick, we rented our car and drove over to WDW, and were all checked in by 11 am.  Much to his dismay, I forced C to get a birthday button and made him wear it for the rest of the day, resulting in countless happy birthday wishes from strangers!  We stayed at the Boardwalk Inn, and had a wonderful weekend.  The fun was punctuated by spurts of homework, but rest assured that we had an amazing time.

These are just some of the beautiful rugs throughout the resort.

Friday’s birthday lunch was at Beaches and Cream, over at the Beach Club Resort, and just a short walk from our hotel room.  Lunch was so delicious, and this is where you can find the best milkshakes anywhere in WDW, in our opinion.  Since we had been up for so long, we decided to take a short nap in the afternoon.  While C was sleeping, I slipped away to the Boardwalk Bakery to get cupcakes.  These are not your everyday cupcakes.  Neither of us really even care for cupcakes that much.  But these cupcakes?  Indescribably good.

Oreo and Strawberry Shortcake cupcakes...yum.

We headed over to the Magic Kingdom around 5 pm.  We had C’s birthday dinner at Tony’s Town Square Restaurant, which is one of our very favorite places to eat.  We love the atmosphere, the location, the food…you get the idea.  Although Craig tried to hide his birthday button, the waiter took note of it and brought Craig a delicious sundae with a candle on it – what an unexpected and delightful surprise!  We spent the remainder of the evening in MK and even though it rained for about 45 minutes, we were extremely happy because the weather drove most people out of the park, leaving us to enjoy the attractions without much company.  We spotted a rainbow over Space Mountain as we were riding TTA, and then could appreciate its grandeur over the TTA track after we disembarked.

We noticed after the fact that it was actually a double rainbow over Space Mountain!

We watched the “Celebrate the Magic” castle show and the “Wishes” fireworks from Main Street, and the Main Street Electrical Parade from “our” two rocking chairs (see my post from March about our Spring Break trip).  We finished off the night with a Nutella waffle and the Kiss Goodnight light show on the castle.  I think it is safe to say that C had a great birthday.

We really do feel like these seats belong to us!

The next morning we had a late breakfast at the Kona Café at the Polynesian Resort, and as always, the Tonga Toast was superb.  I tried to choose some of C’s favorite places when I was making dining reservations for his birthday weekend, and this is probably our favorite breakfast food in WDW.  After returning to the Boardwalk Inn, we walked over to Epcot for the afternoon before having dinner at Via Napoli in the Italy pavilion.  Sorry to sound like a broken record, but again, this is one of our favorites.

The beautiful Spaceship Earth

Later in the evening, we wandered back to our hotel to enjoy the Boardwalk and so we could spend some time on the homework we had both been neglecting up to that point.  Given that we each had finals on the horizon, we decided to enjoy our beautiful hotel room, watch hockey on TV, and do homework.  That might not sound like a fun evening to some people, but remember, folks – we were in WDW!  We could have done absolutely nothing and we would have loved every minute of it.  Also, we are nerds.  J

Sunday morning, we packed and checked out of our hotel, and headed over to Wilderness Lodge for a late breakfast at Whispering Canyon Café.  This is where you can get the banana bread french toast I raved about back in March, and it was as tasty as I remembered it!  After breakfast, we went to Downtown Disney for some shopping and then went to DHS for a few hours – although our main purpose was to buy some carrot cake cookies to take home with us!

Our final stop before heading to the airport has become somewhat of a tradition for us, and that is to go to Port Orleans French Quarter for beignets.  A few years ago, we went to WDW once a month for an entire year (some of you are very familiar with our infamous, overly-ambitious travel checklists), and it was during these monthly trips that the last-stop-for-beignets tradition was established.  We are usually a little melancholy at this point because the trip is coming to an end, but we knew we would be back in less than three weeks!  We flew back to BWI on a very late flight and arrived home around 1:30 am.  Despite the exhaustion, I declared the trip a smashing success and a fitting way to celebrate C’s birthday!

Beignets...so delicious!

Happy Tails to you!