WDW September 2018

Wednesday, September 12

We had originally planned on this trip taking place from Friday night through Sunday night, because when we originally booked it, I was still teaching full-time. However, we changed our plans a few weeks ago and added a day to our trip so it was supposed to be from Thursday night to Sunday night, which we were pretty excited about. Then came the threat of Hurricane Florence, and the forecast indicated that we would be getting a lot of rain on Thursday, which might impact our flight, so we changed our plans again to leave on Wednesday night to get ahead of the storm. That is the beauty of flying with Southwest – they may not offer the lowest fares (in our experience, not even close to the lowest fares!), but in terms of how easy it is to change your flights, they cannot be beat!

When we had made the first change, we needed to add a hotel night at WDW, but when I called, there was no availability at Boardwalk, which is where we were booked for Friday and Saturday night. So we decided to go with All-Star movies for Thursday night because it is relatively inexpensive and we weren't really going to be spending much time there since we had an evening flight. When we changed our plans for the second time, we needed yet another night added to our reservation, and thankfully there was availability at All-Star Movies on Wednesday night, meaning we ended up with two two-night stays!

Our flight took off a little behind schedule and there was quite a bit of turbulence, but we landed in Orlando around 8:30, and no one sat between us on the plane, so that was fantastic! As is the norm for our quick weekend trips, we only had backpacks, so we were off the plane and headed to the Magical Express area in no time. Yep! Magical Express. Although I have used it before on my trip last summer with my mom, it was C's first time. WDW has instituted a parking fee at the resorts, and I've been quite clear bout how much we dislike the car rental process in Orlando (#nightmare), so we decided to take advantage of the Magical Express service. Of course, that meant we'd have to also have to use the buses, which was less than ideal, but we figured that was the lesser of two evils! Getting on the Magical Express bus went well and we arrived at the resort around 10 pm. We grabbed a bite to eat at the food court and then went to our room and it was very similar to the room we had at Pop Century in June – refurbished and beautiful! The All-Star Resorts are far from our favorites, but we were very happy with our room and the characters we put on our Magic Bands for the All-Star Movies reservation were Jane and Tarzan!

Thursday, September 13

We got up super early because we wanted to get over to Disney's Hollywood Studios to get over to the new Toy Story Land before it was ridiculously busy and we had to get there on the bus. All I can say is that the park is a mess. Complete disaster. The bus loading area is under construction and despite the addition of Toy Story Land, the park itself is no more than a half-day event. It has always been a distant third after Magic Kingdom and Epcot in terms of my favorite park, but it has now absolutely fallen to fourth place behind Animal Kingdom. Having said that, Slinky Dog Dash was perfection. Soooooooooo adorable! The queue is cute and the ride itself is super fun! Even though we got to the attraction about 15 minutes before the official park opening time, there was already a posted waiting time 40 minutes! Crazy! Thankfully we ended up only waiting about 25 minutes, and it was so worth it! I took a ton of photos and I loved that it had a very similar look to Slinky Dog ZigZag Spin at Disneyland Paris. Cute, cute, cute!!!

"He's a short dog and a long dog" <3

After Slinky Dog Dash, we went on Toy Story Mania because it had a posted wait time of 20 minutes (almost unheard of!) and it was really only about a 10 minute wait! As usual, I was working on my accuracy while still scoring at least 100,000 points and got 52%! Maybe not exciting to others, but as someone who does not play video games, I was pretty thrilled! And then we spotted the screen where C was listed as having the high score for the hour! A very successful experience for both of us!

We went to find a carrot cake cookie, and guess what? Nope. There is an imposter version that is sold at the Starbucks, but we did not even bother with it. And Starring Rolls is closed! Oh, DHS, what has happened to you? The lack of carrot cake cookie availability was reason enough for me to downgrade this park to fourth place! We rode Star Tours and then went to MuppetVision 3-D before leaving because frankly, we'd just had enough. I can only imagine how terrible this park will be when Galaxy's Edge opens!

We took the boat to Epcot; normally we would walk from one park to the other, but with all of the construction, we decided the boat would be easier. We walked through World Showcase to the front of the park and went to The Seas, because we hadn't been over to that area for quite a while! The ride is cute, and both Turtle Talk and the aquarium are impressive, but my favorite thing? The manatees. I love them. I could stand there and watch them for hours. One of them was doing these adorable flips and swimming around upside down, and there was just something about the manatee's chubby body with flippers up in the air that reminded me so much of Maddy. I just stood at the side of the tank and cried and cried and cried. I miss her terribly. I could not have predicted that a visit to the manatees would end with me in an inconsolable state.

After I managed to get myself together, we went over to The Land, where I'd forgotten how great Living with the Land was, and then to the Imagination pavilion, where I was reminded of how badly Journey Into Imagination needs to be restored to its former glory. We noted that Soarin' only had a 20 minutes standby wait time, but that is another attraction whose refurbishment is a major downgrade for me, and I honestly have no interest in it whatsoever. We also stopped by a neat place called Light Lab, which offered admittedly overpriced but beautiful drinks!

As we were walking toward Spaceship Earth, we passed Innoventions where you can meet characters. I realized that I was wearing an Inside Out-themed tshirt, so I decided to get in line for the Joy and Sadness meet-and-greet. Well, I had my second breakdown of the day. Even though they don't speak, they are fun to meet and interact with, and Joy immediately noticed my shirt and we "talked" about Bing Bong and his wagon and singing. It was completely adorable! She was then very animated as she pointed to my blue hair, her blue hair, and Sadness's blue hair and made a heart with her hands! We posed for some photos, and I was about to leave, when Joy took my hand and led me over the wall where the pictures of Riley's islands are. She stopped us right in front of Friendship Island and pointed at the picture, then at me and at herself and made another heart with her hands. I lost it and started crying. She hugged me and Sadness came over and hugged me and we just stood there in a three-way hug for a long time. As I was leaving, I thanked them for making a core memory with me. What a wonderful character encounter on a very emotional day for me.

my shirt

note the work of Sadness along the bottom row

After riding Spaceship Earth, we took the monorail over to Magic Kingdom and stayed there for the remainder of the evening. We mostly wandered around admiring all of the autumn and Halloween décor; we did ride TTA and watch the Happily Ever After fireworks before enduring the bus transportation back to our resort.

Friday, September 14

We had a bit of a sleep in after that very long day at the parks, and then checked out of All-Star Movies after I took some photos around the resort because I absolutely love the 101 Dalmatians area! We hopped on the bus to Disney Springs, ate lunch at Blaze Pizza, did a little shopping, and then stopped by Joffrey's Coffee to try something I had seen on Instagram. Using an app called Ripples, you upload photos or images and then the barista can put those images onto the foam in your latte or cappuccino. We chose one pic of Maddy and one of Ginny just to see if it would work and it did! So cool!

I love this so much because not only does Lucky have white fur with black spots like Maddy,
but Maddy would often watch TV with us
(I like to think she was a fan of The Office
because that is absolutely the show that is on most often in our house!)

These are the ears I wore for this trip - we always compared Maddy to Meeko
and Ginny to Mushu becuase their personalities are very similar to these two characters!
I had the ears custom made over the summer for this trip before Maddy passed away.
The ears are also interchangeable!

We wanted to catch the bus to Boardwalk so we could check in and that turned out to be ridiculous. WHY ON EARTH does WDW insist on having five resorts (Swan, Dolphin, Yacht Club, Beach Club, and Boardwalk) share ONE bus from Disney Springs?!? It is infuriating! They’ve been doing it for as long as I can remember! Not only did it feel like 100 degrees, but there were easily 100 people in the line! After an excruciatingly long wait, we were finally able to get on a bus and the only good thing I can say about the entire ride was that we were standing next to a Disney travel agent and had a great time chatting with her about the parks and Disney Cruise Line. I was actually answering some answers for a person seated nearby and the travel agent asked if I was "in the travel industry" and when I told her that I was not, she replied, "well, you should be!" Lady, believe me, the thought has crossed my mind a million times!

When we finally got to Boardwalk, we were able to check in quickly and get up to our room. We hadn't stayed there in about five years, so we were excited to be back. It is such a pretty hotel and the fact that it is situated right next to Epcot was perfect for being able to visit the Food and Wine Festival. We also had a really nice view from our room. Our Magic Bands for this leg of the trip were Oswald and Otensia. The cutest!

our inspiration

We spent a few hours over at Epcot, trying some of the festival's offerings and wandering around World Showcase. One of our favorite shops is at the Japan pavilion and we found some cute, chubby stuffed dogs, so we turned one of them upside down in honor of Maddy, because that was her preferred sleeping position. The stuffed dog looked almost as hilarious as she often did!

<3

My beloved Scotty was performing at Jellyrolls, so we walked over there and spent the rest of the night listening to fabulous music! Unfortunately, absolutely none of my individual pics of Scotty came out, but I did get a good one of one of my other favorites, Rob! As always, it was wonderful to see Scotty and being able to walk back to our room in under five minutes is yet another benefit of staying at Boardwalk!

Saturday, September 15

We got up super early because we had a pre-park-opening breakfast reservation at Be Our Guest over at MK. While it is certainly a gorgeous restaurant, it is overpriced in my opinion, but the opportunity to get photos with very few people around was too good to pass up!

The Wedding Pavilion <3

After breakfast, we rode Haunted Mansion and Splash Mountain, then took the train around to Fantasyland so we could walk over to TTA. At that point, it was only about 11:00 am, but it was already SO hot and we are not people who enjoy the heat. We decided to leave, but first made a stop at Casey's Corner because we had read about a veggie dog they'd started offering there. We tried out the mobile ordering feature on the app, which saved us from having to stand in a very long line, and we each got a "plant-based slaw dog." I find that to be a fairly ridiculous name, but in spite of this, it was absolutely delicious. Seriously good! And we are very excited that WDW seems to be offering more items for vegetarians and vegans!

Disney Detail <3

Mr. Toad in the Pet Cemetery

We left MK by noon and took the bus back to the hotel, which was a less frustrating experience than the previous day because there is a dedicated bus just for Boardwalk. Between a very late night, a very early morning, and the heat, we decided to have a nap, so we slept from 1:00-5:00 pm before walking over to Epcot for the evening. We visited the festival headquarters in the former Wonders of Life pavilion (yet another thing from yesteryear that I miss at Epcot!) and rode Spaceship Earth before spending the rest of the night focused on the Food and Wine Festival. Two of our favorite discoveries were the Impossible Burger sliders and the Greek nachos, as well as the blueberry and cherry beer. Again, pretty pleased with the vegetarian-friendly options!

Impossible Burger Slider

Bubblegum Wall

Baymax

Greek Nachos

We wanted to ride Frozen Ever After, so we strategically got in line a couple of minutes before park closing, and were pleasantly surprised to see the posted standby wait time of 20 minutes. It actually only took less than ten minutes to get though the line! We were actually out of the ride before Illuminations was over so we were able to see the last part of the fireworks!

Sunday, September 16

The dreaded checkout day had arrived, so we packed up, dropped our bags off at bell services, checked out, and walked over to Epcot. I'm not sure there's ever been a trip before this one where we've gone to Epcot four days in a row! We only had a few hours, so we just roamed around the Food and Wine Festival again and soaked up the atmosphere. Sadly, our Magical Express pick-up time was 3:00, so we left Epcot around 2:15 to walk back to boardwalk and pick up our bags in time to be at the ME bus stop at 2:45.

Greek Nachos...again!

Practically Perfect in Every Way

  

If it tells you anything, we did not get on a ME bus until 3:45. And that was only after much complaining and questioning from us and the other family who was also waiting, and ultiately me basically pitching a fit when the FOURTH bus stopped and I had completely run out of patience and I was not happy. What an unorganized mess. That's all I can say. Thankfully, we have TSA precheck, so we were able to get through security very quickly; the other family was very concerned about getting through security and making their 6:00 flight and had repeatedly expressed these concerns to the cast members who seemed indifferent at best. Disney really needs to get on improving this entire system.

Our flight home was on Frontier and rather uneventful apart from a short delay in taking off. We got home around 10:00 and were so happy to see Ginny! Many, many thanks to my mom for watching her for us!

Ginny missing us

Ginny watching the door for our return

Happy Tails to you!