We flew down to Orlando on Southwest and were lucky enough
to have an empty middle seat between us on our flight! My only complaint is
that we left out of Reagan National Airport. In all of our travels, we have
been to many, many airports, and DCA is one of my least favorites. The only
reason we tolerate it is because of cheap airfare because Dulles and BWI are
vastly superior airports. For it being in the nation's capital, it is really an
embarrassing airport.
That said, my dislike of the airport is pretty much the only
negative thing I have to say about the entire trip! The characters for our
Magic Bands were Franny and Lewis from Meet the Robinsons, which is a seriously underrated Disney movie
that I absolutely LOVE. When we arrived in Orlando, we took the Magical Express to Pop Century and dropped off our bag because our room wasn’t ready
so early in the morning. Yep. Singular. One bag for the trip – although I did
have a small backpack to take to the parks that counted as my personal item –
but our laptop, cables, clothes, flip flops, and toiletries fit into one
backpack! We are becoming very skilled at minimalist packing!
We took the bus over to Epcot
to enjoy the Flower and Garden Festival.
For many years, this was my favorite time at Epcot, and I still love it very much even though the International Festival of the Arts is
my new favorite event at Epcot. As
you'll see from the photos, the park is beyond beautiful with stunning colors
everywhere you look! We spent all day there, with the highlights being getting
the most gorgeous cotton candy ever at the China
pavilion (totally worth the 40-minute wait in line!), eating lunch at Rose and Crown to try their vegan fish
and chips (delicious!), and getting the Orange
Bird sipper that was my number one goal for the trip (I've already written
in many a post how I love Orange Bird
and have very fond childhood memories of him, so I won't revisit that here!).
Having gotten up at 3 am to drive to DCA for our 6 am
flight, we were both pretty exhausted by dinnertime. We'd gotten a text that our
room was ready, so we decided to go back to our resort to take a nap. A 14-hour
nap. We woke up the next morning just after 7:00! Clearly we are getting old!
LOL!
Saturday, March 30
We very rarely ever get up early when we are at WDW. If there's a special breakfast
reservation or something, of course, but as a general rule, we rarely make it
our of our hotel room before noon. Since we'd slept for such a long time, we
were up exceptionally early by our standards! We went to the food court to get
something to eat and came across a sign that I wish was posted at every single
food court and quick service location at WDW:
express lane for cash and credit card purchases only. Meaning no dining plan
purchases! I have written to Guest Relations multiple times about this because
it is beyond frustrating to be stuck behind people on the dining plan who don't
know how it works, don't know what items qualify as what, and don't know why an
item is or isn't included. There's always so much discussion and arguing and
sometimes the cast member is ill informed as well and I just can't handle it.
As someone who doesn't use the dining plan, I just want to pay for my items and
be on my way. I pride myself on being a patient person, but that patience is
tested to its limits waiting in line behind dining plans folks so slow
everything down. So this sign made my day! Unfortunately, it was the only time
we saw it out, but at least it was being utilized during the morning breakfast
rush. We weren't at the food court at any other particularly hectic times, so
I'm guessing it's only used when things are really busy. Nonetheless, well
done, Pop Century!
We took the bus to Magic
Kingdom and had a fabulous day! I was on the hunt for three themed ice
cream cones and they did not disappoint! The Lost Princess cone was at Storybook
Treats, the Adventure is Out There
cone was at Auntie Gravity's, and
the Hei Hei cone was at Aloha Isle. All three were really good,
but if I had to pick a favorite, it would be the Lost Princess cone because I love all things lemon!
Thanks to a friend who spotted it on IG the day before, I
also bought a new Alex and Ani
bracelet…Orange Bird! I would not
have know about it if it hadn't been for her because I didn't spend much time
browsing in shops on this trip, so I am eternally grateful to her!
The weather was lovely and we stayed until late afternoon
before heading to Disney Springs for
dinner at Blaze Pizza. After
returning to our resort, we had a quiet evening and I FaceTimed with Ginny.
Usually, she is pretty animated – rolling over, waving her paws, looking into
the phone, tipping her head when I speak – but as you can see, she was having
none of it. I got the evil eye and not much else. Clearly she was annoyed that
we were away!
We took an uber over to the Polynesian to get Tonga
Toast for breakfast at Captain
Cook's and then took the monorail to MK.
We have a brick right near MK on the way to Contemporary
as part of the Walk Around the World
display they did many years ago. For the past several years, if a brick has
been damaged and removed, it has simply been replaced with a plain brick (I
believe we were told the bricks would last ten years and that if they became
damaged within those ten years, they'd be replaced with another copy of the
personalized brick, but it was almost 25 years ago, so don't quote me!).
They've now decided to remove all of the personalized bricks as they redesign
and reimagine WDW. Now anyone can
purchase a commemorative brick to have a souvenir, but if you have an original
brick, you can pick up a voucher at City
Hall and then the commemorative brick only costs $10 instead of $30 for the
6" brick. We had picked up our voucher on our way out of MK the day before, so as soon as we got
to MK, we went straight to the Tomorrowland Light & Power Co.,
which is the shop at the exit to Space
Mountain. We were able to create our commemorative brick, and were told to
come back in about two hours. To pass the time, we rode the PeopleMover, went to Carousel of Progress, and watched the "Move It! Shake It! MousekeDance
It!" street party. The park was pretty crowded, so once we picked up
our brick, we left the park and went out to our original brick to take
pictures. While we were there, we had many people stop and chat, including a cast
member who told us all about the plans for the reimagined entrance to MK!
We took the monorail back to the Polynesian for the fourth themed ice cream cone of the weekend –
the Te Fiti cone at Pineapple Lanai. Another winner, although
I don't really think you can ever gone wrong with lime (very similar to the Tinker Bell cone I had back in
December).
We walked from the Polynesian
over to the TTC and took the
monorail to Epcot. We spent the rest
of the day wandering around the park to enjoy the Flower and Garden Festival again before walking over to the Boardwalk. I'd been keenly aware of the
increase in posts about Jellyrolls
on social media (they started allowing video recording a few months ago) and I
was worried that it would be insanely busy as a result of the overexposure.
While I hoped to be proven wrong, I was unfortunately correct. In our 20+ years
of going there, it was just about the busiest we've ever seen it – as in there
was a line of people out the door waiting to get in when we called it a night.
Remember how I said we were getting old? We only lasted until 11:00! Pitiful!
The pianists were as incredible as always and it was great to see my beloved
Scotty! Normally we try to stay for the whole show, but there was no chance we
were going to last until 2:00 am! Embarrassing!
Monday, April 1
After packing and dropping off our bag at Bell Services, we
took an uber over to Animal Kingdom.
If my number one objective for the trip was the Orange Bird sipper, my number two objective was seeing Kevin from Up, who had recently begun appearing in AK. We all know how much I love Up, and Kevin is such a great character and I just love her!
As soon as we entered the park, we saw DiVine, which is a rare occurrence for us, and then I made a
beeline for area where I thought we'd have the best chance of seeing Kevin. Well it didn't even take five
minutes for us to see her strolling around! So beautiful!
We wandered around the park for a little bit and then were
on our way out when we passed the meet-and-greet area for Russell and Dug. The
line didn't seem too terrible, so I decided to wait and meet them. What a great
decision! It was such a hilarious and heartwarming visit with them! I had a
tsum tsum of each of them that I wanted them to hold, and instead, Dug immediately tried to eat his. Then
they both tried to balance the tsum tsum on their noses, with Dug being more successful than Russell. The cast member and photopass
photographer were also awesome and it just really ended the trip on such a high
note!
We took an uber over to Beach
Club for our lunch at Beaches and
Cream and then another uber back to Pop
Century to catch the Magical Express
back to the airport to fly home to our Ginny – who was very excited to see us!
All was forgiven!
Happy Tails to you!
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