Wednesday, January 7, 2015

WDW New Year's Celebration Part 2

I have so much to write about from the past two weeks that I've decided to do a series of short posts.  This seems like the only way I will actually get everything documented and manage the countless photos we took.  So I'm going to write a post for each of the days of our recent trip that I haven't covered yet, beginning with December 31.  They'll be short, but I hope you'll enjoy them.  I still have Christmas to cover, a review of 2014 to write, and our events on December 29th and 30th to share, along with some other miscellaneous things, but I'll get these short posts done in the meantime.

New Year's Eve is a very important day for us – our wedding anniversary.  And this year was a big one:  20 years!  This was our third time spending NYE at WDW – when we got married there in 1994, in 2003, and now 2014.  We had two very busy days on the 29th and 30th, and planned on a low-key day for the 31st.

We began the day with breakfast over at Wilderness Lodge with my mom before driving her to the airport.  She decided to stay in Florida for only a few days so that she could come back and watch the dogs for us, which would minimize their stay at the kennel.  She is so, so good to us.

As we were driving to the departures area, a plane drove across a bridge right over us, which has to some kind of good luck symbol, right?



After the airport, we grabbed a quick lunch at Art of Animation, then hung out with C's parents for a little while before heading to DHS.  Despite insisting for months that we would not go anywhere near a park on New Year's Eve, we scored a fastpass for Toy Story Midway Mania earlier in the day, and we did not want to pass it up, since that is one of our very favorite attractions.


After TSMM, we got a couple of the carrot cake cookies I am always raving about, and sat on a curb and watch the Osborne Dancing Lights for over an hour.  This may not seem like other people's idea of fun, but between the lights and the people watching, we were highly entertained.  The only annoying thing was that the park was handing out noisemakers to everyone, so people everywhere were making loud, obnoxious honking noises with their horns.  Seriously, who thought this was a good a idea?!?  The same thing was happening over at Magic Kingdom, as my brothers were there and I was receiving texts from them about the ridiculous honking.  I'm glad we were only in the park for a few hours, because I doubt I would have been able to handle much more of that noise.  It is times like this when the teacher in me really wants to start telling people off for being inconsiderate toward those around them.




We walked from DHS over to Yacht and Beach Club – the weather was perfect and we were able to get away from the crowds and the noise.  We stopped at what we like to think of as "our" gazebo, which is the Wedding Gazebo where we got married exactly twenty years ago.  There was no one around, and it was lit up so beautifully that we used my phone to play several songs and we danced together in our gazebo and felt like we were in our own little world.  Very romantic.


We had a late dinner reservation at Beaches and Cream and while we were there, Tim Allen, Buzz Lightyear himself, popped in for a few seconds.  The people he was with had been in the take-out line getting ice cream and he came in to check on them.  He was only in the restaurant for maybe thirty seconds, but it was long enough to snap a quick photo.  I'd read online that he was at WDW that day, so it was exciting to see him in person.


Our waitress was so great to us during dinner – she put on the flashing lights and announced our anniversary and everyone clapped for us.  It was very sweet.  She also gave us two balloons (you know how I feel about balloons), which another cast member later embellished with a quick drawing of Mickey.



We ended the night by watching the Epcot and DHS fireworks from the Yacht Club boat dock with my brother and sister-in-law who had come over from MK.  It was great to see both fireworks shows and not be surrounded by thousands of people, and even greater to be able to walk right out of Yacht Club and grab a cab back to our resort without being trampled by those same thousands of people as everyone tried to exit the parks at the same time!

It was a fabulous day and an awesome anniversary – can't wait to see what the next twenty years will bring!

Happy Tails to you!

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