WDW Trip: Right Bookend

This is going to be a fairly short post – unfortunately we have returned to the real world and I have a ton of homework to do!  And I'm pretty sure the pictures are of more interest than my commentary!

As always, here's a photo of our Magic Bands for this trip…I love "Mary Poppins!"

On Wednesday, I drove C to the airport in Orlando; he flew home to work for a couple of days.  I was pretty pleased with where I parked at the airport:

After dropping him off, I checked in at the hotel where I was attending a fantastic AMTE conference.  I presented with two professors on Friday morning, and the other sessions I attended were very good.  Overall, I really enjoyed the conference and hope to have the opportunity to attend it again in the future.

On Saturday morning, C flew to Tampa and his parents picked him from the airport.  They spend three months each year in Florida, so it worked out perfectly.  I drove from Orlando and we met about halfway in between for a late breakfast before they left and we headed back to WDW.

We stayed at Port Orleans Riverside in the of the royal guest rooms, which have a princess theme.  We stayed in a similar room a little more than a year ago, and the decorations are really cute.

My favorite feature of the room?  The headboards!  You push a button on the side and the headboard lights up.  Adorable!

The resort itself it very picturesque and we love walking around taking photos of the scenery.

Saturday was Valentine's Day, so we went to our two favorite parks – Epcot and MK – with dinner at Kona Café in between.

We knew the weekend would be busy, given Valentine's Day and President's Day, but my goodness, it was so crowded!  We didn't have any specific plans, so we wandered around Epcot, enjoyed the atmosphere, and got some delicious snacks.  We also listened to the band at the U.K. pavilion, The British Revolution.  They are so talented!  They play songs by The Clash, The Beatles, Oasis, Duran Duran, and Queen, to name a few.  They are always highly entertaining!

fresh caramel corn from Germany pavilion

Mickey pretzel

chocolate macaron ice cream sandwich from France pavilion

ice cream martini from France pavilion

We took the monorail over to TTC and walked to Polynesian for dinner.  We'd been to Kona Café for breakfast a few times, but never for dinner.  It was ok.  Not bad, but definitely not great.  The highlight of the meal was the drink served in a pineapple, which looked awesome and was absolutely delicious.  I doubt we will return here for dinner any time soon.

Hidden Mickey

Fortunately, MK was open until 3 am, so arriving there after our dinner still left us with plenty of time!  We did a few of our favorite attractions, watched the Main Street Electrical Parade, and met Anna and Elsa with only a 15-minute wait – what a difference from last year when some people waited five hours to meet them!  A wait time of 15 minutes is about our limit for any character, and since the park was clearing out by 12:30, so we decided to wait to meet them.  They were both funny and adorable, but I especially loved Elsa!

Meeko - one of my favorite characters!

Obviously it had been a rather long week filled with many early mornings, so we slept in really late on Sunday before spending the afternoon at DHS. We saw the Golden Coach from the upcoming Cinderella movie, and I don't think the photo does it justice, because it is even more beautiful in person!

We drove to Downtown Disney for dinner at Raglan Road.  What a headache.  Between the holiday weekend crowds and the construction, it took forever.  I think I have officially sworn off Downtown Disney until the construction is complete in 2016.  It is such a mess right now!

We got up early on Monday because we knew there would be snow close to home.  We left at 5:30 am.  Typically, we would have been home by 7:00 pm.  Not this time.  As soon as we got into Virginia, the road became awful.  Absolutely terrible.

You'd have thought we were on a back country road instead of I-95.  Not a plow in sight.  For over five hours.  It was ridiculous.  We didn't get home until after 11:30!  What a long day!  This is what our car looked like when we got home:

The most important thing is that we made it home safely!  It was so wonderful to finally be back home!  I spent 11 of the first 15 nights in the month of February in Florida!  And one of the other nights was technically spent driving TO Florida, so I'd only spent three nights at home all month so far!  And I hadn't seen our dogs in ten days, so their greeting upon my return was fabulous!

I did realize that I spent the first three Sunday nights of the month at three different Disney resorts – February 1 at Yacht Club, February 8 at Art of Animation, and February 15 at Port Orleans Riverside.  Definitely something I have not done before at WDW!

Even though I love WDW, there's a lot of truth to the saying that there's no place like home!

Happy Tails to you!