As with our trip to Ireland, all the photos in this blog
were taken with my phone, so please forgive any that are slightly out of focus!
We took a short trip down to WDW for the weekend and had a
great time! As you know, we choose character names for our Magic Bands, and for this trip, we were Pongo and Perdita from 101 Dalmatians:
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| Our Inspiration |
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| Dalmatian decals I purchased online - blue collar for Perdita, red collar for Pongo - just like the movie |
We flew down on Friday
evening and the main purpose of trip was to attend the Disney’s Fairy Tale
Weddings & Honeymoons Showcase for final inspiration for our vow renewal
ceremony in a few months. The event was
held at the Grand Floridian Convention Center and it was very well done! We attended two sessions, sampled food and
cake, chatted with the pros, and admired the decor and all of the many table settings.
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| the most magical way to travel |
Alice in Wonderland table and cake:
Assorted cakes and cupcakes:
And the MOST AMAZING cake I have ever seen:
As for the rest of the weekend, we mostly relaxed, and in my case,
did homework. We stayed at the
Contemporary, which is FABULOUS. We’d
only ever stayed there once before, and for only one night, so getting to
experience the resort for three nights was amazing.
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| the envelopes I found online (there was a third one with a Toy Story theme, but I didn't think to take a photo until the second day of our trip after I'd already left that one for Mousekeeping) |
On Friday night, we had dinner at Beaches and
Cream, which is over at the Beach Club.
It is one of our favorite places at WDW, and now that reservations are
necessary, we felt very fortunate to get one.
After dinner, we went over to Downtown Disney and wandered around the
shops. Always a good way to spend an
evening, in my opinion! As I have
previously mentioned, I am not into pin trading, but I bought a couple of pins
that I thought were adorable:
And this is my favorite purchase of the weekend:
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| Mary Poppins cosmetic bags :-) |
The Wedding Showcase was Saturday, so after a quick
breakfast at Contempo Café, where we enjoyed the monorails zooming through the
atrium, we headed over to the Grand Floridian.
After the showcase, we had a dinner/bowling date at Splitsville, which
is at Downtown Disney. I am an
absolutely terrible bowler, but I love bowling!
I was fully prepared to lose in an embarrassing fashion to C, but did
not predict what a competent bowler the eight-year old in the next lane would
be. Oh, well! I had fun despite the numerous gutterballs. Once we got back to the Contemporary, we
decided to watch the Magic Kingdom “Wishes” fireworks from the resort. Beautiful!
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| Yes - this was the ball I used! |
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| extremely fashionable |
We slept in on Sunday, which was awesome. I admit that I love sleeping pretty much all
the time, but we’ve had a lot going on and were both kind of run down, so
sleeping in all morning was a welcomed luxury.
We were able to snag another Beaches and Cream reservation, so we went
over there for lunch and then got ready to go to the Magic Kingdom for Mickey’s
Not-So-Scary Halloween Party. This party
is one of the few opportunities where adults are allowed to wear costumes into
the park, and we’ve attended the party three times before and were very
impressed with the quality and creativity of the costumes we’ve seen. As for us, we are not big into costumes, so
we’ve never dressed up for the party, but we decided to get into the Halloween
spirit a little bit. C wore an Oozma
Kappa t-shirt and a Sulley hoodie, and I wore a Minnie Mouse skirt, yellow
Crocs, and Minnie bow in my hair. That
is just about the most “costumed” you will ever find us.
We went over to the Magic Kingdom around 4:00 and were able
to ride a bunch of attractions before the rain began. It absolutely poured while we waited in line
for Splash Mountain, but the payoff was that as we rode it, there was a
gorgeous rainbow in the sky almost right over Cinderella Castle. So pretty! The rest of the party was a lot of fun, even though it
rained off and on all evening, which caused the second showing of the parade to
be canceled. The upside of the rain was
that it caused the crowd to thin out nicely over the course of the party; it
certainly wasn’t going to chase us away, so we stayed until the end to enjoy
every second.
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| pumpkin spice waffle sundae |
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| candy corn ice cream |
On Monday we sadly had to pack and check out of the
hotel. We spent the day visiting some of
our favorite resorts and I got quite a bit of homework done. While I would definitely prefer to not do
homework on vacation, I can’t complain about getting to do it in such a happy
setting! We knew our flight was delayed,
so we had a few extra hours to relax before heading to the airport. The flight was supposed to depart at 8:15 pm,
but did not take off until 12:20 am, meaning that we did not get to our house until
almost 4:00 am. Even though we were
tired, the welcome we received from our three furry friends was so
adorable. Actually, it was four furry
friends because my mom’s dog was also thrilled to see us – probably because she
knew our return meant that she would be going home in the morning to reclaim her
title of “only dog.”
For those of you who think I only ever have positive things
to say about all things Disney, you may be surprised to know I have two minor
complaints about our trip:
1) Downtown
Disney is a disaster. I know it is
undergoing a major refurbishment, but that fact made it no less annoying to
search endlessly for parking or navigate all of the construction.
2) As
I said, this was the fourth time we attended the Halloween party. I don’t know if Disney now sells more
tickets to the event or if we have lucked out in the past and attended on
nights that weren’t sold out, but it was super crowded. In my opinion, absolutely ridiculously busy
for something that costs people a good chunk of change. In the past, we have walked right onto
attractions and found prime viewing for the parade and fireworks with little
forethought. Not his time. It felt like people were everywhere and it
was only because of the rain that people began leaving so that by the end of
the night, the park felt rather empty and that’s just how we like it.
Overall, it was a fantastic weekend and I owe a huge thank you to my lovely mom, who spent the weekend taking
care of our girls, and another thank you to my awesome sister, who spent part of the weekend with my
mom so that she wouldn’t be alone. I
love these women. <3
Happy Tails to you!
