We got to our room, dropped our stuff and quickly got ready to leave again. Within 20 minutes, we were out the door again and walking back to the bus stops. We only had to wait a few minutes before a bus pulled up to take us to our first park of the trip – Magic Kingdom! It was pushing 6pm by this point, but the park had extra magic hours until 3am. We knew we’d never make it that late after traveling all day, but our aim was to see the midnight fireworks.

Once we reached Magic Kingdom, we had to stop at guest services. Luke had purchased his 10 day park hopper tickets with the Canadian discount, so he had to show his Passport to prove he was Canadian in order to activate them. I had purchased a Premier Passport the previous year (the annual pass which allows you access to both WDW and Disneyland – we had been to Disneyland twice in 2017, and when we did the math we knew I would save money by buying it once we factored in park tickets for the three trips, plus Photopass/Memory Maker plus AP discounts). Since we were already in line at guest services, I took the opportunity to purchase a Tables in Wonderland card. I actually tracked our savings with this card so you can see if it’s worth it, just check my dining reports to see the math!

We finally entered our first park of the trip! We didn’t have much time to soak in the atmosphere though, we had to hurry if we wanted to make it to our first Fastpass, we were already closing in on the end of our window. We walked down Main Street, pausing to take in the beauty that is Cinderella’s Castle at Christmas before entering Adventureland. As we were speed walking along, I stopped. I looked over my shoulder at a man we had just walked past, then looked at Luke and said ‘I think I know him! I’m pretty sure it’s someone from the Disboards who writes trip reports that I follow!’ I had never had never met anyone in person from the Disney websites I follow, so I shyly turned around and asked ‘are you Adam?’ It was, I told him who I was (I had commented on his planning report, so he knew who I was too). We chatted for a few minutes, but we had to get going in order to make our first fastpass, so we said goodbye. I totally didn’t think to get a picture with him to prove the Dismeet had happened!

Luke and I made it to Splash Mountain and scanned our Magicbands. The Mickey on the scanner turned green, we had made it in time! We knew the ride was going to be closed for a lengthy refurbishment starting in the second week of our vacation,  so it was important to us to get on it before that. Also, Splash Mountain was our very first ride at Walt Disney World back on our 2016 trip, so it just felt right for it to be the first ride on this trip.

By the time we got off Splash, we were within our next fastpass window so we walked straight over to Big Thunder Mountain.

We didn’t ask for it, but we lucked out and were assigned the back row – the best row on BTMR! This trip was off to a great start 🙂

After our wildest ride in the wilderness, we had some time to kill before our third fastpass. We walked around, revelling in the fact that after months of insane planning for this trip and wedding, there was nothing left we could do and our vacation had begun! It was a bit surreal, and I was very excited for the next two weeks.

We made our way over to Fantasyland where I snapped this picture of the back of the castle. So pretty!

Our third fastpass was for the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train. This is such a cute ride, I’d prefer it to be a bit longer but it’s such a smooth roller coaster.

Afterwards, we started making our way to the front of the park. Of course, I had to stop to take more castle pictures along the way, the Christmas lights are my favourite!

We walked down Main Street – 

and checked in for our 9:20pm dining reservation at Tony’s.

• Tony’s Town Square Review

After our meal, we stopped for our first (of many) Photopass pictures of the trip.

We still had some time before the fireworks display at midnight, and the hub around the castle wasn’t too crowded yet, so we spent some time just walking around, soaking everything in. We knew the show started about 10 minutes before midnight, but we didn’t head over to the Hub until about 11:35. Since it was just the rehearsal for the real NYE, and they had shot off the same fireworks earlier that evening (I believe at 6pm, before we arrived at the park), we were able to get a really great spot to stand and watch from – and less than a 15 minute wait until it started! 

I don’t consider myself a huge fan of fireworks (don’t let the number of times I watched Happily Ever After on this trip fool you haha), but this show – whoa. Just, whoa. Incredible. I would never in a million years brave the crowds on NYE to see it, but in a decent-sized crowd on December 30th? Absolutely.

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Once the fireworks ended, I decided I was ready to leave. The park was open until 1am, with Extra Magic Hours until 3am, but I was exhausted after travelling, and just wanted to go to sleep. We probably should have went and waited in line for something, it ended up taking quite awhile to get down Main Street and out of Magic Kingdom to the buses. Of course I had to stop for a picture of the train station with the red and green Christmas lights…

But, we made it to the bus stop eventually and didn’t have too long of a wait for a bus to take us back to Pop Century. It was after 1am by the time we got to our room though, I was falling asleep on my feet and crashed pretty quickly. Day one was in the books!

Total Fitbit Steps: 7820

Next: December 31, 2017

After getting through customs, we decided to go to our old faithful in the US terminal of the Edmonton airport, and hit up Quiznos. First food report fail of the trip – I didn’t take any pictures (don’t worry, overall I was really good about remembering). I had a turkey, ranch and Swiss on rosemary Parmesan bread, and I have no idea what Luke ate. It was probably on whole wheat bread though. I took some time to run over to the convenience store in the terminal and stocked up on snacks for the plane – ketchup chips for dayzz! Seriously though, USA – you are missing out by not selling ketchup chips – I’m fairly certain my body composition is ~40% ketchup chips due to how often I eat them…

We headed over to our gate as it approached boarding time, only to hear an announcement that our flight would be delayed due to one flight attendant not being there. Remember how cold I mentioned it was that morning? Apparently her car wouldn’t start, so she was going to catch a taxi to the airport. Ok, fine. My car is brand new and we own a garage, and it wasn’t happy about starting that day, so it’s something out of that flight attendants hands. Another half an hour goes by when we hear another announcement that for whatever reason, that flight attendant is now not going to make it, but a different flight attendant has stepped up and volunteered to be on our flight to help out. The only problem – he’s currently in the air and won’t land at the Edmonton airport for another 35 minutes. Luke and I were now patting ourselves on the backs for spending the extra money to fly direct – if this had happened any other time we’ve flown to Orlando we would have missed our connection.

Since we still had a bit of a wait, Luke went to get us a Starbucks – Very Berry Hibiscus refresher for me and a normal coffee for him. Sorry no pictures, but I’m sure everyone can picture a Starbucks cup haha. While we were waiting, we started chatting with a very friendly couple sitting beside us. They had been to Disney many times, but were very interested in hearing about our upcoming wedding and Marathon Weekend – they didn’t even realize runDisney was something that existed.

Eventually, our final flight attendant arrived and received a round of applause. Boarding began shortly afterwards. We were in row 12, an emergency exit row so we were able to be among the first group to board the plane, which was nice since we had so many things and it allowed us time to get situated for a long flight.

We had pre-ordered food, even though I was very sad when I received the email. WestJet changed their onboard menu, and my beloved ham and Swiss on a croissant was gone! Their menu is now Chopped Leaf, and filled with really healthy stuff, who wants that on vacation?!

There were two things on the menu that we thought we might like, so we decided to order one of each. I went for the California Chicken salad – spinach, oranges, green apples, sunflower seeds and sun dried cranberries topped with grilled chicken breast and creamy feta. Raspberry vinaigrette served on the side.

Luke ordered the Chopped Leaf Baja Bowl – brown basmati rice, grilled chicken breast, heritage blend lettuce, cheddar cheese, red and yellow peppers, Chopped Leaf signature black bean and corn salsa finished with a dash of cilantro. Sour cream and salsa served on the side.

I’m not sure what we were expecting, but cold rice is gross. Luke wasn’t super impressed by his choice at all, I tried it and wouldn’t order it myself. I was apprehensive of my selection, I don’t love spinach… or seeds of any kind… or feta… or cranberries – but I figured at least I could eat the chicken. I’m not sure if I was really hungry, but I ended up quite enjoying this salad. I just wish there was a bit more of the raspberry vinaigrette.

To kick off our vacation right, we both ordered alcohol on the flight (something we rarely do).

Luke went for a classic, and had rum and Coke. I decided to really celebrate the right way, and ordered sparkling wine. I’m not a huge wine drinker, but it just seemed so fitting to toast the next two weeks.

Our flight was ~5 hours, we passed the time by playing games on our phones, and watching Frozen through the WestJet app. Finally, we started making our descent into Orlando. Since we had been delayed leaving by about 90 minutes, we were much later than anticipated arriving at MCO, but it still wasn’t even 5pm. We got off the plane, stopped for a bathroom break and then hopped on the fake-o-rail! Am I the only one who considers this to be the first ride of the trip?

I stopped to snap some pictures of the signs in the airport for the Magical Express – none of our friends and family arriving the next week had been to WDW before (those who had been had never stayed on site), before we arrived to check in for our bus ride. They always ask to scan magicbands, but since Disney only mails out Magicbands within the US, I just hand over the letter we receive from DME and it’s never been an issue.

We were directed into our row, and almost immediately shown to our bus. It was already about half full, so we weren’t able to get seats in the front to try for a picture of the Walt Disney World sign. Oh well. We didn’t have to sit on the bus for long before pulling away from the airport – our vacation was truly starting! The welcome video on the bus had been updated from the year before, it now included Pandora so that was nice to see!

About 25 minutes later, we arrived at Pop Century. I know for sure we were sharing a Magical Express bus with Art of Animation, and possibly another resort, but we were the first stop so I’m not 100% sure. We gathered up our carry-on items, and headed inside to check in. Americans who receive their Magicbands ahead of time can opt in to a text message telling them their room number which allows them to bypass the main lobby, but as Canadians we can’t do this. No big deal, we only waited a few minutes before being called up. I had requested a room in the 80’s or 90’s section since I knew those were the newly renovated rooms, and our request was granted, we were in the 90’s building on the 4th floor. The walk from the main building was not bad at all, and we walked right past the bus stops for all of Pop Century.

Next: December 30, 2017 – Part Three!

Today was our final full day in Florida, and our last park day. We were awake extremely early, and took an Uber to the Contemporary, then walked along the path to the Magic Kingdom. I love that little path, and that security entrance is never too busy. The park wasn’t opening until 9am, but we had a breakfast reservation for 8am at Be Our Guest, so we scanned our Magicbands and entered the park. The previous year we had also made a PPO ADR at Be Our Guest, and ended up getting amazing pictures in front of the castle with no one else around. However, this was right after they changed the welcome show, and were allowing people to enter the park and crowd the Hub for the welcome show (I think they were doing renovations on the train platform or something?). Anyways, it was really crowded, and there was no way we could get empty castle pictures again 🙁

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(Can you tell we were only a little bit exhausted by this point?)

We fought our way through the crowd to the cast member that was checking for dining reservations (you couldn’t leave Main Street or the Hub unless you could prove you had a reservation). It was around this time that Luke realized he had forgot to pack my wallet (it’s his job to make sure our park bag is ready to go each day – also, he was super weird about that on this trip, because he’d been carrying around my engagement ring waiting to propose to me). We try to stick to cash only on our Disney trips, and of course the majority of our money was in my wallet, which was sitting in the safe in our room at Saratoga Springs. At least we had Luke’s credit card.

We arrived at the Beast’s castle, and checked in for our meal.

• Be Our Guest review

By 9:10 we had already been on Seven Dwarfs Mine Train and Peter Pan’s Flight and by 9:16 we were standing in the stretching room on the Haunted Mansion. 

We decided we wanted to do some character meet and greets, so we headed over to Ariel’s Grotto to meet everyone’s favourite Mermaid.

We then headed over to the Storybook Circus area for the meet and greets there. We decided to start with the ladies, and joined a pretty much non-existent line to meet Daisy Duck and Minnie Mouse.

Daisy was adorable! She immediatedly noticed our “Just Engaged” buttons and was so excited when we let her know it had just happened the day before 🙂

Daisy checking out my ring <3

Next was Minnie Mouse in her adorable pink outfit!

After meeting the girls, we noticed the line to meet the boys was very short, so we hopped in line to meet Donald and Goofy!

 

Fly home day was fairly uneventful- we had prepaid for a Super Shuttle to take us to/from the airport, so it showed up on time to drive us the hour or so to LAX. We breezed through security, and then had quite a bit of time before our flight left. I had packed a slice of cheesecake from the night before so we found some seats and enjoyed that.

Our flight was direct from LAX to Edmonton, so a little over 3 hours.

After meeting Olaf, we were getting close to our lunch reservation, so we headed out of DCA and over to Disneyland. We stopped for a few Photopass pictures

We headed over to Cafe Orleans (for the second time on this trip!).

• Cafe Orleans Review

We decided to head over to Fantasyland, and got into line for something we’d never done before – Storybook Canal Boats. As soon as you enter a queue line you can tell which rides are from the 50’s – the queue lines are very narrow and tend to zig-zag in a small space.

This ride was ok, definitely worth going on at least once to see all the little models based on Disney films.

We walked over to Tomorrowland and grabbed a Fastpass for Star Tours for a bit later.

Then we headed to the front of the park – a meet and greet had caught our eye on the app. We had to wait a bit, and we weren’t exactly sure where the line would be (we just knew the door characters came out of to begin their shift, so we hung out close to there).

We waved goodbye to Goofy as he walked past us, then watched as Mickey ran into the villain we were waiting to meet – Cruella de Vil! We followed her over by the train station, where we had a hilarious meet and greet – redemption for earlier that day!

We decided to check out the Main Street Cinema, and we hung out in there for awhile.

Eventually, we headed out and decided to go watch the Storytelling at the Royal Theatre. The show we saw was Tangled, but they were alternating between that and Beauty and the Beast that day. We both really enjoy Tangled, so no complaints from us!

I grabbed a snack from Maurice’s Treats, the snack cart beside the theater. Cheddar Garlic Bagel Twist, $4.79

Delicious! I love bread way too much haha.

The show was really cute, a condensed version of the story with more humour added in. We both agreed we would go back to see another show here at some point!

We decided to go for a walk through Toontown, but we didn’t feel like actually going on any of the rides there or waiting in line for any of the meet and greets, so we headed back to Tomorrowland.

We grabbed a Fastpass for Buzz Lightyear, and then jumped into the standby line for it. Once Luke beat me again and helped defeat Evil Emperor Zurg, we were in the window for the Star Tours Fastpass we had grabbed earlier. As soon as we returned from our flight with C-3PO, we were in the window for the Buzz Lightyear Fastpass we had just grabbed.

We decided to head back over to California Adventure, but we took our time exiting Disneyland, walking slowly down Main Street, checking out some of the shops.

Once we entered DCA, we realized we were hungry and could go for a drink, so we went to the Cove Bar

• Cove Bar review

While we were sitting there, we could see the roller coaster going and we realized we’d never been on it in the dark. Once we finished up our snack and drinks, we went and jumped into the standby line and rode California Screamin’.

By this point it was finally time to use the Radiator Springs Fastpass we had grabbed that morning, so off we went. I love Cars Land at night, it’s so beautiful!

The standby line had a posted wait time of 120 minutes, but the park was only a few minutes from closing. The Fastpass line was actually really long, and it took us about 20-25 minutes before we were boarding a car. By the time our ride through Radiator Springs was over, the entire standby line was gone – so that posted 120 minutes was actually about 30 minutes. This was really the first time we’d noticed how much they inflate the wait times at the end of the night.

So, I had Photopass included with my Annual Pass, but somehow I forgot to download our on-ride photo from our last ride on Radiator Springs. They also only sent three people total in our car, which is a sign of how inflated the wait time was.

DCA was closed by this point, so we headed out and got to Garden Walk as quickly as possible. I wanted to buy my mom a birthday present from the Harley Davidson store there since January 30th is her actual birthday. We arrived there at 8:40, and the store was completely locked up, lights turned off and no one in sight – despite the large sign on the door saying they were open until 9pm. I was so upset, I really wanted to get Mom something from there, but we were flying out the next morning so there wasn’t much I could do at that point.

We ended our trip with a meal at the Cheesecake Factory. Cheesecake makes everything better!

• Cheesecake Factory review

For our last full day in California, we again decided to skip rope-drop and start our day in DCA a little later. We immediately headed over and joined the stand-by queue for California Screamin’, where we stood and waited. And waited. And waited some more. The sign had said 20 minutes, but after standing there for almost thirty they announced that the ride was broken. Sigh. As we walked around the pier, we could actually see one of the trains stuck on the track – so I’m glad we weren’t on it!

We thought about stopping for Toy Story Midway Mania, but the queue was over an hour, and this was shortly before they introduced Fastpass for it. So, we skipped that with plans to come back later – it didn’t happen. Luke was pretty sad we didn’t get on TSMM on either one of our Disney trips in January, but we made up for it on the two trips that followed 🙂

We decided to go check out the special character meet and greets for the Chinese New Year. We entered the queue which didn’t move for over 15 minutes. Finally, Chip and Dale came out looking adorable.

They met with guests for about 25 minutes, then when there were only 4 families in front of us, a cast member let us know that Chip and Dale were leaving, but Mulan and Mushu would be right out. This was exciting! Rare characters!

They came out, and in their 25 minute set they met three of the families in front of us. Three. And then they left. I understand wanting to spend time with each person, but the parents of one family in particular were ridiculous. Seriously, your children do not need to spend 15 minutes getting pictures from every angle/pose/showing Mulan every toy you have with you/etc. You could see the cast members trying to hurry them along, but nope. I know that Luke and I are two adults without children, but we would have taken about 90 seconds – say hello, give a hug, smile for a few pictures, done. Needless to say, Luke was fuming. We had spent over an hour in the line by this point, and we were being told it would be 20-30 minutes before the next character would be out (Minnie Mouse). We were not the only people in line a little upset by this point, and we were not the only ones who decided to leave the line. In a lot of ways, I prefer Disneyland but I have to give WDW the edge in character meets on this day (this comes up again later on this day).

We were both tired and cranky by this point – we had been in the park for almost two hours and had done nothing but stand in lines – for nothing. We decided we needed to go on a ride to get this day back on track , and since we were right there we grabbed a Fastpass for Goofy’s Sky School.

We didn’t have too long of a wait before we were in the window for the fastpass, but we bought a churro and found a spot to sit down and regroup. Once our FP window opened, we rode Goofy’s Sky School – which is just a crazy Mouse style coaster.

We checked the app and noticed there were still Fastpasses available for Radiator Springs for that evening, so we ran over and grabbed one of those.

Also while on the app, a character meet caught our attention- Nick Wilde and Judy Hopps! They were in Hollywood Land by Stage 17, so off we went! There was barely any line when we got over there, and before long we were meeting Zootopia’s finest!

After pictures with Nick and Judy, we realized Olaf was about to start meeting people just around the corner, so we joined that line. There were only two groups in front of us – a young couple and a mother with her son (who I’d guess was 3-4). Olaf came out, and the young couple had their picture taken, gave him a warm hug and moved along. Then, the mother and her son moved up to meet Olaf – and cue another meet-and-greet reminiscent of that morning. The little boy had zero interest in actually meeting Olaf and taking a picture with him. It was cute at first, but after over 10 minutes of him trying to pull down the backdrop behind Olaf, throwing his teddy bear at Olaf, running in circles around Olaf screaming all while the mother smiled at her sweet little offspring – it was a bit much. Even the Photopass photographer was getting annoyed, he would audilbly sigh, then repeat “ok, let’s smile for a picture so the other people in line can give Olaf a hug”. Huge shoutout to that photographer, he was very polite and kept his cool while still giving the mother very obvious hints that she should reign in her child. I don’t mind waiting my turn, but this was painful to watch. Yes, I understand I am at a theme park created for children, but come on.

We finally got to go up and give Olaf a warm hug and get a few pictures.

Next: Part Two