Category Archives: Disney

Disney, Travel

Disney’s Magical Express (and Navigating MCO)

If flying into Orlando International Airport (MCO) and staying in a Disney-owned hotel, you can use their complimentary bus service, known as Disney’s Magical Express (DME). This is a fleet of motorcoaches which travel to every Disney hotel on property (the first year, our DME to All Star Music shared a bus with All Star Movies and Sports as well as Coronado Springs. The second year, our DME to Old Key West was sharing with those staying at Saratoga Springs and Port Orleans).

After you have made your room reservation and booked your flights, you must sign up for DME. The confirmation email you received from your Disney-owned hotel will have information on how to do this.

You will receive a letter in the mail, along with bright yellow luggage tags before you leave (if you have not received these about 30 days prior to your trip, you can give the 1-800 number for DME a call).

Simply attach the yellow tags to your checked baggage before you leave, and check-in at the airport like normal. Once your baggage arrives in Orlando, the airport employees will see the yellow tags, and sort it off to one side. From there, it gets transported from the airport to Disney property, where it is sorted by Hotel and then delivered directly to your room. Expect this to take 3-4 hours from the time you arrive at the hotel – but you do not need to be present in your room for your luggage to be delivered.

If you do not receive the yellow tags in time – no worries! You can just pick up your own luggage once you arrive at MCO (just like any other flight you’ve ever taken).

After arriving at MCO, you will be in one of the four terminals. From there, you will need to catch their monorail to the main building – it’s impossible to miss it.

Then just follow the signs for Disney’s Magical Express – located on Side B on the first floor.

The signs saying “Ground Transportation” will have a little bus with a Mickey head, as seen below.

Other signs will say “Disney’s Magical Express”.

Once you reach the check-in desk for the Magical Express, they will ask to scan your Magicband. Disney only mails these bands to US addresses, so I just say I am Canadian, and they will ask for the letter you received in the mail. Even if you don’t have that letter with you, they can search for your reservation by name in the system. They will then direct you into the proper line, and you will be greeted by another cast member once you reach the front of the line. From there, you will be directed onto the proper bus to get to your hotel.

Sit back, relax and enjoy the welcome video you will see! You are officially on vacation!

Disney, Travel

Park Bag Essentials!

You can get away with carrying nothing on you for a park day at WDW, since your Magicband acts as your hotel room key, your park tickets (combined with your fingerprint), and you can add a credit card/password to it so you just need to scan it and enter your pin to make a purchase. However, we are not those people.

We always carry a bag with us into the park – and we typically take turns carrying it since we only ever take one bag for the two of us. Lately, we’ve been using our Disney Vans backpacks that I found super cheap at Winners:

[​IMG] [​IMG]

But you can use any bag you’re comfortable carrying around!

Now – what could we possibly need a giant bag for? What do we keep in it? That all depends on the time of year we’re at Disney, what we have planned for the day, etc.

This list is not inclusive, and you don’t have to carry all of it (or any of it – just make your list based on your own personal needs)

  • Sweater/jacket – it cools off once the sun sets
  • Raincoat/poncho – Florida weather is unpredictable! We like having those small ponchos from the Dollarstore which we just throw away once we’ve used them.
  • Sunglasses/glasses and case – I’m blind, and need to switch back and forth between the two during the day
  • Passports – Disney has a rule where you can not purchase alcohol without a passport (unless you are an American citizen, then any government-issued ID will work). If my jacket has a zipper pocket, I like to keep the passport there for protection.
  • FuelRod – these are portable chargers that will work on basically any phone (they come with a few different adapters). The great thing about this brand is that they have vending machine-type things in every Disney park that let you swap out your charger for a new, fully-charged one as many times as you’d like (Luke and I only own one between us – my phone will be low so I’ll use the FuelRod, get my phone back up to almost a full charge, then we’ll swap it out for a new charger for Luke to use. On the day we got engaged, our phones were going crazy from all the text messages and Facebook notifications, so we ended up swapping out our FuelRod at least 5 times in one day).
  • Brita water bottle – we like this one since it has a built-in filter. Florida water is gross.
  • Sharpies – for character signatures
  • Pen/notepad – I like to keep notes of what we do during the day
  • Snacks – granola bars, fruit snacks, etc – you are allowed to bring food into the parks with you, some people bring sandwiches to save money (I like Disney food way too much to do that haha)
  • Gum – Disney does not sell gum on property – but you are allowed to have it/chew it
  • Camera/phone – If I have pockets in my pants/sweater I just hold onto these things myself, but it’s nice to have a place to put them while on rides.
  • Ziplock bags – Come in handy for water rides to stick our phones/electronics into
  • Tylenol – the parks are loud and can be quite crowded, which leads to headaches.

This seems like a long list, but most things are very light or don’t take up much space in our backpack.  I like to be prepared for anything!

Disney, Travel

January 28, 2017 – Part Two

As we were walking through Downtown Disney, we realized we were feeling a bit hungry, so we decided to go see if we could get in to the Rainforest Cafe.

After we left Rainforest, we still didn’t feel like going back to the parks just yet. Instead, we headed into the Grand Californian Hotel, and found some comfy chairs in a hallway to sit in. We were right by some large windows, so there was lots of natural light streaming in, and people were coming and going, but somehow Luke fell asleep and napped for about an hour while sitting up haha. I spent the time people-watching and checking in on social media (since the parks did not have Wi-fi at the time, but the Grand did).

Once Luke woke up, we decided it was time to go back to the park, so we entered DCA through the Grand – so convenient! I understand why people love staying there!

We walked around a for a bit, before it was time for our World of Colour dining package at Wine Country Trattoria. If you like negative reviews, you can check it out here...

After our not-so-great meal, I wasn’t feeling great (it was a pretty early morning that day, and unlike Luke, I hadn’t taken a nap). It was also a bit cold, so we decided to go to the Animation Academy building in Hollywood Land. We just sat on a bench in there watching the video on the screens surrounding the room for awhile. We could see the line to meet Anna and Elsa, and as it got shorter we decided to jump into line and meet them. I do like that you can get both of them in a picture together in California, but I thought the pair we met in Florida were a little  better (more in character, and more wiling to joke around with us).

We had never gone into the Sorcerer’s Workshop (located in the same building), so we headed there. It was kind of neat, but I find it weird how it just comes to a dead end, and then you need to back-track in order to get out.

We headed out of the Animation Building, and went to buy some matching Star Wars shirts I had seen earlier in the day (I finally convinced Luke to wear matching shirts with me, I was very excited haha). We made our purchase (and saved 15% with my annual pass!),  then continued looking around in the shops. After a few minutes, Luke realized that his FitBit was missing, and couldn’t remember the last time he saw it 🙁 We retraced our steps, and went back to ask the cast members in the stores we were just in, but no sign of it anywhere. We even walked out to Lost and Found to file an official report, but we have never heard back – it is lost forever (or someone found it, picked it up and got themselves a barely used FitBit Flex…). It ended up working out in the end – my company introduced an initiative where they subsidized the cost of purchasing a FitBit – so I was able to upgrade to a Charge for under $60, and I gave Luke my FitBit flex which was only a month old.

Once we re-entered the park we still had some time before we needed to head over to watch World of Colour, so we headed into A Bug’s Life Land and went to watch it’s Tough to Be A Bug – and no, I still didn’t sit back in the seat for the poke in the back part haha. Of course we had to go on Heimlich’s Chew Chew Train afterwards to help him search for candy corn – it’s the simplest most little kid ride in the entire park, but we find a way to go on it every single trip.

We headed over to the Preferred Viewing area for WOC, but made a stop at the Little Mermaid ride when we saw that it was practically a walk-on 🙂

We had an amazing spot to watch World of Colour thanks to the dining package. The show itself was as fantastic as always, It’s a show I never take pictures of, I just put my phone/camera away and enjoy it to it’s fullest. Of course I did snap a few pics of the Mickey wheel before the show started though 🙂

After WOC was over, we headed out of the park, caught an Uber back to our hotel and called it a night.

Disney, Food Review

Wine Country Trattoria – WOC Dining – January 28, 2017

It’s been almost 10 months since this meal, and I’m finally attempting to write this report. I’ve been dreading it, trying to put it off for as long as possible. I hate negative reports, but I really don’t know if there are any positives from this meal…

We did the World of Colour Dining Package at Wine Country Trattoria back in 2015 on our first trip to Disneyland and it was great, so we were looking forward to getting back to try it again.

We checked in, and were led upstairs to an almost empty second floor. Apparently this is where all of the WOC dining package people were sitting (in 2015 we were in the regular restaurant).

We had the dining package menu placed in front of us:

First up was our drink orders. While we were downstairs waiting for our table, I was looking through the drink menu and saw that they had Fairytale Cuvee – the champagne that is included with an Escape Wedding Package through Disney Fairy Tale Weddings. We had already been discussing that as an option for our wedding (we had only been engaged for a few weeks at this point), so I decided I wanted to order a glass to try it. The waiter looked so confused, and told me he had to go ask for permission to serve me a glass of it (what? He had just told us we could order anything from the bar downstairs…) Eventually he came back with my tiny little $17 DOLLAR GLASS OF CHAMPAGNE! Ouch, I probably wouldn’t have ordered it if I had known it would be that expensive (can you tell I rarely drink at restaurants?)

Luke kept it a little easier for our waiter, and just ordered a beer of some kind (according to our receipt, it’s an  ‘Anaheim Hefewzn’ – whatever that means.). He described it as not bad, but not memorable.

Next up were our Appetizers – we could choose between soup or salad.

I went for the soup, which was a Minestrone that day. It was ok, nothing special. I’ve had better at Olive Garden. It was also a pretty small serving.

Luke went for the Starter Salad – arugula, fennel, red onion, spiced walnuts and goat cheese with a fig-balsamic dressing (the only thing I’d eat from that salad are the walnuts, and I’m not supposed to eat nuts due to my Crohn’s). This salad was similar to the one Luke had back in 2015, but it wasn’t as good as he remembered.

Then came the entrees. On our trip in 2015, I had ordered the steak option and sent it back twice to be cooked as I had ordered it (if I ask for well done, I don’t want it bleeding out on my plate). Once I finally did get it cooked as ordered, it was delicious.

I decided to go for the steak option again this time, and ordered the Ribeye Steak – served with creamy garlic stacked potatoes and roasted brussel sprouts with bacon and honey. I mentioned that I don’t like brussel sprouts, and the waiter let me know I could swap out for broccoli no problem.

The steak was fairly dry (I know, I ordered it well done – but a properly cooked well-done steak should not be dry!). There also wasn’t much flavour on it – shouldn’t they be putting at least salt and pepper or something on it while they cook? The broccoli was cold (but cooked), and the potatoes were just ok. They reminded me a bit of the scalloped potatoes I had at Olivia’s Cafe at Old Key West a few weeks earlier, but the Olivia’s ones were a million times better!

Luke ordered the Herb-Roasted Chicken Breast – served with broccolini, caramelized onions, red peppers and fettucine pasta with an alfredo sauce.

The pasta was good, but the chicken was much better back in 2015. Luke says it seems like everything was pre-prepared, and pretty dry by the time it made it’s way to us – as if it had been sitting under a heat lamp for awhile.

Also included in this dining package is a tray of desserts – Trattoria Tiramisu, European Macaroons, Caramel Chocolate Panna Cotta and Lemon Cream Puffs.

I’m not a fan of cream puffs (or lemon flavour), so Luke ate his and mine was left. I also don’t get the current obsession with macarons (or European macaroons as the menu called them…) – I ate one of these, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to buy them (I did buy a few from a cart in Downtown Disney a few days prior, and I regretted it  – I just don’t love them!). Luke told me his list of best to worst form this dessert plate would be the macaron-cream puff-tiramisu-panna cotta. In comparison, my list would be panna cotta-macaron-tiramisu-cream puff.

Overall, the desserts were fine – but the rest of the meal had been so disappointing up to that point that we were just over it.

This meal cost $46 each, and we saved $13.80 with my annual pass. Our total bill was $111.20 – way too expensive for such a disappointing meal.

Disney, Travel

Budget Friendly Disney Eats!

Look, we know Disney is expensive. Just because we’ve made all those dining reservations does not mean you need to join us for them – but you’re still going to want to eat haha. We decided to put together a list of some great options we’ve tried (or trust the opinions of people who have tried) that might be little easier on the wallet…

Magic Kingdom

  • This list wouldn’t be complete without mentioning Peco’s Bills! It’s possibly my favourite quick service restaurant at Disney (that fixin’s bar doesn’t hurt my opinion of that). It’s a Tex-Mex style menu, and you can easily get an entree and a soft drink for under $20 (we recommend the fajita platter at $14.99 or the beef nachos, $12.49), and then you load it up with all the shredded cheese, salsa, guacamole and sour cream your heart desires – you end up with a large portion!  
  • Columbia Harbour House – we have never ate here, but it always has great reviews. The most expensive entree on the menu is $15, and you can actually get healthier options (like grilled salmon, salad, etc)
  • Another option is Casey’s Corner, located on the corner of Main Street. This place is all about the foot long hot dogs – topped with chili&cheese or mac&cheese – each $10.99 (includes fries) – or . I’ve also heard a lot of great things about the corn dog nuggets ($8.49 with fries). Honestly, they are just hot dogs, but the fries are shoestring style (my favourite!)
  •  
  • I’m giving an honourable mention to Be Our Guest (lunch only). This is one of the only quick serve locations on property to accept advance dining reservations, as it is one of the most in-demand places to eat. The lunch menu is reasonably priced, and soft drinks are self-serve, so you can get free refills throughout your meal as well.

Epcot

  • Sunshine Seasons is the top of my list for this park based on the size of the menu. There are options for everyone – soup, salad, sandwiches, chinese food, vegan – and everything is under $15!
  • We’ve never ate there, but Tangierine Cafe in the Morocco Pavilion is always raved about. The servings are generous, and cost is under $20.
  • If you’re feeling like fish and chips ($10.99), head to Yorkshire County Fish Shop in the UK Pavilion.
  • It’s very easy to make a meal out of snacking around Epcot. Boulangerie Patisserie les Halles has very cheap French pastries, if you like coconut you’ll love the School Bread ($3.49) from Kringla Bakeri Og Kafe in the Norway Pavilion, the curry chicken pocket ($4.50) from Joy of Tea in the China Pavilion is delicious. Turkey legs (~$10) are found in the American Adventure Pavilion, as well as funnel cakes ($7.99).

Hollywood Studios

  • This is the park most lacking in food options, but you can still find things to fill your belly 🙂 The Hollywood Brown Derby Lounge has a small menu that is surprisingly affordable. The actual restaurant is pricer, but you can get a smaller version of their famous Cobb salad in the lounge for $10, or wagyu-beef sliders for $17.
  • Backlot Express is considered the best quick service location at the Studios. The menu is fairly straight forward, with a few items having a Star Wars theme (like the Dark Side chicken and waffles, $10.99)

Animal Kingdom

  • Satu’li Canteen is a brand new restaurant that opened with Avatar Land in May of 2017. They offer a healthy “bowl” served with your choice of beef or fish for $12.99, or chicken or tofu for $11.49. I highly recommend this place – and make sure you get dessert! 
  • If you’re looking for a giant plate of fries, head to Flame Tree BBQ. We shared an order of their pulled pork and cheese fries ($6.49) on a previous trip, and it was more than enough for us as a mid-afternoon snack.  
  • There is a Rainforest Cafe located near the entrance to the park. The appetizer menu is shareable and affordable – we shared a $20 appy platter on our last trip to California at the Rainforest Cafe located there and it was a generous portion of food.

Disney Springs

  • Our #1 recommendation here will always be Earl of Sandwich. Luke loves it – I’m not even much of a sandwich person and I’ve always enjoyed my meals here as well. They are very simple pressed sandwiches with straight forward ingredients, and cost under $7.50 each. Even if you make your meal a combo (add a drink and small bag of chips), your total will be only be a little over $10. You can’t eat on Disney property much cheaper than that!                                                                     
  • We haven’t tried it in Orlando (it’s a franchise we have in Edmonton), but Blaze Pizza always seems to be loved! Who can complain about $10 pizzas?
  • D-Luxe Burger is also highly reviewed, burgers are $10-$13 with a side of fries costing about $5.
  • Morimoto Street Food is a grab and go location serving Asian-inspired snacks (Bao buns are $8-10 for 2, sushi rolls $8, etc)
  • If you’re craving something sweeter, Ghiradelli serves great ice cream sundaes, although they are a little pricy ($10 and up).
  • Chicken Guy – the menu is very basic, but the chicken strips were fantastic! It’s all about the sauces here – be a little adventurous and try a few!

Disney Resorts

  • A lot of people seem to forget about all the options available at the hotels. A personal favourite is Saana at Animal Kingdom Lodge. This can an expensive option depending on what you order, but I highly recommend the bread service ($17). It is more than enough food for one person to make a meal out of!
  • The food options at the All Star Resorts are plentiful and affordable. I had a turkey dinner at All Star Music back in 2016 for under $11 – and it was actually really tasty! [IMG]
  • Beaches and Cream at Beach Club Resort is technically a table service restaurant and you will need an advance reservation, but the prices are very affordable!  It is an old, 50’s diner feeling, and serves up very basic fare – patty melts, burgers, sandwiches, etc. My personal favourite was the grilled cheese and tomato soup ($12.99) – honestly one of the best I’ve ever had. Also save room for dessert – giant ice cream sundaes large enough to share between 2-3 people ($7.99 for No Way Jose, the one we shared)

Honourable Mentions

  • I need to give a shout-out to Disney chicken nuggets. These can be found at select quick service locations in every park, as well as a few resort food courts. They are not your standard McDonald’s style nuggets, they are real chunks of chicken and are quite tasty! ($9.49)
Satu’li Canteen at Animal Kingdom
Casey’s Corner in Magic Kingdom
Chicken Guy sauces from Disney Springs

Disney, Travel

January 8th, 2017 – Part One

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When we woke up, the first thing we noticed was how cool it was. The temperature had dropped overnight, and we woke up to it being only +2 degrees Celsius. We weren’t going to let that stop us though, it just meant we needed to bring our jackets with us for the day.

We were up fairly early this morning, since we had asked bell services to stop by our room around 8am. We were saying goodbye to Old Key West, and would be checking in to Saratoga Springs for the remainder of the trip. Bell services was on time, and we handed over all of our luggage, just taking our park bag with us. We headed out to the bus stop, and the internal shuttle pulled up almost immediately so we jumped on that and rode it to Hospitality House. We checked out, then went to sit and wait for the bus to Epcot…and we sat and waited, and then waited some more. The estimated arrival time on the screen kept changing, and after about a 40 minute wait it finally showed up. That’s the longest we’ve ever waited for a bus, but we knew it was due to all the road closures on property to accommodate the full marathon happening that morning.

Luke’s only request for scheduling our park days was that we go to Epcot on the morning of the full marathon. His plan was to sign up for his first ever full in 2018, and he had found watching some of the race in 2016 very inspiring.

We arrived at Epcot, and it was fairly busy despite the cold temperature. Eventually, we were through the security line and entering the park. We stopped to cheer on some of the marathon runners while checking current wait times in the park. We noticed a low wait time for Soarin’, so we decided to go for a trip around the world 🙂

It was great as always 🙂 Once we exited, we realized we were kind of hungry, so we grabbed a table by Sunshine Seasons and split the Mickey Mousse we had purchased the day before from Amorette’s Patisserie.  

Once we finished our treat (who doesn’t love cake for breakfast?!), we were well within our window for our first Fastpass. You definitely do not need a FP for the Seas with Nemo and Friends, but I think it’s a cute ride and worth going on at least once each trip (and this was our second day at Epcot, plus you need to choose something from tier 2).

We then went and watched/cheered on some of the marathoners! I think this is such an awesome thing, it’s really quite amazing to see all the training and hard work these people have put in, and to see them so close to the end of their run. Seriously, if you are ever around Epcot on a marathon day, make sure you take some time to watch the race and clap for the accomplishment these people are about to achieve.

From there, we made our way over to Test Track for our next Fastpass!

We scanned our Magicbands and entered the Fastpass line, and 12 minutes later (according to the time stamps on my phone), we were designing this beauty…

I named her Alberta, after the province we live in – where people seem to love their jacked-up trucks hahahaha.

The ride was great as always (but not as great as Radiator Springs at Disneyland…)

We decided to start walking towards World Showcase, and entered on the Mexico Pavilion side. Since we had never done it before, we went inside the pyramid and saw there was no line up for the Grand Fiesta Tour! Off we went on a journey through Mexico with Donald Duck 🙂

We did not go any farther into World Showcase at this point, and instead starting making our way over to Canada for our lunch ADR. Of course, we had to stop to watch more marathoners! And I had to take a picture of the wonderful signs these ladies had made haha!

After seeing some people run by with absolutely fantastic costumes, we finally entered the Canada Pavilion – gosh it’s pretty!

We checked in, and had lunch at Le Cellier (review here).

Since we were already in the Canada Pavilion, we had to stop and ask for some of the Canada 150 Buttons they had created in celebration of Canada’s 150th Birthday this year. The cast member (who was from Regina, Saskatchewan according to her nametag) even wrote our hometowns on our pins for us (and dotted all the i’s with Mickey Heads!), and then covered the writing with a piece of tape to protect it.

While we were eating, we had decided to drop our Figment Fastpass, and were able to pick one up for Soarin’.

Soarin’ is such a great ride! I can’t believe we had never been on it prior to this trip (although it was closed for refurbishment on our only WDW trip before this one, and it was closed on 1 of our Disneyland trips as well).

Next: Epcot, Part Two

Disney, Travel

Fastpass+ at WDW

First of all, what is Fastpass+ (FP+)? It is a service offered by Disney complimentary with your park tickets which allows you to select up to 3 attractions per day to experience with a shorter line. At all of the applicable rides, you will see the regular, or “standby” line as well as a Fastpass line. The standby line might be a wait of over 2 hours, but with a FP+ you should be on the ride within 10-20 minutes (usually faster, sometimes it might take a little longer).

At the 60 day window before your trip, you can select up to 3 Fastpasses in advance. Your 3 choices must all be at the same theme park, but once you have used those up on the day of, you can search for any available FP+ that may be remaining for any park (to be used that day). I believe our max was 6 or 7 Fastpasses in one day… so it can be done!

If you are staying off site, your window to book these does not open until the 30 day window. By this point, some of the most popular rides will already have zero availability for FP+ – this is just one of the many perks of staying on site at WDW.

You will be given an hour long window to use your FP+ – there is a very small time frame of wiggle room on each side of this hour (from everything I’ve head or read, it’s about 5 minutes early or 15 minutes late – which essentially gives you an hour and 20 minutes).

When you go to use your FP+ for a ride, you must scan your Magicband (see, these things are important!).  The light will turn green, and a cast member will wave you through to the Fastpass line. Typically there will be a second scan point as well, to deter any line jumpers, so keep your Magicband out and ready!

Not every ride or show offers FP+ selection. Also, not every ride/show that offers it actually requires it. Each park is different as well, as you will see below. If you click on the name of the park, it will take you to my blog post describing a little more detail about each ride.

Magic Kingdom (choose any 3):

  • it’s a small world – Fastpass is not really required, line is typically not too long to wait in.
  • Big Thunder Mountain Railroad 
  • Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin
  • Dumbo – Fastpass not required, just go a little later in the day
  • Enchanted Tales with Belle
  • Haunted Mansion
  • Jungle Cruise
  • Mad Tea Party – Fastpass not required, line is never too long
  • Meet Ariel at her Grotto – character meet
  • Meet Cinderella and a Visiting Princess – Princess Fairytale Hall
  • Meet Mickey Mouse – Town Square Theater – talking Mickey!
  • Meet Rapunzel and a Visiting Princess – Princess Fairytale Hall
  • Mickey’s PhilharMagic – Fastpass not required, you can almost always get in to the next show (so you might wait 10 min)
  • Monsters, Inc. Laugh Floor – Fastpass not required, the theater is large and you’ll just have to wait for the next show
  • Peter Pan’s Flight
  • Pirates of the Caribbean
  • Seven Dwarfs Mine Train – highly recommend getting a Fastpass for this one. It’s one of the newest rides in this park (about 4-5 years old now, but lines are always over an hour)
  • Space Mountain
  • Splash Mountain
  • The Barnstormer – Fastpass not required
  • The Magic Carpets of Aladdin – Fastpass not required
  • The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh – Fastpass not required
  • Tomorrowland Speedway – Ugh, no. Don’t waste a fastpass on this. Don’t even waste the time spent in line for this.
  • Under the Sea: Journey of The Little Mermaid – Fastpass not required

The three fastpasses you choose for Magic Kingdom will depend on the people in your group.

Epcot

Epcot Group A (choose 1):

  • Frozen Ever After 
  • IllumiNations: Reflections of Earth 
  • Soarin’ 
  • Test Track 

This is a tough call. The easiest one to eliminate as your choice is Illumintions, as the show can be viewed from anywhere around the World Showcase. Are you traveling with younger girls who love Anna and Elsa? Then you might want to pick Frozen as the lines are always long. Soarin’ is one of my favourite rides, but the line does tend to be shorter than Test Track (which is also an excellent ride) – neither one of those are bad choices to be honest.

Epcot Group B (choose 2):

  • Character Spot
  • Disney & Pixar Short Film Festival
  • Journey Into Imagination
  • Living with the Land
  • Mission: SPACE
  • Spaceship Earth
  • The Seas with Nemo & Friends
  • Turtle Talk with Crush

Most of these are unnecessary to use a Fastpass on – Turtle Talk, The Seas, Living with the Land, and the Short Film Festival almost always have minimal wait times (if any). I’m a wimp and can only handle the green side of Mission:Space, so the line for that is rarely long (although if you’re a thrill seeker who likes G-Force rides you’ll want to grab a Fastpass and go to the orange side). The character spot can see long lines, since it’s one of the only places to see Classic Mickey and Minnie. Even the Fastpass line for that moves slowly. Journey into Imagination is mainly for kids, so if you are a group of adults it’s not necessary to use a Fastpass on. Spaceship Earth never has a crazy line, but it’s something you HAVE to ride while at Epcot, so we usually grab a FP for it.

Hollywood Studios

Disney’s Hollywood Studios Group A (choose 1):

  • Toy Story Mania!
  • Beauty and the Beast – Live on Stage
  • Fantasmic!
  • Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster

This group should only have 2 options – Toy Story or Rock ‘n’ Roller. Fantasmic is easy to grab as a 4th Fastpass later in the day, and Beauty and the Beast isn’t difficult to get into since the theater is large. Again, what ages are the people in your group? Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster is the only coaster at WDW with an inversion, and it does have a height restriction, whereas Toy Story is for everyone. Both rides tend to have long standby lines most of the day as well.

Disney’s Hollywood Studios Group B (choose 2):

  • For the First Time in Forever: A Frozen Sing-Along Celebration
  • Disney Junior – Live on Stage!
  • Voyage of the Little Mermaid
  • Indiana Jones Epic Stunt Spectacular!
  • Star Tours
  • Muppet*Vision 3D
  • The Twilight Zone Tower of Terrror

This one is always easy for us – Star Tours and Tower of Terror. You can almost always walk into the Muppet ride, and the other four options are shows with roomy theaters.

Animal Kingdom

Disney’s Animal Kingdom Group A (choose 1):

  • AVATAR Flight of Passage
  • Na’vi River Journey

I have not been on either of these, since Avatar land opened after I was last at WDW, but from everything I’ve heard Flight of Passage is one of the best rides Disney Imagineering has ever created, and should be your #1 choice for a Fastpass.

Disney’s Animal Kingdom Group B (choose 2):

  • DINOSAUR
  • Expedition Everest
  • Finding Nemo – The Musical
  • Flights of Wonder
  • It’s Tough to be a Bug
  • Kali River Rapids – tends to be closed for refurb in January
  • Kilimanjaro Safaris
  • Meet Favorite Disney Pals at Adventurers Outpost
  • Primeval Whirl
  • Rivers of Light

I always get a Fastpass for Everest – my fav ride in all of WDW! I also usually wait in the standby line multiple times (later at night, it’s almost a walk-on). The Safari is always worth a FP+ as well. Dinosaur is ok. FP+ is not required for Nemo or Flights of Wonder.

Disney, Travel

January 7, 2017

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Since the half marathon was cancelled, neither one of us had to wake up with an alarm on this day – which is one of my favourite things in the world 🙂

I believe we slept until about 10am, and woke up feeling refreshed. I actually might have slept even later…

We took our time getting ready, and ate some of the snacks we had in the room for breakfast. We had no plans until supper, and we had planned on this being our day away from the parks, so we decided to head to Disney Springs for awhile. I packed only the essentials in my purse for the day – wallet, camera, fuel rod, bottle of water and lots of snacks haha –

As soon as we arrived in Disney Springs, we realized we hadn’t actually ate any real food all day and we were hungry, so we went to make Luke happy with a stop at Earl of Sandwich.

After eating, we went to Amorette’s to check it out. They had so many delicious-looking things there, I wanted to sample one of everything!

There was also a really cute Christmas tree still up in the store, so of course I had to take a picture of it…

And of course, we did buy a few things…

We took our time, walking around the Disney Springs area. I really like how it looks 🙂

I found the Harley store, so I took this picture and sent it to my mom. Her and my step-dad own Harley’s, so she was excited about it.

After doing a bit of shopping (my mom had a birthday a few weeks after this trip), we decided we were cold and finished with Disney Springs. This day and the next were not the Florida weather we were expecting!

*Yes, I took this earlier in the day, and yes those are in Celsius*

We headed over to the bus stops, and found the one heading to the Polynesian. We didn’t wait long before we were off. This was the first time for both of us visiting this resort – wow! I really loved the feel of this place, it’s definitely on our short list for bucket list Disney hotels.

It was around 3:30-3:40pm by this point, and Trader Sam’s was due to open at 4pm. We decided to go and get our name on the wait list since it was somewhere we both really wanted to check out.

After enjoying some libations at Trader Sam’s, we headed upstairs to check in for our supper reservation – at ‘Ohana!

After our supper, we had planned on sticking around, and possibly heading down to the beach to watch the Magic Kingdom fireworks. I, however, had ate way too much and wasn’t feeling the greatest (and the same for Luke), so we decided to call it a night and called an Uber to take us back to Old Key West.

This was by far the most relaxed day of our trip, and I didn’t take many pictures at all. Sometimes, in the middle of a vacation, I just need a quiet day 🙂

Next: Epcot Part One

 

 

 

 

Disney, Food Review

Earl of Sandwich – Supper – January 27, 2017

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After finally getting to meet Captain America and Spiderman, we decided to call it a night – after eating of course! We headed out of the park and over to Downtown Disney, walking until we reached our destination: Earl of Sandwich!

We had ate at Earl a few weeks earlier when we were in Orlando, and it was close to the top of Luke’s ‘must-eat’s’ while in Anaheim.

We didn’t switch it up much on this visit, and I ordered the exact same sandwich I’d had in Orlando – the Holiday Turkey: Turkey, cornbread stuffing, cranberry sauce and mayonnaise $6.99. Of course, I asked for it without cranberry – I’m just not a fan.

This was just as good as the last one I’d ate earlier in the month! I’ll have a really hard time ordering anything different on future trips – the combination of turkey and stuffing is just perfect 🙂

Luke also decided to order one of his favourites from our meal at Earl of Sandwich a few weeks earlier, and got the Hawaiian BBQ: Grilled chicken, ham, swiss, pineapple and BBQ sauce $6.99. He loved it once again!

For some reason, I also insisted on ordering one of their Pepperoni Pizzas: Tangy pizza sauce, Italian seasoning, mozzarella & pepperoni on our Artisan bread. $6.99.

This was ok, but from now on I’ll just stick to my beloved Holiday Turkey sandwich 🙂

We made both of our sandwiches into combos, which meant we each had a fountain drink and a bag of chips. The cost was an additional $2.99/each.

Our total bill came to $29.11. We did not use my annual pass – I can’t remember if we forgot about it, or if they just don’t accept it there. Either way, it’s a relatively cheap meal for something so great 🙂

 

Disney, Wedding

Using Our Room Block

Now that we finally have our room block set up, anyone who was looking to reserve a room at a value resort can now do so for our reduced group rate!

Message me directly for the link to our room block website 🙂

  • Once you have the link from me, this is the first page you’ll see:
  • Click on the dropbox where it says “Select your guest type”. The two options are Accessible Room (which is for those with a wheelchair/limited mobility) or Attendee (which is what I selected for this tutorial).  
  • You will now be taken to this page. 
  • You can search the dates (where you can see our discounted group rates are valid from December 27th, 2017 until January 18th, 2018 – but you must check in by January 9th) 
  • Another option is to click browse all hotels as a list. (see above picture). That will take you to this page. Ignore that $830/night Grand Floridian, no one wants to spend that much on a hotel!  
  • There really isn’t much difference between All Star Music and Pop Century, although Pop is currently being renovated and most rooms will be completely refinished by the time this trip happens. The theming at both is over the top and really fun, go check out my information on the hotels page to read more.
  • I decided to go with Pop Century for this example. You can click anywhere in the box with the hotel name, and it will bring up the available room types which you can book. (For this one, it’s only the standard view room)  
  • Now, click on the date you wish to check in. For this example, I clicked January 7th. As soon as you select a date, a green “select” button appears. 
  • Now, select your check-out date. I clicked January 14th just for this example. Also – you can see that January 5th is not available – which more than likely means the hotel is sold out of standard rooms for that night. After selecting your dates, click the green “Next” button.                  
  • Before you click Next, you will see this along the side with your information – you will need to make sure you are booking your room for the correct number of people. Also – note that the price shown on this screen is subtotal only, taxes will be added (it works out to about $13/night in taxes)       
  • It will now bring you to a page where you must fill out your personal information – name, address, email address, etc. Do this for each guest in your room. Click next, and you will be taken to another page to fill out your credit card information to book the room.                
  • Once your credit card information is entered, and you’ve clicked accept on the terms and conditions, you will see a pop-up with your confirmation number on it! You should also receive an email within a few minutes with your confirmation.
  • Once you have your confirmation, it’s time to go set up your Disney account, which you can see a step-by-step guide here 🙂