Category Archives: Travel

Cruise, Disney, Travel

August 26, 2024 – Embarkation Day (Part Two)

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Once we were announced in the main atrium (Jocelyn had no idea what to think of that, hearing her name announced and seeing cast members clapping) – we headed straight for the elevators and took them all the way from deck 3 up to deck 9. It was time for our first trip to Cabanas! It was raining quite hard this day, so even deck 9 was quite wet despite being covered. It was also understandably busy up there, as the staterooms were still not open to guests. We found a table outside, and Luke sat with Jocelyn while Mom and I went to grab food first. Basically every time we went to Cabanas, I’d grab two plates – keeping one empty and all the food on the other,. Then at the table I’d do up Jocelyn’s plate – it was much easier than taking her through the buffet with us – this was one of those times when it was nice to have three adults to wrangle one child during the week. At a few meals her and I just shared a plate – neither of us are big eaters.

Yes – Jocelyn wore her giant tiara throughout the entire check-in process and beamed at every cast member who called her a princess…

I didn’t take a picture of her plate, but she had fries and ketchup, and penne with tomato sauce. She probably had bread as well… And a giant cup of apple juice. Jocelyn definitely helped me with those chicken fingers on my plate as well…

Nothing exciting, but from the top going clockwise – cornbread, penne with alfredo sauce (and you can see where Jocelyn’s penne with tomato sauce was sitting), grilled chicken, asparagus, chicken finger, mashed potatoes, focaccia bread, turkey and gravy (?? I think?), more chicken fingers. Most people were excited about the mountains of shrimp and crab legs on the buffet at this time – I actually don’t eat any type of fish, and my husband is allergic to shellfish – so you won’t see much of that in this report.

All of this was just ok. None of it was a standout, but it filled me up and was fine.

We went to the bathrooms on deck 9, and Jocelyn was so excited that she could reach one of the sinks without me holding her up. Honestly – having one lowered sink in each bathroom was a standout for her all week…

You can see how wet the deck was behind us – the Sail-A-Wave party ended up being delayed to the evening because of all the rain.

Someone had posted in the WhatsApp chat that rooms were available, so we were in our stateroom for the first time by 1:50pm. We had booked an inside stateroom midship on deck 6 – we were nice and close to the elevators/stairs and I loved the deck. It was 3 floors down to the main atrium, or 3 floors up to the pool deck/Cabanas – such a great central location.

We hung out for a bit, but none of our checked bags had arrived yet. We decided to split up and go check out some things. I know Luke went to get a good coffee from Cove Bar (I didn’t step foot in there once all trip, as I don’t drink coffee), and I have no idea where Mom went. Jocelyn and I went to check out the open house for the kids club. I didn’t plan on sending her there often during the cruise, but she is a daycare kid so she’s used to that type of atmosphere.

The kids club (I think it’s called the Oceaneer Club?) was adorable! She loved it!

I was fascinated by the handwash stations – those silver things. The kids stick their hands in and it automatically has a timer and shuts off itself once their hands are clean. They also had these by the check-in, so every child had to use them before entering the club.

The doors are bathroom stalls! So cute!

When we checked in and signed her up for the club, they put a magicband on her wrist. They told me if we took it home at the end of the cruise, there would be a $25 charge applied to our account for it, but this charge is waived as long as you return it before disembarking. That seemed fair to us.

Jocelyn and I met up with Luke and my Mom at the muster drill, and Luke showed us pictures of his coffee (since you have to pay at the Cove Bar, they do fancy artwork on top – I’m sure there’s a proper name for this art but I have no idea what it is…). It looked cool, and he said the coffee was significantly better than the free stuff on deck 9 that they were passing off as coffee 🤷🏻‍♀️

The muster drill seemed to take forever – we were on time but dozens were not. C’mon people, it’s not that difficult! While we were standing there waiting, we left the port of Vancouver and began sailing away. We also had a great view of seaplanes landing while we were waiting for the late arrivals at the muster drill.

Cruise, Disney, Travel

August 26, 2024 – Embarkation Day (Part One)

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I am a person who enjoys sleeping (and sleeping in) – I woke on my own before 7am on this day. I was just so excited! As soon as I woke up, I rushed over to the window, pulled back the curtains – and was met with this beautiful sight <3. As I said – the price of the Pan Pacific was worth it to be able to look out the window at this while getting ready.

Our friends who were on the same cruise had crossed multiple time zones, so they were awake very early – they actually watched the Wonder dock and sent me this picture (they were also staying at the Pan) –

I can’t remember our exact check-in time, I want to say it was 11:45? Luke and I decided to walk to the liquor store, which was only a block or two away. I grabbed a cheap bottle of wine to take onboard – and I didn’t even touch it the entire trip. Luke bought some beer to take onboard. While walking back, we ran into a couple wearing Disney clothing – obviously they were embarking today as well so we chatted with them the entire way back.

Once we were back, we finished packing everything back up and called bell services – they came to our room, and took our checked bags directly to the ship – so handy! We got ready and took some more pictures –

At some point Luke went and grabbed McDonald’s breakfast for everyone (except me – I ate some leftovers they had brought me back from Old Spaghetti Factory). I’m not a breakfast food person, so foods like spaghetti will win every single time over an Egg McMuffin.

While we were still in the room I filled out the required health questionnaire. I also took a screenshot of the countdown in the app showing zero days left!

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Check out for the hotel was at noon I believe, so we were able to hang out in our room until it was time to check in for the cruise. We checked out around 11:15 (and I got a picture of the Monday mat in the elevator). The picture of the funnels was from the hotel lobby (the timestamp on that was 11:19am).

When staying at the Pan Pacific, you don’t even need to go outside to reach the check-in areas. At 11:29am I took this picture (and we were not setting any land-speed records haha – we were walking at the pace of a four year old) –

I think our official check-in time was 12? But we were showing our passports and getting wristbands before that time. After that, we went through customs and then another room to put our backpacks through a scanner (like at the airport), and finally found ourselves in the final waiting room. I have these pictures of a happy Jocelyn in the waiting room timestamped at 12:21 (and we’d been in that room for awhile by that point).

When we arrived in the final waiting room, they had already allowed anyone in boarding groups 1-8 to board the ship. We were group 13, so we did have to wait a few minutes but it wasn’t bad at all – I think we were in there for ~20 minutes?

By 12:32 I was taking this picture:

And we found our first photographer of the trip!

And then we were finally onboard and ready to truly start this vacation!

Cruise, Disney, Travel

August 25, 2024 – Travel Day

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Since our cruise departed on a Monday, we decided to fly to Vancouver on Sunday. This flight is only ~90 minutes for us, and we had multiple options for flight times on that day. We ended up going with a 1:20pm departure, flying with WestJet and their new UltraBasic option. When booking this type of ticket, you do not get a carryon – you can only board with a personal item. Going there, this was fine, but we really could have used the space a carryon would have given us on the way home after buying souvenirs… Luckily, I have the WestJet mastercard, so all four of us were able to check a full size bag for free (saving $50/bag/person each way – so $400 total). We basically needed a full size bag just for Jocelyn’s princess dresses haha!

We had chose to stay close to home since the fall of 2022, as our elderly dog had started showing signs of declining, and we didn’t want to be far away in case something happened. We had someone set up to watch all the pets in our own home while on the cruise, but unfortunately, we did have to say goodbye to our dog in July 2024. Our remaining dog ended up going to hang out on my best friend’s acreage and our neighbours checked in on our cats. All this to say – Jocelyn hadn’t been on a plane since 2022 and it was safe to say she was a bit excited… This was in the car when we arrived at the airport –

Also – within a 24 hour time span, we drove in a car, a bus, a plane, a train and a ship. We all agreed that was pretty cool…

Once we parked our car, we had to take a bus to the main terminal of the airport. Check-in was a breeze, security went very smoothly and before long we were standing by this sign in the Edmonton airport –

Jocelyn chooses her own outfits every single day, and 9 times out of ten it involves a dress. She’s also big on accessories – she had on a ring, a bracelet, a necklace and that giant fancy tiara. She was called “Princess” so many times by airport staff and you could see how happy it made her – she didn’t stop smiling…

We had time to kill, so we grabbed some Cookies by George, drinks from Starbucks and then found a spot to sit and watch the planes.

Technically with an UltraBasic ticket, you board last. However, we were travelling with a child under the age of five, so we were allowed to use family boarding which was nice – gave us time to get situated! We gave Jocelyn the window seat, and she loved watching outside before drawing some pictures and then settling in with her tablet for the rest of the flight. She was so well behaved – I’d fly with her any day <3

Before long, we had arrived in Vancouver! It’d been a long time since I’d been at that airport – the last two times I’d been to this city, we’d drove. After collecting our checked bags, we walked over to catch the skytrain.

We got off the train at the Waterfront Station, and somehow got swung around the wrong way… we took the wrong exit up to ground level, and had to drag our suitcases a few blocks – if we had taken the correct exit it would have been a few steps *facepalm

But, we made it! And saw our first docked cruise ship!

The Pan Pacific is such a fantastic location if you’re in Vancouver for a cruise. It was expensive, but I’d stay there every single time, the convenience was worth the cost (plus the view from our room window was amazing – especially the next morning ;)). When we arrived to check in, our room was not ready yet – the receptionist kept apologizing and ended up giving us coupons for drinks in the lounge in the lobby. This was completely unnecessary, but greatly appreciated!

A friend of mine who lives in the Vancouver area wanted to come say hi – so we went and found a couch in the lounge to wait for her. Shortly after my friend arrived, Jocelyn started melting down, as four year olds do. Luke and Mom decided to take her up to our room which was now ready, letting me spend some time catching up (Mom also had some work to do). They ended up taking Jocelyn to the Old Spaghetti Factory – by the time they returned our friends we were meeting on the cruise had found me, and we had supper together at the restaurant at the Pan Pacific. I took zero pictures during this…

There was an actual meetup of people from the cruise (organized through the facebook group and whatsapp chat that had been set up for our specific sailing) – and it was in the same lounge/restaurant we were in. We quickly said hello to that group, I said goodbye to my friend who lives in the area (I’ll see her again next year when I’m back in Vancouver for a book signing event) and then headed upstairs to our hotel room.

I loved the day of the week mat in the elevator – the simplest things make me happy haha.

Our room for the night had an amazing view of the floating Chevron – this also made us irrationally happy haha…

We watched so many seaplanes taking off/landing this evening and the next morning – it was really cool. I’m also just realizing I didn’t take a single picture of the room itself – it was nice, but nothing special. Just a standard hotel room with two queen beds – one for Luke and I and one for Jocelyn and my Mom.

We tried to get a good night’s sleep, but we were all pretty excited! Tomorrow was the big day!

Disney, Travel

January 5, 2018 – Part Five

After we finished eating, we didn’t really have any major plans for a few hours. Since it wasn’t too far from where we were, we decided to go visit the Country Bear Jamboree! We both really enjoy this stupid show haha, and try to go see it at least once every trip.

This was Frederick the AT-AT’s first time seeing the show, but since he’s an inanimate popcorn bucket, he didn’t tell me his thoughts or feelings about it.

Earlier in the day, after using our third Fastpass, we had jumped on MDE and grabbed a fourth Fastpass – for Jungle Cruise. We were now in the window for that, so that’s the direction we headed in.

Frederick the AT-AT got to see the eighth wonder of the World – the BACKSIDE OF WATER!

Our next stop was to visit some animatronic birds at the Enchanted Tiki Room. I love this water feature that you see from the queue line, it’s so pretty (especially at night when it’s all lit up). I still give Disneyland the edge when it comes to the outdoor space at the Tiki Room though…

Also – the crowds were high. This was less than a week after New Year’s, and it was the Friday night of Marathon weekend. You can see in my Country Bear photo above that it was pretty full, and we were in the back row of a packed house at the Tiki Room as well – two shows that are not always at capacity.

After we left the Tiki Room, we slowly made our way over to the Tomorrowland Terrace to check in for the Happily Ever After dessert party. We were not in a rush, and thoroughly enjoyed our relaxing evening together – our last night in the parks alone! We were both so excited for our friends and families to arrive – all of our Disney trips up to this point had been with just the two of us, so we were looking forward to sharing our love of the parks! We really enjoyed this dessert party, you can read all about it over here 🙂

Once the show ended, we decided against leaving with the crowd, and instead headed into Tomorrowland and hopped on one of our favourites – the Peoplemaker!

After our tour of Tomorrowland, Main Street had cleared so we decided to head out. The park was open until midnight, but we had to get back to OKW – my Dad had finally landed in Orlando and was en route via the Magical Express! We hopped off the bus at Hospitality House at OKW and a few minutes later the Magical Express bus pulled in. I hadn’t seen my Dad since the previous June, so this was exciting! He was actually staying in our room for the night – he was booked in a room of his own for a week, but then we weren’t able to find him a flight on January 6th that didn’t cost way too much money, or have terrible flight times. So, January 5th arrival it was! We had him added to our room with a note that it was just for the one night, and reconfirmed this at the front desk on the day we checked in – no problems at all!

We were all pretty tired, so we just headed to the room and settled in for the night, and just spent some time chatting and getting my Dad excited for the week to come. We were all sad too, one of the first things my Dad asked was if the news of Terence’s accident was true (my uncle was still a kid, only 9 years old or so when my parents had started dating so my Dad had known him for a long time).

We eventually fell asleep filled with a lot of emotion – Luke’s family and some of our best friends would be arriving tomorrow, and we had a busy schedule for the day!

Fitbit Steps: 13,599

Disney, Travel

January 5, 2018 – Part Four

We entered Magic Kingdom, our second park of the day around 3pm. We didn’t have any fastpasses, and our dining reservation wasn’t until 4:10 so we were not in any rush. We noticed that Tinkerbell had a short wait, so we went to say hello to everyone’s favourite pixie-dusted fairy. She was very excited about our wedding buttons, and insisted on checking out my ring. She was a wonderful Tink, very animated and excited and we really enjoyed our visit with her.

As we exited, we realized the Festival of Fantasy Parade would be coming through shortly, so even if we wanted to head to another area of the park, all of Main Street was blocked off for the parade route, and both sides were lined with people. Obviously we could have cut through the shops, but we decided to take the time to actually watch the entire parade (something we’d never actually done before – up to this point we’d only seen bits and pieces of it). Enjoy the four million photos I took of this parade haha –

After the parade ended, we made our way up Main Street with the crowd and made our way over to Liberty Tree Tavern to check in for our early supper. Our reservation was at 4:10, and we checked in a few minutes early – but we’re talking about LTT so of course they were running behind. They said they would text us when our table was ready, so we went around the corner and watched The Muppets: Great Moments in American History.

Eventually we were seated at Liberty Tree – about half an hour past our reservation…

Disney, Travel, Wedding

January 5, 2018 – Part Three

After dropping by the Hollywood Tower hotel, we decided we needed a snack. The location for this seems to change on each trip, but Luke knew where to go on this trip to get the famous Carrot Cake Cookie! According to the picture I have of the receipt, it was at Beverly Sunset? I’m fairly certain that’s a store that sells Pixar merchandise these days, but apparently they sold snacks at one point? Maybe they still do – can anyone confirm or deny this?

I took a picture of this just because I thought it was ridiculous – but I don’t think I’d actually enjoy it…

Anyways, we bought a carrot cake cookie to share, a bottle of Coke for me and a coffee for Luke. We saved 20% with my Annual Pass, so our total was $8.33. We found a table to sit at outside where we enjoyed our treat – we had time to kill before our third fastpass.

It doesn’t look pretty, but these are so good! The “cookie” part is a carrot cake, slightly firm on the outside but nice and soft on the inside. The centre is a cream-cheese style icing (like a traditional carrot cake). We really enjoy these, and actually included them on our wedding day. I just wish they didn’t have stupid raisins – but not to worry, I do some surgery and remove them all before eating haha.

We still had some time before our third and final Fastpass, so we decided to head over to the Star Wars Launch Bay.

We decided to go visit BB-8, which was weird. You go in and stand beside a robot that beeps at you and moves its head… I guess I’m just not a fan of the non-living character meets?

As we were leaving the Launch Bay area, I spotted a popcorn bucket that I needed in my life! As I was buying it, the Cast Member asked me if I was going to give him a name, and if so, what was it? After brainstorming with the cast member for a few seconds, I decided on Frederick… so everyone, meet Frederick the AT-AT <3

Luke took that picture of me after we had walked over to use our third Fastpass of the day at Star Tours. We stopped to watch Jedi Training for a few minutes, I really hope that’s something that still exists when Jocelyn is old enough for it! It’s so cute, and some of the kids are so hilarious, and are so into it!

After Star Tours, we said hello to Gertie and admired her Santa hat haha, before heading out of the park.

I took a picture of Frederick the AT-AT sitting on my lap on the bus haha – I took lots of pictures of all the adventures he had that day haha – just wait for the next part of this trip report!

Disney, Travel

January 5, 2018 – Part Two

Luke suggested we just hang around the resort for the majority of the day, but I decided I wanted to use our Fastpasses and try to enjoy a little bit of our day. There wasn’t anything I could do to help, since I was over 3800km away from the hospital my uncle was currently in – so why not make the most of our day. We had missed our breakfast reservation, but luckily I had bought extra goodies at Karamell Kuche when we were in the Germany Pavilion at Epcot the day before so we shared this amazing Chocolate Caramel cookie (I want to say it cost around $4.50?). I actually popped it in the microwave for a few seconds to heat it up – 100% recommend!

We also had our snack boxes from the 5K the day before, so we snacked on a few things from there. For those not familiar with runDisney, after you cross the finish line they give you your medal, and a box of snacks. There’s also bottled water, bananas and things like that to grab if you’d like. Inside the snack box, there’s usually an applesauce pouch, a little bag of tortilla chips, a little thing of plastic cheese for the chips, some cookies/granola bars, fruit snacks, etc. It’s nothing fancy or overly exciting, but it’s nice to have a few extra little snacks for the following few days. I didn’t take a picture of the inside of the box on this trip, but I did take this of my really nice 5K medal sitting on the box haha –

Our first Fastpass was from 10:55-11:55 at Hollywood Studios. We arrived at the park around 11am, and were met by this –

We set off down Sunset Boulevard, but had to stop for a Photopass photographer. This is actually one of my favourite photos of Luke and I from this trip (you know, excluding our wedding photos haha) –

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Our first Fastpass was for Rock N’ Roller Coaster. I enjoy this ride, but I’m at the perfect height where my head beats side to side against the head restraint so my ears are always sore when I get off. Am I the only person this happens to?

Also – during the queue line, there are screens advertising upcoming “concerts”. Using the RFID technology in the MagicBands, these screens change and will actually be customized to a person in the close vicinity. There’s a few spots throughout the parks that have this little custom touch – but this was the first time it was one of us!

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Our next fastpass was right next door, at Tower of Terror, but not until 12:10. We decided to use the bathrooms by Rock n’ Roller, and I decided to call my Mom and get an update on the situation back home. Things weren’t good, my uncle had underwent brain surgery that morning to relieve some of the pressure on his brain. My Mom let me know that she had already changed her flights, instead of arriving the next afternoon (Saturday), she wouldn’t be getting to MCO until Sunday evening. At one point she mentioned maybe cancelling altogether so she could stay with my uncle, and I believe I responded with something along the lines of “that’s fine. If you stay home I’ll never forgive you for missing my wedding.” (emotions were high, I felt bad after I said it – but I just wanted my Mommy at my wedding). We said goodbye, I hung up and then stood in the Rock N’ Roller Coaster courtyard and had a nice little cry (definitely not the last one on this trip – I was a bit of a mess).

Around noon, I wiped my face, and we headed over to Tower of Terror. I could have headed back to the hotel room to mope around and be sad – or I could be sad while enjoying Disney – so I chose the latter!

On our first Disneyland trip back in 2015, I was adamant that I would not get on Tower of Terror, the idea of it terrified me. I could see how disappointed Luke was, so I sucked it up and told him I’d try it once – turns out I loved it and we never miss it now haha. I actually prefer the Guardians overlay in California though (I know, blasphemy!) – I like the upbeat energy of it, the fact that you shoot upwards as well, the theming, etc. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love the aesthetic of the original Tower – I only take about 467 photos of the building every single time we ride it hahaha.

I loved the lady in front of Luke! She was losing her mind – it was clearly her first time riding, and she was screaming before we even started haha. Her friend was laughing the entire time – they seemed to be a lot of fun! Even the scared lady had a few laughs at the end.

I love the themed Stitch plush you can find in the dump shop on certain rides – I tried to remember to take photos of him whenever I saw him!

Disney, Travel, Wedding

January 5, 2018 – Part One

I figure I should include a warning at the beginning of this post – this one won’t be all sunshine and rainbows and happy Disney stuff. I’m also going to keep it pretty short – the next post will be back in a Disney park.

Our alarm once again went off way too early – but I woke up excited! My Dad was going to be arriving later this evening (with almost everyone else flying in tomorrow), and we were going to Trattoria el Forno for breakfast – a place I’d been looking forward to trying! Luke got up and headed in to take a shower, while I grabbed my phone to quickly check my social media, and see if anyone had any last minute questions about anything before coming to Florida. There was a single text message from my Mom, that was timestamped from the middle of the night – “Call me when you wake up.” I immediately knew it wasn’t good news, so with my heart sinking I called her. It was even worse than I could have imagined.

The evening before, my uncle was in a snowmobile accident, and had to be airlifted to a hospital in the major city I live in (he lived a few hours north of me, in a much smaller city). My Mom also informed me he was currently in a medically-induced coma, he had brain injuries but the full extent was currently unknown – but it wasn’t good. A little background – there was only an 11 year age difference between my uncle and I , so he was more of a big brother when I was younger. He had moved across the country while in his 20’s – and was the sole reason I also moved across the country (I initially lived with him before moving a few hours south to Edmonton). This was tough news.

Luke finished his shower, and started to get mad because I hadn’t started getting ready, and we were going to be late for our breakfast reservation. However, he only had to take one look at my tear-stained face to realize something was wrong. I had lost my appetite and didn’t want to leave our room at that point, so we actually ended up going back to sleep for a few hours. We did end up getting hit with a $20 no-show fee for our missed Trattoria el Forno breakfast, but I did not care about that in that moment – and I didn’t have it in me to call and try to cancel that morning.

Disney, Travel, Wedding

January 4, 2018 – Part Two

After that much needed nap, we both woke up feeling much better. We got ready, and decided to head out hours earlier than we needed to for our evening plans – we wanted to see how the lines were for merchandise at the race expo today (since we didn’t want to wait 2+ hours yesterday).

We arrived at the ESPN Wide World of Sports and it was so quiet! There were no lines anywhere, and we were able to easily just walk into the area with the merch. Seriously – if you’re not running the 5K during Marathon Weekend, there’s no need to go to Race Expo on the Wednesday!

I didn’t take pictures of our purchases, but I bought a generic RunDisney hoody, Luke picked up a few shirts specific to this race weekend and we picked up the sneaker Christmas ornament. We weren’t in a rush, and just took our time looking around. Eventually we made our way back to the buses – but instead of going back to OKW we caught a bus heading for the Contemporary!

We were so excited about our evening plans – we were celebrating our upcoming wedding by splurging on Highway in the Sky for ourselves! But, we arrived early at the Contemporary and were feeling a bit hungry, since we’d only ate snacks in our room up to this point of the day, so we headed to the Contempo Cafe (review here). We killed enough time and it was eventually time to head down to the Wave to check in for Highway in the Sky (HITS) (full review here!).

HITS ended with the 9pm Magic Kingdom fireworks viewing from the 5th floor of the Contemporary. We still had energy from our nap earlier in the day, so we decided to walk over to Magic Kingdom to enjoy a few hours in the park (they were open until midnight that night).

My photos from this night ended up out of order, and I didn’t take any notes this night – so I can’t remember the exact order of attractions we hit up during these few hours. But I do know we went to visit a few princesses. Some of these pictures make me laugh so hard – so awkward at times hahahaha


At one point, we went on Pirates of the Caribbean. I had to take a few pictures of the auction scene, since this was before the Redhead scene was changed, but it was known that it would be changing soon.

We also made it on The Many Adventures of Winnie-the-Pooh. I’ve always loved all the 100 Acre Wood characters, and even though this attraction is nothing special I really love it.

We decided to try something new to us, and went to Enchanted Tales with Belle. As we entered the queue line, a cast member stopped me – and handed me the red card! I was the chosen one! It’s kind of stupid how excited I get about this thing haha –


Also – it was still cold, in case you couldn’t tell by how bundled up I was haha.

This is such a cute little… show? Attraction? Whatever you call it – go see it at some point! Now that I actually have a daughter, I’m really excited to take her to this one day! I didn’t really take any pictures, because I think it’s weird to take photos of other people’s children – but I did take this one of the wardrobe –


And Luke took this quick video of the wardrobe talking –

We ended our night with a ride on Haunted Mansion, one of our favourites!



Luke took this video of the “Kiss Goodnight” shortly after midnight –

As we were leaving, we stopped in a few shops along Main Street. This was when Rose Gold was the hot “it” colour, and the cast members were actually rolling out an entire rack of Rose Gold spirit jerseys in preparation for the next morning. These things were impossible to find at this point, so I was really excited to see them and I definitely left the store with one that night!

It was quite late by the time we got back to our room at Old Key West, but I had a very important task to attend to before heading to bed – putting together our welcome bags for our wedding guests! The first guest (my Dad) would be arriving the following evening, with the large majority arriving the next day. It was almost time to actually kick off wedding week!

I pulled out everything we had for our welcome bags – some of it we had lugged with us from Canada and some we had purchased on our Walmart run at the beginning of our trip. We had tossed around a few ideas for actual bags to put everything into, but we had already gone over our budget for welcome bags so we ended up just asking for extra Disney parks bags at a gift shop, and once we explained what they were for there was no issue giving us a stack of them. Score!

We had shirts made for everyone (you’ll see them later in the trip!) –

This picture was of the Rubbermaid tote we’d been storing all the wedding stuff in back home – part of the reason we needed to check four full sized bags on our flight! We had a lot of stuff to bring with us!

I laid everything out on the spare bed, separated by person/couple – turns out we had a lot more than I thought we did for these bags!

Here’s a close-up of my Dad’s stuff so you can see everything we had – custom shirt, Body Glide, hand sanitizer, wet wipes, bandaids, Disney pens (some people also got Disney notepads/sticky notes), a couple packs of gum, Brita water bottle, a few bottles of water (we bought multiple cases at Walmart – it’s so cheap in the States!), travel pack of Q-Tips (we mainly bought these because of the cute Disney tin they came in), travel-sized Kleenex, Tylenol and snacks (chips, chocolates, granola bars – Disney themed of course, and water flavour pouches). There were also nail files for all the females, and a necklace for each of my Bridesmaids/Maid of Honour (they actually ended up wearing them on the wedding day)

It was really late by the time we finally crashed for the night (like 2:30am). I also didn’t realize how much my life was about the change the next morning…

Fitbit Steps: 20,741