Our Uber arrived, and off we went once again to Give Kids the World! Today we had opted to do a different task, and had signed up for Food Delivery (I think it had a different, cute name, but I don’t remember what it was now). We were early this day, and knew where we were going – hurray for us! We checked in for our 11am-2:30pm shift, and were directed on where to go. Once we arrived, we were given a run-down on what to do. This was a little more extensive than yesterday’s instructions (scoop ice cream, wash your hands, wear a hair net, keep the place/scoops/blenders clean, don’t eat the food, etc). Today we were stationed in a little room by the main dining hall, with some telephones and computer screens. The families staying at the Village are allotted a certain amount of dining credits for their week (much like the Disney dining plan), and they are allowed to use these credits for delivery (basically like room service). They would call, Luke or I would answer the phone, ask for their room number and their order, and everything would get punched into the computer. The order would print out on a receipt in the main kitchen, where the volunteers working there would prepare it. The receipt would also print in the room Luke and I were in, and it was our responsibility to gather the drinks requested (cans of pop, bottles of water, milk, juice, etc). Once the order was ready, someone from the kitchen would bring it over to us, and one of us had to go deliver it. Before starting our shift, a manager had made us do a short little training course to prove we knew how to drive a golf cart, and then provided us with site maps so we knew where to go.

We started our shift just as the lunch rush started, so it was actually steadily busy.  I really didn’t love this volunteer shift, I hate talking on the phone and every time I drive a golf cart I feel like I’m going to flip it (I know, I’m weird). Luke used to work at a golf course, so he was much more comfortable driving the cart, so I let him take most of the deliveries. I did enjoy seeing some of the painted fire hydrants around the village though, they are so adorable!

At 2:30, our shift was over and we were relieved by the next set of volunteers. We took our time walking back to the main building, taking some pictures of the village as we walked (since it was dark out when we left the night before).

We called an Uber, and had him drop us off at a Walmart close by. We wanted to pick up a few drinks/snacks to include in our welcome bags for our family, as well as a few things for ourselves to snack on. We figured we’d be there for an hour, maybe an hour and a half… that turned in to over three hours since we were enjoying looking at all of the unique things we don’t have in Canada. We went a little overboard on snacks for our friends and family, and I picked up some cute Disney souvenirs for a fraction of the cost in the parks (like a Mickey Mouse zip-up hoody for $24 – which does show up in later pictures on this trip!) We also picked up some alcohol (because that is sold in Walmart – crazy! Also the prices, so cheap!!

*No, I didn’t buy this, but $3 wine?! Seriously?!

I grabbed the necessities for making Mimosas on the wedding morning, as well as some plastic Disney Princess cups to drink them out of. #Fancy – but they looked cute in our getting ready pictures! (Sneak peek of more wedding pics)

Finally, 3 hours and over $400 later, we made our way out of Walmart pushing an overflowing shopping cart -oops! We knew we couldn’t fit everything into a regular Uber/Lyft, so we decided to stop being cheapskates and ordered the Uber XL (or whatever it’s called)…naturally a 15-person van pulled up for us hahaha. Luke and I just looked at each and laughed, shrugged and said “at least all of our stuff will fit in it”.

By this point, we were behind schedule, so when we pulled up at our hotel for the night, I immediately grabbed a luggage cart for our insane amount of Walmart purchases and a bell services attendant came over to assist. I explained that we were checking in for the night, but we had a dining reservation we were running late for, so we would come grab our stuff after we ate (we also hadn’t ate since our expensive sandwiches that morning, so we were hungry!).  This wasn’t an issue at all, and we headed off to our ADR – 1900 Park Fare!

For some reason, we also had a reservation at California Grill that night, so we headed straight there after finishing up at 1900 Park Fare.

Once we finished our second meal, we headed back to the Grand Floridian to finally check in for a few hours of sleep. I’m a little sad we didn’t have much time to really the room, but it was the most comfortable bed we’ve ever slept in on Disney property. The room was also huge by hotel standards, and it was only a studio (not a 1-bedroom or anything).

                               The view from our room was pretty great!

As great as this room was, I don’t think we’ll ever pay to stay here. It’s very expensive, and – unpopular opinion – it felt a little uppity for us. The night we were there, it was over $800 – we stayed there for free. When you book a Disney Fairy Tale Wedding and set up a room block, the bride and groom are given a free night in any resort of their choice once they hit a certain number of confirmed room nights. We knew we’d never be able to afford to stay at the Grand on our own, so we were quick to choose this as our freebie.

Fitbit Steps: 7670

We woke up relatively early, and called bell services. While we waited for them to arrive, we finished packing up the last few items, before handing over all our luggage. After two nights at Pop, we were moving up to a much fancier hotel for the night!

I also realized I had not taken pictures of our room when we first arrived since we were in a hurray to get to Magic Kingdom – what a bad trip reporter I am! I took the time to take some before we left – so ignore the fact that the bed isn’t perfectly made, etc.

   *I thought the showers were pretty nice!

            *A pocket door and full-length mirror separated the sink area from the toilet/shower

      *I didn’t use it, but there was a hair dryer, iron and full-size ironing board in the room

*Again, ignore the terrible job at making the bed, I just pulled the blankets up so it wasn’t a crumpled mess. The bed itself was decent, and it was really nice to have plug-ins on either side to charge our phones at night.

*Even more plug-ins underneath the TV! I was impressed by the amount in these renovated rooms

 *The safe is small, but more than enough for us to keep our passports safe! It was also used to keep our wedding bands safe, since we couldn’t wear them yet!

 *I think this is a great use of space! Since it was just the two of us, we left it set up as a table for the duration of our stay, but I can see how it’d be a bit cramped if you had to leave it down as a bed during your trip.

*The headboard of the pull-down bed

  *It was incredibly easy to pull down the bed/push it back up, I’m a weakling and I didn’t find it too heavy at all

*The clear-front mini fridges are pretty mini, they really don’t hold much at all…

We had been cutting through the parking lot to get to the buses/main building at Pop, since it was much quicker, but we decided to actually walk through the resort (seeing as how we were leaving, and still hadn’t done this…)

We went to Everything Pop food court, but we realized we didn’t really have time to sit down and have a proper breakfast, so we each grabbed a pre-made sandwich from the refrigerator section. I didn’t take pictures of them or the receipt but I had turkey and Luke had ham – both on white bread with cheddar cheese. If I remember correctly, they didn’t have any type of sauce on them, but they had mayo/mustard/etc packets to put on yourself. This food court typically accepts Tables in Wonderland, but it was still a blackout date so we paid full price – $7.50/sandwich. Not a great deal, but the sandwiches were decent and were enough food to hold us over.

Luke sat down on a bench by the front door to eat, and called an Uber at the same time. I ran over to the front desk to make sure I didn’t need to do anything special to check out of the hotel (there’s sometimes different rules since we’re International, plus I had booked our two night stay at Pop using the room block we had set up for our wedding). By the time I got back over to Luke, his entire sandwich was gone, our Uber was about a minute away and I hadn’t started eating – anyone who knows me, knows I’m the slowest eater on the planet haha. I ate half of that thing so fast! I hate eating in other people’s vehicles, so I shoved the other half into my purse haha.

We said goodbye to Pop Century, and headed off for another volunteer shift at Give Kids the World!

Next: January 1, 2018 – Part Two

We slept in a bit, but we were still up by 9:30 or so. We got ready for the day, and headed towards the main building to call an Uber to take us to the Grand Floridian. 

As soon as we walked in the door, I spotted Richard! For those who don’t know, Richard is a long-time cast member at the Grand who was still working a few days each week as a greeter, despite being in his early 90’s. He’s a bit of a celebrity among the Disney Wedding groups, so of course I had to stop to talk to him, and get a picture with him! 

He was so adorable, and so friendly! I mentioned that we were getting married at Disney, but he was sad we were holding our ceremony at Sea Breeze Point and not the Wedding Pavilion. He’s known for helping Wedding Pavilion brides with the train on their dress while pictures are being taken on the staircase in the Grand Floridian. He unfortunately passed away in June 2018, so I am very glad I stopped to talk to him for a few minutes during this trip <3

The Christmas decorations were all still up at the Grand, and I naturally had to take pictures of the tree (and of course, the lobby itself)!

The entire lobby smelled like gingerbread, I’m sure partly thanks to the giant gingerbread house they had set up there, which was so adorable! I’m fairly certain they were pumping the smell of gingerbread into the lobby as well.

We were starting to get close to our dining reservation, so we headed outside and made our way over to Narcoossee’s for their brunch.

• Narcoossee’s Brunch Review

While we were eating, we received a push-notification that Magic Kingdom had reached capacity- no thank you to being in those crowds! This was as close to the castle as I wanted to be on this day:

Once we finished our meal, we thought we had lots of time, so we decided to go for a walk around the resort. We followed the pathway all the way over to the Wedding Pavilion- even though it was not the location of our wedding ceremony, I thought it was a beautiful venue and I wanted to see Picture Point (located just outside it). They’ve since restructured the pricing, but at the time when we signed our contract for our wedding, it was an extra $2000 to use the Wedding Pavilion for an Escape wedding – I just couldn’t justify that, since that was enough to cover our reception at Homecomin’…

I had to take a picture of the Franck’s door, even though I never got to go through it. Disney offers three packages for weddings – Memories (basically an elopement – for the couple and 4 guests, cost was $2500 when we signed our contract), Escape (the couple plus 18 guests, cost was $5000 for Sea Breeze Point when we signed our contract) and Wishes (started at $12,000 and could go as high as you’re willing to spend). I initially was looking at Memories, and just having parents there, but Luke really wanted more so we jumped up to Escape. With the two lower tier packages, all correspondence is completed through email/phone calls – however if you are having a Wishes wedding you actually have an in-person planning session which is held at Franck’s (including cake tasting!).

Picture Point is so perfect with Cinderella’s Castle perfectly framed behind it <3

We called an Uber as we walked back towards the main entrance. We sat down on a bench, and watched as the estimated time of arrival kept changing – we had forgot about all the traffic trying to head to Magic Kingdom! We were heading to Give Kids the World for a volunteer shift from 3-6:30, but we were supposed to be there at 2:30 to sign in, get trained, etc. We had gave ourselves plenty of time to get there on a normal day, but not New Years Eve! What a rookie mistake, we should have known better! We eventually realized we were not going to make it there by 2:30, so we called the GKTW Village but they didn’t seem too upset by it. Our Uber finally showed up – no fault of the driver for taking so long, the lines of cars we passed as we drove away from the Magic Kingdom area was insane!

We finally arrived at GKTW around 2:50, so at least we weren’t late for our shift to start. It had taken almost 45 minutes for our Uber to reach us at the Grand Floridian, so we would have been there early if it wasn’t for NYE traffic.

For those who don’t know, GKTW Village is a non-profit resort in Kissimmee which provides week long vacations for the families of children with life-threatening illnesses. They work with groups around the world like Make-A-Wish to make theme park dreams come true. I believe I heard that about 60% of wishes involve the Orlando area (Disney, Universal, etc), so this is where they stay. Everything on site is free for the families – they receive meal credits to use throughout the week, theme park tickets, etc. There are a few little rides on site – a train, Merry-go-Round, etc, and lot of organized activities. A lot of the day-to-day operations of the entire resort are run by volunteers, so we had decided it was a good way to spend NYE since we didn’t want to go to a park.

We checked in and were led to the Ice Cream Palace where a supervisor gave us a quick run-down of what we needed to do. Our shift began at 3, and lasted until 6:30pm.

There were eight kinds of ice cream available, plus non-dairy options were kept in a freezer in the back room to avoid cross-contamination. The families staying at the Village had no limit on what/how much they could order – or when! The ice cream palace opened every day for breakfast! There was hot fudge and hot caramel for sundaes, bananas for banana splits, milk and mixers for milkshakes, sprinkles, Oreo bits, etc for toppings and a Coke freestyle machine for drinks (or floats!).

The ice cream shop itself was decorated with a CandyLand theme, and was very bright, colourful and fun!

Our 3.5 hour shift wasn’t overly busy, but it did stay steady. Even when we had downtime, we kept busy by wiping down tables, restocking ice cream, making sure the napkin dispensers were full, etc.  Creativity was encouraged, and I made some crazy concoctions during our time there! A banana split with hot fudge and Oreo crumbs and a dozen cherries on top? Done! A milkshake with cherries and sprinkles blended into it? Done!

It was a really fun way to spend an afternoon, and all too soon our shift was over. It was dark out by this point, and we took our time walking through the village and seeing it all lit up. They actually celebrate Christmas one day every week, Halloween one day a week and have a birthday party for the children once a week, so I believe it stays decorated year round.

I’ve been asked a few times already how we went about even setting up this volunteer shift. It was actually very easy, you just need to fill out an application on their website, http://www.gktw.org/volunteer/

After we signed out, we called an Uber to take us back to Disney property. We were dropped off at Disney Springs and the driver dropped us off on the east side. I believe they are supposed to do drop offs on the west side by the old Cirque du Solieil building now, so I don’t know if this driver didn’t know that or if it was just easier with the NYE traffic. I prefer being dropped off on the east side, and it worked out perfectly for checking out the Christmas Tree Trail. Enjoy my million pictures from this!

We had lots of time before our supper reservation so we took our time looking at each tree, before walking around a very crowded World of Disney. We also stopped in Amorettes to see their Christmas display, but we decided not to buy anything at that point (which I now regret, as I never made it back there on this trip – Luke did, but he didn’t take pictures).

We were still a bit early, but we decided to go check in for our reservation at Homecomin’. We only had to wait a few minutes before they had a table ready for us!

• Homecomin’ Review

Once we finished eating, we were tired and headed back to Pop Century. We packed up our stuff in preparation for our hotel move the following day, and were both asleep before midnight- we both woke up when we heard the fireworks and sleepily said “Happy New Year” before rolling over and going back to sleep. We are such party animals haha.

Total Fitbit Steps: 11,675

Next: January 1, 2018 – Part One

This was only our second trip to Walt Disney World, but it was one to remember (see: Proposal story!).

It was our first time doing a split stay on Disney property, and it was so easy! Bell services were fantastic and it was so nice to not have to move our luggage ourselves. I’m not sure if we’ll ever do a full stay in one place again.

It was also our first time renting DVC points, and it was a smooth process- one which we’ve already used again multiple times! I don’t think we could ever afford to pay rack rate for the Deluxe Resorts, so DVC makes it affordable for us. We also loved both Old Key West and Saratoga Springs.

We used the dining plan on our first trip, but opted to pay for all meals out of pocket this time – which we definitely preferred. I don’t see us using the dining plan again.

It sucks that the half marathon was cancelled for Luke, but it gave us an excuse to attend a runDisney event in California since they allowed him to transfer his registration. I also ran my first ever 5k during this trip, which was so well organized and fun (I don’t see myself ever running a regular 5k though, runDisney events only!)

Overall, it was a great trip, and I’m so lucky that Luke loves Disney just as much as I do, and that we get to make these memories together <3

It was the worst day of the trip – time to go home. Magical Express was picking us up around 11am, so we finished packing up and headed over to the main building by 10am. We decided to grab some food at the Artist’s Palette – the quick service location. I like the ceiling in there a lot, it’s very cute.

We had time, so Luke sat and enjoyed his food. We said our goodbyes to Walt Disney World, got on the Tragical Express and headed home to Canada.

I just realized I didn’t really take any pictures of our room, other than a detail shot of the little thing that laid across the bottom of the bed – I have no idea what it’s actually called, but I loved it! It was so subtly Disney – you don’t even notice the Fox and the Hound at first glance!

We also had a nice view from our balcony (which we never really used…)

Next: Final Thoughts

There was a short posted wait time for Mad Tea Party – and you can’t go to Magic Kingdom and NOT ride the teacups!

We decided to continue our relaxing day, and headed over to the Carousel of Progress to see the Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow…

We found a Photopass Photographer by the side of the castle, so we decided to stop for some more pictures

 

We then headed back into Fantasyland to use a Fastpass we had grabbed to meet some princesses! The other side didn’t have too long of a wait, so we decided to meet all four of them!

I find Cinderella to be an incredibly boring princess, much too prim and proper to be entertaining. We didn’t spend much time with her, just said hello, she commented on our Just Engaged buttons, we took a few pictures and that was about it.

       *more unexpected Photopass pictures haha*

So, we had no idea who Elena of Avalor was, but she was probably our favourite princess we met that day – she was very bubbly and adorable. I wish I could remember our conversation with her, but of course I’m writing this a year and a half after it happened… I love these pictures of Elena and Luke though  <3

This Magicshot was clearly meant for Cinderella, not Elena – and I find most of these things weird… but here you go!

We then headed to the other side of Princess Hall – to meet Tiana and Rapunzel! Both were great, and really excited to learn we had just got engaged the day before.

By the time we finished meeting the princesses, I felt like a snack, so I grabbed a churro. This was actually the first one I’ve ever had in Florida – and it was kind of gross. It had clearly been sitting under a heat lamp for a little bit too long – the ones I’ve had at Disneyland have always been hot and fresh. I was disappointed, but I still ate it.

We wandered around a bit, I think we went to see Enchanted Tales with Belle (but I have no pictures to prove this, so you’ll just have to believe me…), before jumping in line for The Little Mermaid ride – where I was once again handed a red card! Twice in one day!

We caught the train over by The Barnstormer, and rode it all the way around to Frontierland.

We had never been on Splash Mountain in the dark, and the wait time was basically non-existent so it was a great time to try it out! We came oh-so-close to have a boat to ourselves! Maybe one day…

It was getting close to time for Wishes, so we decided to watch from the bridge in Frontierland. It’s not the best viewing location, but we could see the fireworks and it wasn’t crowded at all.

There were Extra Magic Hours this night, so we did not join the rush of people leaving the park after the fireworks. Luke realized he hadn’t ate since lunch, and decided it was time for him to have a snack. He decided to grab one of his favourites, a Dole Whip Float.

He enjoyed it, as always. We sat for a few minutes while he ate it, and we realized we didn’t have many things we wanted to accomplish during Extra Magic Hours, that we would just go on rides with short wait times. We walked over and The Many Adventures of Winnie-the-Pooh was a walk-on so we hopped in a honey pot and went to visit the 100-Acre Wood. We then headed over to Tomorrowland for our final ride of our trip – Buzz Lightyear.

After Luke beat me yet again on Buzz, we decided to say goodbye to the parks for this trip and headed out to the bus stop. We headed back to Saratoga Springs, and finished packing up. We ate some of the snacks/leftovers we had in the room – we realized we had forgot to eat supper haha. Whoops?! After shoving some food in, we crashed pretty quickly – we had a relaxing day, but it was still a long day.

After meeting the four characters in the Circus tent, we went to check out the merchandise for sale in there. We decided to pick up a pink ear hat and have it embroidered with the name of our 3 year old neighbour as a gift for her.

From there, we made our way over to the most thrilling ride in the Magic Kingdom – the Tomorrowland Transit Authority Peoplemover!

When we walked back into the Hub, we noticed a meet and greet for a character we’d never met before, so we headed over and got into line. There was only a few people in front of us, so it wasn’t long before we were introducing ourselves to Mary Poppins (don’t tell her I’ve never watched her movie…)!

We started making our way down Main Street to leave the park, but we took our time, browsing in the shops as we went. I found a super cute Chip and Dale shirt – which I made Luke buy me since he had forgot my wallet in the room haha.

We made our way out of the park, and headed over to the boat dock. We only had to wait a few minutes before a boat arrived to take us to the Wilderness Lodge. It was our first time visiting that resort, and our first time taking one of the Magic Kingdom boats. It’s such a nice relaxing way to travel.

We were a little early, but we checked in anyway for our reservation at Whispering Canyon Cafe. You can read the review by clicking on the link.

Once we finished eating, I decided I wanted to change into my new shirt, so I ran to the bathroom to do a quick change and put my hair into a braid. We then caught the boat back over to the Magic Kingdom.

We stopped for a few pictures by the train station – something which is a lot less crowded in the middle of the afternoon. The photographer tried to make us do some weird, awkward poses, and it looks like Luke is about to lift me up into some kind of cheerleading pose in the last one…

 

We decided to go meet Tinkerbell, something we’d never done there – but when we saw a posted wait time of 5 minutes we figured it was the perfect time. I was finally awarded the honour of being the chosen one, and handed a red card as we entered the line – I was way too excited about that.

The posted wait time was inaccurate haha – we literally walked in to meet her, she was just saying goodbye to a family. So our wait was actually more like 15.8 seconds (and no, I did not actually time that).

Tinkerbell was really cute, and a lot of fun.

I can’t believe I’m going to share this picture – anyone who has used Memory Maker on a WDW trip has some…unfortunate photos taken of them haha. The photographer’s tend to take pictures right before you meet the character, but most of the time I don’t even realize they’re doing it… this was one of those times. I figure everyone can use a good laugh – so enjoy my extra chins and mostly-closed eyes and stupid grin hahahaha – thanks Disney Photopass Photographer at Tinkerbell….

We headed up Main Street and went to ride Haunted Mansion again. It’s been so long since this trip actually happened, but I assume we had grabbed a Fastpass for it (or it just had a really short posted wait time?).

We then headed back into Fantasyland, where we stopped for another new to us thing – pictures with the Sword in the Stone! Not surprisingly, neither one of us pulled it out.

Next: Part Three

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