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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Next: December 30, 2017 – Part Three!

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

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

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

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

• Be Our Guest review

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

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

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

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

Daisy checking out my ring <3

Next was Minnie Mouse in her adorable pink outfit!

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

 

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

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

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

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

• Cafe Orleans Review

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Delicious! I love bread way too much haha.

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

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

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

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

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

• Cove Bar review

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Cheesecake Factory review

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Next: Part Two

Every great trip report starts in the days leading up to actually going on a trip! Feel free to skip to the next post, we don’t get to Disney until then… I knew that the week leading up to this trip would be really busy, so we had decided to skip Christmas this year – which broke my heart a little bit since I love decorating so much (I’m typically that person who has multiple trees…). We spent Christmas Day at my mom’s house (where she once again spoiled us by buying us a red KitchenAid stand mixer – something I’ve been eyeing up for years despite the fact I don’t cook), and had a wonderful turkey dinner. On Boxing Day, we did a bit of shopping, although it was mainly last minute things we needed for the trip or pet supplies to last while we were away. We then went to the Olive Garden for unlimited soup, salad and breadsticks haha. December 27th, we both had to work. Since we had been trying to eat through the food in our fridge, and hadn’t bought any new groceries we again went out to eat that night – this time at Famoso. It’s a fantastic Neapolitan style pizza place and on Wednesday nights their prosciutto-wrapped mozza balls are on special – so delicious. We also had a coupon that expired December 31st, so we basically had to go eat there that day haha.

December 28th, we both worked again all day. We had started setting what we needed to take in our spare bedroom a few weeks earlier, but I started seriously packing on this day. December 29th, I was up early to check us into our flight. I was hoping to score an upgrade to first class for a small fee, but no such luck.  Luke had to work again that day, but only a half day. It was my scheduled day off, so I took advantage of that and packed like a crazy person! We had so much stuff to take due to this being a two week long trip and lugging all our wedding stuff, so I had to be very creative in how I packed to make sure nothing would get broken and our suitcases stayed underweight. The pets were all really helpful while I packed…

Eventually, I was satisfied that everything was packed and I wasn’t forgetting anything, so we drove our dogs out to my best friend’s house. She was going to be watching them for the first few days (and my mom would be checking in on our cats and degus) before my co-worker Scott moved into our house on January 2nd to act as our pet/house sitter. The worst part of any trip for me is saying goodbye to my puppies

Luke went to sleep at a decent time, while I stayed awake because I decided I needed to clean our house. I think I was just excited/nervous for the next two weeks haha. It was pretty late by the time I finally went to bed. My mom was going to drive us to the airport the next morning, so we had told her our plan of leaving our house at 5:45am. At 5:52am, she called my phone and woke us up – Luke’s alarm didn’t go off. So, it was a pretty frantic few minutes of pulling on clothes, grabbing our last minute items to be packed (cell phone chargers, etc), and then trying to load all our luggage into my SUV as quickly as possible.  To make everything even better, this was the weather…

yep, it felt like -47oC with the windchill – which meant we couldn’t load up my Rav4 the night before because we had things which could freeze.

Luckily, we had built in a bit of a buffer so we knew we would be fine, but Luke and I like to be at the airport very early for any flight – it’s the one thing in my life I’m always early for haha. About halfway to the airport Luke realized he had forgot his Brita water bottle in the garage, he had set it down to lift a suitcase into the SUV, and he was pretty sad about it. Florida water tastes disgusting, but those Brita bottles really work well to mask the taste! It was too late to turn around, but luckily we had actually bought a bunch of those bottles to put into our welcome bags for our wedding guests, so I told him he could steal one from there so he wouldn’t be without on this trip.

We arrived at the airport, hugged my mom goodbye and headed inside. Typically when we fly, we book the cheapest flight, but for this trip we decided to spend the extra money and fly direct. There’s actually only one flight per week that goes from Edmonton to Orlando direct, and it’s only on Saturdays. Initially, our trip was going to be from January 2nd – 13th, but once we decided we wanted the direct flight, we extended our trip backwards to December 30th.

We checked in and dropped off our four giant suitcases. I was a little nervous watching them disappear on the conveyor belt as my wedding dress and Luke’s suit were inside one… We were going to take our wedding day outfits as carry-on, but we already had so much to carry, and we decided to take the chance that it would all work out – after all, we were flying direct and our wedding wasn’t until the end of our vacation.

The security line for the US departures was the longest we’ve ever seen it. We had our boarding passes scanned, and then everyone was being directed to the left to join the snaking line. However, I was randomly selected, and asked to step to the right. Luke was told to stay with me, since we were travelling together. I had to place my carry-on suitcase on top of a table, and a security lady opened it up and looked inside. I had nothing to hide, so these additional screenings never bother me. Once she was finished, she told us to follow her and she escorted us to the front of the line. We easily saved 20-30 minutes in line just by being randomly selected! Go us! The rest of security and customs was a breeze, “Where are you going?” Walt Disney World. “What is the purpose of your trip?” To get married!

December 30, 2017 – Part Two

Enough time had passed by the time we re-entered the park that we were able to go grab another Fastpass, this time for Buzz Lightyear (and for a time frame that we were almost in already!).

We used the Star Tours fastpass we had grabbed earlier in the day, and by then we were already in our window for Buzz, where Luke beat me as per usual.

The sun had set by this point, so we went to check out the castle all lit up.

We decided to grab another Fastpass, this time for one of my favourites, Big Thunder Mountain

We still had some time to go before our next fastpass, so we went to Fantasyland to go on some of the classic rides – Snow White’s Scary Adventure, Pinocchio’s Daring Journey and Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride.

It was our first time going on Mr. Toad – that ride is ridiculous, one scene literally depicts Hell. We had just made it out of Hell when the ride broke, we could hear the people behind us laughing and yelling out that they were stuck in Hell.

Of course, I had to stop for a picture on the ride vehicle located outside the entrance. I also have no idea how to pose for pictures…

Another ride we had never been on at Disneyland was Alice in Wonderland, so that’s where we headed next. It was much better (and longer) than I was expecting- I thought it would be similar to the rides we had just come from, but apparently it has actually undergone a few refurbishments. It’s by no means what I would consider an E-ticket ride, it was just better than I thought it would be.

As we exited the ride, the Main Street Electrical Parade was going by. We had watched this parade on our first trip to WDW, and weren’t really overwhelmed by it, so we made no effort to see it on this trip.

We were finally in our window for Indiana Jones, so we walked across the park to go on that. It’s such a great ride, the attention to detail is spectacular.

Luke decided he could use a snack, and bought himself a Dole Whip float. He ate it while we walked over to Pirates of the Caribbean, and by the time we were getting ready to board our boat he had finished it.

Once we exited Pirates, we were in our window for our Big Thunder Fastpass. I love the California version of this ride so much!

By the time we got off the Wildest Ride in the Wilderness, the park was getting close to closing time, so we headed out and caught an Uber back to our hotel.

We were a little slow moving this morning, and slept in a bit. When we arrived at the park, we entered California Adventure first. The first thing we did was grab a Fastpass for Soarin’ for later that day.

We didn’t have a ton of time before our dining reservation, so we checked wait times and went to the Mickey Fun Wheel (stationary, of course- none of that moving car for me!). I used the zoom on my real camera and got some pretty cool pictures of the mountains in the distance, and a fake mountain much closer (almost all of my pictures are just taken with my phone, which was an iPhone 6 at the time of this trip)

After our short stay in the park, we headed out and walked over to the Disneyland hotel for a reservation at Goofy’s Kitchen

• Goofy’s Kitchen review

We once again entered DCA, and went to use our Soarin’ Fastpass.

After our trip around the world, we entered a short stand-by line and rode California Screamin’

hopped over to Disneyland and grabbed a Fastpass for Star Tours a few hours later.

From there, we headed to the Star Wars Launch Bay to meet Chewbacca and Darth Vader. I get the biggest, cheesiest grin on my face every time I meet Chewie haha…

We were hanging around afterwards, checking out the Star Wars stuff when a cast member came over, commented on our tshirts and then handed us a card with a picture of Bobba Fett and let us know he had seen him hanging around back by the cantina.

We headed back there, where there was a cast member standing by a nondescript door. We just hung out for a bit, waiting for Bobba Fett to appear but after standing around for about 10 minutes we went over and asked the cast member what time he would be showing up. The cast member smiled at us and pushed a button we hadn’t noticed, and within a minute Bobba Fett had emerged. Apparently we had to ask about him.

It was really cool to meet a rare character like that!

We finally headed back outside after spending well over an hour in the Launch Bay, where we ran into some Stormtroopers.

We decided we wanted to meet another character, so we checked the app and decided on Belle.

We were getting close to our dinner reservation in Downtown Disney, but we ran over to grab a Fastpass for Indiana Jones first.

Our supper that evening was at Naples, which I really enjoyed.

• Naples review

Next: January 29, 2017 Part Two