Ahhhh…the most Magical time of year in the most Magical place!

It’s time for another blog of our Christmas trip to the World!

So this trip started with how a lot of our trips have been.  Hey Dan…why don’t we move our 1pm flight to the morning?  Ok.  Then both of us…why are we just not going the night before?  We have the time share points to use.  Ok.   *Carrie dials Southwest…evens saves reward points…New flights booked! Carrie dials DVC…one more night booked!*

So we ended up at Animal Kingdom Lodge again the first night.  Nice room.  Amazing Christmas decorations in the lobby.  Giraffes outside our balcony in the morning.  Sweet score!  We (Okay, mostly me) packed pretty well so that we didn’t have to unpack everything.  The next morning after getting ready for Magic Kingdom we decided to Uber/Lyft to Bay Lake Towers.  Disney will take your luggage to your new resort for you if you would like but since we were heading to Magic Kingdom anyway and can walk there from Bay Lake, we chose this method.  We dropped off all of our stuff at Bay Lake for them to hold until our room was ready and off we went to our “extra day” at the Magic Kingdom.  🙂

I kept it pretty low key (well low key for me) that day.  We rode our favorite rides, took time to meet a character or two, and even didn’t run from place to place!  As it was chilly that day (hoodies and jackets) we didn’t ride Splash Mountain again.  Dan is bummed we keep missing it as he hasn’t been on it since they refurbished it.  We ate at Casey’s that day.  A new one for us!  It wasn’t bad and I would do it again.  The portions are huge, and it’s different from the places we usually choose.  Right after lunch we realized that M had left her stuffed animal and lovey wrapped in the sheets at Animal Kingdom.  We rushed to guest services to call the front desk (don’t ever try to call the front desk of your hotel yourself for anything…even from within that hotel.  You are routed to a general number and they won’t actually get you someone within that hotel).  They thankfully were able to reach someone in the hotel and they just happened to be cleaning our room at that time.  All was found and later delivered safety to our hotel.  We headed back to the hotel around 5pm/6pm and unpacked a bit.  Later ran up to the quick serve in Contemporary for some dinner.  I like their food there.  Good choices for being small and healthier options too!

The next morning we were running late as usual for Hollywood Studios.  Our goal had been to get there early to sign-up for Jedi training and then rush over to get in line for Slinky Dog (since we couldn’t grab a fast pass).  Since we were already running late we grabbed a Lyft and had them drop us off.  The bus/parking/car sharing area is a hot mess right now with construction at HS and the walk is about 5-8 minutes from drop off.  We walked quickly and the line was still pretty long for Jedi Training.  Upon getting into line I quickly gave up all hope of riding Slinky Dog that day.  When we got to the front of that line for Jedi Training, they said they had one more spot open for the first Jedi Training of the day.  We took it (again messing up our plans), but knew since M had been wavering on doing the training or not, this was our best hope for success.  Don’t give her time to think about it!  haha!  It of course was AMAZING and she loved every minute of it like we knew she would.  We continued to tour the park that day with M and Dan riding Alien Swirling Saucers, and us doing Toy Story Mania, plus lots of other rides and shows.  We tried Woody’s Lunch Box for the first time.  Total one and done.  Not a good option for M (no Uncrustables) and Dan and I were not happy with our lunches either.  That evening was a Hollywood and Vine reservation.  One of our faves.  It gets bad reviews, but we always like it.  Good character interactions and lots of food options.  We watched the light show over by Tower of Terror after with the “snow”.  It was pretty awesome!  We then decided it was early enough to head to Disney Springs so we jumped on a bus to see the Trail of Trees.  While nice, it was extremely crowded.  We again grabbed a Lyft back to Bay Lake.  There is totally transportation available everywhere, but we had started to get spoiled and the walk back to the busses seemed like a large hike after a long day and the Lyft pick up was right there.

Saturday was a later (like 10am start) to Animal Kingdom.  Jumped on a bus and headed over around 9/9:30.  We walked into Pandora first hoping to grab a rider swap for Dan for Flight of Passage since he had yet to ride.  No dice.  You had to wait in the line and get all the way to the front before receiving the rider swap and we didn’t have time for that as our first fast pass was 10am.  We headed to Everest and M and I jumped in the regular line at 9:50 (there was only a 15 minute wait) in case she wanted to ride it again.  She rode it once and was a one and done for this trip.  We had time before our next fast pass for the Safari and so we did the newer bird show.  Pretty cool, but I wouldn’t head to Animal Kingdom just for that .  While in line for the Safari, Dan noticed John Stamos walking by with his family.  He was a reader for the Candlelight Processional that week.  As many times as we have been, I think that was my first celebrity sighting.  We then grabbed a quick lunch and headed to our fast pass at Navi River.  It was the first time riding for all three of us.  While in line I happened to check the app and there was a fast pass available for Dan for Flight of Passage for 2:30pm.  Grabbed it!  M really enjoyed the ride and we then decided to leave Dan for him to ride FOP and we headed back to the hotel to change and take a few minutes of down time.  We met up at the Polynesian for dinner at ‘Ohana at 4pm.  One of our favorite things at Disney is the food options (specifically sit-down) so we did have the dining plan again this time.  Doing the math, it came out pretty close in comparison if we paid out of pocket, so we just went for it.  After dinner we took a Lyft over to Fort Wilderness for the campfire/sing-a-long and had a reservation for a sleigh ride later that night.  The campfire was cute and they had bingo for the kids too, plus a meet and greet with Chip and Dale.  We took the internal bus system to get there from the front and then the internal bus system to get to the area where they were doing the sleigh rides.  The ride was fun and we got to see many of the Christmas displays that the campground visitors had put up.  We also got a limited edition pin for those that are pin collectors.

The next morning was Chef Mickey’s for breakfast.  Another one of our favorites.  So much good food and the characters are great!  We then rolled ourselves out of there and took the monorail over to Grand Floridian to see the Gingerbread house and all the decorations.  The line was ridiculous to get hot cocoa and gingerbread (which we aren’t huge fans of anyway) so we just picked up a small one in their gift shop.  We then hopped on the monorail again to head to Magic Kingdom.  It was our Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas party day, but we also wanted to get some extra rides in so we hit the parks up early (a benefit of our Annual Passes) with some Fast Passes.  We could barely still eat at lunch so we grabbed a snack and rode more rides until grabbing our wristbands around 5/6pm for the party.  We then were finally ready to eat so we chose Cosmic Rays (one of Dan’s faves) for a quick meal before heading out to see the shows and parades.  Since we had ridden many rides already in this trip and hadn’t ever been to a party to see these shows/parades/fireworks this was going to be our goal this time.  We grabbled some of the goodies and free snacks and we did the second parade (less crowded) on Main Street so we could watch it snow while we were there.  Got a great spot and after enjoying the parade we headed quickly to see if we could jump on Big Thunder (M’s request) and actually rode it twice in a row before they closed down the line.  It was now after midnight and M fell asleep on the walk back to Bay Lake.  By the way…that walking to Magic Kingdom thing?  Yeah, it’s the best thing ever about our “home” resort.

Monday it was off to Epcot.  We had it timed so that as long as we got to Spaceship Earth by 10am we could hit all of our fast passes.  We also had a bonus fast pass that afternoon from Soarin’ because of a breakdown on another ride the day before.  After hitting SE, Test Track, and the Seas with Nemo, I jumped online to see if I could grab us another fast pass.  Saw one for Test Track (One of Dan and M’s faves) and grabbed it for 6pm.  We then decided to grab lunch in The Land.  Their quick service there is also full of healthier options and not the same boring pizza and burgers.  We also knew M would eat the pasta there and since we were having dinner that night at San Angel Inn, we knew she should eat something good for lunch as she won’t eat much at dinner.  As we were leaving The Land to head to the countries for a bit, the rain started.  I’m not kidding you when I say that EVERY time we are in Epcot.  EVERY.SINGLE.TIME.  So we put on our ponchos and stroller cover and went.  They came on and off a lot that day.   We did about half of the countries and jumped on the boat back to the front of Epcot to hit our Soarin’ fast pass.  We then decided to hit the other countries and then head to our dinner.   It was fabulous as always and M actually decided she liked the 3 Caballero’s ride this time too.  Just in time for them to change it as I see it changing to a Coco theme here in the future as part of the pavilion has already seemed to head that way.  We then headed back to that boat just in time for it to start raining again.  Back on with the ponchos and stroller cover.  As we waited in the Candlelight Processional line (our dinner came with tickets for the show), it started to pour.  Like bad.  M was taking cover in the stroller and staying very dry until we got to the point where they parked the stroller for us.  She then climbed under my poncho and tried to stay dry as the water literally rushed all around us.  This is where we saw the “nasty” of Disney come alive.  You don’t see it often, but when you get to an outdoor auditorium that is only half covered in pouring rain and the seats are very limited under cover, people start pushing.  Dan was ready to bail, but I wanted to give it a few more minutes.  Thankfully right before it started, they found two seats in the front row at the end.  Dan had water rushing at his feet, but it was not on our head and I had M on my lap.  We could see the choir well but only had a limited view of Neil Patrick Harris.  He was amazing as a reader and Dan and I enjoyed it.  M fell asleep.  Yes, with all that singing, she only made about half of it.  What she saw though she enjoyed.   After we found our stroller, we headed to the back entrance of Epcot, walked to Beach Club and did a Lyft back to the hotel.  We at that point didn’t want to do buses.  Too far, too crowded, and again we had gotten spoiled.

That night (yes at like 10pm) we had to pack.  Boo.  And we thought for some reason it was a good idea for our last day to make a Fast Pass for Slinky Dog.  So we packed, we checked our bags, and we had them hold our carry-ons and off we went to Hollywood Studios (another awesome thing about the Annual Pass…a quick pop in was easy!).  When we got there I noticed the line for Toy Story Mania was short and we couldn’t get in line for Slinky Dog yet, so I figured we could push it.  We had a blast on it and on SD but as always I was pushing our time.  We quickly rushed out of HS as we still had to grab lunch and use our last few snack credits.  At Bay Lake we had the slowest cashier in the history of cashiers and she kept screwing things up so I sent Dan to get our food to go and M and I figured out the snack thing.  We grabbed the bus with 5 minutes to spare and made it to the airport in more than enough time.  At the airport our friends from home who had also been there at about the same time were on our flight.  The girls quickly made fast friends and kept each other busy on the plane ride home.

This was another magical trip.  Beautiful decorations, great food, and lots of fun.  We really enjoyed the Christmas holidays, but I have to say fall might still be our favorite time.  It’s a hard call because I love that time at home as well, but the fireworks for the Halloween party are AMAZING, and there is just something about that time of year down there for us.

Onward and upward to the planning of our next trip!  M (and Momma!) is already counting the days!!