So as always this “trip report” took me longer than I would have liked to get up on my blog. And as my first time as an honest to goodness REAL Disney TA, I wanted to take the time to make sure to get it right! 🙂
This trip was a trip for my 40th Birthday. 40. The BIG 4-0. But to be honest, I was truly in my favorite place with my favorite people, so it wasn’t nearly as bad turning 40 as I thought! When I started planning a year or so ago, it was just going to be Dan, M and I. I decided though I wanted my parents to be there. I mean they were the ones to give me birth so it just only seemed right! We usually invite them about every other year to join us on a vacation, so they hadn’t been with us since fall of 2017. Well kind of. Mom came with M and I for our Spring girl’s trip in 2018. Mom and Dad weren’t sure if they wanted to spend much time in the parks but I wanted them to be with us at Magic Kingdom on my birthday (again, back to the favorite place/favorite people thing). However, when Mom realized that it was Flower and Garden Festival at Epcot, Mom decided that they needed one more park day. Dan, M and I had our Annual Passes. Which we are stinking spoiled with. So spoiled that on the last day of the trip we went into Magic Kingdom just to use our snack credits and ride Big Thunder Mountain.
Prepare yourselves for all the food in this trip. I mean like lots. So much that I don’t think any of us were hungry until like a week after we got back. We got the deluxe dining plan. It was a lot of food. We did get to try a bunch of places though that we hadn’t before and also go back to our faves.
Day 1. We arrived late on a Tuesday night (did you know that Tuesdays tend to be the cheapest flight days? If not, now you know!) While planning for the trip we were able to secure free tickets to the Moonlight Magic event on 3/27 so didn’t want to rush that day. I moved our flight to Tuesday night and we stayed at Comfort Suites Airport. It was about $130 for the 5 of us in a Suite with free breakfast and free shuttle from the airport. It worked out fine. Breakfast was just ehhh, but again it was fine. The place was clean, the showers were hot, it was close to the airport, and they fed us. Not bad.
Day 2. Of course no one could sleep the next morning since we were in Disney so everyone started moving earlier than I had planned. Even though we had packed carefully so we didn’t have to get stuff out of every suitcase somehow it was kind of a hot mess putting everything back together for our move to the Grand Floridian (GF). We have done the stay one place the night before the trip was supposed to start but it has been fine. For some reason, I felt kind of hot messy this time. I don’t know how people do split stays in the middle of their trips. I’m more of an unpack and get comfy kind of girl. We headed off though to GF and were ready for the trip to really begin. When we got there one of the rooms was ready. That is a rarity with DVC. Usually 4pm is the “rule”. We dropped all of our luggage in the one room and headed off to Disney Springs. We had 1pm reservations at Rainforest Café. Since we had all had just a light breakfast though we were starving so we decided to head straight to the restaurant and see if we could get in early. Since we are Landry Club members and Rainforest is a Landry’s restaurant I mentioned that when we checked in. They seated us within 5 minutes even though we were about an hour early. Best $25 I spent. $25 gets you a membership. You then get a $25 certificate to use when you first sign up and another $25 on your birthday every year after. After lunch we walked around the Springs and about 4pm we headed back to the hotel. Our room was ready and I wanted to unpack before heading to Moonlight Magic at Hollywood Studios.
Moonlight Magic started at 7pm (well 9pm, but they started letting you in at 7pm), but we arrived at 6:45pm and were let in. We had checked-in at the hotel prior to heading to the park. Mom and Dad hadn’t been there in years and it was nice to be able to add another partial park day for them without having to pay. We hit up the Frozen show when we first got there as it wasn’t going to be open during the party. It is one of our favorites and they hadn’t seen it (like most of the park). I was however bummed that @equityben wasn’t there that night. If you don’t know who that is, check him out on Instagram. Hilarious. We then headed over to Sunset Boulevard use our food vouchers that was part of the celebration. We always have a hard time choosing a quick service restaurant at Hollywood Studios but this time I think we chose well. We ate at Sunset Ranch Market which has multiple options. I think out of everyone’s choices my mom chose best and had the Fried Green Tomato Sandwich at Rosie’s All American Café. Dan and I chose Mexican and it was good. Dad had a burger. M had what they call a Power Pack. Little bits of everything she likes. We then headed to the Toy Story area to enjoy the rides with relatively short waits. The rain was on and off that night and it was cool, but we still made sure to get our free Mickey bars on the way out of the park later that night!
Day 3. Our first full day on property was kicked off at our favorite breakfast buffet. Chef Mickey’s is a favorite choice of all ours and we tend to go back to our faves. After a late breakfast Dan, M and I headed to Animal Kingdom and Mom and Dad headed back to the hotel to relax. We hit our three fast passes that day and did a little exploring of Animal Kingdom. Spoiler alert, it isn’t our favorite park. There is lots to do but I feel like because we have an awesome zoo in Pittsburgh, we tend to not be as impressed with the animals. Spoiled. I will admit it. We had a reservation that afternoon at the “Caring For Giants” tour. It was a closer look at the elephants on the safari. It was a fun tour, not too expensive, and I learned a lot. Did you know that farmers in Africa were taught to put bee hives around their farms to keep the elephants out? This is done because the elephants don’t like the bees, and the farmers don’t like the elephants because they destroy their crops. The farmers win b/c the crops aren’t hurt and they get honey, and the elephants win b/c the farmers don’t need to poach them for their tusks. Pretty darn smart. We finished up our touring early that night and checked to see if we could get into Tusker House early for our dinner reservation. The thankfully were able to take us. The food was alright but we have been to many other restaurants at Disney that we have liked much better. The characters were great, but I feel like it was a one and done place for us. We headed back to the hotel that night as we had an early morning the next day. Mom and Dad had had dinner at Grand Floridian Café and their review was much better. They really enjoyed their meal and would go back. Dan and I had eaten there a long time ago (Before M) and enjoyed it as well.
Day 4. It was the big day. My birthday! 🙂 We all put on our birthday shirts and headed into the park for Extra Magic Hours at Magic Kingdom. I know there is always a debate on whether or not EMH makes the parks more crowded or if it’s better to do another park those days. We find it to be great to get a lot of the smaller rides in before the masses come in. Plus, it was my birthday and we were spending it in my favorite park. After getting Buzz Lightyear, Dumbo, Barnstormer, Under the Sea, and our first fast pass to Seven Dwarfs in, we headed to Be Our Guest for Breakfast. Mom, M and I aren’t huge eaters so the 3 of us split an adult meal and a kids meal. Dad and Dan got their own. And we all enjoyed. We love to sit in the ballroom. It’s just a cool atmosphere. We did our next two fast passes and then I started to get us more. After you use your first three you can get another one at a time. We rode more of our favorites with a quick break for lunch at Columbia Harbor House. As much as we love it there, we had dinner planned that night and then the dessert party. We totally should have skipped it. Oh well, you live and learn. We hit some more of our favorites and headed out right before the parade to catch the boat to Wilderness Lodge for dinner at Artist Point with Snow White, the Evil Queen, Dopey, and Grumpy. We all enjoyed this dinner and thought the character interaction again was awesome. (Check out the fun video on my FB page to see some cool things about the kids meals!) After dinner we leisurely headed back to the park. I had a fast pass for Buzz and we used that. After that I had some issues with my fast passes and had to stop to see one of the Cast Members in Tomorrowland. Magic Kingdom has added some guest relation teams in different lands so that you don’t have to go all the way back to Main Street if that is an issue. That is awesome. You walk so much that it is nice to not have to walk even further when you need help. Look for these teams in blue shirts and kiosks around the park. After that we headed into the dessert party. We chose Garden Viewing. Even though you don’t get to sit during the fireworks the view of the castle was amazing. We would for sure choose that location again if possible. We enjoyed all the amazing desserts (especially the giant chocolate covered strawberries) and would do it again for a special occasion. We had talked about staying some more that night to ride, but were honestly tired. It was a long but amazing day!
Day 5. Off to another big breakfast at Trattoria Al Forno. Mom, M, and I had been there before for the girl’s trip but this was Dan and Dad’s first time. All was enjoyed and I think it has moved to the top of the list for Dan and Dad for a sit down breakfast. I personally could just eat all the pastries and be good. So yummy!! M really enjoyed Prince Eric and Flynn Rider. Dan was not so happy! Haha! After breakfast Dan, M and I headed off to Magic Kingdom again and Mom and Dad headed back to the hotel and planned to go to Disney Springs for a bit. We all met up later that night for everyone’s favorite ‘Ohana. Dan went to Trader Sam’s prior to us eating to put our names in so we (okay Dan) could grab a drink. If you haven’t been…it’s small, the wait is long, but it’s a fun atmosphere! Perfect timing as we got the text that we were next in line for Trader Sam’s just as we were done with dinner. M headed back to the hotel with Mom and Dad and we headed to Trader Sam’s. We all hit the sack early that night as we had a long day at Epcot the next day.
Day 6. We had a pre-park opening reservation at Garden Grill this morning. Similar food to ‘Ohana breakfast but we really enjoyed this much more. It was cool walking into Epcot that morning with almost no one there. We were slightly late to breakfast though. After switching monorails at the TTC there were some long waits that morning. Thankfully we had planned an hour travel time so were only about 15 minutes behind. Looking back, we probably should have used Uber/Lyft. Ahhh…hindsight is 20/20. We had a beautiful (and sometimes very warm) day in Epcot. But we can’t complain. We broke our rain curse in Epcot. I swear it ALWAYS rains when we are there. And thankfully this time it didn’t. We got some new things as we ate around the world at the Flower and Garden booths that afternoon. And one of my favorite things (not Flower and Garden related) was the macaroon ice cream sandwich in France. I swear I’m still dreaming about it. We took some time in some of the countries on the way to our dinner later that night. Dinner was at Akershus. Good food, M loves the princesses, and our waitress was amazing that night. Very sweet and personable. The best we had had all week. Always makes the meal just that much better. After dinner we did Test Track one more time and Mom and Dad took M back to the hotel for a sleepover. Dan and I hit up Soarin’ one more time and then headed back to the hotel to pack. The DVC rooms at the Grand Floridian didn’t have much drawers for storage and to be honest the room looked like a tornado hit it.
Day 7. We were up and moving earlier that we thought so we were able to check our luggage into the airline, and put our carry-ons in Mom and Dad’s room. After one last large meal (because that’s what this trip was about! Haha!) at 1900 Park Fare, Dan, M and I headed into the parks and Mom and Dad got to chill in the Grand Floridian lobby and watch them bring in all the beautiful chocolate eggs for Easter. We had just enough time at Magic Kingdom to use a fast pass for Big Thunder and then head to the Main Street Confectionary to fill up some to go containers with our left over snack credits. It was then time to head to the airport.
It was a great way to spend my 40th Birthday…maybe someday I can talk Dan into spending all of them down there!?!? 😉
This trip was the kick off to a large year of travel. Even more than we usually do. Family visits, beach, and of course some more Disney trips because of the Annual Passes (I priced it out and a weekend to Hershey Park was more money out of pocket than Disney this year). I feel like I pound it into M’s head about how lucky she is to be able to travel as much as we do, but sometimes I need to remind myself. Yes, I use coupons. Yes, I often skip other things I want and sometimes put off stuff I need. Yes, we use Southwest points and M has flown for free all of last year and this year from our companion pass with Southwest. Yes, we have DVC points to use each year with our time share. But when it all comes down to it we are blessed be able to travel like we do
thecltdiaries 