DIS Unplugged Events min trip report:
I took a long weekend trip to Disney just for the DIS Unplugged anniversary. My boyfriend and I were there from Thursday until early Tuesday morning. At least, we were supposed to be. Southwest had a computer ‘glitch on Wednesday afternoon. This glitch ended up affecting flights all through the weekend. I think I was lucky to get out of Newark Thursday afternoon. Brian’s flight was from Austin was in the evening and it ended up getting canceled. We were scrambling to find him a replacement flight since the earliest flight Southwest could get him on was an arrival in Orlando Saturday afternoon. Which would really suck for a trip that is just a long weekend. We finally found him a noon arrival flight from American that would arrive Friday. We had to pay a lot for it, but it was either that or have the weekend ruined.
So on to the DIS events, which I’m sure is what you all want to hear about.
Friday night we attended the Star Wars fireworks dessert party. It was not a DIS event, but we ended up spending the evening with
@soniam and her husband and then we also randomly met
@GaSleepingBeautyFan there and shared a table, so it turned into a really nice evening. The desserts were good, I was glad that they’d added some savory items instead of just sweet so we were able to eat a lot of naan bread and hummus. The alcoholic drinks were good if not maybe a bit strong. The fireworks were amazing. Though I feel like calling them fireworks is misleading, the show is now mostly a projection and laser show with a few fireworks thrown in.
Saturday we attended the video blogging event with Ryno and Tom Bell from the
Disneyland show. I thought Ryno was a great host, he made sure to talk with everyone and was super nice. Brian and I also randomly found someone (rather she found us first) that had been on our Backstage Magic California
ABD! That was really fun to hang out with her again. We got to pick Tom's brain about DL and all the potential changes there. We started in Canada and just slowly made our way through the countries. Whenever someone wanted to make a drink or snack stop we would all pause and then the purchasers of the drinks/snacks would film a short review with Ryno for the video blog. It was super hot that day so it seemed like most of us were just searching for shade the whole time. It was still a really good time and we wrapped up in Mexico. Ryno had to run off for the soft opening of Abracabar, but a group of us went on the boat ride in Mexico together and had a good time. I did hear some reports that the video blogging on Sunday may have been an even better time, but that’s ok I still had fun Saturday.
Sunday we got to go to the Connecting with Walt event, which I had been looking forward to a lot. Once again, it was sooo hot and the sun was blaring down on us the whole time. Michael and Craig were a little bit late because they were looking for one particular window as part of the presentation. Carole was there (Michael’s wife) and she let us all know what was going on. This was so much fun. Michael pretty much knows everything about Disney, it was a little like being on the tour that goes into the Utilitdors and I’m forgetting the name of it. But I am pretty sure Michael knew even more than our tour guide for that. We traveled down Main Street as Michael pointed out windows and the history behind them. We were racing the 3 o’clock parade a little and Main Street was starting to fill up with people waiting for the parade. I think we all kind of hit our limit with the crowds and the heat. When we hit the end of Main Street it was time for some rides! We all got to cool down in Carousel of Progress together, which I always enjoy. After the Carousel it was time for a cruise on the People Mover. The poor cast members did not know what to do with a group our size. They wanted exact numbers and no one really knew, and also no one knew how many people would be in each cart, sometimes people ended up going solo and some cars were packed with 4 people. Poor cast members.
After the ride we all met up in the Tomorrowland Noodle Terrace for a wrap up. Michael spoke some more and then we all got surprise Connecting with Walt pins! After all, you can’t end a Disney tour without getting a pin, right?
Next day was podcast day! We showed up at the Cirque theater at exactly noon. There were a lot of people there ahead of us and shortly we were allowed to load into the theater. Seating was first come first serve, we got good seats at the back of the lowest section. The team was playing old videos before the show started, everyone pretty much quieted down and we all enjoyed the videos together which included the three guys squeezing onto Mater’s at DCA, the video with Bob where he did SW Weekends and the one with Theresa and Kathy when they did Habit Heroes at Epcot.
The podcast started right around 1 with the incredible video that Ryno put together, I think the podcast is up by now so you’ve all seen it or will see it. It was very well done. Next Pete came out and gave very nice introductions for the rest of the crew. I won’t go into detail for the rest of the podcast since it is online now, but it was really fun. Unfortunately neither DL trip winner was there to receive their trip in person. The podcast wrapped up around 2:30 and we immediately headed off to AK to hit some attractions we’d missed.
We also were able to get into the Epcot Illuminations dessert party Monday night. We wanted to stop at La Cava to get a margarita before the party, we had just arrived in France when I got a text that the dessert party location had been changed to the Odyssey due to threat of storms. Ugh. Doing a 360 degree tour of World Showcase on a very muggy night while chugging a margarita is not a great idea. We finally ended up making it to the dessert party at about 8:25 (it started at 8). We had time to grab some glow necklaces, one plate of desserts and an ice cream and suddenly it was time to head back to France to get in our spot since it hadn’t started to storm yet.
So the dessert part of the party kind of sucked due to our lack of time there, but to be honest from the start I was really paying for the location and for the company. I never expected to get too much out of the desserts.
Our viewing area was in that fenced off terrace kind of thing that was in between France and England, so it was a really great spot. We received special glasses that made all the fireworks appear to have Mickey heads on the ends, so that was neat. After Illuminations we ended up staying for a long time and chatting. This was our last night so I was very reluctant to leave. I also got to have a very nice chat with Ryno, most of the team waited around until almost everyone was gone.
It was actually kind of hard to get to chat with the podcast team. I think I showed up to the credential pick up at the wrong time, there were lots of others there as well and everyone was already chatting. I did get to meet Ryno, Michael, Tom and Kathy so that was exciting. I’d already met Craig and Kylie on my Southern California ABD but I got to chat with them again too which is always a good time. The rest I could just never pin down, whenever I saw them they were already engaged in conversation with someone else. I kind of expected that though, there were so many people at the event and we all wanted to meet the podcasters.
One of the best parts of the weekend was meeting all the DISers. We really are a very friendly, fun group on here who all love Disney. It was amazing, as usual, how easy it is to talk with everyone and make new friends.
I'll also be doing a trip report on the rest of the trip, so if you'd like to join in on that please do! I'll have a link in my signature soon.
Just did - you're part of the Pod Squad - loved that! 
