“I felt like a chickmunk!” A Jan/Feb 2019 TR UPDATED 6/2 x 2 COMPLETED!

[Gina Starr]

Hello everyone and welcome to my very first trip report! I have been here on the dis for several years and have “watched” lots of trip reports over those years but I have rarely commented and have never posted my own report! I decided three weeks before my trip this year to do my first PTR to see if I would like to do a Trip Report. I figured what the heck! and decided to go for it. I didn’t take very many pictures and some of my notes are a little lacking so let’s hope this isn’t a massive dumpster fire!

So who am I? I’m Gina and in addition to self-deprecating humor I love all things Disney, my dog, and being a lazy bum.



My trip (and life) partner is my hubby Donnie. I know DH is a common thing on here for husband but I don’t love abbreviations so I will just call him by his name through the report.



We are high school sweethearts (awwww) and in our early 30s. We have a fur baby named Pepper who is considered a senior and he recently had heart surgery that we dropped a small fortune on. But he’s our baby and absolutely worth every penny! When we aren’t working we enjoy doing old people things. I’m a home body but Donnie likes to do “stuff” so we go to the movies, gamble on occasion, go to Dave and Busters, go bowling, etc. We are the exact opposite of party people and between the two of us we got exactly one alcoholic beverage on this trip. I’m known for saying “this would taste good if it didn’t have alcohol in it.”



Moving on! Let’s do the pre-requisite who, when, what, where, why thing. I already told you who we are so let’s talk about our favorites.

Gina
Favorite restaurant: Does Erin McKennas count as a restaurant? If no, then Satu’li Canteen
Favorite snack: Cookie sandwich from Erin McKennas or gluten free beignets or churros from Nomad Lounge (anyone notice a theme?)
Favorite land: Frontierland/Adventureland
Favorite show: Carousel of Progress (or is that a ride?)
Favorite ride: Haunted Mansion or People Mover
Favorite new thing we did: Hoop Dee Doo Music Revue

Donnie
Favorite restaurant: Skipper Canteen but he changed his answer to Satu’li when he heard mine
Favorite snack: Pineapple upside down cake with dole whip
Favorite land: Pandora
Favorite show: Festival of the Lion King
Favorite ride: Slinky Dog Dash
Favorite new thing we did: Using Minnie Vans but when he heard my favorite new thing was Hoop Dee Doo he changed his answer (he does this a lot! He needs to know what I’m gonna order when we go out to eat before he decides what he wants)

The other W’s
The what is a trip to Disney (duh). We left home January 24th and returned February 5th. That makes this our longest trip (anywhere) ever! We are a 14-ish hour drive away from Disney so we stayed the night on the way down for one night, did one night at Port Orleans Riverside, and the rest of our trip at our home away from home Port Orleans French Quarter. We became pass holders for the second time this trip. As much as we would love to go again in 2019, I don’t think we will be able to make it work but we like to do January trips so will make sure to go in January 2020 before our passes expire to get our moneys worth.



Some stats for this trip:
4: the number of ADRs we cancelled :-(
4: the number of ADRs we got same day or just walked up
5: the number of texts my mom sent me about the weather back home
1: the number of texts my mom sent asking how we were/ telling us how Pepper was
3: the number of trips to Erin McKennas
2: the number of spirit jerseys I bought (whoops)
0: the number of nighttime shows I saw
Wow this is long, I tend to ramble. If you are still here, welcome and thanks for reading along with me!

*Oh yeah, I plan on posting everything from my phone and could never figured out the photo hosting thing from my phone. I got Flickr but every time I tried to post pictures from my phone it was just a link so I guess I am going to post pics right from the dis which has the 10 pic limit so I might have to split some posts up.*​

 

[missangelalexis]

Yay glad you have started! Joining in and can't wait to hear about the trip

 

[LeiaIsAPrincess2]

Following along! Can't wait to hear more

 

[LaurieLiz]

Joining in! Congrats on writing your first trip report and I'm looking forward to hearing more about your trip!

 

[cheshiregoofy22]

You’re off to a great start! Excited to read more and super envious of your long stay!! (But in a good way)

 

[chs27]

Wonderful start! Hope Pepper is feeling better.

 

[disneyAndi14]

Yay! I’m joining in, we were there the same time! I am pretty sure you went to after hours the same night we did!

I didn’t see you to say Hi! So

I post everything from my IPad and cannot use the host site either so 10 pictures for me as well. My IPad is attached to me, lol!

 

[Gina Starr]

Yay glad you have started! Joining in and can't wait to hear about the trip

Glad to have you here!

 

[Gina Starr]

Following along! Can't wait to hear more

Thanks for joining in!!

 

[Gina Starr]

Joining in! Congrats on writing your first trip report and I'm looking forward to hearing more about your trip!

Thanks for being here! I’m excited to re-live my trip!

 

[Gina Starr]

You’re off to a great start! Excited to read more and super envious of your long stay!! (But in a good way)

Thank you! I’m honestly jealous too because I doubt we will be able to do that long of a trip again.

 

[Gina Starr]

Wonderful start! Hope Pepper is feeling better.

Thank you! He is good as new. He had a pericaridectomy which means he had the sac around his heart removed. Super scary stuff but he recovered like a champ!

 

[Gina Starr]

Yay! I’m joining in, we were there the same time! I am pretty sure you went to after hours the same night we did!

I didn’t see you to say Hi! So

I post everything from my IPad and cannot use the host site either so 10 pictures for me as well. My IPad is attached to me, lol!

Hi! Yea, we were at the same DAH but I didn’t see you either. We had a ummmm.... interesting experience. I’ll be sure to write all about it!

I think I’m going to have to use my iPad instead because my phone is too tiny! Just trying to change the color of the font was quite the task.

 

[Gina Starr]

Hi everyone! Hope everyone’s been having a good week. We went to see Hamilton over the weekend and it was amazing! My new favorite musical!



I will go ahead and post our travel day which is always boring, sorry!

Day 0 Thursday January 24th- Travel Day


Yay! It’s finally the day! Our last Disney trip was a year ago so we have been counting down the days for a while. We both desperately needed this vacation! Our alarm was set for 4:00am but we both naturally got up at 3:45. Neither of us are “get right up once you wake up” people so we laid in bed and looked at our phones for a while. We finished up the last little bit of packing we had to do and got on the road right at 5:00.



The gps had us getting to our hotel at 3:20 pm with no stops and I always like to see how close to that we can make it. We stopped for gas a few times and I found gluten free Oreo type cookies at a rest stop so I was excited for that! (Oh yea, I am gluten free. I’ll call it an intolerance more than an allergy but I eat 100% gf so you will gets lots of gf reviews) The one fast food place I can actually eat at is Chick Fil A so we always look for that on the way. We stopped for lunch a bit before noon and I got my normal grilled chicken nuggets and Donnie got his normal deluxe classic chicken sand which. We made it to the hotel a little after 5. Which means the total for stops/traffic was an hour and 45 minutes on a 10+ hour trip! Not bad!


Before the trip I went on my find me gluten free app which gives reviews of restaurants for gf food. There was a bbq place literally down the road from the hotel with amazing reviews. All the meats and sauces were gf. Pretty much the only thing that wasn’t was buns for sandwiches and Mac and cheese. I got a bbq chicken loaded baked potato and it was delicious! Donnie got a spare rib sandwich and it was bone in which was right on the menu but he gets nervous when ordering food and just picks the first thing on the menu that looks good. He said it was good but like how do you eat a sandwich with bone in it? (Sorry, I was still trying to get into the trip reporting habit so no pictures)

After dinner we found a Target because we were wanting to buy an Amazon Fire Stick before our trip but no stores near us had it in stock. I checked the Target app and there was one about 10 miles away that had it in stock. We bought it, came back to the hotel and swam at their indoor pool. For all of 10 minutes. The pool was tiny and the water was cold. We set up the fire stick, watched some Netflix, and went to bed.

*I will go ahead and start the next day too since this was so boring!​

 

[Gina Starr]

Day 1 Part 1- Friday January 25th- Checking in to Port Orleans Riverside

We had about 4 more hours to drive this morning so we woke up early and ate breakfast at the hotel. The breakfast area was cool here. Everything was prepackaged, even omelettes. They also had breakfast sandwhiches, cereal, yogurt, waffles. I was planning on eating a Lara bar as that’s what I normally eat for breakfast at home and didn’t figure they’d have anything I could eat. But they had a gf breakfast sandwhich! I was seriously so excited they had something. Of course it didn’t taste the greatest but just to have an option at all was exciting.




I’m pretty sure we drove the whole 4 hours with no stops. We got a text at 11:45 that our room was ready. Today was going to be day 0 but we decided to take extra time off work and see what rooms were available. We decided on a royal room at Port Orleans Riverside. We have always stayed at FQ but the royal rooms looked cool. We were in room 9906 which was on the third floor. We had just one bag for tonight so we didn’t have to drag everything in.


(Token welcome sign photo)

We got to the room around noon and were back out by 12:30.















We decided the closest bus stop was the main one. This is one of the reasons we love FQ- only one bus stop! It wasn’t bad for the one night but it would have got old for a 10 night trip.

Coming up soon- our first park(s) of the trip! ​

 

[missangelalexis]

Sounds like your travels went really smooth! Your royal room looks lovely!

 

[disneyAndi14]

Sounds like a good travel day, we tried a Royal Room once and really liked all the detail in the room.

Excited to hear about your first day!

 

[LaurieLiz]

We went to see Hamilton over the weekend and it was amazing! My new favorite musical!

AHHHH HAMILTON! I'm so glad you liked it! It's definitely one of my favorite musicals.

As for your trip, I'm glad the drive went so smoothly and that you found so many gluten free options.

I also LOVE the royal rooms. My family and I stayed in one during our last trip to Disney and we thought they were so cute!

I'm so excited hear about your first park day!

 

[Gina Starr]

Sounds like your travels went really smooth! Your royal room looks lovely!

Thanks! It could have been bad driving through mountains during winter but no issues at all!

We loved the royal room but thought it was a little dated.

 

[Gina Starr]

Sounds like a good travel day, we tried a Royal Room once and really liked all the detail in the room.

Excited to hear about your first day!

Yea we loved the details! Donnie took pictures of literally every little detail but I only shared my favorites. I feel like they could use a refurb though