8 days, 120,000 steps, and a whole lot of fun! Feb '14 TR 12/17/14 **COMPLETE**

[librarygeek]

Welcome to my newest trip report! Yes, this trip was from last February, but I only just got around to posting it now. I hope you will still be interested in following along! Sadly, my computer hard drive crashed last week and I lost all of my photos… but the good news is I never bothered to delete them off of my camera! So I’m in the process of re-uploading and re-editing them, but thankfully they still exist. It’s tedious but I’m grateful they aren’t permanently lost.

Contents

Art of Animation and Princess Running Expo
A Downtown Disney Afternoon
The Enchanted 10k
An Afternoon after a Race
Typhoon Lagoon
A Full Sunday Afternoon
Off to the Magic Kingdom... and a bit of a rough start
The end of our MK day
Epcot Day!
Epcot Evening
Hollywood Studios
A Not so Great Start
Finishing up Animal Kingdom
The Best Way to End a Day
A View from Above

About Us



I’m Becky, 25 years old at the time of this trip. I’m the big Disney lover in this relationship, though it’s growing on DH. By day I work as a children’s librarian, but my other big thing is my Disney blog! It’s called Disney in your Day (www.disneyinyourday.com), and I absolutely love writing it. I also do theater as a hobby. And I’ve become a runner recently. So those things take up pretty much all of my time!

DH joined me for this trip! He’s not as big into Disney as I am, but it’s definitely growing on him the more trips we take. In fact, he even said we can buy DVC once my student loans are paid off! He’s a software developer by day and spends his free time both creating and playing video games.



But for much of the trip it wouldn’t be just us – we were staying with and spending time with friends as well! A bunch of girls and some of their husbands that I know from the DIS were there this weekend for Princess Half Marathon. We were rooming for the first 4 days with one other couple (I’ll call them D & B). And then our other friends were sharing a room down the hall (I’ll call them M & C), along with another friend . And there were some others that we met up with throughout the trip as well!

The Trip



I had originally planned to go for Princess weekend, since I had friends that wanted to run. I finally decided to just sign up for the Enchanted 10k, since I’d never really done a race before and a Half seemed too intimidating at first. I’m glad I made this choice! I was going to stay with friends, but then DH and I talked about planning a 2014 Disney trip. And it seemed to make sense for us to tack on some days at the end of Princess weekend – that way I wouldn’t have to pay for airfare again! We arrived on Thursday, February 20th, and stayed until Friday, February 28th. We switched resorts on Monday.

We had a ton of special stuff planned for the week – I of course would be running the race, and I’d see the expo too. We arrived on Thursday and for the first half of the trip we decided to do some things we hadn’t done before, including Disney Quest, Characters in Flight, Dine with an Imagineer, and Typhoon Lagoon. Then starting on Monday we would hit up the 4 theme parks, one on each day.
The title is in reference to the fact that I got a FitBit for Christmas, which tracks how many steps I walk each day.


The Accommodations





For the first 4 days we were sharing a room with friends at the Art of Animation. We had a Lion King room. After the weekend was over DH and I switched to Port Orleans Riverside where we stayed in a Royal Room! One of my friends, M, is a CM so she got the CM discount on our rooms, which was a huge help and why we could afford the AoA suite (especially splitting it with another couple) and the Royal Room.

First post should be coming soon!

 

[DisneyKid4Life]

Subbing in Becky!!

Oh my, I hear so many stories (especially recently) of people losing photos via HD crash (or worse). Than goodness I constantly back up (twice). And thank goodness you kept all your photos on the camera.

 

[librarygeek]

Subbing in Becky!!

Oh my, I hear so many stories (especially recently) of people losing photos via HD crash (or worse). Than goodness I constantly back up (twice). And thank goodness you kept all your photos on the camera.

Glad you're here!!

Yes, I'm lucky I was too lazy to delete them off my camera I had all my pics back to my Dec. 2013 Disney trip. But last time I backed up was the end of 2012 (I know, very bad) so I lost most of my 2013 pics. But thank god for TR's! Because of that I still have a ton of photos on my photobucket account. And combine that with what I have on facebook and I don't think I'm missing too much.

 

[Dis_Yoda]

I'm in! Can't wait to read about your 10K experience.

 

[librarygeek]

I'm in! Can't wait to read about your 10K experience.

Welcome, I'm happy you're here!

The 10k was a lot of fun, although I was really nervous at the time! But it was good enough that I'm now signed up to do the Tower of Terror 10 miler this October!

 

[Dis_Yoda]

Welcome, I'm happy you're here!

The 10k was a lot of fun, although I was really nervous at the time! But it was good enough that I'm now signed up to do the Tower of Terror 10 miler this October!

My husband & I are running ToT in October as well. It should be a good (although hot and humid race) (And there are a few other pre-trippers as well which helps motivate for training) We also have the Star Wars 10K & Half Marathon in January.

 

[librarygeek]

My husband & I are running ToT in October as well. It should be a good (although hot and humid race) (And there are a few other pre-trippers as well which helps motivate for training) We also have the Star Wars 10K & Half Marathon in January.

Oh, that's really exciting! The Enchanted 10k turned out to be very hot and humid too - I think we were at about 80 degrees even at 6am. You just never know with February weather! Luckily I'm getting used to running in the heat now over the summer.

And I'm a little jealous you get to do the Star Wars races! They sound amazing and I would love to do them someday, though California is a bit of a longer trip. In fact, we've never been to DL and are hoping to go next year, but DH didn't want our first time there to be filled with race stuff and I totally get that. One day though - and I can't wait to hear about your experiences with it!

 

[RGirl]

Can't wait to hear about your trip, Becky!

 

[librarygeek]

Can't wait to hear about your trip, Becky!

Thanks for joining in!

 

[librarygeek]

Art of Animation and Princess Running Expo

Thank you so much for being patient with me on waiting to start this TR! As I mentioned, I recently lost my hard drive and hadn't backed up any photos since 2012. Luckily I have a lot on facebook and Photobucket (thanks to Trip reports!) but I've been spending pretty much every free moment on my computer going through them and downloading them to my new hard drive. So starting this TR kind of got pushed to the side a tiny bit. But I'm here now!

So to begin, DH and I checked into AoA on Thursday evening. Our friends that were staying with us, D&B, wouldn't be arriving til the next day. We had a Lion King suite, and I absolutely had to go around and get lots of pictures before the room started to actually get lived in!

This is the table that folds down into a bed. On the bed side there's a picture of adult Simba sleeping in the vines of the jungle:



And here's the living room area. The couch unfolds into a bed, and there's also a TV that you can't see in this picture:



The little tables they had were so cute! They looked like tree stumps and had the lyrics to Lion King songs on them:



Probably my favorite detail was the shower tiles! If I can figure out a way to make this happen in my own bathroom, I'm definitely doing it. DH already approved it because he loved it too!



And then here's the master bedroom. I brought my Simba pillow pet with me, and he really liked our room! Mousekeeping also had some fun setting him in different poses around the room when we got back.



And the next morning, when it was light out, I made sure to take a picture of the view from our room! We had a great view of the fun Lion King stuff outside!



Friday morning we got up and the first thing we had to do was get our park tickets. My friends M&C had graciously offered to get us tickets with C's military discount, so we needed to go to guest relations with C to turn in the vouchers they had. Their plan was to go to Magic Kingdom in the morning so we went along with them to get the tickets outside of MK. That went fine, but when M&C went to go into the park, she realized she had left her own ticket, her CM pass, in the room and was a bit upset. I would've been really upset too! It's such a pain to have to go all the way back to the room and not get into the park when it's right there! But sadly, there was nothing we could do, so they headed back to the resort and DH and I walked over to the Contemporary so we could get a bus over to the running expo.

The expo was at the ESPN sports complex, a place that I had never been before. It looked a lot nicer than I expected it to, in all honesty!



It was pretty well organized so we could find our way around and where we needed to go. I headed over to the Enchanted 10k booth to pick up my race packet and my bib - as well as my pin that I had pre-ordered!



I think it was right around now that I got a text from D&B saying that they had arrived and had just gotten to the sports complex! So we went to go meet up with them and I went with D to pick up her race stuff. We also made sure to wait a few minutes to get some pictures in front of the backdrops they had up!



This was all in one building, and then in another was the main part of the expo where they had all the booths set up that sold stuff. On our way over here we also met up with my friend N, who was running the Princess Half, and S, who was doing the Royal Family 5k! We chatted and caught up for a few minutes and then explored the booths.



They had this great t-shirt for guys that said "My favorite Disney princess is my wife." But sadly, they only had a size small left so I couldn't get it for DH, even though he said he would wear it! Now that I have my silhouette machine and the heat transfer kit I'll just have to make him one!

We looked around at a lot of stuff, but the only thing I bought was a flip belt to hold my stuff in while I run. I knew I needed something and it looked cool so that's what I got! They had big walls set up too with the names of everyone running, so I took some time to find my name before we headed out (It's in there, I promise!).



After that we said goodbye to our friends and DH and I headed back to AoA for lunch because we were starving! And I was dying to try the food court. Let me say, this definitely did not disappoint. The food we had was so good, and there's a great variety! I had the tandoori shrimp for lunch and it was different but great. DH had the surf and surf burger.





I'll be posting more food details, including pictures, in the dining review I plan to start soon!

 

[DisneyKid4Life]

That fold down bed thing still really fascinates me. So cool.

And wow Becky, you sure do have a lot of friends with one letter names! What are the odds, lol.

That's cool that there's a name wall like that. And I didn't move on until spotting your's on there. It is definitely there.

 

[librarygeek]

That fold down bed thing still really fascinates me. So cool.

And wow Becky, you sure do have a lot of friends with one letter names! What are the odds, lol.

That's cool that there's a name wall like that. And I didn't move on until spotting your's on there. It is definitely there.

Yeah, I think the fold down bed is a great idea!

Hahaha. Well, I was going to give my friends all Disney-related names, but then I thought that would get too confusing. And I'm just not very creative, lol.

Thanks for finding my name!!

 

[scottny]

Following along.

Nice you got to stay at AofA in Lion king.
The food court there is so good.
The expo looked nice. Too bad about the shirt but good you can make one.

 

[librarygeek]

Following along.

Nice you got to stay at AofA in Lion king.
The food court there is so good.
The expo looked nice. Too bad about the shirt but good you can make one.

Glad to "see" you again here Scott!!

Yes, definitely the best food court we've been to in Disney! I wish we had more meals there, but hopefully we'll be back

 

[librarygeek]

I'm going to be updating the TR soon, but I wanted to let you know that my dining review is started in case you want to follow that too!

http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?p=51824369

 

[librarygeek]

I'm going to be updating the TR soon, but I wanted to let you know that my dining review is started in case you want to follow that too!

http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?p=51824369

 

[NinePoundLemon]

Joining in!! Love the Lion King room.....the tree stump tables, the lamp, the shower....it's all so cool!

I've been a lurker for several years, and FINALLY decided to join. The very first trip report I ever read (years ago) was your wedding/honeymoon planning thread, and then your honeymoon dining review....and I've read all of your reports since then!! I figured it only made sense that your current TR is the first one I comment on!

Can't wait to read about your trip!

Trisha

 

[elphie101]

And now I'm over here!! Your TR just gave me the idea to make a friend trip and stay at AoA - if only someday (I'm sure by the time we manage it we'll find ourselves wanting to stay elsewhere!) Those little tables are so cute and THAT SHOWER!! I want to rip that out and bring it home with me! Oh my god it's stunning.

The bad thing about reading so many PHM trip reports is it gave me unrealistic expectations about the Expo for the Everest 5K. Womp womp.

So glad to be following this TR now!

 

[librarygeek]

Joining in!! Love the Lion King room.....the tree stump tables, the lamp, the shower....it's all so cool!

I've been a lurker for several years, and FINALLY decided to join. The very first trip report I ever read (years ago) was your wedding/honeymoon planning thread, and then your honeymoon dining review....and I've read all of your reports since then!! I figured it only made sense that your current TR is the first one I comment on!

Can't wait to read about your trip!

Trisha

Wow, I'm so flattered!! I'm glad you finally decided to make an account And I'm excited to have you following along!

And now I'm over here!! Your TR just gave me the idea to make a friend trip and stay at AoA - if only someday (I'm sure by the time we manage it we'll find ourselves wanting to stay elsewhere!) Those little tables are so cute and THAT SHOWER!! I want to rip that out and bring it home with me! Oh my god it's stunning.

The bad thing about reading so many PHM trip reports is it gave me unrealistic expectations about the Expo for the Everest 5K. Womp womp.

So glad to be following this TR now!

Yay, you're over here too! I think AoA is great for a friends trip - it's so fun and since the bedroom/living room is separated by a door you at least have a little bit of privacy if you need it. I'm obsessed with that shower too!

Aww, that's too bad - you should come for a PHM weekend! I really want to do the Everest 5k someday. Even though the expo isn't as great the race itself sounds really cool! I know there were rumors that they might get rid of it so I hope that doesn't happen.

 

[elphie101]

Yay, you're over here too! I think AoA is great for a friends trip - it's so fun and since the bedroom/living room is separated by a door you at least have a little bit of privacy if you need it. I'm obsessed with that shower too!

Aww, that's too bad - you should come for a PHM weekend! I really want to do the Everest 5k someday. Even though the expo isn't as great the race itself sounds really cool! I know there were rumors that they might get rid of it so I hope that doesn't happen.

I'm thinking of hopefully hitting PHM in 2016 (we have our heart set on ToT 10-miler for 2015, since it's right when our wedding APs will be up), but February is a really bad time for me to be out of work so it might just be a dream.

I know runDisney has published pamphlets that advertise the 2015 Everest Challenge (May 1-2) so it'll be around for 1 more year! It was an amazing race and I wish we could do it again (mostly because it was 60 and raining the whole time - blegh). It actually ended up being around 5 miles when all is said and done, so you do get quite the workout! And gotta love the afterparty