Mickey, Magic, and Migraines, oh my! (June 2019 trip report- 10/6/19)

KimmyCole

KimmyCole

Earning My Ears
Joined
Apr 27, 2018
Mickey, Magic, and Migraines, oh my! (June 2019 trip report)

The Who, The What, The Why
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Hello Disboards! This is my sorta second trip report. The first one only got halfway finished and looking back it was not particularly good (avoid it :scared::rotfl2:), so here’s to hoping this one goes better!

The Who: The party was me, my parents, and my lovely boyfriend, Tyler. My parents and I go pretty much every year and love everything about Disney. Tyler, however, had not been to Disney in about 20 years. He had very few memories of his trip and was very excited to experience the magic. I was very nervous that I had hyped it up WAY too much and he was going to be let down because I can and do ramble about Disney all day every day lol.
The What (or when?): The trip was from June 21st to June 27th staying at the Yacht Club (our very favorite resort). We had plans for all 4 parks along with two, that’s right TWO, Early Morning Magic events.

The Why: On top of this trip being Tyler’s 1st adult trip, we also were celebrating my college graduation!

Note: I always have a TON of words to say which means this trip report is probably going to be very long and detailed. I also took 300+ pictures so expect to see my face and Tyler a lot. You’ve been warned, proceed with caution :laughing:.
That’s all the information that needs to be in the introduction, I think. So without further ado, here we goooooooooo! :tink:
 
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Day 1: Michigan Left Us Wildly Unprepared
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Travel day!!!! Honestly one of my favorite days of a vacation. There is nothing like the excitement of driving to the airport so early in the morning, knowing that you’re going to be somewhere completely different in a few short hours. It’s all even better when DISNEY is the destination.

My dad has a history of not getting out of the house by our decided deadline because he likes to double and triple check that he’s done everything he needs to. So this year, I decided to try and help him along by writing a list of everything he needed to do before we could head out. I figured if he could physically mark that he’s done it, he might not feel the need to go look again. Our goal was to leave by 6:15am so that we could play in rush hour and still manage to make it to the airport two hours before our 10:20am flight.

I woke up on Disney Day around 5:25am. I did my hair the night before, so I just had to touch it up, do my other get ready for life things, and do some final packing. I noticed this morning that the clasp on my very favorite Disney necklace that I wear everyday was no longer working very well! I was a bit disappointed but happy that I was going to the very place I got it so replacing it would be very achievable (…or would it, dun dun dun).

Tyler lives about an hour away on a lovely island so he stayed over the night before we left so he wouldn’t have to get up any earlier than necessary. He was up and ready very quickly since he didn't have the option of double checking. Anything he didn't have wasn't coming since home is a bit of a trek. He hung out eating a muffin while waiting for the rest of us to get it together.

My parents were up before I was and moving around the house to finish packing, load the car, and make sure to do things like turn off the water, move our garbage over to our very kind neighbors house to be thrown out over the weekend, etc.
We managed to get everything we needed, check off the list, still do a double check, and be on the road by 6:15am! Go us!

Our first stop was Tim Horton’s because my parents wanted a coffee and I filled out a survey to get a $1 pack of Timbits and no way was I passing that up lol. After our pit stop, we were on the expressway to the airport and it was only 6:35am! In the past, we’ve hit a lot, and I mean A LOT, of traffic on our way to the airport. Like run through the airport because they’re holding the plane for us a lot of traffic. So I’ve always got a touch of nerves under my excitement. This time we hit almost no traffic and were parking the car at 7:15am. It was THE smoothest airport travel day I remember. Except my mom almost left her phone in the car, but luckily she remembered before the shuttle left the lot and the lady was able to circle back for my dad to run and get it out of the car. Other than that little mishap, we had no issues getting to or at the airport and were checked and through security by 8:00am.

We then had two hours to kill and I was up for the challenge, I love running around the airport :laughing:. I took a picture of the Detroit Monorail, got some Starbucks, visited my favorite fountain, which was unfortunately half down, and we visited the tiny terminal that you get to through wicked cool tunnel that blasts Motown jams. We played on the train, got some McDonald’s, and just loitered the time away.
We boarded the plane around 9:50am and departed only 10 minutes late. We were in the exit row which was nice because Tyler is 6 foot 3 and always enjoys extra leg room. The flight had an upset child at the beginning who managed to be settled down for the majority of the flight and we only had a little bit of turbulence.

My parents watched movies and Tyler put on Tag while playing Mario Kart on his Switch with me. I listened to almost all of the Hamilton soundtrack. We played quite a few games before Tyler tapped out because of a small headache, "nothing to worry about" he said. I continued playing until we arrived.

We landed around 12:35pm and had our luggage and car rental by 1:15pm. Normally we rent a car for the entire trip, but with Disney charging for parking we only rented the car until Sunday. We wanted to be able to make it to the Early Morning event at Magic Kingdom without worry about transportation there. We also like to pick up groceries before heading to the hotel, so that was our first destination! We picked up things we needed for the week then off to Disney!
At the store we first started to feel how unprepared we were for Florida weather. Up until our departure day, Michigan had been living in a Spring holding pattern. So lots of rain and 70 degree days, when it wasn’t rainy it was absolutely lovely, but in no way prepares you for days that feel like 103. We were at the hotel around 2:35pm and they managed to get a room for us! I also got a graduation button which was exciting. Our room was on the second floor and very close which we loved! We got to use the staircase in the lobby for pretty much all of our coming and going. The room had a cute little Mickey head on the bed and I was getting extra pumped up. We were there and Tyler and I had a dinner at Storybook Dining at Wilderness Lodge in a couple hours.
Then everything fell apart. :scared1::scared1::scared1:

Tyler has been known to get very bad migraines and travel apparently now brings them on, who knew? Not him unfortunately. That little no big deal headache from the plane? Remember him? He was in disguise, he was most certainly something to worry about. A villain for sure :darth:.

So once we were in the room Tyler’s head started to do its best impression of a watermelon splitting open, making him feel TERRIBLE :crazy2:. He ended up getting sick from the pain. He downed Excedrin, took a shower, and laid down for a nap. I ended up cancelling the dinner because I wasn’t going to drag him around feeling like total garbage. Luckily, they didn’t charge us for cancelling. Once I got Ty situated and made sure he had everything he needed, we left him in the dark and went off to the Beach Club giftshop to pass some time and hope that AC, a nap, and medicine would fix him up.

We purchased some reusable mugs and I tried on all the ears they had, getting a new pair was on my list of things to do. After poking around we popped over to the Yacht Club store to get some dinner. My mom and I had ham and cheese on a pretzel bun and my dad had a turkey sandwich. All of it was delicious. After we ate, we checked on Tyler who was feeling like a new man and incredibly guilty. We kept reassuring him that he picked the best day to get sick (if there is such a thing) and that we were just happy that he's feeling better. I took him down to get a sandwich and cup of his own.

Then the four of us headed over to the Boardwalk to see some performers and get some ice cream at Ample Hills. It was our first time there and there were very few customers at the time, so we got to try a lot of flavors without being rushed. I got oatmeal lace, my parents both got peppermint patty, and Tyler had sweet cream and cookies. It was all delicious. We then people watched on a bench by the beach before heading back to the room.
I was asleep before 10pm, but was unfortunately woken up in the middle of the night by my dad’s snoring. Curse you, snoring!!!!
See you soon!!
 
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Hello everyone! It's just come to my attention that my photos are all blurry on certain devices. I'm working on how to get them to not be. If anyone has a suggestion or fix for this, please let me know!
 
I'm enjoying your report and look forward to the first full day! I, too, love travel day. Not for the plane ride but for the feeling of waking up in your own bed and several hours later being at WDW.
 
DisDreaming4116 said:
I'm enjoying your report and look forward to the first full day! I, too, love travel day. Not for the plane ride but for the feeling of waking up in your own bed and several hours later being at WDW.
Click to expand...
It's such a magical thing! Thanks for following along!
 


Day 2: I Promise I’m Not A Toddler​

First park day! Woo-hoo! Disney is extra REAL on the first park day in my mind. We got up on this glorious day around 6:30am to start getting ready for our day. We ate muffins that we got the day before for breakfast before we left. Stacy was on while we ate, my dad is a firm believer that Stacy should be watched pretty much every visit to the room. We set out at 7:30am. We got to TTC and had to walk through the maze of construction to make it to security (so much pixie dust). We made it through without any trouble and then learned the monorails were down and I was all wait what? I want to be told to stand clear of the doors in Spanish, I love it. I tried multiple times to explain the magic of that to Tyler before we left and he just kindly told me I’m crazy but supports it (all I can ask for really :laughing:). So, with a heavy heart, we headed over to the ferry and were setting sail about 8am. It was very hot/packed on the boat and I ended up smearing the ink on my graducation button with how toasty I was. I was very confused about the new smudgy tattoo on my arm until I looked at my button.

We were journeying down Main Street, USA at 8:15am. Stopping for the always wonderful castle pictures. We went the opposite way of the crowd and picked the path that would lead us to Liberty Square. Since we had Early Morning Magic in Fantasyland tomorrow, we weren’t going to fight with the masses to get on 7DMT. We had a nice, shady wait spot near the front of the rope where we watched some squirrels and chatted with the tour cast members who were manning the rope.

When we were finally allowed to start walking Tyler was very impressed with their system of controlled walking, no running and no passing the rope. He thought it was genius. We met up with another group of people outside Frontierland. The nice Frontierland cast members explained that we don’t run in Frontierland, we don’t even walk there. We stick our thumbs in our pockets and mosey (not a direct quote, but pretty darn close lol). So, thumbs in pocket, we moseyed on over to Splash Mountain. It was really bunchy getting into the queue but moved quick once we were in line. I LOVE the cute little Ziploc Splash Mountain bags. I shared a bag with my mom so that I could keep mine nice and not contaminated by phone. We had a grand time following Briar Rabbit and co. and were off at 9:25am (super psyched we didn’t get stuck and have to exit the ride like last year).

We headed over to Big Thunder Mountain, fondly referred to as the Fast Choo Choo by my family. We were about to board at 9:32am and were off at 9:40am. Tyler loved the Fast Choo Choo! I feel like I should note here that Tyler is very scared of roller coasters. He hadn’t really been on them since the Disney trip 20 years ago, so he was being really big and brave the whole trip by going on everything. His only issue with the ride is that he felt like he was going to hit things. I never considered how scary parts of the ride might before for tall folk lol. Despite fear of a concussion, we went back on because it was only a 15 minute wait. My mom likes to time rides to compare to what they had posted. This one was spot on! We were off the ride 15 minutes after we entered the line.

After Big Thunder, we headed over to Haunted Mansion. It was a 35 minute wait, so we bought a refillable popcorn bucket (a first for us!) to snack on while in line. While Pa was buying the popcorn bucket, I had my mom take a picture of Tyler and I in the stockade things. From start to finish (10:10am start), it took 25 minutes.

We went from there over to Pirates, which had a 15 minute wait (we were digging the fairly short wait times!). During this wait, my mom started to use the Play Disney app which was actually a lot of fun! We pretty much played the Splash Mountain game in all of the parks because we thought it was the best.

After Pirates I made my way to my favorite Magic Kingdom snack meal thing, the fresh fruit and chocolate spread waffle. I DREAM about the deliciousness that waffle is. Tyler got the sweet and spicy chicken waffle sandwich and my parents both got the powder sugar covered Mickey waffle. During this time, I REALLY started to feel the heat. I had to abandon them for a minute and hide in the Christmas Shoppe because I wasn’t going to make it.

Note: I do not always handle heat well. It can make me very crabby and difficult. Tyler finds my lack of heat handling hilarious because my favorite place in the world is so ridiculously hot every time I visit .:rotfl2:

Around this time, we were feeling like it would be a good time to start heading back to the hotel. We decided to visit Mickey’s Phillarmagic because we missed it last year and it would be one last break in AC before trekking all the way out. We enjoyed the performance and were approaching the monorails at 12:15pm and found out that now only the hotel loop was working so we figured it’s better than nothing and made our way up. While waiting, the park loop pulled up, let people out, loaded up folk who just happened to show up, and pulled out all before we even had a glimpse of our monorail. The heat was starting to get me (felt like 103 degrees) and this made me a TOUCH grumpy. By the time we got back to the hotel on the achingly long hotel route and trekked to the car through the construction maze, I was less than happy. Then, THEN, I ran into the foot of a suitcase and promptly turned into an angry toddler :furious:. I was too hot and needed a nap and AC not necessarily in that order. I remember being very pouty and requesting that no one talk to me for a while as I sat on the couch all angry like. Not my finest moment :rolleyes1:rotfl:. I eventually pulled myself together enough to put on my bathing suit and sunscreen and head down to the pool. After a quick dip, I promptly fell asleep on one of the chairs, once again, like a toddler :laughing:. Once I woke, I was still a bit grumpy, but definitely more like the 22 year old I am.
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My suitcase battle wound
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I have a note on my phone that a fry fell on Tyler from the sky, but I have no recollection of this??? Disney birds strike again, I guess lol. In an attempt to further improve my mood, Tyler and I visited Hurricane Hanna’s for some drinks. He got the Pinacolava which was pretty tasty, nice raspberry flair with the normal pina colada goodness. I got a Banana Cabana which tasted like an alcoholic banana, I enjoyed it thoroughly.

After a bit more swimming, we headed back up to the room to get ready for Animal Kingdom. By this point, I was no longer too grumpy, and a shower returned me to my normal, bubbly state. We arrived at the park at 5:05pm and headed over to Yak and Yeti Local Food Cafe for dinner. Myself, Tyler, and my mom got Honey Sesame Chicken and my dad got the Teriyaki Beef Bowl. We had never eaten there before, and it was delicious!

After we ate, we headed over to Flight of Passage for our 5:35pm-6:35pm FastPass. We moved really quickly through the FastPass line which is always nice. I’ve never gone standby for this ride, so I only have ever had a glimpse of the queue which looks like it has some pretty cool things. When we were in the little holding room watching the pre-ride video and then it stopped the normal progression and it said that the system needed recalibrating. It kept going between having use move around and come back to genetic matching. Code for someone having issues getting on the ride? We were in this holding pattern for close to 10 minutes. It was a long, but nice cool wait that stayed on theme for the ride, so all and all not terrible. We enjoyed our flight as always, but we had some trouble focusing on the screen. That was a bit of theme throughout all our time with 3D glasses. Tyler thought the ride was AMAZING. He was very impressed with it. For a lot of the rides, he would ask what it was like and I would only answer fun to keep up the mystery :rotfl:.

We headed over to the safari for our 6:50pm-7:50pm FastPass. On the way, Tyler and I got a picture in front of the tree.We were on it by 7:10pm and it was one of the best safaris I’ve ever been it. We happened to have timed our ride with feeding time, so the animals were super active. I have never seen the animals so close and moving around so much. I also got to see baby giraffes and all I can say is awwwwwwww.
After our amazing ride, we headed over to my mom’s favorite, Everest! We had an 8:00pm FastPass for it and were on it pretty quick. I love love love the part where you go backwards. Tyler was nervous getting on this one, his FitBit showed his heartrate jumping :laughing:, but he loved it! Once we were off the ride, we headed over to Dinosaur to see how long the ride was. It was either ridiculously long or down (maybe both?), I remember there was an issue, but I failed to write it down. We headed out of the park because there was nothing else we wanted to wait for. We stopped for a picture in the Lion King frame. On our way back to the hotel, we stopped at McDonald’s for cheeseburgers because it was our last night with the car, we were hungry, and why not? The line took FOREVER, but we had a lot of fun goofing around in the car.
After retrieving our food, we headed back to the hotel. Stacy was of course put back on and we got ready for bed. I was asleep pretty quick upon our return because I was suddenly feeling less than stellar (maybe the burger?). An early night was for the best though because we had Early Morning Magic the next day!!!! :goodvibes:goodvibes:goodvibes
 
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Day 3: Early Morning Magic Take One​
Hello again! I still cannot figure out how to get the pictures to look nice for everyone, but I'm working on it! This was a particularly exciting and magical day of our trip so I'm pumped to relive it!

We woke up around 6 so that we could get ourselves organized and ready for our Early Morning Magic Event! AHHHHHHH! I still can't believe that we went to this event. Before we left, I had Tyler pretend to be a captain because it felt right lol.
At 7 we were at TTC and in line for security. They had 3 tables open which was nice because it made the process extra quick and we were heading over to the monorail by 7:05. I was pumped to be on the monorail, buuuuuuut it was SLOW. Lots of stops for traffic and such which seemed odd since it was so early in the morning. We finally made it to the Magic Kingdom and were outside the gates at 7:28. You get cute little wristbands for the Early Morning Magic events so that you can be told apart from the rest of the Disney goers. This was pretty important for this event especially because there are so many different things that happen at the Magic Kingdom before the park opens. It was also very crowded being outside the gates, it was like the old days of rope dropping which was kinda fun. I miss the train coming in with the characters and all the "GOOD MORNING!" happening. Standing out there waiting to be let in really let the excitement build and I was SO ready when they let us in at 7:40. When you walk in there were lots of different cast members directing everyone to where they were supposed to be based on their reason for visiting the Kingdom nice and early on a lovely Sunday.

We were making our way on the mine ride at 7:48, a 30 minute wait time was posted and it was a super cute joke :laughing:.We were about to board at 7:50 and off at 7:55. The first time I rode this, I wasn't crazy about it. I felt like they had built it up to be this wild and crazy coaster, that's not what it is at ALL. But I've grown to really love the ride for what it is and was excited for the chance to ride it so many times. We hopped back on at 8:00 and had to walk all the way around the queue. When we were researching the event to see if it was something that we really wanted to do, we saw a lot of videos/reports where they opened a cut through the connects the exit to the entrance so you don't have to walk all the way around every time. Unfortunately they didn't do that, so we got our steps in lol. We were back off the ride at 8:04 and decided to go for another round (back in line at 8:05). Pa decided that we should make this round a little more interesting and challenged us to ride with our eyes closed until we were in the mine. This was an EXCELLENT challenge and totally changes the experience. With your eyes closed you can't adjust your body so you just flail all over the place. Poor Tyler might have gotten whacked on this adventure:rotfl2:.

Something interesting throughout this trip is that we got put in rows 6 and 7 a lot. Like enough for me to notice and mention it. Our first two rides on the mine train were in these rows and this trend was all over the place.

After the eyes closed ride, we decided to head on over to Winnie the Pooh at 8:14 and were in our Hunny Pot at 8:18. We walked right on, but got held up by a small lad who could NOT stop touching the honey walls, it was adorable and completely relatable. We enjoyed our visit with Pooh and friends and were off the ride at 8:21. We set our course for Peter Pan and on the way we saw the CUTEST family. They had 3 kids and they were dressed as Wendy, Tink, and Peter respectively, it melted my heart. We walked straight on the ride at 8:25 and were off at 8:28. I loved that wait times were nonexistent. That alone makes the event spectacular and worth while. There's some rides that we just don't go on some trips because the waits are ridiculous, so this really helped us hit everything we wanted to. Another ride that falls into this category is Prince Charming Regal Carousel. We all picked our steeds and enjoyed our ride. At 8:37 Ty and I decided to go on the Tea Cups. My parents have no interest in this on any trip. Tyler wasn't super interested in it, but he hopped on with me and we had a TON of fun. We did a whole lot of extra spinning and we definitely were feeling it.
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I've got a goofy laughing face in this picture lol
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Once we got off the ride it was 8:45, we wandered over to breakfast at Cosmic Rays. We figured that we could eat breakfast in 15 minutes and then head over to Space Mountain with the rope drop crowd. This event had a standard plate for each guest. The plate had 2 pancakes, 2 pieces of bacon, a sausage patty, some potatoes, and scrambled eggs. For drinks they had little bottles of water, orange juice, apple juice, and coffee. The plate was delicious! There was also buffet style fresh fruit, yogurt, oatmeal, meats and cheese, and pastries. Overall, we LOVED the event! It was well executed, the food was delicious, and it was delightful to walk around and get on rides without zillion other people. We got on everything that we wanted to, got to go on 7 rides in the hour we designated for riding. The 15 minutes for breakfast was the perfect amount of time and it wasn't very busy in there.
We headed over to Space Mountain at 9:03 and it was like 3 minutes too late. The crowds were WILD heading over to there, but we were still pretty close to the front of the giant line and were walking through the queue at 9:07. We were boarding at 9:20 and off at 9:24. I love this ride a whole lot, it's one of my favorites. Tyler thought it was a lot of fun, but was concerned he was going to hit his head and wouldn't even know it's coming. Once we got off the ride, we decided to head back to breakfast because why not? It's open until 10:00 so we figured we should take advantage. This return trip solidified that going 15 minutes before park opening, it was HOPPING now. We went for cinnamon rolls, croissants, and fruit. We also got two more breakfast plates to share. It's nice that they don't limit the number of plates that you get! Splash Mountain Ziploc bags came in handy here and helped me smuggle out some pastries :rotfl:. I consumed a fair amount of orange juice at both breakfast visits and it made me VERY giggly. This has never happened before I was all wound up from it, Tyler cut me off lol. At 10:00, we were well and truly stuffed so we headed over to the Carousel of Progress to digest and enjoy a truly wonderful experience. Once we exited at 10:20, we still weren't digested enough so we rode another family favorite, the people mover!! We got to see the progress being made on Tron which was pretty cool!

Next we popped over to the Laugh Floor. I love the option of sending in jokes from the audience. Tyler told me my absolute favorite joke so I told him to send in it. He refused so pumped up on orange juice me took matters into my own hands, and made a mistake. I accidentally added an extra number to the phone number! Luckily I noticed the mistake and was able to resend the joke before the show started. I think the jokes they tell on the Laugh Floor are hilarious. Tyler's joke got read and people laughed! I'm happy I sent it in for him. The joke is: What's a dog's favorite breakfast?....Woofles :rotfl2::rotfl2:. It gets me every time lol.

Once the show ended, we decided that we were ready to start heading back to the hotel for some swimming. On our way out, I decided that I wanted to get the Briar Rose Gold ears, so we stopped on our way down Main Street. I'd tried on so many ears and these ones won! I was excited that I finally felt confident in committing to my second pair of ears. My mom wore my polka dot ones back to the hotel. We managed to get out of the park and on a monorail really quick! HOWEVER, cause there is always a however on this trip, we got trapped at the Contemporary for a hot minute because monorail blue was getting a maintenance check at TTC. The only bright side to this being trapped was that there was a little girl and her parents on the monorail with us and I learned that sunscreen can be amazing. Her sunscreen smelled like cotton candy AND had sparkles in it. Like does sunscreen get any better? I've never been more jealous of sunscreen in my life lol.

This was our last day with the car so we took another trip to the store. Pa had woken up on Saturday with a sore throat and by Sunday his throat hurt less, but he sounded terrible! We were hoping that some cough drops would help him out. He is allergic to a flower that just happened to be blooming while we were there. After our trip, we headed to the pool!

I'm going to stop writing here because I've gotten sleepy. I'll try and get the rest of this day written and posted tomorrow!
 
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I've made some progress on the sassy picture upload front! Not all of them are visible on the report, but the ones there are normal sized and clear and the links work if you want to see the pictures! I'll keep working to get them all visible! Thanks for reading and your patience! :wave2:
 
Day 3: Disney Ducks Are Scary Ducks​
Hello again! Here is the second part of day 3. After we got back to the hotel with cough drops in hand, we decided to head down to the pool. Tyler and I were feeling hungry so we got lunch at Hurricane Hannah's. I love the food and drinks here, I think it all tastes delicious! I got a buffalo chicken wrap and Tyler had the bacon angus cheeseburger. Both were excellent and we enjoyed them thoroughly. My parents kept it simple and made peanut butter sandwiches in the room.
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I failed to get a picture of Tyler's burger apparently.​

While we were eating at our table by the pool, a duck approached Tyler and Tyler proceeded to run away like it was a big scary monster:scared1: :rotfl:. This requires a bit of backstory. Our trip last year included myself, my parents, my brother, my aunts, uncle, and cousins. It was a big whole crew. We had a lot of meals at Epcot because we really enjoy the fish and chips in England. On each of our visits there we noticed all the ducks lurking, looking for a scrap or two. On one visit, a duck took a particular liking to my brother and had a DEEP interest in his fish and chips. My brother decided that he had no interest in sharing with the duck and made that known. The duck took great offense and proceeded to bite my brother in the butt :rotfl2:. It still cracks me up to this day. This story made its way to Tyler so he is very suspicious of Disney ducks. His fear of them is even better when you know that he is usually a big fan of ducks. Here in Michigan, he often quacks at them and has kind words to say lol. His caution towards Disney ducks continued through the whole trip. He ran away from ducks at the pool another day when he opened up the popcorn bucket and one came towards him with an open mouth. Other than this, our pool time was very relaxing. After hanging out there, we headed back upstairs for showers and a quick nap.

Our destination for the evening was Hollywood Studios, but first we were going to head to the Beach Club to look for my necklace and to Epcot for dinner. I'm not sure if I mentioned it earlier in my report and don't feel like looking :rolleyes1, I looked for my replacement Mickey necklace at the Boardwalk on arrival day. They ladies there looked high and low but they only had the display necklace!!! They offered to call Disney Springs to see if they had it, but I told them that I would keep an eye out. They told me to keep an eye out for places that sell Pandora which I thought was odd because I didn't remember it being by Pandora. I looked at the Yacht Club Pandora case and the ladies there told me that they hadn't seen my necklace in a Pandora case before, furthering my suspicions that it wasn't Pandora. After all the investigating, I decided to look at Beach Club for it. Luckily, they had it! I was super duper excited to see it, it was by Crislu!

After retrieving my necklace, we set out for dinner. The plan was for all of us to get fish and chips, but I wasn't sold on this plan. Tyler loves to fish and knows all about fish, but doesn't really care for eating them. He catches them and the rest of us eat them lol. He was willing to go with the flow and eat it. I decided that he should get something that he's guaranteed to like. So, I took him over to Morocco where he got a chicken wrap and I got a lamb one. Both were delicious, but the yogurt like sauce was a bit heavy. My parents enjoyed their fish and chips, but were harassed by Disney ducks so for that reason alone it's good that I took Tyler to Morocco :laughing:.
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Shout out to my mom for taking food pictures for me lol
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With full bellies, we ventured over to the Friendship boat to cruise over to the Studios. The boats are a convenient way to get between the parks, but oh my gravy are they slow. I get that the stops are important, but they take so long. I wish there was a boat that just went straight from Epcot to Hollywood Studios. On this boat ride, we learned that our RRC Fastpass was no good because the ride was down. On MDE it said that we had a pass that would allow us to FP one of a variety of rides, but there were no Toy Story rides or ToT on the list, so we decided to wait and see if the Coaster would come back. Since our FP was delayed, the boat ride became a little more bearable, no more rush. We made it to the park at 6:15 and had about a half an hour before our ToT FP.

We didn't want to hop into any lines because they were all super long, so we wandered into the Lightning McQueen Racing Academy. The show was cute and nice and cool, but I'm not sure I would go see it again unless I had time to kill.

We then moved to our ToT FP, the standby was 125 minutes long and the FP was at the gate. When we made it close to the lobby, they made an announcement that the wait might be longer than posted (it had gone up to 145 minutes). When we FINALLY made it into the service elevator area we saw that not one but TWO elevators were down. Luckily, while we were standing there they managed to get another elevator up and running. I've never seen the ToT line like this, even when RRC has been down. This was one ride that Tyler was pretty scared of getting on and the long wait really let anticipation build lol. He ended up loving the ride, but wouldn't put his hands up. It only took 41 minutes to get on and off the ride, but it felt much much longer.

Our long visit to the Hollywood Tower Hotel did have one benefit, it was long enough for RRC to pull it together for a show! However, lots of folks had been hanging out waiting for the ride to come back on so the line was crazy long. Luckily, our FP from earlier were going to be honored so we got to hop in the FP line. I love this ride so much! I was scared to ride it when I was younger, but when I finally went on it was an instant love that hasn't faded over the years. Tyler really enjoyed this ride and wasn't even worried about hitting his head, always a plus in his book lol. When we got off the ride, Standby was at 65 minutes.

We refilled the popcorn bucket and headed over to Star Tours. We haven't been on this ride in a while, but figured we had a FP (it was a FP filler) for it so why not go on. My mom usually doesn't go on it because it makes her sick, but she decided to tough it out and come along. We loved all the Star Wars puns that the Cast Member was making. We had the Kylo Ren sequence and my mom AND me almost got sick. We both had to take off our glasses and close our eyes. I've never had trouble with 3D at Disney before but it had been causing me trouble all week. Tyler and my dad both enjoyed it.

After that experience, we decided that we were ready to go back to the hotel to prep for another Early Morning Magic event!!!
 
Day 4: Early Morning Magic Take Two ​
We were up and out the door at 6:30, our plan was to make the mile walk over to Hollywood Studios! Our tickets were for 7:00, which meant we had the chance to eat breakfast before the rides started at 7:30. The other option was for a 7:30 entrance to the park with the chance to have breakfast in the event/when the park opened. I had my mom stop for Captain Pictures today, I love that our room was so close to the staircase lol.

After pictures, we set out towards Hollywood Studios! I knew that there was a walking path to Hollywood Studios, but this was the first time we used it! The walk was very pleasant and went quick. We checked in with the cast members, got our wristbands, and set out to Blacklot Express for breakfast.

When we got there it was a bit busy, but it moved quick. This breakfast was different from the last one in that there is a whole menu that you can choose from. There were also areas with cereal and pastries for guests to grab themselves. I was SUPER bad about taking pictures at breakfast, I was really hungry and was a bit grumpy through breakfast :scared:. Pa got the Mexican corn chilaquiles and eggs bowl and the rest of us had chicken and doughnuts with sweet potato barrels. Tyler also went back for the breakfast charcuterie platter. We thought that breakfast was pretty good, but we liked the Magic Kingdom one a lot more. The food had pretty good flavor, but certain parts could better. Like, my doughnuts tasted pretty good, but they were just a bit too hard/dry. The sweet potato barrels and chicken were good good! I think Pa liked his overall, but thought that there were too many tortilla strips in it. His complaint was probably a bit related to the fact he had wisdom teeth pulled about 2 weeks before our trip and wasn't allowed to eat crunchy foods. He also grabbed some pastries which he said were pretty standard. So overall, a pretty average breakfast, we enjoyed it but weren't WOWed.

We finished breakfast and started to make our way to Toy Story Land! We entered the land at 7:28 and the rides were already up and running. We headed straight to Slinky Dog Dash, it had a 5 minute wait posted, but it was VERY busy. It took us 17 minutes from start to finish. The 17 minutes felt fast and long all at once, we had the chance to visit Toy Story Land on our trip last year, but it was so busy that we didn't get to go on anything other than Toy Story Mania, so this was going to be our first ride!!!! We got rows 1 and 2 and it was so much fun! I love all the little hills and how well you can see the park!

The line was even longer when we got off of it, so we headed over to Toy Story Mania. We walked right on at 7:55. We were off at 8:05, I beat Tyler. He says I had an unfair advantage having gone on it before, I'm not going to say he's wrong :laughing:. We were off the ride at 8:10 and decided to go for another round, Tyler won this time around so it was good that I celebrated my win lol.

We headed back over to SDD at 8:21, it had a 10 minute wait posted this time. The line went much quicker and we got rows 8 and 9. The ride is SO much better in the back! We thought that it was faster and I love that you can see Slink bouncing up and down in front of me. We were off the ride at 8:37 and back on at 8:44 in rows 8 and 9 again. Just as much fun as the first two rides! At 8:52 we were making our way out of the land. As we left I took some time to really appreciate the details that have been put into the land. Disney did an amazing job of including details that really drive home the feeling of being a toy. I'm glad I got to experience the land with so few people in it. This feeling was multiplied when we got held up by a cast member because of the masses entering the land with park opening. That crowd was INSANE and we were just a bit annoyed that we were being held up by the crowd, I understand it's a big group but surely they could rope off a little exit path for the guests leaving the event.

We were approaching RRC and ToT at 8:57. The Tower line was suuuuuper long, we got in line outside of the gate. We didn't go on Swirling Saucers during the event and saw that it was temporarily down according to MDE. We didn't really have an interest in riding it during the event, so I'm not sure if it was down then or not. We also saw on MDE that Slink was 120 minutes and ToT was a 45 minute wait. The wait wasn't too terribly bad, but I'll be happy when all the elevators are working again. I like how the sequences on ToT are always changing, our sequence this morning was WAY better than our first one.

When we got off the ride the line was all the way down the outside wall and the Coaster had a 105 minute wait so we decided to dip out, the park was crazy busy. As we headed out we got to see the First Order marching, this is always super cool to me. At 10:00 we were leaving the park and headed to the boat. We came and did what we wanted to do, minus a visit with Aerosmith. Overall, it was a great event and well worth the money!

Up next: the rest of our day at Animal Kingdom!
 
Day 4: Wild Times at Animal Kingdom​
When I last left off, we were leaving Hollywood Studios after a delightful early morning event. It was hot as always, so we headed straight down to the pool once we were back. We collectively decided to get chicken nuggets from Hurricane Hannah's and share them. I don't have a picture of this meal because I fell asleep after my dad and Tyler went to go get them, when I woke my share of nuggets and fries were there, not exactly a pretty food picture lol. After lunch and my nap, we hopped back in the pool and enjoyed how amazing the pool at this resort is. We've stayed at a lot of different hotels on Disney property in my life and i haven't found a pool as amazing as the ones at the Yacht and Beach Club. The sand at the bottom of the pools feel AMAZING and can be very entertaining. When I was little, my brother and I would dive down to the bottom and build structures out of it on the rocks lining the lazy river. I got in touch with young Kim on this trip, found a bucket, and proceeded to have a blast playing with the sand. My parents and Tyler got roped into my games and had a great time as well.

After the sand and bucket play time, we decided that it was an excellent day for some Beaches and Cream ice cream. I LOVE their ice cream, they give good portions and it tastes delicious. I've tried all the flavors over the course of our Disney trips, and this trip I was feeling the butter pecan. My dad went with cookies and cream while my mom and Tyler got mint chocolate chip. None of us were disappointed in our flavors. When the ice cream had been devoured, we decided that we were all set on the swimming and ready to go shower and get ready for our evening at Animal Kingdom.

We were at the bus stop, my first time EVER, at 4:50. The nice little sign thing wasn't showing a bus wait time for Animal Kingdom which was a bit disappointing. The bus came at 5:12 and after a quick drop off of people at the Beach Club, we were on our way! Now I have no real reason to not like Disney buses, I'm not sold on them yet. I've always done Disney with the convenience of a car, you don't have to wait on anything other than your party. Having to wait 20 or so minutes was not ideal in my mind. End of the world? No, but still felt like wasted time to me. Now my next trip is just Tyler and me and we're not getting a car, so I guess I'll have a more thorough opinion next year.

Back to the trip report after that random tangent :laughing:. When we were on the bus right around the time that our first FP was scheduled for. We had been hoping to grab dinner before the ride, but buses being a bit slow kinda put a wrench in that. We decided that we would go on Dinosaur and then grab dinner, look at us being flexible lol. BUT THEN, we heard the nice lad across the way tell his family that Dino was temporarily closed. After some personal investigation of this statement, we discovered that it was true and going along with our luck rides being down when we've got a FP for them. Well flexibility was no longer necessary, and we went back to our plan of dining first.

We arrived at 5:35 and as we walked towards the tree, a cast member walking out told us "Have a great day at Disneyland!" We said thank you and then proceeded to giggle about how she came to work in the wrong state :rotfl2:. As we were walking, my mom checked MDE and saw that Dino was working again, SO we decided to ride THEN get food, so much back and forth lol. On our walk, we got to see Chip and Dale dancing in their dinosaur costumes which is just adorable. The Dino stand-by line was PACKED, so it was nice to get to just walk through the FP line to the little video room. Tyler wasn't really sure what to expect on this ride and I told him he didn't need to worry cause unlike Disney ducks, dinosaurs don't bite :rotfl:. We enjoyed our pre-historic journey, but were more than ready for dinner once we were back in the present.

This evening's dinner choice was Flame Tree BBQ. We ate their on the big family trip last year and really enjoyed the food. My mom and Tyler got the pulled pork sandwich and my dad and I got the mac and cheese. All of it was delicious and filling.

With full bellies, we headed over to our FOP FP. When we checked in at 6:40, the stand-by line was at 160 minutes :scared:. I've never actually gotten to go in the part of the queue with the man in the tank. The line was moving fast, until it wasn't. Everyone with FP was being held up by two individuals who decided to sneak into the FP line and managed to get all the way up to the point where a cast member has you scan your band a second time. They were asked to scan, when they couldn't because they didn't have FP, they then proceeded to argue with the cast member for several minutes before they got sent back down the line. People need to just follow the rules! All the time they spent in the FP line and fighting about their lack of FP could have been time spent in the proper line and put them closer to the ride. Ugh. Any who, when it was our turn to go into the video room place thing we got sent up to B3. We've never been on the third level before so we were really excited about this change. We had the calibration error again but it was only for a minute. Is this a normal part of the ride now or just a weird coincidence? I may never know, until next year of course lol. The 3rd floor made for an even more amazing ride! The "drops" feel bigger and I felt like I noticed more details at this level than at the lower one.

After we finished our flight, we took the pathway from Pandora that leads over to the Lion King show. This pathway is just so beautiful, I had never been that way before and was pleasantly surprised. We had about a half hour until our Everest FP so we got some cups of water, parked ourselves near the gift shop, and watched people come down the mountain. After some waiting, we made our way through the queue. I love how they use Magic Bands to pull names and personalize the signs on rides. We loved the ride like always and Tyler went full no hands! So big and brave :laughing:.

With all of our FP used, we decided to head on back to the hotel. We were in line for the bus at 8:25 and were on the bus at 8:30. 20 minutes later we were in our room and happy to be off our feet. It had been a long day and it was the first day that we were really feeling all the walking that had been done. As amazing as both Early Morning Magic events had been, we were excited to be able to sleep in the next day before we set out for Epcot!
 
I'm loving your report so far, and yay for a new trip booked! Very exciting!

We stayed at the Boardwalk last year, and while I loved it, we walked through Yacht and Beach Club and I TOTALLY want to stay at the Yacht Club now. I really loved it.
 
kclark9830 said:
I'm loving your report so far, and yay for a new trip booked! Very exciting!

We stayed at the Boardwalk last year, and while I loved it, we walked through Yacht and Beach Club and I TOTALLY want to stay at the Yacht Club now. I really loved it.
Click to expand...
Yay! I'm so happy that you're enjoying the report! It's so much fun reliving it by sharing it here on the boards.

We're already counting down the days already! :rotfl:

I've never stayed at the Boardwalk but I've heard some great things about it and I would totally recommend the Yatch/Beach. My dad surprised us with staying there a couple years ago and we got HOOKED. It's a truly amazing resort!
 
Following along! :wave:

KimmyCole said:
Tyler has been known to get very bad migraines and travel apparently now brings them on, who knew? Not him unfortunately.
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My boyfriend gets bad migraines too. Fortunately the travel itself doesn't seem to bring them on but the weather can so every so often there's a day of a trip where he's out of commission.

KimmyCole said:
Note: I do not always handle heat well. It can make me very crabby and difficult. Tyler finds my lack of heat handling hilarious because my favorite place in the world is so ridiculously hot every time I visit .:rotfl2:
Click to expand...

Same! :rotfl:

KimmyCole said:
I have a note on my phone that a fry fell on Tyler from the sky, but I have no recollection of this???
Click to expand...

I love it :laughing:

KimmyCole said:
The duck took great offense and proceeded to bite my brother in the butt :rotfl2:. It still cracks me up to this day. This story made its way to Tyler so he is very suspicious of Disney ducks.
Click to expand...

And this too :lmao:

KimmyCole said:
Tyler and I just booked a trip for May 2020 to celebrate our birthday week!! It's 295 days away and I'm already so pumped! :dogdance:
Click to expand...

Yay!
 
Day 5: Epic Epcot (and around it!) Adventures
​
Hello everyone! It's been a crazy long time since I've had a chance to update my trip report. My job started up again and has kept me on my toes and exhausted for weeks now. It's nice to finally have a minute to relive Disney! When I last left off, we had just had a fun Animal Kingdom evening and were ready to sleep in.

I woke up at 7:00 and remember it being wonderful, 9 hours of sleep after early wake-ups and busy days was just what I needed. We were moving slow this morning since we were just headed over to Epcot which is a wonderfully short walk from the Yacht Club. While they were getting ready, I ran down stairs and got myself some Mickey waffles. I failed to take a picture of them, but they were the standard and yummy 3 little Mickey waffles. Our schedule was even more relaxed because we had our FastPasses booked for the morning, so we didn't even really need to rush over and get into lines. We were still moseying about the room at 8:15, but were in the park at 8:35.

After hanging out by the International Gateway for a short while, we headed over to Soarin' and were in Concourse B at 9:10 and were taking flight around 9:30. We were seated in the middle section which makes the ride so much more enjoyable in my opinion. I really paid attention to the scents on this flight and decided that the dirt smell in Africa is my absolute favorite. Once we were safely back on the ground, we made our way over to Nemo since it was 9:37 after a bathroom break and our Test Track FastPass was at 9:50-10:50.

We got to walk right on to our shells and were off the ride at 9:50. When we were exiting we got to see a bunch of people in scuba gear cleaning the tanks. We also saw the fish getting to eat. It was really cool to see so much extra activity happening in the tank. I love watching the fish every trip and these extras made it even more amazing. My mom was bummed that she didn't get to see dolphins and manatees. Tyler really loves fishing and fish in general so he thought this was a super cool place. After checking the tanks out for a while, we headed over to Test Track. We noticed that it was exceptionally humid on our walk.

We checked in for our FastPass at 10:05 and were soon in the Design Studio. Tyler and I built a beastly looking car that was wildly inefficient, while my parents built a super sleek vehicle. We were out of the design studio at 10:18 and finished enjoying our ride at 10:30. We got the score of 212, which was only 15 off of the top for the hour. My parents got 194. At this point, my dad decided to abandon ship. He hadn't been feeling well the last couple days and still wasn't feeling great so he decided to head back to the hotel. The rest of us went and poked around in Mouse Gears for a while.

When we left Mouse Gears, we weren't feeling standing in line for another ride so we started to make our way out of the park. As we headed towards the International Gateway, we made a detour to get some flavored popcorn. After much debate, we went with sour cream and chive and oh my gravy was it good popcorn::. With our tasty snack in hand, we continued our walk and decided today would be a good day to grab a pizza from the pizza window on the boardwalk.

As we came to the bridge outside of the International Gateway, we decided to take the scenic route down by the river. When we were standing under the bridge, we realized that we were under what we were supposed to be walking on to get to the Boardwalk. We commemorated our error with an under the bridge selfie and then corrected our error :rotfl:.

When we finally made it to our destination, we made the terrible discovery that the pizza window doesn't OPEN until 12!!!!! THE HORROR. My mom was not feeling waiting around for the pizza place to open, so she retreated to the hotel to hang out with Pa. Tyler and I decided that we could find a way to kill about 40 minutes on the Boardwalk in the scorching heat. We started with poking about the General Store for a while. That kept us busy for a while, but we eventually got bored and hungry and decided to buy a giant Mickey cookie and eat it at the tables outside the store. It was a DELICIOUS cookie which I ate the majority of lol. Tyler like it, but some parts were waaaay too chocolately for him. I had no issues with the chocolate levels :laughing:.


We very dramatically tried to time when we should head over to the window while hiding in AC after we finished the cookie. We had about 8 minutes until open and decided to wait it out a bit. We should not have lol. We were at the pizza window at 12:01 and were 5th in line! When we finally made it to the window, we order our whole pepperoni pizza and two of the Schofferhofer grapefruit beers to keep us cool while we waited. Our beer was given to us at 12:22 and our pizza was ready about 15 minutes later.


At this point, it felt like 108 outside and we were FEELING IT. The trek back to the hotel was miserable, especially passing the piping hot pizza back and forth. On the walk, I discovered my parents were at the pool and would love if we dropped off some slices to them. It was at this point that I failed to secure plates from the pizza window. So, we decided to walk through the hotel to cool off and ask for some plates at the Beach Club gift shop food court place thing. This plan worked really well and gave us the last little bit of strength we needed to deliver slices and make to the room to cool off, eat the pie, and drink a ton of water. After we relaxed for a bit, we headed down to the pool to hang out with my parents for a while. The pool was just what we needed after our toasty Boardwalk adventures!

Around 4, we headed back up to the room to shower, change, and cool off before heading back over to Epcot to spend an evening exploring the countries. We were making our way back to the International Gateway at 5:30. We decided to grab dinner at La Cantina. I got the kid's empanadas, my mom got the kid's chicken taco, Ty got the grown up chicken tacos, and my dad got the grown up beef tacos. While my parents were ordering, Tyler and I popped over to the margarita stand. I got mango and he got strawberry. Both margaritas and all the food was delicious and filled us up. Around 6:15, we went inside Mexico for the Three Cabellos. Oddly enough, there was an actual line for the ride. This hardly ever happens in my experience. It was a quick wait, and we were on board at 6:22. I think this is a cute ride and was perfect for us as we digested.

https://flic.kr/p/2hr436ihttps://flic.kr/p/2hr6Puphttps://flic.kr/p/2hr3ZbLhttps://flic.kr/p/2hr433Nhttps://flic.kr/p/2hr5SJr

After our ride, we started to poke around each country. I love spending time exploring each one of them. Around Norway, we started to hear our first rumbles of thunder. Tyler and I enjoyed trying on the Viking hats and seeing all the other things in the gift shop. At China, it started to rain and get really windy, so we went the tiny museum about Shanghai Disney. It was really interesting in there and I love the Disney characters for the Chinese Zodiac. While we were in there, the weather started to settle down again so we kept moving.


It started to storm a bit while we were at Germany. My parents decided to find a dry spot to hang out while Tyler and I decided it was nice to move around while it was cool even if it meant getting wet and kept going. We explored the countries leading up to Japan, took a picture or two, and saw that the wind had actually knocked over all the flower pots in Italy and broken most of them.
Tyler and I spent a long time exploring Japan, they have a ton of cool things in their shops. After we poked around for a while, we decided to go meet up with my parents for the Guardians of the Galaxy show. My parents have watched it before and my mom loves it. The show is very cute and well done. After the show, we decided to hit the final countries on the way to the International Gateway. Once we finished with the countries, we were looking at the sky trying to decide if Illuminations was worth the chance of getting rained on. As we discussed it, they made an announcement that weather in the area was going to delay the show, so our decision was made our day of adventures came to a close.

Back at the hotel, we decided to change our FastPasses for Hollywood Studios for the next morning to evening FastPasses at Epcot. We were feeling pretty tired and were ready to just spend a day at the pool. Tyler and I also decided to book a dinner at Via Napoli to make up for the Storybook dinner we had to cancel. After all this planning, we decided to call it quits for the day and went to sleep! Hopefully I'll get another chance to update soon!

Update on 2020 trip: Tyler and I have moved our trip dates to the end of June and have decided to stay at the Gran Destino Tower at Coronado Springs! We're super excited!!
 
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