Mom and daughter bonding over New Years!

llbmom

Earning My Ears
Joined
May 27, 2013
Hi All! I have been reading these boards for years, getting great info for all our trips. I hadn't posted in ages and had to get a new username because it had been so long! I wanted to do this trip report since I got so many tips about traveling at such a busy time.
This trip would be me-the mom and my DD(17). I have been in love with Disney World since my first trip when I was 10. This would be my 12th trip. I have also been lucky to visit Disneyland twice. I am always planning a trip in my head when I am on the boards lol! The idea for this trip came in March. My husband and DD had the opportunity to travel to China. He is a college professor and was taking a group of students for a spring break trip and she was able to go along. I was staying home with our DS(8&9). I wasn't too upset about not going. I love to travel but China wasn't for me. Anyway while they were gone I found out that over Christmas we would have an extended break. Since my husband's schedule would be more flexible over his college break he could stay home with the boys and Lindsay and I could have a girl's Disney trip. He just laughed when I told him my plan but he is pretty easy going and gave me the go ahead. My daughter is a high school senior and will be going off to college in the fall. She has been accepted to Seton Hall in NJ and Catholic University in DC. So our time together in the future will be around her breaks. Being able to share this trip with her has been so special!

Just a little background. DD has been to Disney multiple times and with us to DL. We adopted our boys five years ago. They have been to Disney twice and I have turned them into Disney lovers too. Our last trip was May '12. Our dear friends are also Disney fans and we always said we should take a trip together. For the wife's 40th bday her husband wanted to surprise her with a Disney trip. He asked me to be the Fairy Godmother and plan everything. It turned out to be a perfect time for us to go along! So for almost a year we had the secret planning going on. He wanted to wait until the night before to tell her but I convinced him to give her a week notice. She was very surprised and even more surprised that we were coming too. We all had a great week together!! Now for the details of this trip!

Day 1 12/30-arrival and MK 3am EMH!!
Well the day didn't start out too well. We had a 2hr delay of our flight out of Pittsburgh. But we were finally on our way, landed around 6pm and in no time we were boarding the Magical Express. We used our MB and had no problems with our check-in for the bus. We did have to wait about 20min until everyone was on the bus and then we ran into alot of traffic by the International Dr
intersection. We got to POFQ around 8pm. I love this resort! It seems so calm to me. It does hold a special place with me as my husband and I stayed there on our honeymoon. I had done online check-in but there was no one working the online check-in desk so we had to wait in the regular line anyway. It was strange they had 4 CMs working the concierge but only 1 doing check-in. Finally the one concierge CM starting taking the check-ins because a line was forming. It then took only a few minutes to check-in and we were on our way to building 7. It was the furthest away but not far at all. We freshened up and headed to the food court for dinner. We stayed at POR last year and loved the make your own salad so we were happy to see it on the menu. However it was not the same:( At POR they have a much better selection of items and they mix it all together with the dressing in a huge bowl before serving. Here they just put the dressing on top and it was very hard to mix. I know it sounds silly that it wouldn't taste the same but it didn't. Anyway we finished and got to the MK around 10pm for the fireworks and EMH.

Well the MK was packed! But who cares we were there!! It was a great atmosphere! There were DJs thru the park playing great music. Cast members were dancing as were the guests. It was just so much fun to be there! We spent a little time on Main St taking in the decorations. I had no plans except to be back on Main St to see the fireworks. We decided to ride the train and get off in Fantasyland. My daughter wanted to see the new stuff. We walked around loving all the new sights and then headed back to Main St. We decided to get a treat at the Confectionary. I had a Minnie cupcake and Lindsay had a chocolate covered pineapple spear. The cupcake was decorated cute but had no filling inside. But it was moist and very tasty. We ate these sitting on the curb watching it snow-loved that!! By this time we needed to find a place to watch the fireworks. We walked thru the Emporium and came out thru Casey's. It was very crowded in there. We found a place right outside Casey's near the Crystal Palace. We were off to the side of the castle but still had a great view and only waited about 20 minutes until the castle show began. This was great!! With all the clips and music from the movies. The fireworks were fantastic!!! We like fireworks but they are not a must do for us on trips. I am so glad we were able to see these! I knew we would not be braving the MK or EPCOT on NYE so this was our NYE celebration and we were not disappointed!

Will we make it to 3am?? Check back to find out!:wave2:
 
Well when I left off the fabulous fireworks had just ended but our night was just beginning! Since we were over by Casey’s we headed to Adventureland and started with the Jungle Cruise. This was great at night, especially with the holiday jokes added. We just made our way around the park doing ride after ride. When we began the waits were only about 20min, by the end things were walk-ons. We were able to ride Jungle Cruise, POTC, BTMR, Peter Pan, Pooh, the new Ariel ride and TTA. Cinderella’s carriage was outside the New Fantasyland entrance so we had our picture taken there. I was glad we did that because it wasn’t there on our other day at MK. We were also able to see the Enchanted Tales with Belle. This was very cute-Lindsay would have loved it when she was little. Our other surprise of the evening was walking right in to visit Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty. When Lindsay was little one of our visits was spent searching for every princess. It was fun to see her with them now. We were they only ones in there so all three of them were talking like girlfriends! FYI-pictures taken at 2:30am after a travel day are not flattering (lol)!! Our last ride was TTA and then we headed towards Main St. We had made it to 3am! This would be one of our best memories and a great start to the trip!
In no time we were back at POFQ and in bed by 4am. After a few hours sleep we were up at 8:30-New Year’s Eve !! We usually eat breakfast in the room so I had just brought granola bars and such for us. On our last trip with the whole family I ordered food from garden Grocer and I was very pleased with their service. For just the two us the stuff from home worked fine. We had lunch reservations at Sanaa for 11:30. We were on the bus to AK by 9:45-plenty of time I thought. WRONG!! The MK and EPCOT traffic was so terrible it took us 1.5hrs to get there! Luckily there was only about 15 of us on the bus, if it had been packed it would have been awful. A poor little boy had to go to the bathroom-thank goodness his mom found a plastic bag in her backpack that he could go in! The bus driver called to see if he could go a different route and they told him to stay where he was –that was a little confusing to all of us on the bus. Anyway when it became clear we weren’t going to make our ADR at Sanaa I called dining reservations and was able to get it moved back until 1:15. I was also able to move our fp+ times to later in the evening on MDE. So everything eventually worked out and we make it to AKL with time to explore the resort and see the animals. This resort is beautiful! Lindsay had wanted to visit here and Sanaa was her choice for lunch. We will definitely be back with the boys. They would love watching the animals and my husband would love Sanaa. We enjoyed our food-especially the bread with dips and the butternut squash soup.
After lunch we made our way to AK. We had some time to explore, take pictures and see ITTBAB before our fp+ for the safari. It was great-we saw tons of animals. When we were done the parade was just starting so we were sort of stuck. As it ended we were able to make it to Festival of the Lion King. They said it was standing room only but we got seats in one of the last few rows. This is such a great show! I was glad we were able to see it since it won’t be shown for a while. Afterwards we made our way towards Dinoland with some shopping along the way. On our way we stopped to visit with Pooh and Tigger! They were some of Lindsay’s favorites when she was little and she was still excited to see them. Next was Dinosaur-which is always fun. Just a little background on me and AK. I try to like AK-I really do. I think it’s a beautiful park. But usually when we visit the humidity in that park kills me. And during every visit it has rained-not just a little drizzle but lightning with torrential downpours so our day is cut short. I feel like I never know my way around. At one point I was wishing I had a park map to figure out where we were. So after a detour we eventually made our way over to visit Mickey and Minnie. There was hardly a line so we only waited about 10min! I didn’t think we would do any character visits this trip but we seemed to be coming upon them at the right times. Our last ride of the night was EE with our fp+. This was great-and doing it at night made it even better! As I said before this park is beautiful and even more so at night. It will be great if AK gets a night time show and stays open late on a regular basis.
The park was about to close so we headed out and decided to head over to the Beach Club and see if we could get into Beaches and Cream. We had never been there before but heard it was good. I had no idea how small it is! They were full for the evening so we just ordered from the take out area and had sundaes for dinner! It was a beautiful night so we enjoyed sitting outside. A lot of people had their NYE hats on already blowing their horns. Maybe someday I will brave MK or EPCOT on NYE just to experience it once but I was very happy with how our day turned out. We had a nice leisurely walk over to MGM to get a bus back to the resort. We had our only problem with the Magic Bands that evening when I tried to use them to pay for the sundaes. Once we got back to the resort they had no problem fixing them and they worked fine the rest of the trip. We were tired from last night so we headed to bed. We were planning to get to MK early in the morning to beat the crowds. Stayed tuned for our New Year’s at the MK and our ladies tea at the Grand Floridian!
 

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