Greetings! Hello Disboards and welcome to my first trip report!
I am very very late and very very excited to talk/type about my first trip to Walt Disney World!!
This trip happened some months ago, back in August of 2014 and it was... I don't quite have words to describe it like, I have cliches for days to throw @ y'all i.e. IT WAS MAGICAL
BUT
we will get into that soon enough for now, an introduction!
The first thing to note about me is that whenever asked a direct question, any answer that I could possibly have just kinda flies out of my brain and takes a trip to ??? Narnia? A beach getaway? The corner gas station to buy emergency dish soap that is at least seven dollars more expensive than anywhere else??? WHO KNOWS.
What I do know is that when faced with a question like "What is your fave movie?" I suddenly find myself questioning if I've even ever seen a movie in my entire life.
In short, I am bad at describing myself so don't cringe too hard as I attempt this introductory post.
Hello!
My name is Lii, it is pronounced like Lee, and rhymes with knee. I am twenty three years old. I like a lot of things and there are very few things I dislike. I live for cheap jump scares, horror movies and horror video games are my jam. I also really love Nintendo and carry my 3DS everywhere. I watch a lot of anime, especially shoujo and I love fashion. If you talk to me about DC Comics, we'll be best friends but don't talk to me about Young Justice because I'm in denial.
I'm one of those gross optimists, too.
*creeps on other trip reports to see how others set theirs up because I have no idea what I'm doing*
Oh! We post a pic of ourselves now, okay, I'm down with that!
Here's me minutes after arriving, dressed as my bff Buzz, of course:
If you would like to find me elsewhere on the internet, my username for everything is KingLii!
This includes, but is not limited to: Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram.
That is all, I believe!
I will be posting the first actual post sometime tomorrow, see ya then! Post #2: Road Trip To Florida Post #3: First Day @ MK
Hello again and happy Friday! Also, Happy First Day of Spring!
I hope everyone had a wonderful week and if not, well, at least its the weekend now.
This post will focus on the road trip down to Florida! I would've skipped the road trip entirely but it flows right into visiting Downtown Disney for the first time and I wanted to share that experience. Plus, there are some road trip pictures I wanna share <3
To frame our story, the trip consisted of me (well duh), my 17 year old brother, our mom and dad, so when I say "we", I'm talking about mi familia and not my other personalities.
First off, here was the outfit of the day!
We live in Wisconsin and left right around midnight on Thursday night? Friday morning? It was a cool morning, foggy with a forecast of rain. The small amount of light that filtered into the environment made everything eerie. Driving through the farmlands was something straight out of a horror movie.
We hit Indiana right as the sun started rising and that was about all I saw of Indiana before falling asleep.
My mission on the road trip was to take a pic of all the state signs as we passed them because I'm incredibly cliche like that. As my mom was aware of this goal, she woke me up right as we crossed into Kentucky. Since we drove through Louisville, the first thing we saw was the KFC Convention Centre so of course the first words out of my mouth were "WHO WANTS SOME KFC???" and there was much eye rolling in the kingdom.
Tennessee was when I tweeted "ur the only 10 i c" because I'm lame but was also absolutely gorgeous.
The entirety of the drive was up and down mountains and while it was an amazing sight, it was also kind of terrifying, especially as there were ramps everywhere for "runaway trucks".
We finally gave in to a tourist attraction in Georgia (read as: I whined for a good half hour and my family finally gave in to my demands just to shut me up.) We visited a really pretty farm where we picked peaches and ate the most delicious pecan pie.
Those peaches were seriously the sweetest and juiciest peaches I've ever had, just thinking about them now makes me jealous of past me. In Georgia, we also spent part of the night, as by this point we had been driving for about 13 hours.
After approximately six hours of sleep, we continued on the journey. Our arrival to Florida was announced by many signs offering free orange juice. Like, literally every fifty feet was a FREE ORANGE JUICE INFORMATION CENTRE sign.
I promise that the longest drive of my life was from the Welcome to Florida! sign to actual Disney World and whoever decided to put up all the Disney World signs up is just cruel. Every time saw a WDW sign, it felt like I was already there and where is the actual entrance and how have we been driving for three days straight already shouldn't I be seeing Mickey soon? At one point, I was absolutely convinced that we had driven straight through Florida, across the body of water and were wandering somewhere around Cuba.
Of course I have a picture of the Disney World entrance sign but the day was cloudy and a little rainy so it doesn't look very good and by this point, I think everyone has seen it (if not in person, then probably in some other trip report). Some time after passing that sign and before reaching Pop Century, my spirit left my body and I was giving my parents instructions via an Ouija board.
I easily shattered track records when I sprinted across the Pop Century lobby and straight to the front desk. As the guy who helped us explained everything in the welcome packet, the only thing I could think was "give me the room number, I'll figure the rest of it out" partly because I was impatient but mostly because I was seriously on the verge of tears.
LOOK AT THIS MAJESTIC PRINCE WATCHING OVER MY ROOM HOW BEAUTIFUL IS HE
The love I have for Pop Century is pretty much legendary. Like, there's Romeo/Juliet, Catherine/Heathcliff, Pop Century/Lii. I absolutely love everything about it and if you're on the fence about which resort to stay at, hit me up and I'll show you the Pop Century Way.
By the time we got all our stuff out of the truck, showered and changed, it was some time around 7pm. We didn't make plans to go to the parks the first day we arrived since we knew it would be late and a waste of a ticket so we headed out to Downtown Disney for dinner.
I did not make any reservations and it was a grave mistake on my part. It was Saturday night and the wait for any of the restaurants was something like, three hours.
But okay, with a view like this, waiting three hours??? Who even freaking cares??? I will wait seven days if need be.
The shortest wait time was for Portobello so we ended up eating there and I thank the food gods for directing us to that restaurant because the food was amazing. We all ordered completely different things and it was all delicious and don't even get me started on the desserts. I still have dreams about their biramisu and panna cotta. Please go try the biramisu and panna cotta. Do not leave Downtown Disney without trying the biramisu and panna cotta at Portobello.
As we were waiting, we got to listen to an excellent trio perform and while they were awesome, they did play "Let It Go" like three times, like sellouts. Just kidding. If performing "Let It Go" made me more tips, I'd be up there like "listen to this five hour remix of Let It Go I wrote haha".
Amongst all the wonderful things at Downtown Disney, World of Disney was definitely my favorite because there was just SO MUCH. When you heard that its the biggest Disney Store, that doesn't really mean anything until you're in there and "holy crap, this is the biggest Disney Store". You will cry, your wallet will cry, its the best of times.
One of my other favorites things was walking into the Lego Store and finding Legos in my favorite color because I never find things in my favorite color.
Is anyone surprised at what my fave color is? Being in the Lego Store was an interesting experience because I felt the overwhelming urge to just DESTROY everything and knock over all the Lego displays and throw all the Legos on the floor. I think mostly because growing up, Legos were always strewn across the floor so to see such organization and tidyness was unexpected. There was a Lego Woody and a Lego Buzz and I of course tried to see if I could pry a Lego off, just as so many before me. Buzz and Woody were both taller than me though, so I didn't appreciate that very much.
As Downtown Disney is in the midst of being transformed, there were a lot of construction walls and there was a whole other half that we didn't realize existed until the last day. The one big thing we missed that I really wanted to do was Disney Quest. I've heard a lot of mixed reviews and most people seem to think it's outdated but I was really wanting to try out the arcade games.
Here's one final picture that I really like, but I can't remember where it's from! I want to say the Candy Cauldron, but I'm not 100% sure. If you know, please let me know!
That's all for now! The next post will be about our first day going to the parks, we visited Magic Kingdom !!!!
Until then, and thank you for reading!
Happy Wednesday! I'm back with Day One of my trip!
Sunday morning got off to an early start, as we wanted to get to the parks as soon as they opened. I woke up a little bit earlier than everyone else to get my outfit ready because I was Disneybounding as Buzz Lightyear. I freaking love Buzz Lightyear. I have gotten quite a few questions on how the top part was done and all I did was literally glue sequins onto a piece of felt and then sew it to a neon green shirt after I cut the bottom off.
The walk from the hotel room to the bus stop was basically a panel from a Flash comic book, that’s how fast we booked it. There wasn’t a line at all and the wait for a bus was maybe five minutes. Our first park was going to be Magic Kingdom!
When we got there, the gates were still closed and we got a really awesome spot for the Welcome Show. This is where I started crying. Spoiler alert: there was a lot of crying on this trip. The show was really cute and all but I was i t c h i n g for the gates to open. And then the gates opened and I probably died for a little bit.
We walked in and literally stood right at the entrance for maybe ten minutes just looking at Main Street because we were all just stunned. We probably looked incredibly dumb but that’s okay. The weirdest thing is that this horde of people that entered the park with us quickly dispersed, which made the park seem really empty. (I later discovered that everyone probably made a mad dash for the Mine Train because when we walked by there, not even an hour after the park had opened, the wait for it was at three hours.) The walk down Main Street was super cute and when I saw Cinderella’s Castle, I started crying again. Typical.
There was a suuuuper nice photographer that took great pics of us right in front of the castle and I, of course, took a bajillion and four pictures of the castle.
We wandered through it and ended up at the Cinderella Fountain and I took the picture that every single person has taken of it. Here it is:
My mom is a HUGE Snow White fan and she was dying to get on the new ride. She followed that ride from the announcement and through all the construction, but like I said before, the line was ridiculously long. I did have a fastpass for it, but not until like, 8pm and she was a little bummed we couldn’t go on it right away. The first ride we did end up going on was The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh.
It was good up until the scene with the heffalumps because not only were they the freaking heffalumps but they were glowing and I was in a dark room and let me tell you, I almost peed my pants. My dislike for the heffalumps stems back to my early days.
There was a locally owned video rental shop that we went to a lot when I was little. I loved it because right in the middle of the children’s section, there was a little playground and when you’re a kid and there’s a playground INSIDE, that’s a whole nother level of awesome. In addition to the indoor playground, that shop was the only place that sold whistle pops and I always got one. Whenever we went there, I was always allowed to choose one VHS to rent. The one I had chosen was a Winnie the Pooh Christmas special. The actual VHS in the box ended up NOT being a Christmas special and while it was still Winnie the Pooh, it featured a segment about Heffalumps and Woozles. I’m not sure if it was because I was in the mindset of Christmas and wasn’t expecting it at all but let me just tell you, this is absolutely terrifying when you’re six
To this day, it still freaks me out.
After the mini trauma, we walked right on to Mad Tea Party, another ride with no wait! It was beyond cute, the color scheme of that ride is everything. I picked a purple teacup because purple is my favorite color but there was a pink one with hearts that was super cute too.
We eventually wandered into Storybook Circus, where Barnstormer and Dumbo didn’t have wait times.
BIG TOP SOUVENIRS IS ONE OF MY MOST FAVORITE PLACES OF ALL TIME CAN I PLEASE LIVE THERE. The smell of delicious popcorn and candy apples that hit us was absolutely amazing. I literally walked right out of the shop so I could walk back in and experience it again.
My other favorite thing in there is the pin trading! Like, seriously! How cute is this!!!!!
#PopcornPinTradingPosse
A small note about pin trading: I promised myself I wouldn’t take part in it but I also had bought some pins to trade *just in case* I found one I really liked and I ended up getting obsessed with pins and blowing a lot of money on it. Slightly ashamed but I don’t regret anything.
I had a fastpass for Space Mountain so we hit up Tomorrowland. Oh! Before I forget, I didn’t do ANY research on the rides. I knew Space Mountain was a roller coaster but I didn’t know exactly what it did. I purposefully didn’t look up anything ride related so I could be genuinely surprised the first time I rode. SPACE MOUNTAIN WAS BEYOND AMAZING. The music, the lights, the ?????????????????????????????? It was somehow an experience that I remember but can’t quite picture and maybe I died for a little bit on this ride too, who knows? I got off the ride literally bouncing.
We started to queue for Astro Blasters but I spotted actual Buzz Lightyear and his line was really short so we ended up doing that instead. Meeting Buzz Lightyear was AMAZING!!! He got really excited when he saw I was dressed as him and made a heart with his hands, it was the cutest and one of my favorite memories. Everyone in line was losing their mind too and the little kids were all “oh my god, she’s Buzz!” it was pretty bomb.
We wandered around the Tomorrowland Light and Power Co for a bit to cool off and there was a machine where you could get Alien Funko Pop figures.
I made “THE CLAWWWW” jokes, don’t worry. The machine was out of order, which made me sad. This is also where I saw the charging station where you can charge your phone for free and the key is your credit card. Why isn’t this option literally everywhere???
MONSTROPOLIS WAS SO FUNNY! The audience interaction just MAKES THE SHOW and we were lucky enough to be in a crowd with people who were willing to participate and do all the silly things asked of them! Before the show, you’re asked to text a joke that might be used and I submitted one. Are you ready for it? Okay, so what does Aladdin yell when he’s annoyed? “Ah! I’m so Agrabah-ated!” (agrabah-ated? aggravated? get it? im a riot) My joke, unfortunately, wasn’t used but I did get a text back from Mike Wazowski!
The Carousel of Progress is in that same area, and we really wanted to get out of the heat for a bit so we went on that next. I had no idea what it was. The show itself “felt” outdated and if you see pictures of it, it may seem that way but it was a really cool experience! I’m not gonna say why because it completely caught me off guard and I don’t want to ruin it for anyone (eventhough I might’ve been the last person on earth to know how it worked?) PLUS, you’ll be singing “It’s a great big beautiful tomorrow!” and of all the song lyrics to get stuck in your head, these are just the nicest.
By this point, we’re getting hungry so we stop for lunch at Freddy Fazbear’s lol jk (small joke for my gamers out there). I chose Cosmic Ray’s Starlight Cafe for us to eat at just because of the name. I think we all ended up getting chicken and it was really good! My favorite part was the delicious hot cheese sauce they had in the condiment island so you could pump a small mountain of cheese on to your plate without any judgement (versus having to ask someone for cheese and then asking for more even as they hand you three containers of it). That cheese sauce? SLAMMIN. Oh, and Sonny’s puns were hilarious but Sonny himself is TERRIFYING.
Full of food, we headed back to Storybook Circus to meet some characters and everyone in their circus get-ups were absolutely adorable! It was pretty empty in there, so we got through everyone pretty quick, which was good because we had only planned on meeting with one or two characters, since we had a fastpass coming up.
Look @ this really great pic of me and Donald, I look like a broken robot.
That fastpass took up to Liberty Square, where we queued up for the Haunted Mansion.
PAUSE.
HOW EXCITED WAS I FOR THE HAUNTED MANSION. A WORD DOES NOT YET EXIST TO DESCRIBE, I WAS BASICALLY EXISTING ON A DIFFERENT PLANE AT THIS POINT.
I’ve heard Grim Grinning Ghosts a bajillion and four times, its one of my FAVE songs (BECAUSE I FREAKING LOVE HALLOWEEN) so I held back the terrible urge to sing along. The Haunted Mansion was my first time facing a moving platform to board a ride. I had many concerns. Mostly because walking in broad daylight across a flat surface had me trippin’, and now I had to get on a conveyor belt in the dark and somehow land in a seat????????? Fortunately, my brother had the same thought process and helped me navigate on but ohhhh boy, I was wondering if texting my will to someone was legally binding or not because I was thinking I was going to fall and die.
A display of my amazing photography skills, look at how sharp and crisp this pic is.
And then I actually did die. This is my ghost typing right now. Did you know Ouija boards can connect to wifi now? The Haunted Mansion is probably the best ride ever of all time anywhere. It’s been scientifically proven, there is much data, loads of scientists and doctors went “hmmmm” for a long time and then decided that yes, The Haunted Mansion is everything. Literally fight me if you don’t agree.
We boarded the Liberty Bell afterwards, super excited this family LOVES going on boats and the sun was SCORCHING. Leaning up against the rails was the type of torture that occurs AFTER you refuse to talk while getting waterboarded because it was metal and metal plus sun and lots of heat = don’t touch that. But what’s a little first degree burn when the view is amazing??? Warning: I went a little overboard with the HDR, if you hadn't already noticed haha
After getting off the boat, we literally stumbled into the Tangled Bathroom area and I became a being of pure light. If capable, I would have cried. So many of the cries. All of the cries. Cries forever. I walked into the bathroom and stood there for a good ten minutes and got a lottttt of weird looks like, “are you waiting for a stall?” “nope, i’m just looking at the walls” “ooookay……”
We met Winnie the Pooh and friends, TIGGER IS THE BEST HUGGER EVER. Meeting Tigger was another of my all time favorite memories. Are you ready for a picture of me looking like a total goon? Here it is:
But not as favorite as MEETING KAELA.
Y’all may know Kaela, she’s posted a few trip reports before and we met through a mutual friend and after about a year of knowing each other, we got to meet in real life! As she was working, I spotted her first and I remember thinking OH MY GOD KAELA IS ACTUALLY RIGHT THERE I COULD GO UP TO HER AND JUST PUT MY HAND ON HER FACE IF I WANTED TO. Which I didn’t, but it was def an option. And yes, it is true. Kaela is way cuter in real life, which how is that possible? No one is quite sure. MEETING KAELA WAS SUPER MAGICAL THOUGH. HI KAELA.
Gaston’s Tavern was next and it was one of the areas I was really looking forward to. This is where I had my first Mickey Ice Cream Bar! All the rumors are true, it’s way more delicious than any other chocolate covered vanilla ice cream you’ve had. I also tried Le Fou’s Brew, because the description was super interesting. It was rank. I laughed until I cried because it tasted so bad. The actual drink wasn’t too bad, it was literally as described: apple juice with a hint of marshmallow, but the stuff on top was SOOOOO BAD. I was like WHAT IS THIS and also WHY IS THIS IN EXISTENCE but mostly WHO THOUGHT OF THIS. Another favorite memory.
The Little Mermaid area is beyond beautiful. Look at it.
I made reservations for dinner at Crystal Castle and it was awesome! It was character dining so most of the time was spent stalking the characters around the restaurant and trying to gauge when they would be at our table versus actually eating. I’m three years old apparently.
We met Tinkerbell and she was SO CUTE AND ENERGETIC AND SPARKLY. The end of the day is a bit of a blur because I wasn’t sure what was going on. My mom had said she wasn’t feeling well and then suddenly disappeared, and we spent some time looking for her. It turned out that she had gone to the bathroom wayyyyyy across the park because it was the only one she remembered it’s location. Since she was feeling sick-y, we decided to call it a day and left around 8-ish.
She did feel well enough that we rode the monorail to EPCOT and then took a bus to the hotel, for the sole purpose of riding the monorail. We were all pretty stoked for the monorail and we hopped on a pink one, which was pretty cool. The view was amazing, I’m getting a little teary eyed just thinking about it haha.
As I’ve said before, I absolutely love Pop Century so I didn’t mind going back so early and chilling at the hotel! I was a little bit bummed that we missed the fireworks and night parade but it was okay. My favorite part about going back to the hotel every night was checking all the photopass pictures! ESPECIALLY THE RIDE PICTURES! AND EVERYONE’S FACES ON TOWER OF TERROR!!! But that’s for another post! See you then!
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