This trip was a whirlwind. The shortest trip we’ve ever done (yet) it was a big experiment for us.
This was our first time only doing 3 (technically 2 1/2) days, our first time in a long time NOT doing the dining plan, and our first time driving straight through the first day. Let’s see how those experiments turned out… along with my cellphone photos (I’ll come back and add photopass photos later).
Wednesday we both got off work early, loaded up the car, and set out!
Instead of stopping for crappy fast food and snacks the whole drive down, we packed a little dinner and snacks in the cooler and it was really nice. Once we were out of the city and had eaten, I climbed into the backseat and slept for a bit (I’ve had sinus stuff off and on for a few weeks now, I’d taken a bunch of medicine before we left hoping it would kick in and take care of the worst of the pain before it was my turn to drive!) Somewhere in Alabama we switched out, and we took a weird route that had us going through so many cities, stoplights and whatnot it was frustrating. We made sure to NOT come back that way.
After I drove for a few hours, Chase took over again and I slept in the back again for a while, then I was back in the driver’s seat for a few hours. Chase did the last bit into Orlando.
He woke me up around 6 saying, there’s the sign! And I couldn’t get my camera ready for a picture fast enough….
I was perfectly fine with driving all the way through, I ended up with about 5 hours of sleep. Chase, as I predicted, was not, he only managed about 3 hours or so. After we checked into the hotel (room wasn’t ready of course), we just laid in the car for about an hour in the parking lot, while he tried to get a bit more sleep. I was up and ready to go though. I think he could tired of hearing me rustle around and we went on to Magic Kingdom for the day.
We checked in at guest services and switched our AP green cards out for the real thing… SO EXCITING!
We took the ferry over since the monorail line was long and was surprised by Thumper and Miss Bunny and a band greeting the disembarking crowd:
This is the first time we’ve been at Magic Kingdom in 2? years that there hasn’t been hub construction. Everything looks so nice!
We had “breakfast” at Casey’s Corner, then headed over into Tomorrowland. I wanted a new phone case and I knew just the one I wanted to get at the D-Tech store. (My Hogwarts phone case I got at Universal last year finally gave up the ghost and the bottom part broke on the drive down. It was a sign!)
And Chase got a Chip and Dale magic band. Then we rode the peoplemover, of course.
I got new ears since I forgot mine at home:
We got a dole whip and then rode the ferryboat around. The crowds were heavy so we didn’t do just a ton of stuff. We met Mr and Mrs Easter Bunny!
First trip of 2016!
Then we headed back to the car and went over to see Disney Springs for the first time in a long time. It’s looking really nice. We had a quick lunch at Bongo’s, just shared a sandwich, and Chase bought some Legos and I went to see what Tsums they had (nothing I wanted). Then we finally got the text the room was ready and headed over for a quick nap before dinner.
We were in the 70s building at Pop this time around.
Then we got turned around heading to Magic Kingdom, came back through the main gate so I was able to get a better photo this time:
While laying in the car in the parking lot at 7AM that morning, I got online and booked our Skipper Canteen reservations. The interior is great, our server was great and the food was great. I had the mac and cheese of course:
Chase had the steak with the yuca fries which I LOVED and stole most of:
Also best coke I had on property all trip.
It was raining while we had dinner, so we donned our ponchos and headed over for a quick ride on Haunted Mansion, then I watched the fireworks from Rapunzel’s bathrooms LOL. Chase got a giant ice cream sandwich before we left for the night.
Also – we used NONE of our fastpasses this day because they all fell right during the time we were at the hotel taking a nap LOL
Day TWO! Epcot day. We got there at park opening…
We ran over to Test Track and hit the single riders line, because standby was already an hour long. I got stuck in between a couple, because the boyfriend wanted to ride on the outside. It was awkward. (We had a fastpass for Test Track but it was late in the day when we knew we wouldn’t be on that side of the park, and I couldn’t get an earlier one. We ended up not using any of our fastpasses this day, either.)
We had breakfast in France!
Then we got our Easter Egg hunt stuff, headed back around to Mexico to start our march around the world. The first Flower & Garden booth we hit was Mexico, where we got the shrimp taco. It was tiny but tasty. We rode Gran Fiesta and then headed into China, where Chase got the Gaoli Beef Bun which was good.
Frozen construction in Norway…
We breezed through Germany and Italy without stopping long, nothing at the booths we really wanted. In America we pigged out though:
Chase got a beer flight, and the chocolate cake. I got the beef brisket burnt end hash with white cheddar fondue and it was SO GOOD… seriously best thing I ate all weekend. America was also the hardest easter egg hunt… took me a while to find it.
In Japan, Chase got Frushi and I got to do Pick-a-Pearl! I’ve ALWAYS wanted to do this, and it was a lot of fun. Chase helped me pick a really ugly oyster, and it ended up being a good one as I ended up with a “blue-ish silver” pearl which the Pick-a-Pearl lady told me was only in 5% of oysters. This picture doesn’t really show the colour well but here it is:
(Along with some cute papercraft dogs!)
We skipped through Morocco pretty quickly and in France I got the onion tart and the La View en Rose slushie. The onion tart was SO good. Slushie was good, too.
Chase got some ice cream in France, and we walked on into UK to sit and eat it, and we watched Mary Poppins meet in the gardens… very nice. We got on into Canada and found our last easter egg… just as the bottom dropped out in a massive monsoon. We hunkered down in the store there for a bit, before throwing on our ponchos and making a run for The Land pavilion. We found an empty table and dried off, and I ended up falling asleep for a while LOL. It was still too early for our dinner reservations at Garden Grill though, so after the rain subsided, we went over and shopped in MouseGears for a bit, then over to Art of Disney where we bought a print, got to meet the artist (super nice and walked us through his process, signed our print), and then made our way back to the Land where we rode Living with the Land, then off to dinner.
Thankfully we got one of the tables on the lower level where we could see over into Living with the Land!
The food was good, there was a LOT Of it, and we met the characters multiple times! So much so that by like, the 4th time Mickey came by, we were just like, “Hey, Mickey.”
In the rain storm, I was glad I’d brought a pair of flip-flops in our park bag, and not regular shoes. BUT! The brown dye on my leather flip-flops wore off on my feet. My feet were dark brown by the end of the day. I scrubbed them off with some towels in the room and was left with white towels with … very suspicious-looking brown stains all over them. LOL, sorry housekeeping…
We completed the egg hunt and got Stitch as our reward!
Then we ran off to Hollywood Studios to see the fireworks. Chase and I have differing opinions on the removal of the sorcerer’s hat (he liked it, I hated it):
Saw some troopers in Launch Bay:
Then back to the hotel again to get ready for the next day…
Day 3!
We headed back to Hollywood Studios to meet Chewie and Kylo Ren!
I forgot to bring something to trade with the jawas, tried to give them some of our trader pins but they weren’t interested. They did very much enjoy my phone! LMAO!
Then I met Jake!
After that, we headed back to Epcot. Chase was shopping for a birthday present all weekend, and he finally decided on some cologne from Norway. We ran over and picked that up, I got some ice cream and some peach bubble tea, and Chase got another Gaoli beef bun, because he liked it so much. We also picked up our Flower & Garden passholder print!
It was starting to get hot, so we headed back to the car, I changed clothes (I had a whole bag of clothes and shoes in the car in case I got hot or cold, etc… LOL) and we headed to Animal Kingdom. I have never spent much time in Animal Kingdom, so it was nice to explore some areas we’d never been in. We used all 3 of our fastpasses, too! After getting a snack, we headed over and rode the safari (and had a GREAT guide who was doing a sort-of “Muldoon from Jurassic Park” vibe), then Festival of the Lion King.
Then I rode Everest by myself, Chase wouldn’t…. I ended up sitting next to teen boy who was trying to “outscream” the girl in the car in front of us (his friends). My poor eardrums.
Then we went to Yak and Yeti for dinner!
While it was very good, I’m also 99% sure it made me sick later in the night :\
It rained while we ate dinner, and cooled everything off (yay!) so we headed back to Magic Kingdom to end our trip.
We rode the peoplemover again, got a dole whip, and watched the fireworks before heading back to the hotel.
Like I said I got sick to my stomach later in the night. That sucked. We got up early, Chase went and got me some medicine, and we started the long trip home. I slept through most of florida.
We are booked into Pop Century for our next trip again… I really hope we get put into the “Hot Pants” building.
Yesterday was also our fastpass booking day for the next trip… that helped take the “sting” out of having to go home a little bit!