UGH
We’re home.
Don’t really want to be LOL Because Disney World was fantastic as always. Even though by day 7 we were EXHAUSTED and ready to be home, I still would rather be there of course LMAO.
SO! Let’s start at the beginning.
Chase and I both took half days off work Friday. I got home and got the house ready, started getting luggage into the kitchen. Chase got home about 1 and we loaded up the car and headed out! YAY. Normally we just leave after work so being able to leave at 1 made things so much nicer. Traffic was light. We listened to our audiobook. Got into Atlanta around 9ish?
We did change one thing up with our trip – we usually stay overnight in Columbus, GA. This time we stayed in North Atlanta. Why? So I could SHOP before we hit the road Saturday morning. Our hotel was directly behind Fine Fabrics!
I did NOT come to play
Despite all my prep and sheets of reference materials I only got 3 cuts of fabric – a new fabric for Crait Leia coat, which still isn’t 100% but it was interesting and I got it. Fabric for Qi’ra pants which I guess I’m doing now. And some blue taffeta that MIGHT work for Loyalist Committee. I didn’t take pics of any of it, I’ll do that later this week. The fabric bag just lived in the car the whole week and didn’t move until we got home Saturday night LOL.
So then began the hell drive.
“WAISTIN” away… LOL
I don’t know what was going on with traffic that Saturday. We did add basically an hour onto our Saturday drive by staying in North Atlanta instead of Columbus, but what should have been a 7 hour drive was a NINE HOUR DRIVE. Traffic was HORRIBLE the entire drive down. All the lanes would just suddenly slow down, complete stop, stop and go for a few minutes, then clear up with no reason for the slow down? Then it would be ok for a few minutes and then happen again. It was like that THE WHOLE WAY. WTF.
So we got into Orlando MUCH later than planned. I’d booked fastpasses for the evening and we missed all of them; we got in about 7.
Our first night we were staying at Port Orleans Riverside. You guys know I love French Quarter but I’d never stayed at Riverside, so I excited to check it out. It’s so much bigger than FQ, which I was expecting, but it’s almost like, Caribbean Beach big. It took us a bit to find our room.
The housekeeping welcome had Tiana and Naveen! And they left us candy!
My fav part of the room was the “painting” on the headboards:
Princess and the Frog themed again!!
So we got changed and headed to the Magic Kingdom to try to at least catch the fireworks. We hadn’t eaten dinner yet but we needed to stake out a spot, so we did that first.
Fireworks were great (except for the girl who decided to step right in front of me so close her hair was practically in my mouth, totally block my view, and then when I said something was all “I was here first” – no, you moved somewhere else and then tried to squish back.) and we ran into Jess & Bill! But after the fireworks we realized the only places we wanted to eat in MK were closed, so we decided to hustle on back over to our hotel to get something to eat before their quick service closed. Well they ended up being out of most of the things on the menu so we both just ended up with cheeseburgers that were so-so.
Sunday morning we got up, took our bags back to the car, checked out and drove on over to the Poly. We knew it was way too early to check in, but we wanted to check our luggage (and didn’t want to have Disney move them and them not show up before dinner).
I did my Gamora-inspired look with Chase in his Starlord shirt that day!
With my Avengers ears.
Also, who needs green skin when I still have this MASSIVE GREEN BRUISE on my forearm from falling down the steps?
It’s finally feeling normal again. 2 weeks later.
After dropping our stuff at the Poly, we went to Epcot for the day.
We got there before anything really opened tho, so we kinda just meandered around until it was time to walk over to Beach Club for lunch.
My Avengers ears got a lot of compliments!
Gamora look… it was fine in the morning but in the heat of the afternoon I was definitely questioning my decision to wear books and black jeans to Epcot. LOL.
Also had nowhere to put our Polynesian leis (we rode the monorail to Epcot), so I ended up just wearing them on my wrists until we bought something and had a bag to put them in LOL
KERMIE
LUNCH! Was Beaches and Cream. One of our favs. I usually get the grilled cheese and tomato soup WITH fries on the side (because Beaches and Cream has the BEST fries), but it was hot that day so I skipped the soup.
Matching bands
After lunch we walked on around the rest of world showcase and then back to the monorail. We’d been awaiting a text that our room was ready and by 3 we still hadn’t gotten it. So we figured it had to be soon… we were exhausted and figured we’d just head on back to the hotel and sit in the lobby and wait.
So that’s what we did. While we were sitting there, I started messing around on the Disney app and pulled up a thing about unlocking your room door with the app – and from there it told me our room number? Even though we hadn’t gotten a text that the room was ready? We decided what the heck, let’s go try it. Walked on over to the room listed in the app and… it opened the door right up. And immediately after that we got the text that the room was ready and it was the same number as what the app said. LOL. So thankfully we didn’t walk into somebody else’s room.
We were in Rarotonga right next to the lobby! Our view out our window looked right over the monorail.
Ok, so… I really wasn’t all that impressed with the Poly rooms. It’s more than you’re paying for the convenience of location, the ambiance, and the nostalgia. The rooms themselves weren’t all that different from a moderate room – except the bathrooms were nicer. OMG the amazing lighting around the mirrors in the bathroom! I want that at home!
But the room itself didn’t have a full length mirror – which Port Orleans does – and it didn’t have a ceiling fan – which Port Orleans does. It did have an inside door (instead of exterior door), and a balcony where I could watch the monorail, and a couch that could fold out into a bed (nice for a bigger group), but honestly at the end of the day French Quarter is still my favourite. It was nice to be able to stay there because it was definitely on my bucket list. (Next – Wilderness Lodge)
So after a rest, we got changed and drove over to Yacht Club for dinner at Yachtsmen Steakhouse!
I wore the tiki bird dress – which was being sold like EVERYWHERE now but oh well. And I made Chase match in his Tiki bird I got him for Christmas.
We got to Yachtsmen WAY too early so went and had drinks in the lounge. One of the wait staff saw us and said “OMG I hope you guys are going to Ohana for dinner!” And we said no, Yachtsmen… and she said “Even better! I love it! People usually just wear black and boring!” LOL
We shared the Porterhouse for 2 with potatoes and brussel sprouts and omg it was so much food and so good.
Matching bands again – Captains!
Monday was our lazy day. We slept in and then got up and went over to Kona Cafe without a reservation.
I’d been waiting for this!!
Then we went over to Animal Kingdom for a bit. We were originally supposed to only run over, do our Flights of Passage fastpass and then back to the resort to chill and swim. But the day ended up being chilly, so we decided to just hang out at Animal Kingdom longer than planned.
Also since it was colder that day than I planned, I switched to my Padme look for the day.
LOVED my lake dress ears.
WE SAW KEVIN!
Then over to meet Scrooge…
I’ve been trying to meet Scrooge for YEARS!! I was so excited. He’s one of my fav disney characters.
He liked my ears! Then we talked about how nice his clothes are.
We didn’t meet a lot of characters this trip – mostly just aimed for characters I hadn’t met yet or if they had short lines. Since Launchpad McQuack was right around the corner we went to meet him, too, since he was “new” for us.
He saw my Captain Marvel pin!
Padme look!
We used our Safari fastpass and then went and had a giant pretzel in Pandora before our FOP fastpass. Chase enjoyed it! But after that we headed on our and decided to go to Disney Springs for an early dinner and because Chase was itching to use his birthday money on new legos.
We went to Polite Pig for that early dinner (it was like 4?), did the Butcher Board for 2 that came with lots of stuff. And those amazing brussel sprouts!! YUM
I wanted this!! But I honestly don’t think I’d wear it much so wasn’t sure about spending that much $$ on it. So I didn’t get it.
Amazingly enough the only dole whip we had the whole trip was in Disney Springs.
Then back to the hotel for an early night. I washed my hair and put it in curlers for wearing Ariel the next day – but I tried something different. Put my hair in a very high ponytail right on top of my head, and then put curlers in my ponytail. That way I didn’t have curlers jamming me in the skull all night (which always causes a migraine). But after I did that, we decided to go to Trader Sam’s… so I improvised to hide my curlers LOL
Had drinks and a late night snack at Trader Sam’s. Chase got on the shrinking chair at the bar LOL Then we walked around the beach for a bit before heading back to the room.
OH! I bought 3 bath bombs at basin and used them the next 3 nights. It was very nice after a long day!
MK from the poly beach
Tuesday was still a little chilly but I wanted to wear my comfy Ariel look hell or highwater so I just lived with it. LOL. How did the ponytail curlers turn out?
FABULOUS! At first.
And already falling 20 minutes later.
Rode the monorail over to MK and went to Sleepy Hollow for breakfast. Chase got some waffle with ham and cheese on it, I got the fruit and nutella one. And we snagged the rocking chairs in liberty square to sit in while we ate.
Our first FP was mine train, so we went and did that… and then I messed up our FPs for the rest of the day. I thought our Pirates FP was at 2 – it was at noon. And we totally missed it. BOO. I didn’t get to ride Haunted Mansion at all this trip – our FP for it was on saturday, one of the ones we missed, and the wait was crazy long every other day.
Anyway, went and met Ariel. She liked my shirt!
Then over to Tomorrowland, rode the Peoplemover and did Monsters inc.
Tron construction from the Peoplemover
Then we ate ice cream and then camped out for a spot to watch the parade. I didn’t take any pics because my phone was CONSTANTLY on the verge of dying the whole trip.
Then back to the hotel to rest and get ready for VICTORIA AND ALBERTS!!
So yeah my red dress I made was actually a Bespin Leia-inspired dress/disneybound. LOL.
I used General_Leah’s spoonflower bespin fabric for the shawl. Leftover gold trim from my own Bespin tunic.
I brought my R2/BB8 wallet to carry with it but ended up leaving it in the room because I didn’t really need it.
My only regret was not stitching down the back flaps of the open back — the slightest breeze and they moved out of place. Per the pattern directions they were supposed to be sewn down with a button, but I didn’t do that because I liked how they looked hanging. But now I see I should have at least tacked them down.
Oh and my shoes were a disaster LOL. I bought these on amazon and they came and were a much brighter red than my dress fabric. I decided I’d just mix up some fabric paint and darken them up a bit. Well, I tried to do this just a couple of days after falling down the stairs, and the repetitive movement of painting the shoes was killing my arm LOL. I did the best I could… let them dry overnight and checked them the next day to find they looked like I’d walked through mud. It was all caked up in some places and less in others, it looked GROSS. THANKFULLY…. I went and just rinsed them off in the sink and somehow it all came off?! They looked brand new again. So that was a thing that happened.
ANyway, we got dressed and rode the monorail over to the Grand Flo.
They had so many Easter Eggs on display!! Here’s a few favs.
And then we went and checked in at Victoria and Albert’s!
We were seated right away. The table had a little stool next to it for us to put our phones and things on!
They also had a water menu. We went with the house water. LOL
The wine menu was on an ipad.
Normally I don’t care where I am, I’ll order a coke. But I didn’t want to be that person so I ordered a sweet tea. The tea was frozen into cubes and then they poured tea over that. It was so good.
We had 12 courses all together. We didn’t take pics of everything. But everything was amazing.
This was the second course – a lobster course. That bite on the left? Guess who dropped that? If you guessed me you’d be right. I thought it hit the floor, but it ended up being caught up in my dress… so I was able to rescue it and… yes, I still ate it. No regrets.
Meat course
There was so much food. I hit a wall about halfway through. But it was all so good. I literally felt like I was drunk on food.
A dessert course
Towards the end I got hot tea and Chase got coffee
The harp player kept playing really interesting songs and we had fun trying to pick out what they were. There were Disney songs of course, but also “For Good” from Wicked and “A Million Dreams” from Greatest Showman.
Afterwards they gave me a rose, a copy of our menu, and BREAD TO EAT FOR BREAKFAST lol. All together… it was a 3 hour experience.
Here we are at the end, Chase in his suit I made for him!
Afterwards we walked back to the Poly and totally crashed.
Wednesday morning we packed up, ate our breakfast bread, and checked out of the Poly! But before we could head to our next hotel, we went to Disney Springs to go to the Void. This my 3rd time playing through the Star Wars game, and Chase’s first. It was so much fun! (Again!)
Then we went to take our stuff over to Port Orleans French Quarter to check it, because it wasn’t even 11 AM so we knew it was too early to get into our room. I was doing Leia disneybound that day, and I couldn’t put the buns on that morning — no way to wear a VR helmet with Leia buns on LOL – so I was just going to do them in the public restroom at Port Orleans FQ. We went in and checked in and… our room was ready!! What! Amazing.
So we were able to go ahead and take our stuff to the room and I was able to put my hair up in there, which was good because it took me a bit and it was a struggle with the bow AND the buns.
I went with tennis shoes for this even though I brought my white disneybound Leia shoes – these were much more comfortable.
Then went to Hollywood Studios for the day!
First up, gotta meet Edna Mode.
She did NOT like my shrug — too cape like! So I took it off to take pics together! LOL.
Then we went to do our Slinky Dog fastpass…
I had no idea if my buns would survive! And I had to hang on to my bow since there was no taking it off and getting it back on LOL
But they survived!
I LOVE Slinky Dog and Chase did too!
Then we went to meet Chewie. He liked my buns, and Chase’s goatee!
Then we went and had drinks and a chacuterie board at Brown Derby’s lounge.
Then back to the hotel to change and head to Epcot for dinner. I switched to my NASA ears.
We slowly walked around world showcase until we got to Italy – a half hour before our reservation – but trusty old Tutto Italia got us seated right away. It was good, like it always is.
At POFQ I’d noticed somebody else had all their ears in their windows, so I did that, too. Then housekeeping made a little towel roll and set them up on it for me!
Thursday was supposed to be animal kingdom day… but since we kinda did everything on Monday, we skipped it and did Epcot all day.
I wore my Westworld shirt… and since I didn’t really have any ears that “went” with that, I went without to give my head a break. (And as a result had one pair I never even wore. Boo!)
We ended up just sitting around for an hour waiting on the festival booths to open. First stop was to get an orange bird – the drink was delicious, it was like drinking an old dreamsicle pushpop. (and we also got some crispy citrus chicken which was delicious)
We didn’t take any pics of the food we ate this day. My phone was already at 50% at 10:30 in the morning so I had to take it easy on the pics! But we also had:
Beef Tenderloin Tips, Mushroom Bordelaise Sauce, Whipped Potatoes with Garden Vegetables at Northern Bloom (this was my fav)
Potato Pancake with Caramelized Ham, Onions and Herb Sour Cream at Bauernmarkt
Shredded Beef Brisket with Smoked Potato, Chorizo Fondue and Green Tomato Relish at the Smokehouse
Chicken Karaage with Nanban Sauce: Japanese-style Fried Chicken served on a bed of Shredded Cabbage and topped with a Soy and Vinegar-based Dressing at Hanami
Key Lime Tart with Toasted Meringue at Florida Fresh
Tarte au Chévre: Goat Cheese Tart with Caramelized Onions on a flaky Pastry Crust at Fleur de Lys
All good!
OK I saw these in December and had to have one.
Luna sushi!
After we made our way around world showcase, we stopped in a few stores and then back to the hotel to get ready for dinner. We didn’t ride Soarin or Test Track or anything at Epcot… but we did ride Grand Fiesta Tour once and Spaceship Earth twice.
And we did get selfies with Mickey, Minnie and Goofy at the character spot! (Shortest stand-by wait I’ve ever seen at character spot…)
Dinner that night was Morimoto in Disney Springs. Chase has been wanting to eat here for ages! So we finally went!
I wore the rainbow shrug I made a couple of weeks ago – but I got no pics of it, only these videos Chase took from the back.
We rode the boat over to Disney Springs and shopped around a bit before heading to Morimoto. They were slammed busy and behind so we sat at the bar for a bit before we were seated.
Started off with sushi and… something else I can’t even remember? It was good. Then the main course…
Chase got ribs and I got this ramen that was SO FREAKING GOOD. OMG. Like Morimoto was my 2nd fav meal of the whole trip, after V&A.
Friday was Hollywood Studios in the morning/Magic Kingdom the rest of the day. I wore my Captain Marvel outfit!
I had planned to wear this the day before with a different Captain Marvel shirt. But I saw this one at Disney Springs and decided I wanted it instead. So I bought it thursday night and wore it Friday.
Chase’s matching look was “Make it a Blockbuster night” shirt LOL
We went to Hollywood Studios only to ride Slinky Dog again – I had another fastpass booked. We walked and immediately saw Donald in his regular sailor suit so had to pause there and get pics.
Also can we talk about the weird back of this shirt?
It’s got this red back inset and the seams are outward. I guess it’s a stylistic choice? All the shirts were like this. But to me it just looks like they sewed the back panel on wrong side out.
But I liked the front enough to deal with it. LOL
Rode Slinky and then left – and in that short amount of time I developed a blister on the back of my foot from my cute red vans. So I switched them out for flip flops which wasn’t as cute but at least comfortable. Then to Magic Kingdom for the rest of the day!
We had lunch at Pinocchio and while we sat there, I deleted our other 2 DHS fastpasses and booked new stuff at Magic Kingdom – was able to get an Under the Sea and a Pirates. So we did those. Rode Peoplemover and Carousel of Progress. And then we did something that I’ve NEVER DONE… we rode the raft over to Tom Sawyer’s island. Watched the parade from there. Then headed back over.
Said goodbye to Magic Kingdom and headed back to the resort!
Oh! I had seen this pin online before we left for the trip. I planned to get it ASAP but couldn’t find it at any of the pin stations I checked! I even checked the shop disney parks app and everywhere they said it would be, it wasn’t. I went over to the POFQ gift store Thursday morning waiting on Chase, and there it was! Just one left! So glad to have found it.
Friday night dinner was another new one for us – Sanaa! I wore my Haunted Mansion shirt and ears.
Once again got there early and sat in the bar. Then we got the bread service once we sat down and omg we didn’t NEED anymore food after that.
IT was SO good.
But we did get more food, Chase got the butter chicken (YUM) and I got the braised beef (YUM)
Finally rolled out of there and back to POFQ around 10.
So we’d originally had a breakfast booked at Kona Cafe saturday morning before we hit the road, but since we’d already eaten there once that week, we decided to forego it and I canceled it thursday. That way we could get on home Saturday, since it was an all day drive.
Well Saturday morning we got up at 5:30AM, loaded up the car. We double checked the room as we left to make sure we hadn’t forgotten anything it was at that moment Chase realized he’d left his valuables in the safe. in the safe in our room at the POLY.
So we put our stuff in the car, Chase called the Poly, they confirmed they still had the items and we drove over there. I stayed in the car while Chase went in to get his stuff… and then he texted and said to come inside. Turns out they DIDN’T have his stuff – nobody had checked the safe after we checked out. So it was still in there and there were guests in the room. Because of course it was, it was 6 in the morning.
So we had to wait for the guests to leave the room. The manager called and got us a reservation at Kona (LOL) but I really wasn’t hungry that early in the morning so we skipped it. Chase sat in the lobby and waited and I went back to the car and slept.
Finally around 9 the manager came and got Chase and they went to the room. The guests had finally left and the manager let Chase and in and thankfully everything was still there, no problems. WHEW. But of course we were now 3 hours behind schedule — thank goodness we weren’t trying to catch a flight LOL.
So google maps took us a funny way home. Instead of going up through georgia part way and then cutting through alabama, it took us through the panhandle and then up through alabama. Which turned out to be a much nicer, less traffic-y drive. Much more scenic!
We rolled into our driveway right around 10. Hit some heavy rain in MS that slowed us down but overall not bad.
And Sunday morning we discovered everything in our backyard is blooming!
Luna was SO glad to see us. We let her sleep in the bed with us Saturday night and she was so happy. Once we were awake Sunday morning she was purring, rubbing against us. We spent Sunday being super lazy. I uploaded all my photos. Read a bit. Had a mini Marvel movie marathon (Iron Man 1 and 2, Thor – though I slept thru most of Thor – Captain America, Iron Man 3 – though I turned it off halfway through to skip up to Captain American Winter Soldier).
And today is back at work. BOO.
So yeah I’ll come back and edit in the handful of missing pics. But overall a great week and now I’m excited to get into my next sewing projects I’ve been putting off.