Today, we'll have Candy's big group Disney World Trip. That's kind of on this episode, 442 of WWE Prep to Go. Hello and welcome to WDW Prep to Go, a retox strategy and ideas for people playing their Disney World trips. And we have lots of trippy ports. I am a host Shannon Albert from wdwprepschool.com. Thank you for being here for episode 442. Feels like we just hit 400 and here we are at 442. Today is another trip report. This time it is with Candy. I'll have more about that in just a moment. A reminder, if you want to be a guest on the podcast, like Candy is, that the only way to do that is through the speak pipe information in the show notes of every episode. We do not accept emails, dms, et cetera, for submissions. There are multiple reasons for that. This is the system that seems to work for us. If your trip works out with our schedule, then somebody on my team will reach out to you to get you booked for your pre-trip and post-trip interviews. And we will go from there as always a reminder to follow on social media. If you are not already, I hope that your 2024 is ending on a good note and that we can go into 2025 with some optimism and excitement. I'll have more on Disney and 2025 plans in an upcoming episode. But for now, let's talk about Candy's trip report. It has got a lot of different elements. I knew immediately when I started talking to her on the pre-trip, why she was booked, because we like to get different kinds of trips and different kinds of travel groups. Not only is it a group of 12 people, but it has a make-a-wish element to it. Candy herself is not part of the make-a-wish travel group. But as you will hear during the podcast, somebody in her group, in her family is, and they decided to make it a big group effort, which is delightful. So you'll hear about her trip in just a minute. I did want to clarify before getting into her trip report that as you will hear that Candy stayed offsite and because of that, her lightning lane booking window is different than onsite guests. But I wanted to clarify that window for people who are considering offsite stay. So if you're staying onsite, you get to book your lightning lane seven days before your trip begins and it's for your whole trip. If you're staying offsite, it's three days before, but the three days varies if it is one day at a time or if you can do it for the full length of your tickets. In Candy's case, she had a military ticket. So she was staying offsite with military tickets and had to book three days before each day of her trip, which meant waking up multiple days in a row to get those lightning lanes. However, most people travel with date based theme park tickets, which require you to select a start date at the time that you purchase it. And if you have those kind of tickets, you can purchase it three days before the first day of your ticket for the whole length of your ticket. So you don't have to do the multiple days of getting up to book those lightning lanes. I just wanted to clarify that. I know the system is still new to all of us and we're trying to learn the ins and outs, but in Candy's case, she had to wake up three days before and do it multiple days in a row. So I think that's it without any further ado here in my chats with Candy. Welcome to the podcast, Candy. Hi, thank you. I am talking to you on Thursday, December 12th and I understand you're going to Disney World. I am. I leave tomorrow. Oh, December 13th. OK. Yeah. And how long are you saying? We are staying until the 19th, so we fly home the evening of the 19th. Who's we? OK, we have a huge group. So it is my husband and I, my mom and my stepdad. And the reason for this trip is that my niece who will be turning five on this trip is on a make a wish trip. So she is going with my brother and his girlfriend, her mom. And then on their side, we have two aunts and uncle and another set of grandparents. So we've got 12 people all together. OK, so let's talk about this because this is different. So your nieces, it's your nieces make a wish to it. Correct. And with that, what are the parameters? Like how many people get to come? Yeah. And the stuff. So make a wish is taking care of my, the nuclear family there. So my brother, his girlfriend and my niece. So they are on the make a wish and the rest of us are on our own and folding in when we can, giving them time to do some of their own stuff, kind of sharing in the experience when it's appropriate, but also letting them have their, their moments as well. OK, so I assume that you schedule yours to coincide because there they get to go. So you're just going to go and join. And it's one big group. OK, so I couldn't type fast enough to keep up with all the people. What's the total number of people? Twelve people. OK. And, and so we know it's you and your husband and then mom's up dad and then, and then it's extended family. Like on the girlfriend side. So on my brother's girlfriend side, it's her two sisters and brother and her parents as well. So we've got grandparents on both side, aunts and uncles on both side for my niece. OK, but the part of it that is the make a wish is the three or four people. Three people, three people. OK. And then everybody else is just kind of on their own and correct me. Up as they can. Yeah, exactly. OK, all right. So then I assume, are we just going to be talking about your specific portion of this? Mm hmm. Yeah. OK, and you can let us know kind of how you went to weave with the rest. Yeah, exactly. And then how are you getting to Orlando? So we are actually all going on the same flight tomorrow. We leave at 745 and Pacific time and land in Orlando at 450. OK, you're landing at 450 and where are you saying? We are saying some my group, my mom, my stepdad, my husband and I are staying at the Saunders Siris, which is a hotel just off property. So serious. Yes. So Sonder S O N D E R. Yeah. Yes. OK, Sonder, Sonder. See, and then serious. Yeah. See, I R R U S. Yeah, like the cloud. OK. Yeah. OK, I've never heard of that. Yeah. So Sonder is kind of like halfway between a hotel and an Airbnb. They have a few properties around the country and I travel and I stay in them for work. So I had some points, but basically it's like the perks of a hotel. Like there's onsite staff and all of that. But it's a little cheaper. You check in and out yourself. You don't have to interact with everything's all taken care of ahead of time. So it's a it's a little cheaper way to travel, but you still have some of the perks of if something breaks their staff around. So that's why I love doing this podcast. You learned so many things. Yeah, I'm going to look that up. OK, so on December 13 tomorrow, you are landing at 450 and then how are how are you getting from the airport to your hotel? Yes, we are my husband and I have cited. We are Ubering and lifting the whole trip. We did not run a car. We have decided that that is a luxury we would like and knowing that, you know, we'll still have to go to the TTC and stuff like that. But that way we're not dealing with parking and driving and all that. So yes. OK. And then are the other the other members? I know it's going to be hard to know. Yeah, so yeah, so they make it which part they are saying to give kids the world. Yeah, they're saying to give kids the world. They have a rental car. My mom will have a rental car that she is using. So I imagine at times we will ride with them in their rental car. But my husband and I are getting a lift from the airport to the hotel and we are meeting an Instacart at the hotel. So that is our task while other people are getting rental cars. We are meeting the Instacart at the hotel. OK, you're doing Instacart for some basic groceries. Yes, exactly. Does this hotel, because you said it's kind of between Airbnb and hotel, does it have a kitchen? This one does not. So some of them that they have do, but this one is just, you know, mini fridge, microwave. I think maybe a toaster, but it's not like a full kitchenette. Well, a microwave and toaster would be things that most Disney world rooms don't have. So that gives you some options. Exactly. Yeah. OK. And then you're after you get to your hotel, you get your Instacart delivery. What are the plans on? Yes. So this night. My husband did not grow up in a Disney family. He has become a Disney person over the last 14 years. And he never expresses a desire to do anything like he's he's game to do everything. But he and then out of the blue, like two months ago, he's like, I really want to go to trader Sam's. So we are going. We have a dinner reservation at 755 at the Kona Cafe. So our plan is to go over the Polynesian kind of get in the trader Sam's queue. Go get dinner and hope we can get into trader Sam's that night. OK, dinner at Kona. And that's just the four of us doing that while other people are getting into their settle then and the get kids the world orientation and all that's happening that night. So dinner at Kona and then back to the hotel for for rest because we will have gotten up very early. Yes, a whole day of flying. OK, so then the next day would be Saturday, December 14. What is your plan? We are at Magic Kingdom. OK, yes, we're at Magic Kingdom. My niece has a bippity, bopity boutique first thing in the morning. And we are doing something that most people do not, which is we always rope drop the railroad. It has been our tradition. We've only been to Disney World once before. We are Disney Landers being on this coast. But our family, since I was like two, we get to the park. We ride the railroad first and then we go from there. So we did a lightning lane multi-pass for this trip because we're seeing off property. We can only book three days in advance at 7 a.m., which is 4 a.m. our time. So I booked our lightning lanes yesterday for this day. We have a haunted mansion at 830, a big thunder at 1025. And then some stuff later in the day. Obviously, we're going to try to futz around the stuff as we go. My stepdad is also a disabled veteran. So he has a dash pass that can accommodate him for the things that he wants to ride. And then the make a wish thing is she can have up to four additional people. And it's basically like unlimited lightning lanes for a ride she wants to go on. So the way my husband and I are cleaning this trip is making sure that we can do the things we want to do. And then just being along for the ride with whatever else she wants to do. So if she says I want to ride the Snow White ride 10 times in a row and mom and dad are tired of it and she wants Aunt and uncle to come, we're going to hop on. Otherwise, we might just hang out and look at some characters. We might wander around. But we've got the lightning lane so that we can make sure that if there's something we really want to do, we're not imposing on anybody else to try to convince people to do things. Yeah. So when you said your flight times, I knew you must be coming from pretty far away and you're on the West Coast. Yeah. Where are you coming from? We're coming from Oregon Portland. Okay. So that is a long ways and explains why you're more Disneyland people. So when it came time to buy lightning lanes, are you doing that for the four of you or is it? I am doing it just for my husband and I because my stepdad has the dash and he has some back and neck issues and things like that. So he's not really 100% sure what he's going to want to ride or how much he's going to want to do. So we're doing the lightning lane, just the two of us knowing that there's going to be times that we're just going to want to go do our own thing a little bit. Okay. And we can talk more as we get through it, but did you decide to get lightning lanes for all the parks or just certain ones? Well, so we have only been able, because it's for the three days in advance, I've actually only been able to book our first two days. So my plan right now is to book for all of them, but some of them we can't even book till we're already there because of the three days. So I think I'm going to, we might pivot on that towards the end of the trip once we see, you know, what the park busyness is looking like, how we're feeling, how all of these different, you know, between the make a wish and the dash pass and all of those things, but, but our plan right now, we have budgeted for doing all the days of the trip, just so we're, we've got it under, under control. Yeah. I didn't even consider that you would be making them during your trip. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Three days before thing. I'm thrilled about it. Cause I do think about four a.m. today. Garps for such a Saturday. So I'm like, this is great. Seven a.m. It's going to seem like a breeze. Yes. I'm going to turn it to your time zone. Okay. So on this Saturday where you're at Magic Kingdom and you're dropping the rope, by the way, we did a VIP tour at Disneyland and the first thing we did was go on the railroad and they said we've never had anyone say this. And I think it had just reopened and we just really wanted to go on it. It's so good. And so I was like, well, we're not making the use of VIP to archive very much, but here we go. Okay. So you got your lightning lanes, you're up dropping the railroad. Other plans. Yes. Priorities for this day is I really want to go to Pico's Bell and try the corn moose. And we're going to do, we have a five p.m. dinner at the jungle, the Skipper canteen. And we're going to try to stay for fireworks. That's what we are hoping to do that day. Okay. Probably we'll need a break at some point in time, but we'll see. We'll see. I think we'll have a little bit of Disney magic energy the first day usually. So. Okay. Sunday, December 15th. Yeah. So Sunday is just my husband and I, everyone else is going to universal this day. We decided that universal was not something we wanted to do on this trip. So it is just the two of us and we are doing Hollywood studios because we have not done any of the Star Wars stuff at either park. We have not been to Disney since COVID because of other trips that have come up. So we are very excited. So that's kind of our priority. I did get this morning. I got 10 AM Millennium Falcon and then we've obviously done Star Tours before, but we got a Star Tours. We have lunch at the sci-fi dining and theater, which we've never done before Tower of Terror. And then I did do the single pass for Rise and we have that in the earliest we could get that was five 30 p.m. So I am going to keep an eye on that and see if we can move it up earlier in the day. And then we have a nine p.m. reservation at Oka's Cantina, because I've heard so many people on the show talk about how it is really fun to get out of that later in the evening. And I thought that would be fun. It is. It is fun. So as an offsite guest, making all these reservations, like both dining and lightning lane. Yeah. Availability. How'd that look for you? I was able to get dining everything I wanted, not always at the times I wanted, but I was able to anything that was like, oh, we really want to do this. I was able to do with the exception of, and we'll talk about this on the next day, but space 220 lounge, we have still been trying to get lightning lanes. I have found both days that it was hard to get things early in the day, which obviously if we're trying to like get the most value out of it is a little concerning. I was able though, like when I booked yesterday for Saturday, my stuff was later in the day and I just kind of kept an eye on it, was able to move it forward. So I'm hopeful that I can move some things earlier up, but stuff was available. I couldn't get Tron. I couldn't get Tron even with a single pass or with a single pass, but I'm hopeful. But things are definitely later in the day than I was hoping they would be. I think that is very tricky. And I don't love that because I expected them to drop more for offsite guests. Yeah. I mean, hold a certain amount back, but it seems like you are destined for those later times. Yeah. And I will say the December, this Saturday, our Magic Kingdom Day, there are no more park reservations available for that day. And I should say we are on like veterans passes, so we had to do park reservations. And one of the people in our group did not get their park reservations and we were very concerned, but we ended up finding one, you know, they just kept refreshing. But that, so that might have also played into like some of the issues for, for those just because it's going to be a busy day of Magic Kingdom. So. Yeah. And it is, it is that busy season. Sure is. Okay. All right. So Monday, December 16th. Yes. Monday, December 16th is the day we are, is the only day, or the, the day that everyone is here after this day, people start going home from some of the other groups. So we are celebrating my niece's birthday this day, her birthday is actually on the 17th. So this is Epcot Day. That's my birthday. It's a good one. Yeah. It is a Epcot day because she is princess obsessed and wants to do all the princesses. We are going, as I mentioned, trying to get a space 220 lounge. That's the, my, I just keep refreshing. We're very excited about holiday food booths. I'm going to try to get fast passes for Remy. I'm going to try to get a guardian single pass, because obviously that is the thing to do. And I imagine we're going to go on frozen about 50 times. So that's, that's the day, this day. And we are going to leave the park early that day. Make a wishes planning something for her birthday dinner for all of us. So I don't know if that is going to be back and give kids the world. There was some talk about medieval times possibly. I do not know. I'm letting go and letting God with those dinner plans, like this, well, this blackout the evening. Yeah. I will be where I need to be. That is all I know. So that is that day. So we're, we're going to do some food booths because the food sounds really fun for the holidays and, and ride some rides, but it's, it's princess day that day. Did they time it to go with her birthday? Yes, they did. Yeah. Yeah. That's fun. That's not how I spent my birthday. So no. Yeah. Yeah. She, because she was, I mean, she's turning five. So she was born in December, 2018, COVID shut down and then she got leukemia. So she has never been on a plane. She has never been to Disney. So this is going to be a really special experience birthday at Disney. Yeah. Yeah. Big. Big time. Yes. Okay. So now we're on Tuesday, December 17. Yes. So Tuesday, just separate, separate teeth is another small group day. It is just my husband, my mom, my step dad and I. And my mom and I are doing a four-park challenge on this day. So our four-park challenge where it's ride a ride, eat something or drink something in every park, see either a show or meet a character, photo with a park icon, and then we're going to try to ride all the forms of transportation. So we're going to start at ticket and transportation center and monorail to the Magic Kingdom. We're going to rope drop Peter Pan. Hopefully we will run into some dapper deans on Main Street. We're supposed to be out that morning and grab some food on our way out. Obviously we'll take a picture with the castle, take a bus to Hollywood Studios. Hopefully we will have been able to get a lightning lane for Tower of Terror. We're going to try to meet Edna Mode and mobile order a pop tart. Take the Skyliner to Epcot and this is where the men are meeting us because we have a beer garden reservation and it is a candlelight dining lunch. So we are going to do a beer garden for lunch. We're going to ride Space Ship Earth and take a photo and then we are going to drive in their rental car to Animal Kingdom and we're going to spend the rest of the day at Animal Kingdom until we come back for the candlelight processional that evening, which is Neil Patrick Harris, which would be really fun. We've never gotten to do that before at Disneyland. So it is exciting to get to do it there. So we're starting to get a dining package. Yes. Yes. That was another wake up at 4am and refresh and refresh and refresh and refresh and but we got it. We got it. We used to be early December, like it used to be a routine that every December. So if people wanted to plan their trips around, they'd be like, yeah, December, you know, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, they'll be there, but this is a little later. So you had this trip planned before the narrators were. Yeah. So I think we were going to try to go whoever it was, but when we found it, it was going to be him and not somebody that we were less excited about. We were like, okay, we got it. We have to make this happen. So it worked out really well, but this is another day where the rest of the group is going to be over doing their second and final universal day. And so we were like, this is perfect because we're not, you know, taking a huge chunk of the day where we can't meet up with people to do these other things. But Animal Kingdom is kind of how we're spending the afternoon. So it's funny because we're doing the pro park challenge, but we're like doing all these other parks before lunch and then just, it's kind of our Animal Kingdom day. Animal Kingdom was our favorite park when we were here last time. So making sure that we've got time to like enjoy the ambiance and things like that, going to try to go to two things Disney and that people are always going to love is the World Showcase. And I don't, you know, yeah, it's, it's so good. And when we came last time, it was when I graduated from college. So my husband and I were also very poor, very broke college kids. And so getting able to go and actually be able to like buy snacks and not pack peanut butter and jelly to eat the whole time is going to be really fun. But yeah, so we're, we're, we're going to do everyone in the group's going to do lightning lanes this day. So we're hoping, you know, that we can hit, hit the big ones and since we're going to be there later in the day that we'll have good luck, you know, getting, getting those multi passes, obviously we have to get it on a train still on this day to hit our four part challenge. So we are going to go out to Rafiki, Rafiki's watch on the train. We want to do festival of the Lion King. And then we have the five 30 dinner at Yakin Yeti. And I'm hoping that we are actually hungry for dinner. This was another priority on the trip for us because on that trip 10 years ago, this was our like big fancy dinner because we were college kids. So this was like a big deal. So we kind of went, when did you say you're Yakin Yeti reservation is at five 30. So before you go back, can't let before we go back, before you go back and animal kingdom closes at six this day. So that was the latest we could get. So I think even if we're not, you know, because we're, we will have been doing done beer garden at 12 30. So I'm, I think we'll probably be hungry, but if even if we just get some snacks and drinks, we'll be good. And then when we're done at Yakin Yeti, animal kingdom will be closed and we will go back over to have caught for the evening. Okay. And then we have our candlelight processional eight 15 and then bed. Bed. Yes. Okay. And then you have Wednesday. Disarray. Yes. And this is our last park day and this is the big group, a little smaller because some people love what gone home, but the, the, the bulk of the group. We are tentative plan. So again, with this being, I make a wish trip for my niece. This day, we have some, some flexibility in the morning. We think we're going to want to go back to magic kingdom this morning. But if she is gone, how to do something different, then we're going to do something different. But we're going to magic kingdom in the morning, writing whatever she wants to ride running around. So we have a breakfast booked for my, the four in our core, little group at stake house 71. So I think we would do that and then take them on a rail over. But that is probably, you know, that's something that it's maybe going to get canceled. Who knows? The only hard plans for this day is that we are going back over to Hollywood studios in the afternoon. My brother is doing a lightsaber at zombies, and the rest of us are babysitting and doing whatever a child wants to do at Hollywood studios. I did get another ogres for this day for the big group because no one else will have been with us on the day we're going. And I don't want them to miss out on that opportunity. Again, my get canceled might adjust. And then the big plan for this night is we have make a wish has set them up with fantastic preferred seating. So the rest of us are going to try to go to fantastic at that time. That's like 30 as well. So we will kind of just hit whatever we missed before and have a hopefully very relaxing day. Okay. And you said that's your last part day. So last part day, December 19th, you depart. Yeah. Yeah. We leave at seven p.m. Thursday, summer, 19th. So my husband and I are thinking we're going to go over to Fort Wilderness and do canoes because we're from Oregon where it's very cold right now. We feel like the weather will feel good for us and we enjoy doing stuff like that. So we thought it would be fun. We have a whispering canyon cafe at Wilderness Lodge at 115. It's also very possible that we'll just head over to give kids the world and hang out with them for the day. That's kind of their resort day that they're going to, you know, play in the pool and do stuff like that. So we're pretty flexible, but tentative plan is canoes, lunch, go over to give kids the world and then we don't leave until later in the evening. Okay. Got it. Okay. Is there anybody a trip that we have not talked about? No, I don't think so. I think we're, we're, we're really excited. It's going to be a good trip and I think, you know, my, my, my, my thought process is like book things and cancel them if we need to, but I'd rather have the option. And pivot because of group plans changing than not have the option. So. Yes. Exactly. All right. Well, this sounds good. A lot of different elements going on. Yeah. And so I'm excited to hear how they all work out in reality and I'll talk to you when you get back. Yeah. Thanks. Well, come back from your trip candy. Thank you. We are talking, we're talking the day after Christmas. So that means that you have been back about a week. Yes. How did your ship go? It was amazing. It was wonderful. That's great. Okay. I'm excited to talk to you about it because you got a lot of different elements. Let's start at the very beginning. You know, a very good, a very good place to start Friday the 13th. You, we're going to land in early evening and Uber to your hotel. How did that go? Yeah. So we discovered when we tried to place our Instacart order to our hotel, that Publix is going to charge us like a $50 delivery fee for some reason. So we decided to do a grocery pickup instead. So little bit more flight got in on time, but we just rode in the rental car to Publix and a grocery pickup. Listen, I know this isn't a two way thing with the listeners being able to communicate easily, but if anybody know why this happens, that's unfortunate. I have no idea. And we did other Instacart orders during the trip for like random stuff that we forgot and did not have that problem. So I do not know. Maybe it was just a weird fluke, but we, we were like, we're not going to pay that much money for having it. They said, they said Friday the 13th, we charge an extra 15. Yeah. Something like that. So there was, it was about an hour drive from MCO to the resorts, which was not great, but we, we did that. So we got a grocery pickup, got checked into our rooms. Rooms were great. So we stayed at the Sonder, like I said, in the pre-show or in the pre-trip and rooms were really big, really basic, you know, like motel style rooms, but they were clean. They were updated. I think our only complaint, and I would say if you were traveling with like family, like a bigger group of people, is that there wasn't a lot of storage. So there wasn't a lot of like, there were no drawers in the room. There was like a couple of pangers. I'm an unpacker. So that was a bummer for me, but it wasn't the end of the world though. I'm still hung up on the one hour because it is right by the zero. So that seems like, yeah, no, there was a lot of traffic. There's a lot of traffic. It was quite a bummer. So, so it makes me wonder if the Instacart was like a rush fee, like Uber chart or not run, not rush. Well, we tried to place the Instacart order before we got on the plane in the morning, like we tried to place it at the airport. So I don't know, but but regardless, we we figured it out. I mean, we did the grocery pick up. So it took us a lot longer to get to the hotel than we thought. So we thought we were going to get to the hotel and have a little time to like unpack and rest before we went to dinner. And we had about a half hour before it was time to go to Polly for dinner. Okay. Okay. Polly for dinner. It does that mean that you missed your Trader Sam's window as well? We did not. We actually got really lucky. We went to Polly. We immediately went to Trader Sam's and got on the list and they were told us it was going to be an hour and a half wait. So it was perfect because it was like five minutes before our dinner reservation. So we checked and Trader Sam's got on the list, went up to code and cafe for dinner. Can you tell us what time it was? I can tell you what time it was. And you're going to look at your time stamps because and what you're doing. The reason I'm asking is because there is a strategy to getting to Trader Sam. So I'm just curious at what time did you get on the list for the hour and a half wait, which actually is great timing for dinner. Yeah. So we got on. We had an eight p.m. dinner reservation. So we probably got on the list about seven fifty. Okay. So I would, I thought you were going to say, well, I guess you landed a couple hours before this. So it makes sense. But I thought it was going to be a little earlier time. No, we were very lucky because I was worried. I was worried just based on everything I had heard. And I think oftentimes it's a lot longer of a waiter harder to get on, but we, they said an hour and a half and I said, great. You said great. And then you headed to Kona headed to Kona cafe had dinner. It was fantastic. Had the, the fancy bread, had a, had a cocktail. I, we ordered just like a variety of things for the table and my stepdad's Japanese. So he has definitely some strong opinions about Asian food. So he, we kind of let him steer us, but it was great, is great dinner. And then we went back down to trader Sam's. Did you go to trader Sam's like, did they call you, they texted us and they said your table is ready. Oh, and I'm sorry. And I actually need to read my notes when I'm talking to you in between dinner. We got done eating and we had a little bit of time before they called us and we walked down to the beach and the fireworks were getting ready to start at magic kingdom. So we got to watch those go for a few minutes before we got the trader Sam's text. So that was fun with the, the music piped in and all of that. And the new Polynesian tower opened the week we were there. So we kind of got to walk past that and it's almost ready to open form as well when we were doing that, which was fun. Mm hmm. Just before the resort got, gets a beer. Yeah. Okay. And now we're trader Sam's. It was everything we hoped it would be. We got, you know, because we were on the list, we got seated inside at like a low table with little couches around it. My husband got his tiki mug. He got one of the classic ones. And then we found out that because it was Friday the 13th, they had a limited release run of the madam lioda mugs they had had at Halloween time. They had five left when we arrived. And so I spent way too much money on a madam lioda mug. You got it. I mean, can you believe? And it was excellent. We got to like experience all the different drinks and the chance for folks who have not been there, you know, as people order different cocktails, like special effects happened in the room, very tiki room style. It was really great. It was a lot of fun. And so we hung out there for about an hour, had a couple of drinks, enjoyed the ambiance. And then when you order a drink that comes at the souvenir mug, they, you get to drink from it. And then they give you a brand new clean one that's wrapped up in a box with bubble wrap. So if people are concerned about that, you don't have to carry like a sticky cocktail glass around. And because the madam lioda one was like limited edition, they, they were not going to be able to replace it. If anything happens to it, she actually gave it to me and said you should go outside in the hallway in like the light where you can see it right now. Make sure there's no chips because if you see something right now, I still got enough that I can swap one out, but I might not in an hour. So that was really great. That's a great tip for anything that is super limited like that. Yeah. Yeah. So it was really great. And we loved it. And then we all went back to the hotel and it was about, I want to say about 10 30 and started winding down for bed and fortunately, because we've been traveling all day, we were tired, even though we were three hours behind. Yeah. Just tiring, just tiring. Yeah. Okay. So the next day was Saturday December 14th and you were going to rope drop the railroad at Magic Kingdom. That was the plan. We did get to Magic Kingdom. The park opened at eight. We got there at eight 30, but the train does not open that Magic Kingdom when park opens. It did not open until nine or 10 is what the cast member told us. So we did not rope drop the train. So we walked back to Haunted Mansion. We did Haunted Mansion first because we had a lightning lane for it. And we knew that some of the other rides we were going to do with mayonnaise and didn't want, you know, didn't, we're not sure how she would feel about the Haunted Mansion as a five year old spoiler alert. They also did not make it for a rope drop because traveling with a five year old on her first ever vacation, they overestimated their ability to go in the morning. So we actually had a couple hours at the park in the morning before they joined us. So we did Haunted Mansion. We decided we need all the little food. We did a mobile pickup food at Sleepy Hollow. We got waffles there and some nice coffee. And then right, it was about 10 30 when my niece arrived and right away, she wanted to meet Mickey Mouse and walked out of Mickey Mouse and her favorite, well, her favorite princess changes every day, but her favorite princess of the day, that day was Princess Aurora and Aurora was just at when you walked out of meeting Mickey. She was just there. So it was kind of perfect. It was like if she'd gotten to do nothing else for the whole trip, she would have been content. So that was really special. Good way to start for her then. Good way to start. Yeah. This next part was, you know, in the like big sister mode, you know, walking down Main Street with like her on my brother's shoulders, you know, the way my dad, you know, is very, very sweet and very special to do. But the ride she wanted to ride the most was the mind train. She had seen videos of it online. She was in. So we went to the mind train and she got to, you know, with the make a wish pass, you get to go in the lightning lane lines. And it is for her and three additional people because that's how many people they had on their little make a wish trip, but she can go on them as many times as she wants. And it's actually, it's for four people total. So the thing about the make a wish is it's for the child, but it's also for the whole family. So if her ride that she was too small to go on or things like that, like mom and dad could still use the pass and do those rides. That was good. So we did mind train twice then a little mermaid because it was right there and she didn't even know about it. And that was very exciting. But that is also when we realized that we had a daredevil on us because she liked the little mermaid ride, but she's like, can we go on mind train again? And we're like, we can do it again, but there's also lots of those. So we trucked it over and did Tiana. And this was really great because this was kind of, you know, it really is at the cast members discretion about how they want to handle the make a wish stuff. But because we had my mom and stepped out on the desk pass, my husband and I had did lightning lanes and I think we also did a virtual queue for Tiana this day. And then the make a wish between all of that, we kind of covered like nine people. So they were like, we'll just let all 10 of you go in, you know, like so we were able to do a little bit of that sort of stuff to try to, you know, obviously my needs wanted to write everything like five times. So it kind of worked out, but also sometimes cast members just like, uh, it comes out in the wash. They're like, you tried, you can write together. Yeah. And it was nice. Because then we got to do some things, everybody altogether. When we got off Tiana, it was time for her to go do her Bippity Bopity Boutique. And so we all went from there and went on pirates to just her and my brother and his partner, her mom and dad went and did that and the rest of us. And then did pirates and then we did lunch at Pico Spill. So good. So good. The new menu. I've heard about the old menu, not being great. New menu was great. We also got the sweet corn mousse. I wanted it. Corn on the cobs, like my favorite food. I was, I was in on the gimmick and I was right. It was delicious. So I highly recommend that that was about two o'clock. Then we went on jingle cruise and I should say none of the rides that we have gone on at any point in time. This whole trip, except for the railroad, we had to wait in a standby line for everything else. We either did lightning lanes, I used to stand by skipper that was great for us to kind of grab stuff. And then with make-o-ish and das, we just kind of got to walk, slowly walk from place to place, enjoy the ambiance of the park, not be so that was great. So right after lunch, we did jingle cruise, that is not an overlay we have in California and it was excellent. And then the vipanue vapadibu tik was over. So our princess appeared and she decided to be Princess Belle. So that was excellent, you know, everyone in the park. Oh, it's a princess. It's a princess. I mean, she's looking around and it's her and it was so cute. And then she decided she was brave and wanted to go on the Haunted Mansion. So we did the Haunted Mansion again for the ones of us that did it in the morning. That was very scary for her and we got stuck right before you're getting off. So when you're like still in the graveyard, but you can start to hear the hurry back. Not ideal for a scared child, but for me, fun because I love that ride. So- So she was good with Teana's and 7% of my train, not good with Haunted Mansion. These are all different kinds of scary. Yeah, different kinds of scary, absolutely. And then she wanted to go on a roller coaster again. So at this point in time, Mom and Dad also realized that they made an error by not getting a stroller at the start of the day. With Make-A-Wish, they cover a stroller for them for the day. They just didn't think she would need one. She also had not eaten and was starting to be a little cranky. So it was, well, she ate breakfast before they came, but had not eaten during the day. So they got her a snack. I went and got her a stroller, which you have to go all the way back to the front of the park again. And then I came back and then we went on Big Thunder, which she wanted to go on again because she is a daredevil and wants to be on those roller coasters. At this point in time, my husband, she decided she wanted to go back to mind train and my husband and I had a lightning lane for Space Mountain. So we, at this point in time, our feet were sharing to get tired. We told everyone, we'll meet up with them over at Tron in Tomorrowland a little later. And we took the train from right by Big Thunder to the Tomorrowland fantasy land stop. And that is the longest line we waited in the entire trip. And it was about 30 minutes. That's not bad for the whole trip. Yeah, not bad at all. But bad for the train. So we went on Space Mountain, always, always great. And then got a snack and wandered around Tomorrowland for a little bit until my brother and them all met up with us. And we did Tron. Tron was a lot of fun. I want to start with saying that I will say I definitely recommend people try the I was not comfortable in the sample seat, but fit. My husband is six foot four and he was hit the way his body portion, he was too long. So his feet did not fit in like the little stir up, like it hung off in a way that was not safe. But fortunately, and everyone, I assume a lot of listeners to the podcast know this, but they do have a traditional like ride vehicle that is still like cool and fun. It's at the back of some of the cars. And so we just went up when it was time for us to board. We just told the cast member, Hey, can we get the, you know, regular ride vehicle? And they said, Oh, yep. And then they just had to stand to the side until the next vehicle came. And we got on it. So, so it wasn't much of a delay for you to get that. No, it was like one ride cycle. Okay. Yeah. So I think they said they had like four. So it was like every, every other, you know, train of light cycles or something like that, at least the day we were there. So, and it was still a really fun ride, even with that, but just just a note, because you know, when you're boarding rides really fast, I think if we hadn't already known that we did not fit, it would have been stressful, at least for me, the way I am to like be like the person holding it up, you know, so for what that's worth. Got it. At this point, I have a question because I'm assuming based on your schedule that you've been talking about, that it's late evening at this point. Did you change the lubricant team plans? Sure did. Yeah. So we, because we did not eat lunch until about two, we, and that's great because I didn't even put a no, I just put my, my order here. We pushed our skipper canteen reservation back. So it was, see. And did you decide to push it back at lunch, knowing that you were not going to be quite hungry at five o'clock? Yes. I rescheduled it at two in the afternoon. Okay. Yeah. And that's good that you were able to do that. Yeah. Yeah. It was definitely a situation where I was like, I really want to eat there, but I know we're not going to be hungry for dinner at five. So I was going to just cancel it. And I tried to see if we can modify it first and we were able to, which was great. And at that point in time, other people had already figured out their plans for the day. So originally when I made the skipper canteen reservation, I had made it, I think for like six people thinking other people would want to join us. And by this point, by lunchtime, everyone was like, Oh, I think we're going to go try to like camp out for the fireworks, which was not a priority for my husband and I. So it was also just the two of us trying to get into skipper canteen, which made it a lot easier. I think to get that. Yeah, okay. So got off a tron. It was dark by this point in time, which was great because we got to ride it at night, which is fun. We had a lightning lane for small world. So we walked back through fantasy land, did small world, did the tiki room, and then had our dinner reservation at skipper canteen. So which was excellent. The cast members, they were really fun and I had the hanger stick, which was excellent and it has been had the, what does it taste like chicken because it is, which was great. You know, good food, all that. And then we were ready to start heading out of the park. And I don't know what was going on this trip when we get to our next day that we're at Magic Kingdom. You will see a similar thing, the monorail to TTC was down. And so obviously it was like an unhinged line of people trying to get on that monorail. It was not going anywhere, but we were able, we saw the monorail to the resort. So we just zipped right on to the monorail over to the contemporary, saw the gingerbread house there and then called an Uber from there to our hotel. And it was about a 20 minute wait for an Uber, which wasn't terrible. So I wanted to talk about this because you're staying off site and using red share and yes, Magic Kingdom is the hardest of all. How did you find that combo of off site plus ride share? I think it was fine. I will say I was surprised, you know, I travel a lot and use Lyft and Uber a lot, which I know is not always true of folks that are traveling to these places. I was surprised. There were a couple of nights where it took like 10 or 15 minutes to get matched with a driver, so I would open up Lyft and Uber and try to find a driver and see just who came first. I didn't find the prices to be too crazy. I mean, I think we averaged for just like a regular, like the four person car when it was just my husband and I, you know, it was like $12 to $15 and when it was the Uber XL for like six people, it was like 20 bucks or so was kind of the prices we were looking at, which is pretty reasonable considering that parking is 30 bucks a day. Anyways, if you're off site, an off site guest, but it definitely the wait times in the evenings were more than I was expecting. Okay. Good. I mean, good idea to do what you did when leaving Magic Kingdom because some spots are easier to get picked up than others. Yeah. Yeah. And it was mostly just that we are feet hurt, so we didn't want to like stand. We were like, we cannot just stand on the monorail platform. I would rather sit and wait at the contemporary. I thought you were going to say that you took the resort monorail to the TTC since the express one was busy. Yeah. We didn't, mostly because we also wanted to like walk into the contemporary, we're like a little bit of history nerds and, you know, all the crazy historical things that have happened there. We were like, it'll be fun to walk through for a minute. So, so we, we liked that and it's got to see the big gingerbread house. And then what went back to our hotel and went to bed with very tired feet. And. Okay. So you said the next day, everybody else is going to universal you and your husband are going to Hollywood Studios. Yes. So that is what we did. I had booked, so we got up that morning and booked our lightning lanes for our last park day on Wednesday because remember we, because we were offsite, we can only book three days in advance. So I booked our, I look up at seven still about our lightning lanes, and then we kind of stayed in bed for a little, but our first ride was Star Tours at 10 30 AM. So I think we got to the park right around 10 is when we, we tapped in. I will also say that we, and I forgot to mention this for, for Saturday, but we, because we were staying offsite and did not have a car, we brought a backpack with us every day that we stuffed in a locker, which has kind of been our Disneyland strategy for years. So I had like our rain jackets and extra pair of shoes, stuff like that. We ended up not using that as much of this trip as we did in the past, but I still feel good, you know, for the $10 a day to rent a locker to know that if we needed it, it was there. You know, it's funny. I feel like lockers are Disneyland culture more than Disney World culture. And I'm not sure why because Florida is like hotter, usually rainier, like it makes sense to have those weird things on hand. I have never ruined a locker at Disney World before. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. And I, I wonder for some people, if it's, you know, they're staying on property. So it's just easier to go back to your room, but I don't even know if that's true. But I think for us also, because we, and I know you also don't often travel with like young children, but you know, I know a lot of people are like, Oh, I just put stuff in my stroller. And I'm like, well, I don't have a stroller. I have a backpack and I don't want to carry it all day because I am Lazy's and I hate having to stuff it in the little pockets on the ride. So I think I should use it where I'm getting kind of tired of carrying a heavy bag with all the stuff in it. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, it works well for us. So we put our stuff in our locker right at the entrance of the park, went over and did Star Tours right before we got on to Star Tours. I did a mobile order pickup for Ronto Roasters and Kava Cuddle, which are right next to each other over in Galaxy's Edge. And so we had put out breakfast. So we did Star Tours, went and grabbed our mobile pickup, had a little food, had a little drink. I will say we did not try this, but the Kava Cuddle has like a, it's like a cold brew that has cocoa puffs on it. So we did that, but there's also a bluesy option. We did not opt to do that at 10 in the morning, but I imagine it would be very yummy. I will also say that at whatever time we were getting that, which I think was like right at 11 is when Ronto Roasters switches from breakfast to lunch. So we had put it in for breakfast and it canceled and I was like, oh no, what has happened? But fortunately, I was able to just like put one in right after for lunch. So good to know. Yeah. The breakfast Ronto wraps or whatever are not available very long. Yeah. They have very limited hours there. Yeah. And they look really good. And do both of the meat and the vegetarian Ronto Roasters is to try them both. And they were both excellent. I would say that vegetarian one is a little spicy, it's got a little kick to it, which is if that's not your thing, I would not do it because it is kind of my thing. And it was almost a little bit much for me, but I'm sure people listening to this. So like you're a baby. It's wasn't that spicy, but it was spicy. But after that, we went and did Millennium Falcon and you had a lightning lane for that. We did this again later in the trip and I now know that the people who we rode on it with the first time have definitely ridden on it many times before because they were excellent pilots. I was a gunner and then my husband was an engineer. We did great. I don't remember our scores, but I felt very good about them, but those pilots have done this before. Wait, have you not ever ridden Millennium Falcon? No, we have never done any of the Star Wars stuff. Okay. Because I will say as someone who's been on the right a million times that I would let you be the pilot or the like, you've had it a million times, let somebody else have a chance. Yeah. But but it was fun. It was fun to not crash the whole time because we did this later in the trip and I was the pilot and I. Oh, okay. You had dreams. You had your day. Yeah. They all seem rough to me no matter who the pilot is. Yeah. Yeah. But it was great. It was a really fun ride. I really loved and I think this was my, you know, I think build the way they built the Star Wars stuff is obviously beautiful like they did an amazing job, but I also really love that they were really intentional in planning the rides because I love that when you land the Millennium Falcon, you're landing it in bat, you know, galaxy's edge and then you get off. I will also say I don't know if anyone is a Sims player and I know this is off topic, but the Sims had a bat to expansion pack and it is the exact same map as the land. So I knew where everything was and covariates around. You know what else we're going to know? You're going to know exactly the land at Disneyland next time you go because they are the same. Yeah. But it, my husband was like, how do you know where these things are? We've never been here before. And I was like, because my Sim has done these bounty hunting exercises. Okay. But do, okay, this is totally, we're going off topic, but does, does Sims have like expansion packs or whatever for all of Disney theme parks? No, no. It's just like your Sim can go on vacation to bat too. Oh, just bat too. Like they're actually going to bat too. Okay. Because it's kind of a genius way to learn your way around. Yeah. I know. It was great. So now I'm like, before my very first trip, which has been, you know, 20 years ago now, I was stressed about how to get places because I'm like, I can read a map, but it's flat. I want to see you in person exactly. How do I navigate to that first rope drop thing? Yeah. So I'm just saying if the, if the creators of the Sims are listening, you clearly have already done a Disney collaboration for the Star Wars stuff, please expand it. Please. That would be so fun. I love it. So after that, we did a bunch of bounty hunting and like wandering around. We just had a really fun time. Our next lightning lanes, and this is, we talked about this in the pre trip a little because I couldn't book till three days in advance. I was able to get everything I wanted, but a lot of things I couldn't get until a lot later in the day. So our next lightning lane that we had booked was not until like three 45 and afternoons. We had like three hours and we, because we had lightning lanes for stuff we wanted and like as soon as we tapped into Millennium Falcon, it booked me, run away, railway, you know, so it was, we had stuff lined up. I wasn't going to wait in a super long line. So like I said, we did bounty hunting. We kind of just enjoyed the holiday decor there, which was so fun. We went over to tune in lounge and grabbed a cocktail. We were hoping to hang out in there, but there were a lot of people waiting for their prime time lunch rolls or something, they were just kind of hanging out, which is great for them. But I wanted to sit there also and did good not, but that's okay. So we went out around the little pond. They've got that big dinosaur out there, had our drinks kind of just enjoyed being there. And then did a mobile order for Woody's lunch box for lunch. We did have previously scheduled a prime time reservation, but again, just because we got to the park, we had that lunch. We decided to not try to do, not sorry, not prime time, the sci-fi. We had a sci-fi reservation. So I actually rebooked that for later in the week when we were going to eat back a Hollywood studios and canceled the one for that day. So we did a mobile pickup at Woody's lunch box. Toy Story Land is so cute. We loved it. There is no place to sit in that entire land. And they need to figure it out. No place to sit and in warmer times of year, also really hard to escape the sun. It was a warm day for us, at least being from not a hot place. And there was no place to sit, there was no seating at the restaurant, there were a lot of stand-up tables, which seems to be a thing that they do at Disney World a lot. And I'm like, "Girl's got to get off her feet every once in a while." So that wasn't great. But the food was good. We did walk across from that alien's willing saucers was walk on. So we did that ride. And then it was time for our Tower of Terror lightning line. So we hoofed it over Tower of Terror. On the way, we got to meet Max, who was just walking around, which is fun. I hadn't met him before. And so we did Tower of Terror. We love Tower of Terror. And I'm wildly guardians the galaxy thing at the California Adventure is fun. We liked the original a lot. That's kind of our vibe. So it was fun to get to go on that. And then our favorite ride of the trip, hands down, Mickey's run away, we're all away. Your favorite ride of the trip. Yeah. But yeah. So you haven't been on that one to Disneyland either. Because I haven't been on that one to Disneyland. Okay. I got it. I haven't been on that one to Disneyland. I had no idea. We had been on the great movie ride. Enjoyed that. But obviously, you know, that's been a while. So we did not watch any content about this. It was not on our like high priority list of things to ride, but it just grabbed the lightning line for us. We were like, "Let's give it a whirl. Let's see what this is about." I don't want to spoil it for our people, but let me tell you what, the ride is great. From how you get into the ride vehicles, you know, going from the theater into the ride. Excellent. That ride has been open for almost six years. I am so impressed to be with some spoilers. And I even was a D23 member for a while, and they sent me a record with the song on it. So I know the song, but I had not, so, so good. It was great. It was really creative, really beautiful, loved to like everything was changing. It was also our first time, because remember, we haven't been on rides yet at this point in the trip. So it was also our first time where the ride vehicles like changed order and like track lists, the track lists ride systems. We had not experienced that before, but when you go over the waterfall, it was excellent. My my husband lost his mind. Like we thought it was so great. I will also say that we had to see a cast member do something really sweet, which I'm sure they do all the time, but we do not. Well, I know they do sweet things all the time, but there was a little boy who had like a balloon and they took it from him and said, you can have it when you get off the ride. And then it was like waiting and like balloon daycare at the end of the ride, which I thought was really sweet. I always wonder like you paid a million dollars for a balloon. Where what are you going to do with it? You go on a roller coaster, apparently that's what happened, but that ride was great. And that one's also exactly the same it does mean that I was for the queue. Yeah. And I think, you know, because we do not have children and we do not often travel with children because this is a marnieces first time. It just is not a ride that was like a priority for us because we were just like, oh, if I'm going to go to to town, I'm going to read Robert Roger Rabbit. That one is bananas. Yeah. But once it's truly bananas, but I think I think there's some of these things that I'm kind of passionate about because I don't want adults to miss out. And it spreads like that. And also the frozen sing along because it's like, well, I don't really care about frozen and like, yeah, it's still fun. Even if you're just adults. Yeah. It was. Yeah. And we love the dark ride. So like we were dark ride people, but it just hadn't been like a high priority for us. And now we will never miss it because it was the best. And now is your favorite. Yeah. Got off of Mickey's Runaway Railway while we were on that. We've been trying to get a slinky dog for days and see how my skipper grabbed us a slinky dog for like immediately after. So that was great. So we went and did slinky dog, went over back to Galaxy's Edge and road rise, which was great. I will say it had been down for part of the day, which I know is a theme. And I don't know if the lightning lane also always skips the transporter vehicle, but it did that night. So we did not get to ride on the transporter. It does not skip the transfer. Yeah. So yeah, so we, we went right into the room where like the stormtroopers are, which was still really cool. But I've been hearing about this lately. It makes me think the transporter vehicle has been a source of ride outages. So they thought, let's just skip it and get more people coming through. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I, again, like I knew about that just because my mom had been on the ride before, but we did not do any spoilers for this either because I had heard it was really cool and I wanted us to like experience it. And it was really fun. Um, no, that's cool. It wasn't a huge one where I would, but it was really fun. Can you, you can understand why some people compare them though. Yeah. Totally. Right. Right. It's like a Star Wars version of Mickey Mouse. Oh, yeah. Totally. Totally. But it was, it was a great ride. It was a lot of fun. And then we did, I will, I will also say I just love with the trackless vehicles. Like as a imaginary nerd, you know, you watched the show and you learned about, oh, they did the tower of tear and it like the elevator drives into elevator and you're like, oh, it's so cool to see how they've over time taken some of those features and put them in other attractions. And it's cool. I like it. Mm hmm. Got a fries and we had an Oga's reservation that we moved up a little bit in the evening because we are old now and determined that we did not want to stay in the park until night 30. So we did move up our Oga's reservation a little, but we still had some time to kill. So we did a little more bounty hunting. We did do a mobile pickup for a little drinky at docking day seven. And then it was time for our Oga's reservation. Oga's was really fun, we were at a standing table on this night with like a mother and daughter that were, you know, daughter was home for Christmas. It was a lot of fun. I did a fuzzy tantan and I did the, oh my gosh, what is it called? It is on the back of the menu and it's under rations, like so you think it is food, but it is a giant jello shot and it is very good and I, is it called, it's just kind of the name because people listening might want to know, I know the Rodeon ration is what it is called. Okay. And it is really fun. I love a jello shot, but it comes in like a petri dish, not in the normal jello shot cup, it's got boba in it and pop rocks on top and nerds. Yeah. They almost like caviar, there's so many little things, but it was really yummy and they did bring it with two spoons because they thought I was going to share it, but I didn't. I hate it when they, when they bring two spoons, two straws, where they call things shareable. I'm like, according to who, excuse me, you know, I'm not big a chair, but that is when I, I'm going to try to recreate at home, it feels re-creatable and it was really yummy and really fun. And then after that, we had done, you know, the things that were our priority for the day and we headed back to our hotel and we later in the evening ordered a pizza, but kind of use this night to try to rest and rejuvenate a little bit, getting ready for the big, the big Epcot day the next day. Yes. So no issues catching an Uber back now. You know, it was, it was very easy from Hollywood studios that night. Mm hmm. All right. Next day was Monday, December 16th and this is Epcot day with everybody there, everybody at Epcot. So Epcot is a little different than it was last time I was there, or maybe the last time I was there, I was younger and was not as observant. It felt like some of the cultural stuff that was at some of the different pavilions had gone away a little and is more gift-shopping and less. There's less of those little museum pieces. So that was kind of a bummer, but we still had a really great time. We walked right in, did the, they have the festival favorites booth really close near the front and because we were there for the holiday festival, the holidays, we got the Ruben pro-cats and ham sliders and they were excellent. Saw the big spaceship earth gingerbread house, which was excellent, very cool. And we happened to walk in, it does like a light show. So we got to see that and it just happened to be happening when we were there. But the first priority of the day is for my niece to meet Snow White because this was Princess Day and Snow White is a big favorite. So we hauled over to Germany and met Snow White. She, with the Make-A-Wish kids, this is, I think, a very cool thing that they do. I do not know if it's the same at Disneyland, but it does need a world because there's more established meet and greets for the characters. They have them either go, they don't have them go in like a lightning lane or anything if that's available. They literally just have them go to the exit of the attraction and then a cast member just gets them in. So she was able to be the first one to meet Snow White. She got to dance with Snow White and curtsy with Snow White and take lots of fun pictures and say hello. She likes face characters, does not like her. She was very concerned about the size of Chip and Dale because that is way too big for a Chipmunk to be. She's not wrong, she's not wrong, she's not wrong, she's not wrong, but so she thought that was very cool, met Snow White. We then went back to Norway, we did, my husband and I did pop over to Mexico and to try to find a little bit of a snack and because we were surprised that there was also no food in Norway at that point in the day. So there was lots of places to get drinks but not like snow breakfast. Not when we were thought that we could find so that maybe, maybe there was and we were not very good lookers, but we did go to the, there was a margarita stand in Mexico that also had tacos and empanadas in case city is and they were excellent. So we grabbed those, came back and were on I believe the third ride of the frozen ride, which was great. I think that's a really cute ride. We had been on maelstrom when we were there the last time, frozen ride was great and it's especially great with a five year old who knows all the words to the songs and is screaming them at the top of her lungs. So highly recommend, if you could arrange that experience, highly recommend, but yeah, she went on that three times. So aunt and uncle were on the third run and then she went and met Ann and Elsa, which was very fun and we all, the whole family got to come in and be a part of that with her and you know, planning a family game night with Ann and Elsa so fun. They were excellent and then we went back to try to track down some other princesses. So we went to Morocco so she could meet Jasmine, went to France and found Belle. They did the rummy ride. We were not, we did not hop on that. She did not want to do that more than once and we were not able to get lighting lanes. We did not get to ride rummy on this trip. So that was a bummer, but we went to England to meet Winnie the Pooh and also met Alice and then at this point in time, my guardians pass was up. So we, my husband and my stepdad and my mom and I hauled back over to go to guardians and we got there and guardians was down. So we, this was also when I, where everyone had to leave the park early because we were going back to give kids the world for dinner and so my brother was also heading up to try to do guardians and I was like guardians is down. So they went and did living with a land, we rode mission space, which was great. Great ride. Ten of us. Is it? Are you being ironic? I am being, I am being a little sarcastic. My husband loved it. My stepdad got motion sick and he does not usually. I remembered it from the last time we were there and my husband did not. So I also think that that is part of why I was not as like entranced by it, but it's a fun ride and there, it was a walk on so, but fortunately by the time he got off mission space guardians was back up. So we were able to do guardians and again, this was one of those times where because I had a lightning lane, my mom had the dance pass and then the make a wish that we were able to get everyone in there, which was awesome. And then we left this park and headed over to give kids the world for dinner. Okay. A couple things before we hop over, did you attempt to get on the Space 220 lounge walk-up list? We did not attempt to do that just because frankly, I couldn't quite figure out where it was and we were running around with my niece. So we did not get on the walk-up list and we did not get a reservation either. You wrote Mission Space, so as you're staring at it, the entrance is just to the right. Like it's in the same space, but it's, now you know, if you're next to me, yeah. And then like you said, you were going to do holiday food boost, but I think you did the festival favorites is what you mentioned. We did the festival favorites and then that's pretty much all we did. The lines were just really long and since a lot of the people in our group were not interested in doing those, it was kind of like, if we wait in this 30-minute line to get us a bite of food, we will miss other experiences with the group. So we decided to kind of, kind of, we grabbed a couple things. We got, you know, I think the frozen tea and Morocco, but that was just from a regular place, but the food boosts were not really a thing that we were able to participate in very much just because of how crowded it was. And I can't remember if you mentioned this, but how did the Make It Wish Families get back and forth? So they have a rental car. So yeah, Make-A-Wish did a rental car for them for the week. Okay. So they were getting back to give kids the role in their rental car. You took... I wrote... I did. Did you go in there? My mom and stepdad had a rental car, so we rode with them in their rental car dining. Okay. So you were the only ones with that one? My... We... So out of the whole big group, only my mom and my brother had rental cars. So there was a combo of us that were ride-sharing, hopping, and people's cars wouldn't have made sense. Okay. That night. We rode with them over. So in rental cars, you walk up to give kids the world. Yes. Yes. And give kids the world. If I... I hope that nobody has a reason to go there, but they just take really good care of them. They stay in these little villas, so there's not like a hotel, at least for where they were. And it seemed like the majority of the housing there was their little, kind of like little mini duplexes that have, you know, a bedroom and a little kitchen and all of that, which I imagine, you know, especially for kids with medical sensitivities, being able to prep your own food if you need to, or keep meds chilled or things like that. It was really great. And then the food court there is different food every night, but they always have a kids-friendly kind of area like most buffets have at Disney. And if you are not staying at the resort, so if you're like a guest, like we were, it is $3 to get into the buffet for meals. The other fun things they do there is they do different holiday celebrations for all of the holidays and birthdays. So the night we were there, it was Halloween, I give kids the world. So we got to enjoy some trick-or-treating and some characters and some Monster Mash and all that good stuff. And then when we left the little dining area, there was a launch happening at Cape Canaveral and there was a staffer there, and we got to watch that with a bunch of families standing in the... It was really cool. It was really cool. It was really cool. And then I give kids the world. There is a... It's hard to describe, but it is like a big giant tree that you can go inside. And there is a room that is covered in stars. And so every child that stays like of kids the world or that gives them a wish trip, you know, that sick child, at some time during the week, they do a star ceremony where they get to come and they write their name on a star and it gets put up. And then by the end of the week, they get to come and know where their star is and they are there forever. So we got to go in and see that. And I think that's a really special thing. Sorry. Ooh! Try not to get out. My volunteer position when I went to give kids the world was to help people locate their stars. And that is a very emotional thing because in some cases, people didn't know if they would be back, but also it's often just a sweet memory. Yeah. It was really special to get to kind of see that and see where that is. And then we went to the ice cream parlor that they have there that is open all the time where the kids can just go and get ice cream, which was great. And then we went home and went to bed or went to back to our hotel and went to bed. So the dinner birthday, is it just, or birthday dinner? Is it just, was it for her or was it just generally for people having their birthday? So for her, it was just us. So we just got like a big, long table in the buffet and had her birthday dinner there. Her birthday was actually on Tuesday. So we celebrated them on Monday night because on Tuesday, some of the other parts of the group were flying back to Oregon. Okay. So is your group's decision to do the her birthday dinner there as like a group? I got it. I got it. Yeah. Okay. So that was the end of that. The next day was Tuesday to summer 17 and it was four park challenge day. Let me tell you, it was not for her challenge. Okay. Well, it was, that was the point. We just got back to our hotel leader that we had expected the night before and I think part of my life is remembering that this is a vacation and I shouldn't be exhausted and want to cut my feet off at the end of the day every day. So we decided to sleep at an extra hour and do a three-park day. So I think especially because I had had the whole day at Hollywood Studios on Sunday. It just was like, let's not kill ourselves because it, it like we wanted to do this. We thought it would be fun, but it doesn't feel like it will be fun right now. So yes, it's, it's your trip to what I could do. Yeah. Exactly. It's there to be fun. So did you start at Magic Kingdom? We did start at Magic Kingdom and the nice part of that is on our first day at Magic Kingdom, my brothers, my sister-in-law, my brother's girlfriend wanted, had really wanted to go do a silhouette of my niece because now her hair has come back in and it's curly and, and had forgotten to do it because it was just such a busy day. So we, we started at Magic Kingdom. I was the first person at the little silhouette booth when it opened and we got silhouettes of her and of our dogs, which we had planned in as we can, so we took pictures of our dogs. Where are they? Are they separate silhouettes or all one? Separate silhouettes. Separate silhouettes. So the two dogs are together and then the, my niece is separate. For folks who haven't done the silhouettes before, which I have always seen them, but had never actually done them, they're amazing. You know, they, they can do it from a picture or from a person sitting there and they are totally happy to do dogs. And the price you pay, which I think for pets was like $18 for kids or people was like $14. It comes with two copies. So that price is two copies of it, which is very cheap, especially for a Disney souvenir. And then it's an extra like $13 to get the little oval frames if you want to do that, which we did just because I think they're cute and hard to find. So all in for four silhouettes, it was a hundred bucks, which not a bad, not a bad for a Disney souvenir in my opinion. So we did that. And then my mom and I, cause this was still just my mom and I, this part of the day, we did the people mover, which was one of her favorite rises a kid when it was still in California. So we did people mover, we did the carousel progress, which, ooh doggy, that's a, that's quite a, quite a attraction, but you know, it was, we had, we hadn't seen it in a few years. So we thought, I get into trouble because I didn't talk about how much I don't like crazy stuff. Yeah. Yeah. And again, that's one where it had been in California when my mom was a kid. We saw it the last time we were at Disney World, but it's not, you know, it was more of like a nostalgia thing. And man, it really doesn't hold up. That's the thing. Where does the line from nostalgia into like, ooh, that didn't, ooh, got off a carousel of progress, went on the teacups because we had not done that the day before, stopped at the little Cheshire Cafe and got a coffee. And then it was time to head over to Epcot for our lunch reservation. So when we tried to leave Magic Kingdom, we thought it would be really easy to get on a monorail and go to Epcot, but the monorail was down. And there was no bus because why would there be a bus running to Epcot? Because there's a monorail and it was like, we happened to get there, I think, like right as the issue was happening. So like even the security guards that were over at the bus area were like, no, you just go get on the monorail, like, and we were like, the monorail is not working, but we had to get to this lunch reservation. So we called a minivan and this minivan was $48, which was, which is rough, but we had to get there. And my mom had said earlier in the trip that she really wanted to write a minivan at some point in time, just because they're so cute. So it did accomplish that goal, but it was very expensive. I will also pause here to say that I do not recommend anyone rent a car from budget rent a car because in the morning that men, my husband and my stepdad were dealing with a rental car issue because the night before we had discovered when we got pulled over that the budget had not paid for the tags for the car that they were driving and refused to exchange it or do anything with it. And I don't want to be a negative Nancy, but both the MCO budget where they rented it and the one right in Kissimmee, where they had said we could go trade it off, would not were not helpful. So they ended up spending about two hours trying to deal with a rental car situation. And at some point in time, just decided, okay, I guess we're just going to drive this a legal car around Orlando for the rest of the week because we do not have another option. But that was good to me. So bizarre. It feels like with a rental car company, it's like you have one job and then it's to provide cars that are drivable. Yeah. That are legal. Yeah. And like they had even paid extra for the like gas thing that's like a, you know, and the woman at the Kissimmee counter would not exchange the car, even though the budget customer service over the phone had said, just bring it in. And then there was like, maybe I can get you a car, but I can't guarantee that it will be the kind of car you asked for, which is what we needed to carry the scooter my step dad was using. So it was just a nightmare. So do not recommend the customer service was not great. It was kind of shocking from like a big national chain to have it be that bad. So that's my two cents on that. We all made it to Epcot and went to the beer garden restaurant for lunch and it was fun. We had never been there before with this was a candlelight dining package lunch. So that also included a beer. The beers were very large and I need people to know that because my mom and her husband do not drink beer, so they ordered beer and we ordered beer so that my husband and I could each have two beers double fist in it. Yeah, they were big giant beer mugs, like a liter of beer or half liter of beer. So that was surprising, but the food was great. The show that they do at dinner was rare at lunch was really great. It was good. It was great food, great, everything. We like German food. We like, we like a weird warm potato salad. It was good. And it's Christmas-y. It's Christmas-y. It's Christmas-y. And it accomplished the primary goal, which was getting us into the candlelight processional in the evening. For nail project here is? Yes. Yes. I will preview that to say that I was very stressed because we were all running late to this lunch reservation and my husband knew that I had woken up at 4 a.m. to get this reservation so we could go to this processional and he knew I was really stressed out and he was like all in game and I did not find out until we were walking into the candlelight processional that he did not have any idea what it was. He truly thought that I was that stressed out about seeing a parade because he heard the word processional and thought it was a parade and that I was freaking out about us getting reserved seating for a parade where Neil Patrick Harris was just going to go by on a float. That is what he thought. He was so stressed out about this man against like a gold, you know, just like he was all in for this thing that was important to me that he thought was very stupid and then he was there. He's like this is amazing. I've caught apparently to have a parade and so let's bring that back. Yeah, not for sure. But I would just I will just preview that he was like ride or die all in for this thing that he thought was very dumb because he did not know what it was and then was like oh I understand so we did our lunch. We stopped at the China Pavilion just walking through on our way back but headed back to the parking lot to drive over to animal kingdom for the afternoon. So animal kingdom we did fight of passage which was really cool. I hadn't that we'd never done it before thought it was really fun. We are not big avatar people but that whole land is just so beautiful like gorgeous. The ride was really fun. All the special effects were great. Got off that went on Navi River beautiful ride feel like it could use a little more plot but it was gorgeous. It's just pretty. It's pretty to look at don't know why it's there but it's sure pretty. I do feel like it is to start contrast to most rides which have a story and this one I just tell myself it's pretty. Yeah. Anyway I love a dark ride right I'm a Disneyland girly I've been on those 1950s dark rides my whole life and there was just I was like oh the story is pretty okay that's cool and there's an awesome animatronic there right really cool animatronic very cool to look at I do feel like if I had waited in the very long line and not had a lightning line I would have maybe not been very happy about that but there's a list of attractions I feel like or in that category and I'm going to put Peter Pan slide up there where you don't want to wait for hour and a half when it's such a short ride. I think that's one that I'm so nostalgic about but I would probably wait in it now but if I didn't know what it was yeah but Navi River not sure what you're up to there it's room to grow on that attraction as thought I'll say but it was really pretty we went from there kind of walked around over to Africa went on Kilimanjaro Safari which was a really good one and we got to see some giraffes running which was really cool there were also some little kids on it which is always makes it more fun and there was like a family behind us from Italy and so that was really fun because you know there were everything was everyone was just very excited which is always good that's the vibe you want on that attraction I feel at this point in time we had an Everest lightning lane because the park did close at six o'clock and it was probably four thirty or five by this point in time so we had an Everest lightning lane and Everest was down so we wandered a little bit and to tell you me remember from the pre trip animal kingdom is our favorite Everest was our favorite ride the last time we came like we were at like four times in a row at the end of the night there was no one so we were very excited right Everest it was down so we went over to Yakin Yeti they were able to get us in a little early we were not super hungry because of eating at beer garden at two noon but we did have you know we ordered a couple things to share had a couple drinks hoping that Everest would come back up it did not so Everest did not come back up and we then the park was closing we did get to see the illuminations on the tree of life as we were leaving which was fun and then we went back and got in the rental car and went back to Epcot or the candlelight processional which was at 815 so we I think it was you on on I was actually on the Facebook group that day and you had recommended people get there at least 45 minutes early mm-hmm we did that and the line was all the way back to Morocco mm-hmm fortunately it was right by the oasis dip and saber in Morocco was where we were in the line so we did get a sangria while we were waiting in line so we waited in the line for a while then got in our seats were still pretty good we were just out of the cover but in that like first row of the benches there it was great it was a beautiful show you know we we love Christmas it was nice you know Patrick Harris did a great job of course and again this was approximately the time when my husband realized what we were doing it was like when the parade start yeah it's like why are we what is going on why are where if there's a parade where are there all these people in the middle of the walkway I don't understand but it's got me thinking a lot about the word processional now sure does sure does they're wrong yep sure does so he but it was a great it was great he loved it we all loved it it was excellent I will say my so my stepdad you know he was using a scooter to get around he is also a cancer survivor but because we were literally coming into the park to go to the show and leave he did not bring this scooter in and was told by a cast member that there was no ADA seating and that it was all ADA seating and there was ADA seating so I'm not sure why they told him that but I also think you know I know there's some issues with DAS and things like that as that system changes I do think some money Disney needs to hear that like having people stand around for a long time is also inaccessible so you know so I if I had known that the line was going to be that backed up and it was also a little late when when it they started letting us into the theater I probably would have told them to bring a scooter but and it's what it is I guess I assumed that more of the waiting would happen in the theater because it's like they let us in we sat down in the show immediately started and I'm like it feels like you could have had us filtering in there a little earlier I would have expected that too yeah but the show was great fantastic beautiful finished up the show started to walk out of the park because the park was closing at nine and decided to sneak into the Mexico Pavilion and ride the Grand Fiesta Tour because also because knowing that it's been a long time since our last trip to Disney World I feel like it is a high-risk ride for not being there so we wanted to make sure we got it in but we walked out right at nine and luminous was happening so that was really fun to see and not something we had planned on making time for but it was going on and we were like this is really cool and then we snuck out of the park and got in our car and went back to our hotel and that was the end of that day it was okay and you basically I have one more park day left if I am reading notes correctly and some people were leaving yes some people were leaving so on Tuesday all of the my sister-in-law's siblings all left on Tuesday so Wednesday was my parents my sister-in-law's parents my brother my sister-in-law me niece my husband and I so smaller group still a big group a smaller group they did not the my sister-in-law's parents did not do a parkhopper my brother-in-sister-in-law this day was kind of the they knew they were gonna do Hollywood Studios in the afternoon but did not really know what they were doing in the morning they thought maybe Magic Kingdom they had not planned to do animal kingdom at all and then my niece wanted to go to animal kingdom so fortunately my not fortunately but as you may recall the day before we did not get to write up such an Everest and that was a bummer I had this in my head I said I hope she gets to go yeah so my brother texted me and said we're gonna do animal kingdom tomorrow my husband and I changed her park reservation to animal kingdom and met so just the five of us my brother my sister-in-law my niece my husband and I hit animal kingdom again in the morning they got there a little bit before us and went over and hit the Navi and the flight of passage which my niece literally was on Navi and was like this is boring I want to write a read a register you didn't write it again I didn't you know I didn't I missed that one I did get on our way over to Asia I stopped to grab a little food while my husband was using the restroom and was sitting on a bench and got flocked by those big white birds what are those called oh shoot well they're big and they've got long pointy beaks and they wanted to eat my donut really bad so I got some great pictures of some big birds try to eat my food but I did not give it to them then we went on expedition Everest with my niece twice he's brave yeah she loved it and we loved it and it was really fun and then she wanted to do dinosaur she did not know what it was but she likes dinosaurs I was a little nervous about that one but we so we left Asia walked towards the dino land which also again will be as we all know leaving soon so that was good to have that experience but on our way to dinosaur she saw the triceratops bin and needed to go on that with uncle von my husband so had to do that and then while they were on it she was like can we do this again so they went on it again because he's a softy and we'll do whatever she says so they did triceratops bin twice and while it was happening Kevin came through and that was very cool because I had not seen Kevin before and I just think that's so fun did Kevin try to eat your food he did not try to eat my food but my niece got off the ride and was getting into her stroller and was not interested in that she Kevin saw her and wanted to give her attention and she said you can stay over there so said you're not a face character yeah she said absolutely not giant bird you worse anyway where the birds are trying to think of called egrets they are called I literally was looking at this like an hour ago I bet a white ibis a white ibis is the one okay there's a lot of birds there but yeah there are a lot of birds there and they're not the kind of birds that I have in my house so I was not used to them I feel like all the parks really have a lot of birds of them and that's something we don't talk about enough yeah we saw a lot of ducks but the the white ibis they there was like I swear there was six of them and they did not have any personal boundaries there used to be in bed yeah yeah obviously they were they were really into it so got off triceratops bin saw Kevin walked over to dinosaur what a ride we have the same taste and attraction thank you I feel validated also my niece was terrified absolutely terrified mm-hmm I'm with her on that yeah so there's different kinds of scary yeah didn't like that at all got off of that and let her run off some energy and the bone yard well the grownups did vacation gossip as we are want you want to do in a large group trip and then we started to head towards the front of the park to head back to Hollywood Studios along the way we ran into the Miriamenagerie and she was obsessed with that so we met some penguins they let her pet the penguins which was very cool and then as we are walking out of the park she says well I want to see the tree princess we're like what are you talking about so apparently some how cuz remember she was not going to go to animal kingdom so maybe another kid at give kids a world or something was talking about it she heard about divine oh but we are trying to leave this I okay wait wait I'm in love with her Connor tree princess tree princess um so cute um but it was also like we were trying to leave this park and you cannot always find divine so we're like I don't know if we all make this happen and then when we want to return the backpack or get our back walker backpack backpack from the locker divine was right but right there so it was perfect so she got to see the tree princess she was in love with the tree princess and then we actually crammed into their rental car which was very small with four adults and a child in a car seat and went over to Hollywood studios for the afternoon our first ride there was run away railway obviously because we were almost going to ride it again and we had done what I will say is if you are a park hopping standby skipper I think is a must because we even though we cancelled our lightning lanes that we had booked for that morning at Magic Kingdom so we could do animal kingdom stuff we were able to like stack everything for the afternoon as we were done at the other park so standby skipper just was grabbing us you know as soon as we got up Everest grabbed us run away railway it was grabbing stuff so we were not refreshing our phones which was really great so we did run away away as a big group this was another one of those times when because we had the lightning lane they had the past my mom and stepdad were here with us at this point in time all the grandparents had joined we were able to get everyone on the ride together which was really fun because we loved that ride so much and then my husband and I broke away and went and did our sci-fi reservation for lunch which was really good the food was really good we had burgers and a little cocktail and but it was just really fun again my husband hadn't went into it with no idea what was going on but he's a huge sci-fi nerd so it was just it was a good atmosphere for us so I love it so much of it was a surprise to him he is this thing he's down he's down for everything but planning no that's not his that's not his thing so but it was great got out of there and met up with everyone and did slinky dog and then we had an oga's reservation and at this point in time in the trip because so we had originally booked this over over this reservation for everyone we did like two separate reservations everyone could go at this point in time in the trip we had realized that sitting down at restaurants was not how my brother and my niece and my sister-in-law wanted to spend their time on this trip which is fine so we had actually dropped this down to just be for my husband and I and my mom and her and my stepdad so we all went over to oga's ad I had a different drink don't remember what it's called I will look it up it had dry ice in it and was fizzing other people but it wasn't but it wasn't the fuzzy tanta it wasn't the fuzzy tanta was the bee spin fizz oh yeah yeah yeah so it it's it fizzed up it was fun I will say when we made this reservation and I would encourage people to do this if you're traveling with people who maybe have mobility issues you can put that on the reservation and so we did have to wait for like a couple extra minutes but they did sit us at a table and there were other people there but they were fun but we were able to sit for this reservation which was nice because I don't think my stepdad would have had as good of a time if he had to stand but we had had a couple drinks my stepdad accidentally ordered the drink that came in the tiki mug which they do have there those are really fun tiki mugs because they look like a classic tiki mug but then you actually look at them and it's got ewoks and stuff on it but again they gave it to him in a fresh cup so he could take it home after that we had a lightning lane for millennium falcon and rise after that but rise was down my brother had his savey's workshop at this point in time and they ended up just coming over so my niece was with her other grandparents doing more Toy Storyland stuff so we hung out a little bit hoping rise would go back up because we had a lightning lane for rise it did not during that time and this was a jolly wood nights night at Hollywood Studios to the park we had to start leaving around seven so it was a bummer so everyone else went back to their hotels but as my husband and I were walking out he was like where does that go and it was the Skyliner which we had not discussed or experienced so we took the Skyliner to Caribbean Beach and then to Riviera and then just took a lift from from the from the Skyliner from the Riviera era back to our hotel and I will say I think I did we did determine that if we when we come back to Disney World we will be staying at a Skyliner resort that is I knew I knew that was going to happen which is part of why I got him on that Skyliner but I do think that will be that will be you know being being at Caribbean Beach in four minutes from when you walked out the gates of the park was a really nice feature that is nice but you did not stay for Fantasmic we did not stay for Fantasmic mostly because we were hoping rise would go back up and it did not so such as life but I am a Disneyland person and I'm kind of a Fantasmic snob anyways so if I were you I would be too yeah because the Disneyland version is superior yeah maybe not the seating maybe not the seating but there is a nostalgia for Disneyland people about sitting with your head between bars and your own square to watch Fantasmic too just as if as a person who is not as young as she used to be I do appreciate a chair I yeah I feel that too but yeah so it was a good night and that night we just started you know getting all of our stuff together or getting all packed up because Thursday was our last day in Florida so next day was Thursday December 19th and you would discuss possibly visiting Fort Willowness before your evening flight yeah we did discuss that we woke up that morning and found out that our flights which were supposed to leave at 7.50 we're pushed back to 10.50 also our feet hurt from five park days so we called nautical and my husband and I booked a resort pass to the Windham Bonnet Creek I don't know if folks know about resort pass we had not done it before but it has been aggressively advertised in social media so there's a lot of them where it's like $20 a person to like go to a fancy resort pool Bonnet Creek it was $90 for up to two people and it was a day room so we had a hotel room from like 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and we could use all the resort amenities and had a hotel room so we decided to do that so that way we could just take our luggage with us over there have a place to charge all of our stuff up all day have a place to shower when we got out of the pool that wasn't like a public shower so we did that we hung out in the lazy river swam in the pool did the hot tub met a retired FBI agent in the hot tub so that was fun you know kind of just laid around all day at this resort lounge in and then at four when we had to check out of the room we checked our bag at the resort at this point in time our flights had been pushed back to 11 30 so we decided to go kill some time at Disney Springs so we took a lift over to Disney Springs we went to Jacqueline Z's holiday bar which was fun and Indiana Jones is like my favorite movie so that was fun we had a little couple snacks the little mine car meatballs were really really good and had a couple drinks there tried to find a dinner reservation at Disney Springs and could not find dinner reservation at a reasonable time so we were like oh well just wander around for a little bit walked across to wine bar George they have that little pickup counter there and they have a frozen old fashioned which if you like an old fashioned I would really recommend because it is excellent so did a little shopping discovered that we could not find any like real food in the place we could sit down and eat that wasn't a tremendous weight so I did get on the my Disney experience up and found a reservation at wilderness lodge for dinner because we had had a lunch reservation there and we canceled it so we took a lift over to wilderness lodge and had dinner at the Whispering Canyon Cafe which was fun our wedding anniversary is on the toilet was on the 22nd so I just made that kind of our anniversary dinner in the app when I booked it because I knew they would embarrass my husband and we had a really good meal there and they did in fact embarrass my husband which was great but it's a really cute place the kids you know the catch up thing where you have to like bring the catch up to the next table with all the little kids running around it was it was great and wilderness lodge is just beautiful at Christmas just gorgeous so we walked out of dinner and there is a back patio in the back of the lodge that is like just like one little patio that has just two little rocking chairs on it and so we sat there for a while and that was very nice and relaxing and at this point in time our flight was delayed till 1250 but we it was starting to get late so around I think 930 we took our lift back to the Windham Bonnet Creek to grab our luggage that we had checked there and then took another lift to the airport mm-hmm got to the airport I want to say I fly Alaska Airlines whenever I can that's my airline of choice their staff were not great at this airport they were yelling at us for coming to check our bag so late they said we should have come when our flight was originally supposed to take off because why because there's no way to know if they would have had staff they're not usually open that late and we were like well I wasn't going to sit in this airport for five hours so it was not great TSA was also the line was not long but their staff were not great I fly a lot and it was very you know conflicting instructions in like a very grumpy attitude kind of way which is like there's a lot of people here who don't travel very often let's take a chill pill but got through all that everything in the airport was closed at this point in time there was like no place to get food or anything and again Alaska Airlines did not do any my brother had been there for a couple of hours because he you know we just hadn't communicated and he did not know that the flight was kept getting delayed and they had not offered them vouchers they had not done anything and all of the restaurants were closed so that was a bummer but our flight did in fact leave at 1250 thank goodness the flight crew was excellent a lot of people had apparently canceled their flights or rebooked them because the plane was like half empty so we got a road to ourselves which was nice and instead of landing in Portland at 1050 that night we landed in Portland at 450 in the morning but we made it unintentional red eye unintentional red eye but we made it home and you know that's life didn't ruin the trip but was not the best travel day but you know we did get to see you know we we weren't planning on going to Disney Springs and we weren't really planning on doing a lot of stuff that we got to do that day so that was fun and now you're home and now we're home now yes okay so some by the way happy anniversary thank you since that was now a few days ago some rapid fire questions about your trip how did you feel about traveling this time of year in terms of crowds and weather what there was pretty good I I would say if you're traveling plan for all weather with your attire because when we were leading up to the trip for like weeks in advance it was like 66 to 75 was the forecast and like two days before we left everything like jumped way up so most days it was in like the high 70s low 80s which was nice but you know I'm glad that I had seen that and kind of adjusted some of my little outfits that I had been planning because that's the kind of person that I am so you know we did not do the snow the bell Disney bound that involved a lot of fabric that did not happen so a little bit of planning a little bit of adjustment it did rain pretty bad on our Epcot day and we're Oregonians where we get a lot of rain Florida rains built different I would say so glad we had rain jackets but got pretty soaked so definitely was glad we brought like extra shoes and could swap things out so we weren't soaking wet crowds were not terrible I've been at Disneyland on Christmas day and this was definitely not that bad I don't think I would want to be there during actual Christmas week though because people were starting to get a little pushy people were starting to get a little cranky so yeah which which happens this time of year but you know that's not the Disney magic that I want so but it wasn't it wasn't too too bad and I would say the lightening lines and stuff like that also made a bit different because I I some of those lines were hours long that we just kind of skipped through so I'm staying at the Saunders serious hotel yeah I we loved it I mean it was so cheap and the rooms were clean comfortable again like if I can afford it I would stay on property in a place that was a little bit faster to get back to my room I would have probably taken more breaks during the middle of the day which is something that I'd like to do on trips but it was a great great property our room had like a couch had a bed you know big bathroom lot's space so again was this your first time staying offsite no no I have never stayed on site at it just oh you've never stayed on site okay yeah alright so you're kind of used to it yeah yeah how did you feel about staying offsite this time given the different dates for like dining and lighting lights yeah I again I think if if the I could make the cost make sense I would like to stay on property because those perks I think are significant now I also think that being a Disneyland person I just forget how big not necessarily the parks are but just like this space is right you know at Disneyland we can stay off property and still walk to the park walk back from the park and take a midday break you know and it's not a big deal so yeah so I think I think if I a Disney World trip staying on property makes a lot of sense and I think if I maybe was traveling a time of year that was not so packed and prices would be a little bit lower I could I could easily justify that to myself how about the new lightning lane system I didn't mind it I again I think just staying off property we didn't have access to it as much as far as like getting the times we wanted but I thought it was pretty great I would say if you're gonna spend the money on the lightning lanes which are not cheap just buy the stamp ice skipper or or whatever alternative exists when you're going because that that was really what came in clutch because at just when people canceled lightning lanes I it was like oh do you we snagged you this we snagged you this and so we just kind of were able to go and and that was gonna be my next question so it sounds like standby skipper is something that you oh yeah like we did we liked it a lot and the only thing I would say if you are going with a big group you know on our in our group most days most people did not buy lightning lanes other than us but there was the day the Wednesday where we did Epcot and animal kingdom that my mom and her husband had it as well just so we could try to get on all the rides together because we weren't sure how things were gonna work with Das and you do have to have every single person that you want to add your standby skipper except standby skipper as a friend so if we've been trying to book it for like 15 people which you can have all those people for the same price you do need to make sure that they're all like accepting that friend request and there's a little bit of logistics to get it set up but when I thought it was totally worth it what about can I like positional dining package I thought it was worth it I feel like it would have been more worth it at dinner time because I feel like an I can eat the fey for me is something that I did not want at noon like I basically got like one plate of food and it was delicious and it was good but you know but I do think being able to like have guaranteed seats for candle light processional if that's something you want to do if you think about like it was I think it was like a $15 upcharge from what it would have cost to go to beer garden once you'd factor it in a beer as well so basically I paid $15 to go to the candle light processional and have a guaranteed place to sit so I think that's worth it if I had had a dinner time and instead of a lunch time I think I would have liked it better I feel like Disney is setting it up so you almost have to get that dining package because there's so many available that it's like well then if you're standby the number of seats are more limited there's still some available but it's just more limited than it used to be yeah so it's hard because it's not cheap but um sometimes it's required all right anything else about your trip you want to share before we finish up I would say on that note there were definitely some deals for candle light processional that were better than others as far as the meal prices and what you were getting from it so I would definitely say and I think that's probably true for any of the like because I know there's like fantastic dining there's firework you know so I would definitely just encourage people to just take about time to do that research because there were places where the dining processional was like 80 bucks but the entrees were 30 so it was like in my mind not really worth it but no I think it was a great trip I'm really glad we did it it was crazy I will say the thing that I think made the trip work really well for us is that before we went sat down and just like took a couple minutes to say these are the things that are high priorities for us these are nice to do and these are things that we do not care about with my husband and I because we're on this big group trip with like a million people what are the things that if we miss we will be sad and what are the things that if we miss we do not care and that helped us throughout this whole trip to prioritize like so like the food booths was an example of like oh we would love to do this but right now it's more important that we go meet Winnie the Pooh with my niece whereas the first day we were there it's like if I do not go to the tiki room I will be sad so I must go to tiki room and I will not go to the fireworks so I can go to tiki you know so knowing that we were on the same page was what made that work really well for us I think that's really good advice for all groups yeah because it is difficult to get everything done but if you have your must do's you can at least focus on those right exactly that that is good good advice okay well I appreciate you taking the time to share in the middle of all your planning of the all the logistics and this has been really fun yeah thank you for having me it was great I hope you enjoyed my chats with candy we did keep talking for the after chat on patreon as I speak to the guests I just make notes of things I would like to ask them that are a little off topic and we do that on patreon it is up in video and audio form so if you're a patron look for it there if you're not you can sign up and get caught up on all the back episodes where we have this kind of content as well as a private Facebook group and we have a whole separate podcast that I do with Heather that is sometimes unhinged and a lot more personal so you can look for that on patreon I think that will wrap up this episode of wderaprep to go for more information please check the show notes in your podcast app or head to the website wdw prep school calm click on pod cast at the top school done to episode 442 until next time I will see you on the site bye. bye. 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