Chewie, we're home... A May 2015 TR! Update 11/3

Yay! Seeing a new tr from you brightened my day so much! I was there just a week after you so it will be interesting to see how our experiences match up.
 
Yay! Welcome Back!! I love, love, love your trip reports! Can't wait to read about this trip! A May trip in on my bucket list (we usually go in August and October)
 
Yay! You're here with another TR!!!!!!:rainbow::jumping1:party::dancer:

:wave::wave2:HI! Welcome Back!!!!:wave2::wave:

I'm looking forward to another wonderful TR from you!

Hey look at that, our trips overlapped!

Thanks so much, I really appreciate it! It feels really good to be back again. And that's kind of awesome our trips overlapped, hahaha.

Yay you're doing another TR! I'm so sad we missed each other by a little more than a week!

Yeah, finallyyyyyy, just took me forever, haha. But yeah, I feel like we always miss each other. ONE OF THESE TIMES we will meet!

So excited to see you doing trip reports again.. your videos were what pushed me to try making one for our last trip!

Thank you so much, I'm really glad to be writing again. I've missed it! And that's awesome that you made a video. It's such a great way to remember each trip by. Lots of work, but worth it.

Woohoo!! Can't wait to read! Thanks for the heads up on Twitter! ;)

Haha no problem! I realized a few people from the DIS are on there so thought it might not be a bad idea. :)

Lurked on your last report and loved reading about your trip. Have officially joined the DIS and now am looking forward to reading about your adventures.

Hey thanks for coming out of lurkdom and saying hi!! Like I said, I really like hearing from people. Glad to have you here!

YAY! I'm so glad you've started a TR! I'm definitely joining in :thumbsup2

Thanks so much, glad to have you here. It's nice to have familiar faces/names when I'm writing. I got a little worried people would forget who the heck I was, haha.

Joining in here as well. The other trip reports were great!

Thanks so much, really glad you're following along and enjoyed my previous trip reports. :)

OH MY GOSH YESSSSSSS DANI. Funny story, I didn't even know you were doing a new TR. I went to look at your old TRs to find your Disneyland one because the obsession is real, and FOUND THIS ONE!!! I am so excited to see you writing again! Can't wait to read about your first May trip!

MARISSA! Girl, when I saw your name pop up in here I got excited. I am really happy to be writing again, too! It was nice to take a break but I did start to miss it. I hope you're writing one about Disneyland? Please let me know if you are!

coming out of lurkdom! :wave2:

love your TRs and you take beautiful pics!

Haha awesome, it makes me happy when people come out to say what's up! And thanks so much, I appreciate the compliment on my photos!

You're back...ready for another:)

Haha yes I am, and thank you for joining in!
 
I'm joining in for the TR!

Awesome, glad to have you here!

Subbing. So glad you decided to do another trip report.

Thank you! I'm glad, too. It was nice to take a little break but I've missed it.

Following! Looking forward to reading! :)

Thank you! I'm very excited to post!
Can't wait to read your trip report!! Pls post it on your blog too :flower1:

I will definitely be posting this trip report on my blog, that's a definite!! I figured the intro doesn't need to be up there since if you read my blog, it already has an intro, haha, but yes, definitely giving people the option to keep up here or on the blog.

So can I just say I am SUPER stoked you're back at the TR hustle? Like, probably too excited. But not in a weird way. :rolleyes1

Haha, and I'm SUPER stoked that you're back and reading, duhhhh. And it's obviously not weird, we're on the same page. ;)

I am so, so, so HAPPY you're writing another trip report; I can't wait to read about your adventures!:yay:

Thank you so much! It really is making me so happy that people are excited and stuff. I think this will be a suuuuper fun trip report.

Yay! A new trip report! I'm excited!

Glad to have you along for my trip report. Thanks so much!

Your trip reports are awesome. I also love your videos. So awesome and you do such a great job with the film and music editing.

Eagerly awaiting your next installment!

Jay

Thank you SO much, seriously. It means a lot, especially on the videos. Those things take forever but I do love the end-product... so thank you! Hoping to have the first post ready tonight/tomorrow!

Yay! Seeing a new tr from you brightened my day so much! I was there just a week after you so it will be interesting to see how our experiences match up.

Aww that is so nice of you to say, I'm really glad though and very happy to be back.. and to you have you joining in again!!

Yay! Welcome Back!! I love, love, love your trip reports! Can't wait to read about this trip! A May trip in on my bucket list (we usually go in August and October)

Thank you so much! I'm looking forward to posting about this since May was brand new for both of us, and we're usually September/January people.
 
Hi Dan! Joining in ... love the trip report title!

You had me with your love of Dole Whip's and Matt's love of old school EPCOT

Love your trip report videos! Great music choices and you did a great job matching up the peaks/valleys/pauses/beats in the songs with the video!. Quick question - do you use a GoPro of some sort?
 
Day 1 - Part 1: We're here! Aaaand it's actually too early to do anything.

Usually I do a little write-up/post photos of our travels to Disney World... or actually, more like a LONG write-up of it. But this time, things were pretty mellow, so I'll try to go the shorter route.

Keyword being try.

We decided to catch a red-eye flight from Seattle to Orlando on Alaska Airlines (the only airline that offers a non-stop flight between SEA-MCO, and thank God it exists), so after we dropped our car off at the parking place, we got to Sea-Tac airport at around 7:30pm. It's always tradition that we grab dinner at the airport when we take this flight to Orlando, so after getting through security pretty quickly, we went and grabbed a bite to eat.

After eating some Wendy's, we headed over towards our gate and picked up some waters and magazines for the flight.

Our flight was booked pretty solid because a very large amount of high school kids were on there. However, they were surprisingly well-behaved and I was happy about this since it was a red-eye... and silence is golden on a red-eye. Overall, the flight was pretty mellow. I spent most of my time working on jigsaw puzzles on my iPad, and trying to sleep when I could. I think I may have snagged around 45 minutes of sleep in total? It's kind of difficult to sleep when you're on your way to your favorite place in the world, so I mean, you can't blame me.

Anyway, we got into MCO earlier than predicted, which is ALWAYS exciting. I had to go to the bathroom and of course Matt gave me crap because he always does. He is the king of booking it to the Magical Express, leaving me behind in a cloud of dust. Of course, we always forget which way to go to get there, but I remembered it was in the direction of big ol' B and then... we were riding on the fake monorail.

We got to the Magical Express area and we expected there to be some people around but... nope. There really was no one around. We checked in and were sent to the Old Key West/DTD area bus line.

Time for a little side story since I didn't write about our previous trip:

I was really happy about this because when we arrived last September at the same time, they put us on a bus with everyone who was going to the monorail resorts when we were headed for OKW. We seriously hit up eeeevery resort you could think of - Wilderness Lodge, Contemporary, Grand Floridian, Polynesian, and I think one other random one in there.

Either way, we were THE last stop and it took over an hour and a half to finally get to OKW. It wasn't the end of the world since we enjoy visiting the monorail resorts anyway, but still, it was a wee-bit long, and even our bus driver kept apologizing to us/didn't seem to understand why we got stuck on that bus in the first place.

So anyway, this time, we got onto a bus pretty quickly and ended up with no one else on it with us! It's a pretty fantastic feeling having your very own personal motorcoach and knowing you're going straight to your resort. I was pretty excited about it... and so was Matt, he was just exhausted, haha.

IMG_4962_zpsaqqtvmcw.jpg


Our bus driver was really nice and friendly so he and Matt talked a bunch and I half-listened to their convo and half-watched the video on the bus. Then we were driving under arguably the most magical sign in the world... which is blurry in this photo because I evidently uploaded the wrong one, so sue me.

IMG_4966_zpsfhnlkp74.jpg


After what ended up being not that long of a bus ride, we arrived at Old Key West at 6:30am.

IMG_4968_zpsra1ajdsh.jpg


I had done online check-in for us, so we went inside and of course, no one was around so we got taken care of pretty quickly. Unsurprisingly, our room wasn't ready so we decided to drop off our carry-on bags with bell services and then....

Realized it was WAY too early to head off to a park.

I mean, it was like 6:45 and though Magic Kingdom was opening at 8, we didn't really have a reason to get there super early only to just stand around. So we decided to walk around Old Key West instead, since the sun was finally starting to rise. It was beautiful.

IMG_4972_zps4g7awg59.jpg


We both agreed it was a little weird to be staying there our entire trip, just because our previous 4 trips, we'd stayed at Beach Club Villas. BUT at the same time, Old Key West is our DVC home resort, we'd enjoyed stayed there for 4 nights in September (and a good portion of our honeymoon), so it was be nice to be back again.

After roaming around the resort a little bit, we decided to plop ourselves on the couches inside of the lobby and relax for a bit while we needed to kill some time before heading off to Magic Kingdom... which meant watching Mickey shorts.

IMG_4973_zps7qunullo.jpg


We caught a bus at around 7:20 or so, and arrived at Magic Kingdom by around 7:35. I'd forgotten how quickly the buses at OKW get you to Magic Kingdom. We could not believe we were there, and even better, there wasn't much of a crowd waiting to get into the park... whiiiich was kind of weird since we figured with it being a Saturday in May, it'd be way busier.

Things became even more surreal when we found ourselves watching the Welcome show. I mean, who the heck catches the welcome show on their very first day at Disney World? Especially while running pretty much no sleep... These kids right here.

IMG_4979_zpsqfjmpw6n.jpg


We're kind of hardcore.

The Welcome show was lovely as always; it's always cute seeing all of the characters ride in on the train.

wdw2015day1_zpsvphfhyje.jpg


wdw2015day1-2_zpsnrwqlmnn.jpg


After the park opened, we both agreed coffee and something to eat were definitely needed, so we knew we'd be stopping at Starbucks for iced coffees and breakfast sandwiches.

But before we did that, I of course got the same feeling I always do when we came around the corner and saw the castle for the first time... or well, after I moved to the left on Main Street since there was a giant tarp protuding out, hahaha. But you get the point - seeing Cinderella Castle for the first time definitely makes me a little vaclempt (as Linda Richman would say) on every trip.

After staring at the castle, we ran into Starbucks, ordered, and ate pretty quickly since we were hungry and also because we wanted to go check out the park, of course.

We left Starbucks and both noticed that it was not nearly as warm as we thought it would be. Leading up to this trip, my friends who live in Miami kept telling me it was going to be ridiculously hot and we were going to melt because of how hot it had been in April... so I was pleasantly surprised by the lack of heat, and especially enjoyed the lack of humidity we'd gotten used to seeing during September trips.

Anyway, we got to the Hub and it was admittedly weird to see everything looking so different. On one hand, the new Hub grass areas with the fountains are absolutely beautiful, but there was a part of me that was sad about the loss of what was there before.

I was also a little sad to see that the Partners statue was hidden away in a box, and spoiler alert, they didn't come back out for the remainder of our trip. But we were okay with that, there's always something getting fixed up, and again, the new Hub does look pretty fantastic as it is.

As per usual, I wanted to stop for photos and Matt was cool with it, so I took a couple of Pinocchio and Jiminy with my X-T1.

wdw2015day1-3_zpstiwkrmh1.jpg


wdw2015day1-4_zpsxogota75.jpg


Now I'm not entirely sure if we had FP+ reservations or just decided to head into Frontierland first on a whim, but that's where we went off to. And holy poop, it was not busy at ALL.

As in, there was no one walking around except us and then some CMs. It was actually really weird for a Saturday morning in May.

IMG_4984_zpsgmhxupqo.jpg


So I did what most people would do... I named myself the Deputy of Frontierland. Because why not?

IMG_4986_zpsfmhbmn6x.jpg


Since it was so dead, we figured we'd hop on Big Thunder first. I can't say we've done Big Thunder first on ANY trip, as usually we're Pirates kind of kids, but hey, sometimes you need to switch things up, so switch we did.

IMG_4993_zpsgajturgx.jpg


We came THIS CLOSE to getting our very own roller coaster. And by THIS CLOSE I mean, we were the only people who loaded onto it, but then they decided to let people stay on juuuust as they were about to get off... so we had to share with one other couple. UGH, #firstdisneyworldproblems (and yes I'm just messing around about having to share, in case my ridiculous sarcasm isn't coming through my writing right now).

IMG_4994_zps66uj4ohd.jpg


IMG_5002_zpstmik9oqr.jpg


Anyway, Big Thunder was a blast, as it always is, and we were off of it pretty quickly. To no one's surprise, Matt really wanted to go see his ghost friends so we strolled on over to the Haunted Mansion. That was also a total walk-on, though we kind of took our time when going through the interactive queue.

IMG_5014_zpsny8zzyjx.jpg


One thing that I thought was interesting was that the Bride's ring was definitely different than the one they'd had there during our previous trips.

IMG_5015_zpsdimq8hfy.jpg


I believe last September, when I looked, the ring had been taken out from its spot. But this time, it was back, but a completely different ring. And just so you guys don't think I'm totally crazy, here is a picture I took back in 2013 of the ring in the same exact corner (vs the one above is a picture I just took during our trip). They're two completely different rings.

file_zps6401050c.jpg


Why they changed them, I have no idea, but I find it interesting. I'm kind of obsessed with little details like that.

I tried to make myself not take many photos this go-round on the Haunted Mansion since it was our first ride-through, but I did allow myself to take one of Madame Leota.

wdw2015day1-5_zpsfibe6s6n.jpg


Not to worry, because I have way too many that I did take later, haha. Haunted Mansion is arguably the most difficult ride to photograph, even with very fast glass, so I'm always trying to perfect my photography of it, especially the Hitchhiking Ghosts.

After riding the Haunted Mansion, we headed over towards the Tangled restrooms area since I love that area... aaaand it wasn't a bad time for a restroom break. At this point we were just kind of wandering since it's always nice to get acclimated to actually being in Disney World.

wdw2015day1-6_zpssadbtusy.jpg


We headed over towards the back of the castle to walk through, since we were going to be meeting up with someone, but I made us stop for a quick photo of the Sword in the Stone since not too many people were around.

wdw2015day1-7_zpsl4ocakjv.jpg


I'm a huge fan of the back of the castle, as I don't think it gets nearly as much love as it deserves... and I also happen to love the Sir Mickey's sign, as well. That area in general is so well-themed.

wdw2015day1-8_zpsm4rk4iyu.jpg


Our friend and her family were still getting into the park, so I had some time to get a few more photos of the other statues near the new Hub area... Okay more like a bunch, so hopefully you guys don't mind me posting a few.


wdw2015day1-9_zpsibrqu8eh.jpg


IMG_6322_zpsnvjppmli.jpg


wdw2015day1-11_zpsqttfryjp.jpg


wdw2015day1-13_zpsnmwprfwm.jpg


And thiiiiisssss is where I leave you guys hanging until the next post... But trust me, you'll want to stick around because this day ends up being pretty epic.

Continued in next post
 
Last edited:
Hi Dan! Joining in ... love the trip report title!

You had me with your love of Dole Whip's and Matt's love of old school EPCOT

Love your trip report videos! Great music choices and you did a great job matching up the peaks/valleys/pauses/beats in the songs with the video!. Quick question - do you use a GoPro of some sort?

Welcome, so glad you are here and thank you! I am totally excited about the new movie and that trailer was magnificent.. plus it comes into play later in my trip report. ;)

Dole Whips are my JAM. And yes, Matt is a very, very big fan of old school Epcot. He misses Horizons a lot.

And thank you for the compliments on the trip videos! I really appreciate it. I used a GoPro in my last video (and the one I'm editing right now), it's a Hero3+ Black edition. I highly suggest it for Disney trips!


Looking forward to following along :flower3:

Thank you for joining!!

Yippee!!! I'm here and so excited to read another of your Trip Reports!!!

SO happy to have you here, I always love your comments!! :)
 
@danimaroo
Excellent job on the photography. I like that you took so many thing shots instead of people shots. The framing and depth of field/focus are very nice. I have a hard time doing the normal kind of vacation photos, so I just let DH do it. Plus, I will spend forever trying to get shot the way I want, walking around, crouching, looking to see how the light is now and will be later. I used to be into photography a lot, so I tend to have a strange eye for subject, point of view, and focus. What do you shoot with? We really need to upgrade our camera body, and we might as well get a new lens too:rolleyes1You might like the French photographer Eugene Atget. I am looking forward to more of your report.
 
I'm joining in! I absolutely love your photos. I just got a DSLR before my trip in January and hope to take photos like you do in the near future.
 
So cool having the bus to yourselves! It must be so crazy arriving at Disney at that time of day AND being there too early to do anything! beautiful pic of the sunrise you got!

I was there around the same time as you. The Parners statue being hidden away was definitely a bummer!

I agree, the back of the castle is gorgeous!

Sounds like a great start to your first day!!
 
FYI. I love your Sarcasm, you have a good way portraying it through your writing!

AND of course beautiful photos! You should sell them :)
 
wow - that must be a very different feeling to be arriving so early with no one around. and how cool to have your own private motor coach - like the rock stars you are ;)

seeing Cinderella Castle for the first time definitely makes me a little vaclempt (as Linda Richman would say)

Tawk amonst yourselves ... I'll give you a topic: Steamboat Willie was neither a Steamboat, nor a willie ... discuss

Great pictures - especially of the Hub statues! So nice to explore the parks with low (no) crowds
 
We headed over towards the back of the castle to walk through, since we were going to be meeting up with someone, but I made us stop for a quick photo of the Sword in the Stone since not too many people were around.

wdw2015day1-7_zpsl4ocakjv.jpg

OMGosh. This photo is perfect!!
 

GET A DISNEY VACATION QUOTE

Dreams Unlimited Travel is committed to providing you with the very best vacation planning experience possible. Our Vacation Planners are experts and will share their honest advice to help you have a magical vacation.

Let us help you with your next Disney Vacation!











facebook twitter
Top