The Florida Project! 12 Days @ WDW for our 10th Anniversary! UPDATED 9/23

[AAshleySEG]

I can't even handle people.

Tim doesn't have much of an issue, but I seem to the older I get. However, I REFUSE to skip the teacups!

I think the older I get the less patience I have, but I feel like it should be the other way around, mostly I just don't have patience with people who don't follow the instructions of cast members...haha!!

I like the teacups, so hopefully I will continue to be able to ride them for a while, the first time we rode it was much better on Jeremy than later in the day...I was really spinning it that time, and he didn't feel so well afterwards...oops!

Ariel does look a little strange in the ride now that you mentioned it! I think Ursula looks great though, as well as the Under The Sea scene! It is at least a great ride to get in out of the heat for a bit, and always with a short wait! =D

LOL about Le Fou's brew!! I told ya, it is either a love or hate with it...haha! I think the fact they play it off as some amazing thing wasn't the way to go, literally it is just like frozen apple juice with foam on top, but I like apple juice..hehe, you win some and you lose some =D The macarons were pretty good though, we will definitely try the other flavors next time we go!

And OMG yes...Columbia Harbor House was really good this time...we even went back for dinner later...lol!

 

[annie170]

Wow! What a productive morning! Five minute wait times are heavenly.

Your macarons look really good. This is the first I've seen of those.

I'm a big fan of the lighthouse sandwich at Columbia Harbor House. So good!

It sounds like you had perfect timing getting out before the rain.

 

[AAshleySEG]

Wow! What a productive morning! Five minute wait times are heavenly.

Your macarons look really good. This is the first I've seen of those.

I'm a big fan of the lighthouse sandwich at Columbia Harbor House. So good!

It sounds like you had perfect timing getting out before the rain.

Yes, those 5 minute wait times are the best! It is so nice to be there at the first part of the day!

This is the first time we have seen the macarons too! I am not exactly sure when they added them to the menu, but we really enjoyed them and are looking for to trying the other fruity flavor set next time we go!

I can't remember if I have tried the lighthouse sandwich or not, I may have had it when we went on our Keys To The Kingdom tour a few years back, so next time we go I will have to try it again just to make sure! It totally sounds like something I would really enjoy!

We were very lucky with the rain! Literally when we walked into the resort room it started coming down like crazy!! We were also lucky that it was still raining when we went back too though!!

 

[AAshleySEG]

Sunday, June 11, 2017 (Part Three) - The Rainy Day Cavalcade!

We had rested up in the room a bit and the rain had started to slow down, it was still raining though so I did not take my Canon DSLR, I did take the Nikon Coolpix, which is a waterproof camera, with us so I could still take some photos! Sorry that the quality of these isn't as good, but what can you do...LOL! We were back at the bus stop by 5:00, it took about 20 minutes for the bus to come and pick us up at 5:20, we weren't sure if we would make it to our Buzz Fast Pass so we changed it to 6:00 just in case!

When we made it back to MK, no one was trying to go in, only us, so that was making us happy!! Looks like the rain did its job for us again! We started walking in and before we fully reached Main Street we heard something coming but not something we recognized, which was odd. Out of all the time we had been to Magic Kingdom in the rain we had never seen, or even heard of this happening?? It was the Rainy Day Cavalcade!?!

It was one of the coolest, most unexpected things, we have seen in a while, you literally should have seen the smiles on our faces! It was seriously like we were little kids again! It is the catchiest tune as well! It is really crazy to me still that we have never been there when this went on, but now I almost look forward to it raining again when we are at MK so we can see it again! It only lasts about 1 minute, 20 seconds, but so cool! If you want to see it in full, check out the video at the end of this post, Jeremy got a great video of it!

We got to see lots of characters, Mickey, Minnie, Goofy, Donald, the Incredibles, it looked like a lot of the characters from the Move It, Shake It, Celebrate It! My favorite was seeing Judy Hopps and Nick Wilde! I seriously love Zootopia! We just watched it again a few days ago, and it is still as awesome as I remember it being too!

So after the parade we started walking over towards Tomorrowland. We had a little bit before our Buzz Fast Passes since we had changed them to 6:00 so we walked over to ride the TTA, a Disney trip isn't complete without a ride on the TTA! Such a classic Disney thing, after all of the information that came out of D23 this past weekend we are super stoked to see all of new things being added all over the resort!! Definitely looking forward to the Tron Coaster in Tomorrowland!! I know some of you know we have a miniature schnauzers and one of them is named Quorra after the character from Tron Legacy! It was about time for our Buzz ride, so we walked over and scanned our bands to get in, we love these types of ride so much, that just like at Hollywood Studios, while walking though the line we made another fast pass to ride it again in a little bit! About half way through the ride this time...I had done it...Galactic Hero!!!

We finished our ride on Buzz and it was about time for dinner so we decided on Columbia Harbor House again! It was pretty empty and looked like after we sat down that they were cleaning the upstairs area getting ready for it to be closed. This time I ordered the Salmon with Green Beans and Rice, and Jeremy got the Fried Shrimp Plate again. I don't think this Salmon was as good as the Salmon we had at ABC Commissary, but it was still very tasty and I would definitely get it again! So Columbia Harbor House was 2 for 2, we both really enjoyed our dinner!

After we finished eating we made our way back over to Buzz for our fast pass, and poor Jeremy, I beat him again. The photo pass photo for this one was actually really funny, he put it in the video, so you can see it there...LOL! The next ride I made a fast pass for was Winnie the Pooh. Jeremy had never ridden it! He had ridden Mr, Toad's Wild Ride at Disneyland, but not Winnie The Pooh here, so at least he had something to compare it to old vs new. On our way we stopped by the Mad Tea Party to ride one more time! This time I was spinning the teacup, unlike last time, and turns out that was a bad idea for Jeremy...he got really dizzy. I know now that we can ride the teacups, just not spin it from the inside at the same time!

We rode Winnie The Pooh and I made a fast pass for us to ride Pirates again since Jeremy loves it so much! The FP was for 8:00, so we could literally just walk over there and ride it immediately. One the ride on Pirates was over the walked toward Main Street and the Confectionery, we were in the mood for some Rice Crispie Balls! Next we headed over to the Popcorn Cart to get our Disney World Popcorn fix! Finally we stood in the middle of Main Street to wait on the new Happily Ever After Nighttime Show!!

We can't decide yet how much we like the new show. We saw it on its opening night on the live stream, we really both like the song a lot, it is really catchy! Seeing it in person it is one of those shows that you are going to have to watch more than once for us. There is literally so much going on. Wishes was more about watching the Fireworks which I loved, this one has both the fireworks and the projections so you basically either focus on one or the other, and for us it was really difficult to watch both things at the same time, it was like sensory overload. I really enjoy the projections but I miss being able to watch the fireworks at the end of the day. Overall it is a great show and they put a ton into it. It is just a LOT of stuff going on at once and seeing it all in one watch is difficult. But that pretty much is in tune with Walt Disney World, just one trip is never enough. Once the show as over we walked back to the buses and made our way back to Saratoga Springs, we were in the bed sleeping by 10:30-11:00. Our plan by the weather at the moment was to hit up Volcano Bay tomorrow, but we will see what that has in store and if our plans change!

Stay Tuned For The Budget Post!​

 

[AAshleySEG]

Last Trip Report I did a budget post so we could see how we did in relation to how much I budgeted for our trip. We got a lot of positive feedback on it, so I am going to do the same thing this time, only a tad differently. Instead of doing a budget post at the end of each post, I am going to do one for an entire day once I am finished with it. That way, with it being in a separate post, if someone wants to read it they can, and if not they can just skip over it!

Our total budget we have saved for this vacation is $3500.00 in the savings account, the day we left we transferred that to checking and kept all of our receipts along the way, we also tallied everything up for each day at the end. Anytime we would have additional cash from other sources we would add that to a vacation envelope and we also always toss all change into a jar and so the change was converted into cash too, we were thinking we would use the cash for anything not budgeted for, souvenirs, snacks, things of that nature, in total we ended up with $578.00 in our cash envelope to take with us! So the totals at the bottom represent how we are doing as far as budgeted vs actual, and then below that, the cash is what we have left of the original $578.00. If you have any questions about how we budgeted for the trip or anything, just let me know!

Sunday, June 11, 2017 Budget!

Budgeted Amounts
Breakfast - $30 - Magic Kingdom
Lunch - $50 - Magic Kingdom
Dinner - $50 - Magic Kingdom
Total: $130.00

Actual Spent
Breakfast - Main Street Bakery - $16.04
Lunch - Columbia Harbor House - $36.27
Dinner - Columbia Harbor House - $35.21
Total: $87.52

CASH - Le Fou's Brew & Macarons - $12.23
CASH - Popcorn & Coke - $7.75
CASH - Rice Crispie Balls - $8.51

Budget Status
$42.48 Under for Today
$131.01 Under Budget Overall
($504.15) Remaining In Saved Up Cash for Extras​

 

[annie170]

I've never seen the Rainy Day Cavalcade in person, but have seen photos on trip reports here. Really cute idea!

Jeremy's face on Buzz is priceless!

That's funny that you ate both meals that day at Columbia Harbor House. Do you find that you're limited with quick service options being pescetarian?

HEA does sound a bit busy, but I'm looking forward to watching it one day.

You guys seem like so much fun in your vlogs!

Still enjoying your budget reports. You're doing really well on spending this trip!

 

[rdkeim]

Coming back to the MK despite the rain looks like it was a great decision! I've read about the Rainy Day parade but we've never seen it either. It looks fun! Columbia HH is my fav counter service - love the salmon. I don't usually watch people's videos but yours are so well done. Thanks for sharing.

 

[Teetah]

OMG that Rainy Day Cavalcade show!!!! How awesome!! Never heard of it either - what a fun thing to catch!

Poor Jeremy on Buzz lol.

Interesting feedback on Happily Ever After! I haven't watched any videos of it and won't until I see it in person. I am curious to see how I will react!

Those Disney snacks tho.....mmmmm....

 

[lauralynn0612]

Sunday, June 11, 2017 (Part Three) - The Rainy Day Cavalcade!

We had rested up in the room a bit and the rain had started to slow down, it was still raining though so I did not take my Canon DSLR, I did take the Nikon Coolpix, which is a waterproof camera, with us so I could still take some photos! Sorry that the quality of these isn't as good, but what can you do...LOL! We were back at the bus stop by 5:00, it took about 20 minutes for the bus to come and pick us up at 5:20, we weren't sure if we would make it to our Buzz Fast Pass so we changed it to 6:00 just in case!

When we made it back to MK, no one was trying to go in, only us, so that was making us happy!! Looks like the rain did its job for us again! We started walking in and before we fully reached Main Street we heard something coming but not something we recognized, which was odd. Out of all the time we had been to Magic Kingdom in the rain we had never seen, or even heard of this happening?? It was the Rainy Day Cavalcade!?!

It was one of the coolest, most unexpected things, we have seen in a while, you literally should have seen the smiles on our faces! It was seriously like we were little kids again! It is the catchiest tune as well! It is really crazy to me still that we have never been there when this went on, but now I almost look forward to it raining again when we are at MK so we can see it again! It only lasts about 1 minute, 20 seconds, but so cool! If you want to see it in full, check out the video at the end of this post, Jeremy got a great video of it!

We got to see lots of characters, Mickey, Minnie, Goofy, Donald, the Incredibles, it looked like a lot of the characters from the Move It, Shake It, Celebrate It! My favorite was seeing Judy Hopps and Nick Wilde! I seriously love Zootopia! We just watched it again a few days ago, and it is still as awesome as I remember it being too!

So after the parade we started walking over towards Tomorrowland. We had a little bit before our Buzz Fast Passes since we had changed them to 6:00 so we walked over to ride the TTA, a Disney trip isn't complete without a ride on the TTA! Such a classic Disney thing, after all of the information that came out of D23 this past weekend we are super stoked to see all of new things being added all over the resort!! Definitely looking forward to the Tron Coaster in Tomorrowland!! I know some of you know we have a miniature schnauzers and one of them is named Quorra after the character from Tron Legacy! It was about time for our Buzz ride, so we walked over and scanned our bands to get in, we love these types of ride so much, that just like at Hollywood Studios, while walking though the line we made another fast pass to ride it again in a little bit! About half way through the ride this time...I had done it...Galactic Hero!!!

We finished our ride on Buzz and it was about time for dinner so we decided on Columbia Harbor House again! It was pretty empty and looked like after we sat down that they were cleaning the upstairs area getting ready for it to be closed. This time I ordered the Salmon with Green Beans and Rice, and Jeremy got the Fried Shrimp Plate again. I don't think this Salmon was as good as the Salmon we had at ABC Commissary, but it was still very tasty and I would definitely get it again! So Columbia Harbor House was 2 for 2, we both really enjoyed our dinner!

After we finished eating we made our way back over to Buzz for our fast pass, and poor Jeremy, I beat him again. The photo pass photo for this one was actually really funny, he put it in the video, so you can see it there...LOL! The next ride I made a fast pass for was Winnie the Pooh. Jeremy had never ridden it! He had ridden Mr, Toad's Wild Ride at Disneyland, but not Winnie The Pooh here, so at least he had something to compare it to old vs new. On our way we stopped by the Mad Tea Party to ride one more time! This time I was spinning the teacup, unlike last time, and turns out that was a bad idea for Jeremy...he got really dizzy. I know now that we can ride the teacups, just not spin it from the inside at the same time!

We rode Winnie The Pooh and I made a fast pass for us to ride Pirates again since Jeremy loves it so much! The FP was for 8:00, so we could literally just walk over there and ride it immediately. One the ride on Pirates was over the walked toward Main Street and the Confectionery, we were in the mood for some Rice Crispie Balls! Next we headed over to the Popcorn Cart to get our Disney World Popcorn fix! Finally we stood in the middle of Main Street to wait on the new Happily Ever After Nighttime Show!!

We can't decide yet how much we like the new show. We saw it on its opening night on the live stream, we really both like the song a lot, it is really catchy! Seeing it in person it is one of those shows that you are going to have to watch more than once for us. There is literally so much going on. Wishes was more about watching the Fireworks which I loved, this one has both the fireworks and the projections so you basically either focus on one or the other, and for us it was really difficult to watch both things at the same time, it was like sensory overload. I really enjoy the projections but I miss being able to watch the fireworks at the end of the day. Overall it is a great show and they put a ton into it. It is just a LOT of stuff going on at once and seeing it all in one watch is difficult. But that pretty much is in tune with Walt Disney World, just one trip is never enough. Once the show as over we walked back to the buses and made our way back to Saratoga Springs, we were in the bed sleeping by 10:30-11:00. Our plan by the weather at the moment was to hit up Volcano Bay tomorrow, but we will see what that has in store and if our plans change!

Stay Tuned For The Budget Post!​

I am definitely more of a traditional fireworks gal so I'm not sure how I feel about all the projections at the new show. Guess I'll just need to go back to find out! I'm going to check out World of Color at Disneyland in a week or so. It might give me a feel for projections, but there won't be fireworks to compete with it either.

That Carousel of Progress clip gave me nightmares! We watched it FOUR TIMES IN A ROW on our last trip. Don't know if the ride was glitching or if someone in another wedge kept walking out the door causing it to just replay over and over. Either way, I had flashbacks.

 

[AAshleySEG]

I've never seen the Rainy Day Cavalcade in person, but have seen photos on trip reports here. Really cute idea!

Jeremy's face on Buzz is priceless!

That's funny that you ate both meals that day at Columbia Harbor House. Do you find that you're limited with quick service options being pescetarian?

HEA does sound a bit busy, but I'm looking forward to watching it one day.

You guys seem like so much fun in your vlogs!

Still enjoying your budget reports. You're doing really well on spending this trip!

It is definitely a fun way for Disney to still be able to give people something if the entire parade cannot go on! It was so fun and unexpected for us to see the Rainy Day Cavalcade, we still talk about when we talk about this trip!

Poor Jeremy, he is going to start beating me soon and then I am going to be the one making the faces...LOL

I didn't think we were too limited, this time it was more like we just eat at all of the other places more often so we forgot how much we loved Columbia Harbor that when we ate there again we wanted to eat it again for dinner too, we actually can usually find at least one option at every quick service restaurant, we aren't very picky eaters either so, so that could also be a factor. We eat things as simple as veggie burgers and cheese pizza to like the lobster squid ink pasta, and everything in between, luckily Disney is good at, and getting better at having more options for all types of eaters!

We definitely need another watch or two of HEA to figure out how much we like it, it is definitely busy, that is a great way to describe it! It is like sensory overload there is so much going on, I am still looking forward to checking it out again to see everything I missed the first time!

LOL, thanks! We try to have fun with everything we do, that's like now we just started going camping almost every weekend, so those vlogs are pretty funny too, we really like to travel, so whenever we are doing it, we try to enjoy it!

Glad you are still liking the budget posts, we were really happy with how well we did! We may splurge just a tad later on, but we still didn't go crazy luckily!

 

[AAshleySEG]

Coming back to the MK despite the rain looks like it was a great decision! I've read about the Rainy Day parade but we've never seen it either. It looks fun! Columbia HH is my fav counter service - love the salmon. I don't usually watch people's videos but yours are so well done. Thanks for sharing.

I think this was the first time that almost every single day we took a break in the middle of the afternoon. The crowds are usually at their peak at that time, so it was great for us, especially after the rain, or at MK during the rain, going back it was so nice! Rainy Day Cavalcade was so great! It is definitely something we are going to try and catch again, it just puts a smile on your face when you are at the park and you think you are going to miss the parade because of the rain! The salmon was really good! I think we actually had a lot of salmon on this trip!! Thank you! I'm really glad you are enjoying the videos! Jeremy has a lot of fun vlogging!

 

[AAshleySEG]

OMG that Rainy Day Cavalcade show!!!! How awesome!! Never heard of it either - what a fun thing to catch!

Poor Jeremy on Buzz lol.

Interesting feedback on Happily Ever After! I haven't watched any videos of it and won't until I see it in person. I am curious to see how I will react!

Those Disney snacks tho.....mmmmm....

It's so funny that we have both been to Disney so many times and never heard of, or seen that Rainy Day Cavalcade Parade! I want to go in the rain all the time now just to see it again!

Soon he will be beating me all the time on Buzz and TSMM!

Yes, I would totally recommend seeing Happily Ever After in person! I am really interested to hear what you think about it too!!

Yes...Disney snacks...I want more now!!

 

[AAshleySEG]

I am definitely more of a traditional fireworks gal so I'm not sure how I feel about all the projections at the new show. Guess I'll just need to go back to find out! I'm going to check out World of Color at Disneyland in a week or so. It might give me a feel for projections, but there won't be fireworks to compete with it either.

That Carousel of Progress clip gave me nightmares! We watched it FOUR TIMES IN A ROW on our last trip. Don't know if the ride was glitching or if someone in another wedge kept walking out the door causing it to just replay over and over. Either way, I had flashbacks.

I am definitely curious to see what you think about Happily Ever After! We have not had a chance to make it out to Disneyland to see World of Color yet! We really need to get out there, you would think we would have been back since 2007, considering our home DVC resort is at Grand Californian..haha!!

Oh no! I know exactly what you mean about Carousel, that happened to us a few years ago, I think enough time had passed since then, but we didn't ride it for a while after it happened!

 

[AAshleySEG]

Monday, June 12, 2017 - Alone at EPCOT

We woke up this morning and the first thing we did was check the weather and radar. There was an 80% chance of afternoon thunderstorms from about 1:00-6:00 pm so we decided to skip Volcano Bay for today and instead head to EPCOT! We made it there right as it opened at 9:00 am and I had to stop and take the iconic photo of Spaceship Earth!

Now since we have visited all of the other three parks and have done exactly the same thing for breakfast, we decided to do it here today too, just to round out the experience at all of them! We headed over to Fountainview which is the resident Starbucks at EPCOT. Once we had our croissants we started casually walking over toward Norway because we saw on the app that the wait time for Frozen Ever After was only 30 minutes, which seemed really short based on everything we had seen and heard since it opened. When we got over the line was out the door, so I was thinking how could it only be 30 minutes, but we decided to stick with it anyway and play it out, so as soon as we got in line, we started our timer to see what actual wait time was.

After just a few minutes we made it to the interior portion, the line was moving quite quickly, faster than I thought it would, and faster than Maelstrom ever did. I really really like how they did the queue for this one, it really feels like you are in a village at night time when you are in here, much nicer to stand in than the queue for Maelstrom ever was.

We made it and were seated in a boat in 24 minutes. That was a very quick wait and we were excited to see this new ride! I remembered riding Maelstrom very well, so I was curious to see how this would fit in to the ride space. Immediately I was happy that I didn't get blinded like I always did at the beginning of Maelstrom...LOL! I have heard that lots of people love/hate this attraction now, but we really enjoyed it a lot! The tech in it looks really cool, the animatronics are well done, it actually fits in really well with the layout of the other ride. I would totally ride it again, and even maybe wait up to 30 minutes for it again. It is always fun to have an option to check out a new attraction, and after all of the info they released at D23, there should be a multitude of them coming over the next few years!

So we said goodbye to Elsa and stopped by the replica Stave Church in the front portion of the Norway pavillion. We had never been in there before, but I noticed that on the door it said Stave Church Gallery, so we were curious to see what was in there! For some reason I didn't take any photos, but Jeremy did take a bunch of video on this one. It was so cool, there were a lot of historical artifacts and pieces that inspired a lot of the movie. Patterns and instruments, clothing, and furniture. Definitely stop in there and check it out if you have never done so before! Like I said, I didn't even know you could go in there, much less what was actually in there! Our first fast pass of the day was for Living With The Land so that is where we headed next!

I love this ride, every time I leave here it makes me want to start a garden at home again. We went on the Behind The Seeds tour a few years ago and it is so much fun to walk around in there too. I love all of the hidden mickeys and the not so hidden ones too!

After Living With The Land we went to out favorite rest spot in EPCOT over at Sunshine Seasons to sit down and check our Nintendo DS's for Street Passes and stuff and also try and figure out what we wanted to eat for lunch and/or dinner later on. Our next fast pass was just a little time away and it was for Soarin' so we sat there for a bit and looked over menus on our phones to get some ideas. Once we had that figured out it was time for our Fast Pass. This was going to be our first time riding the new version of Soarin'! We got on there really quick since we were a party of two, we got pulled out of the line and moved up so we were on in like 3 or 4 minutes. After it was over we talked about it and we both like the original version more. There is just something about those Orange Groves and the Forests of California that we liked more than the landmarks of the World. It is still a great ride, we do just prefer the other one more, I wonder if they will ever have multiple versions you can choose from like over at Mission Space, that would be cool if you could choose which scenery you wanted to see! Another thing I noticed, and not sure if it was or if was just me, but all of the people and animals looked very animated/computer generated in this new version? Has anyone else noticed that, I need to ride it again to do more research...haha!

It was almost prime lunch time by now so we started heading around World Showcase, our goal in trying to choose somewhere for lunch was that it had indoor seating, and so each and every place we tried to stop at was full until we made it over to our 4th choice which was Liberty Inn, which turned out to be a mistake for once. On the menu we saw a vegetarian chick'n, we have had it flavored differently before at Food & Wine and at home, so we knew what to expect as far as that went, it also looked great on the food board, so that's what we decided to try!

It looked really good so we were excited to dig in! We have had tons of vegetarian/vegan food all over the place and we even make it at home too. The faux meat was not the problem with this one, it was the sauce and accompaniments that came with it. For us, it was just not a very well thought out dish. The flavors didn't really go well together and the toppings did not taste fresh at all, more like they had been back there a few days, and we were really disappointed because it looked so great! Oh well, we started heading back around World Showcase and ended up stopping to grab a plate of fish & chips to tide us over until dinner since we didn't eat too much of the other lunch.

We made a reservation a little bit ago for Via Napoli for dinner. It had been a really long while since we had eaten there and we remembered how great it was the other times we did, so we wanted to try it out again!It was time for our afternoon break so we headed back to Saratoga. Oh and remember that rain...it was about 2:00 pm and it had yet to rain even a drop. However, by 4:00 pm we had showered and rested and it had started to rain. Tomorrow we had planned on going to Typhoon Lagoon, so we wanted to see how the new transfer system worked at Disney Springs, so that is where we rode the bus. We asked the driver then got out and walked over to World of Disney, the Co-Op, then Tren D before walking back to the bus stops. We made it back to EPCOT for one last ride which was on Finding Nemo. It might seem like we didn't do too much at EPCOT, we don't usually ride very much there, for us we like to walk around and enjoy the scenery...lol! We were going to ride Journey Into Imagination with Figment but we weren't paying attention to time and by the time we made it was barely after 7:00 pm so it was closed for the day. We slowly walked to the UK, Japan, and Germany shops and spent a good long while looking at all of the stuff in them. Our dinner res was at 8:25. We had a great server named Ania, we had Calamari as an appetizer and a Pizza Maragarita! It was HUGE!!

Sooo delicious though!!! We ended up chatting with our server about traveling and different things, she told us about Italy and that she was going to Iceland in a few months, so we told her some things to try and see when she went there! We didn't realize it but by the time we left it was after 10:00 pm!! Oh no!! We hoped we would still be able to catch a bus! It was very strange walking around EPCOT at night, and the entire time we were leaving...we didn't see any other people...

We were VERY happy when we made it to the bus stop though and we still had a bus to ride back to the resort. We made it back a few minutes before 11:00 pm. Tomorrow we are switching resorts for the last time. Goodbye Saratoga Springs, Hello Grand Floridian!

​

 

[AAshleySEG]

Last Trip Report I did a budget post so we could see how we did in relation to how much I budgeted for our trip. We got a lot of positive feedback on it, so I am going to do the same thing this time, only a tad differently. Instead of doing a budget post at the end of each post, I am going to do one for an entire day once I am finished with it. That way, with it being in a separate post, if someone wants to read it they can, and if not they can just skip over it! ​

​

Our total budget we have saved for this vacation is $3500.00 in the savings account, the day we left we transferred that to checking and kept all of our receipts along the way, we also tallied everything up for each day at the end. Anytime we would have additional cash from other sources we would add that to a vacation envelope and we also always toss all change into a jar and so the change was converted into cash too, we were thinking we would use the cash for anything not budgeted for, souvenirs, snacks, things of that nature, in total we ended up with $578.00 in our cash envelope to take with us! So the totals at the bottom represent how we are doing as far as budgeted vs actual, and then below that, the cash is what we have left of the original $578.00. If you have any questions about how we budgeted for the trip or anything, just let me know!​

​

Monday, June 12, 2017 Budget!​

​

Budgeted Amounts
Breakfast - $30 - EPCOT
Lunch - $50 - EPCOT
Dinner - $50 - EPCOT
Total: $130.00​

​

Actual Spent
Breakfast - Fountainview Starbucks - $17.10
Lunch - Liberty Inn - $29.14
Lunch Part Two - Fish & Chips - $11.71
Dinner - Via Napoli - $60.00
Total: $117.95​

​

Budget Status
$12.05 Under for Today
$143.06 Under Budget Overall ​

($504.15) Remaining In Saved Up Cash for Extras​

 

[Sailormoon2]

Don't you just love walking through empty parks! Also I'm impressed with how well you are doing on your budget, and like even coming under!

 

[rdkeim]

Another fun day! Sorry your lunch wasn't good - can't go wrong with the fish and chips. Your pizza looks amazing! We have an ADR at VN on our first day on our Dec. trip. First visit there wasn't so great so I'm giving it another try. How great walking thru an empty Epcot - glad you didn't miss the last bus!

 

[AAshleySEG]

Don't you just love walking through empty parks! Also I'm impressed with how well you are doing on your budget, and like even coming under!

It is so cool to walk through a park when it is empty like that, we usually aren't there that late at night, I remember back a few years ago we would always make super early breakfast reservations so we could be inside the parks before opening, but being there at night is a totally different experience!

Thanks! We were actually really surprised how well we were doing with the budget while on the trip! We didn't think we would be spending that much less than we planned, but it almost ended up like Disney was cheaper than we thought it was going to be this time, which sounds crazy!!!

 

[AAshleySEG]

Another fun day! Sorry your lunch wasn't good - can't go wrong with the fish and chips. Your pizza looks amazing! We have an ADR at VN on our first day on our Dec. trip. First visit there wasn't so great so I'm giving it another try. How great walking thru an empty Epcot - glad you didn't miss the last bus!

It's alright, we can't always pick winners...haha! I have never eaten anything else there at Liberty Inn though so we don't have anything to compare it to. That might have been why that was the only place with open seating indoors...lol! The fish & chips were great, just what we needed after that lunch so we were thrilled with them at the time. Oh my goodness...that pizza was delicious! See how big it was...we ate the whole thing...we couldn't help ourselves it was so good! I hope your experience there is good, we have only eaten there like 2 other times, the first time was right after it opened and it was great, I don't really remember the second time, but I'll keep my fingers crossed for you that you have a great meal there!! I really think we were right on the cusp of missing the bus, there was literally no one else around until we got out to the bus area and the people out there are like..where are you headed...so I think they called one for us...oops! We just had such a great time chatting to our server. We totally lost track of time, but I feel like there were still other people in the restaurant when we left...so other people had to have gotten out later than we did! I remember one time we went to Teppan Edo and it was like 11:00 pm or something when we got out of there and we still caught a friendship boat...the hours must have been different whatever that time was, but it was still a lot later than this night.

 

[rdkeim]

I think for our first time at Via Napoli we were both tired and the service wasn't good and it was very crowded and noisy. This time around we're going there on our arrival day so I think we'll be in a better frame of mind. I love to hang back after Illuminations and wait till the crowds are mostly gone. It just seems so peaceful and the background music adds to the ambience. Looking forward to your next day!