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

Just another little quick update! We went on a weekend trip this past weekend and then instead of driving home toward the then Hurricane, we decided to take refuge in the camper instead of trying to brave the wind and drive it so we are still out of town and I don't have access to the photos and trip journal, but we will be out of town next weekend as well and then I should be back home to get this report finished up! Thanks to everyone for hanging in with me, I know it is taking a while..LOL!! Not too much more to write about, but I still have the Anniversary Day and the last day of the trip to go, so I can't wait to tell you guys all about it! Thanks again for sticking with me on this one!! I should be back in action on the 18th-19th!!
 
Glad to hear you're okay.

You've moved this report really quickly. I've read some that take over a year!
 
Glad to hear you're okay.

You've moved this report really quickly. I've read some that take over a year!

LOL, that is true! I just feel like it is taking me forever...haha! We have been away from home so much, I should have uploaded all of the photos at one time instead of by post, but there were just so many to go through...hehe!
 


Friday, June 16th, 2017 - Happy 10th Anniversary Day!!

Today is our anniversary so we started the day off a little lazy and woke up a little late, well late for us anyway. We got dressed and headed down to Disney Springs for our planned Disney Springs Anniversary Day! We kind of planned the day around being there the majority if not all day long, and it was the first time we have ever tried it! First stop this morning was the Early Bird Special at Flight of Characters.

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This is something that we have wanted to do for a long time but never thought the cost was worth it. With the Early Bird we got to go for half price, so for that, we decided to go ahead and do it! It was really nice to go up and see all around the WDW/Orlando area! So much to see from up here too like Typhoon Lagoon, EPCOT, the MK area resorts, downtown Orlando, and a whole lot more!

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We even took an Anniversary morning selfie together! I know there aren't too many photos of us together in our TRs, well at least the ones where we don't do Photopass, but there are plenty of those in some of the other ones, so if you are interested in seeing them, you can check out the links in the signature. But anyway, you could really see for miles in all directions, it was a nice clear day. The wind was very steady so it was a smooth ride up and then down!

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For a quick breakfast this morning we stopped yet again by Starbucks. Tea and Caramel Frappe, are the known things we generally get for breakfast, but this morning instead of our regular croissants, Jeremy got a chocolate croissant, and I had an egg and cheese. The next planned activity was the Early Bird over at Splitsville Lanes! We have bowled there once before and had a great time, so we were looking forward to going again! We had both forgotten our socks, of course, right! So before we went over that way, we walked over to World of Disney. We had some funds on the rewards card from the Disney Visa, so we found the perfect socks we wanted and they were 2 for $20, so with our DVC discount, the rewards we paid a total of $1.00!

It was already starting to get pretty warm by this time of the day, so we were pretty happy that we had indoor plans at Splitsville! We paid for one hour and were guided upstairs by the manager to the newest lanes after the remodel of the place. This area had just opened a week ago and was great! It is really nice to see this place is doing well because we really like it! We started setting everything up once we made it!

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Oh yeah!! And the socks we decided on getting, we each now have a matching pair of Monorail Socks! They are too awesome, we love them! I still wear them at home now...haha!!

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Part way into our first game we decided it would be better time wise, and cost wise to eat a pizza here at the alley rather than going to Blaze and it was a good decision!! The pizza was delicious!

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After finishing eating and bowling we had bowled 3 games total! We had so much fun, Jeremy wrote the notes for today and he was like "Andrea's second game was great with a 170! I lost all 3 games which was not a surprise" I thought that was funny so I wanted to put his perspective in there!!

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We had a great time there, so if you have never been to Splitsville, for food or fun, we definitely recommend it! Next up on the original agenda was to go over to Port Orleans to rent surrey bikes, so we left Splitsville and went to the car to drop off some stuff, then headed over to the bus stop to wait instead of taking the boat. While we were standing there the heat kept getting worse, so we changed our plans just as the bus was pulling up! Jeremy has always enjoyed straight razor shaves so he wanted to go over to Art of Shaving and see if they had any appointments, but unfortunately they were booked up until later this afternoon near when we had dinner reservations, so that plan got canceled before it even started. Once that had been stricken off the list we were off to the resort for our next idea which was to go to the pool, since every time we tried to go it was raining or lightning actually. So you can guess what happened as soon as we got out of the car and back to the resort...haha!!! That was the next strike off the list, but we were going with the flow today so it wasn't a big deal at all!

One of the great things about how I try and make some plans beforehand is that there is usually an idea or backup of backup plans waiting in the wings and the next one actually did work out! A few months before the vacation I had seen an ad in Walgreens that if you bought 2 or 3 Coppertone sunscreens you would get a free ticket to see Cars 3 from Fandango, so I needed sunscreen anyway which meant that all I had to do was send in the receipt and I was golden! So with my Fandango coupon code all ready to go and today being the opening day of Cars 3, we redeemed our code and bought a second ticket and we headed back to Disney Springs!!

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This was the first time we had experience assigned seating for a movie, our theater here is so small it doesn't need to do it. Cars 3 was so good!! We really enjoyed it a lot. It definitely recaptured the magic of the first one and we can't wait until it comes out on Blu-Ray so we can get it and watch it again at home! Our anniversary dinner was coming up soon so we headed back to the resort to get showered and ready for dinner which tonight was at Boathouse! We were excited to try a new restaurant and after the experience last night, it could hopefully on get better from here.

We made it, checked in, and were seated right away! We were greeted by our server Bryan and by the first interaction we knew it was going to be a fantastic night! Water and bread were brought to the table and within those first 5 minutes it had exceeded Homecomin' by ten fold...maybe more.

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Little did we know at the time that this restaurant was going to move up REALLY far on our favorite restaurants on property list! We each ordered a drink, I think Jeremy had a Kona Longboard maybe, and I wanted to try their Blueberry Lemonade, I think that is what it was and oh my goodness was it delicious!!!! It was one of the best drinks I ave had in a long time!

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We had also ordered Firecracker Shrimp along with our drinks, and it also came our really quick afterwards and we started digging in, I mean we had already started in on those rolls, they were so good!!! I am thinking about them at the moment now once I saw the photo again!

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The shrimp were oh my so good, and they were laying on a bed of like crispy tortilla strips or something and after the sauce had dripped down on them, they were the perfect complement to the shrimp dish, overall 5 stars for this one, it was great! For dinner tonight Jeremy ordered the Crab Stuffed Maine Lobster and I ordered the special which was Alaskan Halibut with Green Beans. Both of these were outstanding, but the halibut...oh that halibut, was phenomenal!!

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We finished every single bite of both dishes and of course tasted each others, because I don't think we could have gone wrong with food selections here! Everything is so fresh and brought it daily so if you ever get to try it out, we hope you do! It was finally time for dessert so we chose the Pineapple Coconut Souffle Bread Pudding, and they even brought it out with a littler congratulations on it for our Anniversary!

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It was just as, if not more delicious than it looks. We enjoyed Boathouse so much, that we changed our reservations for the next night because we wanted to come back here again! One of the highlights of the entire trip, the serving staff was excellent, the food was divine, the atmosphere was great, this is just an all around top notch restaurant and for us highly recommend anyone to try it! Hopefully you will have as good of an experience as we did! We were full from dinner, but it was about time to walk around over to La Nouba to pick up our tickets for the 9:00pm show.

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We had roughly an hour or so until then but the doors opened at 8:15. We sat around outside and listened to the music from House of Blues while we waited. Once the doors opened we walked inside and grabbed a coke from the concession stand then took our seats inside. We were in section 101 which is stage left and Row E. It is the closest I think we have ever been seated for this show, I think this was Jeremy's 3rd time seeing it, and my 6th or so? I can't remember. We really wanted to be able to see La Nouba one last time before it ends at the end of this year, and it was so worth it! If you have never seen it and are going to be there this year, I hope you get a chance to check it out, the last showing is December 31, 2017! After La Nouba our amazing Disney Springs Anniversary Day was complete. We had a really great day, and it is definitely something we are going to remember for a long time!


 
Happy (Late) Anniversary!! Sounds like you guys had the perfect day together!

We've got reservations for Boathouse in 3 weeks and your review definitely has me convinced we are going to love it!
 
Happy (Late) Anniversary!! Sounds like you guys had the perfect day together!

We've got reservations for Boathouse in 3 weeks and your review definitely has me convinced we are going to love it!

Thank you!! We really enjoyed our day! Definitely a different sort of Anniversary day at Disney, but I am really happy with everything we chose to do that day! I hope you guys enjoy Boathouse! I know that all experiences aren't the same, but we had two fantastic back to back nights there with different serving teams and we are dreaming about going back right now soon! I want to go back so much and after looking at the food again, I am jealous that you will be there in 3 weeks!! Have a great time!!
 


What a great way to start your anniversary with the balloon ride!

I love how you two just go with the flow and change plans accordingly. I really wish our trips were longer to do more things like miniature golf, bowling and movies.

Boathouse is on my must try list. That Pineapple Coconut Souffle Bread Pudding looks better than Ohana's!
 
Great update! Sounds like a relaxing yet fun filled day! You have me wondering if I should change our reservation from Homecomin to Boathouse? Hmmm.
 
What a great way to start your anniversary with the balloon ride!

I love how you two just go with the flow and change plans accordingly. I really wish our trips were longer to do more things like miniature golf, bowling and movies.

Boathouse is on my must try list. That Pineapple Coconut Souffle Bread Pudding looks better than Ohana's!

Thanks Annie! We really enjoyed the balloon trip! We try most of the time to go with the flow because at Disney if you don't you are bound to get disappointed some time or other. At least we have sort of learned that over the years. I really feel bad showing you all of this stuff to do outside of the parks because I want you to be able to try it...LOL! Yeah, the food there was fantastic...both nights we went it was superb! We can't wait to go back there again, drooling about it right now!
 
Great update! Sounds like a relaxing yet fun filled day! You have me wondering if I should change our reservation from Homecomin to Boathouse? Hmmm.

It was a great day! Away from a lot of crowds and we just focused on fun things to do together so we really enjoyed it! Might do it more often when we go down to Disney! Yeah, this is what I will say, I don't want to discourage you from going to Homecomin' because there have been tons of awesome reviews and a lot of people really enjoyed it, heck if I would have read a negative review before we went, I still think I would go just to see if it was a one off experience that person had, but I loved Boathouse so much, it makes me sad we didn't try it before. My vote is for Boathouse purely based on our two back to back experiences there, but you could also have a great time at Homecomin too!
 
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!

Friday, June 16, 2017 Budget
Budgeted Amounts
Breakfast - $20 - Quick Service
Characters In Flight Balloon - $20
Bowling at Splitsville Early Bird - $25
Lunch - $30 - Quick Service
Surrey Bike Rental - $50
Dinner - $150 - Boathouse
La Nouba DVC Tickets - $120
Total: $415.00​
Actual Spent
Starbucks Breakfast - $17.36
Characters in Flight - $20.00
Bowling Early Bird - $25.56
Lunch at Splitsville - $28.00
Cars 3 AMC - $11.82 (had 1 free ticket from Fandango)
Dinner at Boathouse - $175.00
La Nouba DVC Tickets - $119.28
Total: $397.02​

CASH $4.50 - Monorail Socks and a Drink (after Chase reward dollars)
Budget Status
$17.98 Under Budget For Today
$317.07 Under Budget Overall :banana:

($338.83) Remaining In Saved Up Cash for Extras
 
Love your last video! I have been watching your state park reviews - I commented on a few. I am really enjoying them, but I would like to see more Andrea! :):):) You guys should come review Indiana State Parks soon -we have great ones! Well...I think so, anyway...we rarely camp at them so I can't say much for that.

I can't believe you guys tied!!! I really thought you had him, Andrea!

I am really hoping Disney does the deal on APs for 2018 like they did for 2017. After our big HI trip, I am ready for some smaller, long weekend type trips and want to do Disney a few times next year if we can.

BTW - MMMMMMMM SPRINKLES!!!!
 

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