The next morning after checking out, we had to meet up with my parents at MGM to go to the Brown Derby to pay for the Dining with an Imagineer that we had gotten for them as their gift. We still had a little time before meeting them, so we decided to head to Rockn Rollercoaster for one last ride. The line wasnt too bad and by that time it was almost time to meet my parents.
We started walking down that street talking about our MGM shoot there a few days earlier and when I saw the McDonalds fry cart I was starving and went up to get us a fry to split while Kris ran to the restroom. The girl at the window smiled at me and asked how long we had been married, I told her 4 days and she said to take the fries as a gift. I was so excited and thanked her before walking away. Even though things like the cookie and fries were such little things it still added to the excitement of Disney.
I then called my mom to see if they were at Brown Derby yet and we walked over to meet them. We walked in together and I checked in making sure that they would take care of the payment in advance since we had bought it as a gift. My mom was so excited for the lunch since it is something that she has wanted to do for a very long time. I was so glad that they liked their gift so much.
Here are some photos of their lunch. They got a personalized platter that was signed by the Imagineer. He told them lots of great stories including the fact that the walk in front of the Chinese Theater with Judy Garlands name was made from imprints of the real ruby slippers!
While they were enjoying their lunch Kris and I headed towards Sci-Fi Dine-In where my family was scheduled to eat lunch. Since we were heading to Sarasota this would be our last chance to say good-bye to several of them. We had a little extra time, so as we were walking past the Great Movie Ride Kris suggested that we take some time to ride it.
As we started to walk into the main waiting area with the movie screen I spotted the Dream Squad! I was so excited, they were handing out YOMD ears and we each got a pair!
Kris has on a little scary look here:
My favorite section of the ride:
Kris isnt into wearing the ears too much, but he downed the YOMD ones for a few shots. After the ride I told him that we had to pose in front of the Sorcerer Mickey Hat with them on too!
On the way out, we headed to Guest Relations to see what could be done with the one day pass that we had bought Kris mom that she didnt want to use. Thankfully since it was a one day they told us that it would never expire and they gave us some type of receipt that we needed to keep since the ticket had originally been in her name. There are some great people in guest relations there and we ended up chatting with them for a while before heading out.
While we were waiting for them to fixed the pass, I played around taking some pictures of our ears.
On our way out of the park; our dreams had really came true on this trip!
One last shot on the tram to the parking lot:
After leaving MGM we headed to Downtown Disney because we had a couple of things to pick up off of our honeymoon registry. Some fellow Disney brides had surprised us by getting the Disney cookbook and Mickey and Minnie wedding frame for us. I was so excited! The first stop after arriving at Downtown Disney was the scrapbooking store. I stocked up on a few things that I knew they wouldnt have at the World of Disney (where I could get the annual pass discount) and we mailed our postcards there too in order to get the special postmark. Our presents:
We then headed into the Christmas shop where I picked up the ornament that we had personalized earlier in the week. My family has one artist Rosann that has done our ornaments there for years and we always request her work. I had to control myself from buying anymore and then we headed to the kitchen store. While I was picking up our cookbook and a few items for our Mickey kitchen at home Kris ran into my maid of honors parents who were outside eating at Earl of Sandwich. We sat down and talked to them a few minutes since they were leaving for California later that afternoon.
After a few minutes of visiting we headed towards the World of Disney. Along the way, I stopped at the pin station and picked up a few more things to put on a cork frame that I had bought at Target. I picked up a Leap Day special edition with Tinkerbell and another wedding pin. Heres a shot of the frame that has all the pins from our trip. My mom had a cork frame like this that she bought years ago at DTD, so I was excited when I found them at Target earlier this year. Ill take a picture of some of these things to post soon.
Once at World of Disney we stocked up on lots of goodies. I bought a scrapbook, scrapbook kit, several picture frames, and some of my favorite foods including some Mickey and Minnie pasta for our housewarming party at our condo (which we still havent had yet!)
I could tell Kris was starting to get bored after almost 2 hours of shopping, but I was finally done. We headed out of the World for what we thought was the end of our Disney trip, but little did we know we would be back very soon!
We took the freeway south where we stopped in Lakeland, so I could get some shots of the Tigers stadium for the scrapbook. None of the guys had taken pictures when they came to the game the weekend before. Plus, Kris wanted to see if their team shot was open. Unfortunately, the shop was closed, but I did get some pictures of the stadium.
We then got back on the freeway and headed towards Tampa. Two of my friends (theyre actually more like my brothers) had left Orlando earlier that week and headed over to Tampa to stay with one of their friends for a few days. Theyre brothers and the oldest who is my age was the one who had came back from New Zealand just in time for my wedding.
Halfway there it started pouring down rain and it didnt stop for the rest of the night. It was nice driving through Tampa because I had never been there before, but we hit a ton of Friday night traffic. Finally, after reaching her house we rain inside getting drenched in the process. Our friends had went to see Cirque du Soleil La Nouba at DTD on Tuesday night, so they showed us the program and talked to us about the show. We shared Disney stories from the past week while enjoying fresh chocolate chip cookies that their friend had just backed. After enjoying our pre-dinner dessert we headed out for dinner.
We went to a Japanese steakhouse not too far from her place and the food was pretty good.
After getting back from the restaurant Kris and I decided to head out since we still had about 1 hour drive. Plus, my friends were flying out in the morning, so they were going to head to bed early.
We arrived at our hotel in Sarasota pretty late, around 10:30 or 11 p.m. I had some rewards nights through La Quinta, so the room was going to be free which was a bonus. This was one of the nicer La Quintas that Ive ever stayed at and was really surprised by how big our room was there.
After getting in the room I still had one last piece of wedding cake that Kris and I shared while we were looking through brochures trying to decide what we wanted to do the next day.
Up next
what are we doing here and will we be lucky enough to get some extra time at WDW?
Thanks for keeping up with me!Wow, I just realized that your 1st anniversary is in less than 6 months!!! Holy cow; where has the time gone???
It's amazing how quickly time has passed since that day. I actually think this year has flown by faster than last year while we were doing the planning!
) I miss Dreamfinder so much and love to hear the original song that was played in the earlier version of the ride. I had to search all over to find the song online to have Stan include in the video for a portion of the DP coverage. It has been pretty tough to keep up with all the different names of the ride through the years 
Maybe next time...I always say that! 
You look like you had a blast with your family. Some of our family and friends stayed for a few days too and we had a great time with them! Gosh...I sure do wonder what happened with the Sarasota trip? I wonder if you might have run into anyone by accident when things didn't turn out as planned....hmmmmm. 
I can't wait to hear all about it!
We had bought it as a gift for my parents and didn't have the budget to actually go ourselves too. We're hoping to do it on our trip next year for our anniversary 
