[HollyRose1313]

The Pirate and The Princess Conquer the World: January 2008 Pre-Trip Report

Ok so I know it is a little early but I am driving myself crazy with anticipation and I need some outlet for my Disney fever (I have been satisfying my fever by doing a lot of shopping at disney.com but dh said I have to stop or we won’t have money left for the trip), so almost three months before we leave here is my pre-trip report.

The Party:
The Pirate: aka Jolly Roger aka Roger
My Dh who is 24 and going to school full time (so he can get a really good job so I can be a stay at home mom when we have children and also so we can be DVC members…that would be just amazing) and works two waiter jobs (so we can go on this trip to Disney). Roger has been to Disney five times and fully encourages my vacation planning obsession. His favorite ride in POTC and his favorite park is EPCOT (he is a bit of a foodie, which I didn’t think was possibly considering he is from Wisconsin… but it works for me).

The Princess: aka Holly Rose aka Me!
I will be 25 by the time we go on our trip. I work full time as the manager of a scrapbook store. I love my job but I am very excited to have a nice long break from it for our trip. I have been to Disney once before (ok I have really been there twice but I don’t count the trip from when I was 12 and went with my friends family, this is no lie but other than the water parks the only things we did during our four day stay were Transit Authority, Beauty and the Beast, and Muppet Vision 3-D…so tragic) shortly after we got engaged. It was the most magical time ever and it really segued my obsession from Disney movies to Disney parks. I, like everyone on here (and like everyone in their right mind), have our trip planned out to a T. My favorite ride is Big Thunder Mountain and my favorite park is the Magic Kingdom.

Our Journey:
We will be leaving Duluth MN (average January temperature is about 9 degrees F) on January 12 and after a nice little flight (complete with a complementary miniature can of soda) we will be in Orlando FL at 11:30 am (should be about 60 degrees warming than it was when we left home). We will be staying until January 20th.

Our Lodging:
We will be staying at Pop Century in a preferred room from the 12th-17th and at Animal Kingdom Lodge in a Savannah view room from the 17th until the 20th. Neither of us have stayed at a value or a luxury resort before so it will be two new experiences for us.

Our Plans:
This is our belated honeymoon, I didn’t have any vacation time last year after our wedding, so I will be trying to squeeze as many perks out that as we can.
This will be our first time using the DME (they started it about two weeks after our last trip) and it will be our first time using the DDP.
We have are ADR’s and this is what we have (all the restaurants we are doing are new to me, Rog did a few of these with his family back in the day):

12th: Dinner at San Angel Inn and then watching Illuminations. It is my first time to see Illuminations, so I am very excited! I do not handle heat and sun very well at all so last time we went in April I didn’t get to see any nighttime shows because I had headaches. I am hoping the cooler temperatures will help with that.
13th: A full day at the Magic Kingdom(!!!!) with dinner at Liberty Tree Tavern. I am such a sucker for Thanksgiving food so I will definitely be wearing my stretchie pants to this meal. I am also so excited because I have never met Minnie Mouse before!
14th: My first time ever to Animal Kingdom and then a late dinner at 1900 Park Fare. I am glad that we ran out of time to go here on our last trip because this will be a whole new Disney experience for me!
15th: We are spending the day at Epcot with a very early dinner at Le Cellier. After what I anticipate being an amazing meal we will be heading to Downtown Disney for shopping and then to Pleasure Island to hit up the Adventure Club. I have no idea what to expect there, everything about it sounds really odd, so naturally I am highly intrigued.
16th: This will be our only day at MGM. We are not thrill ride people at all (ok short tangent here, last trip it took me 2 days to convince DH to go on BARNSTORMER! I kept pointing out three year olds coming off ride still alive and not crying to finally get him to go. As we are in the cart going up the ramp he turns to me panic stricken and says “This is a huge hill, this was NOT a good idea!” The look on his face when we got to the top and he saw the very slight decent we would be taking was so priceless, I would say a little like Dorothy when she sees OZ behind the curtain mixed with the face of a guy who knows he is going to hear about this one for a looong time. Needless to say it took no convincing to get him to go on BTMRR with me. Anyways…) There just isn’t much at MGM for us to do so we will just be doing one day. We are eating to Sci Fi and I can’t wait to see Fantasmic!
16th: Moving on up! We are waking up and checking out of Pop and bringing our luggage to AKL! (I can’t even imagine looking out of our hotel window and seeing a giraffe, this is my dream resort to stay at) As long as weather is good (by good I would say anything in the 60’s or above is swimming weather in Minnesota) we will be going to Typhoon Lagoon for the day. Then we will head back to our deluxe apartment in the sky. Shower and change and we then have dinner at Boma and just enjoy the resort for the rest of the night.
17th: Back to Animal Kingdom in the morning, WCC for lunch, and then more time at the Magic Kingdom!
18th: Our last full day (it makes me sad just typing that) we have a full day of Epcot with dinner at Biergarten. No one ever pronounces our German last name correctly so I am hoping the host at Biergarten does me proud.
19th: We will hit up our faves at Magic Kingdom before we have to be at the airport at 5:00pm and then I can come home and scrapbook our trip!

Looking at the MK schedule it doesn’t look the the P&PP will be going on while we are there but if it does we will definitely be in attendance.

Ok so in a nut shell (ok a very, very , very big nut shell) that is our honeymoon, thanks for looking!
Hmmm not really sure how to to put in the thread (I will figure it out before my trip report) but here are photos of the Pirate (looking more Prince Charming), the Princess (looking like a total princess), and our last time a Disney with my favorite character we saw (not my favorite according to movies and everything but I just thought Pinoc was the cutest thing ever)