The Pirate and The Princess Conquer the World: January 2008 Pre-Trip Report - UPDATED 4/14 About This Page:

[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)

[MickeyMAC]

Great start to your trip report. Your plans look great. I love going in January, the crowds are low except for MLK weekend and the weather has not been bad.

[KrisLuvsDisney]

Excellent start on your TR

You both are going to have a wonderful trip

[vfair]

Great start. Sounds like wonderful plans. Don't worry about starting so early - we all need an outlet sometimes.

[Jody]

Sounds fun! Great start on the TR. Vent as much as you like, we all like listening to anything about Disney.

[Lemap760]

Looks like great plans. You're going to have a wonderful time.

[Colexis Mom]

Great start and plans Holly Rose

[bsblady01]

I hope that you and your dh have a magical time at the world

[Starla4436]

Can't wait to read more!

[mcc0313]

Your plans sound great...it should be an amazing belated honeymoon.....and I am sure that the cooler weather will make it even more enjoyable...

Have a teriffic time and looking forward to hearing all the details when you return....

[DyanKJ130]

Great start!! Can't wait to hear more

[HollyRose1313]

Saturday January 12th 2008

We woke up at 4:00am to get us to the airport by 5:00. Luckily, when you know you will be in Disney that day it always makes waking up so much easier (even with the fact that we didn’t go to sleep until midnight).
We always debate before each vacation if we should pay an extra chunk of money and fly out of our small city or drive 2 ½ hours and fly out of Minneapolis and each time we are sooooo happy with our decision to leave from our city. Luckily we have a dear friend who was willing to drive us to the airport at 4:30 in morning so we were dropped off right at the airport door (when it is the wee hours of the morning in January in Duluth Minnesota this is a very welcome luxury).
Our flight didn’t leave until 6:30 but we wanted to get there with plenty of time due to a snafu in our plane tickets (Roger made my plane ticket under my maiden name, which for most people going on their honeymoon wouldn’t be a big deal but since we were married a year and a half ago it became a big deal for us). We checked in at the Northwest counter and they were not able to change the name so we got our tickets and went to find a seat to wait for the security check to open. At 5:30 TSA opened the line and we were first through, luckily they let me on but I had to be searched and patted down and all that which was more than a little embarrassing. But oh well it didn’t last long and we were chatting up a Disney storm while we boarding the plane. If it seems like this is a very long entry for a day that mostly consisted of traveling you would be right…this was the loooooongest day of my life. We flew from Duluth to Minneapolis, had an hour layover, flew from Minneapolis to Detroit, had a 4 hour layover, flew from Detroit to Memphis, had a 2 hour layover, and then from Memphis to Orlando. Boy oh boy was I getting cranky by the time we hit Memphis. Just a few travel tidbits from the day, Detroit has the nicest airport I have ever been in, very new, very very clean. Because of the clean carpet I became one of those people I have always stared at before from behind my Us Weekly; I took out my blanket and just sprawled out on the ground near a window and got only a few minutes of sleep but at least an hour of rest. Now just so you all know this is not something I would do at just any airport (but no judgment to those who do, ok well a little judgment but not much) it is just that the carpet was so fresh and clean it would have been an insult not to lay on it. Now Memphis was another story, I would not have laid on the ground in that airport for all the dole whips in the land.
Ok so eventually we arrive in Orlando and head right to the DME, this was our first time on DME and went perfectly.
We arrived at Pop Century at about 6pm but the exhaustion (and crankiness) from earlier in the day had been replaced with the euphoria that comes from breathing in WDW air. We went and checked in to our room (got our Just Married buttons) and dropped our carry ons off. We had gotten a preferred room and were assigned to the 50’s top floor.
After a quick outfit change we were in line for the bus to Magic Kingdom. This is by far my favorite park, and was open a little later that night so it was perfect for our first night.
Into MK we went and we both knew we immediately needed food. We decided to grab a fastpass for BTMR and then hit up Pecos Bills.
We had not eaten hear before and really had never heard anything about it but it was the first place we saw so we were stopping. We were on the DDP so of course we both wanted to get our full value from the plan; I got the Bacon Double Cheeseburger with fries, a coke, and some type of chocolaty dessert and Roger got the BBQ Pork sandwich with fries and some type of fruity dessert. I don’t remember much about this place except I either loved or hated the fries but because we didn’t bring our camera this first night I don’t have a photo to help me out.
So we “finished” our meal, I don’t know why I got the double cheeseburger since the first thing I did was take a patty off but whatever I guess I was trying to stick it to the man. While we waited for our fastpass we went on POTC and ended up being quite pleased with the updates. I still don’t think they were needed but I really don’t think it took anything away from it either. I did enjoy watching people in front of me freak out before the “water” wall.
Fastpass time, yeah! I don’t know what is wrong with me but I always feel so smug walking through the fastpass line looking at everyone standing there in the regular line, like I know some amazing secret they just can’t figure out, does anyone else feel this way? So we just zipped right down to the ride and boarded the train. In the time we were inside Wishes had started and it had started to downpour, so we went left the inside cave it was like sensory overload with the ride, the fireworks, and the rain but it was very cool and our magical moment of the day. After we were done we promptly bought me a poncho and headed for Monsters Inc. (we usually follow a more efficient schedule for rides but we just wanted to make sure we got a few certain ones in this night) and absolutely loved it! Very neat show, I was worried it would be similar to Stitch but luckily that was not the case. Before we headed back to Pop we decided to do Astro Orbitor, not a good thing to do when it has been raining, we ended up sitting in a big puddle of water and afterwards we really ready to go back to our room and rest up for our full day at the Magic Kingdom.

[wayneava81]

Sounds like a very long day in the airports but it was worth it in the end to be in the MK. More please!

[nconover]

I'm very glad you are sharing your trip with us. Great day thus far, I'm ready for more.

[mickeycrazy]

Great start! That is a long trip, but definitely worth it to end up at WDW! Can't wait for more!