Our 30th Anniversary (you don't look like you're old enough to be married 30 years) Trip - COMPLETE!! 11/15 About This Page:

[DMA]

Hi all!
We’ve been back since September 30th and I am finally getting around to formulating my notes into an actual TR. It took me a while to get down to business and it may be a couple days in between entries because I only just finished day 1! But as long as there are at least a few people who are interested, I’ll keep plugging away at it.

Cast:
DH – Jeff (51)
Me – Donna (50)

Travel Dates: September 22nd – 30th 2009
Accommodations: Port Orleans French Quarter

I didn’t do a PTR, but these are our plans in a nutshell…

This was our 6th trip to WDW together. We celebrated our 25th Anniversary in Disneyworld and at the time we said we’ll be back in 2009 for our 30th! We ended up being able to take a trip with our three kids DD(26), DD(23), and DS(20) in January ‘08. We had a wonderful time together but while we were there of course Jeff and I were planning our anniversary trip in the back of our minds… how long can we get away for, where would we stay, what new TS places would we try?

Our Anniversary is in August, but we chose to go in September. We decided we wanted to stay at POFQ this time. We had been there in 1991 when it was just Port Orleans and we really loved it. Since then we’ve done POR (for our 25th anniversary) and ASMu (with the kids). So, it was time for another stay at the French Quarter. We made reservations for 8 nights, and booked our flights so we could take advantage of our first and last days.

We had never been to WDW during F&W so we were excited about being able to take part in that event. I also realized that we would be there during MNSSHP. It took a little more coaxing to convince Jeff that it was worth the money for two 50ish adults to attend a Halloween party. But he eventually was on board. We had also decided that we’d like to do one of the behind the scenes tours this time. After a little research we chose the Keys to the Kingdom Tour. So, there were lots of new and different things to experience this time around!

We had originally booked with a 40% off pin code, but when free-dining was offered we decided to try that out and changed our reservations to include a MYW package with the free dining. DDP was another first for us!

ADRs included Grand Floridian Café, Biergarten, Tusker House breakfast, Yak and Yeti, Kona Café, Olivia’s, Raglan Road, and Le Cellier.

So, now that you know the preliminaries, on to the good stuff!


Next up: WDW here we come!

[chezp]

Great start!

[Colexis Mom]

Great start Donna!

[Lemap760]

Great start.

[DMA]

Tuesday, September 22nd

My Dad picked us up to take us to the airport at 5:30am. We arrived at the airport and went through security without a hitch. Soon we were waiting at the gate. We boarded on time and the flight arrived at MCO ahead of schedule. There was no real line at DME and within ½ hour we were on our way to the resort. We made a quick stop at Saratoga Springs and then on to POFQ. We did not do the online check-in, but there were only 1 or 2 people in line ahead of us, so there was not much of a wait, and check-in went very quickly. We were in our room (1310) by 10:45. I hadn’t requested any particular building, but I was secretly hoping that the scheduling CM would have noticed it was our anniversary and upgraded us to a king and/or water view room. No such luck! We were in building 1, which is quite far from the main building and on the third floor! But we really didn’t care. It was a quiet spot and only a few minutes’ walk from the main building.



Our luggage arrived by Noon and at 12:20 we were on our way to the GF for lunch at the Grand Floridian Café. We got a bus to MK and then took the resort monorail to the GF, arriving about 30 minutes before our 1:25 ADRs. We used the time to wander around and take some pictures of this beautiful resort.







At about 1:10 we checked in for our ADR and were seated immediately. Our waiter was Robert and he was a hoot! Since we hadn’t done DDP before, he gave us a good explanation of how it worked and what we could order. And even though I knew most of what he told us, it was good to have him go over it. Jeff ordered the Grand Floridian Burger and I had the Salmon Salad. Both were delicious, and though I thought of it earlier, I forgot to take pictures once we got our food! Dessert was the highlight. We ordered the dessert sampler which consisted of a key lime tart, cheesecake, tiramisu, and chocolate mousse.



At one point we noticed that the girl who seated us brought us two additional napkins. They were black, and the ones already at our table were white. We had no clue why she brought them out until Robert told us…We both had dark shorts on and the white napkins were leaving lint on our shorts. If we had used the black ones we wouldn’t have had that problem. I’d never heard of that before! I guess because we don’t do fine dining that often!

An aside here…I seem to recall that many people note how much their meal would have cost them without the DDP, but after we signed our receipt we were not given a copy of the one with the actual cost – only one with all zeros. I started jotting the amounts down after some of our meals, but decided I didn’t really care that much. It was free, so I wasn’t going to worry about it!

After paying the bill we headed back to the resort. Boy was it hot! We had hoped the end of September would be a bit cooler, but temps in the 90s were forecast for the entire time we were there. It was time for a nap. We’d gotten up at 4:45am and were planning on going to MNSSHP tonight, so we needed to rest a bit.

Next up: MNSSHP!

[Colexis Mom]

Great update! What a yummy meal! Love the pics!

[Cam22]

Great start! And those desserts look totally !

[chezp]

Those desserts look really

[DMA]

Originally Posted by Cam22

Great start! And those desserts look totally !

Originally Posted by chezp

Those desserts look really

They were delicious! And small enough that we each got a couple bites of each, which was just enough. The little "celebrate" easel in the middle was made of dark and white chocolate, but Jeff ate that. I was pretty stuffed - I think that would have done me in!

[disneydreamer33]

Great start.
The desserts looked delish.
I noticed that too with the receipts. They don't give you the actual cost anymore. I made mental notes of the actual cost before they took it away. We wanted to add up the actual cost to what the DP was. We ended up saving between 400 and 500 dollars.
Can't wait for more.

[OhToodles!]

What a great thing to celebrate!! My in-laws celebrated their 30th anniversary at WDW too - and I hope to someday as well. (For now I'll settle on my 30th birthday next year. )
Those desserts just made me hungry!

[MMMD]

Great pics. Can't wait for more!

[DMA]

September 22 – part 2

We got up and started getting ready for the Halloween party about 4:00. We were dressing as a bride and groom - since we were celebrating our anniversary we decided that would be appropriate. Jeff wore a tuxedo t-shirt, a pair of black shorts and a top hat. I wore a white tiered skirt, a home-made bridal veil and a t-shirt that I transformed into a bodice for the “gown”. We felt a little silly walking to the bus in our costumes because we didn’t see any others dressed up, so we decided to wait until we got to the MK to put on our hat and veil.

We arrived at MK about 5:30 and donned our headpieces. We did the bag check and went through the turnstiles and then stopped for our very first Photopass picture!



When we walked out from under the railroad station, it was so awesome to finally be there! We walked around a bit taking it all in and taking photos of the beautiful Halloween decorations. Then I realized that we hadn’t gotten our trick or treat bags when we came in (how did we miss them??) so we headed back to the entrance and got those. We also picked up a Halloween map of the park. (In hindsight we realized that we should have gotten a regular map as well – the Halloween maps do not have restaurants or attractions labeled). So finally we headed down Main Street. On the way to the hub, the music suddenly got louder and we were ushered to the curb by a nice Photopass photographer who said “I can’t take your picture now; they want us to clear the street for the parade.” OH! That’s why the music was so loud! DUH. It was the Move it! Shake it! Celebrate it! Parade! We got some nice pictures of the parade, followed it to the hub, and then headed over to get our bracelets for MNSSHP. Because we were wearing our Anniversary buttons every CM we passed wished us a Happy Anniversary! Wow! Fantasyland was our first stop and we noticed Pooh and Tigger in their meet and greet area, so we got in line for a picture. It wasn’t 7:00 yet, so they didn’t have their Halloween costumes on, but we didn’t care.



After that we rode The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, It’s a Small World, and then Mickey’s Philharmagic. No lines at all! Nice! We then waited in line to get our picture in front of Cinderella’s coach.



Again, lots of anniversary wishes. In many cases, if the CM had a chance for small talk they would ask us how long we’d been married. When we said 30 years, many would say “Wow, you don’t look old enough to be married 30 years!” That became the mantra for the week and of course it made us feel pretty good!

Then we headed for HM and again no wait. We opted not to get in line for the Photo at the HM because of the long line. In fact the only lines we encountered all night were for photo ops (and food, but I’ll get to that later). Then we came upon the PP photographer taking hitch-hiking ghost pictures, and she didn’t have a very long line at all!



By then it was dark and a little harder to find our way around. It’s been a long time since we were at MK in the dark and not having a park map made it very frustrating. We found one of the trick or treat spots and got in line for some candy. Then we headed to BTMR. What a blast in the dark! After that we rode SM. It had been quite a few years since we’d ridden SM. The last time we were in the world it was down for refurbishment, and the time before that I think we chose to skip it. So, it was a lot of fun this time. After we got off we wanted to get something to eat. The 8:15 parade had started so we had to walk along the path parallel to the sidewalk. I didn’t realize this existed and thought once the parade started we’d be stuck, so it was nice to make our way through behind the crowds. We went back to Fantasyland hoping to eat at Pinocchio Village Haus, but when we got there we found out it was not open during MNSSHP. The sign in front directed us to several other eateries that were open during the party. We decided we would eat at Cosmic Rays, but not having a map, and not realizing it was so close to Fantasyland, we took the LONG way round. We decided to go to Toontown and take the Mad Hatter’s treat party path to Tomorrowland. Well, we got lots of candy, but once we got into Tomorrowland, we had a heck of a time finding Cosmic Rays. After wandering around for 15 minutes, we finally asked a CM who directed us there. When we finally got there, everyone else in the World was in line ahead of us! I really didn’t think the park was that crowded, but I guess everyone decided to eat before getting their spots for Hallowishes. We decided to split a CS meal and got the chicken sandwich, a bottle of water and carrot cake. We finally got our food and found a place to sit. For all the people in line, I must admit there were plenty of empty seats in the dining area. It felt good to sit down and we’d been so busy having fun we hadn’t realized how hungry we were! After our meal we made our way to the bridge from Tomorrowland and staked out a spot for the fireworks. It was a pretty good spot for 15 minutes before show time.



After Hallowishes we went back to Tomorrowland and rode TTA and Buzz Lightyear. Then we made our way to Main Street to pick a spot for the parade. We ended up walking all the way down to the train station and decided to sit up top and watch from there. It was a little wait since it was still 20 minutes to parade time and we were at the end of the route. But at least we had seats! It was a great spot to watch, but not so good for taking pictures. I still have not mastered taking pictures in the dark and with moving subjects most of my pictures turned out blurry. I did get a good video of the headless horseman, though.

After the parade we went to Adventureland and rode POC. On the way we noticed character meet & greets with Aladdin/Jasmine and Hook/Mr. Smee, but the lines were pretty long. We decided there would be other opportunities. POC is always a great ride, and again it was as if we were the only ones around! Oh, except for the Flintstones sitting in front of us! There they were - Fred, Wilma and Pebbles - their costumes were awesome! On our way out of the park we stopped at Main Street Ice Cream shop and used 2 snack credits for ice cream cones. YUM! Then we made our way to the buses and back to the resort to fall into bed! But not before viewing our pictures from the day and filling in the blanks in our passporter book...

The weather today was…hot and muggy
The best thing today was…no lines for the attractions
The funniest thing today was…all the costumes at MNSSHP, in particular, the Flintstone family
Today we tried…The Grand Floridian Café
And the result was…delicious! Especially the dessert platter
The most magical moment today was…Hallowishes


Next up: Our first full day!

[KMB733]

Looks like your trip is off to a great start!

[DMA]

I was playing around with the sizing on my pictures and decided to try them out by posting a few additional pics from MK and MNSSHP.











I think I'll stick to this larger size, although some of them are a bit blurry. Maybe just a coincidence that the additional ones I chose were not that clear!