Friday 10 June 2016

Unbirthday Adventures at the Big D - aka Lauren & Angela do Disney

You've just gotta have a Main Street USA photo done.
As you saw from the last post that Angie wrote on May 16th: we went to Disney together last month! This trip was a super big deal for both of us, several years in the making as she mentioned. Angie's life long dream has always been to go to Disney and I knew that that was a thing that I could make happen for her. So my Mum and I set out to pull it off and we succeeded. We decided on this year for it so that it could be a joint Unbirthday celebration for Angie and I for our BFD 30th and 40th birthdays which are only 11 days apart in January. We chose to go in May instead of January for two main reasons: better weather and it being easier to get time off work in May.

Angie flew from the UK to Canada on May 17, and then on May 18 we started our two and a half day road trip to Orlando, we decided on a road trip because it was Angie's first time in the US period. Our route took us through New York, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia on the first day. West Virginia is all up in the mountains and as the day went on we ended up surrounded by more and more clouds. The effect was magnified the next day by the awful weather as we made our way through the rest of West Virginia, into Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and finally into Florida where we spent the second night in Jacksonville. We were at Disney from May 20-27 when we started the two and a half day drive back to my house (the only change in the route is that we had to cross into Ohio on the second night for the hotel because finding one in Pennsylvania on Memorial Day weekend didn't work out for us), and then Angie flew out on May 30 and arrived back in the UK on May 31. We stayed on Disney property at a non-Disney resort called Wyndham Bonnet Creek, which is located near enough to Disney's Hollywood Studios park that we were able to watch the Star Wars fireworks display they have there from our patio.
Mad women on a motorbike!

Angie and I both being HUGE Potterheads we took one day off from Disney to head over to Universal Studios and visit the Wizarding World of Harry Potter which was absolutely fantastic! I've always said I wouldn't even think of going to the Wizarding World of HP (WWHP from here on out so I don't have to keep retyping it) without Angie so I made good on that. While we were at Disney and WWHP a good time was had by all three of us (my lovely Mum came with us) and we did all sorts of fun things. On our first full day at Disney, the 21st, we started the day off right by having breakfast with Mickey, Minnie, Donald, Goofy, and Pluto at Chef Mickey's. Because really what better way is there to start a trip at Disney than having breakfast with the Mouse himself?

After breakfast it was off to Magic Kingdom again (we'd popped in the night before for the parade, fireworks and dinner), where we took that first photo you see up there. We took A LOT of photos, according to Angie's facebook album, at least 429. We decided to shell out for the Memory Maker Package (about $150USD) so that we could have digital copies of all of the professional Disney Photo Pass photos. The second day, Sunday May 22, Angie and I headed to Disney's Typhoon Lagoon water park while my mum relaxed at the resort. We spent most of the day mucking about in the wave pool there, and ended up getting horrible sunburns even though we'd reapplied out sunscreen, we were the lobster queens. My sunburn even extended into my scalp so I had to wear my baseball cap the rest of the trip instead of my awesome Maleficent Mickey ears that I picked up on the 21st. The 23rd was the day that we went to the WWHP where Angie and I's geeking out increased exponentially. We bought wands (I got Sirius's and Angie got Draco's), and Wheezes's products (shirts & candy), and chocolate frogs among other things; we rode the Hogwarts Express twice because the interactive trip is different in each direction. We weren't brave enough to do the dragon roller coaster there but we did the other 3 rides, the Gringotts one was definitely my favourite.

The faces of fear ladies & gents - the Dark Side had no cookies...
The 24th found us at EPCOT where I geeked out over Figment before we took a trip around the World Showcase, and then we tried to ride Test Track but got absolutely fed up of waiting in the line after the ride got stopped due to technical difficulties so we decided to go back to Magic Kingdom again so we could ride Space Mountain a second time (Space Mountain is my Mum's favourite ride and one of my favourites at Magic Kingdom.). On the 25th we headed to Hollywood Studios the home of all things Star Wars related at Walt Disney World. We rode Star Tours twice because we had read/heard that there were like 50 different possible tours, and our second tour ended up being better than our first. We also decided to go and meet Kylo Ren which was a horrible idea because OMG he was so intimidating!!! He was probably laughing at us behind his mask.

Our last day at Disney was on the 26th and it was a full day, we spent most of the day at Animal Kingdom where we all got super soaked riding the Kali River Rapids and where I made the mistake of taking my poor Mum and poor Angie on a roller coaster that they both absolutely hated (Primeval Whirl). Animal Kingdom has an old school carnival games area where you can win stuffed animals (dinosaurs and such) so I forked out $20 to get the three of us 7 tickets. I won both the games we played, I won a sea horse plushie for my dog and a purple dinosaur that I gave to Angie because purple is her favourite colour. We left at around 4-4:30 because we had an 8:00pm dinner reservation for the Hoop-de Doo Musical Revue and we wanted to relax first. It's a good thing we left the park when we did because as we were relaxing I decided to read the reservation confirmation again and noticed that we would have to pick up our tickets at the box office first an hour prior to the show AND that from the parking lot at the resort there was a 20 minute bus ride to the back of the resort property where the box office and show were located. I noticed that at 6:30 so the minute I noticed that we all kicked into high gear and got ready super fast. It was a fun show to end our time in Disney on.

We'd already started planning our next trip by the time Angie flew home.

Lauren

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