10th Anniversary DVC Christmas Trip Report

The pizza was really delish! I recommend it as both a tasty meal and a bargain meal. Four meals for $31!! Beat that, any-other-restaurant-in-Disney! (Ok, Earl of Sandwich actually still wins and there's no tip at EoS, but this is close!)

DAY 10: December 9

Our last full day in Disney , but to combat the vacation's-almost-over blues, I had booked our last ADR for this morning and it was one that I was VERY excited about--Breakfast at 1900 Park Fare! Originally our plan had been to do rope drop at Magic Kingdom and take advantage of early morning touring, but I gave Benn the option of sleeping in and he was all about it, so our 11:15 ADR was the first item on the agenda.

Since we had picked up the two gingerbread pins from Boardwalk and Beach Club, we left a little early and took the mini-bus to the Contemporary to get their Gingerbread pin. The had some really cute treats for sale by their gingerbread tree, including a cupcake that contained a hidden mickey regardless of which direction you sliced it. It was pretty cool. THey must have used some sort of mold with radial symmetry that had a Mickey shaped cross section and then added the contracting colored batter to fill the cupcake.

After obtaining pin #3 of 4 and getting instructions for how to navigate via mini-bus to TTC (which seemed to be more difficult than necessary, but we weren't sure about the "legality" of leaving the car parked at the Contemporary all day), we moved the car and boarded the monorail for GF. Three gingerbread pins down, 1 to go, our first Grand FLoridian destination was the Gingerbread House--where they had sold out of the gingerbread pin--NNOOOOOOO!!!! What we didn't know at the time was that this was actually the largest edition size of all the LE Gingerbread pins, but it was the 15th anniversary of the GF Gingerbread House AND it featured Remy, so it was a perfect storm of demand exceeding supply. We checked all of the other shops at GF just to make sure there wasn't another bag tucked away somewhere. The cast members did say that it was possible that they hadn't received the whole shipment, so they advised us to check back. Later in on our trip. hmmm. helpful. Fortunately, we had a friend from home (sort of--we went to college together and she lives in Baltimore. Close enough that I was willing to drive to her house to buy the pin from her) who was arriving that day. So we asked her to check for the pin for us before she left, but alas, no new shipment arrived. LUCKILY, thanks to the magic of WDWFGU, ZapperZ just happens to have picked up a GF Gingerbread pin purely for trading purposes and I happened to have had a super cute Captain's Choice LE Donald Duck that he was willing to trade for. So, we mailed out pins this morning and soon, thanks to Zz, my 2013 gingerbread collection will be complete!!

Ok, where were we? Oh yes, 1900 Park Fare. I feel like decor-wise that the grandeur of Grand Floridian does not extend into this restaurant. There's nothing wrong with it and I liked the overall experience very much and I would eat here again (and again and again and again), but it's just an observation that the restaurant seems slightly shabbier than the Resort as a whole. Apparently we were one of the last tables seated because the restaurant was very crowded when we first sat down, but it was nearly empty by the time we left. The buffet was amazing for breakfast (well, we were kind of using it as lunch). The strawberry soup is one of the most delicious things I've ever tasted and dipping mickey waffles into the soup is just...mouthwatering. I also had some delicious smoked salmon with a splash of the lobster sauce from the lobster eggs benedict. I think I also had some creamed chipped beef or sausage gravy or something that was pretty good. The strawberry soup was so amazingly fabulous that I can barely remember the other food. Of course they had other favorites like eggs, bacon, fruit, and a create your own omelet station, all of which were lovely, but oh the soup...ok I'll stop. I felt like our character interactions and our meal were at a little bit of a rushed pace. I was trying to savor the food and the character moments and it was all flying by so quickly. I would not do a Create-an-omelet here again because it was difficult to time this station with when the characters would be at our table was very difficult and you couldn't exactly walk away from your omelet. We saw Tigger and Pooh first which was nice and we got a picture, but they were not who I was there to see! Next was Mary Poppins--getting better. Then Alice--much better! Mary Poppins and Alice both stayed in character very nicely, but we had very little time to actually visit with them. The Mad Hatter accidentally missed us the first time, but a very helpful cast member who was managing the breakfast rounded him up and brought him back. He was very good, but once again, pretty fast. This was the most important interaction for me because I had seen Alice and the White Rabbit at MK earlier in the week (Alice at 1900 Park Fare was considerably better), but I had never interacted with the Mad Hatter before. The only other character meal that we had done was Garden Grill and I felt like the characters there spent a lot more time interacting with us (and that the design of the restaurant made it easier for them to do so). Also, having a buffet at a character meal was a more difficult thing to manage than I had anticipated. Still, I would definitely do it again--even just to get some strawberry soup! Seriously, does anyone know where else I can get this stuff? Do they sell it in any other restaurants? Do they sell it in a jar? I need like 5 gallons.

Our fast passes for the day were for MK and we had found out the previous day that our friend, Beth, had arrived the previous night and was going to be at MK today also. So, after breakfast, we boarded the monorail and make our way to MK. We started on Pirates for about the 5th time for the week--can't get enough of that ride! There's something about the timing and lighting on the waterfall that fakes me out every time. My memory says, "oh the waterfall is just a quick little dip," but every time it lasts just slightly longer than I expect and I momentarily scream in my head, "oh my god! they changed the ride to a big drop!" immediately followed by, "oh. no they didn't. of course. how could they have done that so quickly."

We had received a phone call the previous evening that there was some sort of DVC holiday party at EPCOT from 3-5, so since we had received a text from Beth saying that she would be delayed because her dad had made Le Cellier reservations that she didn't know about, we decided to revise our plans and all meet up for what turned out to be the DVC Merry Mixer.

I'm usually not a fan of Jungle Cruise (in case you haven't read my previous posts, I'm super ophidiophobic and there the plastic reptile at the beginning and the whole cave thing at the end. *shudder*), but I really wanted to see it re-themed as Jingle Cruise. Actually, I really like the bad jokes and I would ride this multiple times per trip if it were not for the reptiles. SO anyway, I know where all the minefields are for me, so I just close my eyes on the parts that make me start freaking out. I thought the re-theming and the Christmas jokes were super cute! I hope that this will be a trend that continues for other WDW attractions. I feel like they were able to work this holiday makeover in such a way that it was fresh for old friends without losing any of it's regular charm for first-time guests.

While we were talking with Beth about meeting up, I scrolled though facebook and also saw that my friend Val who I did gymnastics with as a kid and coached with briefly had taken my advice and brought her family to WDW for Christmas and they were in MK for the day, too!! By that point, they were across the park from us and we needed to start working our way toward the monorail to get over to the DVC merry mixer.

So monorail+monorail = EPCOT. We walked back to WS between Canada and UK to get in line. THe line was longish, but it moved really fact once the doors opened. It was VERY cool to be escorted to the secret party tent backstage. I wish the lighting had been a little brighter and the music a little softer, but I'm not much of a party person, so for others, it was probably perfectly fine. Originally, I got in line for merchandise, but I really just wanted to look at the pins, which I couldn't really see well from outside the queue area. I was in line for like 5 minutes and then I gave up because it was moving really slow and I had already bought two MVMCP pins, three gingerbread pins, and a not-pandora charm to Benn's...um...German pretzel? So I felt bad buying anything. So while we waited for Beth to finish at Le Cellier, we got in line for a picture with Christmas Minnie and Mickey. About 10 minutes later, Beth, her dad, and her grandpa joined the same line. We got through and used our treat vouchers to grab some cider and cookies and waited for Beth's family to finish. She's actually the one that got us thinking about buying DVC, so it was cool that our park meet-up ended up being the mixer. We picked up our super cute "free" Christmas ornament and we all walked back to the front of the park together. Beth's family was staying at EPCOT for a bit, but we still had FP+ at MK for later and we hadn't yet seen the castle lighting show, so we hopped the monorail back to MK.

It was nearly time for castle lighting, so once we found a spot on the Main Street side of the hub to wait out Move It, Shake It, Celebrate It, I texted Val to find out where they were. Turns out they were at the front of the hub. So we watched the castle lighting and worked out way through the crowd to find Val and her family so we could visit a bit. They only had one day left before they were surprising the kids with a limo to Port Canaveral to get on a Disney Cruise! It was really cool to see them having such a great time on their first Disney trip!!

It was almost time for our FP+ to meet Rapunzel, which Benn had just been dying to do (seriously. Rapunzel is his favorite princess.) So we met Rapunzel and Snow White and had very nice and very personal interactions with both. The sets for Princess Fairytale Hall and very nice. Originally, I was disappointed that this wasn't going to be a ride or show, but I think they did a very nice job with this meet & greet. Next we opted for another viewing of Mickey's Philharmagic. I love that show and I could watch it over and over and over. Next stop was Big Thunder Mountain to use our last FP+ for the day. We had dinner at Pecos Bills, where I thought we might be able to get a limited view of Main Street Electrical Parade, but that didn't really work. No biggie. We had already seen it earlier in the week and our main objective was to eat tasty dinner: mission accomplished. We strolled back through Liberty Square and stopped to watch Wishes. We really had no intention of try to see Celebrate the Magic again since we had gotten such a great view on Saturday night, but as we neared the hub, we noticed that each time we thought we were as close to the castle as we could get, another spot would open up. We ended up in the very front section directly in front of the castle. Getting to see this show from so close was just an amazing way to spend out last night in WDW. After it was over, we boarded the ferry to TTC to retrieve the mini-bus and drive back to Saratoga to pack

Luckily our flight wasn't scheduled to leave until 8:10pm the next night, so we still had almost a whole day left!

Preview	Attachment	Size
	Hidden Mickey cupcake	3.94 MB
	<3 Alice	4.36 MB
	The man is mad, you know	4.1 MB
	Jingle Cruise	4.26 MB
	DVC Merry Mixer	2.19 MB
	Benn with his new girlfriend	867.65 KB
	Castle Projection Show - Frozen tag	1.61 MB

We've arrived at the day that I've been simultaneously looking forward to (I'll have completed my trip report!! I like things that are complete!) and dreading (i don't get to write any more trip report and relive Disney magic ( )

DAY 11: December 10

Just because it's the last day, don't let it be the worst day!! It had snowed at home overnight, so we were kind of secretly hoping that our flight would be canceled and we'd have to stay, but no such luck. I suppose it was just as well. We were missing the kitties terribly!

Originally, we were planning to do Hollywood Studios all day, but we decided the night before that we weren't really feeling like we wanted that to be our last day, we switched our FP+ selections to MK and just went to HS for rope drop. Of course Toy Story was first and as had been customary throughout our trip, I beat Benn. This is a pretty major feat because Benn is a very experienced video gamer and despite the fact that I am a child of the 80's (you know, when Nintendo was king?), the only thing I ever played was an old baseline Atari until I went to college and discovered the Sega Dreamcast. SO to say that I come into video games with a slight disadvantage versus my peers is a bit on an understatement. That I can actually win at TSM is a major victory! We took one more ride on Star Tours before bidding Hollywood Studios goodbye for this trip.

We wanted one more sandwich from "The Earl" and a quick stop at the Christmas store and Once Upon a Toy where I designed the ultimate Disney Potato Head. Benn saw Stormtrooper t-shirt that said "pew pew" on it that he really wanted, but alas, it's only available in child sizes. I tried to buy a Benn-sized t-shirt and an iron-on transfer and do it at home for him for Christmas, but my shirt was a FAIL. They didn't have the right color shirt in the right size at the craft store, but I was willing to compromise color for fit. But then, I neglected the fact that when I ironed on the image, it would be a mirror image of what was printed on the sheet. Benn's shirt says "wep wep". #epicfail

We spent quite a bit of time browsing the beautiful Christmas ornaments and I spent a lot of time arguing with myself about whether or not I should buy a bunch of them. I particularly liked the very detailed character ear hats (my problem is always that I love ALL of the characters, so I want the complete set) and the character shoes. I have the princess and villain shoe pins, so I thought that these would make a lovely addition to our tree. I decided to forgo the purchase. I'm just getting started with my new real estate career, so I am being much more judicious than usual about luxury purchases. At $17-24 each, this was going to be an expensive proposition! Well, I kept thinking about them, so after we came home, I decided to check ebay and I found someone selling 12 of the hats--and all characters that were on my to-buy list (especially Alice, Rapunzel, Queen of Hearts, Mary Poppins, and Sleeping Beauty). The whole set was only $125 with free shipping!! That's only $10.42 each!! So, with some prodding from Benn, I jumped at the chance to add them to our collection.

Our final gift purchase was some "cat pot" for the kitties from the spices/kitchen stuff store. They usually don't care much for catnip, but it smelled pretty strong, so we thought, "why not?" They absolutely love it!! Best $4 I ever spent on them!

We were of course driving the mini-bus today since we had to leave for the airport and part of the draw of renting our little buddy was that we did not have to plan to return to the resort before going to the airport. For our 8:10 flight, I figured that we needed to leave TTC by 5:00. Just in case the gingerbread pin had magically arrived at GF overnight, we took the resorts monorail. We checked every shop to no avail. We walked around GF a little bit more since we had rushed over to MK the day before. I hadn't spent much time here prior to this trip and I had never taken notice to the tile patterns before. If you're never spent time just wandering around GF, check it out sometime. There are a ton of characters hidden in the tiles! We walked out the back of the main building toward Narcoossee's and noticed that the boat dock was right in front of us, so we hopped on the MK boat and got a bonus water tour of the Polynesian. We were the boat's sole occupants and it felt like a private charter was taking us to MK. Very cool.

Once in MK, we used a FP+ to ride Haunted Mansion and visited the gift shop (Yankee Trader? Village Trader? something like that) and bought a new Mickey toothbrush holder and cup for the bathroom. We picked up the previous set at Target and they were really poor quality and I really didn't like them, so stumbling onto these was a happy accident. By the way, does anyone know of any place that sells a nice quality Disney shower curtain? The one we have now is red yellow and black mickey heads, but our bathroom is blue and white. That the shower curtain was Disney was WAY more important than whether or not it matched the bathroom.

We did Pirates on standby and "happened" to stumble right over to the parade route to catch our last ever opportunity to see the Celebrate a Dream Come True Parade. I like this parade, but I'm really psyched about seeing the new Festival of Fantasy parade and I'm really hoping that it is running by our April trip. By the time the parade finished, we had a few minutes left to get to our Big Thunder Mountain FP+. I love this ride so much and I just found out today that it's going to be closed on the days that we are planning to be at MK in April. Get this: We're going April 5-9. Our schedule is largely dictated by accommodations that we need to make so that dad can walk the minimum amount required, the fact that I want to be in the Magic Kingdom ON my birthday, and the fact that my parents elected not to get a park hopper. Our MK days are April 7 and 8. BTMR is closed April 7-9. What are the chances that this would happen on such a short closure? Especially since it was closed for out entire trip in April 2012 and down 7 out of 8 times I tried to ride in August 2012. So I think that MK is open late the night that we arrive and my dad turns into a pumpkin around 9:00, so I'm going to hop over to MK just to ride Big Thunder on our arrival day. (There's a little pre-trip preview!)

We stopped by Tinker Bell's Treasures (I think that's what it's called--the shop in Fantasyland that's on the left if you walk straight through the castle) for some pixie dust so that just in case I need to help the plane fly home safely, I would be prepared. For our last FP+, we completed our Peter Pan's Flight "bookend" which we are going to try to make a magic kingdom tradition. We strolled around on Main Street for a bit and stopped for an ice cream at Edy's. I love that the kid's cone comes with mouse ears and I remembered to take a picture of this one before I dove into it! On our way down Main Street, we ran into Beth again and chatted for a few minutes before taking one last ferryboat ride back to TTC. We then took the LONGEST drive ever to the airport.

I was very stressed out about the toll thing because when I was driving the rental car for my work thing in Orlando in June, I came across a toll booth one night that was unattended and had no credit card thing, so I had no choice but to continue on even though I had not paid the toll. There was no barricade, so the only thing that could happen is that I could receive a ticket in the mail. I never did, but the rental company (Dollar) had made me very paranoid because they assess a $25 charge for any toll that you run and they were trying to sell me the toll pass thing for like $80 or some crazy price and there was no way that I was buying that for what was going to amount to $10 or less in tolls. So just to be safe, I set the GPS to avoid tolls and we would have been fine, but we hit mega traffic on I-4 and decided to take our chances with bailing off of the interstate early. We had to stop for gas within 10 miles of the airport anyway (as told to us specifically by the rep at Dollar), so I was going to have to do it sooner or later. It was a lot of unfamiliar back roads and a lot of (mostly red) signal lights, but we got down to about the 3-mile mark from the airport and I stopped at the gas station to fill up the car. Now, according to the fancy pants mileage calculator in the mini-bus, we were averaging 30.6 miles per gallon, so my 3 mile drive to the airport should have used .1 gallons of gas. The guy who checked in our car tried to say that the tank wasn't full enough. I don't know why that particular thing hit me, but the way he said it really torqued me out of shape. I explained to him that I inconvenienced myself to make sure that I followed their rules for refilling the tank and that it most certainly WAS full. He acted like he was being super generous by calling the tank "full". whatever. The only good thing about dealing with the rental car people was that when I let the guy inside know that the car was making a slight squeaky/ grinding noise sometimes if we turned the wheel hard to the right, he volunteered to give us $35 off for the "inconvenience", so that was cool. So dealing with Dollar's inconsistent application of their policies and their heavy-handed up-sell campaign was a pain, but at the end of the day, I rented a car for $166 for 11 days including the RIDICULOUS nearly $100 government rental car surcharge fee or whatever.

We were still watching the flight schedule very closely and communicating with my parents back at home because no other Southwest flights from Orlando to Baltimore had been on time that day. Well, we were lucky enough to be the first on-time flight, but our plane was PACKED. It makes perfect sense--all of the people who's flights were canceled were try to get to their destination any way they could. I did mobile check-in and since we were flying AirTran, we should have had the option to select our seats, but (maybe because I used the mobile app), it skipped this step and we were randomly assigned across the aisle from each other. The nice lady that I was sitting with on the two-seat side agreed to switch with Benn and we very much appreciated that. This was our first trip where we have had very smooth flights both down and back and I did not experience and horrible piercing ear pain. We landed a few minutes early at BWI, retrieved our luggage, collected my parents, and drove home, where much to my surprise, all three cats greeted us at the door and we did not receive the cold shoulder at all--this is definitely a first!

Sadly, that was the end of the trip and this is the end of the trip report. I have very much enjoyed sharing our trip with all of you and I hope you've enjoyed reading! Luckily, it's soon time for a new pre-trip report. Of course, I have some planning to finalize first!!!

Preview	Attachment	Size
	Holly wins at TSM!	4.16 MB
	The last sandwich for this trip from the Earl	4.23 MB
	Potato Head goes CRAZY!	3.98 MB
	Pew Pew--isn't this shirt seriously adorable? Why do they only make it for kids?	4.35 MB
	One of the ornaments we bought...eventually...after we got home	3.91 MB
	Hidden Minnie in tiles at Grand Floridian	4.32 MB
	Grand Floridian Boat Dock	2.08 MB
	Celebrate a Dream Come True Parade	1.63 MB
	Mickey Ice Cream :)	4.12 MB

Thanks everyone! Oh my gosh, disneydoc--that's such an awesome deal! Which ones did you get?

Well, I always do a photo book of each Disney trip, so I'll be working on that for a bit and then I have to actually do the planning for the trip and we're taking my parents, so it's more coordinating than usual. And i'd better get my revisions back to Kristen for the article that I just wrote before I do any of that!! Fortunately, work has been slow-ish because no on wants to go look at houses in the freezing cold, so I should be able to tackle everything in short order!!

LOL!!

Thanks, Allie! I think that "build a wacky potato head" is going to be a new trip tradition for me.

Thanks for the toll info, Mandy! and OMG you just made my day that Festival of Fantasy should be running by April!!! I've been looking at the pictures and I can't wait to see it!! Do you think Seven Dwarfs Mine Train is possible? I've been keeping a very close eye on it. We'll be back two more times this year, but getting to do a new ride and see a new parade on my birthday would just be the best ever!