**Completed** 2015 Besties go to Disney Trip Report

I made it home not very happy about it but here I am. The only positive thing about being home? I had Mickey Mail! A box and an envelope. One for our Sept trip and one for the Nov one! Now that made it a little better...

I will have a full run down in a bit. I have to watch Game of Thrones tonight and I am home alone. A trip report should keep me occupied until it comes on!

More to come!

Ok, I think I am ready. I ordered pizza and I'm downloading pics. This should keep me occupied for a bit. Then to catch up on everyone's posts and trip reports.

Tuesday - I took the car in for scheduled maintenance... Of course they found something wrong with it AGAIN. 3 oil leaks. The seals broke and weren't leaking yet but they went ahead and fixed (THANK GOODNESS for extended warranty!) So Joe told them it HAD to be done before I left on Friday.... moving on to Thursday...

Thursday - The car is done and ready to be picked up. Kerry takes me to pick it up before she heads home to pack. My packing was done on Tuesday! I tried to get them to get on the ball!

Friday - Travel day - I forced my self to stay up late Thursday night as I thought I would sleep until time to get up... NOPE, I was wide awake at 3:00 AM I laid in bed watching tv for a bit and gave up the fight. I took this time to do some laundry, repack a couple things, load the car and re-do my hair since sleeping on it turned out bad that night. Nadia was supposed to be at the house at 6:30. I was counting on 7:00 since she is NEVER on time. I walked out the house at 6 to load the car and there she was coming down the street!!!! We hung out for a bit because Kerry was not ready for us to come get her. We got to her house around 7:15, loaded everything and hit the road.

We made stops at the Georgia Welcome Center and the Florida one (free OJ samples!!!) and drove on to our lunch destination. 4 Rivers Smokehouse in Jacksonville. It is on our must do list every Florida trip. I had the Santa Maria Tri-Tip Sandwich and the girls shared the Sliders (Pork, Burnt Ends and Chicken) Everything was wonderful as usual. One of the Disney Foodies moderators met me there to pick up a VIP Baymax pin I got for him and we headed on to ORLANDO!

I checked in on-line for a 4:00 arrival time (we originally planned on leaving later) at 1:42 I received a text that the room was ready! We would have gone straight to the room but we had to go and attach their credit cards to their bands. We arrived at Pop around 2:30.

Going to edit pics and try to add some that are right side up!

ok ok ok....

We got credit cards all settled and headed for the room to rest a bit (yea... right) The girls loved the resort, they thought it was fun and wonderful and fantastic. We were in building 5, 4th floor room 5468. We had a pool view (the Hippy Dippy Pool). The pool was packed and the music blasting when we arrived. We got in the room and while we could still hear it, it wasn't bothersome to us. We decided to head over to Everything Pop and look around for ears. We really didn't see many so we decided to catch the bus to Disney Springs. The sign had Downtown DIsney/Typhoon Lagoon on it. Underneath it said to take the EPCOT bus after 2 and transfer... So we hopped on EPCOT. I asked the driver as we were getting off where we went for the DS transfer. NOPE, not right, that was for TL only. He said people do it all the time. They why don't you word your signs better. By this time we realized we would not have time to get back to POP, wait on the DS bus and have time to shop before getting ready for dinner.

We grabbed a drink at Petals instead and sat by the pool chatting. Kerry had the Banana Cabana Cruzan Mango Rum, Coruba Coconut Rum, Creme de Banana, and Orange and Pineapple Juice with a splash of Grenadine and I had the Black Cherry Lemonade Grey Goose Cherry Noir Vodka, Odwalla Lemonade, fresh Lime juice, and Grenadine topped with Sprite. Both were DELISH and hit the spot after a long day of travel. After chilling a bit, we went to the room to get ready for dinner at Sanaa. We were tired but ready for a good dinner.

We arrived at Sanaa about an hour before our ADR time. We wanted to look around (I wanted to show them our new home away from home) a bit before dinner. We walked all around the resort and watched the animal for a while. We checked in about 30 min before our time and we were handed a pager and told it would be a while. No problem, we wanted to watch the animals some more. We turned to walk out and before we could get past the stairs the pager went off! At least we got a window see and saw lots of animals. Dinner was FANTASTIC as usual. We started with the bread service of course, it's the main reason I wanted to go back. We went with the original and garlic ginger naans and the onion kucha and ALL the accompaniments! For dinner, I had the Tandoori-marinated Pork Tenderloin, Kerry had the Tandoori Chicken and Nadia picked the Chickpea Wat and one other (oops, I forgot) with the Five-Grain Pilaf. We shared the dessert sampler. Everything was wonderful as usual. We did feel rushed thru dinner, we weren't even there for an hour. I would still go back. Its one of my favorites! The kulfi in the dessert trio was coconut and was the hands down favorite! YUMMO!!!!!! I could have ordered more but thought better of it.

After dinner we ran over to Jambo house real quick to peek around. I got a text from CCP about meeting. We were kinda on the fence since we had been up so early and going full speed since 6am! We decided it was too early to go to the room and headed for Poly. We were there for a little bit. We got a Lapu Lapu to share and drank about all of it when I realized no CCP yet. I was getting the look from the girls and I was feeling a bit tired. I text her and she was still a good little bit away. If it wasn't for the girls I would have stayed but I didn't want to push it with them and have them hate me tomorrow. I mean I was dragging them around to 3 parks... She graciously told me to go on to the room and we would have to try again next time. I still feel VERY BADLY about it and I hope she still likes me! We headed back to the resort and crashed hard.

Tomorrow my first time Park hopping!!!

I am trying to power thru this before my 2nd wind crashes. Joe is in Florida working and is not watching Game of Thrones tonight so I will wait and watch it with him when he gets back... The things I do for the man I love. Anywho, moving along.

Saturday morning. Alarm is set for 5:45. 3 girls getting dressed in a small resort room is fun and interesting! Today is going to be a busy but fun day. Order of events; 1. Animal Kingdom 2. EPCOT 3. Magic Kingdom (open until 2am) I wanted to be out of the room by 8 so we could get to the car, a snack if needed, park, get to the gate and be ready to make a run for it. Well, we arrived shortly after 8. Andy by shortly I mean I didn't think they would let us in the main gate yet Luckily they did and a few more cars were rolling up behind us. We parked (VERY CLOSE) and had a short but already HOT walk to the gate. HOT will show up several more times in this TR. We roamed around Rain Forest Cafe for a bit and thought we would sneak thru the secret entrance. Well, they had it all blocked off, so we headed back out and got in line. We waited about 25 minutes, they played the welcome to AKL bit and we were scanning bands and going in!

The plan was to head straight to the safari and be in line for FOTLK by 9:30 for the 10:00 show. One of my favorite parts of the trip was after we crossed the first bridge and Nadia finally looked up and saw the Tree of Life. She stopped dead in her tracks and just said "WOW!!!" It was amazing to see it thru someone else's eyes for the first time! We stood there admiring it for a minute (I had to keep things moving) and headed to Africa. We got to the Safari and they didn't have it open yet. We stood there a couple of minutes and they dropped the rope and in we all went. We were on the 2nd jeep to roll out. We had a row to our selves so I let the girls have the ends so they could see. There was lots of activity and I saw lions for the first time!!!! The jeep pulled up the the hut to exit at exactly 9:20! I love a good plan. We headed out, stopped for coffee and a muffin and hopped in the FOTLK line. We had a pretty short shaded wait. Thank goodness, it was HOT! We were in giraffe section about 5 rows up. The lady in front of us had on a LARGE hat with ears ON TOP of it so we moved up a couple rows, with permission of course. The show was wonderful as usual. I heard them both ooohhhing and ahhhhing and clapping and yelling the whole time. I was enthralled again by the performance!

After the show we wandered around the ToL and ran into Pocahontas. She was about to leave but she stayed and met with us for a few since we were the only ones on the trail! The tree is so beautiful and I appreciate it more and more every time I see it. Our short time in AK was up and we headed for the parking lot. Even when you get to a park early and park close, still look at your section and aisle... it did take us a few to find the car

You all know how much I love this park, I could have stayed put all day but...

Next heading to MK to park the car and hop the monorail to Epcot for park 2 of 3!

My computer keeps crashing on Picmonkey where I am making the photo collages so I think that is a sign. I will work on this some more tomorrow tonight. Tomorrow I have to concentrate on work and trying to score an Alex and Ani DVC bracelet. SHHHH Don't tell anyone they will be available...

SO I forgot to include another favorite part of Animal Kingdom. While we were on the safari, of course the 3 of us had an entire row to our selves... Kerry was on the right side. When we were going over the rickety bridge, she thought we were going to crash into the ravine. It was quite comical and she held on tight thru the rest of the ride!

We made it to MK parking lot very quickly from Animal Kingdom. We parked quite close but didn't realize it and waited on the tram We could have walked it faster...

Anywho, we hopped on the monorail over to EPCOT to begin our trip around the world and hitting the Flower and Garden Food booths. We went kind of willy nilly. Things we originally wanted to try we passed on and picked up a couple others...

We started to the right and stopped at:
Urban Farm Eats - kale salad, ghost pepper dusted talapia and the chardonnay
Fleur De Lys - duck confit and strawberry macaron
Botanas Botanico - seafood ceviche, sweet corn pancake and white corn arepa
Taste of Marrakesh - pistachio baklva and white sangria
The Smokehouse - beef brisket burnt ends hash and piggylicious cupcake
Primavera Kitchen - limoncello panna cotta, bellini and frozen Italian primavera
Florida Fresh - key lime wine

It was so hot that by the time we hit Italy, I was DONE. I just can't make myself eat (or really drink) when I am that hot. I was dripping sweat and miserable. We all were... While I enjoyed F&G, I'm not sure I would go again. Everything was good. We never waited more than 5 minutes in a line on a Saturday afternoon. The topiaries were beautiful. I don't know, I know they are two totally different festivals, I just didn't get the same F&W vibe that I loved so much.

We really didn't have time to roam around the countries much with our schedule. We walked thru Canada and Italy and that was it. We did watch the flag throwers in Italy for a bit before the sun got to us. Nadia said it is very similar to how they do it in her hometown but there it is much faster paced and more throwing of the flags.

My favorites of the things we tried were...
1. burnt ends hash
2. duck confit
3. kale salad

The panna cotta was my favorite dessert and the key lime wine of course was my favorite drink

We headed for future world for our fast passes. Soarin, Meet and Greet and Spaceship Earth.

Soarin - I was a little worried about Kerry with her motion sickness but she did GREAT! It was Nadia who was scared. LOL I laughed at her more than I enjoyed the ride. Now, if you were following along with us on Facebook, you saw this next part.

While we were on Soarin, it stopped. The other two sections immediately dropped down and we stayed up. We slowly dropped down to the floor. We couldn't unbuckle to get off. They had to manually unlock it so we could exit. Luckily it happened during the fireworks part.

Nothing was ever said by the CM's and when we finally got unbuckled we were swiftly walked out of the theater. It did give us something to laugh about for the next couple hours We hopped in line for Living with the Land then headed to meet Mickey and friends! After we jumped in line for Spaceship Earth giving up FP+ for both. We were way ahead of schedule and we went ahead and hopped the monorail back to MK!

We made it to the station right as the monorail pulled up. We got the front section with very few people in it! Arrived at TTC and walked over to the ferry. They opened the gates as soon as we walked up and we were on our way!!! I was pointing out all the monorail resorts to the girls and answering questions about DVC, the bungalows, GF and such. Then we were looking at the castle and Space Mountain. A quick trip thru bag check and thru the tunnels we went! MK was fairly busy so we just started strolling the shops on Main Street. Kerry and I finally got our ears and Nadia chose a fedora..... Yes, we gave her a hard time about it.

I checked MDE for fast passes and I kept getting a "technical difficulty" warning. We finally went to a FP kisok and was told once you use your 3 FP you can't add any more from your phone you HAVE to go to a kiosk. Is this right??? I'm pretty sure I was changing and adding on the fly in November. Something about crashing your phone and killing your battery and updating every 5 seconds???

Anywho. We walked thru the castle and I had the girls touch the slipper. We wandered back to Liberty Square for roasted corn but they were out so we got baked potatoes that none of us were thrilled with. There was a lovely white bird that got some of mine. We then went to get a Dole Whip, scored our only FP of the evening for Little Mermaid at 8:15 and went to ride it. It was our only MK ride.

We found a bench between Cosmic Rays and the Hub and sat to wait on fireworks. We were so tired at this point that we decided to watch from there and leave after. I had never watched from anywhere other than in front of the castle (ohhh and Cali Grill) and it was VERY disappointing. I thought for sure the music would be played all over the park. I only heard bits and pieces of Wishes so this was just a fireworks show for me and it sucked to say the least. They were right over us which was cool but that was it... And since Wishes was the main purpose of hitting MK, I feel like I let the girls down.

Our long SLOW walk out of the parks was broken up by walking thru the Emporium with about 5000 of our closest friends (I wonder what their loss rate is after Wishes, you can really pick up anything and just walk out....) We each got a pack of Sorcerers of the MK cards for Abigail and SLOWLY walked out of the park. It was after 11 and we had to wait about 10 minutes for a ferry.

We made it to Pop and realized we were hungry again. So we grabbed pizza and headed to the room to eat in bed and reminisce about our day

Tomorrow is check out

We woke up much early than we planned, so we started getting ready and packing. Didn't we JUST GET HERE????

We loaded the car and headed for Everything Pop to pick up a couple gifts before heading to the Poly for breakfast at Kona Cafe. We arrived early because we were WAY AHEAD of schedule. We didn't get to sneak in early this time. There were tons of people waiting. We got paged right at our ADR time which was 10:30. We were starving! We started with the French Press Kona Coffee and a round of Liliko'i Juice. We placed our food order with our drinks. Needless to say we were ready to eat! I ordered the Samoan, Nadia had the Egg White Omelet with Red Peppers and Goat Cheese and Kerry got the Macadamia Pineapple Pancakes. I feel like it took a long time for the food to come out but it could be because we were so hungry at this point. The Samoan was outstanding! Egg was perfectly poached (a bad poached egg can ruin a meal) the pancakes were delicious and the omelet was the stand out surprise. I am not an omelet fan, especially an egg white one.... but it was great. The goat cheese was plentiful and the roasted red peppers were a perfect match. All in all we had a wonderful breakfast!

One more trip for souvenirs and we were on the road right at 12.

It was a fun trip. I will not be doing one that short and packed full of things anytime soon. LOL But we did a lot and saw a lot and the girls are already asking when we can go back!

Thanks for reading along. 140 days until the next one.

I must be crazy or I was just switching as we were going but we never used a kiosk in November

Yes, they are ready to go back. Kerry and I wore our ears to work yesterday and she said she was very sad when she took off her magic band LOL. I told her she can wear it all the time!!!

We will plan another girls trip probably early next year or maybe food and wine this year Definitely more park days!