And as is par for the course lately, I'm later than I'd like getting my trip report put together--and this one should be easy!!
So day 1, we flew later than I prefer (10:30am flight), but it was nice to be able to wake up at a normal time instead of in the middle of the night! LOL.We arrived a little before 1:00 and Benn instantly understood why we travel early in the mornings--the lines at Magical Express were insane! And it was a Sunday afternoon in January! Oh well... Everyone on our bus was headed to Pop Century, so that was cool--we only had 1 bus stop. Our room was ready when we arrived and we were in the 80's building as requested. We just had carry-ons since we were only staying overnight, so we ran up to the room and dropped the bags, hit the food court for some tie-dyed cheesecake, and headed for MK.
I was just picking up my ticket for the following day at will-call and since I had a 1-day ticket, I was left alone to sullenly look upon the Magic Kingdom while Benn got to use his still-valid AP to pop inside for a minute. I'll spare you my security rant because I think it's irresponsible to expose Disney's security weaknesses online, but let's just say that karma insured that Benn's nanny-nanny-boo-boo-I-get-to-go-inside-and-you-don't 3 bonus minutes of magic actually cost him two trips through the metal detector. 
But he did get to see the Dapper Dans in winter wear so I was still totally jealous.
After our quick MK detour, we did some monorail loop Facebook live before meeting up with my cousin Jenn and her boyfriend Nico at Kona. Sadly, our Kona meal was less delightful than it had been in October. Benn's tuna was really good and our spicy tuna roll sushi was killer, but my lamb that I had been so looking forward to (and frankly was the reason that we switched from Morimoto Asia to Kona) was so bland. It wasn't bad, but it was nowhere near the awesome lamb chop I'd gotten there in October. Jenn had the tuna also, but didn't care for it and Nico had the Salmon, which he liked very much. We declined dessert to hop over to Disney Springs for Vivoli Il Gelato. Jenn had driven to Poly from the farm that she and Nico were working on for the winter in Gainesville, so we had a car. Score. I had the rice pudding and hazelnut gelato and it was oh so delicious. I'd been looking forward to that more than anything in October, but I was sick the whole weekend and the texture of the rice pudding just didn't go over well with my cold symptoms. It was very disappointing, so it was so enjoyable to get to have my favorite dessert cold-free this time.
The bread has changed AGAIN since October...
After we got our gelato, we hit Jellyrolls for the evening. Though we did have to make a quick stop to investigate how the cupcake ATM worked. It was a good night, but the crowd had some diversity in its musical demographic that night, so there were long stretches of songs that I straight up don't like. I'm not an Elton John fan at all and it seems like we alternated between his catalog and songs I'd never heard of for almost an hour. We did throw a few requests in and my greatest victory of the night was getting the guys to play the theme song from DuckTales. Scotty, the guy who had also done Rainbow Connection the year before when Jenn and I were there and is also from Pennsylvania, sang it for us and it was AWESOME. I apparently took zero Jellyrolls photos, but here's a cute on of Jenn and Nico.
Day 2- We got up a little later than planned and opted to grab breakfast before we caught the bus because I knew it ould be noon before we could eat lunch, but we still hit Epcot right after rope drop. We ran over and did Soarin' quick and then started trying to find festival stuff to do. Unfortunately, I missed that we could have done Animation Academy first thing, so we spun our wheels a little bit. We did get to an advance start on the Find Figment in the World Showcase scavenger hunt since Norway opens early now. The pattern was pretty easy as all of the paintings were in the gift shops near the kidcot fun stops, but we ran out of time to find them all. We should have taken the opportunity to single rider test track, but I had to meet for my animation class at 10:45 I think--pretty sure it started at 11. I met up with my friend Michelle who moved to Florida a few years ago and we got to do the class together, so that was a nice treat. The class was taught by Todd Bright who was an in-betweener on Hunchback, Lilo & Stitch, and others. He was very informative and had lots of neat props for us to check out. The most valuable thing I got from that class was a stop motion animation app that allows you to turn your drawings into an animation using motion capture. Now I am unstoppable! This class was a really good value--I think it was like $35 and there was an AP/DVC discount.
After the class, we met up with CCP and Mr. CCP and enjoyed about half of the festival's food offerings together before their Frozen FP. For me, festival food favorites were the Reuben, the braised beef in Germany, and the flank steak in Mexico. Benn and I finished up the day on our own, checking out some of the artists at the festival. We met Rob Kaz, who has a cute little frog character that he paints into everything. We met a lady who creates journal pages by boiling leaves on paper to make different patterns. And we met Carlos Cuba, who does AMAZING landscape photography and mounts his photos on glass so they look as crystal clear at the picture on a 4K TV. We also played around with the step-in artwork and the living statues and we got to paint the big mural.
Mr. CCP's mini cronut (I have no idea how to spell this word) sandwiches
Deconstructed Cobb Salad--decent, not my favorite
Reuben = awesome
Deconstructed BLT = delicious
Something-something breakfast shake = not so good
Tacos = good, but normal
Flank steak = AMAZING
Chalk "painter" at Norway--WOW. I had no idea you could accomplish such realistic skin tones with chalk
Braised beef in Germany = WOW
Poached pear panna cotta = meh
We didn't line this up very well
Scallop = very disappointing
"Can I substitute dark chocolate for the milk & white chocolates?" "sure." score. I'm not going to say that I felt the best after drinking all of this, but #worthit
The characters had custom art work at their meet & greets!
I love Alice's winter dress!
Oh, right. We were doing a scavenger hunt. I forgot...oops
Mural!!
I was way too full to eat another thing, but I really wanted to try the sweet potato pie. This was my festival "must-try" and I was a little disappointed, but honestly, I was so full by the time we got to this stand that my assessment probably isn't fair.
Living Statues
"We're painting the roses red, painting the roses red...not pink, not green, not aquamarine!" Ok, maybe aquamarine...
It was also our first time staying at Pop. We were underwhelmed with the room--I feel like the rooms at the All-Stars have more intrigue than the rooms at Pop--but we really liked the overall look at feel of the resort. Since we were in the 80's section, we had the Rubik's cube stairwells and we discovered that when you are facing the first two buildings as you enter from the 70's section, one of the Rubik's cubes is "solved" and the other is "scrambled". I loved their Rubik's cube pin board, though in my haste to cram in this trip, I actually forgot my pins at home. 
Apparently there is also a resort scavenger hunt. I wish we had taken the time to do that, but there was only so much we could squeeze in. We didn't go to the pool because there wasn't time, but it looked as perfectly boring as the All-Star pools; good enough for a swim to cool off, but nothing "extra".
It was an awesome day and I hope to be able to go again and to spend more time at the festival next year!!!
