Hello, new Disney friends and fellow Disney enthusiasts!
About me:
I am a fairly new member and have enjoyed getting my Disney fix by following many wonderful trip reports here when I am missing Disney…which is pretty much ALL THE TIME! Unfortunately for me, I don’t get to make it down as often as I would like, but I have made it down a few times, my first time was a weekend trip in 1991, a day trip to Disneyland in 1992, a full week trip in 1998, and then I took a loooooong hiatus and didn’t get back down there until 2016, which awakened my Disney passion and I got to go back in fall of 2017, and then most recently, beginning of June 2019. Though my husband enjoys DW, he doesn’t want to go as frequently as I do, so luckily for me, I have a sister who loves it, too, so I went with her on my last two trips. For my 2017 trip, I tagged along with her family and it was her first time there and she instantly fell in love with the place! So that brings us to 2019, when it was the dead of a miserably cold winter for both of us since we live in the north, and Florida was calling. We decided to do a sisters getaway weekend, and since I am a teacher, we had to wait until June. It was a long wait, but when the time came, we were more than ready. So let’s do this! This is my first time doing a trip report so I have no clue what I am doing so will be learning along the way, but since I have enjoyed so many trip reports on here, I thought I would give back and give it a try in hopes it can bring a smile to someone's face who needs a little Disney joy. I have lots to share with you and hope you enjoy tagging along with us down memory lane and I will tell you right now…when my sister and I get together and Disney and cameras become combined, it is Ham-It-Up City! You have been warned!
Who: Little Ol’ Me and my fellow Disney Addicted Sister.
That's me in the pink, and my sister in white.
What: Long weekend girl’s trip, Disney style!
When: June 7-June 11, 2019
How: Very bumpy plane ride, crazy weather from sunny and hot 102 heat index to monsoons of cold rain and thunderstorms with swimming through puddles, to very pleasant cloudy and overcast days, lots of buses and boat rides, a couple rope drops, and of course, lots of food, characters, shopping, and rides!
Where: Stayed at Pop Century, and over the course of the weekend, visited many resorts (Art of Animation, Fort Wilderness, Contemporary, Polynesian, Wilderness Lodge), Disney Springs, and did two park days: Hollywood Studios and Epcot one day, and Animal Kingdom and Magic Kingdom on the other.
It was a lot to pack in for our 3 ½ days, but our Disney adrenaline was pumping and we tackled it all! It may have taken me all week to recover when I got home, but you know…YOLO!
So as Slinky Dog says, “Let’s go!”
Day 1: Friday, June 7, 2019
Travel: Yuck. I won’t bore you will all the gory details, but I had to get up at 4 in the morning, drive to our huge, international airport, navigate parking, stand in a very long security line, made it on the plane in the nick of time, suffered lots of air turbulence…the kind that makes you want to kiss the ground when you land…but I finally made it! Ahhhh…Orlando airport…I love seeing this! So exciting!
I only had to wait a little while for my sister’s flight to land and then we were off to the Magical Express!
Check In to Pop Century. This was my second stay here and let me just say, I LOVE the smell of the lobby there. So after some discussion with my sister on what that smell could possible be (like orange cream but more lemon-y maybe? We will never know), we looked around the lobby and headed to our room. We enjoyed the walk down memory lane…not to age ourselves, but we certainly remembered these:
Magical Occurrence #1:When I stayed at Pop a couple years ago, I was all the way at the back of the resort which added a lot of walking. I did request a closer room this time, but I don’t know if it was because of my request (I never heard anything back from them) or if it was just luck, but we were a lot closer this time, in the 50s building, just a few minutes walk from the lobby and transportation. Our feet certainly appreciated that after miles of walking all day. Also, when I stayed there a couple years ago, I was lucky enough to get one of the newly refurbished rooms so new they were nice, and now they are all done, so was happy my sister would enjoy them, too. Modern, clean, comfortable, and at a good price…what’s not to love! And we love the art above the beds! Fun!
We had a few hours until our dinner reservation so thought we would walk over the bridge walkway between the two resorts to check out Art of Animation in case we would ever want to stay there on a future stay. Now, it can get hot in the Midwest where we are both from and we can suffer extreme temperatures throughout the year, but this year, it has been rainy and cool for pretty much forever so we had not gotten a chance to acclimate to hot weather yet. So we were NOT prepared for the level of hot it happened to be at this particular time in the afternoon as we walked around. We pretty much thought we would burst into flame at any minute.
Just to survive and not look like one of those skeletons who didn’t make it in the desert, we had to dodge inside for some air conditioning here and there. We managed to not spontaneously combust and enjoyed seeing all the character statues around the resort, and made it back to Pop and thanked our lucky stars for the man who invented air conditioning…seriously, he should get his own holiday!
After recovering for a little while, it was time for our first big event of the trip: Hoopty Doo Review! This was both our first time checking out the dinner show and we were super excited! And hungry! Magical Occurance #2: The bus to Magic Kingdom was there and we didn’t have to wait! Yay! So off we went to the MK, got on the ferry to cross the lagoon, and there we were at Fort Wilderness Campgrounds with plenty of time to spare. So we looked around a bit, did a little shopping in the gift shop, my sister did some pin trading, and took some pictures. It was still hot, but overcast at this point so that helped and the sun wasn’t as high in the sky so we were happy about that.
About me:
I am a fairly new member and have enjoyed getting my Disney fix by following many wonderful trip reports here when I am missing Disney…which is pretty much ALL THE TIME! Unfortunately for me, I don’t get to make it down as often as I would like, but I have made it down a few times, my first time was a weekend trip in 1991, a day trip to Disneyland in 1992, a full week trip in 1998, and then I took a loooooong hiatus and didn’t get back down there until 2016, which awakened my Disney passion and I got to go back in fall of 2017, and then most recently, beginning of June 2019. Though my husband enjoys DW, he doesn’t want to go as frequently as I do, so luckily for me, I have a sister who loves it, too, so I went with her on my last two trips. For my 2017 trip, I tagged along with her family and it was her first time there and she instantly fell in love with the place! So that brings us to 2019, when it was the dead of a miserably cold winter for both of us since we live in the north, and Florida was calling. We decided to do a sisters getaway weekend, and since I am a teacher, we had to wait until June. It was a long wait, but when the time came, we were more than ready. So let’s do this! This is my first time doing a trip report so I have no clue what I am doing so will be learning along the way, but since I have enjoyed so many trip reports on here, I thought I would give back and give it a try in hopes it can bring a smile to someone's face who needs a little Disney joy. I have lots to share with you and hope you enjoy tagging along with us down memory lane and I will tell you right now…when my sister and I get together and Disney and cameras become combined, it is Ham-It-Up City! You have been warned!
Who: Little Ol’ Me and my fellow Disney Addicted Sister.
That's me in the pink, and my sister in white.
What: Long weekend girl’s trip, Disney style!
When: June 7-June 11, 2019
How: Very bumpy plane ride, crazy weather from sunny and hot 102 heat index to monsoons of cold rain and thunderstorms with swimming through puddles, to very pleasant cloudy and overcast days, lots of buses and boat rides, a couple rope drops, and of course, lots of food, characters, shopping, and rides!
Where: Stayed at Pop Century, and over the course of the weekend, visited many resorts (Art of Animation, Fort Wilderness, Contemporary, Polynesian, Wilderness Lodge), Disney Springs, and did two park days: Hollywood Studios and Epcot one day, and Animal Kingdom and Magic Kingdom on the other.
It was a lot to pack in for our 3 ½ days, but our Disney adrenaline was pumping and we tackled it all! It may have taken me all week to recover when I got home, but you know…YOLO!
So as Slinky Dog says, “Let’s go!”
Day 1: Friday, June 7, 2019
Travel: Yuck. I won’t bore you will all the gory details, but I had to get up at 4 in the morning, drive to our huge, international airport, navigate parking, stand in a very long security line, made it on the plane in the nick of time, suffered lots of air turbulence…the kind that makes you want to kiss the ground when you land…but I finally made it! Ahhhh…Orlando airport…I love seeing this! So exciting!
I only had to wait a little while for my sister’s flight to land and then we were off to the Magical Express!
Check In to Pop Century. This was my second stay here and let me just say, I LOVE the smell of the lobby there. So after some discussion with my sister on what that smell could possible be (like orange cream but more lemon-y maybe? We will never know), we looked around the lobby and headed to our room. We enjoyed the walk down memory lane…not to age ourselves, but we certainly remembered these:
Magical Occurrence #1:When I stayed at Pop a couple years ago, I was all the way at the back of the resort which added a lot of walking. I did request a closer room this time, but I don’t know if it was because of my request (I never heard anything back from them) or if it was just luck, but we were a lot closer this time, in the 50s building, just a few minutes walk from the lobby and transportation. Our feet certainly appreciated that after miles of walking all day. Also, when I stayed there a couple years ago, I was lucky enough to get one of the newly refurbished rooms so new they were nice, and now they are all done, so was happy my sister would enjoy them, too. Modern, clean, comfortable, and at a good price…what’s not to love! And we love the art above the beds! Fun!
We had a few hours until our dinner reservation so thought we would walk over the bridge walkway between the two resorts to check out Art of Animation in case we would ever want to stay there on a future stay. Now, it can get hot in the Midwest where we are both from and we can suffer extreme temperatures throughout the year, but this year, it has been rainy and cool for pretty much forever so we had not gotten a chance to acclimate to hot weather yet. So we were NOT prepared for the level of hot it happened to be at this particular time in the afternoon as we walked around. We pretty much thought we would burst into flame at any minute.
Just to survive and not look like one of those skeletons who didn’t make it in the desert, we had to dodge inside for some air conditioning here and there. We managed to not spontaneously combust and enjoyed seeing all the character statues around the resort, and made it back to Pop and thanked our lucky stars for the man who invented air conditioning…seriously, he should get his own holiday!
After recovering for a little while, it was time for our first big event of the trip: Hoopty Doo Review! This was both our first time checking out the dinner show and we were super excited! And hungry! Magical Occurance #2: The bus to Magic Kingdom was there and we didn’t have to wait! Yay! So off we went to the MK, got on the ferry to cross the lagoon, and there we were at Fort Wilderness Campgrounds with plenty of time to spare. So we looked around a bit, did a little shopping in the gift shop, my sister did some pin trading, and took some pictures. It was still hot, but overcast at this point so that helped and the sun wasn’t as high in the sky so we were happy about that.
But our second park day….Yaaaaayyyy! 
As previously told, the day before we had gotten up early to rope drop at Hollywood Studios. Today was the same plan, but Animal Kingdom opened at 7am today, so that meant we had to get up EVEN EARLIER to rope drop (ugh!)…and all the fun of the last few days was starting to catch up to us, but once again, the alarm went off and we were just excited to get to be at Disney World so we managed to drag ourselves out of bed and made it to Animal Kingdom to rope drop for Flight of Passage. We made it there around 6:45ish and they started guiding people who were going on FoP towards the line for that. So we snaked our way through that line for about 20 minutes and then we were finally in the Pandora line queue area and it was about another 20 minutes or so until we were on the ride, so roughly, even though we rope dropped, we still waited for 45ish minutes. Now, this was not our first time on this ride. We went on it on our last trip (fall, 2017) and stood in that line for TWO HOURS!!!!! Not fun. So 45 minutes, 15 of which were before the park technically opened, was not that bad. By the time we got out of the line, the wait was up to 100 minutes and it was only around 7:30. So again, rope drop was worth it, especially since we were only going to be in the park for half of the day.
I can't believe all that you were able to see and do at AK with just half a day! It's great to see how being prepared and having a plan can make all the difference!
