Trip Report Like a grand and miraculous run

Welcome to our Princess 2018 Trip Report! If you like loads of pictures and videos then this is the trip report for you!

The basics:
Who: Me (Emily) who turned 26 right after returning from this trip & Haley who is my 18 year old sister celebrating her senior year!
When: February 21-February 25th
Where: We stayed one night at all-star sports then switched to Coronado Springs
Why: Because who doesn't love waking up at 3am to run a 5k and 10k around EPCOT?!?

Are you ready for some sisterly bonding around Disney World? Stay tuned!
 
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WDW_Emily

WDW_Emily

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
February 21st, 2018

Our alarm went off at 4:30am and we knew it was Disney time! We quickly got ready, loaded up the car and were on our way to the airport!


We arrived at the airport around 5:30am. Our flight was scheduled to begin boarding at 6:10am. The line to check our bags was huge but luckily the line at security was non-existent. We made it to our gate right at 6:10 and they were already starting to board! We we boarding group C though, so we were good to go!


Somehow with boarding C7 and C8, we got to sit next to each other. Not only that but we also got a free middle seat! Haley slept most of the flight while I watched Riverdale and listened to showtunes. We ended up landing early also! So far the travel gods were on our side!

Before getting on Magical Express, we both changed into Florida gear. Long sleeves and leggings were not going to last long in the Florida humidity.

We started making our way to Magical Express. The line for All-Stars was huge but as we approached the line, a Cast Member was looking for a party of 2 to fill the bus! We made our way to the front and were on the bus to All-Star Sports by 9:40!

While on Magical Express, we got a text saying that our room wasn't ready yet (which we expected it wasn't even 10!). We decided to drop off our bags at All-Star and head right for EPCOT. We had fastpasses that started at 12:30 but figured we could go early, grab some coffee and walk around.

BUT FIRST: ANNUAL PASS TIME!
IMG_3700
Considering I'm going back to Disney in June and November, I figured this was the year to become an annual passholder! I feel like I reached a whole new level of Disney nerd.

As we entered EPCOT, we were redirected to the right due to what we think was a commercial being filmed. First stop: Starbucks. If we were going to make it until Illuminations, we were going to need some coffee.



Current time: 11:45. The lines at Epcot were huge! The shortest line at 11:30? Figment, with a 30 minute wait. Into the line we went!

After Figment, we made our way over to our first fastpass, Meeting Mickey, Minnie, and Goofy. Wait time without fastpass? 90 MINUTES:oops:. I wasn't kidding when I said it was busy.




Once we met characters, we went over to the Land to see how long the wait was for Living with the Land....It was 50 minutes:banghead:. However, Soarin' was only 40 minutes (seriously when does Soarin' ever have a shorter wait than Living with the Land)? We decided 40 minutes wasn't a horrible wait and got into the line. One of my biggest pet peeves with Soarin' is the beginning of the line where it's wide enough for people to scoot by. We watched multiple families shimmy their way up to the front because the line is too wide.

After Soarin' it was time for our next fast pass, Spaceship Earth. Always a favorite.
Before the Siemen's sponsorship is taken down.


By this time it was 2:30pm and our hunger had kicked in full force. The only thing we had eaten so far was Belvita snacks on the plane. With lunch on the mind, we set off for Mexico.

We got an awesome table right near the water. I ordered the nachos and Haley ordered the tacos. Both of us devoured our food.



Our bellies were full and it was time for the Mexico ride!


 
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WDW_Emily

WDW_Emily

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
After Mexico we started to make our way through Norway as it was time for our Frozen Fastpass! We both love this ride!


Although I wasn't hungry, one of my must stops around World Showcase is in China. I love me some of those potstickers!



We continued to take our time and roam around World Showcase. With only two people, it was easy to see everything that both of us wanted to see.






France made us stop too for some of our favorite desserts! I have no idea what we got but I do know it was tasty.


We went around and explored to UK a little to see if any characters were out but they were all in for the day. Haley took this opportunity of a pretty empty UK building to make herself at home with Winnie the Pooh and Tigger.


By now the sun was starting to set. The wait for The Seas was 5 minutes now so we decided to go to The Seas for a little bit.



After the Seas we went over to Living with the Land which also now had a 5 minute wait. I don't know if I was supposed to pick this up but.....

By now it was 7:00pm, In our two hours before Illuminations, we decided to ride Test Track single rider, grab dinner, and meet Anna and Elsa.
First up Test Track!


Next on the List was Anna and Elsa who talked about chocolate cakes and chocolate covered carrots for Sven.




Last on the agenda was dinner. Haley decided it was her turn to get potstickers. I went with Chicken Teriyaki from Japan. Shout out to Japan Cast Members who took the time to learn about my allergy! I asked the simple question if the beef noodles had any seafood to which the CM replied, no but if it's an allergy lets double check the binder. Turns out all the broth has shell fish and these CMs saved me from a trip to the ER.




We watched Illuminations from Japan which was a great spot. No pictures of Illuminations because I wanted to enjoy it and not photograph it :)

Onto the bus we went, hoping that our luggage all made it to the room okay. We ended up in a room in the Tennis section. We quickly showered and went to bed. I don't even have pictures of the hotel room but we just used it to sleep for 7 hours before switching to Coronado Springs the following day!
 
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WDW_Emily

WDW_Emily

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
OKAY PHOTOS ARE FIXED! BACK TO THE TRIP REPORT!

February 22, 2018

Today was a little bit of a relaxing, going a bunch of places day. The plan originally get up early and go to Epcot to ride Soarin and Test Track since we didn't think we would be able to get on them to previous day. We decided to take the morning slow and make it to Epcot around 9:30/10. This meant we had breakfast at the hotel! I had mickey waffles and a strawberry smoothie while Haley had a omlette flat bread.



Off to Epcot round 2! We had no plans on what to do when we got there so we just strolled around for a little bit.


I decided to be very basic and take pictures with the bubble gum wall.


Haley on the other hand went for the sprinklers


We spent our last couple minutes in EPCOT in the single riders line for Test Track then we were off to Yacht and Beach Club!


Now you may be asking yourself why did we go to Yacht and Beach Club? Well, instead of going back to our hotel, then getting a bus to the expo, then back to our hotel, then to DHS, we thought we would skip step one and just walk to Yacht and Beach and catch the Expo bus there.

I am currently working on editing my video from the expo so that will be posted here once I am done. We got to the Expo around noon, right when it was opening. We first went over to mech which had a huge line. We decided we would be okay with just our race shirts and if we really wanted something, we could check online after the event. On our way to pick up our bibs we stopped for some photos with our race backgrounds.

(Haley didn't want a 5k picture, she was all about the 10k)


We then went in to pick up our bibs Last year, I was in Corral E for the 5k and Corral C for the 10k (however, I went back to start in F with a friend). Haley had never done a Run Disney event before but she is a ninja when running and has done Cross Country and multiple Spartan races. We predicted Haley would be in A or B and I thought I would be in D for both events. Haley ended up in A for both the 5k and 10k. I ended up in D for the 5k and in C for the 10k! I was so excited to actually run in the C corral this year!


Next stop was our race shirts which was a very easy pick up. We were ready for race day!


After the expo we took the bus to Coronado Springs. By now, it was around 1:30pm. I thought it was odd I didn't receive a text or anything saying if our room was ready or not. I decided to log into MDE and realized I never did online check in! :oops: Off to the front desk we go!

This my friends is where our trip starts to get full of surprises. After waiting patiently in line and hearing the woman in front of me complain about not getting a refurbished room, I knew we most likely were not getting one (which was fine, it would have just been a nice perk). I go to the desk to check in and the CM asks if I have stayed at Coronado before to which I replied no. He then says Welcome! I see we have a birthday and a graduation on your reservation! And great news! we have multiple rooms you can choose from! What floor would you like? I honestly didn't care so I asked if any were refurbished rooms. He then replied with yes we made sure it was a refurbished room for your party! Lets go with building 1 on the 3rd floor.

We were stunned. We never pay for preferred rooms and always get the rooms in the back a mile away from anything. Haley and I were very excited but before checking out our room we grabbed a quick lunch.

Surprise number 2: As I was getting my food one of the CM's said Happy Birthday to me and continued by saying well whats a birthday without cake?!? Then gave me a free piece of chocolate cake! Coronado CMs, you guys are great.



Haley's food. I have no idea what this is.


It was then time to check out our room! We also got the 3 construction pins which we really liked because Haley loved the 3 Caballeros and I love Donald. Honestly, we never even heard any construction throughout our whole stay.

 
WDW_Emily

WDW_Emily

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
After dropping off our expo goodies it was time for Hollywood Studios. Quick background on us and Hollywood studios. This used to be Haley's favorite park until all the construction. She adores/ adored The Muppets, Indiana Jones, and The great Movie ride. She also loves Fantasmic. Haley went to DHS in the beginning of February with her school and they got rained out so they were only able to do Tower or Terror. Last time I went to DHS was February 2017, It was drizzling but nothing too bad. When Fantasmic started, the rain became a downpour. They called the show off right before the Pocahontas scene. Needless to say, we really wanted to watch Fantasmic this trip.

Our first fast pass was for Tower of Terror which is one of my favorite attractions. The fast pass time was for 1:15-2:15 and we left our hotel at 1:45:oops:. We got off the buss at 2:05 and ran through DHS like the crazy people we are to make that fast pass. No way were we waiting in line.




After Tower of Terror it was time for our Toy Story Mania fast pass! Due to construction, the line was odd. It was mostly outside but we entered close to where you pick up your 3D glasses. We ended up waiting about 20 minutes with a fast pass but it was much better than the 120 minute wait in the sun other people were doing.

AND THIS LITTLE BOOGER BEAT ME! First time for everything I suppose. Incase you are wondering what an over excited 18 year old sounds like when she beats her older sister, here is a clip.


Our fast pass for Star Tours wasn't until 4:45 so I made a request to see Star Wars Characters (specifically Chewy). Haley not being as big of a Star Wars fan agreed after I told her I would watch the muppets for her. She actually loved meeting Chewy! She was amazed by how big he was!




Before going over to muppets, we stopped for some snacks. I got a Mickey ice cream and Haley got roasted almonds. Our goal was to not eat a full meal at DHS. We both aren't huge fans of their food and would rather wait until we got back to the hotel for dinner. Almonds and ice cream should hold us over right?




Onward to the muppets! but not before a quick stop to meet Max!


Now it was muppets time!


By now it was 5pm and time to use our Star Tours fast pass . Still have never been the rebel spy but I loved seeing the need additions from episodes 7 and 8.




And at this point we realized how little there is to do at DHS at the moment. Haley hates upside down coasters so Rockin' was out, all the shows had ended for the day, and we still had over an hour until Fantasmic. So what do we do? Let's meet Olaf!


While in line for Olaf, we were able to get a 4th fast pass to Fantasmic! We started to make our way over there, hoping we would actually get through the whole show. We sat in beast I believe in row R and boy did we get wet! We thought we were high enough up but apparently not.

Once again no pictures of Fantasmic because they come out bad and I wanted to enjoy it in person.

After Fantasmic we decided to stay for Star Wars fireworks which were okay. Haley and I are not the biggest fans of projections because we can watch the movies at home. You can't see fireworks at home so we wanted more of a Star Wars Weekend type of firework show with the Star Wars Soundtrack rather than a laser and projector show with some fireworks in-between.

By this time, our stomach were growling. Back to Coronado we went. Haley's food was half gone by the time I made it to the table!



We made it back to our room by 10pm which was a good thing because we had a 3am wake up call for the 5k tomorrow morning!
 
WDW_Emily

WDW_Emily

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
February 23, 2018

RACE DAY! Haley woke up at 2:50am so she could shower before the race. I on the other enjoyed my extra 10 minutes of sleep. We got ourselves ready and were on the bus by 3:30! Quick note if you are doing a race and staying at a resort with multiple bus stops, If the bus becomes full at stop 1 they will not go to the other stops! We were the first stop so we didn't experience this problem but we did hear complaints from others at Coronado who were waiting at stop 3.

We arrived at the Epcot parking lot around 3:50 and the race was scheduled to start at 5:30am. The lines for characters were insane so we went right over to our corrals and waited....for a long time.

For this race, Haley dressed at Batman (not Disney I know) and I dressed as Rey from Star Wars. The plan was for Haley to text me any valuable characters as she was in corral A and would be seeing them way before me. The remainder of this post will be mostly from my perspective in corral D. Haley and I made a vlog that I will link at the end of this post in which she gives a couple updates on her run. She is a ninja though so her priority was running while mine was smelling the flowers lol.

I made it to the starting line at 5:55, which I was extremely happy about starting before 6am. Run Disney now sets off "waves" inside of the corrals. This helps to stop a huge heard of people not being able to move the first mile. I was in Corral D's first wave.



AND OFF WE WENT! The first mile I feel is the hardest one. There is minimal Disney music, no characters, and it's really just running in a parking lot. Right before mile 1, Mike and Sully were meeting. The line was already super long so I decided to pass. After 11 minutes of running, I hit the mile 1 marker!


At this time I got a text from Haley. She was done :eek:. I informed her I was at mile 1 and to just enjoy her snacks until I was done. She told me she met some characters and couldn't remember the order but knew Sebastian was the last one.



Mile 2 was all in World Showcase and a little bit in the international gateway. In mile two, there were Vikings, Dopey, Abu, and Beast. I stopped for none of them. Last year, the wait for Dopey was 30 minutes and I was not up for that again. I hung out in the Beast line for about 2 minutes then realized I was going to be meeting Beast at Be our Guest later tonight and bounced. Haley on the other hand, had no lines being in corral A so she met Dopey and Beast!





We were up to the last mile! My timing so far was pretty good because I hadn't stopped for any characters. As I was coming up to Spaceship Earth, in the distance I saw Rapunzel and Flynn which come on its Flynn Rider I clearly needed a picture.


As I was finishing mile 3 I saw Sebastian. Knowing he was the last character I decided to stop for him as well. Haley also stopped for Sebastian when she was running.



My 5k finish line pictures came out rough so enjoy this picture as a "I finished the 5k" picture


After running I met up with Haley who was done with all of her snacks. We then went to go meet Ariel because we didn't have any pictures together from the 5k.


And we were back on the bus to Coronado before 8am! 5K was a success and we were off to shower, take a quick nap and go to Magic Kingdom for the day!

Link to 5k Vlog if you are interested (note that Haley IS NOT a morning person and I am): <iframe width="560" height="315" src=""
 
WDW_Emily

WDW_Emily

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Magic Kingdom Day!

Haley and I both slept for a solid hour before getting ready to go to Magic Kingdom! We arrived at an extremely busy Magic Kingdom around 9:45 am.

And no we did not plan to both wear bright shorts and black tops lol.

Our first stop was for coffee. The line for Starbucks was out the door so we went over to Cheshire Cafe and I got a FREE iced coffee for my birthday! The lines were already getting long but the back of the park had no lines at all. We took this opportunity to meet Donald (my favorite) and Goofy. We waited under 10 minutes for both characters.

But seriously, how could someone not love this duck?


Once we finished meeting Donald and Goofy, Haley noticed Dumbo had a very short wait. We rarely go on Dumbo because the line is usually long but when it's only 10 minutes, we hop in line!


And that my friends, was the last 10 minute wait we would see for the day.

Our first fastpass was scheduled for 11:35 and we still had about a half hour to wait. Ariel only had a 20 minute wait which is usually walk on so we went into that line.

And boy was it long. We started waiting outside an ended up waiting a total for 35 minutes to ride! Nevertheless, it just meant our fastpass was ready as soon as we got off. Onward to Mine Train! Mine Train had a 120 minute wait but with fast pass it was less that 5 minutes!



Since I met Donald, it was only fair for Haley to meet her favorite character, Pooh. The line was about 50 minutes long but he's her favorite so we waited.
Believe it or not there is a Haley in this picture...



By this point we were getting pretty hungry. Although not our favorite place in the world, we stopped at Cosmic Rays. Our phones kept going off this whole trip about "mobile ordering" so we decided to give it a try. AND BOY WERE WE MISSING OUT! We sat down and found a table, placed our order, and haley went up to get it while I held our table down. In total it took maybe 5 minutes. Without the mobile ordering, we would have still been in line. I didn't take pictures of our food but I believe I got chicken tenders and Haley got a hamburger.

We were then onto Tomorrowland for our Space Mountain Fastpass!

So Haley had been to Disney about 2 weeks before this trip with her high school class to take part in the YES programs. A part of the program was riding Space Mountain with the lights on. Well for some reason, they skipped that section of the program. But some Disney magic came her way and we got to ride about 75% of Space Mountain with the lights on! They went back off at the end of the ride but it was a first for both of us!

 
WDW_Emily

WDW_Emily

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Continuing on after a super long delay!

Once we got off Space Mountain, our goal was to get some sweet treats and find a spot to watch FoF. First, I needed a picture with the purple wall...


And then we were off to the Confectionary! Believe it or not, Haley and I rarely go into the Confectionary, let alone buy anything. Haley went with a Mickey cake pop which she enjoyed even though she doesn't like brownies. I on the other hand, got a dark chocolate coved pineapple which was amazing! How have I lasted so many trips without this??



We found a great spot for FoF. I appologize to anyone who was near us as I sang the entire parade.





Considered we hadn't done anything in Adventureland, we started to make our way over there. Although not hungry, I wanted to get an orange swirl before getting in the 30 minutes line for pirates. To my wonderful surprise, the CM gave it to me or free for my birthday!


We enjoyed our last pirates ride wanting the red head and then we were on our way to ride Splash Mountain when we got the dreaded email that we needed to reschedule our fastness as the ride was down. Without knowing what ride to now make a fast pass for, we went to ride Winnie the Pooh and figure it out in line. Right before we got on the ride, the ride broke down. We now had two fast passes we could use on pretty much any ride. We first tried Peter Pan but neither fast pass would work. Our new plan was to use one of our fast passes for Haunted Mansion and the other pass for Big Thunder Mountain. First up, Haunted Mansion.


^Can you see the tiredness in my eyes?

We started to make our way to Big Thunder Mountain with our paper fast passes and noticed the water was going at Splash. We took the extra 2 minute walk and noticed that Splash was just starting back up! We quickly got in line and only waited about 15 minutes!


As we exited Splash, I checked the My Disney Experience app to see what the wait times were and I noticed we could now pick our 4th fast pass! We decided to book it with pooh because the time started in a couple minutes. Off to Pooh we went! And we actually got on this time!

It was now time for our Be Our Guest reservation! Haley had never been here for dinner but had been here for lunch. We ended up with a table in the grand ballroom.

This never happens but Haley and I got the exact same meal! We both started off with some bread and French Onion Soup.


We then got steak, veggies, and fries


I then got my birthday dessert which Haley was very upset no one sang to me (honestly I didn't care I was happy with a card lol).


We then decided to split the Grey Stuff which was pretty good.


Overall we enjoyed Be Our Guest but won't be returning with the updated menu and prices our total for two people was over $100 which is fine we got a three course meal but I'm not going to pay more when the food is not something I would enjoy.

Our last thing for the day was to use our fast passes on Big Thunder Mountain. When we went over there, the lovely CM gave us ANOTHER paper fast pass! We decided to use those the following day when we came back to Magic Kingdom.

And that was the end of our day at Magic Kingdom! We were in bed by 10pm ready to wake up at 3am. If you would like to watch a 34 minute video of our day you can click the following link:
 

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