Live! - 10 Nights at Riverside for Food & WIne

Hi guys! Our cab should be here to pick us up for the airport in about an hour. I'm anxious to hit the road, so I thought I'd pass the time by starting a trip report of sorts. I'll do a few updates when we have downtime on what I expect will be a very leisurely-paced vacation. I guess anyone who's interested can also see my Tweets, and starting tomorrow, my Food & Wine Festival photos on Foodspotting. I'll try to post some photos also when we're back at our room at night.

In the title, I indicated that this vacation was for Epcot's International Food & Wine Festival, but that's only partially true. Yes, we do favor the Festival, and during its run is, in our opinion, the best time of year to go. It's for this reason that pugmalion1 and I decided to plan our wedding (and future anniversaries) for this time of year. That leads me to the other reason we're going to Disney World. A week from today, we get to meet our wedding planner for our Swan/Dolphin wedding that will take place next year! I'm so excited to get some of the details hammered down and finally secure our date. If all goes according to plan, we'll be marrying on November 5th, 2013 in one of the Swan's beautiful outdoor ceremony locations, and then having a dinner reception with our closest friends and family at Todd English's bluezoo. I guess that means we'll be celebrating our -1st anniversary on this trip as well!

Anyway, I'm done blathering now, we'll see ya real soon!
 
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Hulacat

Hulacat

Active Member
Have a great time Melissa- and congrats on your wedding news! Riverside is so beautiful- hopefully you get to stay in Arcadian or one of the other manors, sigggh:) We spent our Disneymoon there, so pretty.
 
Sweet Melissa

Sweet Melissa

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Thanks, Hula. We requested to be placed in the Manors, so we'll see! We've always been French Quarter people, but we stayed two nights at Riverside last year and decided to return. I'm looking forward to it.

We're all checked in and waiting to board in the Billings airport now. Our flight is supposed to board in 10 minutes, but there's no gate agent here yet. The plane is here, though. Next stop: Salt Lake City!
 
real mad hatter

real mad hatter

Well-Known Member
Have a magical vacation.We spent 14 days at PORS in July this year,magnolia terrace.The renovated rooms are lovely.It was our third time at Riverside and its our favourite.Don't forget to toss your dime off the bridge into the Sassagoula river and make a wish;)
 
W

wiigirl

Well-Known Member
Have a great time! :)
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Sweet Melissa

Sweet Melissa

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Hatter, I'm looking forward to the refurbished rooms. The one we stayed in last year hasn't been done yet and I'm curious to compare.

We just touched down in Salt Lake City. We made great time! Landed about 25 minutes ahead of schedule. I hope the good flight karma holds out from SLC to MCO.
 
Sweet Melissa

Sweet Melissa

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
We're finally settled in our room and unpacked. Riverside gave us a great room in the Magnolia Terrace manor. We have a corner room with a king bed and a water view. I love the new rooms! The color scheme is so soothing. We're off to Old Key West for dinner at Olivia's now.
 
Sweet Melissa

Sweet Melissa

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
I forgot to mention, the Halloween characters are out in full force! We saw Mardi Gras Mickey and Goofy at French Quarter and Tiana and Louis at Riverside.
 
Sweet Melissa

Sweet Melissa

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Dinner at Olivia's was great, due largely to our server, John, and his hospitality and extensive knowledge of the menu. He kept bringing us tastes of different dishes and offering advice. He was a total superstar, and all of his recommendations were spot on.

We made our way back to Port Orleans after dinner and enjoyed some of the Halloween festivities. We bought some sickeningly sweet drinks at the pool bar before checking out the outdoor movies. Riverside's movie under the stars was The Nightmare Before Christmas, and French Quarter's was Hocus Pocus. We watched a bit of both, but the light pollution on both screens was terrible. We could barely see the picture, especially at Riverside.

Now we're back in our room relaxing. Spending half the day in airplanes makes one more tired than it should. Tomorrow we're heading to Epcot for the Food & Wine Festival.
 
PUSH

PUSH

Well-Known Member
I love the feeling of "tomorrow we are going to ___________." It seems dumb, but it's true.

Also, Riverside is my favorite resort! Hope you enjoy it, and have a great trip!
 
Sweet Melissa

Sweet Melissa

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
PUSH said:
I love the feeling of "tomorrow we are going to ___________." It seems dumb, but it's true.

Also, Riverside is my favorite resort! Hope you enjoy it, and have a great trip!
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Haha, there are several days where we won't have that "the plan for tomorrow is ..." thing. This is the longest trip to the World we've ever taken. Now that we live in the boonies and flights are so expensive, we couldn't justify the short vacations we're used to taking. As such, many days in our schedule have a lot of leeway, or no plan at all.

It's weird to me to get to Disney Property and not immediately head to the Magic Kingdom. We're so used to flying in from the NYC area and getting in early enough to spend all afternoon and evening in a park. Coming from Montana is a whole other animal, though. There's no such thing as a direct flight from Billings to Orlando, so that extra thousand miles in the air plus at least one layover makes it a much longer travel day. By the time we got checked in and settled at our resort, it was already 6pm, and the Magic Kingdom closed at 7 tonight for Mickey's Not-So-Scary Halloween Party. We won't be stepping foot in the Magic Kingdom for another couple days at least. It's just so strange!

Resort Wi-Fi is pretty slow, but I'm going to try to upload some photos tonight. If not tonight, I promise there will be pictures in the near future!
 
Sweet Melissa

Sweet Melissa

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
We're at one of my favorite places: the Cabana Bar at the Dolphin. We just stopped in to meet the manager about possibly having a rehearsal dinner here next year. It seems like a really good option for our group. While we're here we decided to stay for a drink. We had a good day at Food & Wine today. We stopped snacking around 1pm, but got a good amount of ground covered in those couple hours. We're headed back to Epcot after this. We have dinner at Rose & Crown in a few hours.
 
Sweet Melissa

Sweet Melissa

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
We spent a few hours at the Magic Kingdom this morning. Between Fastpass and very manageable crowds we were able to walk on to pretty much everything we wanted to ride. The only exception was Pirates, which was down when we tried to ride it. Despite what I thought were pretty low crowds, Tortuga Tavern was open and packed. Are they just opening it more than they used to?

We're at the Wave now, having a drink and a light lunch in their lounge. After this, we'll figure out how to kill some time before our 4:15 showing of Wreck-It Ralph at Downtown Disney.
 
Sweet Melissa

Sweet Melissa

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
We're resort hopping today. We just left the Wilderness Lodge and are currently on a boat (completely empty but for us and the captain) headed for the Contemporary. We also plan to hit Polynesian and the Art of Animation. Eventually we'll go to Animal Kingdom, then probably somewhere in AKL for dinner.
 
Sweet Melissa

Sweet Melissa

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
We're halfway through the vacation and time is flying. It's been so much fun and so relaxing, though. I feel so lucky that we have another five nights here. I could get used to taking trips this long! I thought I'd finally get around to posting a few pictures today.


Glimpsing the Castle by Melissisms, on Flickr


Room with a View by Melissisms, on Flickr


Port Orleans - Riverside by Melissisms, on Flickr


Rose & Crown in the Morning by Melissisms, on Flickr


Mouse Chic by Melissisms, on Flickr
 
erstwo

erstwo

Well-Known Member
Sweet Melissa said:
I forgot to mention, the Halloween characters are out in full force! We saw Mardi Gras Mickey and Goofy at French Quarter and Tiana and Louis at Riverside.
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Oooooh! I wonder if this is common? I would love to meet Louis!

ETA - Loving this TR! I'll be following along. Congrats on the upcoming wedding!
NYC to Montana?! That is quite the transition! I bet it is beautiful in Montana though!
 

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