Trip Report Livin' La Vida Local

All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them.

For those of you that have been following my adventures for awhile now, welcome back! 😊 For those of you that are just joining my adventures, I'll do some quick introductions before we jump on in!

I'm Brittany and this is my prince, Dylan. ❤️ We are from Pennsylvania and got engaged at MK a little over a year ago. We took a page from Walt's book shortly thereafter and chased our dreams, leading us to central Florida. I teach 1st grade and Dylan works at the Magnolia/Palm (Disney) golf courses located across from the Poly and Grand Floridian. After living in FL for a full year now, we are 100% certain that we won't be moving back to PA. We are Floridians through and through and can't imagine living our crazy life together anywhere else. ☺️
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You'll see lots of faces in my report (including some of yours!), but this is the one you'll see most often. 😉 This is my very best Disney friend, Brooke (@wishes2013)! We met through this site and were brought together when we realized that we would both be teaching 1st grade at the same school. I'm not exaggerating when I say that you can either find us at school or Disney... we're together more often than we're not. 😋
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You can find the ongoing trip report that chronicles our first year living in FL and being passholders here. 😊 This report will serve as more of a "highlight reel," rather than detailing every moment of every trip we take to the parks. But fear not, there will still be lots of report to read! If you're looking for your Disney fix or a way to chase those Disney blues away, you can most certainly find it here. 🤗

To all who come to this happy place, welcome!
 
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blreinsel

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Saturday, May 11 cont.

The whole group! The PP photographer bribed P with stickers because she was NOT having any part of this photo shoot. 😂
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Bridesmaids!
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My brother and I don't agree on much, but I'm sure glad he gave me Jessi as the sister I never had. 🥰
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My little princess!
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This one has a backstory. 😂 This is my 1st grade team.. well, there are two others but this is my squad. 😉 Everybody at school uses Brooke and I's names interchangeably and it's become a running joke.. the kids, other teachers, our own teammates lol. We've just accepted it and started saying that we're basically the same person anyway. Monika started referring to us as Fauger (a combination of both of our last names). Then we decided that we needed a squad name that combined all of our names, but we struggled. Eventually, we combined random letters from each of our last names to create the squad name "Winter." Over the course of the day, they started trying to come up with a hand signal, and apparently this came to them as I was taking pictures with other people. They sprang it on me and told me to smile all in a matter of like 3 seconds, hence my deformed hand. 😂

Anyway, Winter for life! 🙃
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We headed out of the park and caught a boat to WL for the next leg of our bachelorette journey. But where were we headed?
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blreinsel

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
OMG! So jealous you got your bachelorette party at WDW! How perfect!
I can't wait to read the rest of it.

Just need to ask, did you get a little sunburnt? 😂🤣

Lol! Just a tad. ;) I got super bad tan lines (obviously) and then had to spend a week at the pool trying to even them out for the wedding. :hilarious:

That's my kind of bachelorette party! And yes, Team Bride clearly won, hands down!
Oh team bride DEFINITELY won! I'm not even saying that because I'm biased since it was your team...I mean seriously, that's how a scavenger hunt works! 🤣
The scavenger hunt looked like sooo much fun! I agree, Team Bride won for sure!!!
You ticked all the pictures of the scavenger list so team bride won all day long! great bachelorette party im looking forward to reading some more.

Hear that @wishes2013? WE WON. 😋😂

The scavenger hunt was an absolute blast.. Brooke did a great job. :joyfull:

Bride & Groom ears...

Real life Bride & Groom > store display


YES. Extra points for us. ;)
 

blreinsel

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
OMG, you must be so excited!! What a super fun bachelorette party! And I have to agree with the others....you totally won the scavenger hunt. I've never heard of getting extra points for finding more than one of the things.

It was a super fun weekend! Yes, we’re very excited! It’s hard to believe that it’s finally almost here. 😊
 

blreinsel

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Saturday, May 11 cont.

We arrived at Wilderness Lodge and walked over to check in for our Happily Ever After fireworks cruise! :joyfull:😍 You can sail from any of the monorail resorts for this cruise, but research told me that WL is the best choice because it gives you the most time on the water prior to fireworks time. After checking in, we stopped by Geyser Point to grab some drinks. If you know me at all, you can probably guess what drink I had. ;) Some basic snacks and drinks are also included in the price of the cruise.. soda, water, chips, rice crispy treats, etc.
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Our CM was great and handled a boat full of women as well as anybody could. :hilarious:
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We cruised around for quite awhile, passing right by Discovery Island. Our driver shared lots of interesting information both about Discovery Island as well as other Disney related items. :) We were able to connect to the boat's wifi and play our own music while we cruised. We were having a blast!

We stopped right in front of MK probably about 10 minutes before fireworks were due to start. We turned off our music and the pre-show music was piped in through the boat speakers.
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It was at that point that our driver informed us that there was a good chance that we were going to have to head back to the dock... there was lightning in the area. We kept our fingers crossed and hoped for the best, but at the exact moment that HEA started, he started the boat up and we headed back to shore. We were able to kind of watch the show while we made our way back to shore, but a lot of it was hidden by the trees. We ended up docking at the Poly, directly behind one of the buildings which made it impossible to see anything. We got off of the boat and ran down to the beach so we could watch the last couple minutes of the show from there.

I was devastated. I had been looking forward to this for months and couldn't believe our terrible luck. I was also extremely annoyed that they just shooed us off of the boat without offering us anything. I refused to accept that my girls all paid for a private viewing of HEA and we got nothing but a boat ride. Fortunately Dana was able to get Disney to offer a full refund, but it took a good month for them to finally process everything.

I want to be able to recommend the fireworks cruise but I just can't. The weather is so unpredictable in Florida, especially during the rainy season, and there's no way to guarantee that you'll actually get what you paid for. When we did the Illuminations cruise with @DisneyJeff, we had a blast! I was hoping for an amazing experience with this cruise as well, but Mother Nature had other plans. I'm sure it's fantastic when you actually get to see the show, and I guess most of the time you will get to do that. So maybe if you plan to do a cruise during the dry season you'll have better luck, but you're still taking a risk. We plan to attempt the cruise again someday, but it's definitely a bummer that it didn't come to fruition for my bachelorette party.

We walked back to the TTC and headed out for the night after HEA ended. We had an amazing day at MK and I'm so thankful that we got as much accomplished as we did! :) We had another full day planned so got to bed as soon as we got home. Epcot, here we come!
 

blreinsel

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Sunday, May 12

We were up and at em' early the next morning to head to Epcot for day 2! We stopped for a necessary Starbucks fill up before continuing on to the park. ;)
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Caffeinated up, we arrived at Epcot 20 minutes later. I started getting out of the car and Jessi says, "hold on a minute!" I turn around and this is what I see. Yes, those are pudding shots. :hilarious: We had made them for Friday night when we were just hanging out at the house, but we had some leftovers. Also, please believe me when I say that P is not eating an actual shot. We made some non-alcoholic ones for the minors. :hilarious:
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Minutes later, there we were... living our best lives, taking shots at 9am in the Epcot parking lot. :hilarious:
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We finished up our business and then started heading for the front gates. Brooke drove separately, so I sent her a quick message to let her know what was taking us so long. :hilarious:

:inlove::inlove::inlove:
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Dylan had to join us again so the girls could scan into the park, but he went about his own business shortly after we all got inside. :) The CM's were handing out flowers since it was Mother's Day.
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We stopped for a few pictures before heading to our first attraction of the day.
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