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.

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.

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!

 

[blreinsel]

Sunday, May 12 cont.

I think that we had a FP for Spaceship Earth first, and then we went to Club Cool to give Rose the true "welcome to Epcot" treatment.

She said, "I wondered why you guys all had your phones out all of a sudden." Mission accomplished, we walked back outside for some pictures. The sun was brutal, so you'll have to excuse our squinting. Our group was a little smaller today.. Caitlin joined us shortly after this picture!

Next up was our Test Track FP! This is P's favorite ride, so she was super excited to get to do it again!

That's my girl!

Living With the Land had a short wait, so we hopped in line for that next.

I think my pictures are a little out of order here, but we did wait standby for Soarin' at some point throughout the day. P got a little spooked the last time she rode, but she loved it this time around!

 

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Sunday, May 12 cont.

We were on our way to our next FP and noticed a short wait for the Character Spot so hopped in line! We had told P that we were on our way to another ride, so when she figured out that we were meeting characters first, she was not pleased. She refused to participate in any of the meet and greets, claiming that she was "scared of them." We were cracking up and kept making jokes about how their outfits being different than yesterday must have been the scary part.

Goofy tried to steal me for himself but was unsuccessful.

Minnie noticed our shirts and that led to a conversation about Mickey and his lack of a proposal. She said that the longer he waits, the bigger her ring has to be when he finally asks her. We agreed that at this point, her diamond should be at least as big as Spaceship Earth.

We exited and finally went to use our last FP on Nemo.. P was in better spirits by the time we exited the ride. At that point, we were ready for some WS fun, not to mention some lunch! We split up to grab lunch from different places.. half of us went to Katsura Grill and the others went to Liberty Inn. Bellies full, we grabbed some drinks to help us cool off. Most of us went with the Bee's Buzz, a F&G offering from the Joffrey's Stand in America.

 

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Sunday, May 12 cont.

All cooled off from our drinks, we decided to continue the "cool" trend and visit some royalty.

I forget what the conversation was here, but it was something to do with "no Hans."

Showing P how cold her hands are!

Overall we had a good meet and greet with them, however they were just a little... odd. They interacted with each other a lot, but it was almost too relaxed. You could tell that the girls are friends in real life and that was trickling into their interaction as Anna and Elsa. They didn't break character in an obvious way, but they weren't completely in character either. It's hard to explain, but I just felt kind of meh about the whole thing. P loved it, so that's really all that matters.

 

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Sunday, May 12 cont.

We took a bathroom break and then decided to go see which characters were meeting for the Visa meet and greet.

I'm always happy to see Pluto and Minnie, but I do wish they could put some more exclusive characters here. Maybe that would incentivize people to get a Disney Visa? This was the first time I did the Visa meet and greet at this location and I couldn't believe how small it is! There are some really awesome paintings on the walls, so I recommend doing it for that reason alone.

We were all ready for a snack, so we headed back to WS to find something sweet! I had the cheesecake from the Honey Beestro booth and it was incredible! I repeated this dish a few weeks later.

Somebody wasn't ready.

There we go!

 

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Sunday, May 12 cont.

We took a few more pictures before continuing on!

We planned to wait standby for Frozen, but that can't be done without a drink to enjoy while you wait. We all decided on margaritas from Mexico. As we were walking along, out of the blue P starts singing quietly, "heyyyy margarita aye!" We LOST IT. It was completely unprompted which made it that much funnier.

We didn't have too long of a wait before we were floating along with Olaf and friends! We all actually had to chug the rest of our drinks because we got through the queue much faster than anticipated... we were feeling the effects.

We looked around in the gift shop for a few minutes when we exited.

We had meant to get a picture with this topiary when it was still light out, but we didn't get around to it. This will have to do!

 

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Sunday, May 12 cont.

We started making our way toward the front of the park, but stopped for a few last pictures on our way out. They had this adorable sign for Mother's Day.

And with that, my bachelorette weekend came to an end. Jessi and P flew out early the next morning, while Dana and Rose flew out in the evening. I am so grateful that my girls were all willing to fly down to make this dream a reality. We had a blast and had great luck with hitting everything we wanted to get to, relatively low crowds, and good weather (for the most part). The only thing I would change is the fireworks cruise, but that was totally out of our control. I'm so lucky to have such great friends and am thankful they wanted to celebrate with me all weekend!

 

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Monday, May 13

As I mentioned in my last post, Dana didn't fly out until Monday night. I had taken the day off of work so I could take Jessi and P to the airport that morning, leaving us with a full day to entertain ourselves.

We started at AK and were greeted by DiVine when we walked in! It had be a long time since I had seen her, and Brooke and I had actually just been talking about whether or not she still performed. Our question was answered!

We were going to try and do standby for the safari, but the wait was obnoxious already so we decided to skip it. We decided to head straight for the best thing at AK.

I love them so much. Now that I had my tumble monkey fix, we decided to go ahead and hop over to Studios!

When we arrived, it was getting ready to dump a whole lot of rain on us, so we ran right to Beauty and the Beast. The skies opened up shortly after we sat down, so we were happy that we made it when we did!

 

[JosieBee]

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.
View attachment 299051

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!

How awesome to have your best friend be your teacher friend And Disney loving friend! I teach kindergarten so know how important our teacher friends are! Looks like you are living the dream! Looking forward to reading your reports!

 

[blreinsel]

Monday, May 13 cont.

We actually ended up watching Beauty and the Beast twice because the rain was not letting up. It was a true Florida storm and we had no interest in navigating the park in that. I thought that the CM's may clear us out at the end of the show, but I think they knew that a lot of people were going to stay put to avoid the rain. We got lucky!

At the end of the second show, the rain finally let up and we were able to escape. We took a much needed bathroom break and then grabbed lunch on Sunset Blvd. With our bellies full, we moved on to visit Andy and friends!

I had been texting with Brett throughout the morning so let him know that we were on our way over to see him. He told us to meet him at the camper, which was the moment I realized that the gift shops are in the shape of Tonka vehicles. It just goes to show that no matter how many times you visit, there's always something new to notice!

We stood and visited with him for a little while, filling him in on the excitement of bachelorette weekend. We eventually had to part ways so we could attend to the rest of the things on our afternoon agenda.

While exploring Andy's backyard, we got some serious pixie dust!

YESSSS! We immediately got in line for Slinky, especially because the skies were looking questionable again. We were almost to the front when the weather announcements started. We were worried that we were going to get cut off, but we got lucky!

We got pelted with rain the entire ride, but IT WAS WORTH IT. I love Slinky so much!

We used our FP for Aliens before heading out of the backyard! I really do love this ride.. it's nothing extravagant but I always find myself smiling and laughing the whole time I'm on it.

 

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Monday, May 13 cont.

We had one more stop... the best attraction at Studios.

Oh Ben, I love you so. He put on a great show, as always, and our day was now complete! We used our last FP for RnRC, and Dana ended up losing her MagicBand on the ride. ☹ Luckily she has others, but it was still a bummer.

We headed out of the park and on our way out, one of the CM's at the gate asked if we had met any characters in the park today. I was confused and just kind of looked at him and said no. He asked if we wanted to and pointed off to the left where Aladdin was standing all by his lonesome. Don't mind if we do!

These characterpalooza meet and greets seem to be popping up more and more lately and I am HERE FOR IT.

 

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Saturday, May 18

Some random pictures from an evening at AK.

All I want is a tumble monkey meet and greet lol. I'm working on it.

 

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Saturday, May 25

Dylan was in Pennsylvania for his bachelor party and I wanted some AK action! I decided to do something that I knew Dylan wouldn't want to do, and probably none of my friends would want to do either.

Back to back to back Lion King shows! That's right, 3 shows in a row! I decided that it would be a research opportunity to determine the best way to get good seats at the show. This is an ongoing research project that I'm very passionate about.

Show #1: Early standby; I got in line 25 minutes early for the 4pm show. We were let into the theater about 5 minutes before the show started and I sat down at 3:57pm. I got to go down to a row closer to the front because I was a party of 1 and could fill in on the end of the bench. I ended up in row 5 of the giraffe section.

Show #2: Late standby; I got in line 6 minutes before the 5pm show and walked right into the theater. I told the CM that I was a party of 1 and she again sent me down closer to the front. I ended up in the exact same spot as the previous show.. row 5 in the giraffe section.

Show #3: Fastpass; I got in line at 5:30pm (walked out of the theater from the previous show and got in the FP line immediately) and was let into the theater at 4:46pm. I told the CM that I was a party of 1 and asked to wait off to the side so I could fill in on the end of a row. I ended up in row 5 of the warthog section, which wasn't nearly as good of a seat as I'd had in giraffe.

My thoughts? My experiences from these 3 shows told me that getting in the standby line right before the show started was the best bet. I had a great view and was right on the end of the row, which allows for some interaction with the performers occasionally. This won't necessarily work with a bigger group, or even every time as a party of 1. I prefer the sections of the theater that the standby line is filtered into over the ones that the FP line is filtered into, so that's something to consider as well.

Anyway, enjoy my million blurry pictures of my favorite boys in all of Animal Kingdom! The best part of today? My favorite tumble monkey picked bugs out of my hair at one point during the show. I was SO HAPPY.

 

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Saturday, May 25 cont.

Finishing up! I also learned today that the monkeys will trade off certain parts of the show. For example, the same monkey doesn't come out on the swing every show and which monkey comes on the swing determines their placement on the floor, as well as some of the tricks that they do.

I could have watched several more shows, but unfortunately there weren't anymore today. I was hungry, though, so I headed for Flame Tree to get some dinner!

I did another lap around the park after I finished eating, just to enjoy the beautiful evening, and then I headed home for the night.

 

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Sunday, May 26

Caitlin and I met up at Studios a little early for our dinner ADR. We had a FP for Toy Story Mania and also wanted to stop and see Olaf so he could wish her niece a happy birthday!

We checked in for dinner at Hollywood and Vine and only had to wait a few minutes before being called in! Caitlin had eaten here a few times before, but this was my first time.

Daisy looked gorgeous in her spring outfit! We complimented her outfit and she started dancing all over, working it like the diva she is! We told her that Donald was causing trouble in the restaurant and she asked us to keep an eye on him and keep him in line. We promised that we would.

Mickey came by first and we told him that he looked dapper! Caitlin said that she thought his outfit would be perfect for a proposal and suggested that he make it happen tonight! He began patting the pockets on his coat and said that he had forgotten Minnie's ring in his other jacket. We told him that he should still definitely wear this outfit when he does propose to her. We also told him that we had talked to Minnie at Epcot and she said that her diamond needs to be as big as Spaceship Earth.. he thanked us for the information.

Goofy came by next and we also told him how dapper he looked. We complemented his bowtie and we all agreed that he was the best dressed in the restaurant. When he came over to us, apparently Donald had also been planning to come over to us next. Donald came storming over and Goofy told him that he's the #2 duck. I'm sure you can imagine how that went over with Donald. Donald started kissing and hugging us and stood in between us and Goofy, trying to prevent him from getting to us. He then "beat up" Goofy and "scared him off." We didn't actually get any pictures with Goofy, but he came back around later and we took care of it!

Now that Donald had taken over and scared Goofy off, he was content. We told him that he's the #1 duck and talked about strong and tough he is for beating Goofy up. We also told him that he needs to be careful kissing us because Daisy was nearby and might see him! Caitlin told him that he had called her a loser twice before and he got down on his knees to beg for her forgiveness. He said that he had only called her a loser because he was grumpy from not eating breakfast that day. He kept giving himself angry eyebrows with his hands. He started talking about needing dessert to avoid angry eyebrows and he tried to talk a nearby CM into getting him some ice cream. When she said no, he covered her face and motioned for us to get him a bowl. It was such an awesome interaction with him and he stayed with us for a really long time!

In between Donald and our next visitor, there was a battle between Donald and Mickey (this Donald was incredible ). Another table across the restaurant started singing "who's the leader of the club that's made for you and me?" Of course everybody else in the place starting singing along and clapping. Donald STORMS over and is shaking his head and waving his arms, trying to get them to stop. Another table started chanting "Donald, Donald, Donald!" which he of course loved. It then became a battle to see who could be cheered for the loudest. He finally walked away, apparently satisfied that he had some fans in the house too. When he walked by our table, we reminded him that he's the #1 duck no matter what, and that earned us some more hugs.

Minnie was up next, and she was kind of boring. First of all, she was literally the smallest Minnie I've ever met... I thought I was going to snap her in half when I hugged her lol. We complimented her dress and told her that we had been working on Mickey and a proposal. Mickey walked by while we were talking to her, but he didn't acknowledge her. We told her that we would have a talk with him about ignoring her!

 

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Sunday, May 26 cont.

Mickey came back around and we scolded him for not saying hi to Minnie when he had walked by earlier. He said that he would smooth things over with her in the back. We reminded him to get her ring switched over into this jacket pocket so he could wear the outfit when he proposes!

Goofy finally made it back over to see us but we didn't have much interaction with him on his second visit. He was pretending to shoot baskets and dunk a ball in the middle of the restaurant when he walked away from us, though.

The food was actually really good! There was plenty to choose from, and everything I ate was good! They also had quite a few yummy desserts to choose from.

We will definitely be back! We want to see the rest of their outfits (they change for each season), and I'm not going to argue with having that food again!

 

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Monday, May 27 - 2nd Annual Memorial Day Extravaganza!

Brooke and I started this tradition last year.. on Memorial Day we hit all 4 parks and do the most patriotic thing in each of them. Caitlin decided to join us this year as well! We were under a heat advisory all day and it was HOT. At the end of the night, I could literally barely keep my eyes open.. I don't think I've ever been that tired in my life lol. But we had a blast and accomplished quite a bit, even with the busy Memorial Day crowds!

I had to pick Dylan up at the airport that morning, so we didn't get started until around 10am. We met at Studios and headed straight for Muppets. This is American because of Sam Eagle. Miss Piggy as the Statue of Liberty also qualifies, however the lady we asked to take our picture cut her off.

We stopped to say hi to Chip and Dale!

Dale loved my ears and took them off my head right away!

He decided that he should probably give them back so he didn't get in too much trouble.

Everybody cheered for him making good choices! Lol

They are just soooo cute!

Next up was a visit with Brett (Guy Behind the Magic). We stood and talked to him for a long time, and he ended up "escorting us out of the park" and wrote us a ticket while he was at it.

We said our goodbyes and headed to AK!

 

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Monday, May 27 - 2nd Annual Memorial Day Extravaganza!

We arrived at AK and attempted to watch FoLK, but they cut the line off just before we got in. We went and grabbed some treats to cool off with while we waited for the next show! I had the new one with the watermelon syrup and coconut rum. It was good!

Because it would be un-American to visit AK without watching Lion King.

We had a late lunch at Flame Tree and then grabbed our "American" picture for AK.

 

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Monday, May 27 - 2nd Annual Memorial Day Extravaganza!

We had one more stop before leaving AK....

We gave the boys all our love and then headed off to Epcot for the next leg of our journey!

 

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Monday, May 27 - 2nd Annual Memorial Day Extravaganza!

We decided on Voices of Liberty at Epcot because none of us were sure that we could stay awake through American Adventure. They were fantastic as always!

Again, the lady we asked to take our picture cut off the sign.

We had been wanting to try to cocktail pops from Italy, and the heat had us dying for something cold! Brooke and I had the sangria one and Caitlin had the chocolate covered strawberry one. They were delicious and really hit the spot!

We didn't stick around at Epcot for long because we were all tiring out pretty quickly. We took the monorail to MK and used our first FP for Big Thunder. Then, we went to watch Hall of Presidents to check off our American item for MK.

Our next FP was for Splash, which felt fantastic!

Our last FP was for HM, so we used that and then promptly headed out for the night. Typically, we would have stayed for fireworks but we were all just so exhausted. Plus, we still had to go to school the next day, whereas last year we had finished before Memorial Day. Either way, we hit the most American attraction in each park, so mission accomplished! It was a great day with great friends.

 

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I'm going to combine a few posts here.

Tuesday, May 28

Drinks at the Poly with @wdisney9000, C Minor, and Dylan! Keith has already shared about our evening, but I'll just reiterate that we had a great time and could have sat there for hours chatting about Disney, Florida, and life in general. We always love getting together with him and C and jump on the opportunity to do so when it's presented! It was also an honor to get to meet C Minor after reading about her for years. She's just as sweet in person as she appears in TRs.

Friday, May 31 - LAST DAY OF SCHOOL!

Brooke and I organized a last day of school staff outing at Epcot to celebrate the start of summer! We had a pretty big group and we had a blast walking around WS, chatting and celebrating! We also saw Pentatonix (I don't listen to them, but other members of our group do), so that was a highlight of the evening.

During our walk around WS, I had the flatbread from the Honey Beestro! It was yummy!

I also repeated the delicious cheesecake from the Beestro.

Saturday, June 1

Brooke and I needed one last violet lemonade (she ended up going back for more the next day ) before F&G ended. We also had outfits that needed to be worn. Dylan just rolled his eyes at us.

Monday, June 3

Passholder event at Typhoon Lagoon! This was my first time at TL so I was excited to see how it compared to Blizzard Beach. The event was from 5pm-8pm (but the actually let us in closer to 4pm) and was totally free to us!

We had some food and a beverage before heading for the slides!

We had a lot of fun and got to do quite a few slides! We spent a few minutes in the wave pool, but we didn't stay there for long because the slides were more important to us. Overall, it was a super fun evening, but we did still have some decent waits for some of the more popular slides. I had always heard that TL was better than BB, but I honestly didn't notice much of a difference. They both have really great theming and they both have some great slides. I'm not a huge water park person in general, so maybe that's part of it, but to me I'd say they're pretty equal!


Thursday, June 6

I don't have any pictures because I only took a few short videos today, but I want to document the fact that I watched 5/6 Festival of the Lion King shows in one day. The plan was to do all 6, but we were starving and ran to get food.. the line ended up taking FOREVER, making us 2 minutes late to the show and the CM wouldn't let us in. I told him that we were trying to do all 6 shows and really tried to get him to let us in, but he wasn't budging. We sat outside the theater and could still hear the music, so it kind of counts lol. I thought that I might start to get tired of it by the 4th or 5th show, but I didn't.. not even a little bit. I LOVE THIS SHOW SO MUCH. I learned that the performers change after every 3 shows, but some of them will come back around (presumably a result of them picking up shifts or something to that effect). By the end of the summer, I WILL see all 6 shows in one day!