Saturday, July 14 - Happy birthday to me!
Dylan had us up bright and early and on our way to MK for my surprise birthday present!
The only two things that I could think of were breakfast reservations or a tour, but I had no idea which restaurant or which tour. I love Disney, Dylan, my birthday, and surprises, so the day was already off to a perfect start.
When we scanned our bands the CM wished me a happy birthday and asked how old I was turning, following it up by asking if I was 22. I used to be a huge Taylor Swift fan and her song "22" was my anthem for years, so there's a big joke in my family that I'll always be 22. Dylan refuses to partake in my nonsense so when that was the age the CM guessed, I immediately turned to him like 
. He was not amused.
He told me that we needed to go to Town Square, and soon we were checking in for the tour I've been DYING to do forever.
We were given our name tags, earpieces, and water and they took our order for lunch at Pecos Bill's. We had a few minutes until the tour began, so we used the restroom and waited in the lobby area.
Disney is the only thing that will get this much excitement out of me so early in the morning.
I still can't believe that he did this for me. I'm marrying the most amazing, thoughtful man in the entire world.
Our tour guide's name was Kelli and she was great. We learned that she started out working at Splash Mountain and also worked at Big Thunder before moving into the Guest Relations arena and starting to do tours. Her fiancé (who we met later on) is also a tour guide and Disney is what brought them together.

She's a teacher and this is her summer gig... won't be long before you can come take a tour with
@blgauger in the summer.
The tour was 5 hours long with a break for lunch in the middle. We got to ride Jungle Cruise and Haunted Mansion, learning some REALLY interesting facts about both of them. I won't share all of the awesome things that we learned and got to see, but I will share some of my favorites.
1. Walt LOVED ice cream and ate a bowl every night before bed (SAME

), explaining the placement of his window on Main Street above the Plaza Ice Cream Parlor. Vanilla was his flavor of choice.
2. We got to see the staging area for the parade floats and learn how they are driven. They had all of the MNSSHP floats out and were working on them while we were there.
3. We learned a lot about Cinderella's Castle and the suite. As if I didn't want to win a stay there bad enough.
4. We talked about Tinkerbell's flight during the fireworks and the logistics of that, which I found really interesting.
5. The highlight, of course, was getting to go into the utilidors. It was what I expected, but so much more. I was really hoping to see a half dressed character, but the closest we came was seeing a dancer with her wig on and makeup done, but not yet in costume. They had some really neat artifacts and pictures displayed, as well as all of the completed pin collections from over the years.
I seriously cannot recommend this tour enough. It was INCREDIBLE and didn't ruin the magic at all whatsoever... it simply enhanced it. Dylan loved it almost as much and is already looking forward to our next tour.
We stopped for a few pictures while we decided what to do next.
The balloons in this magic shot are different than they used to be and I love them.
It was really hot at that point in the day and we were ready for some sort of break. We decided to go check out Cast Connection, which is the shopping warehouse available only to CM's and their guests. There is a back room that only CM's with valid ID can enter, but Dylan said there wasn't anything exciting back there anyway. I picked up a few things, including one of the adorable Minnie dog harnesses for Tink.
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They're still being sold in the parks for $35 but I got hers for $15 plus Dylan's discount.

Overall, Cast Connection had some pretty good deals but it's honestly not much different than the Character Warehouse at the outlets. There are some things there that they don't send to the outlets, but it was mostly the same stuff.
I had originally made FP's for Hollywood Studios (before I knew that Dylan booked the tour), and it ended up being perfect timing to use them following our break! We made it to the park just in time for Tower of Terror and lucked into my favorite drop sequence.