Trip Report Our First December Trip! A Bay Lake Tower/ Dream Cruise Land & Sea Report ***COMPLETED***

Hi everyone!! Back from a wonderful trip only yesterday. Among laundry loads, grocery shopping, giving the cats the attention they're craving, not to mention recovering from my sea legs (I have no trouble ever on the cruise ship, but the first day or two afterwards, I still feel the motion of the ship), we are also uploading pictures. So I will be beginning our trip report shortly.

You may have seen our Pre-Trip report here:
http://forums.wdwmagic.com/threads/...-night-trip-first-time-renting-points.909350/
The nitty-gritty of our trip:

WHO: Amber, age 38 (myhappyplace) and Dave, age 46 (Mrhappyplace). We have been married for 3 years. We live outside Atlanta together with our fur babies.




PAST TRIPS: Dave visited WDW as a child a couple times, and I have been going every 1.5 years or so since 2001. Our first WDW trip as a couple was our honeymoon back in October 2013. Our next trip together was a Land & Sea trip in September 2015. While on that cruise, we booked this cruise, then added some days to the beginning of the trip, since neither of us have visited when Christmas decorations are up-and I LOVE me some Christmas!! Spoiler alert: we booked our next cruise on this one!! (TIP: if you think you even remotely want to cruise again while onboard, there is no reason NOT to do this! It locks in a discount and shipboard account credit, you have 2 years to complete the cruise, plus if you decide not to, the deposit is refundable!!)


WHEN: December 1-4 Bay Lake Tower (we rented points-another first, all went smoothly)
(December 1- Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party)
December 5-9 4-night Disney Dream cruise


OF NOTE: This report will have TONS of pictures. After our prior trip, on which Dave highly enjoyed borrowing my camera, we bought him the same one, so we could share lenses. So some pictures are from my camera, some are from his camera, some are from my phone, some are from his phone.

Who's ready to go!?

 

[myhappyplace]

I was happy with these! ( @imahistorygeek notice the Lularoe?)






When it was time for the fireworks, we stood in the street. View wasn't too bad, though hard to get any photos without heads along the bottom. Warning: onslaught of not-very-good fireworks pictures!













Oh, Christmas Tree!

 

[myhappyplace]

And then, of course, more Main Street photos, as we headed to our choice of parade viewing spots-near the flagpole, so that we could get the lit castle and snow in the background of our parade photos!



Me, looking up in wonderment!


We did run up to the train station, to see the view from there:








And back down

 

[myhappyplace]

We waited I think about 30 minutes, but were entertained by the pre-parade entertainment and the antics of the little girl in front of us. Before long, here came the parade! Dave had the wider angle lens on, and I had a zoom lens on.





Awwwww




The Frozen section was next


Wreck-it Ralph and Vanellope were next...Dave liked her car


Goofy, Chip & Dale, and the Gingerbread Men






Clarabelle Cow




Snow White and her Dwarves

 

[myhappyplace]

Snow White & her Prince


These ponies were precious


Cinderella's Coach


Here come the Princesses












Then the Toys:

 

[myhappyplace]

Wrapping up the parade with what was both Dave and my favorite part...the soldiers!









And here comes the big man himself!




After the parade, we headed out back to our resort. And that's the end of our first day! Thanks for reading so far

 

[epcotisbest]

Wow! These are some great photos. Thanks for sharing.

 

[epcotisbest]

We stayed at BLT a couple of years ago and loved it. We were inside the C at about 10 o'clock, 9th floor looking out over the pool and lake. Really enjoyed the view. As for theme, it is nothing as immersive as AKL or WL, but we liked the modern, clean style. One of our favorite things about trying different Disney resorts is the different feel of each one.

 

[myhappyplace]

Wow! These are some great photos. Thanks for sharing.

Thank you! Thank YOU for reading!

We stayed at BLT a couple of years ago and loved it. We were inside the C at about 10 o'clock, 9th floor looking out over the pool and lake. Really enjoyed the view. As for theme, it is nothing as immersive as AKL or WL, but we liked the modern, clean style. One of our favorite things about trying different Disney resorts is the different feel of each one.

The view was awesome, even if it wasn't theme park. We enjoyed watching the monorails go in and out of the Contemporary, and watching the boats arrive, both on Bay Lake and Seven Seas Lagoon. We (well, I, as Dave doesn't care for it) also liked being able to see the Electric Water Pageant. It really was a classy place, and I liked being there in proximity to one of the original resorts.

 

[Mrhappyplace]

We stayed at BLT a couple of years ago and loved it. We were inside the C at about 10 o'clock, 9th floor looking out over the pool and lake. Really enjoyed the view. As for theme, it is nothing as immersive as AKL or WL, but we liked the modern, clean style. One of our favorite things about trying different Disney resorts is the different feel of each one.

We've been trying out different resorts ourselves. Not sure we will ever stay at all of them but we have a list of ones we want to stay at. Curious enough in the early stages of planning this trip we were thinking AKL but we realized it was a short stay and one of our priorities was resort hopping so with what the purchase points were for BLT being on the monorail loop and walking distance to MK seemed to be the best option for achieving our goals for this trip.

Next trip is Caribbean Beach and that wasn't high on our lists either but the price after applying a pin code was too attractive to pass up.

 

[Mrhappyplace]

Here are some shots I took earlier in the day. Our last trip I really regretted that we didn't take any pictures inside Wyland Galleries a lot of the things I wanted to try to photograph weren't there this trip so I only took two shots inside.

 

[myhappyplace]

^^ he really wants a large shark or dolphin in our livingroom...

Day 2: Friday, December 2nd- Epcot

We wanted to be at Epcot for rope drop, since I was not able to secure FP for the new Frozen ride. So we were up and at 'em, on our way to the monorail station in the Contemporary, heading to breakfast at the Poly. We hadn't looked around too much in the Contemporary, so stopped to admire their Frozen gingerbread display. While I don't get the warm and fuzzies from the Contemporary/ BLT room decor, I do love the Mary Blair art.







And, the 5-legged goat:


So we get up to the monorail station, and realize we left something very important in the room! What was it? Read on to see, but I did go back and get it. By the time we got back up to the station, it was much busier.




You might think that we were off to 'Ohana or even Kona Cafe for breakfast...nope! I do love me some Tonga Toast, though. So what were our plans?? Captain Cook's of course! "But, wait, myhappyplace" you might be saying, "the Tonga Toast at CC's doesn't come with that delicious strawberry compote!"

I brought my own!!!


I found the recipe on pinterest months ago, and have used it a time or two here at home, on pancakes or regular french toast. So, for less money and time, I got to have Tonga Toast! We both had it, in fact. I put it in a container that I got for $1 at the dollar store, which I tossed after we were done.



We looked around at the Poly decor...it is a shame they don't have an icon tree, but theirs was nice too.




Then, it was back to the monorail for Dave's first time to Epcot via monorail! I didn't think to take pics. We arrived shortly after park open, so we weren't sure what the line would be like for Frozen Ever After...

First, some random Epcot pics/ holiday displays on our way:

 

[myhappyplace]

We made a beeline for Frozen Ever After, but by the time we got there, the wait was 55 minutes. We didn't have to be anywhere else until our Soarin' FP a bit later, so we decided to wait. It wrapped around Akershus, and even though there were Cast Members holding signs that said "Frozen Line Starts Here", a family decided to cut in front of us after we had been in the line for about 10 minutes. I made some passive aggressive comments to Dave, kinda hoping they'd hear, but not really planning to do anything about it. That is, UNTIL we heard them say "this wait is going to be 2 hours!", and Dave said straight to them like "well, it was 55 minutes when we got in line over there, but since you jumped ahead of us and all of the other people in line, you won't be waiting 2 hours". They apologized and acted like they had no clue. Did they or not? We don't really know but at least they didn't cause a fuss, and went and got their proper spot in line. We wouldn't have cared if it wasn't like the most popular ride right now.

Some pics while waiting...

We were amused by this squirrel (hard to see) who had no qualms about crawling up in this buggy and looking for crumbs and remnants of food to eat.


By the time we got to the sign, it said 75 minutes. We figure we stood in line for the actual 55 the app said when we got in line)






The decorations were cute:




This was such a cute touch, Oaken in the sauna. We heard a little girl in line near us ask her mom "is he not wearing clothes in there?" LOL.










And, of course you're all waiting for our on-ride photo, right?

 

[myhappyplace]

A couple of the less-blurry photos I took on my phone during the ride:





And, not to backtrack...here is the ornament I got for my niece:




That's all for tonight folks, thanks for reading!! Coming up tomorrow: a whole lotta backtracking for APs and ice cream, and evening at Epcot!

 

[DRD]

Bo is disturbing. I might have bad dreams tonight. Yikes.

 

[myhappyplace]

Bo is disturbing. I might have bad dreams tonight. Yikes.

You ain't lyin'. I think I even recall saying something similar after I took that picture...

 

[myhappyplace]

Next up, we had a FP for:


Dave attempted some photos:




Our verdict--- We loved it! I don't know if I was a little "too used" to the old one, but this one had my eyes taking in every little bit! I did miss the orange scent, but it was fun to have a change.

On our way over to Guest Relations (you'll see why), we came across the Baymax Meet & Greet. This was on our to-do list anyway, as DH really wanted to fist bump him. He even wore another Baymax shirt! The line didn't look too long, though it did take some time, I'm glad we did it! He was so *squishy*!







Then they convinced me to get in the picture:




Next up, was something we were super excited about! Buuuut...didn't go quite as planned, yet. What am I talking about? We wanted to become Annual Passholders!! We had a very friendly and helpful CM at guest services...don't recall his name but he was from Brazil. We were moving along in the process, when screech! We didn't realize you had to have identification with you, and we did not. Oops. We told him we would return later in the day.

One of the big reasons we wanted AP was for the food discount. So we didn't really want to go and get food at a CS in World Showcase without our discount, right?! So where did we go? (For those keeping track, we've now entered the park, walked back to Norway, then to the Land, over to Guest Services, and back toward World Showcase now)

First, we passed this:





And this view:


And then through the International Gateway, with this on our mind:


However, a tug on the door revealed it to be closed And, no there was no sign, and no, we weren't the only ones to try. We found out by asking the CMs in the Bakery next door that they weren't opening until 2:00.

So we decided to:

and split a meatball sub because we were hungry, but didn't want to order a full meal without that discount!

We forgot to take a picture though, so the box'll have to do!



After that, we decided that we would head back to BLT and grab our id's and rest a bit. Plus the flip flops I was wearing caused a blister, so I wanted to change shoes. We boarded a Magic Kingdom bus from the Boardwalk, and then walked to BLT from there.



We saw the Captain America: Civil War bus pulling out

 

[myhappyplace]

I don't recall how long we rested, but before too long, we were back at Epcot, id's in hand. And now I can say:

We are Annual Passholders!


The band was playing as we walked past the fountain stage:




Time to go around World Showcase from the Mexico side (didn't realize how blurry this was till now)




We stopped in Germany for a cheese plate...more for me than Dave, but I did share a bit. Can I just say DELISH?! $5 well spent IMO.




We visited the miniature train, to see if there were any holiday touches, and there were some:




I apparently liked the way this Mickey head mimicked the Spaceship Earth:


We had originally intended to do a little more exploring with the Holidays Around the World. What I really wanted to see was Voices of Liberty, but we had missed all of their shows for the day. We did see a woman giving a presentation on Kwanzaa:


Tree in the good ol' US of A:


We decided to share what has become one of my very favorite meals in World Showcase. Schwarma platter from Tangerine Cafe. I really enjoy each element of this dish, and it's very shareable.


I went with the lamb:


We really enjoy the decor in Morocco, and promised ourselves that in our upcoming May trip, when it wasn't the holidays, that we would take time and explore more in depth, all of the countries.

 

[myhappyplace]

For the second time that day, we headed toward the International Gateway



Back to...you guessed it!


The decorations were so cute!


A helpful flowchart:


The workers in there were so helpful, and encouraged us to sample many things!! In the end, we settled on a Flight. 6 scoops of ice cream, in any combo. We went with 2 scoops peanut butter, 2 scoops ooey gooey butter cake, 1 scoop cotton candy, and 1 scoop baked/unbaked. SOOOO good, and worth it!






We sat at a table at water's edge, and enjoyed the scenery, the sunset, our ice cream, and each other. We were reminded of how much we really did enjoy the Boardwalk.

Before long, we reentered the IG, and debated what we should do. We wandered the streets of the United Kingdom pavilion (I sort of wanted to see if there was any Outlander merchandise, though I didn't really figure there would be). We came across Father Christmas, with no photographer. The man in the couple ahead of us heard me mention that, and he said "we'll be your photographer, if you'll be ours" and we agreed. Love how that works out at WDW!



Snapped this very blurry picture, because I'm into Tudor history



A recurring event/ conversation happened between DH and I many times over the course of this vacation, both at WDW and later on the cruise. How ignorant some people can be...like the times we saw a towel lying on a brick planter, instead of the bin provided for them not more than 10 feet away. So when I visited the restroom, I had to snap this picture to show DH. There is no reason a person cannot throw their beer cup in the trash can RIGHT THERE IN THE BATHROOM. Grrr. The whole stall smelled of beer, too. (Not commenting on drinking, at all whatsoever, just lazy people who can't throw their trash away)


We decided that we could head to Future World, and ride Spaceship Earth. Passed the tree on the way, all lit up:







We always seem to answer the questions the same way (I guess because we're being truthful) so we always end up with the travel future. This time we switched up our answers, and I ended up with an interactive closet...an idea I can get behind! We laughed at Dave's pose, considering he never sits like this, nor drinks coffee!

 

[epcotisbest]

We've been trying out different resorts ourselves. Not sure we will ever stay at all of them but we have a list of ones we want to stay at. Curious enough in the early stages of planning this trip we were thinking AKL but we realized it was a short stay and one of our priorities was resort hopping so with what the purchase points were for BLT being on the monorail loop and walking distance to MK seemed to be the best option for achieving our goals for this trip.

Next trip is Caribbean Beach and that wasn't high on our lists either but the price after applying a pin code was too attractive to pass up.

We have come close to staying at all of them and do have a couple of favorites. OK, three favorites, WL, AKL Kidani and Saratoga Springs. The Epcot resorts were nice and I like both Boardwalk and Beach Club, but liked Beach Club better because of the pool. Having stayed at all levels from value to deluxe, I suppose we are easy to please, as each time we are there, regardless of resort level, we are mostly just happy to be there. We have been staying offsite a lot too and have stayed at some places that are really amazing. Our vacation style has changed over the years and we are now at the point where we spend much more time at the resort and poolside than at the parks, and that suits us just fine.

 

[epcotisbest]

This photo, and several others too, looks like something out of a travel magazine. Very nice.