Mojitos, Night Shows & 40 Attractions! A September 2017 Trip

[StarWarsMomofGirls!]

Welcome to my trip report!

This trip was full with lots on new things for us even though this was our 5th trip to Disney World. It truly is why I love Disney. I put a lot of planning into this trip, I did my first Pre-Trip Report for this one. You can read about it here if you want.

Otherwise, Let's get started! I have ALOT of great experiences that I want to share with everyone! I hope you join me and as I re-live our trip!



Who
Me! Ariella


I am the planner of these trips. It really has become a hobby to plan these trips. I work 32 hours a week as a project manager. And then come home pick the girls up from school and spend what feels like another 32 hours a week doing, homework, making meals and doing you know house stuff.
Favorites: Everest, Enchanted Tales with Belle, Soarin', Splash Mountain

DH Andy


DH doesn't NOT enjoy the planning part of these trips. He loves it when we are there but really isn't one for the nitty gritty planning. Which is fine until it's a week before and he suggests something and it's just too late. DH works in advertising and works hard, so our trips to Disney are usually a welcome break from all of the work.
Favorites: Flight of Passage, Soarin' Big Thunder Mountain

DD Morgan


Age: 9
She is our caring, thoughtful, reserved girl.
Favorites: Everest, Space Mountain, Tomorrowland Speedway

DD Gwen


Age: 7
She is our sassy, fancy energetic talkative girl.
Top 6 Rides: (self proclaimed list)
Space Mountain
Big Thunder Mountain
Kali River Rabbits (Rapids)
Splash Mountain
Flight of Passage
Peter Pan

Where
Wilderness Lodge

When
September 18th - September 24th
6 Nights and 6 Days

Why
Why Not? Am I right?!? Ok, if you need more than that as a reason....

I turned 40 this summer and DH asked what I wanted to do to celebrate. Originally I wanted to go to Hawaii but the more I thought about it, the time difference with the girls kind of scared me. So, we decided to wait till they were teenagers to go. So, I though more about other places and really I just came back to going to Disney!

And to add to that, DH celebrated (I guess you can call it that) 10 Years with his company. For all his hard work with the company, they give there employees a 2 week sabbatical. So, he tacked on 2 weeks vacation and planned a month sabbatical. Nice, right?

So, we decided this trip would be to celebrate my milestone birthday and his milestone at work!

Highlights of the trip:
We were able to go a lot of new things this trip!

• Night Shows - Our first trip to the world, Gwen was just shy of 3 and Morgan was 5. We did a lot and it was AMAZING! But we did not see one single night show. We made sure they were in bed on time each night. So, we had not seen ALOT of the night shows on property. I said part of the theme of this trip will be Night Time Shows! And it was!
• 40 Attractions for turning 40 - Like I said, the main reason for this trip was to celebrate my birthday. And I say a fellow trip reporter do 40 Attractions for turning 40. And I LOVED this idea! So, I tasked my girls with keeping track of this on the trip. Will we make it to 40 Attractions?!?!
• Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween Party - This was a first for us! We have never done a party before. And I was super excited about it. It was a happy accident that we were able to go. We picked September for price and timing. It hadn't even occurred to me that we would be able to do the party.
• New Restaurants & lots of Drinks - I was able to really plan out some new restaurants for us to try this trip. Now that the girls are older, we don't need to do ALL character meals. So, we were able to branch out and try some new places, Ohana, Sanaa, Teppan Edo just name a couple! And I def did my best to try as many drinks as possible!

Stay Tuned! I have LOTS of pictures to come!

 

[StarWarsMomofGirls!]

Chapters:

The Big Reveal!
Travel Day

Day One: Magic Kingdom & Hollywood Studios
Day One: Magic Kingdom: Just getting Started
Day One: Magic Kingdom: There's a hidden walkway?
Day One: Ohana!
Day One: An Evening at Hollywood Studios
Day One: A VIP Expeirence

Day One: Attractions Tally
Day One: Food

Day Two: EPCOT & Magic Kingdom
Day Two: EPCOT Someone is tired...
Day Two: Teppan Edo
Day Two: Where are they?
Day Two: Look at the Cowboy!

Day Two: Attractions Tally
Day Two: Food

Day Three: Animal Kingdom!
Day Three: Animal Kingdom!
Day Three: A New Favorite Ride
Day Three: Finally a Mojito (and some food too...)
Day Three: Pandora and a Margarita!
Day Three: Dinoland mades Gwen Cry...
Day Three: Glow Cubes

Day Three: Attractions Tally
Day Three: Food

Day Four: Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween Party
Day Four: Some much needed RnR
Day Four: Bread Service at Sanaa
Day Four: Pre-Party for Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween Party!
Day Four: We are going to go to ALL of the trick or treating spots!
Day Four: MNSSHP Fantasyland & Liberty Square Edition
Day Four: Frontierland, Adventureland & Fireworks!
Day Four: "I'm a really good driver!"

Day Four: Attractions Tally
Day Four: Food

Day Five: Animal Kingdom
Day Five: Back to Animal Kingdom!
Day Five: Kali Rive WET!!!
Day Five: Conquoring Everest!

Day Five: Attractions Tally
Day Five: Food

Day Six: Magic Kingdom
Day Six: Best Bathrooms EVER!
Day Six: 40 Attractions for 40 Years!
Day Six: Into the Jungle
Day Six: Rice Krispie Treats for Days (No literally!)

Day Six: Attractions Tally
Day Six: Food

 

[kastoney]

Woohoo I"m first. Can't wait to hear all about it!

 

[ariane37]

And I'm second! Only because Kari @kastoney must wake up earlier than me

 

[Raeven]

Following along!

DH doesn't NOT enjoy the planning part of these trips. He loves it when we are there but really isn't one for the nitty gritty planning. Which is fine until it's a week before and he suggests something and it's just too late

Josh is like this too

 

[DLo]

Looking forward to reading about your trip. I went for my 50th last year and celebrated my 40th at WDW too. Great place to celebrate .

 

[StarWarsMomofGirls!]

The Big Reveal!

So, last year we took a short 2 day trip to Disney after visiting family in Florida. And my oldest requested that the next trip be a surprise. (She basically bounces back and forth between wanting to help plan things and the big excitement of reveal. So, we kept this trip a surprise and I debated how best to make the big reveal.

We had done a scavenger hunt one of the times, and they loved it but they were littler and totally didn't know what was happening until the very end. If I had done that again, they would have known almost immediately. So, I had to be more creative this time...

I created a plan to have my sister send notes in the "mail" for the girls with clues. I was hoping that it would throw them off the scent. And it DID!

We decided to do the first clue on the Monday before we left, the next on Wednesday and then the last one on Saturday. It gave us the weekend to then talk about thing and pack not in hiding, which was nice.


You can see that Andy addressed them.. I forgot to have my sister write out the envelopes, so he was worried that they would recognize our handwriting. Nope... Or the fact that there was no postage on it OR that it isn't really my sisters address.... or ours...


Reading the clue...

Clue #1
The first set of clues was a word scramble. Morgan was on this immediately. She really enjoyed solving the puzzles. Which Gwen... well she was mostly ok with Morgan figuring out for her.



It didn't take too long for Morgan to solve the first puzzle. Once solved, there was a lot of discussion on how this wasn't a very specific clue. Bad Aunt... (or me...)

But off they went to search the house! The searched all over and couldn't find anything... Well.... this is because THIS is Morgan's awesome searching skills at work...

(see the small box sitting on the shelves RIGHT NEXT TO HER!)

But Gwen did find the box eventually. I had DH hid 2 "decoy" boxes in the house until the big reveal. So, they opened up and...

were very disappointed. They wondered around a bit more and finally gave up till the next clue.

Clue #2
Clue #2 arrived on Wednesday after school. And was one of those decoder clue. (I am sure there is a proper name for this but well I am too lazy to go look.)




This one Gwen felt ok taking a stab at herself. Morgan finished before her, but came over to help her out.

This one said 'The Gift is not sitting out in the middle of the Floor. The gift is not in the refrigerator. But it is inside something.'



So, off they went again to find this elusive gift. After much looking, they finally found the second decoy box.


Clue #3
Clue #3 arrived on Saturday morning and the girls were "DYEING" to find the gift. Just dyeing.... This last one was a simple crossword puzzle that Morgan primarily solved.


This last puzzle narrowed it down to in a drawer! They girls were both a bit confused still. Sign... sometimes i think I have failed my children... We explained the logic to them and they were OFF!

They looked in there rooms first which I said that didn't they think they would have noticed it at some point this week?!? Again, I have failed them... After that, they headed into our room and FINALLY found the boxes!!!



This is what was in each box, New Ears that I had ordered off of Etsy, We're going to Disney Pins, luggage tabs and there magic bands, and of course gold filler to make it extra pretty.

Once they opened the boxes, it started to sink in.


And then once it REALLY sunk in, they were beyond excited. Gwen was dancing around all day.
[

The girls with there new ears on! I was worried if they would like my selection for them both. But they thankfully did. Way to go me!


Like all surprises with these girls. It take a little while to soak in. But they got it. And then they wouldn't STOP TALKING about the trip. It was cute. This video really captures them processing the surprise.


Next up... Travel Day!

 

[StarWarsMomofGirls!]

Woohoo I"m first. Can't wait to hear all about it!

Thanks! Your trip is coming up. I just posted the reveal we did. Have you decided what or how you are going to tell Kasey?

And I'm second! Only because Kari @kastoney must wake up earlier than me

Ha! That's because Kari's daughter is younger than your boys!

Following along!

YEAH!!!

Josh is like this too

And they reap all the benefits of our planning! right?!? Good thing I like planning all of it.

Looking forward to reading about your trip. I went for my 50th last year and celebrated my 40th at WDW too. Great place to celebrate .

Welcome! I just hope my girls will still want to come with me to Disney for my 50th! They will be 19 & 17! YIKES!!!

 

[mamamelody2]

Great start! We were there the same time last year!

 

[DLo]

Welcome! I just hope my girls will still want to come with me to Disney for my 50th! They will be 19 & 17! YIKES!!![/QUOTE]


Oh , they were with me for 40 but just DH and I for 50. They were both in college and couldn’t get away ( 18 and 22) ( and only one of the two would have wanted to join us )

 

[StarWarsMomofGirls!]

Great start! We were there the same time last year!

Thanks. You will have to tell me once i get into the report how the crowds compared to when you were there the year before.

 

[ALEXandFAB]

Happy to follow along!

Those faces are priceless

 

[missangelalexis]

Joining in! Looking forward to hearing about your trip!!

Love the reveal and the boxes are so cute. The girls seemed thrilled!!

 

[Elizabeth Smith]

Wow! I'm so happy to be joining in on your trip report. What a fun surprise. I don't have any kiddos personally, but I will look forward to the day where I can surprise them like this. Those faces are priceless.

 

[Lesley Wake]

Realized I never let you know that I was following along too!

I hope you join me and as I re-live our trip

My sister was asking me why I was doing a trip report! This is the reason! I get to relive my vacation over and over instead of just looking at photos occasionally!

Originally I wanted to go to Hawaii but the more I thought about it, the time difference with the girls kind of scared me. So, we decided to wait till they were teenagers to go. So, I though more about other places and really I just came back to going to Disney!

I do love Hawaii too! But I never thought about the east coast time difference until I was chatting with someone at the pool!

 

[StarWarsMomofGirls!]

Travel Day!

So, I left off with our big reveal for the girls. We were flying out Monday after school, so we did the reveal on Saturday morning. Saturday consisted of a MILLION questions! They were SUPER excited. Which we were glad about but man alive, was I glad they went to bed eventually...

Sunday was spent packing and running errands for all those last minute items. Our air conditioning wasn't working so well, and I was sweating!!! But luckily I had one of these left in our fridge!


It is the semi-famous Grapefruit Schofferhofer beer! We love this beer, and I usually try to have at least a couple on our Disney trips.

****SPOILER ALERT*****
I ended up having zero of them this trip!

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Anyway, It somehow took me FOREVER to pack us up. I ended up putting everyones outfit in separate gallon ziplock bags and labelled them by day. It worked out well, but took forever.

Monday, FINALLY arrived! I was sooooo excited and so were the girls. They got up and wanted to go to school at like 6:30 AM. Sigh. They were ready to go! We all went to work and school as usual. Until.... I received an email from Disney saying that there was an issue with our fastpasses... Ugh!!!! I knew it was because of the MNSSHP day, we didn't have park tickets that day and a lot of folks were getting there passes cancelled. I didn't have time for this!?! I made DH call and see what the deal was. It turned out that we needed to ONLY have fast passes after 4:30 on our MNSSHP Day. So, the lady changed them for us. And we thought we were all set... Or were we?

Day went fairly fast for me as I had a million things to do before I left. But managed to leave on time. We all meet up at home changed into our "travel" clothes and headed to the airport!

We had to park in long term parking which was a first for us and weren't sure how long it would take to do so.

The girls thought that the bus station was entertaining, for some reason...

We gladly didn't wait too long for a bus to take us over to the main terminal. And were able to get through security fairly easily. It is always a stress with all of our stuff! We had plenty of time before our flight was to take off, so we went to Chickie n' Pete's for some dinner.


Our trip last Feb, we did basically the same thing, so we needed to get a 1st drink of the trip shot!

Chickie n' Pete's is basically a local bar here in Philly and they don't have a kids menu, or at least not at the airport. And Morgan ordered a Roast Beef Sandwich...

It was HUGE! I did not take any pictures of the rest of our food. I wasn't in full Disney mode yet...

After we filled our bellies, we headed back over to our gate and settled in for a bit. The girls had homework to get done.


We told the girls they HAD to finish all of there work in the airport and/or on the plane. That we weren't going to do any homework in Disney. I don't know what is up with 2nd grade, but Morgan couldn't concentrate on her homework when she was in 2nd grade. And Gwen is REALLY struggling with it this year as well! Morgan finished before we needed to board the plane, and Gwen spent 75% of the flight doing homework... Sigh. But they finished!

My girlfriend ordered us lularoe leggings, so we wore them on the plane ride down since it was going to still be hot in Florida.


And yes, we all sat on the yucky, dirty airport floor and lived the tell the tale!


I know that @ArielSRL loves her some lularoe! This was my first pair and they are super comfy...

We were missing Back to School Night for the girls by being away this trip. So, Morgan gave us her note that she was to leave us on her desk. She told me I couldn't read it until we go to the airport.


I laughed that she wrote it like we were actually there. I had asked her when they wrote it and she said that day but she wanted to write it like we were actually going to be there.

Before long it was time to board the plane and head off!!! We flew Frontier this trip and I had flown with them once before with my sisters and mom. They had this "monkey wine" that we wanted to try but ended up not ordering it. So, when I saw this, I HAD to order it!


It's a little blurry.. But it was a Pear Cider. It was good for a cider in a can. VERY sweet. Wouldn't search it out at home but ok.

The flight was uneventful otherwise and soon we were in Florida and riding on the Pho-Monorail!


Our flight landed at 10:30-ish, so we had to go and collect our luggage. DH was NOT happy about this but it wasn't that bad. By the time we made it over to the luggage carousel and all used the rest room, the bags were starting to come out. I always hold my breathe when the luggage starts coming out. Am I the only one who worries that your bag will be lost? Just me? We were of course on the wrong side of the airport for Magical Express... So we trekked to the other side and made it to the promised land!


Morgan scanned her band and we were directed to row 3 (I think) There was 2 other families waiting. We took our go-go-magic-band shot while we waited. We maybe waited 15 minutes before they boarded us on a bus and maybe another 10 before we finally left the airport. It was 11:15 by now. WAY past the girls bed time. (And mine!)


They were all smiles still. (aka the Disney high)

The Bus driver got on and announced that he had 4 or 5 stops. I held my breathe again while he said... "leeeettttssss seeeeee.... We will go in this order.......... silence for what felt FOREVER........ (me thinking please don't be last don't be last...) And then he said Wilderness Lodge first! YES!!!!

It didn't take long to get to Wilderness Lodge. I did online check in, so we were able to go directly to our room. Which was nice, as we had stayed her before and knew where we were going. After our summer vacation and our hour wait to check in then, it was so so so nice to just go right to our room.

We got in the room and I needed to somehow smuggle out of the suitcase the first Tinkerbell gift. I kind of grabbed it out of the suitcase while the girls were bouncing on the bed. I though Morgan caught me, but she didn't say anything if she did. Since I had to lay it out so quickly, I didn't get a picture of the pjs. But you will see them on the girls each morning.

I left this our with the pjs as well, with our "family" rules for the trip. They quickly put on the pjs and were soon fast asleep!


This was the girls at 12:23 AM. It was a long day but we made it!

Up next Day 1 with some fun in Magic Kingdom!

 

[StarWarsMomofGirls!]

Those faces are priceless

Thanks! They were def excited and surprised!

Joining in! Looking forward to hearing about your trip!!

Love the reveal and the boxes are so cute. The girls seemed thrilled!!

Thanks about the reveal and boxes. I probably spent too much thought and time on it. But their reaction was worth it!

Wow! I'm so happy to be joining in on your trip report. What a fun surprise. I don't have any kiddos personally, but I will look forward to the day where I can surprise them like this. Those faces are priceless.

Thanks. We have been a couple times already, and I am so glad that they are still super excited about going back!

Realized I never let you know that I was following along too!

Thanks for commenting. It is always good to know someone is reading!

My sister was asking me why I was doing a trip report! This is the reason! I get to relive my vacation over and over instead of just looking at photos occasionally!

Glad I am not the only one!

 

[ashw100]

Joining in. Can’t wait to hear about your trip. The trip reveal was awesome, I might steal that. Love the leggings, haven’t checked out LLR but those are cute. Sounds like an easy travel day, that’s always nice.

 

[DisneyElite4]

Great report and precious, adorable children! We will be there next week, and I am very interested in hearing how the whole FP+ fiasco for MNSSHP turned out - we also have FP+ on our party night and I am wondering what will happen.

 

[tinkerbell1991]

Following along