The Disney Trip Report You've All Been Waiting For

So here it is the report from the shortened trip to WDW at the end of April. I know I would've had to do Sl.ide or Fli.cker if I had more pictures to share, but as I only took 4 days worth of photos...

So we stayed at the Wilder.ness Lodge. It was beautiful and actually fairly quiet. We had a woods view room and every morning we woke up there were a couple of bunnies on the grassy area below (we were only on the 3rd floor). So we'd go out to the little balcony porch and sit and watch them for awhile. They'd also be there in the late afternoon so we definitely got to see them a lot.

As much as we like this resort and would highly recommend to anyone that they should stay there, we have decided that from now on we'll probably stay at the Polynesian. Lane fell in love with it when we had breakfast there on Friday and it is a monorail resort which is major convenience since we spend the majority of our time between the Magic King.dom and Ep.cot.

This is a photo of the lodge from Bay Lake. We often took the boat to Magic King.dom as it was a direct launch. That's only half of the resort. So you can see it's pretty darn big!

The pool area. Very cool and actually it wasn't too noisy there either. But the theming in fantastic at this resort.

We spent Wednesday afternoon/evening at MK (the Kingdom) and spent most of our time over in Adven.tureland. We rode Aladdin's Magic Carpets, POTC (Pirates of the Caribbean), Haunted Mansion. After riding HM, Eriks realized that POTC was really not scary after all and he'd ride that again before riding HM. Too funny!

Eriks also got to ride his very 1st rollercoaster at WDW and I so wish I could've been on the ride with him. He rode Big Thunder Mountain and LOVED it!!! He couldn't wait to ride it again. Unfortunately he never got the chance :(

Thursday was spent at Di$ney Hollywood Studios. At least until early afternoon when we headed back to the room for some down time. It was fun and we did the Playhouse Di$ney show which Eriks loved because it featured all the characters from his favorite Di$ney shows.

There aren't a whole lot of rides at the Studios, it's mostly shows which was OK by me. We missed out on some that I wanted Eriks to see due to time restraints. We had to have downtime in the afternoons. So he missed out on the Beauty and the Beast stage show and a few others. Oh well. There's always next time.

Eriks with Green Army Man at Di$ney Studios.

Late Thursday afternoon we headed back to MK. It was the night they were doing the SpectroMagic Parade and Wishes (fireworks). Eriks and Lane went and rode Dumbo while I waited on Main Street. People are nuts when it comes to parades. We got there 90 minutes before SpectroMagic and the parade route was already full of people waiting.

Great photo of the castle at dusk. I had nothing better to do while waiting for Eriks and Lane to get back from Dumbo.

I really need a digital SLR camera. As much as I like my camera, I got it for Mother's Day last year, it doesn't take pictures fast enough especially at night so they're not great. This is one of the only really good pictures that came out from SpectroMagic that I felt comfortable sharing. They guy next to me had this nice SLR digital and I kept looking at his photos after he would take them and say, "I wish mine would come out that nice." Anyhow, here's a photo of Donald on one of the floats. The parade is awesome!!!! We were hoping to see it one more time while we were there but didn't happen since we cut the trip short.

Friday we did breakfast at the Polynesian and because of breakfast and the theming Lane fell in love with the resort. I did too and can't wait to stay there. The character breakfast at 'Ohana featured Lilo, Stitch, Mickey & Pluto. The food was good and the coffee was great (Kona). Eriks loved the characters and the interaction.

After breakfast we headed to Ep.cot. The flower and garden show was going on so the park was gorgeous. Here's me with cool flower/bush sculptures of Mickey, Goofy and Minnie even though you can only see part of her.

We spent almost all of our time in the Living Seas. Eriks loved Turtle Talk with Crush and that was probably one of our favorite things to see as well. It's really funny. That too was something we had planned on doing again.

We wanted to ride Soarin' but when we got to Epc.ot the standby line was a 70 minute wait and FastPass return wasn't until 4 pm. Forget it! When we left Ep.cot for the day, the FastPass return was 7 pm and the standby line was 105 minutes!!! Note to self an everyone else, go to the park when it opens and either get in line immediately or get your FastPasses immediately and then go do something else. I was so bummed because we rode Soarin' when we were living in CA since they have it at Di$neyland.

Dinner on Friday night was at Chef Mickey's at the Contemporary. Eriks fell asleep on the boat ride from the Wilderness. So as you can see below, he was completely out the first time the characters came around. We couldn't wake him for anything.

Here he is finally awake posing with Minnie and me. The food was decent. I don't know if I would spend the money again to do Chef Mickey's for dinner. I liked it for breakfast even more but breakfast reservations are REALLY hard to come by. We booked all of our meal reservations more than 3 months before our trip and still couldn't get into Chef Mickey's for breakfast.

I don't have any photos from Saturday because we spent the day at the ER in Celebration. My 1st irregular heart rate episode. We got back to the room and I rested. Then we decided to do dinner as planned at Narcoossee's at the Grand Floridian. Some of the best food I've had in a very long time. I had the romaine salad (pretty much just a Caesar salad) and the crab cakes. I wasn't super hungry and I knew if I ordered a regular meal I wouldn't be able to eat it all. Lane's tuna was great too. I don't think we could've gone wrong with anything we ordered there. It's expensive, but definitely a must do.

Since it was Lane's 40th birthday dinner I ordered him a cake from the bakery at the Grand Floridian. Here's what it looked like:

It was delicious!!! It was dark chocolate cake with chocolate mousse filling. So to die for. Lane really likes the movie Fanta$ia and so I had to do Sorcerer Mickey. I originally wanted to do Peter Pan since Lane has been saying since he turned 39 and didn't want to turn 40 that he was not going to grow up. So I thought of Peter Pan and him not wanting to grow up. The bakery couldn't do anything Peter Pan themed so we went with the above instead.
Lane was tickled pink and loved what I picked.
We ended up bringing cake back to AR since it was a big cake.

The trip ended then as the following day I had more heart rate issues and decided it was time to go home and deal with doctors who knew me. It was fun, but I wish it hadn't ended the way it did. Oh well, life happens. So here's to hoping for a job in Atlanta so we can make regular trips down there.

Hope you all enjoyed the recap!!!