I don't know if I can express how grateful I am that Rick and I were able to take this trip together, just me and him. It was like a dream! Our whole married life has been school, school, and more school. So this was a real big treat for us to take a trip like this. It felt unreal and each day we were on this trip we couldn't believe that we got to spend all day every day together! It was like having a week long date! It was unbelievably awesome!!!
DAY 1: TRAVEL DAY
We woke up really early on May 30, drove up to Orem to hop on the Trax to take us to the airport. We left our kiddos with my mom for the first few days and then with my mother-in-law, Sundee, the last half of our week-long trip.
So we got to the airport and decided to pick up some airport food since it would be a long flight. We wanted to save our granola bars and other snack foods for the rest of the travel day. Rick got some breakfast food at McDonald's. I saw a Cafe Rio and HAD to get it, even thought it was breakfast time. This was my last chance to have one of my favorite salads before moving across the country! And I had enough stamps on my card for a free meal, so it was perfect! I loved my chicken salad for breakfast :)
On the flight they had free movies so we with Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. I also played a ton of Mine Sweeper... random, but kind of fun to play games like that. It was good to have a movie and game to play because I was a little nervous so it took my mind off being on an airplane.
We landed, got our bags and checked in to the shuttle service. We had to wait about 40 minutes before the shuttle came. It was humid!!! Hello Florida! But it finally came and we were driven to our hotel at the Hilton Bonnet Creek Resort. One word. AMAZING! I loved it! My dad offered us the hotel because he had a ton of points through work to get the hotel for us free with points. Oh and I didn't mention this, but he got our flights for free with points too! We were so incredibly grateful. It meant so, so much to us! And it dropped the final cost of the trip so much, which was so nice. I'm so grateful for my parents doing that for us.
I just have to stop and say how weird it was not having the kids with us. Even though May 30 was our "Travel Day" it felt like a date! We were together ALL day, riding the Trax, eating breakfast together, watching a movie on our flight, talking without any interruptions... We kept saying over and over how weird it felt, but at the same time it was SO awesome!
Anyway, so when we got to the hotel and saw the awesome pool and lazy river, we were like, why not?! So we got our swimsuits on and headed down to the pool!
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| View from our room. |
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| Another picture from our hotel room. So beautiful! |
DAY 2: Magic Kingdom
We woke up early to make sure we got the shuttle in time to get there right before the park opened. Well, the lady at the front desk told us the wrong place to wait, so after waiting around for 10 minutes we went back in and asked where the shuttle was and another employee told us it had already left. I was kind of frustrated because we had to wait another 30 minutes for the next shuttle to come. And it wasn't our fault! But oh well, it worked out and we eventually made it there. We just didn't get there in time to get on several rides before the crowds. Oh well... But really, the shuttle system at this hotel was pretty wonky and not very consistent. We ended using Uber quite a bit so we didn't have to waste time using the shuttle system.
Some things from our first day in Magic Kingdom:
-Lunch at Pecos Bill (Mexican restaurant)
-Dinner at Pinocchio Haus. I had a chicken parmesan pasta with a caesar salad and Rick had a chicken sandwich, carrots and fries. It was really yummy!
-As far as snacks are concerned... everyone seems to rave about the Dole Whips at Disney. I hate anything pineapple so Rick got a Dole Whip Float and I got a Mickey ears ice cream sandwich.
-At night we watched the castle/fireworks show and then got ice cream as we left the park (Rick got an ice cream sundae and I got a cookie/ice cream sandwich).
Some of our favorites from the day were Splash Mountain, the castle/fireworks show (I think it was called Happily Ever After), Thunder Mountain Railroad, Mickeys Philharmagic and the Laugh Floor Show.
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| We are so competitive... haha. And just for the record, Rick won! |
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| We were in the very front seats and got VERY wet! Splash Mountain is definitely a favorite. |
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| Tom Sawyer's Island was a really relaxing and quiet area. It was really pretty and fun to just walk around the island, away from the crowds. |
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| The Tiki Room |
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| The classic "It's A Small World" ride. |
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| Riding the Riverboat. |
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| Where we ate lunch-- so yummy! I had a Southwest salad and Rick had a burrito. |
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| Arie's Castle |
The light show on the castle was stunning... like, for reals. When I first heard there would be a "light show" I was skeptical. But I learned my lesson! Everything that Disney does goes above and beyond what you think. It's like the castle transformed into different castles with all the different Disney characters moving around on the walls of the castle. Then at the very end Tinkerbell came flying out from the very top! The picture is blurry but it was unbelievable.
DAY 3: Animal Kingdom
-Got up at 6:30 to catch the shuttle bus to Animal Kingdom. Got to the park around 7:30ish and went straight for the Avatar/Pandora ride called "Flight of Passage". I'm pretty sure everyone else had that same plan because all the people were headed that way, haha. It still ended up being not too bad of a wait. The total time waiting was about 1 hour. But 30 minutes of that waiting was before the park even opened, so it saved a ton of time for other stuff during the day. Later we checked back and the wait time was 210 minutes! So I'm really glad we got to it early!!
-Got some food for breakfast. (Me: Mickey Mouse pretzel. Rick: a Danish)
-Went on the Kilamanjaro Safari
-Festival of the Lion King show. So awesome! It's incredible how much detail and amazingness goes into just one show at one park in all of Disney World! I bet our kids would love this show. I want to take them to Disney World someday!
-After the Lion King show, we were walking towards the Gorilla Pathway place when two guys named Nick and Daniel asked us if we wanted a private tour of the Safari. They said they didn't have any other paid customer so they were giving a ride away for free so we jumped on the chance! We got our own safari ride with two personal guides and got to stop and look at the animals in each section with binoculars for as long as we wanted. They both had degrees in some sort of biology and animal studies and could answer any question about any animal… It was incredible! Such a cool experience!! Nick said he had worked at the Buffalo, NY zoo for several years before coming to Disney World to work on the preserve. It was such a neat experience!
-We were very hungry after the safari tour so we got Asian food at the Yak and Yeti Cafe.
-Other rides we did were: Na'vi River Ride in Pandora, the Dinosaur ride, and Kali River Rapids. We also went on one called Mount Everest-- I will never go on that ride again! It was terrifying. And I'm pretty sure my face tells it all on how I was feeling during that ride.
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| My parents sent me this picture of Gpa and the kiddos! |
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| The "Floating Mountains" were so huge and unreal. It was amazing and pictures don't do it justice. |
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| Lunch at the Yak & Yeti |
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| My mom sent this pic of Kimbri while we were at Disney world. |
DAY 4: Epcot
We got there a little bit before the park opened because everyone had told us that if you want to ride the "Frozen Ever After" ride, then you should do it first thing before the crowds hit. We got there with only about a 5 minutes wait, which was awesome! We had Fast Passes for the other major, long-wait rides so it worked out perfect!
- After that ride we raced over to the Soarin' ride because the wait time was way low. I think we got lucky because right after we got off that ride the wait time jumped way high! We decided to get breakfast at a little cafe in the area in front of Soarin'. I had a salad and a smoothie and Rick had a cinnamon roll.
-A lot of people say Epcot is fun if you are there without kids because there is a lot of neat stuff to look at and appreciate, but not a ton of rides. We found that to be pretty true. I think the only thing the kids would really like at Epcot would be the Frozen Ride and maybe the Finding Nemo exhibit. Other than those and the character lines, there isn't that much for kids.
-We really had an awesome time at the World Showcase! We heard there was a lot of different varieties of food in the different countries. There is also just a lot of cool things to take your time looking at, which if we had kids with us, we probably wouldn't have been able to do.
Mexico: There is a boat ride in the very back of the shop/restaurant. Afterward, we got some street tacos at one of the food stands.
Norway: This is obviously where the Frozen ride is. There was a cool display about where the inspiration came from for the movie.
China: Rick tried beef noodles from one of the restaurants. I took a few bites of his and it was pretty yummy! We also saw an all-about-China movie. It was a "standing only" movie and was pretty old. I definitely wouldn't take kids to it.
Germany: just looked at the shops
Italy: Gelato (Rick tried strawberry and chocolate and I got cookies and cream)
We also went to France (red telephone booth pics), Canada (cool waterfall and another standing movie- my feet were killing!) and back to Italy at the end of the day for some more gelato because it was SO good!
We got some more food for dinner. I went and got food at a Mexican restaurant called "La Cantina"- I got Pollo Cascabel.
It started pouring rain so we ran into the Japan section of the park and Rick got chicken curry. We sat inside that restaurant, along with a billion other people because of the rain, while we ate.
It was fun to "visit" all the the different countries and look around! Definitely a more adult-friendly park.
It rained quite a bit throughout the day so our Fast Pass for the Test Track ride was canceled. We were kind of bummed because we were told that was a pretty neat ride. Right as we were debating whether to leave the park and head back to the hotel, it reopened with about 45 minutes to spare, before park closing time. So we ran over there and used our Fast Passes and then watched the Illuminations Water and firework show after that.
By the end of the day at Epcot, my feet were so sore! We did tons of walking and a lot of standing for several around-the-world shows. But it was a really fun park and a way fun day! Again we felt like we were going on mini dates all day long at the different countries. It is so fun to have this much time to spend together, without a worry in the world! We new the kids were having a blast with grandparents and were so grateful to take this trip together.
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| On the monorail, headed to Epcot! |
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| Canada |
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| Some random face thing at the entrance to the World Tour thing. |
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| France |
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| Inside the Mexico exhibit. |
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| China |
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| Norway |
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| The clouds looked really awesome hovering over the big Epcot ball. |
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| It was so rainy throughout the day! I felt so gross and sticky from all the wet and humidity by the end of the day. |
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| There was a show inside the United States section of the World Tour. It was super boring and I totally fell asleep in it! I would not recommend wasting park time for the show, although the building was really neat! |
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| The Illuminations Show at the end of the day. |
DAY 5: Disney's Hollywood Studios
Are we seriously STILL on vacation?! It still feels like a dream and I can't believe we are still at Disney World!
Hollywood Studios had a lot of fun shows that we got to see! That's another thing that would be hard to do with kids, so it was fun to just relax and watch some of the really awesome shows available. They also have some fun rides! And our competitiveness came out again on the Toy Story Mania ride. Haha! That is definitely one of my favorite ride at Hollywood Studios. It's such a unique ride!
Here are some notes I took about our day in Hollywood Studios:
-Took an Uber to the park. It totally beat having to take the shuttle system that would've taken at least an hour if not longer, because of the hotel's weird shuttle system.
-We went right to the Toy Story Mania ride to avoid a long line and didn't have to wait very long.
-After that our Fast Pass was available for the Tower of Terror. We walked across the park for that one. I always get so nervous on rides like that.
The Beauty and the Beast show was really close to the Tower of Terror and we were able to get a seat right away.
-Got some food at the Backlot Express (I got chicken and fries and Rick got a foot long chili cheese dog with chips)
-Star Tours ride with a fast pass
-Indiana Jones show. We almost didn't get seats for this because it was SO popular! We were standing in the back and after about 5-10 minutes into the show they opened up a bunch of reserved seating area in the very front and let people fill in. So we got lucky and scored awesome seating for that show!
-Saw the Star Wars movie and met the Kylo Ren character with our Disney card so there was no line.
-Got ice cream at a place by the Tower of Terror ride (huge portions!)
-We ate our ice cream right next to Rock 'n' Rollercoaster because it was temporary closed and we were hoping they would open it when we were done eating ice cream… Which it did! We got really lucky. I seriously cannot believe how perfect timing it was! Since we were right at the entrance when they opened it, we just went in the stand-by line which was only about 5-10 minutes. We hurried and canceled our Fast Pass for that ride so we could use it for another fast pass later. It was awesome timing! And a really fun ride. It was very fast and loud and scary (it went upside down), but I'm glad we went on it!
-Went on the Toy Story ride again. Used a Fast Pass for that ride in place of our canceled rollercoaster one.
-Saw the Muppet show. It was alright, but I never really was into the Muppets as a kid. But it was nice to sit for a while in an air-conditioned theater!
-Saw the Pixar Symphony show-- it was absolutely incredible! Definitely not a show kids would want to sit through. It was 45 minutes but was so beautiful-sounding and I loved it!
-The Great Movie Ride. It was about the longest we had to wait for a ride (around 35 minutes). It was a pretty neat ride but you could tell it was a very old ride.
-After that we ate at Sci-fi Café where you eat like you're sitting in a car at a drive-in movie theater. I got a pasta with asparagus and chicken dish and Rick got a hamburger with fries. Fried pickles as an appetizer and we shared an Oreo milkshake for dessert.
-The Fantasmic show! It was scheduled for 9 and was pouring rain. They said they would keep the show going as long as there wasn't lightening. We huddled in our ponchos on the second row, crossing our fingers there would be no lighting. About 5 minutes before the show, they saw lightening, and announced the show would be canceled. NOOOOO!!! We were SO excited to see this show. Bummer!!
-Since Fantastic got canceled we raced to ride Toy Story Mania again and there was hardly no line so we went on it twice in a row. I won again both times, haha. Rick kills me at the Buzz Lightyear ride and I smoke him in the Toy Story ride ;)
-Took the shuttle back to the hotel. It was 25 minutes late and there was standing room only. It was crazy. Really, the shuttle system has been terrible!
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| Our 3D glasses for the Toy Story ride. |
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| Indiana Jones show. |
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| This ice cream was SOOOO yummy! |
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| Rick on left, Alina on right |
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| The Pixar Symphony show |
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| The Great Movie Ride |
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| Sci-Fi Drive in movie for dinner. |
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| I seriously love fried pickles. We ate them on our honeymoon and they have reminded me of that every time we eat them ever since. |
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| Soaked, waiting for Fantasmic... but it got cancelled. |
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| From all the rain and major humidity, my hair was going crazy! |
DAY 6: Church and we walked along the beach.
-Got up at 9am!!! I can't remember the last time Rick and I got to sleep in till 9am. It was fantastic!
-Went to get our rental car in the hotel lobby at 10. They assumed we were a no show (even thought we called and told them we wouldn't pick it up until 10!) and had given our car away 🙄 So we had to wait for another one. Made it to church literally right when they announced "thank you for your reverence during the sacrament". Now we'll begin testimonies" so we went to the rest of sacrament and then Sunday school. Then we snuck into the next ward for the first 10 or so minutes to take the sacrament and then went back to RS and Elders quorum, haha. It all worked out in the end but the whole rental car thing proved to be a little stressful.
-After church in the Temple Terrace ward, we drove to Clearwater beach. It started POURING rain and we debated whether to keep driving toward the beach. We looked up the weather and it said it would be sunny so we held our breath and kept driving. I really didn't want to end up driving another hour if it was just going to end up rainy. But we did and the weather ended up being fantastic!!! Cloudy, but warm and perfect!
-We walked along the beach and found some sea shells and even a sting ray! It was little and startled me so much. I was dipping my feet in the water and suddenly saw something move and it was definitely a little sting ray. Yikes!
-After a couple hours holding hands, and walking and talking along the beach, we headed back to the hotel.
-We should've bought food the night before and put it in the hotel fridge for Sunday dinner, but didn't, so we ate some of our oatmeal packets that we had brought with us for some mornings before heading to the park.
-Also, Clearwater Beach definitely has an accurate name. The water was super clear and the sand was extremely soft. I would go back to that beach in a heartbeat if we ever go back to Florida!
DAY 7: Magic Kingdom- second time
-Got up to make the 8am shuttle/monorail and arrived about 15minutes before the park opened.
-We went right over to Thunder Mountain Railroad and walked right on. And then right next to it is Spalsh Mountain and it said 15minute wait but we walked right on to that too. I loved getting there a little early and having no wait times for 2 major rides!
-On our way to breakfast we saw that the Haunted Mansion ride was only a 10 minute wait so we went on that which ended up only being a 5 minute wait! We were cruising through lines that morning! It was super lucky!
-After Haunted Mansion we were so hungry. We ate waffles at Sleepy Hollow in Fantasyland. Rick had a waffle with Nutella, strawberries and bananas and I had a waffle with eggs and tomatoes on it. Yum! The waffles were huge for the price.
-After breakfast we used a fast pass for the Jungle Cruise Ride.
-Right next to the Pirates of the Caribbean ride we found a place where if you follow a Pirate Map, and get to the end, you get free fast passes for the ride. So that was awesome! We scored an extra fast pass for another popular ride.
-Ate lunch at the Be Our Guest restaurant. I still can't believe we got a reservation for that place. It is free to book reservations there, but they usually fill up months in advance. Rick had been checking the Disney World app without me even realizing the day before and scored a lunch reservation! It was a really cool building and you got to eat in a setting that felt like you were in the Beast's castle. Rick had mashed potatoes, green beans and pork. I had a carved turkey sandwich with fries.
-That afternoon we went to see the parade but it got rained out :(
-Took a ride on the People Mover. It was a long ride and we got on right as it started to rain, again, so it was perfect!
-Fast pass for Buzz Lightyear ride- Rick totally smoked me, again! He is way good at the ride.
-It's a Small World.
-Picked up dinner at the Colombia Harbor House and got cookies and cream ice cream on our way out of the park.
-We left the park early so we could get back to the hotel, pack and get to bed early for our 4:10am shuttle ride to the airport.
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| Rick on left. Alina on right. |
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| Kimbri, Cody, Garrett, Megan They sent us this picture of the kids. Having fun with Grandma Sundee while we were gone. |
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| On the way home. |
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| The mountains looked really neat on our flight home. |
I know I said it earlier in my post but we were SO INCREDIBLY GRATEFUL for this amazing trip we were blessed to go on. Sever whole days with the love of my life and it was spectacular. We got to hold hands together, ride rides together, watch shows in the different parks together, and eat breakfast, lunch and dinner together every single day. It was an unbelievable trip! And we owe a HUGE thank you so our parents for watching our kids while we were gone. I'm grateful for them willing to do that, and for the chance our kids got to have some quality time with their grandparents, right before our move across the country! And now, I want to save up and take the kids back because that would be such a blast!
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