Welcome to another of Trip Report Tuesday! In today's post we'll eat our way through the Food and Wine Festival at Epcot, check-in to our savanna view villa at Disney's Animal Kingdom Lodge, have dinner at Disney Springs, and enjoy a fantastic finale to the day at Magic Kingdom!
Day 2 - Saturday, November 10th, 2018
After a good night's rest we awoke bright and early to check out of Pop Century and head to the parks until check-in time at our Disney Vacation Club home resort.
Here's a peek at some of the cute signage at Pop as we made our way out after a pleasant evening there.
Ready for a morning at Epcot!
Having a rental car we planned to pull into Epcot's parking lot, but to our surprise we were some of the first guests to arrive and they waved us in to an area even closer to the park!
Talk about front row parking - ha!
We snapped a few selfies to send to our girls as we awaited park opening.
Our first ride of this trip is one of my forever faves, Soarin'!
Next we made our way to World Showcase. While the showcase itself doesn't open until 11am, the Frozen Ever After ride opened with the park. So, off to see Olaf we went!
Up until this day we had ridden Frozen Ever After with fastpasses. This time around with a standby wait time of less than a half an hour we made our way through the regular line quickly, yet also had the opportunity to take in all the cuteness of the full queue.
Always up for a good shopping trip, we strolled and browsed at merch throughout MouseGear.
We decided this would be a great time to grab a sip and FaceTime our girls, so that we did inside Sunshine Seasons in the Land Pavilion.
Soon the Food and Wine Festival booths opened and we had one of my favorite kind of Epcot lunches, munching our way around World Showcase.
A couple of my festival faves were enjoyed one after the other. I could not get enough of the creamy spinach and artichoke dip with pulled chicken, toasted almonds and parmesan cheese served with Nut Thins crackers from The Almond Orchard booth! I already shared my love for these gem in a trip report covering our family vacation a few months prior. Throughout that trip and this one I savored these flavors on repeat! Simple and scrumptious. Another in that same category is the Canadian cheddar cheese and bacon soup served with a pretzel roll.
In France we picked up carbonade de boeuf, purée de pommes de terre (beer-braised beef with bacon, onion and mashed potatoes) and a dessert dish of crème brûlée with house-made raspberry jam. The first was comfort food by the bite and the latter - sweetness by the spoonful.
At the China booth we picked up Beijing roasted duck bao bun with hoisin sauce.
Jason's continual festival favorite is always found at the Hops & Barley booth in the American Adventure pavilion. You can count on him having a few more of these when we're back this fall!
In Germany we picked up schinkennudeln (pasta gratin with ham, onions, and cheese). Looking back at the Food and Wine Festival booth menus, this item was a great price at only $4.25 (now $4.50 this year)! For comparison, the bao bun above was $6.75. While it wasn't my festival fave, it was a good value (by Disney Park standards).
I adore these lovely lagoon views!
Lastly we grabbed a couple bubble teas in China, then sipped and chatted our way out of the park.
Cheers to a fun and fantastic festival morn!
Our Home Sweet Disney Vacation Home
Animal Kingdom Lodge
Check-in time at Animal Kingdom Lodge arrived and with it so had we! We stayed in a Jambo House savanna view studio. Always lovely and always feels like home, mostly because it is! Ha! This is where we own our own little piece of Disney through Disney Vacation Club. It's one of my favorite places in the world and I can hardly wait to return in just a few more months! But enough daydreaming, let's take a peek at our room for this stay, shall we?...
As you walk in the door there is a kitchenette at the left and just beyond the full length mirror on the right you'll find the bathroom and a separate space with double sinks, making mornings simple as it allows for someone to get ready while another is showering.
On our Disney trips I do enjoy unpacking to make it feel a bit more like home than living out of a suitcase would, so I put the dresser and armoire to good use.
Just beyond those breezy sheer curtains is a private balcony that overlooks the savanna.
This is a sofa sleeper, but with it being just the two of us this trip we were able to leave it as a sofa for the full length of our trip.
I spy a cute photobomber!
While I didn't take too many photos on this afternoon, next week's trip report will include many photos of giraffes, gazelles, bongos, waterbucks, and more. So stay tuned for that!
A quick snapshot of part of the balcony and one of the zebra chairs I adore!
As you can see from the disinfecting wipes on the nightstand there, I've been wiping down surfaces, light switches, door handles, remotes, etc. to start our hotel stays feeling clean and fresh long before the pandemic's arrival. ;) Once the room was (extra) clean, we got our snapshots and video footage for Eat, Sleep, Dis, Repeat, we headed back out of our room and crossed my favorite bridge to pick up rapid refill mugs.
I still can't get over how adorable these Christmastime mugs are! I was over the moon to buy them and have enjoyed using them each Christmas season at home since this trip!
Cheers to Christmas cuteness!
I love him!
Disney Springs
Dinner at D-Luxe Burger
D-luxe Burger is easily our favorite place to go for a burger on Disney property. The burgers are delicious, they offer oodles of fun dipping sauces for their fab fries, and their shakes are scrumptious!
We chose a table outside on their waterside patio.
I loved all their Christmas decor touches from garland to wreaths.
While the fries are yummy on their own, we are big fans of dipping sauces and they are plentiful here! They offer garlic ranch, horseradish, chipotle mayo, mustard and honey, buffalo blue cheese, and curry ketchup.
Jason filming me for Eat, Sleep, Dis, Repeat videos (yet to be created) as I took pics for Chatting Over Chocolate! Ha!
See ya later, D-luxe! We're Magic Kingdom bound now!
Isn't this Mickey fun?!
While we've enjoyed taking advantage of Disney's complimentary bus service on numerous trips over the years, one of my favorite things about having a car on a WDW trip is the ease of evenings like this one. We were able to go from our resort to Disney Springs for dinner and from there straight on to Magic Kingdom! Had we not had a car we would have had to take a bus back to our resort and then wait for a Magic Kingdom bus. All that to say that cars make Disney Springs + Park visits a breeze!
Such a stunning sunset!
To get to Magic Kingdom by car you park in the MK parking lot and have the option of taking a monorail or a ferry boat to the park. I absolutely love boat rides after dark, so we chose to go with a ferry ride.
Disney's Contemporary Resort always looks so pretty at night!
Space Mountain all lit up for evening park hours
Magic Kingdom
We had just been at Disney World in September on our family trip, the last day of which we spent at Magic Kingdom. It looked so different then all decked out in pumpkins. Now we were able to return to another favored holiday time here, Christmas! I don't know about you, but I especially adore Disney decorations after dark! The lights, the holiday sparkle, it just makes my heart oh so happy! Here are a few shots of the Christmas tree, Mickey wreaths, and garlands along Main Street U.S.A..
This was one of three evenings when they were filming for a Disney holiday special to air on Disney Channel and ABC Freeform in November and December of that year. We heard Jordan Fisher and Ruby Rose Turner of "Coop & Cami Ask the World", considered sticking around the castle area to watch a bit, but opted to just watch for a moment, snap a couple pics and videos to share with the kids and continue on with our night.
We've been in the parks (at both Disney World and Disneyland) during Christmas Specials and Christmas Parade filming. While it is cool watching things at home later and remembering that we were there in person, sometimes seeing the amount of takes they do (and some of the acting that goes into even the audience participation) really takes some of the magic out of watching at home for me personally. Sometimes I prefer to just watch at home pretending this all just happened, no retakes, no directing the audience. It's really just a concert or parade. In reality, it's much different. You can't blame them for doing it again and again until it's as perfect as possible though. That's showbiz, folks.
Our first ride of the first evening of the trip was Haunted Mansion.
Next up, another family favorite, Pirates!
Another peek at the continued filming as we headed back out, later that night...
There are two things that I love about these next couple of snapshots - one, Main Street U.S.A. in its Christmas best and two, the crowds enjoying it all together! No one afraid of one another, not a care in the world. All of us enjoying sharing this magical space! What a great, albeit distant, memory.
One more ferry boat ride back to our rental car and soon we were home sweet vacation home, resting up before another beautiful Disney day to come!
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TRT // 20th Wedding Anniversary WDW Trip Day 1
What a fun day! Mmmm, all the food pics are making me hungry :) And what a beautiful room! I've always thought it would be fun to stay in a savannah view room with my kids! Hopefully someday we can make that a reality :)
ReplyDeleteSame, friend! Those pics make me hungry too (lol) ...and super excited to eat my way around World Showcase again this fall! AKL is our fave! I think you and your family would absolutely love it on a future Disney trip someday too! :D
DeleteAll the Christmas-y Disney goodness has me giddy! :)
ReplyDeleteHooray for Disney Christmas giddiness! That's the best! I can absolutely relate and am so happy that this post gave you all the Christmas feels, sweet Nik! Much more to come! :D
DeleteLooks like an amazing Disney day.
ReplyDeleteIt sure was! Thanks for popping by to hear all about it, friend! :D
DeleteI've always wanted to Disney decked out for Christmas. We often go during the fall so I have seen it all decorated with pumpkins often but we have yet to make it during the Christmas season.
ReplyDelete