I Love Monkeys...

... and t-shirts.  Now I just need to find more ways to combine the two.  Hmph.

Part Six: Disney World Trip Report

Okay, so our last day was kind of all mixed up because we had a lot of places we wanted to go. And there are not a ton of pictures to show for it. But here goes:

We started our day at Animal Kingdom, and this was one place I had not researched a ton..so we had a hard time getting going. We headed over to Kilimanjaro Safaris because I knew that that was the e-ticket ride that everyone else was going to be doing first thing.

This was so fun, and we really got to get up close to all of the animals. I took a bunch of pictures, but it's one of those things like, you've seen all of these animals before so why put all the pictures on here. But I will put the pictures I like the most.

Giraffes! They actually got even closer right after this!

Baby Elephant!!!!!!!! And look at the Mommy smiling, ADORABLE!

After the safari we went over to some other animal areas because it was supposed to have monkeys, but we barely saw any which was a little sad.

After that we headed over to Kali River Rapids because it was pretty hot out. Sadly, this was one of those water rides where you don't actually get very wet from the rapids, you get it from a giant geyser of water...which I think is way less fun. Nonetheless, we did get pretty soaked from the geyser!

His clothes are completely drenched if you can't tell.

Now that we were soaked, we went over to Expedition Everest which is the other big ride that everyone goes to at Animal Kingdom. It was so fun, and reminded me a lot of Matterhorn, but more roller-coaster-y.

Once we were done there, we didn't have too much else we wanted to see, and did have a lot of other places to go that day so we headed out of the park...plus it was nasty hot outside and we were over that.

The rest of our day was filled with shopping! We had been on the hunt for a Chip and Dale shirt that Ben loved, but we could not find it in his size. We headed over to Hollywood Studios where we had seen it, but no luck. While we were at Hollywood Studios we rode Star Wars a couple more times, and then it REALLY started raining. I mean, I have never seen so much rain in my life! We ran out of the park and headed back to our hotel to wait out the storm.

This is a heinous picture of both of us. But it captures how we were feeling after running in the downpour.

Okay, so this was a tiny little baby frog that was outside our door when we got back to our hotel during the storm. He was no bigger than my thumbnail. So cute I had to take a picture and share it with you!

Once the rain had stopped, we finished up our day with some shopping at Downtown Disney! We were so tired, and we had to be up for our flight in the morning, so we went back to the hotel, packed, and got ready to go home. :(

Part Seven will have a tiny bit about the trip, but will mostly be our impressions, likes, and dislikes!

Part Five: Disney World Trip Report

This was our 4th full day at the Walt Disney World Resort, and we were planned to spend the day at Epcot. Sadly, Ben woke up feeling even more sick so we spent the first half of the day hanging out in our hotel room. He felt awful, but ended up being a trooper and we headed out for Epcot in the afternoon.

We went in and mosied around a bit. Epcot seems really cool, but we were really out of it so we weren't really focused on what we were seeing. We rode the Nemo and Friends ride, and the Living with the Land. Living with the Land is pretty cool cause it shows all of the agriculture advances they are trying at WDW.

After that we ate lunch, and then rode Journey into Imagination with Figment. It was ridiculous, but we loved it! And we ended up having the song stuck in our heads ALL DAY! Which we didn't mind at all!

"Imagination. Imagination. A dream can be a dream come true, with  just that spark from me and you!!"

As we headed over to World Showcase, which is really why people go to Epcot, it started raining! So we had spent half our day in the hotel, and now when we were finally out it starts raining. :(

I like to be a creeper when getting pictures of my favorite characters! haha..

The CUTEST little old couple offered to take our picture. And then I decided I can't wait to go to Disney when Ben and I are cute and old.

We kept trudging through and tried to see as much as we could. Pretty much everyone else was huddled into all of the shops, so this might checking everything out pretty difficult. We ate some delicious treats - a sugar crepe (In France) and a cannoli (In Italy). We rode some weird rides in some of the land areas..the weirdest being in Norway! At the end you ride through an area that just had a bunch of oil rigs..oh, and their was something about trolls their too.

eww.

It started to rain harder and harder, but we didn't want to crap out too early. We ran from land to land, and then we ended up back at the front of the park. We rode Spaceship Earth INSIDE of the golf ball, and then decided to head back.

Can you tell how drenched I am?

 Although it wasn't the PERFECT Epcot day, we still had a ton of fun and were not disappointed as we headed back to our hotel.

Alright...Part Six is on it's way.

OH OH OH...AND I just remembered that on Sunday after Harry Potter, we went and watched Fantasmic at Hollywood Studios. I love Fanstasmic at Disneyland, so I was really excited. But I'm sorry, it was seriously awful! I hated almost every second of it. Partly because of the 25 min. show, about 15 minutes of that was devoted to Pocahontas! Seriously...POCAHONTAS!?!? No one likes that movie. Ugh...no wonder I forgot to write about it in the last post, I think I've been trying to block it from my mind.

Part Four: Disney World Trip Report

Lalala..so this is really for my mother at this point, because I'm sure anyone else reading my blog couldn't care less about a trip that Ben and I went on like 5 months ago. But I also want to have this down for my own memory purposes or else I think I will forget everything! So here it is...Part Four:

HARRY POTTER WORLD!!!

Or I guess you can call it by it's real name, The Wizarding World of Harry Potter. Ben and I were both pretty darn excited to go here! It's at Universal Studios Islands of Adventure, which is about 20 minutes away from the Walt Disney World Resort. Our tickets included a shuttle from our hotel to IOA and back so that was super handy. EXCEPT, Ben was feeling really sick that morning and we were running late and we almost missed our shuttle! Luckily, we ran and flagged the driver down right as he was pulling out of the driveway.

We headed straight over to Hogwarts Castle, because we knew it was the most popular ride and didn't want to have too much of a line. Well, we definitely lucked out... there was no line at all! We got there pretty early in the morning and it was Mother's Day, so we think that's why it wasn't busy at all. We walked right on the ride! This was SLIGHTLY disappointing because they have made the queue for that ride so cool, and we barely got to look at any of it. The queue, with no line at all, still takes you about 10 minutes to walk through the whole thing. I can't imagine waiting in line in that! ugh!

 So then we rode The Forbidden Journey inside the Castle, and let me tell you, it is probably my new all-time favorite ride!! It's so fun! It's like a mixture of Soarin' Over California, a classic-Disney dark ride, and and Matterhorn! haha. There was one spot that I didn't love alot though. It was a room with a ton of spiders that get up in your face and spit things on you... Luckily, that's exactly the section they take a picture of you!

I look like I'm having a lot of fun, right?

After the castle, we headed down to some shops. We rode the Dueling Dragons, which is a pretty standard roller coaster and after that we...drank...BUTTERBEER!!!!

I was pretty nervous about Butterbeer. I thought it was going to be just like cream soda, and I hate cream soda. But let me tell you, it is seriously one of the best tasting drinks I've ever had! So So So good! And the cream on top just makes it!

We loved it!

We walked around Honeydukes and Zonkos and I bought a Cauldron cake, cause who didn't always want to try a Cauldron cake every time they talked about it in the movies?!

Eating my Cauldron Cake!

Ben's new all-time favorite picture of me...

We left Harry Potter and went to some other areas of IOA, but then came back and at lunch at The Three Broomsticks...and then we drank more Butterbeer. Oh yes.

Inside the Three Broomsticks!

After lunch, we were both so tired, and Ben wasn't feeling well, so we decided to head home early around 1pm. We loved Wizarding World of Harry Potter, and I am really really excited they are putting one in at California's Universal Studios, because it is definitely something I want to do again!

Small note - if you aren't interested in riding all of the other rollercoasters at Universal Studios, and only want to do Harry Potter - don't plan to be there all day. Harry Potter World is relatively small, and can easily be done in half a day. Even with lines for the rides, I think we maybe would have only been there another hour and a half or so.

Full-Street View!

So we headed back to our resort, and just had a lazy day watching T.V. and relaxing in our hotel room! It was actually a really great day to recuperate half-way through our trip and get ready for the next few days!

Check out Part Five - Coming Soon!

Part Three: Disney World Trip Report

Check out Parts One and Two here and here!

So..uhh...remember that wonderful Disney World trip I went on? And the awesome trip report I was writing for it? Well, I certainly remember it, but unfortunately I have not been doing very well at keeping up with the report. With Girls Camp and some work problems, my life has been a little hectic the past month or so. But here I am...with PART THREE!!!

This was our second full day and we were finally heading to The Magic Kingdom! For those who don't know, Magic Kingdom is essentially the Disneyland of Walt Disney World. I was so excited to see the differences and enjoy the park. I had set up a breakfast for us at The Crystal Palace inside of the park for before it even opened! Awesome, right? I would definitely recommend booking an early morning breakfast reservation for one of the restaurants so you can get in before the park opens.

Check it out!! Hardly anyone in the background!!

Because we got in early, we were able to take some SWEET shots on Main St. before there were really any crowds. I was so glad we were able to do this!

Getting ready for my delicious breakfast buffet at the Crystal Palace.

Check out the adorable Mickey head confetti on the table!

I had told them it was a celebration of my graduation, so there was adorable confetti on the table and I got a delicious cupcake too! The one downside? This breakfast is a character meal...with the characters from Winnie the Pooh. NOT my favorite. In fact, I pretty much hate the Winnie the Pooh movies/characters/stories.. so this was a bit awkward. We laughed and joked as we tried to dodge the characters coming around as much as possible. Ben did get ambushed by Tigger at one point though..I wish I had gotten a picture of his face! Too funny!

After breakfast we spent our day hitting all of our favorite rides...Peter Pan, Haunted Mansion, Splash Mountain, Pirates of the Caribbean, etc.

After going on all of our favorite rides, we staked out a PRIMO spot to watch the fireworks and were lucky enough to get a pretty good view of the Main Street Electrical Parade! It was so fun to watch that and was very nostalgic feeling for me!

Pete's Dragon!!

FIREWORKS!!!

MORE FIREWORKS!!!

If you know me at all, you know how much I LOVE LOVE LOVE fireworks. And the show at Magic Kingdom did not disappoint. It was a wonderful show, and a really great ending to an already fantastic day!

Our next day was filled with some more dragons, beer, and witches...can you guess?? You'll just have to wait for Part Four!!

Also!! I'm planning on doing a full analysis of the trip as the final installment. It'll include how I think WDW compares to the original, my Best-Of's for the trip, what I thought went well, and what I might have done differently! You'll definitely want to watch for it!

Part Two: Disney World Trip Report

If you want to check out part one, either scroll down or click here!

Yay! Our first full-day! I had used http://www.easywdw.com/ to plan out what park we were going to go to each day, and it looked like Hollywood Studios was going to be our best bet! If planning a trip to the world, I really really suggest reading that blog. So much good information, and pretty funny too. 

I had read that the line for Toy Story Mania gets crazy by like 10:30am, which is pretty much the same at Disneyland (DL), so we headed there first because we LOVE that ride! We got fastpasses for later, but decided to ride it right away too.

Ben is looking pretty tired here with the barrel of monkeys.

 We really liked that the queue for this ride was inside which is different from DL, and they had made it so cute and fun to look at everything!

SORRY!

 From there we checked out One Man's Dream, which is a really cool museum all about Walt Disney, and how he came to build the Disney empire, including WDW and DL.

Me with a diorama of Peter Pan's Flight, which is my ALL-TIME favorite ride!

 We roamed the park and hit a couple other fun rides like Tower of Terror, and Rock'n'Roller Coaster. Then we went on the Hollywood Backlot tour, and at the end got to see a ton of cool costumes and props from several Hollywood blockbusters. They even had the organ that Davy Jones played in Pirates of the Caribbean! So cool!

Eee! So scared!

It actually rains over this umbrella when you stand underneath. I'm Singin' in the rain!!

 We rode Star Tours and ate lunch, and then we went on the Great Movie Ride. I'm a huge movie person, and really really enjoyed this ride. It's basically a dark ride that takes you through some of the great classic movies of our time. It was all great until we came to the Wizard of Oz section. All of sudden, these terrifying animatronic munchkins come up from the ground! It was so weird!!

He represents the lollipop guild..the super creepy lollipop guild!

 We had seen and done pretty much everything we wanted to at Hollywood Studios and decided to head out for the evening. Of course, I made Ben take our obligatory picture in front of the sorcerers hat, and then we left!

We decided to spend the rest of our evening at Downtown Disney. We ate dinner and shopped and talked about how our trip was going so far. Which was great! We stopped by the Lego Store, and the displays they had were so cool! They had Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Woody and Buzz blasting off the RC car, and Prince Phillip fighting Maleficent! I cannot believe they do this all with Legos.  I also can't wait to go back to DL and see what they've done at the Lego Store there with the remodeling. 

And that was the end of our first day!! We were having so much fun, and it was so great not having to worry about anything! The next day we were headed to Magic Kingdom. I was really excited for our early morning breakfast there, and to compare it with the original, Disneyland. Stay tuned!

Part One: Disney World Trip Report

So if you don't know, Ben and I were lucky enough to be able to take a trip to Walt Disney World a couple weeks ago. My parents were so generous and offered to send us there as a graduation gift! Seeing as Ben and I are HUGE Disney fans, and usually make several trips to Disneyland every year, it just seemed wrong that neither of us has ever been to "the world" before! We found out we were going last Thanksgiving, and then started doing all the planning this February. And believe me, there is A LOT of planning that goes into a vacation like this! My mom has been hounding me to tell her all about the trip, so I decided to do a little trip report. I'll also be reporting on our opinions of Disney World versus Disneyland. They are so so so very different and there is a lot to compare.  I've got a bunch of pictures and stories to tell, so it might take more than one post, but we'll see.

First off, we went from May 10-16. I had heard May was a pretty good time to go both weather and crowds-wise. I'd have to agree with that, though there was one day that was unbearably hot and one that poured rain like I had never seen before.

Our room was just 3 doors down from that arrow! It was a perfect spot!

We stayed on property at Disney's Pop Century Resort. It's theme is the 1950's-1990's. It was kind of cheesy, and definitely geared towards families with small children, but we actually REALLY loved it. It just felt so fun!

We flew in on the 10th and got into Orlando around 1:30pm. It's really nice when you stay in an on-property because you can set it up for a Disney shuttle to pick you up and for your luggage to just be delivered to your hotel room. It made is so much less stressful. Once we got to the resort, we walked through the gift shop, and then relaxed in our room. I'm pretty sure we fell asleep for a little while. After waking up at 3am that morning it was sooo nice to have a nap. Plus, we needed to be rested for our dinner at Ohana that night!

Ohana is located at Disney's Polynesian resort and it's so so so delicious. It's an all-you-can-eat family style meal. The first course was pork dumplings and chicken wings. Then we got a HUGE platter of broccoli and noodles. Then came the meat! It's done on skewers (like Tucanos or Rodizio Grill, is you've ever been there) and it is was good. There was chicken, beef, shrimp, and..something else I can't remember now. Ben said the chicken was some of the best he has ever had!

Can you tell how excited I am for this bread pudding?!?!

Then came one of the best things I have ever eaten. It was a Pineapple bread pudding with a banana caramel sauce and homemade vanilla bean ice cream. Holy mother this was good! We were so full from dinner, but couldn't help ourselves from eating almost the whole thing!

We left feeling fat and happy, and headed back to our resort. It had been a really long day, but so good so far! We were really excited for our first full day at Disney World, and we would be spending it at Disney's Hollywood Studios. 

Wow! I really thought I was going to get more than one day done on this post, but I don't want to overload you! Keep watching for the rest of the trip report...if you want to that is. 

Planning a trip to The World? Let me know if you have any questions...who knows, maybe our experience can help you out!

As we go on..we remember..

Well I can finally say it! I am a college graduate! I sometimes feel like that doesn't mean all that much anymore, but we're not thinking about that right now! Right now, we are thinking about how after 3 majors declared, 3 different schools, and 6 years of classes..I am finally a college graduate!

I was lucky enough to have my parents and sister come up for the ceremony, and it was really great to see them. Ben's parents came, and Ben of course too..and it was so great to have all their support! One of the most memorable moments of the day was the poem read by UVU's Artist In Residence during the convocation ceremony. This was by far the most ridiculous poem and reading I had ever heard. The speaker just made random noises with his mouth for a good 2 minutes of it. I was trying not to laugh too hard because it seemed like every one else was taking it so seriously!! My whole family couldn't stop imitating him the rest of the weekend. The ceremony was a little long, so we totes skipped out about ten minutes after I walked across the stage. We took pictures and then headed home!

The next day we had a graduation barbecue and Ben planned some really great surprises for me! There were Mickey Mouse balloons, a special cake, and a PINATA! It was so fun! I wailed on it and spilled all the candy out with 2 swings, but we patched it all together and the kids took turns taking some hits. It was a really great day eating food and spending time with friends and family!

Here are some of the pictures!

This is me at our BBQ with my trashed pinata!