Dashing Through the "World" with a new camera in hand PTR - PassPorter - A Community of Walt Disney World, Disneyland, Disney Cruise Line, and General Travel Forums
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Dashing Through the "World" with a new camera in hand PTR
DATES: December 10-17
Where: POP
Cast: Ryan (28), Shena (26), This will be our 9th trip to the world since our 2005 Honeymoon!
Reason for the trip: Because we want to!
As some of you may remember we attended the D23 WDW 40th celebration in May and “ran” the WDW Scavenger Hunt. And when i say ran it really felt like we ran through 4 parks in 2 days or 13 hours. We did finish 28th overall!
After that trip we had decided that we had had just about enough of WDW for the time being so we headed home with no plan to return at any point in 2011 as it just took alot of energy out of us.
We both knew we had a couple a “vacation” weeks’ schedule at work for September and December but we didn’t really know what to do. When we stated working on the scrapbook pages for that trip we had a brilliant idea to make a scavenger hunt book and put all the questions and answers! This was going to be a HUGE book but we were up for the challenge. As we started the first few pages we thought it would be cool to put pictures of the answers with the questions; but the bad part was we didn’t have time to take pictures during the hunt. As we were still unsure of if we really wanted to go back we threw several ideas on the table. One idea was to take our first trip to DL. We knew we could probably only afford one more “big” trip for the year. After much consideration and several ideas later we thought if we wanted to get pictures of ALL the answers from the hunt it would probably be in our interest to go back sooner rather than later because we all know how quickly things can be changed around in the world, especailly with all the new FL expansion taking place.
Next up was to determine when would be go, as I stated above we had already scheduled time off for October and December, so it was decision time again. Do we go back for our annual Christmas trip or do we take our first trip during Halloween? If we were to go for Halloween we would have to take a short trip and the week we had scheduled off was right between two big football games that we already had plans to attend. After we did some searching we saw that there was a deal for free dining during the second week in December and so it was decided that it would be a Disney Christmas(for the 5th straight year)!! At the beginning of September we booked us a 7 night stay at POP century with Free quick service dining! Now some say that they QS dining plan is not all that great but we tried it for the first time in May because we also got it for free and it seem to work just fine for our needs, and can you really beat FREE?
__________________
*Shena & Ryan*
Check out our PTR for our upcoming Christmas trip to see Mickey!
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With the room booked it was time to start the planning process. As any avid Disney traveler knows you want to make sure you have your ducks in a row so you can spend as much time as you want in the parks. Now we are not the types of planners that need to have every minute of the day planned out but we do like to have a plan of action. Since this trip was going to be filled with reliving the scavenger hunt questions and taking in the annual Christmas items, we also knew the plan was not to come back in 2012 so we needed to make sure we had our plan ready.
The first order of business was to start checking on flights to MCO and we checked every day and it was not looking good but then we snagged a deal for the arrival to MCO through SWA for 99.00!! The return flight is a different story as we have still yet to book it because it is sitting at 153.00!
AS we were putting together packing and shopping list out October vacation was quickly approaching and some nice relaxing time was in store as the summer had been crazy. Two weeks before the October time off we decided that we didn’t want to stay home but rather take a small road trip or something, so the Disney planning was put on hold and road trip was in the works—so much for relaxing!!
The idea was to drive to Nashville and spend a day or two there and then head on south to Atlanta before we turned around and headed home. As we started adding the cost of the trip it was getting a little more than what we wanted to spend so it was back the drawing board. On the Tuesday before we were supposed to on vacation we were still trying to figure out where to go, so Shena headed over to SWA website and looked at some airfares to see if they had some deals to go around and found some great deals to LA!! So she spent the next hour doing so research on what we could do in LA and surprised me with the plan to take a short 4 day trip to DL. She wanted to surprise me but couldn’t keep it a secret as she wanted my input on some things to do while there. After the initial shock hit that we were going to try and go to DL we went on a frantic search of hotels and tickets, we had to do all this in less than 4 hours as the airfare sale ended at midnight!! Never had we planned a Disney trip that quickly before, oh and did I mention that this was Shena’s first trip to DL and I haven’t been in a good 10 years?!?!
__________________
*Shena & Ryan*
Check out our PTR for our upcoming Christmas trip to see Mickey!
WDW - August 1997 Off Property
WDW - January 2005 AKL
WDW - May 2006 Pop Century
WDW- november-dec 2007 pop century
WDW- dec/jan 2009/2010 pop century
WDW- oct/nov 2012 art of animation
WDW- sept 2013 port Orleans riverside
WDW- july 2015 beach club
Ok so I am back for the next installment, where was I? OH that is right we were talking about our DL trip. This post will be a quick recap of that trip!
So needless to say the WDW plans were on the back burner. We headed to DL on Tuesday morning at 6:00am with a short layover in Vegas and were into LAX around 9:00am. By the time we got to the hotel and checked in we had almost the entire day still in the park. We both really enjoyed DL but were less impressed with DCA, not sure why (maybe all the construction?!?!) but we spent the majority of our time at DL. Seeing DL with its Halloween overlay was a cool sight as we have never been to a Disney park during the fall. My favorites from this trip were the HM Holiday overlay, Indiana Jones (the ride), and Matterhorn. In addition to these, Shena also liked the new Little Mermaid ride at DCA and Mickey’s Soundsational Parade. For my least favorites it would have to be Space Mountain (the “holiday” overlay not the ride) and just Tomorrowland in general as it just looked a little run down compared to the rest of the park and the WDW version (Shena also wanted me to note her least favorite thing during a rain storm is Matterhorn). We were sad to see that POTC was under refurb as we really wanted to see the DL version as it is one our WDW favorites, but we lived (with much grumbling on Shena’s part every time we walked past it). Here are a few pictures from DL.
This was from The Little Mermaid Ride.
Those were just a few pics from DL! Hope you enjoy!
__________________
*Shena & Ryan*
Check out our PTR for our upcoming Christmas trip to see Mickey!
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She wanted to surprise me but couldn’t keep it a secret as she wanted my input on some things to do while there. After the initial shock hit that we were going to try and go to DL we went on a frantic search of hotels and tickets, we had to do all this in less than 4 hours as the airfare sale ended at midnight!! Never had we planned a Disney trip that quickly before, oh and did I mention that this was Shena’s first trip to DL and I haven’t been in a good 10 years?!?! 
[SIGPIC]Ricky, Sharon R, Richard
OH that is right we were talking about our DL trip. This post will be a quick recap of that trip!
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