Monday - April 29, 2019
As with all vacations, I get way too little sleep the night before because of excitement. For once it's not because I was up packing (my packing process had slowly taken place for a month before the trip because I was so excited - I had started my packing list 6 months before), but I was just so excited and buzzing with anticipation that the trip we had been planning for the last year (the date for which we set 2 years before...when we were still at Disney World) has finally arrived. I was tired and burned out from work, and the promise of 2 weeks off in the Disney Bubble communing with Mickey while eating ice cream bars shaped like The Mouse was the bright light I was clawing towards. But no matter how tired I was, as befitting a Disney vacation - I needed to be appropriately accessorized - and this started with our nails.
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| If I were young and hip and cool I would say our nails are on fleek. But that just sounds weird to me. Instead I'm going to use old lady language and just say our nails were awesome! |
Our flight out of LAX was at 11:20 am, but because we're all terrified of being late, we left Orange County at 7 am. We got to Cerritos where we parked the car and then ubered to the airport so we didn't have to pay the $20/day it cost to park at LAX. My mom actually got up at 6 that morning to make us dumplings because she was afraid we'd be hungry. I had told her it wasn't necessary when she asked me the night before, but she did it anyway. Even though I didn't think we'd need it, it ended up that my mama was smarter than me, because even with the treats we had brought with us, we would've been starving and hangry if we didn't have the dumplings. We checked in at the airport and because we all had TSA pre-check, we breezed through security and arrived at the gates. Desperate for coffee we stopped at the first store that sold it. Uh...that was a mistake, because there were better places if we just walked 20 feet further, but fuzzy brains with very little sleep don't think well. We sat in the little cafe and had not very delicious $5 coffees...and while they were very not delicious, the glorious drug slowly wound its way into my system to wake me up so I was at least semi-conscious.
We walked over to our gate and saw lots of people. Because of my American Airlines credit card, we got semi-priority boarding so we would wouldn't have to engage in a battle to the death for overhead space for our backpacks and we all got to check one suitcase. Knowing that we wouldn't be the last group and have to fight our way on, we went across the way to a more sparsely populated gate that had seats and proceeded to eat our dumplings like good Asians. With chopsticks my mom packed for us and sriracha. I mean, how else would you eat them?
Once we got on the plane, we all kind of dozed. I'm gonna say it - but AA kinda sucks. The plane was old. There weren't evens screens at every seat! What???!!! But we were lucky. The gate we had been waiting at ...that flight not only was delayed, but then they had mechanical difficulties with the plane and they didn't even know if they could leave that day! At least our plane took off!I read magazines on my kindle fire, listened to an audio book, and dozed. It wasn't unbearable, but it wasn't comfortable. But the excitement of spending 12 days in Disney World sustained me and psychologically cushioned my physically uncomfortable trip! I have no idea who our pilot was, but he was not super good at his job. When we were landing, the plane was wobbling from side to side and it was a little freaky.
Once we landed, we got on our fist ride: the MCO tram! Yay! Because we booked a Disney Resort for our first night, we were taking advantage of Magical Express. It was magical indeed! We got a super duper good rate on Priceline via one of their express deals - where you have to pick a hotel and pay for it up front before they tell you what hotel you got. I had read an article on Disney Tourist Blog where people were saying that Disney had dumped a bunch of inventory on Priceline and if you know what to look for, with the aid of the Hotel Canary extension for chrome (it predicts the hotel(s) based on the amenities listed. It's not 100% accurate, but it's helpful) you could, while having a heart attack, manage to book a Disney hotel for over 50% off. Being a cheap ass with a hitherto unknown urge to live dangerously, I gave Priceline my credit card information after looking at the options over and over and over and comparing amenities and the rack rates on what I thought would be Caribbean Beach because Hotel Canary told me so and pressed "purchase" hoping I wasn't making a $200 mistake that I'd be regretting. Because we had booked our flights out of LAX and saved a lot more money than we were anticipating, we decided to spend the first night at Caribbean Beach for the Magical Express as well as luggage transport when we move to the Polynesian Resort without having to get up at 6 am, uber from an anonymous airport hotel, and try to check in at 7 am only to drop our luggage off with bell services since we're not renting a car. We booked one of the rooms with a twin bed under the TV cabinet (our cardinal rule is there is no bed sharing!) for around $350 with taxes and fees included. Not cheap, but with the extra bed, having Magical Express (which means they go and get our bags from the baggage claim and deliver them straight to our rooms upon arrival) and luggage transport made the money worth it since that's so much less stressful than our original DIY solution of just ubering all over the place with luggage. Fortunately, God took pity on me and we got Caribbean Beach via Priceline. We had to get 2 rooms because Priceline Express Deals don't allow more than 2 in a room, which wouldn't matter except it's a Disney resort and we need to ALL be registered to a room for our magic bands to work. Also, they didn't guarantee us a room with 3 beds, so we had to get 2 rooms. The grand total for our 2 rooms for the night was $208.04. It was the happiest $208.04 I'd ever spent! I happily canceled our original full priced Caribbean Beach room and contacted Priceline for our Disney confirmation numbers, seamlessly incorporating it into our My Disney Experience. So we got TWO rooms for less than the price of ONE. Winner winner chicken dinner!
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| The moment we got off the plane we excitedly put our magic bands on. Further accessorizing! |
Anyhoo, that was a long-winded and unnecessary tangent to say we literally strolled onto the Magical Express bus and bopped our way to Caribbean Beach. We got there after dark - but the resort was adorable! I wouldn't mind staying there again - but the one thing about moderates (and this is my first time staying at a moderate) is that this one was really big - so it took a loooong time for the bus to make its way around from section to section. We stayed in the Jamaica section in building 41 - and it was actually pretty close to the bus stop! From that location, you had a really good and clear view of the gondola station across the street. We could see them testing the system while we were waiting for our bus.
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| The magical express bus next to ours. They're identical. |
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| Hello from the ME! |
Once we arrived at our resort and dropped our backpacks off in our rooms before we headed off to Disney Springs to eat. The rooms at CBR (it's a good thing we DID get two rooms, since both rooms only came with the 2 queen beds, no murphy bed) were updated, pretty spacious, and quite nice. While it wasn't luxe, it was clean, well taken care of, themed, and really cute! Being that it's called Caribbean Beach, it had a nice beachy vacation-y vibe, not too dissimilar from The Poly, so basically, for the first five days of our trip we were taking an island vacation. 😄🌴🌞
They're laid out like pretty fancy motels. There aren't indoor corridors, but it worked.
I could see this being a super nice resort to hang at. There's a beach (though no swimming - there are gators!) with hammocks and chairs. We wandered into an area where they had a big screen playing cartoons to entertain the kids, and there seemed to be lots of cool activities and amenities here. Alas, we were only staying for a night before fancy bitching it up at The Poly.
We grabbed the bus to Disney Springs - and because I didn't know any better, we walked all the way back to Old Port Royale to grab the bus there. Yeah...there was a bus stop like 4 minutes from our room. 😐 In not too long of a period of time, we arrived at Disney Springs. It's sooooo big! And so clean! And so big! And so wide! And so big! And so fancy!!!! It makes Downtown Disney here in Anaheim look so small and dinky (sob!). I loved it. We had already planned to grab a quick and easy meal instead of making a reservation since we didn't know when we would actually arrive. We decided on Chicken Guy - and it was sooooo good! It was just chicken tenders with awesome sauces and loaded fries (OMG those fries. They'll give you a coronary, but they're so amazingly tasty) but it was one of my favorite meals of the trip! I will admit the excitement of arriving at Disney and the magic of the Disney Bubble may have affected my taste buds, but I stand by my statement that it was delicious.
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| it's a pretty simple menu - it was so good! And I'm not generally into chicken tenders. |
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| The wall of delicious sauces |
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| my selfie game is not strong 😑 |
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| hello cheesy deliciousness |
Once we finished our fried goodness we walked over to Amorette's Patisserie to grab dessert. The desserts here weren't just exquisite like little jewels, but they were delicious as well! We had such a good time just looking at the food porn and trying to pick what we wanted. It was a cute little space and we were so happy sitting in this charming little patisserie eating delicious pastries. It was such a perfect way to end the day. I wish we had one of these here!
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| look at these cakes! The picture is crap, but the cakes are amazeballs! |
We ended up picking the Mickey dome, the lemon meringue bar and the cheesecake. They were all so.good. Soooo goooood. 😋😋😋
We wandered around the World of Disney for a bit and Uniqlo before they shut down because stupid east coast hours -_- I mean, for once we could be part animals and stay up late because we were still on west coast time but nooooooo, people who worked wanted to go home before midnight. Whatever.
Then took the (air conditioned - praise the Lord) bus back to our resort to get ready for bed. Tomorrow we move to The Poly and I get to see Pandora for the first time!
