Day 8: Epcot, DVC tour, & Star Wars dinner
First of all, I’m still alive. I haven’t forgotten about finishing my TR. I started working in our college recruitment office this semester, and this is prime recruiting season. So I have been incredibly busy with work and have been neglecting the boards here. I’m behind on several PJs too, but I will get caught up someday soon. I'm hoping to have our wedding film sometime in the next month or so, so I will share that here. Once I have it, I will also post final vendor reviews as well as our BEO (if that be helpful to share?) and a fun post of "bonus features" (photos/videos taken by our guests and our physical wedding albums).
Stay tuned: I still have a few things to share before it's officially The End.
We woke up a little later than anticipated this morning, so we got ready quickly and walked to Epcot. Josh and I got a little breakfast at Sunshine Seasons, one of my favorite quick service restaurants. By this point of the trip though, I was starting to feel perpetually stuffed from the quantity of food we were eating on the dining plan. Generally, we like to have a heavier breakfast, skip lunch, and then have dinner relatively early in the evening. I didn’t eat much for breakfast because we were eating lunch at Coral Reef.
After breakfast, we rode Mission Space (the weenie hut version because that’s all I can handle) and Soarin’. While we were getting seated at Soarin’, the two kids next to us completely lost it and started crying/screaming because they were afraid that the ride was going to be scary. One of the kids had to be taken outside by a parent because the CM said they couldn’t start the ride if he didn’t stop panicking. It seemed like the little girl who got to stay on enjoyed herself after the ride started, at least. LOL.
Fun topiaries near the entrance.
Soon, it was time for our lunch reservation. As a whole, it seems like a lot of folks hate Coral Reef, but we like it. We didn’t get a very good table this time, and we couldn’t see the aquarium very well. I guess honeymoon pixie dust only goes so far. Haha. (After our awesome room upgrade at the GF, I seriously didn’t expect anything at all. That’s years’ worth of pixie dust there. Haha) I ordered the vegetarian chick’n breast and Josh got steak. My food was better here than it was in October, I think. For dessert, I opted for the cheesecake and Josh got the chocolate mousse cake.
Vegetarian chick’n breast with black beans
Josh’s steak.
Cheesecake with a neat looking garnish
Chocolate cake.
We had time to ride Spaceship Earth and take a few photos before heading to the entrance to meet our DVC escort. When we got outside, we saw a DVC van parked and waiting for us. The guide chatted with us as we drove to Saratoga Springs. Neither of us has been to Saratoga before, and we were impressed. It still is one of the lower resorts on our list of preferred deluxes, but we liked it more than we expected. We were shown to the room we would be meeting in, and our guide arrived very quickly. We chatted for a few minutes, watched a brief video, and then it was time to embark on the tour. Now, I didn’t take personal photos of the units we saw because I was distracted, but it also felt a little awkward to take a bunch of pictures. Sorry!
The first unit we saw was from Aulani, which is on my travel bucket list. (I don’t know why, but ever since I was young, I’ve wanted to spend a Christmas in Hawaii so I could go around singing Mele Kalikmaka legitimately) Aulani is currently one of the properties “open” for folks buying in, but it’s not really practical for us. From what I’ve read, it doesn’t seem particularly difficult booking there 7 months out anyway. The unit was nice, though.
Up next was the Polynesian, the other available property. I really, really liked this unit. We’ve never stayed at the Poly before, and I’m not sure if it would ever be a preference over one of the Boardwalk area resorts, but the studios were very impressive. (We’ll come back to them later.) My favorite part aside from the raised bed (for storing luggage underneath) was definitely the bathroom. It had a more modern, kind of upscale feel than most of the bathrooms in Disney resorts.
Last, but definitely not least, we saw a studio and a one bedroom from the villas at the Grand Floridian. Oh my gosh!!! I know I got spoiled to staying one night at the GF, and seeing these beautiful villas certainly didn’t help. They are absolutely beautiful. Maybe one day we’ll be able to afford staying at the GF for a trip, but I know that the studios here fill up extremely quickly. The one bedroom blew me away, especially the gorgeous old-fashioned bathtub. Why do the one bedrooms have to cost so much more than the studios? LOL
After we saw the units, we sat down to talk about details and numbers. I think the guide knew he had me convinced after he showed me the GF units, haha, but he gave us a few minutes alone to talk things over. Josh was a bit more apprehensive, and we knew it wasn’t necessarily the best time for it since we just paid for our Disney wedding, but…
we joined the Disney Vacation Club! We got a small contract at the Polynesian. I already want to add on to our points, but I think I would like a resale at either BW or AKL. Anyway, after taking care of a few "make it official" matters, we were given some informational materials in a DVC member bag and were escorted to the ice cream parlor.
Josh and I got just a small cup of celebratory ice cream. They had some pretty cool stuff around the room, and I had to get a picture of this train.
With the tour finished, another DVC guide drove us back to the Boardwalk. Josh and I had just enough time to freshen up a little before we needed to leave for our Star Wars dinner at Hollywood and Vine. The boat came pretty quickly, and we lucked out by being one of just a few families headed to the Studios at the moment. Once we arrived at HS, we went straight to Hollywood and Vine to check in for the meal. Honestly, I wasn’t expecting very much because it seems like everyone on the Disboards here hates Hollywood and Vine.
We had to wait 5 minutes or so before we got to go inside. Before being seated, we got to stop for a photo with jedi Mickey at the front of the restaurant.
Honestly, this was one of the BEST character meals we have ever experienced! I think it was mainly due to the character interaction and the atmosphere, but we had a total blast. Just as much fun as all of the kids around, hahaha. All of the characters came by our table twice. Now, I usually can take or leave Disney lunch/dinner buffets because they don’t always have a lot of vegetarian options, but I had several things to eat here.
Was the food quality the highest in the parks? No, but it was perfectly fine standard buffet food. I’m not sure if they were more on top of their game at H&V since it was a special event meal, but I thought it was much better than the reviews indicate on here.
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The best part of the meal was trying all of the specialty Star Wars themed desserts. We tried a little bit of all of them. My personal favorite was the Jabba cupcake. Isn’t it cute in a weird way? As cute as something with Jabba on it could be, I guess. Bahaha.
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After dinner, we rode Star Tours and walked around some shops. We decided to skip Fantasmic that night since we still needed to pack for our departure the next day.
We tried giving our the special passes we had for Fantasmic seating from dinner, but the first few people we asked didn’t want them, so they just went to waste.
Hollywood Studios seems to be the park we neglect the most, although it wasn’t really intentional this trip. When we go in December, I want us to do practically everything in the park since we never know if something will be around the next time we visit. Anyway, we made our way out of the park and to the boat dock. Since we were leaving before Fantasmic, it wasn’t too terrible crowded so we timed it pretty well.
We were leaving the following afternoon, but had at least a half day in AK planned, including breakfast at Tusker House (my favorite!). Sadly, there were a lot of things that didn’t make it home with us, most notably our chocolate tea cups. We still had a little bit of cake left over, but we made it through a pretty respectable amount of the top tier. The following morning, I wrapped my bouquet in a trash bag and packed it, which probably wasn’t the best approach. It got overheated, and parts of it wilted and turned brown. The pieces I salvaged are now potpourri in our living room.
After we were mostly packed and ready to go, I started feeling a little sad. As our honeymoon was ending, it meant it was almost time to leave our wedding bubble and go back to reality. I was sad enough in a lot of ways that the wedding was over, but at least we were still immersed in the magic! Josh and I got in bed and watched a little TV before going to sleep on the last night of our honeymoon.[/url][/url]
We went back and forth about doing a park shoot ourselves once we knew that the "regular" castle shots were off the table, but MK pictures had been one of Josh's top priorities, and I'm so glad we went ahead and did them. You and Jess could always have an anniversary shoot? :-D 
LOL.
But they were a ton of fun. Since we didn't have a DJ or real dancing, they served as both music and unique entertainment.
