Araminta18
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Mar 11, 2016
Hello! Welcome to my trip report! was attending one of the Disney Leadership trainings at the Contemporary, and since the conference included a discounted rate at the Contemporary, my husband decided to tag along and we added a couple extra days and made a vacation out of it. I love writing trip reports because it allows me to basically relive the trip, so hopefully this is at least a little bit interesting for people are not me. 
The details:
who: me and my husband Trevor
when: Saturday, August 12 through August 21, 2023
where: Art of Animation (Aug 12-14) and Contemporary (Aug 14-21)
Introductions:
I'm Tiffany, I'll be your ghost host for this trip report. I'm 36 (as of like a week ago ) and while I'm a librarian by education, I currently do federal records management, since records management is where the pay is, and I gotta pay for Disney! Favorite princess is Sleeping Beauty, but I also love Mary Poppins and Beauty and the Beast and Rapunzel. Favorite ride: I can never pick just one -- Haunted Mansion, Rise of the Resistance, Tower of Terror, Guardians of the Galaxy Cosmic Rewind...I can't pick! But I also love the food and the theming -- the music and all the attention to detail just makes me happy.
My traveling companion is my husband Trevor. He's 37 and loves Star Wars, but has grown to love Disney--his favorite characters are Boba Fett, Vader and Stormtroopers, and on the non-Star Wars side, Grumpy. His favorite rides used to be Haunted Mansion and Star Tours--he doesn't really like coasters or thrill rides, but I did get him to try Big Thunder Mountain and Space Mountain and I don't know that he'd call them favorites, but he definitely likes them. And as of our January trip I got him to ride Expedition Everest and Rockin Roller Coaster! Been slowly building up his coaster tolerance.
Ok! So let's get started! I actually began planning this trip back in February, when work approved me to attend the Disney Leadership training course. I was pretty excited for the course cause I'd heard good things, but also I was excited because the course was going to be at the Contemporary and there was a discounted price to stay there (like $350 + tax a night), so I was like booooooom let's stay longer - vacation! First time at a monorail resort! Woot! So I got everything set up through work (all the travel and such), and was having fun planning stuff, and then I was like wait...the class starts Monday afternoon, and I'm flying in Monday morning...why?! Why don't we fly in Saturday, cause then extra day and a half in Disney?! Esp cause if we didn't fly in til Monday I'd be sitting around at home all weekend basically being like "why aren't we at Disney...". So made that whole change, including finding a discounted rate at Art of Animation (woot!) for the two nights (yay check another Disney resort off my list). And since work was flying me down I was flying American, not Southwest like normal, but we still had flight credit on Southwest so we decided Trevor would fly down on Southwest (cause it was basically free with the credit). So lots of kind of logistics stuff.
But finally it was almost time to go! I ended up taking the day before off of work to do laundry and pack, and I was randomly checking my MDE account for something else and then I noticed something odd: my Contemporary reservation was no longer for Aug 14-Aug 21, but for Aug 13 - Aug 17th!! So that freaked me out a bit - I immediately called up the Disney Institute folks (cause the reservation was made through them) and was like "uhhhh help?!" The gal on the phone was like "huh that's weird" and put me on a 25 min hold to "see what was available at the resort". Not gonna lie, I was definitely panicking a bit but she got it all fixed. Phew!
After that I decided to treat myself and go get a little basic manicure with Haunted Mansion stickers for my nails! I don't get manicures very often, so I felt a bit awkward, especially when the lady knocked something towards my hands and I didn't think so I moved to stop and of course smudged my nail polish. Oops! It turned out ok. Not my favorite, but still fun.
But pretty soon Trevor was home from work and we got all our outfits picked out and were all ready to go! And our flight the next day wasn't til 10:30, so we didn't need to catch the uber until about 8 am. So a *little* bit of sleeping in!
The details:
who: me and my husband Trevor
when: Saturday, August 12 through August 21, 2023
where: Art of Animation (Aug 12-14) and Contemporary (Aug 14-21)
Introductions:
I'm Tiffany, I'll be your ghost host for this trip report.
I'm 36 (as of like a week ago ) and while I'm a librarian by education, I currently do federal records management, since records management is where the pay is, and I gotta pay for Disney! Favorite princess is Sleeping Beauty, but I also love Mary Poppins and Beauty and the Beast and Rapunzel. Favorite ride: I can never pick just one -- Haunted Mansion, Rise of the Resistance, Tower of Terror, Guardians of the Galaxy Cosmic Rewind...I can't pick! But I also love the food and the theming -- the music and all the attention to detail just makes me happy.My traveling companion is my husband Trevor. He's 37 and loves Star Wars, but has grown to love Disney--his favorite characters are Boba Fett, Vader and Stormtroopers, and on the non-Star Wars side, Grumpy. His favorite rides used to be Haunted Mansion and Star Tours--he doesn't really like coasters or thrill rides, but I did get him to try Big Thunder Mountain and Space Mountain and I don't know that he'd call them favorites, but he definitely likes them. And as of our January trip I got him to ride Expedition Everest and Rockin Roller Coaster! Been slowly building up his coaster tolerance.
Ok! So let's get started! I actually began planning this trip back in February, when work approved me to attend the Disney Leadership training course. I was pretty excited for the course cause I'd heard good things, but also I was excited because the course was going to be at the Contemporary and there was a discounted price to stay there (like $350 + tax a night), so I was like booooooom let's stay longer - vacation! First time at a monorail resort! Woot! So I got everything set up through work (all the travel and such), and was having fun planning stuff, and then I was like wait...the class starts Monday afternoon, and I'm flying in Monday morning...why?! Why don't we fly in Saturday, cause then extra day and a half in Disney?! Esp cause if we didn't fly in til Monday I'd be sitting around at home all weekend basically being like "why aren't we at Disney...". So made that whole change, including finding a discounted rate at Art of Animation (woot!) for the two nights (yay check another Disney resort off my list). And since work was flying me down I was flying American, not Southwest like normal, but we still had flight credit on Southwest so we decided Trevor would fly down on Southwest (cause it was basically free with the credit). So lots of kind of logistics stuff.
But finally it was almost time to go! I ended up taking the day before off of work to do laundry and pack, and I was randomly checking my MDE account for something else and then I noticed something odd: my Contemporary reservation was no longer for Aug 14-Aug 21, but for Aug 13 - Aug 17th!! So that freaked me out a bit - I immediately called up the Disney Institute folks (cause the reservation was made through them) and was like "uhhhh help?!" The gal on the phone was like "huh that's weird" and put me on a 25 min hold to "see what was available at the resort". Not gonna lie, I was definitely panicking a bit but she got it all fixed. Phew!
After that I decided to treat myself and go get a little basic manicure with Haunted Mansion stickers for my nails! I don't get manicures very often, so I felt a bit awkward, especially when the lady knocked something towards my hands and I didn't think so I moved to stop and of course smudged my nail polish. Oops! It turned out ok. Not my favorite, but still fun.
But pretty soon Trevor was home from work and we got all our outfits picked out and were all ready to go! And our flight the next day wasn't til 10:30, so we didn't need to catch the uber until about 8 am. So a *little* bit of sleeping in!
Not gonna lie...I may have been looking for a class at the place I wanted to vacation! 
