Well, sorry guys! I once again have sucked at updating my trip report - please forgive me!
This summer has been busy - work has been pretty insane, there's been a lot of 10-12 hour days (I'm only supposed to work 8's), and a lot of weekends worked. I've also been motivated to declutter our house, and have almost completed turning our scary disaster of a spare bedroom into a library/craft room/home office. It was the room that's been the dumping ground for things since we bought our house over four years ago, so it took me a full weekend (and 3-4 bags of recycling and 2 bags of garbage) just to sort through it - but there's a light at the end of the tunnel, and it's going to be so nice once it's fully finished! We already bought a new desk and set it up in there, and Luke has been using it on days he works from home.
We still haven't booked our next Disney trip - after ten trips between April 2015 and May 2019 it's been tough to not have anything to plan, but we know we'll get back. We've actually started talking about dates for a future trip, and I think we're leaning towards October/November 2020...
A pretty standard Magic Kingdom day, with an evening at Disney Springs…
A few weeks before leaving for this trip however, one of the ladies from the Disboards who was a part of the Epic Girls Weekend messaged us all, asking who would be around on May 2nd and have a park hopper ticket. Another Disboarder, who has asked to remain anonymous, had decided to gift us with a VIP Tour that day! I couldn’t believe it, it was honestly one of those crazy bucket list items Luke and I had, but never believed we could make it happen due to the high cost associated with it. For those who aren’t aware of what this even is, you can read a bit more
here on the Disney website. Basically, you hire a tour guide (or a plaid, named for their plaid vests that they wear) for a minimum of 7 hours. This allows up to ten guests – we actually had 19 of us on our tour which required two tour guides…
Anyways, once we found out what this amazing, kind-hearted benefactor had offered to us, Luke and I canceled our fastpasses and our breakfast reservation at 1900 Park Fare. I will make it there at some point, on some future trip! Strawberry soup for breakfast?! Count me in! We decided to hold on to our Homecomin’ reservation just in case we had time though – it’s our favourite so we figured we’d risk the chance of paying a no-show fee if we had to.
That morning, I was feeling a bit of jet-lag, especially with the red-eye flight the day before, so we decided to sleep a few extra minutes and just call a Lyft to take us to the park instead of using the Disney buses. This actually turned out to be well worth it, since the security lines on the bus side were insane that morning, but our Lyft dropped us off on the side where people parking their cars enter – so there was maybe one single person in line ahead of us at security.
Since we had cancelled our breakfast reservation, we just ate leftover Cheddar Drop Biscuits from Homecomin’ – a fantastic breakfast option if you ask me! I was so nervous though, I could only manage to eat about half of one – I had pitched an idea almost a year prior to a few girls on Facebook who I met through the Disboards about setting up a meet-up trip – and I was about to meet over a dozen of them today! We even had our own logo for the trip, designed by the wonderful Su-Queen <3
Once we were through security and found the correct line to scan into the park – it was an extra magic hours morning – we entered a mostly empty, slightly wet park:
We headed straight for Guest Services to the right of Spaceship Earth, afraid we were going to be late. We ended up being the third ones there – Karamie (
@paradesintherain ) had also taken a Lyft over, and our incredible new anonymous friend had drove, so we had all entered from the much quieter side of security. We all introduced ourselves, and I handed out the first of my Canadian treat bags I had prepared
Eventually, the rest of our group made it through the crazy long security lines and joined us. Our two Plaids for the day arrived, introduced themselves and handed out rain ponchos to each of us just in case. I’ve always been too cheap to buy myself one of the Disney rain ponchos ($13USD for something I can get from the Dollarama for $3CAD? Pass.) – but they are actually well made and quite thick! I brought ours home with me to save for future trips.
At 8:37am, we approached our first ride of the day – Test Track. We entered through the Fastpass line with our VIP Guides – we felt pretty special all day!
Luke and I worked together to design our car – our goal is always ugly. We call this one “An Ode to Alberta” due to it’s sweet lift-kit. Behold its beauty:
I also have this picture of someone else’s car – I think it’s Karamie’s?
Each car on Test Track only holds 6 people, but there were 19 of us so obviously we had to split up into smaller groups. We sat with Karamie, and her car kicked our car’s butt in the simulations haha. I also stole these next two pictures from Lesley (
@Lesley Wake ), since they are hilarious:
And of course, our on-ride photo:
It was Military Appreciation Month in the US, so the Blue Angels were doing a special fly-over of Spaceship Earth that morning. We went and found a spot to stand with a great view, and spent a few minutes chatting and getting to know each other.
I had asked about a month prior to going if anyone wanted anything in particular from Canada, and Billie (
@Elevationist ) had responded with Ryan Reynolds – so I presented her with her very own Ryan for the front of her
scooter during this time haha. Someone had a bandaid in their bag, and used that to stick him on there…
At 9:30am, the Blue Angels did their first flyover of Spaceship Earth:
An announcer came over the speakers in the park to let everyone know to stay put, as there would be a second flyover once they were back into position. We once again had our camera ready, and captured the second flyover:
This was so amazing to see – and I’m not even American. I’m so glad we took the time to see this!
Our VIP Guides, Jon and Amanda, gathered us together again and led us off to Norway. Our next ride was Frozen Ever After – which we once again entered through the Fastpass line. I love Frozen, and I love this ride – I never rode Maelstrom, so this is all I know for the Norway Pavilion. For this ride, we sat with Jackie (
@missjackiemcg ), Caroline (
@disneyAndi14 ) and Kelly (
@buzzrelly ) – and the rest of our boat was filled with random strangers.
After Frozen, our VIP Tour Guides took us out a side door I had never noticed before that allowed us to skip the gift shop. We headed back to Future World for our final stop at Epcot – Soarin’. Again, we entered the Fastpass line – by 10:15am we had been through the fastpass line for all three tier one rides at Epcot! This VIP Tour was really spoiling me!
Nice work pal!
Again, another picture stolen from Lesley –
Our group took up almost two full rows, and the ride was as great as always!
Afterwards, we took our first official group photo before heading out a Cast Member’s Only door to our awaiting vans.
From left to right: Luke, Molly, me, Kara, Karamie, Steve, Ariana, Caroline, Billie, Kelly, Su-Queen, Liesa, Jackie, Su-Lynn, Lesley, Jenny and Joe
We split into two groups. I was in the van that Amanda drove, but she didn’t really say much as we drove through backstage areas to our next park. It was pretty cool to drive through the backstage of Epcot to see some of the Festival booths not currently in use, the construction on the Guardians of the Galaxy Coaster, etc. We were not allowed to take any photos while in the backstage areas, so nothing to share, sorry.
❤
I guess working 6 days/week doesn't leave much free time...
That's disturbing! I don't mind these wall-mounted ones either!
We'll be here!
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