Newsies' Pumpkin-Spiced Trip Report! - Our MNSSHP, MM August '19 Adventure! *DR link 1/27*

[Newsies]

Joining and looking forward to reading!

Welcome!!! So excited to have you here!!!

Ummm...I already NEED more...

Great start! I can't wait to hear all about your trip!

I promise I'll try to get the ball rolling tomorrow or the day after!!!

I can't wait to tell you about it!!!

Popping over from your PTR . Looking forward to reading more about your adventures.

Also , where do you get the S’mores tart ? I loooooove S’mores. Have they tried the handmade one you can watch being made at the Ganachery?

Yay yay yay!!! So excited to have you here, thanks for following!

Okay, so the S'mores Tart that we had was a staple at the very tiny bakery case at Gasparilla's Grill. I didn't think it was the most special thing in the world, but Grace and Mom really loved it and got it with every QS meal since we had our refillable drink mugs so we could substitute a drink with a dessert with the DDP! We didn't make it over to The Ganachery unfortunately We were stuffed after dinner at Homecomin' and knew the chocolate wouldn't hold up in the heat if we tried to bring it home, so we'll save that for our next trip.

Joining in. Can't wait to hear all about it.

Yay, yay, yay!!! Thanks so much for checking in, I can't wait to update!

 

[PlutosRHM55]

Max Goof looked GREAT on Friday night. Also, little Keightleaux is a little offended that you didn't thank him. You know he has daddy issues.

Awww thanks love. Also, relatable @ Keightleaux and I'm sorry I made them feel that way.

 

[Newsies]

Awww thanks love. Also, relatable @ Keightleaux and I'm sorry I made them feel that way.

He says it's okay, he forgives and loves you very much!

 

[Cloe Colton]

I'm hereeeee!

I can't wait to hear about it all! I was LIVING for your insta posts! They were all so joyful and I could tell you were having the best time! Also, super jelly that you met Jack Skellington!

I'm really excited to hear your thoughts on the private cabana? Did your family think it was worth it?

Also your Dad is adorbs. I wish my Dad loved Disney as much as yours does!

AND finally. I am convinced that there were reasons neither of us got Cali Grill brunch ressies and clearly The Wave was a family fave for you guys!!

 

[cinderaimee]

I'm here and so excited to hear about your trip!

 

[Newsies]

I'm hereeeee!

YAY YAY YAY!!!! SO EXCITED

I can't wait to hear about it all! I was LIVING for your insta posts! They were all so joyful and I could tell you were having the best time! Also, super jelly that you met Jack Skellington!

Awww, thank you!!! Everyone really had the best week ever! I loved your Batuu posts, so jealous you made it over there!!

I'm really excited to hear your thoughts on the private cabana? Did your family think it was worth it?

We thought it was worth it, especially since my family spends the morning/afternoon at the pool, anyway! Even I loved it, and I didn't think I was going to spend more than an hour there!

Also your Dad is adorbs. I wish my Dad loved Disney as much as yours does!

He's a little crazy, but he does love Disney very much!

AND finally. I am convinced that there were reasons neither of us got Cali Grill brunch ressies and clearly The Wave was a family fave for you guys!!

I honestly thought The Wave breakfast was good, but nothing super special! I was still bummed about CGBrunch until we arrived in MK that morning and I got over it, lol.

I'm here and so excited to hear about your trip!

Yay!!! So excited to have you here!!!

 

[Newsies]

Smooth Sailings
8/16-8/17: Travel Day​

After 11 months of planning, we arrived at Friday, August 16— our departure day!

The morning was pretty boring. We were all up so early because we were so excited! Dad started loading up the car early, then we got bagel sandwiches for breakfast. Mom & dad had to run the usual pre-vacation errands— visiting the post office to stop the mail, getting the truck washed and gassed up for the road trip— while Grace and I stayed home. Mom had a hair appointment in the morning, and while she was gone, our cleaning company came in. We try to be as out-of-the-way as possible while they’re cleaning our house, so Grace and I played MarioKart Wii downstairs until mom came home. Then, it was time to drop Roxie off at Best Friend’s pet boarding! She was a good girl and went to play with the other puppies without being too fussy about it.

She even posed for a picture— a rarity!

​

The cleaning company was still at the house when we came home, so mom, Grace, and I went to get our nails done. Fun story time! So my nail tech today was making small talk and asked if I was going on vacation, so I told her we were going to Disney. Turns out she did the DCP in 2003! She was a merchandise hostess at the Grand Floridian and extended her program to the Main St. Confectionery! It’s a small world… pun slightly intended.

Here are our nails! I kicked myself for not getting the purple mom got, but I ended up really liking the blue I chose, too!

​

It was ~4:00 when we got out of the nail salon, so dad was gonna want something to eat before he went to sleep. We got burgers from Five Guys, which is always good when you haven’t eaten anything since 8:30 in the morning.

After dinner, dad went to sleep. Mom had to do some work on her computer while I started snooping on the coverage from the first MNSSHP, then she took Grace and I to run two more errands. Grace and I collect our spare change in a jar in the kitchen throughout the year so that we can take it to the CoinStar machine at our local supermarket before our Disney trip and cash it out. We saved up $80 throughout the course of the year!

Then we went to Walgreens to pick up a prescription and get snacks for the road trip. Unfortunately, the Walgreens snack selection was not fun. Thankfully, living in NJ, our rest stops along the highway always have some form of food court/convenience store that we could pick up snacks from, so we agreed to do that the first time we had to stop on the road.

We got home, I wrote the conclusion for my PTR, then I took a shower and finished packing my toiletries. Mom went upstairs after a bit, but Grace and I stayed downstairs to watch TV together for a while. It was 10:30 when dad woke up and got dressed: an entire hour earlier than we had ever left before. I quickly changed into my travel outfit, packed up my laptop, and moved the rest of our stuff from the dining room table to dad’s truck!

At 10:59 PM, we officially began our drive to Walt Disney World!

Our first stop was, as it always was, and always will be, the 24/7 Dunkin’ in town. I got a Dunkaccino and we hit the road!

I fell asleep pretty quickly, which normally doesn’t happen because I’m always so excited when we start the trip! But I clocked out about an hour into the drive and only woke up to use the bathroom and get snacks with the rest of our family when we reached our first rest stop at 1:00 in the morning. I chose a bag of Cracker Jack and a bag of sour mini-Starbursts, because those were the two of those things that I found most appealing to me as a person who was half asleep at a rest stop in South Jersey at 1:00 in the morning.

There was a little bit of traffic in Maryland around 2:30 that woke me back up, then suddenly, the truck rocked— someone had hit our truck! Thankfully, they only hit the trailer hitch, so both of us were on our way almost as quickly as we had pulled over, but that could have been a disaster! We were in traffic for maybe half an hour more before we were out of the construction zone.

I went back to sleep around 4:00 after another rest stop and slept all the way to 7. Normally, at 7:00, we’ll pull into this Denny’s that’s on one of the first exits in Virginia… but today, I woke up in North Carolina! We had made awesome time. We ended up finding a different Denny’s. We had pancakes that were completely forgettable, and a child threw a crayon at me. Understandably. I’d throw a crayon at me if I saw me in a public place, too. Here's a Forky pic from a NC rest stop.

​

We went back on the road and didn’t stop until a little after 12, where we stopped at Zaxby’s for lunch. I don’t care for Zaxby’s as much as everyone else in my family cares for Zaxby’s, but I love that you can get Texas toast on the side here, because nowhere up north serves it! Here are my Wings 'n' Things, ft. Forky.

​

We continued on the road, where I mostly slept. We stopped once again at the Georgia Welcome Center, which was brand new back in November and is now already a neglected mess with these disgusting grey globs covering Tom Hanks.

​

We breezed through Georgia until we reached the last exit, Kingsland, and pulled into our hotel for the night at 4:30, which was a record for us. This is our normal stop-over exit, because there are a lot of hotels and restaurants and it’s 5 minutes away from the Florida state line, so our drive the next morning isn’t bad at all. In the past, we’ve used Fairfield Inn & Suites, but this year, we chose Microtel because it was cheaper.

We highly recommend Fairfield Inn & Suites. We recommend Microtel a little less. We had some major problems with payment— mom paid in cash as soon as we got there, but as we were checking out the next morning, we found out that they charged the card she had to put on file. She eventually got it sorted out with them, but it was a frustrating ordeal. The rooms are just a little dated, but the beds are nice and big and it’s mostly clean.

We had Dominos delivered to the room for dinner, so we each had a little bit of pizza and a few parmesan bread knots. I took a shower at around 7:00 in the evening and fell asleep shortly after, my alarm set to 2:45 in the morning for our check-in day!

(Click here to continue!)​

 

[the2ndstar2theright]

Ok I'm obsessed with your pupper

Omg I can't believe someone hit your truck! At least it wasn't worse, and no one got hurt, but still! Gracious.

We had pancakes that were completely forgettable, and a child threw a crayon at me. Understandably. I’d throw a crayon at me if I saw me in a public place, too.

I quite literally laughed out loud when I read this. And I'm actually still laughing as I type this. Kids. Smh.

 

[Newsies]

Ok I'm obsessed with your pupper

Roxie is mostly a good girl. MOSTLY. But sometimes she uses her big puppy dog eyes for evil and tries to convince us to give her a bite of whatever we're eating, and she's been known to bark at squirrels if they get too close to the house!

Omg I can't believe someone hit your truck! At least it wasn't worse, and no one got hurt, but still! Gracious.

It was crazy! Dad is a seriously safe driver-- this was the first time in my life I've ever even WITNESSED an accident while he was driving! But like you said, the most important thing is that nobody was hurt!

I quite literally laughed out loud when I read this. And I'm actually still laughing as I type this. Kids. Smh.

Bruh it was crazy. This toddler from like two tables over hit me SQUARE in the head with a crayon and when I turned to him, he looked me right in the eyes with the guiltiest look I've ever seen in my life. Nobody from either of our tables saw it happen. Kids.

 

[lvcourtneyy]

Joining in! I'm so excited to hear about this trip! Fellow Fall and Pumpkin lover here. I keep trying to convince it to be fall in NY already lol

I can't believe someone hit your truck!! How scary but thank goodness there was no real damage!

 

[Minniemoo15]

Following !

We are new DVC owners with Poly as our home resort. I can’t wait to stay there for our first time in March. I’d love to hear your thoughts comparing Poly and GF sometime.

 

[Gina Starr]

I love reading about travel days for people who drive! Most of the time it feels like people are like “we woke up at 4am and were on the magical express by 8am”

Too funny I am reading about your Five Guys dinner cause that’s exactly what I’m eating right now. It’s one of the only fast food places I can eat being gluten free.

Wow! A fender bender is a fear of mine on road trips. Glad it was not a big deal though!

I love all the Forky pics. Too cute!

 

[Eeyore daily]

Ah cute doggo! I can't resist the cute puppers.

I'm glad you guys are okay from the accident.

 

[Newsies]

Joining in! I'm so excited to hear about this trip! Fellow Fall and Pumpkin lover here. I keep trying to convince it to be fall in NY already lol

YAY!!! #PumpkinSpiceSquad so happy to have you here!!!

I can't believe someone hit your truck!! How scary but thank goodness there was no real damage!

It was a pretty scary moment when we realized what happened, but we feel so fortunate that there was no damage or injuries for either party!

Following !

We are new DVC owners with Poly as our home resort. I can’t wait to stay there for our first time in March. I’d love to hear your thoughts comparing Poly and GF sometime.

YAY!!! So glad you have you here!!

We love, love, LOVE the Poly. I don't know what your usual travel party looks like, but we're a family of 4 adults when we go to Disney and we like the Studio rooms at both the Poly and GF because they give us that extra pull-down bed under the TV, so Grace and I can sleep on separate beds.

We like the Poly more than we like the GF/VGF, though. The VGF building seemed so much farther away from the main building and the QUICK SERVICE (gasparilla island grill was a hike and a half from the VGF building) than our Poly longhouse was, and we liked that our longhouse was right next to the TTC monorail so we could hop on/off there instead of the Poly stop.

I love reading about travel days for people who drive! Most of the time it feels like people are like “we woke up at 4am and were on the magical express by 8am”

Same!!! I don't know what it is about the driving travel days, but I love writing and hearing about them!

Too funny I am reading about your Five Guys dinner cause that’s exactly what I’m eating right now. It’s one of the only fast food places I can eat being gluten free.

Five Guys is one of my favorite burger joints! I had no idea they had a gluten-free menu, that's awesome!

Wow! A fender bender is a fear of mine on road trips. Glad it was not a big deal though!

We were terrified for a good minute, because that's always a fear we have when we're heading to and from Florida. We were very lucky with traffic this year, but we saw some CRAZINESS coming home. There was a massive car fire by the Delaware bridge that completely shut down the southbound side of the interstate

I love all the Forky pics. Too cute!

Thank you!!! I casually mentioned the idea to dad one day and he insisted I took photos with him everywhere during our drive down!

Ah cute doggo! I can't resist the cute puppers.

She's a fluffo! I love puppers, too! I especially love when people put pictures of their furbabies in their TRs!!!

I'm glad you guys are okay from the accident.

Thank you. We are, too. We feel extremely lucky for how our the drive to and from WDW went in general this year.

 

[VeronicaMarie]

Oooh late night driving?! I have no idea how you and your family do it. We just did an 8.5 hour drive this past Friday, left after work and got in closer to 2AM and it SUCKED. I felt obligated to entertain my fiance so that he would not feel sleepy, it was so dark and creepy (mind you this was on a lot of county prairie roads with little lighting) and I was SO SO tired! Maybe it helps if you sleep before? Yay for almost being at Disney. Can't wait for your check in day!

 

[Newsies]

Oooh late night driving?! I have no idea how you and your family do it. We just did an 8.5 hour drive this past Friday, left after work and got in closer to 2AM and it SUCKED. I felt obligated to entertain my fiance so that he would not feel sleepy, it was so dark and creepy (mind you this was on a lot of county prairie roads with little lighting) and I was SO SO tired! Maybe it helps if you sleep before? Yay for almost being at Disney. Can't wait for your check in day!

Mom and dad are the only two drivers when we go to WDW, so they take the day off from work before we leave and they find that extremely helpful. Especially since dad goes to sleep around 4:00, and gets up around 10:30-11 to start the drive, so he's already got about 6 hours of sleep in his system before grabbing his favorite coffee and hitting the road! It's definitely not for everyone, but my dad gets super excited for the drive down.

I can't wait to update!!

 

[Cloe Colton]

Oh wow! That had to be scary and annoying when your car got hit! Glad everyone and everything was okay!

Did the microtel have a distinct smell? Any that I've been in have such a strong smell! I used to stay in one in Ohio for my last job and my clothes would always smell like the hotel/motel? by the time I got home after staying there for a week!

Also love the Forky pics! It always reminds me of elementary school when you would have to document your Flat Stanley (thats what my school called it! lol) I did a similar thing on our honeymoon when somehow one of the photobooth strips of Calista got packed with us haha

 

[afwdwfan]

Fun story time! So my nail tech today was making small talk and asked if I was going on vacation, so I told her we were going to Disney. Turns out she did the DCP in 2003! She was a merchandise hostess at the Grand Floridian and extended her program to the Main St. Confectionery! It’s a small world… pun slightly intended.

Cool!

We got burgers from Five Guys, which is always good when you haven’t eaten anything since 8:30 in the morning.

Love me some Five Guys! That would definitely hit the spot.

I chose a bag of Cracker Jack and a bag of sour mini-Starbursts, because those were the two of those things that I found most appealing to me as a person who was half asleep at a rest stop in South Jersey at 1:00 in the morning.

So what did the you that ate those snacks the next day think of those choices???

There was a little bit of traffic in Maryland around 2:30 that woke me back up, then suddenly, the truck rocked— someone had hit our truck! Thankfully, they only hit the trailer hitch, so both of us were on our way almost as quickly as we had pulled over, but that could have been a disaster

Oh no! I'm glad it wasn't worse! I've had that happen to me a few times before... which is why my hitch never comes off the truck.

We ended up finding a different Denny’s. We had pancakes that were completely forgettable, and a child threw a crayon at me.

Honestly, that just sounds like typical Denny's.

We highly recommend Fairfield Inn & Suites. We recommend Microtel a little less

Love it! Sorry the Microtel had some issues with the payment, but glad it got straightened out.

 

[tinkerbell1991]

Following along x

 

[Newsies]

Oh wow! That had to be scary and annoying when your car got hit! Glad everyone and everything was okay!

It was definitely not fun, especially since I was half-asleep and therefore unable to comprehend the passage of time.

Did the microtel have a distinct smell? Any that I've been in have such a strong smell! I used to stay in one in Ohio for my last job and my clothes would always smell like the hotel/motel? by the time I got home after staying there for a week!

It's so funny you say that, because I looked at the reviews for this particular Microtel before we left and so many people were talking about a smell in their hotel rooms! If I smelled anything, it was close enough to "normal hotel smell" that I didn't notice it, but others could definitely smell it from what I've seen on TripAdvisor.

Also love the Forky pics! It always reminds me of elementary school when you would have to document your Flat Stanley (thats what my school called it! lol) I did a similar thing on our honeymoon when somehow one of the photobooth strips of Calista got packed with us haha

We never got to do Flat Stanley! My school was so boring! I see him all over FB now, though, with people asking if they can ship their Flat Stanleys to people to get photos taken across the country.

So what did the you that ate those snacks the next day think of those choices???

I had the Cracker Jack in the car almost immediately, since everyone else was starting to eat their snacks. I had no complaints. The starbursts were mostly fine, I ate a few in the car before we go to Georgia and a few while we were in the Microtel. I left the half-empty (half-full?) bag in the Microtel garbage can.

Honestly, that just sounds like typical Denny's.

Pretty much!

Love it! Sorry the Microtel had some issues with the payment, but glad it got straightened out.

Same energy as that Holiday Inn Express on I-Drive!

Following along x

Yay!!! Welcome aboard, so happy to have you here!!!