Birthday weekend trip #1

5/17~DAY 1: Whispering Canyon Cafe, Magic Kingdom and DTD
This morning was going to be a special morning for us. We were going to the Whispering Canyon Cafe for the very first time. Now that's exciting enough, but what made it really special is my DH Aunt is a waitress there and we were really looking forward to seeing her. We arrived at the Wilderness Lodge at 9:30am. DH Aunt said to arrive a little later so the big crowds would be gone, and to ask for Tootsie Pop when we get to the hostess counter. She's worked at the WCC for 10 years and that's her "waitress name." We had to wait less than 10 minutes for a table, even without a reservation. We took the time to explore the lobby of WL. It is just amazing. We both were in awe of all the details. It's now on our "must stay there someday" list.
Once we were seated, we both ordered the all you care to eat skillet and it was SO good. During the meal my DH asked if I saw any ketchup anywhere. Since I read about all things Disney, all the time, I was aware of this little "treat" at the WCC. My DH had NO idea what would happen. I told him just to ask his Aunt for the ketchup, and I must say that the look on his face made my day. All in all, I give our visit to the WL and the WCC an A+. The food was excellent, it was wonderful to get to visit with our Aunt and the Wilderness lodge is just awesome.

After breakfast, it was time for some magic, so we drove to MK. We opted for the ferry because the only monorail open was the resort monorail and it had a very long line. Our FP+ for the day were Under the Sea, BTMR and Splash Mountain. I scheduled UtS~1:30-2:30, Splash~3:45-4:45 BTMR~ 4:50-5:50. Scheduling the FP+ this way, allows us to do UtS at 1:30 and explore the rest of the park until about 4:30, when we headed to Splash and we were able to ride BTMR immediately after Splash. Each time we visit MK, we try to fit in as many things as possible, but after so many visits we've learned to do it in as relaxed a way as possible.

After we rode UtS, which really is a cute ride, DH suggested we go into Bonjour! Village in Fantasyland. Since we got our first AP to WDW 6 years ago, I have been searching for a Chip mug. I'm actually shocked that they've never had one, because the Chip character is actually a tea cup. I just thought that he would be one of the first characters from B&TB they made into a mug. But, in all our visits, there has never been a Chip mug. Until.....Today! We walked into the store and on the very first table was Chip. I was so excited. Of course I got "him" and asked the CM if they had the mug anywhere else. Before I could stop her, she said "I'll be right back." When she came back, she informed me she called the Emporium on Main St. and they said that Chip is exclusive to Bonjour! In the parks, but that he may be at DTD.

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Thanks and I'm planning on sharing with him your anniversary present to your wife too. A girl can dream

We had Chip sent to Guest Services and decided to see if the CM's at 7 dwarfs mine train had any new info. As we were walking there, we saw a train full of people riding it. We walked as fast as we could to the front and asked if it was a soft opening. There were about 5 CM's and they were all fielding the same question. They were also all giving the same answer. "These are all cast members riding and this is the only soft opening that we know of right now. The ride will be opening on May 28." We actually checked backed several times, just in case, and we were told the exact same thing each time. With no luck at the 7DMT, we decided to see Mickey's Philharmagic since the wait time was only 5 minutes.

We wandered around a little more, visited the nicotine attraction behind the castle, and went to Haunted Mansion to get it written on my DAS card. At this point, I was having a little trouble walking, so we decided to get a treat at Sleepy hollow. We've never had a plain waffle from there so we split one with powdered sugar and cinnamon only. This turned out to be a mistake. We LOVE SH waffles. They are the best we've had at any CS in all 4 parks. But there was so much cinnamon, and very little powdered sugar, that it was almost impossible to each without choking. Live and learn, next time-No Cinnamon.
At this point it was almost 3pm so we got a spot right on the walkway down from the castle, right beside SH, to watch the parade. We actually got one of the benches at the railing on the walkway and this turned out to be a perfect spot to watch the parade. It was just as amazing as the first few times we saw it, but this time.....we got to see the Maleficent Dragon breathe fire! We hadn't seen this before. The first time we saw it, it roared but it didn't breathe fire. It was SO awesome! After the parade, we went to HM, and got the hitchhiking ghost that changes our heads around. That will never get old to me. At this point we decided to get PoTC written on my DAS and visit the nicotine attraction beside Aloha Isle. It was now time to get to Splash Mountain. As some reading this may know, last month was the first time we ever went on SM. It was because of all the nice people on this forum convincing me that we wouldn't get too soaked, that I decided to try it. Now it's on our must list.
This time, we were in the second row, with two "tweens" in front of us. Translation~not very tall people in front of us=not much coverage from splashes! Well, we definitely got wet this time, but it was still not a soaking wet, so I was fine. After SM, we rode BTMR and PoTC right after that. At this point, we decided just to walk around and wander through shops for awhile.

It was now almost 7:00 and we were both getting hungry. We decided to try something different and go to DTD for the evening. Since our visits to WDW are almost exclusively weekends only, we don't go to DTD because we want all the park time we can get. We've only been to DTD once before. Based on recommendations I've read on this, and other forums, we decided on Earl of Sandwich for dinner. It was very busy, but the line went down relatively quickly. I ordered the Club and DH got the philly cheesesteak. I have to say that we were both extremely disappointed in our sandwiches. I got ONE piece of thin turkey on mine and they didn't even put it on both halves of the sandwich! I ordered it with no tomatoes, so all I had on one whole side of sandwich was a little cheese, a few bacon bits, a huge piece of lettuce and bread. Even the side with the turkey had nowhere near enough turkey. My DH sandwich was no better. One piece of thin lunchmeat on his too! It was almost entirely bread too. It was so bad, we won't ever be trying EoS again.

After our "dinner" we walked through some of the shops and spent a lot of time in WoD. That's an awesome store. We even got to see some of the SiTS fireworks from HS. What we could see were amazing. They changed colors in the sky and they were in the shapes of planets. Really cool fireworks! Needless to say, we were both still really hungry so we decided to do the adult thing and eat lots of ice cream for dinner. We went to Ghiradelli's. I got the brownie sundae and DH got the espresso sundae. We got a table outside and watched the volcano erupt at the Rainforest cafe. It was almost 11pm and time for bed! All in all, except for our dinner at EoS, it was a wonderful day!

To be honest, it's been fun opening my cupboard in the morning and finding Chip! I let the Disney Kid in me pretend for about 1 minute that's it's the "real Chip" and then it's back to grown up reality

Thanks for the birthday wishes

5/18~Day2:Hollywood Studios & First time pin trading
Today we decided that we were just going to do one park, since we had to be pulling out of the parking lot by 5pm at the latest and driving home. We chose HS because we can spend about 6 hours in this park and feel like we've accomplished everything we want to accomplish. This also allowed us to sleep in I made espresso in our hotel room(because a REAL addict takes a coffee pot and espresso on vacation!) and we had Danish to go with it for breakfast.

We got to HS around 10:30.
***I must take the time here to write a few important factors about today's plans:
1. It was the first Star Wars weekend of the season
2. I HATE Sci-fi "stuff" and DH has never seen even a minute of one of the SW movies, so we don't care about any of the SW shows or characters.
3. I don't know anything about Star Wars and I almost got attacked last "May the 4th be with you" by a man in a brown robe holding a big glow stick. He screamed at me because I called it Star Trek instead of Star Wars.
So, except for a few very yummy SW drinks and a couple creepy encounters w/ SW characters, this TR won't have any information about the SW events. I'll get to the drinks and the "creepy creatures" a little later.

Even though we don't care at all about SW, the SW weekends are a good time to do everything else non-Star wars related. The wait times were relatively short for most of the rides, even TSM had a 50-60 min most of the day, which is short for TSM. We scheduled FP+ for ToT, B&tB, & VotLM. Because we scheduled our FP+ on our way to the park that morning, TSM wasn't available. Oh well, the choices weren't too bad considering we scheduled them a few minutes before we walked into the park.

My main order of business today was pin trading. I just decided a few weeks ago that I'd like to try it, so I ordered 25 pins from a reputable seller on Ebay. The pins I really want are The Nightmare before Christmas and Alice in Wonderland. They are the two Disney movies that each have the most characters I love. I'm also searching for any villains too. There's thousands of other pins I'd like but I have to narrow it down somehow.

Our first FP+ wasn't for 2 hours so my DH suggested we walk around looking for CM to pin trade. When we first walked into HS there were a few CM's. I lucked out and got a Cheshire cat from one and a white rabbit pin from another. As we wandered around and found different CM's I was able to trade for another Cheshire cat, one of the Tweedles, and the Caterpillar. I also traded for a Donald pin that I liked too. After looking at every CM I passed, I found 5 Alice in Wonderland pins in one day, which I thought was pretty good. I wish I could have found some Nightmare Before Christmas pins too, but I'm taking pins to MK next weekend so hopefully I'll have some luck there.

Here is what I honestly thought of pin trading. I find the practice of pin trading with CM's a little awkward, and that's why I've always avoided it. I'm somewhat shy around new people and I just wasn't sure about going up to strangers and staring at their pins As it turned out, some CM were very friendly and enthusiastic about pin trading, some were "luke warm" about the experience and one was definitely irritated. I can definitely see how it's addicting and I've already ordered 30 more pins from the same seller on Ebay

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I wondered if that was a good "haul" or not. But since I've never pin traded before, I wasn't sure. I thought it was good. I bought all my pins off of Ebay because if I buy pins I want at WDW, I'll never want to trade them either

5/18~Day 2 continued:
After a morning of pin trading and wandering we were getting hungry. I wanted my "go to" HS snack, the jalapeno cream cheese pretzel. I LOVE these pretzels and they fill me up for a few hours. DH gets the regular cream cheese. On our way to get a pretzel outside of the GMR, we came across a drink cart. They were selling two mixed drinks, The Force and The Dark Side. DH and I don't drink alcohol unless we are at Disney then he likes to get a frozen margarita or a mixed drink. He couldn't decide which drink to get, so I suggested that he get both. Since my DH wanted to take me to WDW TWO weekends for my birthday, I thought he deserved both drinks. The glasses are small, like the punch glasses you may get at a wedding or shower. When we ordered both, the nice CM informed me they were $13.75/each. Inside I was like but on the outside I smiled and asked if they had any discounts. They do take TIW so we saved 20%.

I tried a few sips of each drink and I have to say they were both delicious. As I said I don't drink. I hate the taste of hard liquor but these were awesome! We watched her make them and they both had two shots of liquor in them. My husband drank his drinks while we ate our pretzels. He was done with both of them in about 10 minutes! When I asked him what he thought of the drinks his response was "Goose vopka tarstes good." That made them worth every penny
I would recommend them to anyone who doesn't normally doesn't like the taste of alcohol of any kind. These were VERY good! We got a glow stick in each one(I think they're called light savers??) We didn't get the little "golf ball thing" that they show in the dark side drink picture.

Of course I forgot to take pictures so here is a stock picture of the drinks menu and I took pictures of the glow sticks when I got home. You'll notice in my picture of the glow sticks, my cat is in the picture. I tried very hard to get one without her in it, but it was impossible. She loved them so much

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Man are you right about the madness beginning! I just received 30 more pins that I bought from Ebay and I've already added villains to my list of what I want to collect. It is a lot of fun so far, but with my addictive personality + my OCD, I have a feeling this is going to get out of control....FAST

I have never heard of pinpics before and now I'm almost afraid to look because I know I'll LOVE it!
I think there are a few people on here that might be heading to Fantasyland to buy their very own "Chip" on their next visit.