Over Thanksgiving, the fam and I went to Disney’s Hilton Head Island resort to relax and recharge. My sister and nieces came along to share the fun. As always, we had a blast and found some shark teeth to bring home!

Last week, we headed down to Disney World for the daughter’s BF’s first trip! We stayed at Coronado Springs resort at Disney and had a comfy room in the Casitas section of the resort. Most of our time was spent in the parks, trying to cram in as much as we could for his first WDW adventure! We hit all four parks plus the Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party in Magic Kingdom. Let’s hit the highlights!

There were several new things on this trip for us… lunch at Rix Sports Bar and Grill and dinner at Three Bridges Bar & Grill, both at Coronado Springs. Three Bridges is located in the center of the lake at the resort and dinner there was lovely being on the water and having a great view of the Gran Destino tower part of the resort. Rix was surprisingly good, can’t believe we had never tried that before! We also met the Mandalorian and Grogu at Hollywood Studios — so much fun! Grogu was super cute and very realistic plus Mando stayed perfectly in character.

Also new to us was the Zootopia: Better Zoogether show at Animal Kingdom. This show replaced the It’s Tough to be a Bug show that closed earlier this year. I loved it! Still great effects and the queue to wait for the show has lots of fun things to look at including this cute “Pawdora” jewelry display featuring some of the friends from Zootopia! Here’s a tip, watch Zootopia 2 before this show so you don’t have any spoilers.

In Epcot, there was a Scentsy display of a handful of larger than life snowglobes that featured fun holiday scenes with accompanying scents that you could experience by getting close to the displays. My fave was Christmas Cottage, scented like oranges, raspberries, cloves, and spice. So nice! These were new this year as well. We also got to see the Living with the Land ride transformed into its holiday version, Glimmering Greenhouses. This attraction gets super busy at night when the lights are really showing off all of the displays inside.

While in Animal Kingdom, we were lucky enough to see the Merry Menagerie of puppets in Discovery Island. I’ve seen these before but they get better every year! And the interaction with guests is fun to experience and watch!

We took a very early ride on Kilimanjaro Safaris and were rewarded with some of the best animal sighting we’ve had in awhile. I don’t think there were any animals that we didn’t get to see! Everyone was out and even frolicking in some cases! The giraffes were super close to the safari trucks too and that’s always such a treat! And the baby elephant, eek!

At the Very Merry Christmas Party, we collected all of the free cookies and drinks that were available for party guests plus the fun collectible ornament. We brought most of them home to enjoy later but this chocolate and mint covered marshmallow didn’t make it to the end of the party for me! Delish! The parade was better than I remember and the fireworks — incredible! I have always been a huge fan of the Not So Scary Halloween Party but the Christmas party gave it a run for its money this year!

All-in-all, we had a great time. And despite being exhausted from all the walking (over thirty miles in the four days!), lots of wonderful memories were made. Happy Holidays!

xoxo,

Amber