Spring break at Walt Disney World means nice weather and visiting the parks with tens of thousands of your newest friends.  While it is super crowded at the World, you can still have a great time if you plan ahead and go with the flow if the flow blows your plans.

So new things we tried:

• Art of Animation Resort in a Cars themed family suite
  • LOVE it!  Can’t say enough good things about Art of Animation.  Even though this is a value resort, it screams ‘Disney’ and is great for kids and adults.  Each of the themed sections (Little Mermaid, Lion King, Finding Nemo, and Cars) are so well done that it is mind boggling.  The Cars section definitely brought me back to Carsland in California Adventure and many great memories were made here!
• Polynesian Resort in the brand new Disney Vacation Club rooms
  • The Polynesian is one of the original Disney World resorts in the Magic Kingdom area on the monorail line.  We are proud Disney Vacation Club (DVC) members and were able to book part of our stay in the brand new studio rooms at the Polynesian on their opening date of April 1st!  There was no April fooling going on here as the rooms and buildings are remarkable, feeling retro yet modern.  I’d love to stay in the new over water bungalows that were added but with only 20 of them and the nightly ‘cost’, that’s not going to happen anytime soon.  The only downsides?  Nowhere near enough storage in the room and we were right near the Transportation and Ticket Center so the Magic Kingdom ferry horn blasted its way into our nerves.
• DisneyQuest
  • So this isn’t a new thing for us but we haven’t visited DisneyQuest at Downtown Disney in over 10 years.  This is an indoor, interactive theme park with lots of virtual reality fun, arcade games, animation, and creative activities.  We slid in about an hour before closing and ran through the building like maniacs trying to do all that we could before we were kicked out.  We got a ride in on Buzz Lightyear’s Astro Blasters (man, it is hard to drive and shoot!), Jungle Cruise (I totally fell into the raft on a big wave!), Pirates of the Caribbean (we kicked some butt on that one!), and lots of arcade games.  Definitely worth the trip.
• Mama Melrose’s in Hollywood Studios
  • I know that it can be a challenge to find good sit-down food in Hollywood Studios.  I have always heard good feedback on Mama Melrose’s but had never had the chance to try it for myself (we stick to Sci-Fi Dine-In usually.)  On this trip, I wanted some Mama so we had a lunch reservation and licked the plates clean!  Superb food, great service, and the Fantasmic package (with reserved seating for that night’s show) to boot.  Funny thing is, we were ready to leave the park before the show that night so we found some strangers to give our Fantasmic passes too.  Pay it forward!
• Meeting Baymax and Hiro from Big Hero 6
  • OK, I don’t get super psyched about characters much anymore but I love Baymax!  We were second in line to see him in Hollywood Studios for his afternoon time slot and that 45 minute+ wait was well worth it!  Baymax did the cute fist bump with the kid and it was a great photo op.  Liked him as much as Wreck It Ralph and Vanellope last year.
• Wilderness Explorers at Animal Kingdom
  • I’ll admit it, Animal Kingdom has never been my favorite park.  We typically spend a half day in the park and move on.  However this time, we thoroughly enjoyed the Wilderness Explorers program and completed the entire thing — in one day!  Super fun, this activity takes you all over the park and gets you to really take a deeper look at the park and all it has to offer.  We learned so much and had a great time doing it!  I wouldn’t hesitate to do it again or recommend it to others.  Honestly any of the interactive games that are available in the parks (Sorcerer’s of the Magic Kingdom, Pirates Adventure in Magic Kingdom, Agent P in Epcot, and Wilderness Explorers) are great for that purpose, they take you to places in the parks that you probably wouldn’t normally go to and show you so much more than what you see on the surface.
• Illuminations Dessert Party in Epcot
  • First time for this party but we’ve done the Wishes dessert party in Magic Kingdom.  Liked this one so much better!  Wine and rum, desserts galore, spectacular viewing of Illuminations; we will definitely be doing this one again.  The only bad thing was that it was standing room only, no chairs.  We did sit on the ground for awhile before the show started though.

I could go on and on because we did so many different things this time around but I’ll nutshell some others:

• Seven Dwarfs Mine Train Ride in Magic Kingdom (new ride, super fun but way too short)
• Great Movie Ride in Hollywood Studios (used to hate this, now I think I’ll admit it wasn’t bad at all)
• Flower and Garden Festival in Epcot (this gets better every year and the food stands are divine)
• Frozen Sing Along show in Hollywood Studios (great fun for the Frozen fan)
• Festival of Fantasy Parade in Magic Kingdom (WONDERFUL, best parade I’ve seen on-site in a long time!)
• Great Piggy Bank Adventure in Epcot (this is going away soon and we’re definitely going to miss it!)
• Starbucks (Magic Kingdom, Hollywood Studios, and Downtown Disney so far.  Typical ‘bucks but super convenient)
• Landscape of Flavors food court at Art of Animation (this is hands down the best food court on-site)
• Flights of Wonder show at Animal Kingdom (never done it before, definitely will see it again, excellent show!)

So lastly, the icing on the cake.  On our last day, we had complimentary admission to Typhoon Lagoon due to the pool at the Polynesian being out of service because of resort construction.  In all the times we’ve been to Disney, we’ve never taken the time to do a waterpark.  That changes now.  Typhoon Lagoon ROCKED!  We spent hours there and practically had to drag ourselves out of the wave pool.  It was super crowded too but OMG so much fun!  The only thing I’d do differently there is apply more sunblock because sunburn hurts!  Seriously people, if you go when the weather is warm, you need the waterpark fun and more option on your tickets so you can go here and splash the day away.

Polynesian Village lobby tiki

Illuminations fireworks/laser show finale

Epcot Flower & Garden Festival

Cars pool at Art of Animation with Cozy Cone cabanas, the blurriest picture ever but you get the point

Festival of Fantasy parade dragon

Who turns down a trip to Disney World?  Not this chick.  As you are probably aware, I am a Travel Professional, specializing in vacations to Disney Destinations.  When asked if I wanted to participate in an on-site agent seminar last week, I couldn’t jump at the chance fast enough!  I spent three days at the World absorbing all that I could about resort renovations, inspecting different room categories, meeting new friends, and enjoying some once in a lifetime experiences.  Before I get a million emails about how you too can become a Travel Professional, let me just add that running a small business is a lot of work and while perks like these are super, the effort to get to this point is pretty significant.  I live and breathe Disney 24×7.

Back to the fun though!  I was definitely busy with the resort inspections and classroom portions of the seminar but I did squeeze in some time to visit Magic Kingdom and Epcot.  It is great to pop into the parks and immediately have that ‘home away from home’ feeling.  Disney goes above and beyond to make the overall guest experience top-notch.  Magic Kingdom was fairly crowded for a late January evening so I hopped on Haunted Mansion for a quick ride in a Doom Buggy and then headed over to Pecos Bill Cafe for a veggie burger.  People watching in the spacious dining area of Pecos Bill’s proved to be quite interesting.  I highly recommend grabbing a bench and a snack sometime while you’re in a Disney park and just watching the crowds flow by.  The happiness of the children and their parents as they are making memories of their time together always brings a smile to my face and reminds me why I truly love my job.

The next afternoon led me to Epcot where I enjoyed a most delicious mango smoothie in Canada while people watching (do you see a theme here?)  After every last yummy drop was gone, I strolled over to Mission Space where I took the easy way out on the “Green” side.  For those that aren’t familiar with this ride, you are in a simulator that takes you on a mission to Mars and you have two ride options, Green or Orange.  Green is the gentle version with no ‘g’ forces and orange gives you the full feeling of taking off for outer space.  Since I just had a mango smoothie, I was thinking that rapid spinning wasn’t going to be the best idea I could have so I opted for the gentle mission.  It was really nice and I rode with a family with two little boys who were enjoying their first time on the ride.  I love that!  Seeing their excited faces, even though we didn’t speak the same language, was just great.

After my ride, I meandered around to the Werther’s caramel store in Germany (“Karamell-Küche”) where I promptly ordered up a caramel apple and began the journey into pure delight.  The caramel is made fresh in the store and those apples are to die for.  I finished up my snacking with a little shopping in Japan and went back to my seminar group for a private dinner and Illuminations Dessert party to cap the evening.

Now that I’m back home, completely exhausted and sick (likely due to airport germs), I am so glad to have been able to have had these experiences and learn more to be able to enhance the vacation experience for my clients.

Cinderella Castle

Sunset behind the monorail in Epcot

At Coronado Springs resort

Coronado Springs resort 2015

As a Disney fanatic, the word of the year has definitely been ‘Frozen.’  Anna, Elsa, Sven, Olaf, Kristoff, ‘Let it go’… if you aren’t familiar with Frozen, I’d love to see the rock you’ve been living under. As a Christmas gift to ourselves, my family and I decided to get a little ‘frozen’ for real. Back in September, we visited the Gaylord National Harbor resort near Washington DC for the kiddo’s birthday. I promised her when we left that we’d be back soon and a Christmas getaway seemed like the perfect opportunity.

The Gaylord offers an event called ‘Ice!’ each year in November through New Years. Ice! is basically a giant tented area on the grounds of the resort that is filled with ice carvings themed like Frosty the Snowman that will blow your mind. There’s even an ice carver actually carving toward the end of this walk-through event. These carvers come from Harbin, China, where ice carving and these sculptures are world famous. Signage at the exhibit noted that something like 11,000+ hours were spent working on this years Ice! event. Ah-mazing. You can even enjoy one of the ice slides where you can slide like a kid over and over.

So it is an ice sculpture thing, a given that it is cold. How cold? Uh, nine freakin’ degrees. Yes, 9. I thought we prepared for the cold with our winter coats, gloves, scarves, hats, etc. but nope. Before you can go into the tent, you are given a big blue parka to put on OVER your coat. I looked like a gigantic blue marshmallow. Don’t lose your family in the crowd because everybody looks the same. I was not pleased to be wearing my already huge coat with this big ‘ole parka on top but as soon as I was in the tent for a couple of minutes, I would’ve liked a third layer. It was COLD. How cold, you ask again? So cold that my smartphone stopped responding when I tried to take pictures using it. Now I don’t know if it had decided that it wanted back in my pocket and the screen was too cold to register my touch or if my fingers stopped feeling human. Probably a little of both. The good thing is that the tent isn’t huge so when you leave you aren’t frostbitten but pretty close. You definitely aren’t going in there to hang out for a long time.

We went into Ice! twice during our stay and that second time was much better than the first. We knew what to expect that time around so we weren’t so shocked by the cold. I knew my phone was going to be unhappy so I tried to keep it as warm as possible. We saw things we didn’t see the first time around and got to watch the ice carver working more which was super cool.

What else did we do? Well, I booked the ‘Christmas on the Potomac’ package which gave us unlimited admission to Ice!, a free photo of our family during the event, our night’s accommodations at the Gaylord, and a $100 resort credit. We had a Madagascar themed character dinner in the hotel at Pienza which was yummy to use up that credit. Alex the lion, Skipper and Private the penguins, and Mort the lemur were on hand to take photos with the kids. Mort was so cute! The food was buffet style and even had Peeps! National Harbor has a Peeps and Company store with all kinds of the marshmallow goodness and they are one of my favorite little treats.

We got a superb upgrade at check-in to an atrium view room which gave us a balcony room on the 9th floor overlooking the atrium (duh, atrium view!) We got to watch the nightly tree lighting and fountain shows which were so much fun from the balcony. The resort was PACKED with day guests coming in for Ice! so seeing those shows from ground-level would have been a challenge. Atrium view rocked but I don’t know that I’d pay the extra $200/night to get it.

There was also reindeer scavenger hunt throughout the atrium and lobby for a Dreamworks treat (candy cane) and a chance to win a future visit. That was a lot of fun for the kid but quite a bit of work with the number of people everywhere.

Another great trip to the Gaylord, complete with spinning doors to make Hailey happy and time away to please us all. We’ll be back again — I’m thinking spring!

A giant snowglobe that had a screen you could see yourself on

Selfie of the fam in our parkas

Frosty and Santa in the sleigh

Dragon ice sculpture the carvers were working on

Christmas Tree at National Harbor

Last year, my family and I started a new tradition of spending Thanksgiving on the beach.  What a great way for some time together and relaxation!  The beach party included my mom, stepdad, and two nieces.  While it was a short trip, we all had so much fun and came back with sand in our shoes and memories in our hearts.

Ocean Isle Beach, a small barrier island in North Carolina, was the setting for our weekend away.  The island is about an hour or so north of Myrtle Beach, very near the NC/SC border.  Development started there in the late 1950s but the island has maintained a low-key family atmosphere, which brings us back over and over.  I first visited Ocean Isle (OIB for short) when I was just a wee one and have visited many times over the years.  Most visitors rent a beach house for the week (in the summer) but shorter rental periods are available at certain properties in the off-season. Our favorite spot to stay is on one of the man-made canal streets where you have your own dock that you can relax on, crab from, or swim — if you’re feeling brave.  Swimming in the canal is not my cup of tea because we’ve pulled many a sea creature from the canals over the years and ‘swimming with the fishes’ isn’t my thing.

We enjoyed a Thanksgiving buffet at Causeway Gourmet, right over the bridge to the island.  I don’t know how we never stopped in this delightful little cafe before but we will most definitely be back next summer.  We actually ate lunch again there yesterday too.  Buffet food that actually tasted like the good, home-cooked food you want on Thanksgiving, was aplenty.  The staff was super friendly and attentive.  You can definitely tell that they put a lot of effort into the quality of their food.  Delicious!

With the island being a relatively short hop down to Myrtle, you’re not too far away from the hustle and bustle when you want it.  We typically pop down to have dinner and shop a bit before returning to the tranquility of OIB.  I couldn’t even begin to estimate the hours we’ve spent trolling the beaches for that perfect shell and we’ve never come away disappointed.  Starfish, sand dollars, whelks, limpets, lettered olives, small sharks, crabs, jellyfish, and even a puffer fish have been scooped up while beach combing.  As good beach stewards, if it was alive, it was returned to the ocean again after a quick photo was snapped.  We easily spent five hours or more on the beach this time around, even in the 50 degree weather.  I will say that it is a wonder that I didn’t have hypothermia after getting the bright idea to go barefoot and walk in the ocean yesterday.  It wasn’t a short stroll either and was followed by walking through sand spurs for a good twenty minutes.  Needless to say, I’m due for a nice pedicure after that adventure!

We’ll be back at the beach in the summer and none of us can wait.  This little town grabbed my heart many years back and I don’t think it is letting go anytime soon.

Ocean Isle Beach at sunset

Shells at OIB

Ocean Isle

Sea gulls on the beach

I love weekend getaways!  What a super way to spend some time away with your family and recharge your batteries.  Traveling to new places is so much fun and when mixing new places with ones you’ve visited in the past, you are able to enjoy the new with the familiar.

This weekend included a trip to National Harbor in Maryland, very near Washington, DC.  I had never visited this area before and will most definitely visit again now that I’ve seen everything it has to offer!  We spent an amazing night at the Gaylord National Harbor Resort (OMG!  This place is huge and super fancy!) and toured around the harbor area.  So much to do!

• For $15 per adult, you can take a ride on the Capital Wheel, five rotations around and worth every penny!  The ride is gentle and can seat up to eight guests in an enclosed pod with air-conditioning.  Children are a little cheaper and despite the height of the wheel and my fear of being so high up, it was fabulous!  We could have gone around for much longer. Being able to see so far in each direction was such a delight, nothing like what I expected.
• Take your shoes off and walk in the sand at the sculpture called ‘The Awakening.’  This sculpture is the coolest and looks like a man emerging from the sand.  Don’t forget the selfies at each piece (the head, hand, foot, etc.)
• Peeps and Company store.  Need I say more?  I didn’t even know there was such a thing.  This store is packed with Peeps merchandise and other goodies from the Just Born family.  Outside is a VW Beetle decorated in true Peep fashion that makes for a great photo-op.
• Many other stores and restaurants are located in the immediate vicinity, everything within walking distance.  Basically this area is like a little town and even offers residential living, office space, entertainment, and a beautiful walkway along the Potomac River.

So the Gaylord.  Swanky!  Revolving doors and everything.  This resort has it all including stores, eateries, bars, interior landscaping, and views for days.  I will be back.

Despite all the greatness at the resort and the area itself, the highlight of this portion of the trip was seeing Cirque Du Soleil’s performance of Amaluna.  This show has been in the National Harbor area for a little while now and actually moves on to setup in Atlanta today.  Breathtaking, jaw-dropping, visually stunning… I can’t rave enough.  I have never seen a Cirque performance before and I am finding myself Googling it to see where and when I can see another.  The strength and talent of these performers is unparalleled.  Although these shows aren’t cheap, they are worth every single penny.  Go.  Now.

After the plush night at the Gaylord, we hopped up this morning and headed into the city for a day at the Smithsonian National Zoo.  In late September, I wasn’t expecting the temperature to top out around 90 degrees but it sure did.  Blech.  The zoo offers lots of shady spots to rest though so we made out ok.

The highlight here?  Watching the Asian river otters be fed!  Those nine little otters sure love their fish!  I’ve seen otters several times in the past but always am amazed by their intelligence.  Love!  We also saw Bao Bao, the one year old Giant Panda born at the zoo last year.  When I say saw, I use that term loosely.  She was up in a tree the entire time.  I had no idea that pandas really spent that much time in trees but now I know.  Carousel ride, tamarinds, sea lions, and clouded leopards, oh my!

That’s it for now, new adventures await!