The bliss of a cabin in the (Fort) Wilderness…

August 9, 2024 / Amber Benson / Leave a comment

The daughter and I packed up and headed south to Florida shortly after the 4th of July. This wasn’t our first trip to the “Most Hot and Humid Place on Earth in the summer” and it won’t be our last! This stay was split between time at the brand new Disney Vacation Club (DVC) Cabins at Disney’s Fort Wilderness Resort and a beautiful one-bedroom villa at Disney’s Riviera resort. We flew down to Florida on Breeze Airways, our first time on that airline, nonstop from Richmond to Tampa. And yes, I am familiar with the geography of Florida and realize that Tampa is a solid hour to an hour and a half from Disney. I wanted to try this airline out and had some time to spare so Breeze and Tampa it was! I did discover that while Breeze was fine, flying into Tampa wasn’t really for me, especially after a pile of delays getting to Tampa (and an arrival that was well after midnight) then a rainy drive in the dark for an hour+ in a rental car. Ah, things sound so much better in my head sometimes…

We finally arrived at Fort Wilderness in the wee hours of the morning (like 2:30-3am I think) and checked into our incredible cabin. There have been wilderness cabins at Fort Wilderness for years and I have stayed in one of the original ones, but these new DVC cabins are replacing the original ones. During our trip, only one loop of the new cabins was open and we were so very lucky to get one of those. Let me tell you, these things are stunning. They fit so well into the vibe of the Fort and the outdoors from the look of the cabins, the incredible amount of windows, and all the furnishings and fixtures inside. The new cabins still have a queen bed and set of bunks in the bedroom but the old pull-out sofa has been replaced by a new queen-size Murphy bed that is a sofa by day and pull-down bed by night. So much more comfortable than the original pull-outs with the bars (anyone who has slept on a sofa bed knows exactly what I’m talking about!) The bathroom was relocated to the opposite end of the cabin and expanded for so much more room when getting ready in the morning. I LOVED the floor to ceiling windows in the living room/kitchen area and the high windows in the bedroom that could let the light in each day. I don’t think I would change a thing about these (except to add a washer/dryer) and can’t wait for all of the original cabins to be replaced!

One of our favorite things about staying at the Fort is renting a golf cart and just riding around. It’s fun to look at the campsites that others have decorated for their stays, to be able to head to Trail’s End and grab Mickey waffles in the morning, and to have our own private transport from the main bus stop back to our cabin each evening. At about $70/night after tax, these are well-worth the convenience and fun they provide!

Our park day was a bit limited on this trip, in part because of the heat/humidity and in part because the daughter was knee-deep in two summer college courses. We spent a good bit of the time in the cabin working (a travel agent’s work is never done!) and relaxing. It was simply divine! We did go to Magic Kingdom, Epcot, and Hollywood Studios though during the trip and enjoyed our time in each, as always. Epcot provided delicious dinner at Via Napoli and Magic Kingdom offered up tasty delights at Crystal Palace. We ordered pizza in one evening from Giordano’s (our fave!) while at the cabin too and that was scrumptious as always.

We were able to ride Tiana’s Bayou Adventure in Magic Kingdom and loved it! I was never a big fan of Splash Mountain but love the refreshed storyline and new audio-animatronics in this version. We didn’t even get that wet (bonus!)

Once we moved over to the Riviera resort (no more golf cart, boo!), it was a nice upgrade to be in a one-bedroom villa. I decided to split my stay because the one thing missing from the cabin was a washer and dryer and we really needed clean clothes with the heat. I am a laundry nut while on vacation and I really miss it when I don’t have that available. Once we moved over to Riviera, we really went into relax mode. We still hit the parks, as mentioned, but also enjoyed our time together and at Primo Piatto, the super quick service location at Riviera. That little spot puts out some amazing food on the go.

After a couple of days at Riviera, it was time to make the drive back to Tampa to fly home. Knowing that I-4W gets very congested, we decided to leave super early and make a pit stop at the Lakeland Antique Mall in Lakeland (imagine that). This was about 35-minutes or so from Disney (depending on traffic). I tell you, we almost needed pulled out of there. Everything under the sun can be found in that place, especially if you’re a gigantic Disney fan. So much memorabilia (for sale and just for show) plus your usual antiques are packed into every corner. If you’ve ever been to Roundup Rodeo BBQ in Hollywood Studios, you’ll remember the “paper” plates you’re given to eat on. These look like your typical paper plate but they’re actually ceramic. I LOVE those plates and they actually had a stack of them available to purchase. Of course, I came home with two, LOL.

After the antique mall, we hopped back in the car to Tampa. And of course, congestion had set in by then and we were in for a very long ride back to the airport. So much for just another 45 minutes or so! When we finally got back to Tampa, it was again pouring rain but luckily cleared in time for our flight to leave with only an hour or so delay.

Always a glutton for punishment, I’m headed back to Orlando later this month and again in September, so heat and humidity… here I come (again!)

xoxo,

Amber

Rocky Mountains and ghost stories

June 25, 2024June 25, 2024 / Amber Benson / Leave a comment

In early May, the hubs and I packed up and headed west to Colorado. His most favorite band ever, Clutch, was playing a special two-night event at The Stanley hotel in Estes Park and we knew this was a once-in-a-lifetime must-do. Besides being a Clutch fan since the beginning, the hubs is also a huge horror and Stephen King fan. Since Stephen King was inspired to write his novel, The Shining, after a stay at The Stanley in the 1970s, this had always been on his bucket list of places to visit. More on The Shining and Stephen King later.

We arrived in Denver super late and grabbed an airport hotel for the night. The next morning, we headed out toward Lyons to make a stop at the original Oskar Blues restaurant location. Oskar Blues is a craft brewery that started in Colorado and has a restaurant in Lyons serving up some amazing food. We actually ate there on the way back through to Denver on the day we flew home as well. Delish food and friendly service. It didn’t hurt that right next door was Lyons Classic Pinball so that made for an easy add-on to our plans for our departure day. The hubs loves Clutch, horror, Stephen King, craft beer, and pinball so we were really ticking off all the boxes on this trip!

After Lyons, we drove ‘the scenic route’ to Estes Park via Route 7. This stretch is gorgeous with several places to pull off and admire the scenery. Snow-capped peaks, wildlife, rivers, lakes… nature’s beauty all around! We returned to Denver same way to be able to enjoy the sights again before flying home.

Once we arrived in Estes Park, it was quickly clear we were in some kind of magical place. I saw elk lounging in the grass before we ever got near the hotel. A cute little downtown area, shops, even a Sinclair gas station were all spotted in minutes. As we pulled up to The Stanley though, we knew we had truly arrived. The hotel was just as stunning as it is in pictures. With the Rockies behind and around, red roof buildings standing out among the evergreens… stunning. We could not wait to hop out of the rental car and get settled in. The funny thing is, Estes Park is at about 7,500 feet above sea level, so the altitude will quickly stop you from hopping around too much, lol. Denver, being referred to as the ‘Mile High City’ comes in at 5,280 feet (of course) and Longs Peak, the highest peak in Rocky Mountain National Park, comes in at 14,259. Coming from Virginia where our closest mountain peak isn’t even 1,500 feet above sea level, the altitude change rapidly becomes apparent.

Check in was smooth and we made our way over to a separate building next door to the main hotel called The Lodge at The Stanley. The top floor of this smaller building was our home for the next two nights. We chose the Lodge instead of the main building because the main building is the ‘haunted’ one, or so we thought. Turns out, the Lodge has its own haunted room and weird happenings so we weren’t free from the spooky after all! The room was lovely though and had windows that actually opened (a rarity these days) so I was able to enjoy the cool breeze in the evenings while the hubs rocked out at the Concert Hall. Surprisingly, we were on the side of the Lodge building that faces the Concert Hall, so I was able to hear the entire concert both nights and he was just a short walk (albeit uphill) back to the room.

So back to Stephen King. He stayed at The Stanley back in the 1970s when it was going through a tough financial period. The hotel has a long history going back to the turn of the century as a guest house for F.O. Stanley and his family. F.O. had moved to Estes Park, expecting to die from tuberculosis, but instead being healed by the pristine mountain air. He was very wealthy, having been an inventor with his brother, F.E. Stanley. They developed a photography process known as dry plate which they sold to Kodak and then later Stanley automobiles. Once he moved to Estes Park, he needed a place for his rich friends to stay when they visited (since Estes Park was very remote) so he built the hotel building as a guest house. Over the years, it became a regular hotel but was only open during the summer season due to the snow that happens in the area and not being able to travel out to Estes Park in the winter. As one can imagine, running a huge hotel for a couple of months a year and having to shutter it for the rest of the year isn’t financially practical, so it fell into disrepair about the time Stephen King was there. He actually stayed the night before the hotel was closing for the winter but he begged the staff to let his family stay there since there was no where else to go. His family were the only guests there that night and they stayed in famed room 217. Whatever he saw, felt, experienced that night is what inspired him to writing his next novel called ‘The Shining’. The book later became a movie directed by Stanley Kubrick and starred Jack Nicholson and Shelley Duvall. This version was filmed largely on a movie lot in England but the exterior shots were of a hotel called the Timberline Lodge in Oregon. The original ax from the movie is in a safe at the Stanley.

Stephen King hated Kubrick’s version and decided to film his own version as a miniseries at the real Stanley hotel. This was released in 1997 and starred Steven Weber and Rebecca De Mornay. Through the miniseries, King was able to move the picture closer to his original story. The Stanley hotel offers ‘Shining Tours’ to talk about King, the movie and miniseries, and some basic hotel information which we found very informative. I also went on a night tour of the hotel which was focused on the ‘spirited’ aspects of the property. Luckily (unluckily?) I didn’t have any personal paranormal experiences during the tour or our visit. It did snow a bit that night when the tour started, which was neat to see (before we scrambled back indoors!)

Why do I keep saying this hotel is haunted? Well, there have been many, many sightings and experiences at the hotel by guests and employees over the years that support the theory that the hotel has some guests that remain. While no one has died tragically at the hotel, it is believed that these spirits have returned to the Stanley as somewhere they remember fondly from their past to remain in their afterlife. This story from Uncover Colorado gives you the scoop on some of the ‘visitors’. I will tell you, the creepy feeling definitely takes you over in certain places!

The hotel doesn’t have the hedge maze or animal topiaries from the movie and miniseries but it does have the miniature hotel from the miniseries and a new mini-maze (that the elk keep eating) plus a delicious brunch right at the Lodge building. You

can also tell that wildlife come right up to the hotel from the prints in the dirt leading up to the main building.

In the evening, the hubs had concert bliss and I explored the hotel and enjoyed some downtime. During the day, we ventured to the entrance of the Rocky Mountain National Park, a very short drive from the hotel. We had the best time in the Park and enjoyed looking at wildlife (deer, elk, coyote, birds), seeing the snowy mountain tops, the huge rocks, and lakes. We had dinner at a small Italian place in the downtown area along a river, and meandered around the hotel grounds together. It was such a perfect getaway!

After we got back into Denver, we had a little more time to burn so we drove through the Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge. It was hard to believe such a cool place was right there beside a huge city and an airport! This is an 11-mile drive through a wildlife refuge home to bison, prairie dogs, birds, deer, coyote and more. Don’t pet the fluffy cows! This bison picture is not zoomed!

If you’re ever in the Denver area, you definitely should drive through and see these beautiful creatures for yourself!

After a super late flight home and never enough sleep, we made it back to Virginia the next day. Back to the lower altitude and familiar surroundings. I would love to visit Estes Park and The Stanley again!

xoxo,

Amber

Spring Break on the West Coast

March 22, 2024 / Amber Benson / Leave a comment

Spring is such a lovely time! When we get to spring break week, that means summer is right around the corner, but the fun is already starting! For our spring break this year, the fam and I went to California to visit Disneyland, Universal Studios Hollywood, and take in the touristy sites of the greater Los Angeles area. While we’ve been to Disneyland several times before, this was our first visit to Universal Studios Hollywood, and we were very excited to see Super Nintendo World in person. It didn’t disappoint! Let’s dig in to the deets…

I tell you, as I get older, flying through multiple time zones really kicks my butt! California’s not even that far behind Virginia and I just felt wiped out when we got to Anaheim. I don’t think I ever really adjusted to the time difference on this trip and coming home to the actual time change (spring forward!) surely didn’t help anything. Anyway, we flew into Santa Ana/Orange County airport, so we were very close to Disneyland. After a quick Lyft over to the Disneyland hotel, we got checked in and saw our ah-mazing room for the first time. Two-bedroom family suite in the Frontier tower and I upgraded to add access to the E-Ticket Club upon arrival. This room was killer. You walked in through the double doors, down a hallway into the room’s living room area (convertible sofa and two chairs). Behind the sofa area was a gigantic dining room with a huge table plus a wet bar with a large counter and cabinets. Down another hallway past the wet bar was bedroom number one with a king bed and its own full bathroom then a second bedroom with a king bed and its own full bathroom. There was also a half bath in the hallway between the two bedrooms. This room was quite possibly bigger than my house! We loved every minute of the stay there and did not want to leave! It even had its own doorbell… couldn’t figure out quite why until one evening the doorbell rang (housekeeping) and I realized I never would have heard them knocking from back in the second bedroom otherwise. Livin’ the life!

Adding access to the E-Ticket Club lounge was the best. We’ve enjoyed the lounge on prior trips and knew that the offerings there (breakfast, snacks and drinks during the day, appetizers and drinks in the evening, and the desserts late) plus the ability to see Disneyland fireworks from the lounge and the INCREDIBLE staff (thank you ROBERT!!!) make adding the access on a no-brainer for us. While the add-on isn’t always available if you didn’t book a club level room initially, the cost of $250/night plus tax can be a super deal, especially if you have a bigger family. We were just a party of four with the fam, me, and the daughter’s BF, but we definitely got our money’s worth.

The two parks, Disneyland and California Adventure, were perfect as usual. Our lines were decent, Genie+ worked well, and the weather was fine (albeit a bit chillier than I prefer). The food is always hit or miss for me and the daughter since we’re vegetarians and, for whatever reason, I feel like the food there just isn’t made to suit us. There’s not even a ton of the ‘fake meat’ products out there, which we don’t like anyway, but just so meat heavy overall. It’s a bummer for us, because we definitely like to eat! We did have quite a few rides going down during our stay and that was also a bummer, but we dealt with it and rode what we could. We were also able to go to the first Disneyland After Dark: Disney Channel nite event after hours at the Disneyland park one evening. The After Dark events aren’t new but this was the first time there was a Disney Channel themed one. We had a good time there during the event but didn’t stay super long as all of us were wiped out and I was having issues with one of my feet. I tell you though, Disneyland guests get way more into these after-hours events than the guests at Disney World do. It’s always like night and day between the two coasts and how much the guests really ‘do Disney’. I think it is the difference between the California parks being visited by more locals and the Florida parks being visited by more out-of-towners. You can tell that the CA folks are frequent visitors and really get into the spirit of the parks. Totally different vibe (and I like it!)

Before we left Anaheim to head to North Hollywood, we took a day to do a Los Angeles City Tour. We’ve done these in the past but chose to go with a different company for this tour. The group was small with the four of us and only six others. It lasted a good while, taking up the bulk of a day, but we got a lot in and had a great time. We stopped by the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum which held the 1932 and 1984 Summer Olympics, the Staples Center (now called the Crypto.com arena) where a variety of teams including the LA Lakers play, Griffith Park and the Griffith Observatory where you can see the Hollywood sign from afar, the Beverly Hills sign, the Santa Monica Pier, Venice Beach, the Walk of Fame and Dolby Theater area (the Oscars were being set up to be held that weekend), the Original Farmer’s Market and The Grove, and then drove past various landmarks in LA and the surrounding area. We had lunch at the Farmer’s Market, which is always fun and offers a variety of choices to enjoy. It was handy to refresh ourselves with that area since we were coming back there the following day for another activity.

After leaving the Disneyland hotel, we took a Lyft over to North Hollywood for our next hotel, The Garland. We’ve stayed there in the past and it is a boutique-style older hotel, just over 50 years old now. It’s a cute place, funky retro, but we had some overall unpleasant staff interactions there this time, so we likely won’t return. I am not sure that we would have anyway, since we don’t normally have a need to stay in that area, but I will try another option if we do.

The reason for being over in North Hollywood was so we would be closer to Universal Studios Hollywood for our day there. We also had reservations to play the Squid Game The Trials Experience over near the Farmer’s Market at CBS Television Studios, so being in North Hollywood was closer than coming to that area from Anaheim. This experience is now closed, it ended its run a couple of days after we left, but it was incredible. Definitely a highlight of our trip overall. If you’ve ever watched the Squid Game show on Netflix, it was very much like that, without dying of course. No big piggy bank of money for the winner at the end either. We went in with a group of probably 30ish people and played a variety of games themed like the ones on the show. It was intense at times, and we all had so much fun. I came in third somehow miraculously and the daughter was the overall winner! She kicked everyone’s butt, including mine, who she trounced in the final game by knocking the egg I was holding off of my spoon. We weren’t allowed to take pictures inside, but I have seen some pics and videos circulating online that capture some of the games. And yes, Red Light, Green Light was one of them! As the winner, she got to go into the VIP lounge at the end of the experience (normally a paid add-on) where you can watch the other players go through their games in real-time while on comfy sofas and with snacks/drinks for purchase. They also had a photo booth there for those fun strip photos you can take a touristy spots at no cost, which was great since the ones out in the main experience were $6/each. You were able to shop in a market for souvenirs from the game and also purchase Korean foods and snacks before/after you played. It was a lot of fun and I would definitely do it again should it show up somewhere else I’m visiting.

On our day at Universal Studios Hollywood, we had to get up early and Lyft over to the park for Early Entry at Super Nintendo World. This is an add-on for about $20/person and well worth it. You are given an hour in that land before it opens to everyone else. As small as SNW is and as many people as want into it, that hour really comes in handy. We were able to get in, look around and take some pictures, and ride Bowser’s Challenge with a 30-minute wait (which I think was actually probably shorter than that). I’ve been on a lot of rides in a lot of places and this one definitely ranks up at the very top. It is interactive and whimsical and, despite all the motion, none of us felt sick, which was very surprising. I could have gone on it over and over just to watch more of the ride itself since I focused so much on playing the game the first time. Ten out of ten, highly recommend. The theme overall in this land was incredible, definitely brought back so many childhood memories of hours playing Super Mario Brothers. We ate at Toadstool Cafe which was good, but had a very long wait for ordering and getting your food. This restaurant requires a reservation that can only be made the morning of the visit, but it was definitely worth trying out and seeing inside of. We also had some fun Mario themed drinks back in the regular part of the park at the Power-Up Cafe that were quite delish, and I would buy them again. Overall, I wish the land was bigger (shoot, it could be a whole park!) and had more rides but I think that’s generally how it goes when there’s something you like. You just want more, more, more!

The rest of the park for me was just ok. We did get a complimentary Express Pass to use for the Studio Tour included with the SNW Early Entry, so we used that before it expired at 11am. The Tour was fun, and I enjoyed the King Kong, Jaws, and Nope sections the most. It ran for about an hour and kept my interest up. Afterward, we went to the Harry Potter section of the park and walked around with a Frozen Butterbeer. I’m not the biggest Harry Potter fan but it was well-done like the sections of Universal Orlando and more compact since they only have one HP section versus the two in Orlando. The Simpsons area was fun, and I wish we could have tried the ride there, but the line was pretty long and we were about out of stamina since we were at the end of our trip. I’d say the other highlight besides SNW and the tour was the Waterworld show. That one was unexpectedly very good and well worth the time spent. Stay out of those splash zones though! We skipped CityWalk this time and decided just to go back to The Garland and get in the hot tub for a bit (great choice, in fact).

After all of the fun, it was time to hop on a plane and fly back to reality. Darn reality! Now I am anxiously awaiting our next adventure, but I have about a month to go! Stay tuned!

xoxo,

Amber

Festival of the Arts 2024!

February 27, 2024 / Amber Benson / Leave a comment

My favorite festival at Epcot is the annual Festival of the Arts, held in mid-January to late February. It is my favorite for several reasons including the cooler weather, the more ‘inventive’ food offerings in the festival food stands, the paint-by-number mural, the life-size art backdrops for photos, meeting my favorite artists, and the artwork offered for sale, display, and being created in person on-site. My tippy top favorite reason though is that my daughter started as a single-day chalk artist at the festival last year and was invited back this year to chalk for two days in January! Let’s dive into the trip deets!

We flew in to Orlando late on a Friday night, gotta work around the college schedule! Our lodging for this trip was the incredible Disney’s Polynesian Village resort in a deluxe studio villa. We’ve stayed in these before, on their opening day as villas in fact, and a few times since. I love, love, love the views from the lake view villa rooms. We had the best view of Magic Kingdom and Cinderella Castle from our patio. This was super when it came to watching fireworks from the room. One thing that majorly stinks about lake view studio villas here? The Magic Kingdom Ferryboat! The Transportation and Ticket Center, aka the way you have to come into the Magic Kingdom if you’re staying off-site, is right beside the Polynesian resort. This is great for being able to run over and hop on the Epcot monorail line. This is the pits though if you’re in a lake view studio villa because you hear the darn Ferryboat horn every time the ferry comes and goes over to the park. It’s enough to drive you bonkers until you finally get used to it… you know, on your last night of the trip. LOL. You can also hear the train’s whistle from Magic Kingdom but I actually quite enjoy that sound. But the ferryboat, man… and the ferryboat’s man, giving the spiel over the boat’s PA system about going over to the park and all that. At least you don’t have to ride to the park on that behemoth yourself though!! From the Polynesian, you can take the resort monorail line or hop on the resort boat from the marina (much, much smaller than the ferryboat). Boat noise aside, the Polynesian is my fave and I always love my time there.

So January, right? It’s Florida though, so it’s always hot and sweaty, right? No! No! No! I tell clients all the time that you’re not guaranteed the hot sticky weather unless you’re traveling in mid to late April through about early October. Before and after that, you can have the heat but you can also have the cooler temperatures. On our trip, it was FREEZING! I have been to Disney umpteen times, all throughout the year and have never had it that cold. The air temps maxed in the 50s but it was windy and felt much colder than that. Once the sun went down, BRRRR! We had heavy coats and jeans on and were still cold. Many guests had hats, gloves, heavy coats, etc. on every day and I think I only saw somebody in the pool once, on our very last day when it started to warm up a bit. I’m usually quite hot and don’t think I had one drop of sweat the whole time. It was a short little burst of cold and then warmed back up some the day we left. Wouldn’t you know?! We even came back to the room shortly after dark one night because it was just too chilly to be comfortable.

While we were there, we hit all of the parks except Animal Kingdom. That one seems to get less love from us than it should but we were on a tight schedule so that had to be pushed aside. We had three full days plus an After Hours event at Magic Kingdom from 10pm-1am. While the tickets for the event were close to $175/each, it was worth every penny to have the park be super empty with attractions open (basically no waiting on anything), free snacks (popcorn, various ice cream novelties) and drinks (bottled sodas and water), a second set of fireworks, and — wait for it — Tron with a standby line! Tron is normally only available with the purchase of an Individual Lightning Lane timeslot at 7am for about $25/person or by booking a free Virtual Queue slot at 7am (books in seconds and you still end up having to wait a while in line). There is no regular/standby line to use for this attraction due to popularity. But during the After Hours event, there is no Individual Lightning Lane/Genie+ service available and the Virtual Queues don’t operate either! So the standby line is put into service and you can ride as much as you want! The wait for Tron for us said 20 minutes but we walked right on and through the queue, up to the main room where you board the lightcycles. We probably waited 5-10 minutes in there. While we only rode once (thanks motion sickness) we could’ve ridden at least once or twice more with , that same super short wait. We also rode pretty much everything else we wanted to ride: Pirates, Magic Carpets of Aladdin, Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, Haunted Mansion, Peter Pan’s Flight (with maybe a 5 minute wait?), Buzz Lightyear (twice), Tron, Tomorrowland Speedway (the only people on the track!), and the Tomorrowland Transit Authority. We shopped, had snacks/drinks, and went at a nice pace. We rolled out of the park at just about 12:30am… with a flight at 10am and needing to leave for the airport at 7-7:30am, we had to get some rest!

Hollywood Studios was a blast, as always. We usually go in and head straight for Tower of Terror. I would ride that over and over if I could do it with a minimal wait. Those varying drop sequences are the best! We hit Rise of the Resistance and Millennium Falcon: Smuggler’s Run, went on Star Tours (hoping for a new clip in the ride but we always get the same few), had some lunch, enjoyed a bit of shopping, and then hopped on the Friendship Boat over to Epcot for the rest of the day.

Epcot is probably tied with Magic Kingdom for us as our favorite park. I love how it evolves throughout the year with each festival and its offerings. This was the first time we had been in Epcot since the area behind Spaceship Earth had reopened (in December) and it was a real delight to see what it had become. I love the new space being so full of trees and greenery, areas for sitting and relaxing, charging stations available, spots for character meets, the new Dreamer’s Point statue of Walt Disney, and the cool lighting that comes alive after dark to add a special touch to the area. I know there has been grumblings about how it took so long to morph the old area into this new space and that some people were expecting more but I think it is absolutely perfect. This area will continue to become just what Epcot needed, a place to relax and reflect and enjoy a bit of nature.

We tried out the new Moana water-themed walk through attraction and I really enjoyed that as well. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect and definitely prefer to walk through when it isn’t very crowded but playing with the water features in this area was a lot of fun and made for many great photo ops. I can imagine small children really getting immersed in the experience and having a blast, making lots of fun memories. Definitely try it out, no matter how old you are!

Festival of the Arts was our reason for coming to Disney and we could have stayed for several more days just to soak more of the festival in. The kid chalked for two 3-hour morning shifts and the hubs and I explored the festival while she was making magic on the bridge to World Showcase. I tell you, I could keep going back to the paint-by-number mural over and over (ok, so I might have done it three or four times one day) because it is just super fun. I love watching the little squares fill in and the mural come to life.

I wish the food stands had more vegetarian food offerings (and less of the fake meat posing as something vegetarians want to eat) other that just desserts but they are some pretty darn beautiful little desserts! The visual appeal of the food during this festival is on point. Of course, watching the artists create new pieces during the festival and also sign their art for fans is a huge draw as well. Fan-girling over our fave artists and seeing all of the different styles of art is the best. We can’t wait for next January to head back and create some more art-filled memories! Here’s my favorite artist’s work!

xoxo,

Amber

Recapping the fall, y’all!

January 31, 2024 / Amber Benson / Leave a comment

Wowza! I was coming to write about my latest trip to Disney and realized my last entry was from July! That means I have neglected to fill you in on all of the excitement of the last six months!! I will hit the highlights from the fall and move on to my recent (January 2024) trip in the next post. Hold on to your hats! It was a busy six months…

In August, the hubs and I went to The Omni Homestead resort for a few days for an annual conference related to his job. This resort is full of Southern hospitality and not too terribly far from our home. If not for the winding roads and mountain climbs, it would be a lot closer. I had a great time relaxing by the pool while he toiled away and wouldn’t mind sneaking over for a quick getaway there again when the weather warms back up.

In September, the hubs, kid, and I went to Disney World for the kid’s birthday celebration. (I really do need to stop calling her a kid since she’ll be 20 this year…) We enjoyed a lovely stay at Disney’s Riviera resort, some park time, and the hubs went over to Universal for a Halloween Horror Nights evening out. Going to Halloween Horror Nights remains a “hard no” for me and the kid.

October and November were slow months for us, no big adventures. In December, we headed to Hilton Head, SC for our annual holiday getaway. We normally go there over Thanksgiving but switched it up to go right before Christmas. That was a nice change and helped get us all in the holiday spirit. Disney’s resort at Hilton Head is undergoing a huge renovation project and we were very fortunate to have been able to stay in a renovated room. The updates in the rooms are incredible and I can’t wait to stay there again!

Our last jaunt in 2023 was for New Years Eve. We headed up to the National Harbor in Oxon Hill, Maryland (not to be confused with the Inner Harbor in Baltimore) and spent a couple of nights enjoying that area, driving into DC to visit some of the Smithsonian museums, and watching the fireworks over the Potomac River as we welcomed 2024. There is also a traveling exhibit about the Titanic at the National Harbor which was a delight to check out before we headed home. Check out the third class menu (actual one!) from the doomed sailing.