Celebrating Our First Anniversary: Part 3

Ok, next on our list of Orlando photo ops: Disney's Hollywood Studios! This is Chris's favorite park, and with good reason. Between the Rock'n Rollercoaster, the Tower of Terror, the Indiana Jones Stunt Spectacular, the Fantasmic night show, the Star Wars ride ... what was I saying again?

 

Oh yeah! There's a LOT of awesome stuff at Hollywood Studios.

 

Even after a year, he's still my Prince Charming! (Yeah ... the photographer totally made us pose like that).

Here's a photo I snapped of the screen where they show the ride pictures for the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror. Shh! Don't tell.

 So the picture below is one of the many many cryptic pictures Chris sent to his brother throughout our trip to see if Mike could identify where where we were. Can anyone figure out which ride we near?

 

And the final Disney park, of course, was Epcot. Chris and I had a lot of fun touring the countries and seeing young Michael Jackson in Captain EO. That was something ... lol

 

 

 

We had dinner in Japan, which turned out to be awesome. The food was sooo delicious, and we even picked up some fun Japanese candy to take home for dessert.

 

 

The Volcano Roll is in the middle of this sushi feast.

We may have also had some dessert besides the Japanese candy ... and to put this cookie sandwich in perspective, that plate is probably 6" across. That was a feast in itself.

 

 

In addition to the Disney parks, we also visited both Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure. The latest and greatest addition to the Universal parks was of course, the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. They made a whole little town to go with the ride. Very fun!

 

 

The frozen butter beer was delicious!

 

Here's Chris in front of Hogwarts, where the ride is housed.

You can actually mail letters from the post office with a Harry Potter stamp.

 One of our other favorite sections of the parks is the Jurassic Park area. Love it!

And here's just a few other fun pictures of the parks.

All in all, we had an amazing first anniversary vacation. Even with rainy weather, getting to spend all that time together couldn't have been more perfect. And I'm looking forward to the next 50 or 60 anniversaries as well!

Celebrating our First Anniversary: Part 2

Taking a break from the theme parks, Chris and I managed to squeeze in a few days of exploring some other aspects of Disney and the Orlando area. We saw a dinner show a Medieval Times one night, which was great.

 

We also made a trip over to the Grand Floridian to see the Wedding Pavilion where we got married. And we couldn't resist recreating a wedding photo or two. :-)

 

Anyone remember this photo? I think you can find the original on this blog's page titled "Our Wedding".

This one is a little more difficult to pick out where we are since we didn't have a photographer around to frame the shot. lol But scroll down to the next picture and I'll think you'll figure out where we are.

At Picture Point!

And here's the Wedding Pavilion, just as pretty as ever.

Although there is way more construction going on nearby now. Glad this wasn't happening during our wedding.

We actually visited the Pavilion right before a wedding was taking place, so we got to see the Cinderella carriage and the miniature white horses!

Another night, we headed over to the Polynesian, where we got this shot of the Wedding Pavilion and the construction.

But that wasn't our main reason for going to the Polynesian ...

After soaking up some sun and taking a ride down their water slide, Chris and I feasted on a delicious meal at one of the Polynesian's restaurants. Check out my pineapple drink!

I had the most delicious crab cakes with lime and jalopeno cream sauce. And of course, my favorite thing ever: pineapple sweet bread. I even took a little loaf home to eat for breakfast the next morning. haha

And speaking of deluxe resorts, we finally made it over to the Wilderness Lodge to look around. So pretty!

And on our way back, we switched from boat to monorail at the Contemporary Resort. That's where we snapped this picture, which may call up some memories for Chris's family. He told me he remembers a picture of him and his brother each sitting in an ear when they were little.

We also made our way over to the Boardwalk for a stroll on the beach and a kiss before heading into the Cape May seafood buffet.

This was the only picture we snagged from the seafood buffet. I guess we were too busy stuffing ourselves with crab legs to stop for a picture.

We continued the seafood dining at the Coral Reef restaurant in Epcot. I've wanted to go here for years, so it was awesome to finally get to check it out. One whole wall of the restaurant is an aquarium, so you can watch the fish, sharks, rays, and sea turtles swim around while you eat. And we even snagged a table right against the aquarium, which was so great.

Another stop we made was Downtown Disney. We browsed a few shops, ate lunch at the Rainforest Cafe, drooled over treats in the Candy Cauldron shop, and stood in awe of the massive LEGO statues.

Yum!

Totally made out of LEGOs. Crazy!

 Another resort we visited was Port Orleans. We've thought about staying at this resort before and wanted to take a look at it in case we stay there in the future. It was so elegant and gorgeous! This picture is from the Riverside section, but there's also a French Quarter that's really pretty as well. Can't believe this is a moderate resort!

So that concludes our other excursions in Disney World. Still to come: the other Disney Parks and Universal Studios parks.

Oh, and just in case you were wondering what the kitties were up to while we were away, we had a pet sitter come and check on them every few days. And we also put up a second security camera, where we captured these pictures of one of our more curious cats, Shadow.

He may be terrified of people, but he had no fears about the camera. In fact, everytime we moved it remotely to look around the room, he'd come running over and sniff it and stare at it for a while. What a nut.

Celebrating our First Anniversary at Disney World: Part 1

After spending two awesome weeks down in Disney World, it's hard to figure out where to begin this little photo recap of our trip. I guess it really all started with our rental car. Easiest car to spot in the parking lot EVER.

 

We stayed at the Pop Century resort, which was a value resort. Nothing too exciting about it, besides some nostalgic decorations.

The next two pictures are the view from just outside our hotel room.

We really didn't spend a ton of time at our resort. The cafeteria proved to be wholly disappointing. (Not at all like the delivious made-to-order quick service restaurant at Coronado Springs that we enjoyed last year). The pools were fine, but in the end, we spent most of our time at the parks and the other resorts.

Since we hit each Disney Park twice, I'll just group the pictures by park. So just to clarify, no, we did not change our clothes multiple times at each park. These pictures are from a several days. First up is Animal Kigdom, a personal favorite of mine.

Stitch even came out to greet us when we arrived.

One of our favorite attractions at Animal Kingdom is the safari. As usual, I took way too many pictures of the animals, so I'll just post a couple highlights here.

If you look closely in this one, you can see a big elephant and 2 baby elephants!

We also enjoyed the walking trail, where we got to see some more animals up close, like these guys:

Can you see the two hippos dualing? Their were in an epic battle to see whose teeth were scarier, I think. lol

And of course, since we had our wedding reception in Animal Kingdrom last year, Chris and I had to make a couple stops at places that meant a lot to us.

Here we are at the Tamu Tamu courtyard.

Rememeber this place, wedding guests?

And let's not forget the Tree of Life, where we had pictures taken as well.

Nest stop, Magic Kingdom! It rained a little during our trips to Magic Kingdom (and everywhere else), but it wasn't enough to dampen our spirits. And we've got the sickeningly sweet photos to prove it. haha

We also got a peak at the new Fantasyland area of Magic Kingdom. Should look really neat once they're done, but for now, it's mostly just a lot of construction.

 

And it wouldn't be a trip to WDW if we didn't indulge in a few sweets from time to time ...

 

In case you can't tell, that's a carmel apple with marshmellow ears, dipped in milk chocolate and Reese's Pieces. Yum!

 

Anyone whose ever been to Magic Kingdom at night knows how lovely it is. So these night pictures don't really do it justice. But we had a blast running around during Extra Magic Hours riding all our favorite rides over and over again.

Chris took this picture from the top of Splash Mountain as we were about to go over the big drop.

During the fireworks show.

Ok, so I think this post is pretty full of pictures and I need a break from posting. But coming up, pictures from Hollywood Studios, Epcot, the Universal Studios parks, some resorts, and a few other fun pictures. :-)