Good morning, and welcome to the final day of February! Do you know what else today is? It’s the one-year anniversary of the sweeping changes I implemented to my diet and exercise habits, which as of this post has netted me an I’m-so-proud 80 pound weight loss! I’d love to say I lost 100 pounds in one year, or even 85, but January and February have both been stinkers – despite the amazing progress I know I’ve made, I’ve really had to fight to find the motivation to go down to the gym every day. Coupled with some not so stellar dietary habits I picked up down Disney way (sure, it’s fine to eat a massive entree with no real thought as to its caloric content when you’re walking seven-plus miles a day, but not so much when it’s just you working on your blog at home) I haven’t seen any real movement on the scale.
Ah, but all the other nice little perks are there, the things I fought so hard for this year and that I’m only now really getting around to appreciating. The somewhat shapely curve of my biceps (I even have biceps?! Neat!) The extra spring in my step. The expanded clothing choices. A return to fun makeup and hair care. Little to no exertion sweat. Physical endurance, flexibility and a newfound ability to play casual games on my phone whilst nearly breaking out into a run on the treadmill.
And every day – no really, every single day, and I know you believe it, because I never friggin’ shut up about Disney any more – I think back with no small degree of wonder to our back-to-back trips to Disney World. This time last year the thought of going to Disney – hell, the thought of even getting an airplane seatbelt cinched around my bulk – was incomprehensible and deeply terrifying. Like, I may as well have just proposed a quick jaunt to Mars, such was my disbelief that I was ever going to be in good enough physical shape to tackle a trip to my favouritest place in the world.
But I *did* have the confidence to know that if I just kept plodding away at things, I’d get there. And then one Fall day my husband said, “Let’s go to Disney World, this weekend” and with no small degree of wonder, I realized that we could. I wasn’t at my “goal weight” (I actually don’t have one; I think they’re counterproductive) but I felt physically strong, and like I maybe wasn’t going to have a problem with that seatbelt after all (and I didn’t!) And without getting too hippy dippy on you here, the whole trip (and its Christmastime follow-up) did wonders for my dieting spirits (so long as I can shake that mega-entree-and-a-cocktail habit I fell into whilst Disneyside.)
So the diet and exercise thing and my obsession (it’s okay, you can call it an obsession) with Disney kind of go hand-in-hand. Because aside from just wanting to do something smart for my body and soul, IT’S my motivation – I want to continue having fun in the Happiest Place on Earth, as many times a year as I can, and I can only do that if I’m feeling strong and healthy and well.
So yay, me am proud! Of, um, me. Also rockin’ the Disney athletic wear these days – easier to stay motivated when that motivation is stretched across your bod or supporting your arches. Here I am down in my building’s gym in my new favourite Turkey Leg varsity tee. I have no idea what that odd humanoid creature is painted on the wall behind me, but I do know that it’s freaking me the crap out.
And thanks to an awesome heads-up from a cool Disney blogger friend, I nabbed these Haunted Mansion New Balance running shoes. Yeah, I’ll let that sink in for a moment – Haunted Mansion running shoes. I really love me some unconventional, novelty footwear, but these might be the best shoes I’ve ever purchased. I’m ecstatic to be their owner (and at a 75 percent discount, no less, as they’re a 2017 release and I purchased them with just one week left to go in the year.) I’ll have some inspired-by nail art up on these guys soon, but for now, let’s just bask in their incredibleness. Haunted Mansion running shoes, yo!
So there we have it, my One-Year State of the Weight address. I hope to have just as great news, if not better, to share with you again next year. 🙂
Yeah, that’s a Disney thing. What isn’t these days? It’s a ride, actually, in Epcot’s Mexico Pavilion – the Gran Fiesta Tour Starring the Three Cabelleros, a classic dark boat ride featuring state of the art animatronics and a number of dicey cultural stereotypes. Also fiber optic fireworks on the ceiling. Very cool, although not as pretty as the fireworks in our headboards! Maybe I should have called them Headboard Nails. Although in retrospect, that might attract a very different kind of reader than the kind I’m typically used to…
Kaltxi! And welcome to what I’m sure you are hoping is going to be one of the final posts you have to endure on the subject of my Christmas trip to Disney World. Except I still have so much to say! Particularly on the subject of a very special (and very, very busy) place we visited at the Animal Kingdom on the final day of our holiday, Pandora – The World of Avatar (I’m sold already; gotta love a title that contains a hyphenate.)
The World of Avatar opened in June 2017, and just seven months on, it remains THE hottest ticket in the entire Walt Disney World Resort. And I do mean that literally – FastPasses were not to be had for Flight of Passage, the most popular ride in any of the Disney parks, although I did manage to nab early evening FPs for Na’vi River Journey, a stunningly gorgeous dark boat ride, and my pick for the better of the two attractions anyways (hard not to go with the one that didn’t make me want to hurl all over the back of a banshee, but more on that in a second.)
Right, so before I get to the breathtakingly beautiful landscape and design work (Disney calls this “Imagineering”) let’s get to what I know you’re really here for, TIPS AND TRICKS ON HOW TO TACKLE PANDORA – THE WORLD OF AVATAR WITHOUT LOSING THREE-QUARTERS OF YOUR DAY AND/OR YOUR SANITY.
First, stay on property at a Disney resort. This gives you the ability to book FastPasses 60 days out from your vacation. You may be able to get a FP for Flight of Passage this way. I was not able to get any, but I was on the hunt “just” 30 days out. You should be able to get a FP for Na’vi River Journey with little to no trouble 60 or 30 or even 10 days out.
Staying at a Disney resort also gives you access to Extra Magic Hours, extra in-park time extended to guests of Disney resorts either first thing in the morning or last thing at night. Find out which day the Animal Kingdom is offering their Extra Magic Hours (owing to what I’m assuming are the actual animals’ nocturnal schedules, they tend to offer them first thing in the morning) and get there early with a mind to hitting Pandora.
No, really, get there EARLY. Earlier than you think reasonable. If you’re taking Disney transportation, you’ll find yourself sitting at a dark and foggy bus stop at 6 in the morning with 100 other stressed out people (and that’s just your resort!) also all fretting about how quickly they can sprint through the Animal Kingdom and directly onto Flight of Passage.
I actually really wish that my fellow guests would not do this. Moods at Disney are highly contagious, and listening to some teenager joke-mock his walker-enabled grandmother about the hustle she’s going to have to put on the second they step off the bus is dispiriting. Listening in on other people’s neuroses leaves me feeling highly anxious and unnecessarily fretful.
So it turns out my very best tip is actually to calm the eff down. Please. With our ultra early start to the day, we were on and off Flight of Passage in a little under 45 minutes. And our evening FP for Na’vi River Journey freed us up to then explore the rest of Pandora, and indeed the entirety of the Animal Kingdom. So no need to go all wackadoo.
Having said all that, I am so freaking glad we got that jump start to the day, because by the time we exited the ride 45 minutes later, the wait time had climbed to three hours. An hour later the estimated wait time had vaulted to five incomprehensible hours and the lineup stretched all the way to the front gates. When we took this picture, roaring in front of the Tree of Life, we were feeling quite pleased with ourselves for having conquered at dawn what everybody else was now going to spend the entire day slogging to complete. Mean? Maybe! But the early bird rides Flight of Passage with only a 25-minute lineup. 🙂
Less roar-worthy is the fact that Flight of Passage KICKED MY ASS. It’s a motion simulator, and a deeply immersive one at that – the screen wraps from top to bottom and then side to side. The story is that you’re riding on the back of a flying banshee through the alien landscapes of Pandora. Sounds incredible, and I can confirm that the minute or so of ride I actually experienced was next level amazing. But oh sweet Jebus, the plummeting dips and drops and that nauseating thrusting motion of takeoff and the gigantic, sloshing wall of water…oof, I may need to stop talking about this, right now. 😦
So yes, I closed my eyes through roughly 60 percent of an attraction that I waited half an hour to ride and that some people waited up to five hours to ride. But I felt myself begin to break out into a cold sweat, my number one tell, and decided to instantly bow to the warning signs I was too daft to heed on Star Tours. You’re welcome.
I actually have precious little footage from the exterior or interior of either ride; we really hustled through both lineups, and there was no time to stop and smell the alien roses. But Na’vi River Journey was definitely the more palatable of the two rides for me, a return to those classic, ultra detailed dark rides that have always set my Disney-loving heart aflutter. Plus, Na’vi River Journey just looks like the best rave you’ve never been to. Kind of sounds like it, too. Gosh, I wish I had pictures of this one – it is a boat ride through a black lit, neon alien jungle, and that’s just as pretty as you might imagine.
We quite shamefully made incredibly poor use of Pandora’s other amenities. We didn’t go to Pongu Pongu for refreshing Night Blossom slushies and we also didn’t get to Satu’li Canteen for what is some of the only vegetarian food in the Animal Kingdom (for a place devoted to caring for all manner of wildlife, I find their reliance on BBQ to be quite odd.) I blame Flight of Passage – my best laid Pandoran food plans went out the window the moment I emerged from the ride whiter than a ghost and (as always) cursing James Cameron’s name.
This is the part where I should probably mention that I hated Avatar, the movie. Like, LOATHED it. And I will never not be boggled by its inexplicable (clearly just to me!) popularity. I remember when I first heard about the blue kitty person movie that James Cameron was making, I said to Mr. Finger Candy, “Mark my words, this thing is going to make, like, $17.38 total.” And I was wrong. So very, very wrong! Wrong to the tune of about $2 billion, but hey, you can’t have $2 billion without $17.38, right? Anyhow, my seeming ineptitude at making box office projections aside, I really, really hated Avatar and I’ve watched maybe just 35 minutes of the stupid blue kitty people total (side note: Do you know how hard you have to work to get me to hate a cat? Even an 11-foot tall blue cat with a pervo tail? HARD!)
But I was neither too nauseous nor so much of a hater that I couldn’t appreciate the outstanding Imagineering at work in Pandora – The World of Avatar. Holy cats (11-foot blue cats?) this place is incredible! And no matter your area or areas of interest (horticulture, set dressing and design, food, music, computer tech, storytelling and world-building, architecture and engineering or simply the films themselves) there’s a little something for everyone to be dazzled by in Pandora. I was particularly taken with the floating mountains, which I know are no such thing – I watched enough videos of them going up to know they’re engineered marvels of rebar and concrete designed to look like a craggy, levitating precipice. But when you’re standing beneath a giant, floating chunk of earth, out of the top of which is growing a massive alien tree, its gnarled roots draping down over the edges and bursting through the underside of the rock, it’s hard not to be impressed.
I kept thinking how much my grandfather, a lifelong gardener, would have loved the seamless blending of our real world flora with Pandora’s Imagineered alien blooms.
Ah, yet another way to tell you’re getting on in years – when the behind-the-scenes, technical aspects of a theme park are more interesting to you than the actual attractions (see also the Seed Tour at Epcot’s The Land, where you take a mini class in Disney agriculture.)
It’s really just the most stunningly gorgeous world, and so very beautifully executed. I wish we had been able to stay into the evening when Pandora begins glowing under black lights, the “bioluminescent plants” throwing off alien neon light. Even the splatter effect walkways (already super cool in the daylight) glow after dark!
And the waterfalls! Oh my gosh, so many waterfalls! I feel like this entire post has been me excitedly pointing out yet another thing that blew my mind about Pandora, but that’s exactly what exploring the World of Avatar was like in the first place – what gorgeous, infinitely clever marvel will I find around this next corner?
It seems the World of Avatar also brought out the Pepe Le Pew in Mr. Finger Candy, who laid a giant one on me as we stood in front of a lush Pandoran pond, prompting the cast member taking our photo to mock-admonish that “this is a family park!” and for a nearby group of Japanese tourists to spontaneously burst into delighted applause. 🙂 Apparently Pandora is for Lovers.
So would I go back, even knowing what I know about my ability (or lack thereof) to handle Flight of Passage? Yes, if only to cover myself with about two dozen anti-nausea patches to see if that makes a difference. But also to check out some of the food and beverage offerings, and get a glimpse of Pandora after dark. It’s also just a lovely and beautiful spot to chill out and people-watch for a bit; all those waterfalls make for a very relaxing place to wile away a bit of time. Big recommendation on the World of Avatar; Disney, not too surprisingly, done good. 🙂
Quick bit of shameless self-promotion here (although can it be shameless if it’s on your own blog? Suppose that depends on the definition of “shameless” you’re working with!) But we posted a new video to our vlog, a kind of introductory thing, and I’m really super proud of it. I am notoriously TOTAL CRAP when it comes to audio-visual editing. Like, if it even still exists, there is an editing booth at Carleton University where the tears I alone shed in 1999 probably kept the ancient wood of the desk hydrated for use by another two generations of frustrated J-schoolers. May there be mercy on your souls if you know the particular analog hell of trying to physically – with tape and scissors! and blood and tears – edit an audio clip. It’s soul-crushingly bleak.
So seriously, obnoxious self-horn tootage aside, yay for me! Because I think this video turned out pretty well visually (and aurally) and I like that it explains where we’re coming from with this Disney thing we’re harping on about all the time (it’s okay, I’m not offended, I know it’s harping!) So please do click on the above video and check it out; I’d love to hear any comments you might have or any feedback you’d like to give. 🙂
I recently unearthed a container of old, favourite clothes that I had banished to shameful storage after I had gained, and retained, all the weight. I have no idea why I saved some of the items (the thermal shirt with the stars is cute and all, but…) although others are more clear (the cat ear’d hoodie I wore on my first date with Mr. Finger Candy.)
But I clapped with joy when I pulled these old (yet barely ever worn) Nick & Nora flannel jammies out of the box. Mr. Finger Candy gave me these maybe our third or fourth Christmas together? I LOVED these pyjamas! And then I forgot all about them. Which happens when you somehow manage to gain so much weight, you outgrow your gigantic flannel PJs and are forced to relinquish them to the purgatory of the basement storage locker.
Which is where they would have stayed had I not lost 85 pounds in the last year and completely overhauled both my shape and my health. Making it the perfect time to pull that container of old, favourite clothes straight out of purgatory to see what might fit. Which was actually a ton of stuff! Including these wonderful jammies. I washed them up straightaway and then started to plan a warm, cozy bath with some likewise forgotten bath and body products.
I mentioned last month that as part of my low-buy no buy I was also going to try to use up that which I had already bought, but not yet got around to using. So drawing inspiration from my newly found PJs, I dug a whole mess of candy sweet things out of the beauty bin and drew myself one sweetheart of a bath.
There’s a little bit of everything here – a three-wick candle in Bath & Body Works’ Vanilla Bean Noel, a favourite sugar cookie scent tinged with a touch of musk. A tiny wax pie slice, sugar scrub and lotion from The Bathing Garden in Sugared Pie Crust. A bar of soap from Dreaming Tree Soapworks in Bewitched, a creamy vanilla-raspberry scent. A tiny, cupcake-shaped bath melt from Bomb Cosmetics in Cherry Pie. Mmm, a couple of spritzes of Demeter’s Vanilla Ice Cream cologne, a scrumptious, toasty warm waffle cone scent I already use all the dang time. A cotton candy-scented bath bomb gifted to me from a kind friend. And finally, a post-bath cup of tea using this delicious Binx blend sent to me by another kind friend (named after Binx the cat from the movie Hocus Pocus, it contains catnip!) Oh, and a couple of food-shaped wax tarts from The Bathing Garden because the PJs practically demanded it. 🙂
For the Mardi Gras season, I thought it might be fun to take a closer look at one of Disney’s southern-themed resorts, the Port Orleans Riverside at Disney World in Orlando, Florida. My husband and I stayed at the Riverside twice last year, once during Halloween and again over the Christmas holidays, so we have a lot of information to share with you about this wonderful resort, and even more to show. So as they’d say in New Orleans, let’s roulez les bon temps!
The Riverside and its down-the-stream sister resort, the French Quarter, sit on 325 acres of Sassagoula riverfront property and have a combined total of just a little over 3,000 rooms. Moderate resorts both, the Riverside and the French Quarter both fall at about the mid-range of Disney hotel prices, which is to say the rates are reasonable, yet still bear very little relation to our Earth prices. It’s the great fallacy of Disney vacations that you do eventually come to regard their pricing (for everything, from rooms, to ticket prices, to food) as “reasonable.” You can absolutely find less expensive hotels both on Disney property and off, but if you consider your accommodations to be an important part of your vacation and not just the place you lay your head every evening, you suck it up and hope that the nervous breakdown you suffer once you open your post-holiday credit card statement is at least a funny one.
Staying on property at that slightly elevated rate does come with some rather nice benefits, however, such as access to Disney’s Magical Express, an airport-to-resort shuttle service that also collects your luggage from baggage claim and delivers it to your room, so you can get straight on to the serious business of hardcore theme parking. Resort guests also enjoy a wealth of other perks, from Extra Magic Hours (additional first-thing-in-the-morning or last-thing-at-night in-park time) and the ability to book hard-to-get FastPasses and dining reservations two months in advance. The reader-activated resort mugs, good for unlimited refills on soda, coffee and tea for the duration of your stay, are also pretty dope (semi-pro tip: REALLY rinse your mug out well when switching between coffee and lemonade!)
But those are sweet little bonuses (or bitter and bracing, depending on how well you rinsed out that mug) afforded to all guests of a Disney resort, be it value, moderate or deluxe. What sets the Riverside apart for us at least are the little details, at which Disney just naturally excels. The gentle, every-half-hour boat rides to and from Disney Springs, Disney’s shopping and entertainment district. The horse-drawn carriage rides at twilight along the banks of the Sassagoula. The poolside campfire marshmallow roasts. I particularly love the Riverside’s easy southern vibe – in the evenings the comforting sound of the horses’ clopping hooves mingles with the gentle jazz music drifting up from the boats going back and forth along the river, and it’s perfection. It is just a gorgeous, gorgeous resort, and the only place we want to call home when we’re in Florida.
Situated along the banks of the meandering Sassagoula River, the 2,000 or so rooms that make up the Port Orleans Riverside Resort are spread out among two sections, rustic Alligator Bayou along the northwestern edge of the property, home to the resort’s backwoods-style lodgings, and elegant Magnolia Bend down at the southeastern edge, with its stately, antebellum-style architecture. When we visited at Halloween we stayed in the Alligator Bayou. We even had a welcoming party of one very curious little raccoon hiding in the rangy scrub palms edging the walkway.
For our Christmas trip, we splurged a little and booked a Royal Guest Room, beautiful themed rooms featuring all sorts of magical Disney touches. This put us down in the Magnolia Bend part of the resort, and it was…well, it was gorgeous! And refined and elegant and quiet, although that’s just the Riverside as a whole. For such a large and popular resort, it is remarkably peaceful and serene; yet another huge plus in its favour.
I quite liked the laid back, rustic vibe of the Alligator Bayou (conveniently situated right down the path from the early morning fishin’ hole and Ol’ Man Island, the resort’s main pool) but I adored our stay in the Magnolia Bend. It was just such an unbelievably beautiful area, filled with all manner of lovely Disney touches, large and small. I’m also quite the sucker for Colonial-style architecture, and you can’t throw a sugar-dusted beignet down there without hitting a stately column, a wrought iron railing, or both (but really, you shouldn’t be throwing your beignets at all; just take the boat over to the French Quarter and enjoy a lovely plate of them there, or maybe even a beignet-based ice cream sundae.) 🙂
So many grand lawns! The Riverside’s Movies Under the Stars screenings are held on the front lawn of this beautiful building. The Princess and the Frog, the resort’s official/unofficial movie, is a particular favourite.
And there’s also about a dozen fantastic spots in which to get your selfie on, because I have completely turned into that person. Also vlogging, because that’s now kind of a thing, but more on that in a second.
Delightfully enough, reality lived up to our expectations, and our stay in one of the Royal Guest Rooms proved to be an amazing one. It was such a cool (and very, very pretty) room, and filled to the rafters with cute Disney extras. And I do mean that literally – up at the ceiling the decorative border, designed to look like ornately carved wooden molding, featured a tableau of classic Disney characters, from the Fairy Godmothers and Cinderella’s mice, to Sebastian the crab and Chip from Beauty and the Beast. Pretty random lot, come to think of it! Although I suppose the same could be said of all of the little Disney touches, from the Genie’s golden lamp fixtures, to the wall of princess mugshots, to the shower curtain bearing a print of Ariel’s dinglehoppers. What do all those things have in common? Who the heck knows! But it sure was fun trying to sidestep Carpet every morning so I didn’t accidentally trod on his face.
And I’ve already made all of the dirty, totally non-Disney sanctioned sex jokes about this I possibly can, but the headboards on our room’s two queen beds featured fiber optic fireworks. Every morning as I puttered about getting ready, my husband would lay in bed in the dark and stare up at his headboard as it exploded into festive, twinkling light. 🙂
For a closer, more exhaustive (exhausting?) look at our Royal Guest Room, please do check out this quick room tour video I put together. This video also represents my first hesitant efforts at filming, looking like a boner in public vlogging and video editing, so please be kind!
The Riverside is also home to six pools, including the massive (and massively themed) aqua play area known as Ol’ Man Island. On the evening we wandered over to one of the Magnolia Bend pools, I was the only hardy fool brave and/or Canadian enough to venture into the water. Not that I minded having the entire gigantic pool to myself, mind you – gave me an opportunity to chuckle at the wussies scurrying by, bundled in thick hoodies to ward off the “frigid” 75 degree temps. Suck it up, buttercups! And come on in – it’s warm once you just get in!
Outside of the areas of accommodation and recreation, the Riverside also excels at its dining and entertainment options. There are four places to enjoy both at the Riverside, including Boatwright’s, a popular table service restaurant specializing in Cajun delicacies (I had crawfish etouffee and it was wicked yummy) and habanero margaritas so intense, you’ll take one sip and belt yourself across the face (no, just me?) There’s also the Riverside Mill, the resort’s counter service food court, an airy and raftered space housed in the Sassagoula sawmill. Here you’ll find the usuals (burgers, chicken fingers, Mickey waffles) and some slightly more unusual picks (fried green tomato sandwiches, shrimp po’boys, jambalaya.) The refill stations for those resort mugs are also in the Riverside Mill, so it tends to be a pretty busy spot. Then right down the hall from the Mill there’s the River Roost, a cozy lounge that features the same menu as Boatwright’s, including those dangerously delicious margaritas. Three nights a week the River Roost also plays host to Disney comedy fixture Yehaa Bob and his all-singing, all-guffawing piano revue. We’ve yet to take in Yehaa Bob’s show, but it looks like an absolute hoot. When we stumbled by the Roost a couple of nights before Christmas, Bob had the joint rockin’ and the entire lounge in hysterics. Looking forward to catching this one another time when we’re not bagged-out exhausted.
The grounds (325 acres of them, don’t forget; I’m sure the groundskeepers can’t!) are also so, so beautifully maintained. Whether it’s the neatly manicured lawns of Magnolia Bend, with its tidy planters of colourful blooms, or the Alligator Bayou, with its scrubby palms and elegantly swaying willows, the landscaping is outstanding. And Mr. Finger Candy likes to make fun of me for this, but I adore the name “Sassagoula.” It just sounds so funny – I like to really enunciate it, draw it out. So it fits that I love to toodle down the Sassagoula River on one of the resort’s boats, departing from the conveniently located pier just outside the lobby every half an hour for all spots Disney Springs. This has actually become one of my favourite things to do on vacation, especially if it ends with dinner at Homecomin’ on the other end!
And not for nothing, but the inside ain’t bad either. The lobby is a stunning place, its architecture and interior design invoking the look of an elegant steamboat. And while we’re here in the lobby, I’ll note that we’ve always received outstanding service at the Riverside, from the check-in staff and cleaning crew, to the bell services dudes and the restaurant staff. Everybody’s always been super nice and friendly, but that’s kind of just what Disney does. Anything less would seriously be considered an abject failure, and probably a personal affront to the very memory of Walter Elias Disney. Disney employees seem to hold themselves to some pretty high standards, which as a guest, I genuinely appreciate. Pretty decent lot, those cast members.
And when we went down at Christmas, those same cast members outdid themselves with the holiday decorating and the general festive atmosphere. The halls (and the walls, and the rafters, and the flower beds) were decked alright, and with beautiful wreaths and a gigantic tree, in addition to those ever-present boughs of holly. Fa la la la la la la la la!
Really, though, I was unbelievably homesick on Christmas Eve. Christmas Eve has always been my little family’s “thing,” and even though I was having an absolute blast (at Disney’s Hollywood Studios, my favourite park!) I missed my mom and dad. Yes, I’m that 40-year-old who missed her parents on Christmas Eve. To that I’d say there are far worse things than being a sentimental schmuck. But coming back to the resort after a long day at the park to find all these beautiful decorations, including this weirdo doing the Thriller dance in front of some of them, put a smile on my face. I thought the gingerbread displays, submitted by the various departments at the Riverside, were totally awesome, too. The bell jar Nightmare Before Christmas display was a particular standout. Well done, Team Riverside!
So there we have it, friends, 2000 words on a hotel stay. I swear I could spin the opening of an envelope into an epic tale. Anyhow, if you’re still with me, thank you for joining me on this look inside a wonderful Disney resort, and my great experiences therein. I hope you get the chance to stay at the Riverside, too, someday and make some great memories of your own.
That’s a thing, right? Well, if it’s not, I’m making it a thing! And so the merriest of Mardi Gras to you, friends. Thought I’d do up some festive nails in the traditional colours of the season, extra heavy on the dots to mimic all those cute beaded necklaces. From me to you, may all your good times roll. 🙂
So this is kind of new and potentially sort of embarrassing, but guess who has a new YouTube channel? This blogger! And her husband. It’s called Park or Perish!, our rallying Disney cry, and it will document our Disney adventures (among other hopefully fun things) so I can stop bothering you all with it over here! VIC-TOR-EE! Plus you’ll also get to see our first hesitant attempts at filming, vlogging and video editing, so that’ll be fun and enlightening. 🙂
So if you’d like to put a voice and a constantly moving face to this blogger/vlogger (seriously, I never realized how very elastic my face can be while I’m talking, which I also do constantly. Whilst making weird faces and doing all sorts of odd things with my voice. Filming myself has been very eye-opening in some regards!) please do stop by our burgeoning little site, we’d love to share the fun with you. 🙂
Finger Candy 