Though we certainly gave it our very best shot with our just-just concluded 11-day vacation at the most expensivest place on earth! I’m sorry, I mean the happiest place on earth, Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida. It also may be the hottest place on earth; save for maybe just 12 approaching-cool hours, every day topped 90 degrees with full, bright sun and sticky humidity. As always, we had a wonderful time, and we’ve arrived home with bookings for our next trip already in place, so clearly we’re those nuts that embrace the insanity that is wildly overpaying for a vacation in the devil’s sweaty armpit. No sense denying that! But this vacation also came with some first-time challenges on the accommodations side of things that made coming home that much sweeter – shelter from the Disney storm. I’ve been glad to return to non-Disney life, as tempting as it is to just blow off adulthood altogether and live forever in the Haunted Mansion.
The objective of this trip, because we are Type A Disney nerds who do things like plan out mini challenges within an already packed vacation schedule, was to bridge the Halloween and Christmas holidays with two special event parties, Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party on Halloween, and then Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party one week later on the final night of our trip. In between we’d enjoy a lot of great meals at favourite restaurants, celebrate our 14th wedding anniversary, attend our first fireworks dessert party, don our first ever couples costumes, lay waste to Epcot’s Food and Wine Festival, meet lots of fun characters, take a pile of goofy (and sometimes Goofy) photos, ride the Mansion half a dozen times, complete Mr. Finger Candy’s first and second decks of Sorcerers of the Magic Kingdom cards, and hopefully enjoy a fun and relaxing stay at another great Disney resort.
And, you know, with the exception of but one of those things (our underwhelming, ultimately truncated stay at Pop Century is a blog post for another day) we tackled everything on that list, and have arrived home victorious! Also utterly exhausted, and in possession of about 3,000 photos and videos that need to be organized into posts to share with our friends and family, and of course anyone else who might like to join in on our Disney vacation fun. Come on over to the dark side, we have Poison Apple Cupcakes!
Over the coming days I’ll be sure to drive you bonkers with the recounted details of our trip in a slightly more organized fashion (brace yourselves for the all-food post, because we truly ate ALL the food!) but for now I’d like to leave you with a video I made for our YouTube channel, Park or Perish!, of our evening at Disney’s Hollywood Studios enjoying the Jingle Bell, Jingle Bam holiday dessert party and fireworks show! Spoiler alert: We get Girl Drink Drunk (that’s a Kids in the Hall joke about the potency of ultra stainy, rum-based cocktails, of which we both now have a great deal of experience!)
Finger Candy 
I love that y’all got to do both the Halloween party and the Christmas party in one go. you really are expert planners. Sorry it sounds like it was a semi-bust though. Florida is definitely not a sub-tropical climate for nothing.
Total Type A Disney planners. Now if only that pesky Florida weather wouldn’t get in the way. 😉
I admit I was stunned when I saw your most recent post from Disney and realized you were still there. Lol, you truly go big or go home, I can do a week somewhere max then I tap out.
You did a lot of the events my boss and her parents did too. Epcot wine and food fest, Not so scary Halloween and a dessert party which she told me her parents always book bc it offers prime fireworks seating, she said she walked 6 less miles/day this trip bc they know every route and short cut in the park.
I’d imagine 11 days would require an amount if planning that exceeds my capacity for detail. But you did It! And survived with stories to tell, I’ll peep the blog soon😁
Hey, go big or never come home, right? That is some serious shortcut time-saving, holy cow! Good on your boss and her folks for finding those little paths that you think aren’t going to go anywhere, but actually take you clear across the park without having to walk all the way around the darn thing. Of course, just as often I find myself down some dead end, and I’ve got to turn around and walk another mile in THAT direction, but exploring around nearly always nets some sort of shortcut!