Two years ago, for our 13th Halloween wedding anniversary, we went to Disney World on a super spontaneous, ultra last minute trip and rode the Haunted Mansion 13 times in one day. Last year, for our 14th, we dressed up like Tyler Joseph, the lead singer of twenty one pilots, and bombed around the Magic Kingdom during Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween party.
This year we listed our condo for sale. And it rained. A lot.
Okay, wait, back to the condo part. “But hey, wait,” you may be saying to yourself. “Didn’t you just renovate your condo? And wasn’t it kind of hell?” And the answer would be yes to all of those queries – we did just finish it, and it was its own very special kind of hell, but it was time to move on. Onwards and upwards and outwards! In fact, here’s the tour video our agency shot; hope you like the place. 🙂
Anyhow, in light of that bit of major adulting (lord, how I HATE that term) we’re having a pretty low key anniversary – regrettably no Disneying this year. 😦 Instead we went to the lumber yard for some last minute “I’m selling my house” items and ate sausages and veggie dogs, standing up in the end-of-October drizzle, in the parking lot. It actually wasn’t terrible – this guy certainly looks pleased with himself!
But because I can’t ever let the opportunity pass to look backwards in fondness at my life, I created this little video for our YouTube channel, Park or Perish!, about the year we rode the Mansion 13 times in one day. Two years on, it remains pretty well the coolest thing we’ve ever done, and I wish with all my blackened heart and soul we were there today. This fun little video will have to suffice for now. Happy Halloween, friends, and happy 15th to us.
When I’m wearing one of my many other social media hats (actually, there’s not that many chapeaus in my closet; I Facebook and Insta and that’s pretty well it) I’m a Disney vlogger. I wouldn’t say this is a tremendously serious effort on my part. If it were, I’d be running around Disney World with a monster vlogging rig, filming the newest and the best and the shiniest. But I actually like to enjoy my vacations, and the thought of being chained to my camera when I should just be carpe diem-ing is nothing I wish to do. I also have a really terrible habit of singing along – badly, loudly, and probably off-key – to whatever music is playing. This actually becomes a very big problem when you can hear me singing the Fall Out Boy version of What is This? from The Nightmare Before Christmas – complete with a lot of bluesy, Patrick Stump-esque vocal runs – right over top of the fireworks soundtrack (seriously, I had to bin just about the entirety of my footage from last year’s Jingle Bam show because I could NOT shut up. Somebody tell the broad down front to can it! And maybe not drink five cocktails immediately preceding the show. As a for instance.) 😉
But one thing I do enjoy filming when I’m on vacation is footage of whatever incredibly themed Disney resort we’re staying at on that particular trip (small, incredibly lame confession in these bizarre, social media-driven times: despite having favourite resorts, we stay at a different one every time because a) there’s a lot of gorgeous resorts, and we like explorin’ ’em, but mostly because b) we like to vlog it. There, I said it! I feel so dirty now. I’ll just go and stand over here in shame by this Instagram wall.)
Ahem. As I was saying, I like filming footage of our resorts – the landscaping, the architecture, the pools, the food, the rooms. I recently put together a video that incorporates multiple stays at two of our favourite Disney resorts, the Port Orleans French Quarter and, just on down the river bend, the Port Orleans Riverside, and I thought it turned out really well – a solid vlogging effort!
And so I’m sharing it with you! Hopefully you’ll find some useful information here to help you if you’re in the midst of planning your next Disney vacation. And even if you’re not, it’s just fun to scheme and dream, isn’t it? Happy Disney-ing, friends!
I’ve been a very busy bee this morning – no day of rest for this little worker, who is already feeling anxious about tomorrow’s BIG START to our renovations. I may have mentioned a time or 20 that I’m not the best at dealing with stress; I can turn myself into anxiety-ridden knots over things that should really be NBD (although I suppose completely gutting and renovating your bathroom – your only bathroom – and replacing all of your flooring qualifies as an actual big deal.) So I’ve been up for many hours removing framed photos and other artwork from the walls, stashing boxes of our belongings on the balconies, and making two raspberry cream cheese pies for a celebratory, kick-off to the renos dinner we’re having this evening with my mother, who has been acting as our in-the-know general contractor (we have a contractor, actually, but my mom has a lot of experience in the area of construction and home renovations, and we couldn’t have arranged ANY of this without her invaluable assistance and oversight.) So it’s been a bit of a busy day, and it only just turned noon!
I accidentally tore off three of my four “good hand” nails the other day pulling up the last of our flooring, so I’ve been looking for other blogging and vlogging ways to occupy my online creative energies. Enter a couple of short videos I made for our YouTube channel, Park or Perish!, all about some of the delicious food we’ve enjoyed at Disney World over our last number of trips – just try not to fall ravenously hungry looking at all this yumminess. Happy watching, and bon appetit!
“Sandra,” you are most likely not thinking, “it has been an eternity since you’ve yammered in our faces about Disney. Why so taciturn?” Or something to that effect. 😉 Well, that’s because I’ve moved the majority of my Disney blindness over to both Instagram (find me at park_or_perish, or click on the IG link in my sidebar) and YouTube.
I’m particularly proud of our little YouTube channel, Park or Perish!, because I am notoriously tech-unfriendly. I have accidentally destroyed more expensive electronics than my parents definitely would have preferred (on our wedding day, my dad pulled Mr. Finger Candy aside and, in his usual droll manner, said, “Well, she’s “yours” now. But you do know she destroys electronics, right?”) and in university an emergency infusion of McDonalds was the only thing that held off a complete breakdown during the Online Editing Session From Hell, 1999 edition. Holy crap I’m old. Anyhow, I’m bad with tech. Basically, if it deals with “stuff,” I will find a way of accidentally trashing that stuff and, I dunno, stapling it to myself or something. I’m really kind of an incredible klutz for someone who took dance lessons for 20 years.
But I digress. As always. What I was trying to say is for someone so inept at the “business” side of blogging, and just generally anything having to do with tech, I’m super proud of myself for learning a little video editing program so I could launch our YouTube channel. I’ve pulled off some not totally unfortunate edits, and I love to edit sound – it’s nitpicky work, but so satisfying when your timing finally snugs into place seamlessly. YouTube also represents its very own particular little publishing quagmire; it took me more than a couple of test runs to work out the bugs. None of this stuff comes naturally to me, so I’m really quite pleased that I’ve been able to jump in with both feet regardless.
So that’s where the Disney has scampered off to – it went off to seek adventure in the great wide somewhere known as Instagram and YouTube! I made this video this weekend, and I thought I’d share it with you. It’s all about the Disney nevers you know we’ll probably never actually respect; Disney has a particular knack for dulling one’s sense and reason, or at least our sense and reason. I hope you’ll check it out, and thanks so much for being a great virtual neighbour!
We just returned home from an awesome long weekend trip to Disney World, during which we stayed on property at the Coronado Springs Resort – quite fitting, given that it was hotter in Orlando, Florida last weekend than I think it ever was in the actual Mayan Riviera! Floridian friends, I know you have acclimated to a lifetime of heat, sun and humidity in the same way that I have acclimated to a lifetime of cold, snow and freezing rain, but I DO NOT know how you do it. Mr. Finger Candy and I just wilted like a couple of pansies – and by that I really do mean the flowers; a near constant intake of water is all that kept us upright!
Coronado Springs’ reputation has – unfairly, I’d say – been somewhat tarnished on account of the great deal of construction being undertaken on the property at the moment. There’s a large, multi-unit tower being built on the west side of the property, as well as a vast amount of landscaping work. Given that razed flower beds and 15 stories’ worth of exposed rebar are the very first sights that greet you upon arriving at the resort, I can understand some of the dissatisfaction with the state of the place.
But with the construction mostly confined to the front-most edge of the property, and only during reasonable daylight hours (during which we were never there), I didn’t find the ongoing renovations to the resort to be that obtrusive. Besides, you don’t stay in the lobby of a hotel, a fun little accommodations fallacy Disney has disproved time and time again – it’s the rare hotelier that has rooms just as nicely appointed as its lobby. Though if you were looking to bunk down in a public lobby, you could do worse than Coronado Springs’. Please note the not-so hidden Mickey projected on the back wall of the reception area. 🙂
The property itself was gorgeous, laid out very much like another favourite moderate resort, the Port Orleans Riverside, and also like the Riverside, it was very, very quiet. On our walk to the main Dig Site pool one evening, we had a mile-long stretch of meandering, lantern-lit path all to ourselves, with not another soul in sight.
Of course, that’s because everybody else was at the Dig Site, an incredible resort pool (one of the best ones across the entirety of the Walt Disney World Resort) that we visited one evening. The big Mayan pyramid is the Dig Site’s main showpiece, but there’s also a sweet little waterslide off to one side, a spa, a playground, lots of lounge chairs, Siesta’s, one of three on-property pool bars, and, present company excluded, many, many hard bodies. I guess if you’ve got it, flaunt it, right?
Not one of those hard bodies. 😉 Or sorry, did you say HOT bodies? Because he definitely was one of those! Did you know the tops of your kneecaps can sweat? Well, now you do! However, in Florida’s defence, Mr. Finger Candy is sitting by the pool in a long-sleeved sun shirt, cotton work shirt, full pants and leather high top sneakers, and I spent three days bombing around in all black, so really, who are the dummies now?!
Of our actual room, I completely spaced and took virtually no photos – a true shame, as we were given one of the newly refurbished rooms, and it was lovely – spic and span, up to date and very, very comfy, a wonderful place to call home for three nights. Show of hands if you also like sprawling out in front of Resort TV at the end of a long park day!
I did, however, take the time to film a quick room tour for our YouTube channel when we first arrived, and you can find that video below.
For all the talk of the disruption the construction has caused, I found it to be just that – all talk. I suppose if your Disney experience is hanging out at your resort all day long, you would find Coronado Springs justifiably lacking – not sure how happy I’d be having my relaxing pool day scored by a symphony of jittering jackhammers and reversing backhoes. But if you’re park-bound for most, if not all, of the day, then Coronado Springs – particularly with its slightly discounted, “Pardon our pixie dust” prices – is just the resort you’re looking for. And not for nothing, but all of the usuals are present and accounted for here – a great restaurant in the Maya Grill, a fulsome food court, a cute gift shop in Panchito’s, and a great breakfast joint in Rix, the sports bar-turned-restaurant where we enjoyed an amazing end-of-vacation feast of Huevos Divorciados (that’s Spanish for heaps of Mexican breakfast yumminess on a bed of cheese quesadillas.)
Coronado Springs is also home to a rather splishy convention center. We whiled away an hour or so there as we waited for the Magic Express to not-so-magically return us to the Orlando International Airport and 10 solid hours of travel. Holy cats, what a gorgeous facility! The carpet was utterly mesmerizing, as was the fact that that salon I’m dancing in? Is Salon L. Which suggests there are Salons A through K, which are presumably just as large and grand as L. And there are more salons beyond L! The place goes on FOREVER. I couldn’t stop contemplating the incredible (and incredibly large) wedding you could throw in one of those ballrooms. And then I danced around a bit more. 😉
The only nit I have to pick about our stay at Coronado Springs – indeed, it was THE nit to pick with regards to virtually all of our Disney interactions – was that during check-in we were really held at the mercy of some seriously misbehaving tech. It’s no fun feeling like you’re missing out on the fun because you’ve been stuck in a line-up merely trying to reach the fun for 40 straight minutes. Regrettably, this bad tech juju followed us straight to the parks, where our annual passes were failing to register (did I mention we became annual passholders?!), as were our PhotoPass privileges. To paraphrase my new friend Peter Pan, I’m not that good at math, but even I know there’s nothing that screams vacation fun quite like account management and administration. 😉
All in all, though, we loved staying at Coronado Springs, and I think we’d go back regardless of whether the construction had ceased or not – given how we vacation, it barely impacted our stay at all, and our experience was a great one overall. Happiness is an awesome stay at a Disney resort. Looking forward to our next one.
Oh, we WILL, and in just a little under a week’s time, too! Guesting at the Be Our Guest Restaurant at the Magic Kingdom, that is, one of our favourite spots to dine on Disney property. We love it so much (actually, Mr. Finger Candy is, somehow, the real Beauty and the Beast nut in this household) I made this little video all about our experiences there for our YouTube channel, Park or Perish! So as Lumiere might say, I invite you to relax and pull up a chair as the diningroom and I proudly present…your dinner! And also your breakfast, as many times as we possibly can. Happy watching, and bon appetit!
Finger Candy 