5-night DCL Bahamas cruise + WDW: A 25th Anniversary Celebration - Days 1 & 2 Travel and Disney Springs

-

Travel and Disney Springs

For our 25th anniversary, we knew we wanted to take a Disney cruise. (I mean, it seems like we pretty much always want to take a Disney cruise.) We've cruised multiple times over the years to celebrate our anniversary and we wanted to check out Disney's new private island area, Lookout Cay. We decided to make it a big trip and tack on a couple of days at Disney World at the end. 

We were originally going to fly in the day before the cruise, which was our actual anniversary (January 9) and have a nice dinner before embarking the next morning, but the weather forecast was looking concerning with a chance of icy weather. So we changed our flights, booked an extra night at our hotel and left a day early. It was a little hectic getting out that day, but we made it and arrived late in the evening in Orlando on Wednesday night. We took a Lyft to the Polynesian and found our room, got ourselves sorted out and went to bed. 

The next morning we were able to sleep in a bit before having some breakfast, organizing our things for later, and relaxing in our room. Around noon, we made our way over to the new Polynesian tower and ate lunch at the new Wailulu Bar & Grill. We all enjoyed our lunch and Roger and I had an especially yummy chocolate, banana, coffee dessert. 

After lunch we hopped a bus to Disney Springs and did a little shopping, hung out at the new DVC Lounge, and ate some snacks. We returned to our room, changed for dinner and hopped the monorail over to the Contemporary. We got Emmaline sorted out with some dinner at the quick serve cafe and then went for our anniversary dinner at Steakhouse 71. We had a nice meal, though not as good, we both agreed, as the last time we dined there. Still great, though. 



When we were done, we met Emmaline on the bridge between Contemporary and Bay Lake Tower to watch the fireworks. We took the monorail back to the Polynesian and got ready for the cruise the following morning. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

"It's cancer."

-
"It's cancer." My heart dropped into my stomach. She reassured me that it's very treatable and was caught super early. She said, "I can't even believe the radiologist found it, it's that small." I was scheduled to follow up with her the next day. On December 30 I went into to see her. My friend Andrea went with me to help me take notes and ask questions maybe I hadn't thought of (regrettably, Andrea has too much experience with other people's cancer and she was a great person to have along). Stage 1a Invasive Ductal Carcinoma is the official diagnosis.  Dr. Thomas again made sure to impress upon me that we caught it very early and it's very treatable. The next step would be genetic testing and an appointment was made for the following day to get that done. I'll have results in about two weeks which will dictate the course of action. If I come back positive for a mutation in either of the BRCA genes, her recommendation would be double ...
Read more

Disneyland and Aulani Trip Report - Day 3 California Adventure

-
Image
On Sunday we slept in then went to California Adventure around lunchtime. I feel like at this point I should mention what's going on with Emmaline since you'll see she's in a wheelchair in some of the photos. About a year ago Emmaline was diagnosed with hEDS (Hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome)  which has been progressively getting worse. She often deals with fatigue and chronic pain and after her first day at Disneyland using her forearm crutches, she was just completely dead. She was in a lot of pain and was exhausted. So we rented a wheelchair for her on Sunday and Monday. She'll be starting PT this week and we have an appointment with a pain management team in Houston next month. Some days she's fine and some days she's not. But anytime she really active, she usually pays for it later.  Back to the trip. We ate lunch and rode some rides before meeting up with my friend Annie again to hang out with her and ride some rides and enjoy 1901, the Club 33 at Califo...
Read more

Disneyland and Aulani Trip Report - Days 1 and 2 Yucca Valley and Disneyland

-
Image
I hadn't planned to write up a trip report for this trip, but then I kept getting asked so here it is. Happy now!? Our trip began in California on Friday May 31. We flew out to Ontario airport, rented a car and from there made a quick stop for dinner and a brief unofficial visit to Scripps College so Emmaline could get a feel for the vibe. At this point we've done several campus visits and they are all pretty similar so we felt like we could get a feel for the campus without a full-fledged tour. She loved Scripps and it's jumped close to the top of her list!  From there we drove to our AirBnB in Yucca Valley, CA to stay overnight. As a kid, I spent a fair amount of time with my paternal grandmother at her house in the desert. She loved the desert and when her ashes came to me when I was cleaning out my dad's stuff after he died, I knew that one day I would need to take them back to Joshua Tree.  The last time I was out in Joshua Tree was in 2006 (just after running the...
Read more