Love Mc Zoo

EPCOT Food and Wine Festival was great!  Fun photo ops everywhere though not too many of the photographers out today....maybe too hot or just not as many families in this area of EPCOT. We walked out of the hotel about 15 minutes before the park opened and still had to wait a few minutes until the gates opened.  Besides being such a beautiful property, Beach Club is a great location for today's plans. We made a semi-mad dash to the other side of the park so we could ride Frozen before the line was crazy.  We just walked right on then rode it again with a big 5 minute wait.   So many different booths and great food to try.  We had scoped out the offerings on the night we arrived so we'd made our plan of action for our big festival day.  We opted to divide and conquer:  sharing the tastes along the way then going back for seconds as needed.  I should have kept a log of the food but I'm sure YouTubers will do justice to the e...

It's great having friends help you plan a trip like this - you learn all the strategies.   We bought a five park day ticket with park hopper pass and that happened to get us a sixth day for free.  I might not be calling it the correct name but basically it means we can go to any of the parks on six different days and the hopper pass means that we can hop around on each of those days --- not having to spend the whole day at only one park.  A couple of days we didn't take advantage of the hopper pass but a couple we did.   After having experienced Disney now, I'm not sure if I'd spring for the hopper pass again but I was definitely glad we had it for this first trip.  So our big thing on Day 2 was attending Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween Party!  That party ticket is a separate ticket into Magic Kingdom so we were extra crafty and did not use one of our five day tickets on this day.  We couldn't go into the party until 4:00 so we slept in...

First things first! Chip and Dale!!! We spent Day 1 at Hollywood Studios.  We got there as soon as the gates opened and headed to Toy Story with 348,239 other people!  We spent some time just wandering thru the area - taking it all in and trying not to get run over.  We had a FastPass for the Alien Saucers and for Rockin' Rollercoaster.  We'll be back Friday to ride Slinky Dog with a FastPass since the line at opening was already an hour.  (sigh) To infinity and beyond!!! The theming is AMAZING! Rockin' Rollercoaster.  I was assured that I would do just fine on it....so I got a FastPass and we headed over there after doing all things Toy Story that we could do.  No one bothered to tell me that Rockin' Rollercoaster takes you upside down!   Twice!   I kept my eyes closed 99.75% of the ride...as evidenced here. Seriously?  Could my eyes be shut any more tightly? If I'...

WDW! Up until last week, we were one of the few in our circle of friends who had never been to Disney World or Disneyland.  That has finally changed.  If I had a Mickey emoji, I'd put it here! Taking Care of the Homefront Michael came in for a couple of weeks and stayed with the menagerie while we were gone.  We knew they were in good hands so we were able to relax and enjoy figuring out the world of the mouse.  All the furries were instructed that there would be no trips to the ER Vet prior to us leaving, so to not even try getting us to stay home. Flight - Could Have Def Been Better This trip was originally scheduled for February - Mike's big retirement celebration.  When Daisy got sick, we decided to postpone the trip.  I had used 'anytime miles' on American Airlines (for first class don'tcha know!)  so we didn't have change fees and knew we could tweak the flights closer to vacation time.  As the trip neared, we changed our flights b...

A few years ago, we decided to rent an RV for a trip to the Texas panhandle.  If you've read or heard that story, I'm sure you wondered why on earth we'd EVER take another RV anywhere....but we did. We actually rented twice more before starting to look for our very own 'tenement on wheels'. At one point in dipping our toe into the wonderful world of RVing, I ran across a group called The Escapees.  I stalked their forums for awhile - gleaning what I could about RV insurance, the best campgrounds and whether or not to leave your propane on while on the road -- all the most exciting topics!  We were so new to RVing that we had no idea what we didn't know. Around the time we found Gary, we decided it was time to actually pay for an Escapees membership. One of my hesitations with joining was that it seemed that most members were quite a bit older than us - retired - very experienced RVers.  I wasn't sure that we'd fit in...but I knew we needed their kn...