Teacups and Toasters

This past Saturday we cleaned out some boxes we had stowed away in storage. Amongst the old books, college papers, and stuffed animals, were a few Disney treasures from my childhood. I use the term treasures lightly. One woman’s trash is anothers treasure, right?

Anyways, I thought you Disney fiends would enjoy seeing a few of them.

First up 1980’s Minnie wallet. No cash inside,but there were some fun schools pictures

NextAn autograph book featuring Donald. The inside held autographs from a few characters you don’t see around WDW anymore. At least I haven’t..have you?

The Sheriff of Nottingham

Prince John (The phoney king of England!)

Gadget (Rescue Rangers!)

Honest John (An actors life for me!)

Perla (We can do it!)

I also found

Button from a family dinner at 1900 Park Fare in the Grand Floridian (1990 something?)

Then I found this:

I know this is from a game I had as a child that involved shapes, but I have no idea what the name of the game was, or where the other pieces are. Anyone know?  Here’s a picture of the back of this piece,

Any ideas?

I found a few other things and tomorrow I’ll share my favorite one. It deserves a post all it’s own. Stay tuned!

“How doth the little crocodile improve his shining tail and pour the waters of the Nile on every golden scale?”

-Lewis Carroll

The Mango tea was not as impressive as the Blueberry tea. Sorry, Caterpillar. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t super. The mango flavor was noticeable, but not overwhelming, which does make it similar to the blueberry concept. However, the fragrance wasn’t particularly exciting. I think reviewing these teas has caused me to require my teas carry a lovely fragrance.

At any rate, the Mango Wonderland Tea won’t cause any identity blunders. You’ll know who U R with, or with out taking a sip.

A trip to Walt Disney World can be hard on the bank if you don’t plan it correctly. The souvenirs you and your kids may want during your visit are no exception.  I’ve put together a few tips on how to bring home the goods without going broke.

A. Bring your quarters and pennies. Across the resorts, parks, restaurants, and Downtown Disney there are a mass amount of pressed penny machines and even a few that press quarters. A pressed penny machine is a machine wherein you insert a penny to be pressed, two quarters to pay for your souvenir, select one of three images to be pressed onto your penny, and then watch as your penny is flattened and comes out with your image selection pressed upon it. My daughter loves these machines and for fifty one cents you’ve got a neat little souvenir. Also, you can purchase pressed coin books that hold your pressed pennies and quarter.

If you want to get really serious about collecting pressed pennies, or if you want to know where to find a certain character image, you can stop by guest services at one of the parks and pick up a paper packet that lists the locations of all the machines and which images are in the machines. Pretty nifty.

B. Resort mugs and popcorn buckets make great souvenirs that you can reuse on a regular basis. If you’re staying on property you can purchase a resort mug at your resort’s food court for about $13. You are then able to use the mug for free refills from the fountain stations at your resort’s food court until the end of your stay. I now use mine just about every day at home ( I do wash it!) They fit well in the car cup holders too. OH, and this past trip we saw and purchased a Mickey bendy straw at the check out. My daughter uses it every day and it was 49 cents!

Popcorn buckets, as I mentioned in the last post, are only a buck more than the standard box of popcorn. Disney popcorn tastes so yummy and you can reuse the bucket for snacking at home, snacks on the go (it has a lid), or as a sand bucket!

C. If it’s your first visit stop by Guest Services on your way into any of the parks and pick up a 1st visit button. There are also buttons available for anniversaries, birthdays, celebrating in general, and just married. Oh, and these buttons are free!

D. Pin trading can be one of the most expensive souvenier areas because once you start collecting pins and buy a lanyard to place them on, well you’re simply going to want more. Pin prices range from around $7.00 – $15.00, or nearly $30 plus for a special set. However, pin trading can be fun for the kids. If you go up to a cast member with a pin lanyard, you can trade any of your pins for one of theirs and they have to comply. We haven’t gotten into the trading yet, but my daughter showed some interest on this past trip. This, prompted me to look at some pins on The Disney Store website. Currently, they have a sale wherein some pins are up to half off. Some are as low as $3.99. I am considering purchasing a few of the sale ones and saving them up for our next trip. She will then have a few pins to trade without having an attachment to them.

E. It’s not often that you see a sale at Disney World, but keep your eyes open. This past trip there were some plush dolls half off.

I hope those tips help, at least a little. Aside from budgeting, I’m all for purchasing souvenirs that will really mean something to your family and for a special occasion. We bought our daughter a plush Tinkerbell doll (not the kind that were half off) on our last trip and she loved it so much that she carried it with her everywhere. I do mean everywhere. I think Tinkerbell is in almost all of our vacation pictures.  Point being, let your kids choose wisely about what they really want. Our Tinkerbell was well worth her cost.  If you know of any other tips, I’d love to hear them! Leave me a comment below, or send me a tweet!

I’m having a hard time getting over vacation. While I’ve been fairly productive this week, I can’t seem to get my head out of Walt Disney World. It’s bad. I know. I wake up every day and I want a Pineapple Dole Whip. If you don’t know what that is, you want to. Well, except that you might then have my problem. It’s a soft serve like ice cream, but it’s dairy free. It doesn’t taste dairy free and my dairy loving husband with Wisconsin blood in his veins thought it was better than the soft serve ice cream he had from the same shop. You can get them from Aloha Isle in Adventureland at the Magic Kingdom, but I digress..

I did come back with a few WDW tips to share with you that are not related to Pineapple Dole Whips.

A. Avoid going in the summer. It’s brutally hot.

B. If you must go in the summer, like most, save some money and bring your own bottled water. We did this past time because we drove down and were able to load up the car. If you’re flying have some shipped to your resort ahead of time.

C. In relation to bringing your own water, pack a zip-loc bag and fill it with ice. Stick the bag of ice in the bag you take to the parks and place your water up against it, or if you have a back pack – place the bag of ice on the inside of the backpack so that it will be against your back and then the water on the opposite side of the bag of ice. This way you keep yourself and your water cooled. Of course, make sure that your other items inside of the bag will be protected from the condensation.

D. Get up early and stay up late. I know it sounds contradictory, but try to avoid the parks at midday. The heat seemed to peak between 2 and 3pm. Get up early, go to the park of your choice, and head back to the resort for pool time and nap time around 11am. Then once you wake up from your afternoon snooze, head back out to a park.

E. Extra magic hours can be a great way to spend more time in the parks, however they are quite often the most crowded times to be in those parks. For a  more relaxed way to spend the morning, or evening, try going to a park that had the extra magic hours the day before. It’ll be way less crowded.

F. If you want to take the advice on getting up early to hit the parks, but don’t want to deal with the extra magic hours morning crowd, try booking a breakfast inside of one of the parks for a time before the parks open. It’s no problem to get in for your early reservation, as there is a special entrance line and if you stay on property the buses will be up and running plenty early. It’s also a great way to get pictures of the parks with minimal crowds. Main Street is a whole new experience when you take a stroll at 7:30a.m. (and it’s totally worth getting up early for!)

G. Budgeting for those special breakfasts. The breakfast buffets run about $18.99/adult and around $10.99 for the kids aged 3-9, so for most of us it’s not something we can do everyday, unless we’ve carefully budgeted for it ahead of time. However, it is definitely worth doing at least once. I recommend the one at Crystal Palace in the Magic Kingdom, which includes visits with Pooh Bear and friends. The princess breakfast at Akershus in Epcot is a great way for your princess to meet her favorites, but it’s nearly double the cost. Of course having a large breakast means that lunch can be lite (trust me you won’t want to eat a ton in the high humidity of the afternoon), and then dinner at counter service is pretty reasonable and there are wide variety of choices across the parks. I’d recommend Columbia Harbour House at Magic Kingdom, Flametree BBQ at Animal Kingdom, and ANYWHERE at Epcot!

H.  If you’ve never considered the dining plan, but really enjoy eating – a lot – like me- then consider that. We were at Disney for a week and spent approx. $200 less than we would have with the dining plan, and that was with my husband and I sharing a few counter service meals, eating in the room a couple times from our picnic basket, and only doing table service twice. We did free dining last September and loved it. If you can go at the end of August – December, there are special Free Dining packages available.  The basic dining plan includes one snack, one counter service, and one table service per person per day. Snacks range from popcorn, to muffins, to bottled water, to coffee, to oh so many choices (like pineapple Dole whips!) Counter service and table service include drink, entree, dessert, sides (cs).

I. Have some Kaki Gori (shaved ice) in the Japan section of World Showcase, at Epcot. Seriously, just do it.

J. A bucket of popcorn is only about a dollar more than the standard size. Think of it this way, you get more popcorn and a souvenir for only a buck.

Okay, so mostly that was a list of tips related to beating the heat and enjoying some food. My next Disney post will be in relation to souvenirs. So stay tuned!

A short list of the things that made me smile most at Walt Disney World:

* The Magical Express driver actually said, “God bless.”

* Partycake meeting her friends and the way it made them so real

* The Crystal Palace experience

* Finding out that the Christmas parade, is still called the Christmas parade

* All the cast members calling Partycake, “Princess.”

* Feeling like a really big, little kid -all the time

* Finally, seeing Tinkerbell fly down from the castle

* Friendly people from all over the world giving up their seats on the bus for Partycake

My apologies for not posting in over a week, but a girl needs a vacation every now and again, as does the rest of her family and it was AMAZING! We had an incredible time on our first family trip to Walt Disney World. I know I promised lots of Disneyesque posts, so the plan is for the next week…all Disney…and then I’m going to have to stop because I already miss it so much. It’s my happy place here on Earth and having now been there with my child, it’s even more of a happy place.

My daughter is a few days away from turning two and I wasn’t really expecting her to take to the characters. She absolutely LOVED them. LOVED THEM! LOVED THEM!  Except…Baloo and King Louie freaked her out, which was a little odd because The Jungle Book is one of her favorites and we have to listen to The Bear Necessities 100 times a week. Pretty much everyone else was a hit!  Every morning for two weeks before we left, she would wake up and ask to go see Princess Cinderella’s Castle. Well, not only did she get to see the castle, but we got to meet Cinderella herself! Partycake ( my gal) went running up to her and gave her a big hug. We saw her in an area of Toon Town known as The Hall of Fame (little place at the side of a gift shop) and she was hanging out with Aurora a.k.a. Sleeping Beauty and Belle. The way the line was staged, you had to see Aurora first, Cinderella second, and Belle third. Partycake was really polite and friendly with Aurora, but after a few moments started pointing Cinderella out to her. It was pretty cute.

Aside, from the princessess, Winnie the Pooh made her uberly happy. I mean when we were having some rough two year old moments, if Winnie the Pooh passed by…life was suddenly sweeter. Of course Tigger and Piglet were a hit, as well. We even got to walk down a pathway to the staging area at Animal Kingdom with Piglet all to ourselves. For some reason though, Eeyore was not such a hit. Maybe it’s because he was doing some funky dancing while we were in line?

Being that this was Partycake’s first trip, we really wanted it to be special and spent 98% of our time doing things that we thought she would enjoy. We rode Dumbo three times, went to Ariel’s Grotto (highly recommended for the mermaid fans), had three character meals, took in the Playhouse Disney show and character greets (did I mention we did a lot of character greets?) and rode the train in the Magic Kingdom as much as we could. And you know what? We didn’t feel like we missed out on things we used to do as teens and college students. We skipped taking turns on Tower of Terror and The Rockin’ Roller Coaster. We skipped Space Mountain and Thunder Mountain. When I grabbed a fast pass to Splash Mountain, my husband and Partycake went to The Country Bear Jamboree. Actually, I thought we were doing that one together, but they tricked me! I thought they were headed to The Hall of Presidents so that she could take a nap! I went on Soarin’ at Epcot, while they ate a giant chocolate brownie in the food court (Sunshine Seasons) that the ride is attached to. My husband rode Mission Space, while Partycake and I played with toys in a giant shop at Epcot (I think it’s called Mouse Ears).

Now that we are back home, she cries at night for the train and when we promised to take her to the mall to ride the little train, she started talking about getting a map and seeing Dumbo and Princess Cinderella. It’s been hard unwinding from the constant excitement, for all of us. Perhaps it will help me a little to post a little each day this week. Obviously, this is not a little post, so I will end it here and leave you with a pic.  There’s more to come and I promise not to be so lengthy!

Today I picked up the phone to confirm our dining reservations and have them note that I am lactose intolerant (for the upcoming WDW trip). I called Boma first and they were very nice and took all my information to pass along to the chef. Feeling pretty special because my notes were being passed on to the chef, I placed the second call to the number I was given for The Crystal Palace. A friendly woman named Brenda answered the phone. Here is where customer service that is up and over and beyond begins. Brenda took all my information and passed it on to the chefs at the rest of my reservations. She then sends me an email with FIVE attached documents about food allergies and what is dairy free and what is not (for all four Disney parks and one water park).  There was information on a new allergen free chicken tender with a list of all the quick service places that will be serving it. There was information on pre-packaged desserts. I could go on and on, there was just a plethera of helpful information. For example: I don’t have to ask about fries, or hamburger/hotdog buns. I now know that fries are safe and buns are not. This may not seem like a big deal, if you don’t have a food allergy, or intolerance, but trust me – it gets really old having to ask every place you go. Sometimes waitstaff looks at me like I’m ridiculous and say something to the affect of, “No, we don’t add milk to our fries.” When we eat at Disney, they aren’t going to look at me like I’m ridiculous, the chef will actually come out and talk to me and even walk me through the buffet and tell me what is safe. They have special ice cream prepped ahead of time. They will make things like MICKEY WAFFLES, with soy, or rice milk. This is customer service at it’s finest.

Customer service should be about catering to your customer as an individual. I know this Disney customer service usually comes with a steep price, but we were fortunate enough to catch hold of a free dining week. Still, when we go back again and it’s not free, I’ll still be able to order up a quick service, or a table service or two and know that I don’t have to worry about someone not checking the ingredient label. And whatever meals we pay for, the money will be well spent, simply because of the outstanding customer service.