COMPLETE 9/29 -10th Anniversary at the Contemporary! - May 2024 TR

[Araminta18]

Last Fireworks of the Trip - Friday May 10, 2024 (part 6)​

Back at the resort, my next picture is timestamped 8:30 so not sure what we did in the meantime! I assume relaxed, started packing up, etc. We wanted to make sure we were in the room for the fireworks at 9 pm - our last chance!

Such a gorgeous view - it was nice and cool on the balcony, with a nice breeze going.

Trevor took a timelapse of the sunset:

Such active clouds today!

But we started digging into the cookies while waiting for the fireworks.

The rice krispie cookie was interesting - it almost looked like a cookie on top of a cookie, with the actual rice krispie treats in it. Trevor couldn't really taste the rice krispie treat - it was just fine, nothing super special.

Pretty view!


This was so good! Super rich, but very chocolatey. Trevor thought it was a bit overdone on the bottom but meh, I didn't think so.

Fudge swirl - very rich and fudgey, as you may expect.
Finally, the pinky!

Bigger than we thought - it almost didn't fit in the box! But it was frosting on top of a sugar cookie - good and sweet but not like exceptional or anything. I was glad we had milk to drink with all of these cookies!!

The, time for fireworks!!

Timelapse of the fireworks!

Trevor also took a regular video of the fireworks but he jostled it halfway through and it got aimed just a little bit too high. Oh well!

I noticed for the first time that during the Hunchback section, the fireworks are bell shaped! Not sure how I missed that detail before but it was neat to notice.

After the fireworks, we could hear the cheering on Main Street, and we just sat and enjoyed the echo of the "Happily Ever After" song afterwards - they play the song in the park but not on the channel for the resorts, but we could hear it echoing around from the park, so that was really nice and enjoyable, just to enjoy the ambiance.

We also saw the Electric Water Pageant from across the lagoon at both the Grand Floridian and the Poly:

But it reminded me that I wanted to see the Electric Water Pageant with the sound and everything, so we headed down to the back of the resort to watch that from the beach. Good thing we went, cause we passed the Mickey statue and I remembered that I wanted to take a picture of us there!

 

[Araminta18]

Electric Water Pageant - Friday May 10, 2024 (part 7)​

This was the first time we'd ever been out to the beach:

It's pretty nice! We grabbed a couple seats and settled in for the 15 min wait or so. We'd also refilled the cup on our way out (#2 today), so we had taht going for us


We ended up having to stand up to watch the pageant, cause the fence was in the way:

But not too bad! It was a super cute little show - I'm glad we got to see it:

It helped that the weather was absolutely gorgeous - nice breeze, not nearly as hot as it's been...it was super pleasant.

And by 10:15 we were heading back inside, with one stop at the statue for our pictures!


Not my favorite picture, but still a cute photo op. And I appreciate that they have the phone stand there to take the picture for you. AND I LITERALLY just noticed that the bricks are in the shape of a shadow mickey!

And that was the end of the night - back inside for our last night of sleep, with a quick stop off at Contempo to fill the cup one more time (#3). Tomorrow, we fly home.

Fun with Metrics:
Steps walked: 14116 steps (6.3 miles)
Ride count: 6 (Tower of Terror, Midway Mania, Alien Swirling Saucers, Slinky Dog, Millenium Falcon, Star Tours)
Savings due to AP discount: $0
Refillable Mug Tally: 3 fills today (16 total)

 

[Paulaparm]

I love those time lapse videos!

 

[Araminta18]

I love those time lapse videos!

I'm so glad! Trevor really has fun with them but he's always dissatisfied - i think they're cool too!

 

[Araminta18]

Goodbye to the Balcony - Saturday May 11, 2024 (part 1)​

We slept in again this morning, to enjoy our last few hours in the room...but not too much cause we had to pack and while I may have done some packing last night (can't remember) the main amount had to be done.
Trevor's last sunrise timelapse:

As far as breakfast, we took advantage of Steakhouse 71 mobile order again. Honestly, this was an awesome perk of staying at the Contemporary - like I said, a bit more expensive than Contempo but definitely in the ballpark especially with the AP discount, and better food. The only downside is that it is a little bit slow to get prepped. Trevor went downstairs to get it but also got a refill on the cup (1st one today).

I got the Western Omelet: Ham, Onion, Peppers, and Cheddar served with Breakfast Potatoes

This was delicious. I love biscuits. It was also a larger portion than it looked. Yum.

Trevor got the Walt’s Prime Rib Hash: Seared Prime Rib, Fried Potatoes, Caramelized Onions and Peppers topped with a Fried Egg

Again doesn't look super appetizing, but Trevor said this was also delicious, if a bit too heavy on the potatoes.

And yes, we did eat on the balcony -

Tried to do a panorama shot, though it didn't turn out amazingly - look at the crooked railing.

Lovely sunny day with fluffy clouds.

We finished packing and everything and had Bell Services come and pick up our bags just before 11 am, and we headed downstairs.

Goodbye Mary Blair mural!

We stopped by Contempo Cafe one last time to see about the Cookie Croissant but no luck again. Hopefully when we're there in November they have it!

Our plan this morning was to head to the Magic Kingdom, so we hopped on the monorail and off we went. By 11:40 we were walking underneath the train station, enjoying all the attractions posters.

Seriously I know I post this like every time but this is legit one of my favorite posters and I wish they made it available to buy!

We were heading to Bonjour Village gifts, up by Gaston's Tavern, as I like looking in that shop. On the way we passed a photographer out by the teacups, which is unusual.

Kind of a random spot, but fun.

We went up to the gift shop and bought a couple things, and then kind of wandered a bit. We didn't really have a plan. But we ended up by Liberty Square, so we took pictures with the castle there - this is always one of my favorite spots for castle pictures.



We went over to the Tangled toilets and noticed some new painting there!

It looked really good - super bright and vibrant.

 

[Araminta18]

All the Jungle Cruise Theming You Could Want - Saturday May 11, 2024 (part 2)​

We were a bit at odds, so we decided to go over to the Jungle Cruise. It was 60 minutes, now it was posting 75, but the standby line didn't look that bad and we didn't have anything else planned, so we hopped in line. We haven't done the standby line for Jungle Cruise in a while, so I was really enjoying looking at all the theming.

Poor skippers, trying to swap their shifts.


I feel like we all need a "break in case of party" box.


The winner of the Vaudeville Frolic!


Not sure what the upside down boat is, but it was painted so nicely!


Fun bulletin board!

I want to get the Jungle Crews News!

They also had a medicine cabinet:

for both First and Last aid.


The Peculiar Way remedy is multi-flavoured...I wonder which flavors!

Courage elixir! You'd think the skippers would be downing that one before every cruise!

It ended up being about a 45 minute wait, mostly cause of the lightning lane. Still, I wasn't too sad - I really enjoyed seeing all the theming that we usually miss.

Unfortunately it wasn't a great cruise - the skipper was amazing but the group of people on the boat were mostly not interested and so were talking a lot, and at one point one of the kids who was crying and not wanting to be there saw the snake in the tree and FREAKED OUT but because she stood up the skipper couldn't move on. Poor thing was traumatized and was being yelled at by her family for a bit. I also felt bad for the poor skipper - he was trying so hard and the guests were just not in to it. Such a bummer.

After the ride though, it was time for our lunch at Skipper Canteen!

They were a bit backed up - we waited about 15 minutes for our table but at least it was sitting down and air conditioned.

 

[Araminta18]

Jungle Cruise Lunch and the Festival of Fantasy - Saturday May 11, 2024 (part 3)​

We got seated in the library room, which was nice. We started with the cheese bread -

This is so good! I lived in Brazil for a year and a half, and while I'm not gonna call myself an expert, this feels more like the pao de queijo I had in Brazil than the cheese bread from the Brasil booth in Food and Wine. And then add in the sauce? SO GOOD. If you go and it's not on the menu, ask for it. DELISH.

We also got the Enchanted Orange Dream: DOLE Whip Orange blended with Vanilla Soft-serve and served with an Orange Candy rim

This is just a tad too sweet for me, but still nice to have a cold milkshake (essentially).

I ordered the Nile Nellie's Noodle Bowl: Niles and Niles of Rice Noodles...Sautéed beef tossed with a Spicy Tamarind Sauce, Pickled Radish, Eggs, Toasted Peanuts, and Fresh-cut Herbs

This was not good. The sauce was weird - I didn't like it at all, and didn't really eat any of it. I picked at the beef but whatever the sauce was, it was absolutely not to my taste. Oh well.

Trevor got the fried rice with shrimp:

This was more successful - he liked it a lot.

We also got the Kungaloosh!: An African-inspired Chocolate Cake with Caramelized Bananas served with Cashew-Caramel Ice Cream topped with Coffee Dust

I think this was for our anniversary, cause it didn't show up on our bill. Nice! It was good, and kind of nice to taste something we probably wouldn't have ever ordered (the description has never appealed).

Overall, not our most successful Skipper Canteen outing, between my meal not being great and the server being SUPER slow. Nice, but SUPER slow, especially with the check. Oh well - that pao de queijo is still delicious and absolutely worth it. I wish they'd do that to go!

After lunch, we'd gotten a Tron boarding group at the 1 pm drop, but we needed to be in an uber to the airport no later than 4:30, and so we weren't going to be able to wait for our group to be called. We didn't have plans though so we figured (well me, mostly, being optimistic) it couldn't hurt to ask if we could do Tron right then (it was about 2:45 by the time we got there). Unfortunately, the CM was unmoved, and wouldn't let us in. Oh well! It was worth a shot.

We decided to do the Peoplemover instead, and that wasn't an "oh well", just was nice.

hello! No obligatory feet photo - I think we were a bit tired and hot and a little bit disheartened by the "no" at Tron. Oops.

We got off at about 3:15 and started to make our way out of the park, but we ran into the Festival of Fantasy parade in the hub. We grabbed a spot in the shade on the sidewalk - we were 3 or 4 people back, but at least we were in the shade!



I feel like I don't often get to see the fairies in the parade, so this was neat!

Fire!
Trevor filmed it:

This is such a fun parade - I really like it. And watching it from the shade is always nice.

 

[Araminta18]

Heading Home - Saturday May 11, 2024 (part 4)​

One last Festival of Fantasy pic:

All the dwarfs!

After the parade we realized that when we bought the stuff at Bonjour Gifts, they didn't apply our AP discount. So we were ducking into the shops on Main Street to try and return them and rebuy them with the AP discount - it turned out to be a bit more of an ordeal than we thought - one of the things we bought didn't have a sku that worked at the shops on Main Street. But we eventually got it! Phew.

We hopped on the monorail and headed back to the Contemporary:

the last view from the monorail.

We grabbed our bags, and called for an uber, and by 4:50 we were at the airport. We did a little bit of last minute shopping at the Disney store in the airport (grabbed some treats to take back to our offices), but precheck made security a breeze, and by 5:23, we were at our gate. We had about an hour, since our flight didn't take off til 6:30. But soon enough we were lining up:


The flight home was uneventful - I broke out the milk chocolate marshmallow smore treats:

These were yummy.

We landed at 8:45 but our bags took FOREVER to come out. The belt kept jamming. But finally, after about an hour, we had our bags and were in a lyft heading home. We made it home at about 10:20, and realized we needed milk and we were hungry! So Trevor ran to the store and Taco Bell, while I packed up all the cookies from Gideon's. Priorities!

The treats before I packed them up.

And after:

We wrap the cookies in tin foil and freeze them. I still have a bunch in the freezer...now I want a cookie! Hmmmm.

We did break into some of the treats tonight - we tried the Peanut Butter espresso cookie:

This was interesting - I liked the reese's pieces, and the peanut butter chips, but I could hardly taste the expresso dust. Which is probably a good thing since I don't drink coffee!

The Chocolate cookies and cream cake was delicious:

might be one of my new favorite Gideon's cakes!

We also took a few bites of the Peanut Butter cup cake -

This was good - very peanut-buttery. I like chocolate better so I liked the other cake better, but not bad at all.

I also tried some of the strawberry cookie bites from Gideons which were interesting - I don't know that i'd get them again, but they were still good.

Should we have tasted all these sweets right before bed? Probably not, but it helped keep us going to unpack and get mostly settled, which I call a win. I'm definitely one of the people that unpacks the suitcases as soon as we get home, vs leaving them around for a while - it makes me nervous.

Ok, one more wrap up post, and that's the end of this trip report!

Fun with Metrics:
Steps walked: 10544 steps (4.1 miles)
Ride count: 2 (Jungle Cruise and Peoplemover)
Savings due to AP discount: $25.35 (hard won for the merch! )
Refillable Mug Tally: 1 fill today (#17)

 

[Araminta18]

Wrap up/Haul Post​

Ok, it's the haul!


I bought the purple bag from Vera Bradley - i love the Beauty and the Beast silhouette. And the picture of the castle was from the outlet- yay! Trevor wanted the canteen from Animal Kingdom.


More outlet stuff (the pooh pants and the Avengers shirt, as well as the print), but then the Star Wars shirt was the one Trevor got from Uniqlo from Star Wars day, as well as the May the 4th water bottle and there's a Tarzan ornament in there! you almost never see Tarzan merch at the parks so I had to get it.


The pillow in the upper right is the one we got on the last day that didn't have a SKU in the Main Street shops - isn't it cute? Also the popcorn bucket, and the StarCruiser stuff is from the outlets.


Ears! and more outlet stuff - those Tiana pictures have been at the outlets for a while but I was waiting for them to drop in price.


Marvel stuff and sundries. Most of this is from the outlets - they are dangerous!

Also, I figured I should show the Halfway to Halloween hand pie that we ropedropped Gideon's for!

Pastry completely packed with Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough and lined with Dulce de Leche. They recommended we put it in the air fryer for a few minutes, so we did.


This was good, but the dulce du leche wasn't quite to our taste. Mostly we wanted to try it for the novelty of it, but it was too big and too much dulce du leche. I'm glad we got it though.

Overall, it was a good trip. It was definitely hotter than we expected, but staying at the Contemporary was everything we hoped, and the view from our balcony was fantastic. I'm glad we got to go - knocked one of the bucket list stays off my list! Thank you for reading along - I've been posting a bunch all at once, but I'm trying to get this one done and maaaaaybe my Disneyland Paris one done before we go back in November. Hope it was at least somewhat enjoyable!

EPIC Fun with Metrics:
Steps Walked: 156,643 steps (64.3 miles)

Video Playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLD2n0Bq57wnEV6rSz4F0h3HUyLsnI9m7

Songs Heard While Riding Guardians:
One Way or Another
September x2
Everybody Wants to Rule the World x3
Disco Inferno
I Ran x2

Money saved with AP discount:
$284.25

Refillable Mug Count:
17 (though I probably missed a couple counts ) - savings of $54.34, but to be fair we wouldn't have bought that many fountain drinks.

Total Ride Count:
Tiffany: 62
Trevor: 60

Ride Count for both of us: 52
Toy Story Midway Mania x2
Mickey and Minnie Runaway Railway
Slinky Dog x3
Star Tours x2
Safari
Everest x4
Dinosaur
Navi River Journey
Flight of Passage
Buzz x2
Tron x2
Carousel x2
Peter Pan
Big Thunder x3
Space
Pirates
Haunted Mansion
Seven Dwarfs x2
Jungle Cruise x2
Winnie the Pooh
Guardians x9
Rise of the Resistance
Moana x2
Living with the Land
Soarin
Tower of Terror
Alien Swirling Saucers
Millenium Falcon
Peoplemover

Universal Ride Count for Trevor: 8
Villain Con
Men in Black
Gringotts
Hogwarts
Velocicoaster
Hagrids
Forbidden Journey
Jurassic Park

Tiffany solo: 10
Omnibus
Peoplemover
Buzz x3
Tron
Jungle Cruise
Haunted Mansion,
Space Mountain,
Monsters Inc Laugh Floor

 

[Counting Stars]

Marvelous trip report! I really enjoy your trip reports cause it feels like I am there with you. You include so much detail in such an organized manner accompanied by great pictures! So well done! Thanks for taking the time to share your adventures- a really enjoyable read

 

[dizneedoll]

Another awesome trip report! Thank you for sharing. Im looking forward to DLP TR.

 

[disneyAndi14]

Enjoyed following along. We left the day you arrived on 5/4/24. It was definitely a hot trip for us as well.
Thanks for sharing your trip with us!

 

[alohamom]

I just love all the details you include in your reports.
Hope you two have a blast at Disneyland Paris!

 

[rdkeim]

Excellent TR! It was fun following along. Thanks for taking the time to share!

 

[ThreeBoyMama]

Thanks for another great report! You guys must have an entire room at home full of all your fun Disney merch

 

[PAsFab5]

What a fun trip!! Thank you for sharing!!!!

 

[Paulaparm]

Thanks for sharing your trip! I wish you could share a cookie!

 

[Araminta18]

Marvelous trip report! I really enjoy your trip reports cause it feels like I am there with you. You include so much detail in such an organized manner accompanied by great pictures! So well done! Thanks for taking the time to share your adventures- a really enjoyable read

Thank you! I'm glad you enjoyed it - you're making me blush! Thank you for reading

Another awesome trip report! Thank you for sharing. Im looking forward to DLP TR.

Thank you! I'm glad you're not sick of me quite yet - thank you for reading!

Enjoyed following along. We left the day you arrived on 5/4/24. It was definitely a hot trip for us as well.
Thanks for sharing your trip with us!

Thank you for reading! Wasn't it just crazy hot?! And in May!!! bonkers. Disney is gonna have to start building that bubble for reals.

I just love all the details you include in your reports.
Hope you two have a blast at Disneyland Paris!

Thank you for reading! I'm glad you enjoyed it. We had a great time - I just gotta get my pictures and such together!

Excellent TR! It was fun following along. Thanks for taking the time to share!

Thank you for reading! I'm glad you enjoyed it

Thanks for another great report! You guys must have an entire room at home full of all your fun Disney merch

Thank you for reading! We have a house full of our Disney merch...we may or may not have a problem... But we use it all, so it's practical, right?

What a fun trip!! Thank you for sharing!!!!

Thank you for reading! I'm glad you enjoyed it!

Thanks for sharing your trip! I wish you could share a cookie!

Thank you for reading! Oh man yea that's what I should be doing...too many cookies! Cookie party at my house!

 

[Araminta18]

Wait, question for everyone: when we went to Disneyland Paris, I was in Paris for a few days before we went over to Disneyland Paris. Should I include the Paris stuff in the TR, or just the DLP part? Opinions?

 

[summerlvr]

Wait, question for everyone: when we went to Disneyland Paris, I was in Paris for a few days before we went over to Disneyland Paris. Should I include the Paris stuff in the TR, or just the DLP part? Opinions?

Yes, please include the Paris stuff!