Disney Daze

I'm back from the happiest place on Earth - and I'm still in something of a Disney daze. A post happiest place on Earth hangover, if you will. Somehow the mundane of day to day life just doesn't compare with the fact that this time last week I was wandering through World Showcase at Epcot - spanning eleven countries in one afternoon.

I thought I'd share a bit of my Disney recap today but nothing too overwhelming. I took SO many pictures and I'll definitely share some of my favorites here over the next week or so but I'll start small today.

We arrived to WDW on the evening of January the 5th and spent Saturday just bouncing around from place to place - we love to pop in to different resorts, so we spent some of the morning looking around the Grand Floridian, the Contemporary and the Polynesian before hopping a bus over to Disney Springs.

Disney Springs is the shopping area at WDW and was recently renovated/added to and there are more shops and dining options than you could possibly imagine. If you can't find something that fits the bill at Disney Springs, I don't know if you'll find it anywhere else.

It was marathon weekend at Disney and there were banners everywhere about...well...running! The marathon weekend had a 5K, a 10K, a half marathon and a marathon - and we learned after the weekend was over that there was something called the Dopey Challenge - which meant you completed all FOUR races. Yikes! I can't even imagine.

We grabbed a late lunch/afternoon snack at Jock Lindsey's Hangar Bar - if you aren't familiar with that name, don't worry - most people aren't. The character of Jock Lindsey shows up for all of a couple minutes during Raiders of the Lost Ark; he's Indiana Jones intrepid pilot pal and takes Indy around the globe on his adventures. The hangar bar is set up with memorabilia and tokens from Jock and Indy's travels, the menu has snacks like pretzels, sliders and nachos and the real draw are the cocktails - hello, it IS a bar!

The food was really good - we split sliders, pretzels and nachos - everything was divine! I got a Diving Bell to sip on and my little sister got the Cool-Headed Monkey, which looked suspiciously like the monkey brains served to Indy at Pankot Palace - but I'm willing to bet monkey brains don't taste quite so yummy!

The big draw at Disney Springs (besides the shopping and dining) was the Christmas Tree Trail. The trees are themed to many of Disney's numerous animated features and were only on display through the 7th, so we just did catch them! I said I didn't have a lot of pictures...but I do have lots of tree pictures, ha-ha! Brace yourself!

To round out the evening - we hopped a very colorful bus to the Wilderness Lodge for supper.

We used the My Disney Experience app; which we all had on our phone, to make reservations at Whispering Canyon Cafe for supper. I can't say enough about how handy the My Disney Experience app was all week - but the ease of making dinner reservations alone was worth having the app. It's free - by the way - and if you have a Disney trip in your future, I cannot recommend enough downloading it!

Whispering Canyon is one of our favorite restaurants around the Disney resorts - the name is a misnomer as the servers are boisterous and the dining experience is filled with tongue in cheek moments alongside the delicious food. Case in point - the below picture is what might happen if you ask for a little more water...

Saturday was a wonderful way to start our week at Disney off - a nice slow start, enjoying all the scenery that Disney has to offer before getting the park hopping started on Sunday.

I'll be posting later in the week about each day at the parks - I don't think writing about the wonderful time will make the Disney Daze any less intense, but it will be nice to look over all the wonderful memories made last week!