Disney Quest

November 2, 2013
by wishesandpixiedust 1 Comment

Our Bucket List Revisited #1-50

On April 13 2011, at our 100 day mark, we put out a list of 100 things that we wanted to do as Florida residents. See the original post here . We thought it would be interesting to see what we’ve done so far- our comments will be in blue. We’ll cover #1-50 today, and #51-100 tomorrow.

1. Resort hop. We have only ever stayed at POR-Riverside as a family, and we really want to experience each resort on property. So even though our current goal is to live 20 minutes away from Walt Disney World, we plan to do weekend stays at each resort, over the course of a year or two, and really take in the charm and uniqueness each resort has to offer. Nope not yet. This is something we still want to do.

2. Enjoy a Dole Whip 🙂 We’ve enjoyed them at Magic Kingdom but we still want to experience them at the Polynesian where you can disperse your own.

3. Attend Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party Our first time next year

4. Attend Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party No, we haven’t, but between the two parties we’d prefer to do the Halloween party first, as you can experience most everything the Christmas party offers on the week leading up to Christmas on a regular day in the Magic Kingdom- well except for maybe the hot cocoa and cookies!

5. Go on a Disney Cruise! Right now with living in Wisconsin, the price of getting to the cruise has been a huge obstacle for us. We’re of the mindset that if we’re going to spend that much money, we’d rather spend it at WDW! Cruises are really very reasonable as long as you don’t have to travel over a thousand miles to get to one. Nope, not yet but still in the works!

6. Explore Animal Kingdom Park. There are so many areas of AK that we have not discovered simply due to the intense Florida heat, or lack of time available to us. We have done the basics, such as Expedition Everest, Kali River Rapids, Festival of the Lion King, Nemo & Friends and Kilimanjaro Safari, just to name a few. (There are more). But it seems that there is so much more to Animal Kingdom to take in, and we are looking forward to being able to do that in the cooler Florida months, when we have the time to dedicate to it. We have not explored all that Animal Kingdom has to offer, but we have done more. We find the cooler months are the best times to visit Animal Kingdom, and we tend not to even go in the hot, summer months. Jen will be touring the backstage areas on Thursday through a special promotion with Disney Parks Blog, so check back later in the week for a special post detailing that.

7. Go to Magic Kingdom in the evening just for the parades We have not done this, primarily because although we only live 25 miles from the Magic Kingdom, it takes us approximately 45 minutes to reach the parking lot, and another 15 minutes or so for monorail/bag check time. With the cost of gas prices, it is not cost efficient to travel two hours just to attend a parade.

8. Have brunch at Chef Mickey’s 🙂 One of Ben’s favorite spots to see his buddy Mickey!

9. Ride the monorails, just for the fun of it We do so once in awhile

10. Start a new tradition of celebrating birthdays at Walt Disney World This a wonderful perk of living so close to Walt Disney World.

11. Ride Splash Mountain at night during Wishes We haven’t since moving to Florida- used to be a favorite thing to do while on vacation

12. Ride Big Thunder at night during Wishes See #11

13. Listen to Lou Mongello’s audio guides while on Main Street/Adventureland/Fantasyland/Liberty Square and take the time to absorb all the details No we haven’t but we should 🙂

14. Have lunch at Le Cellier Yes, one of our favorite places to eat in Epcot.

15. Watch Illuminations on a winter’s night, enjoying the fact that it is warm & there is no snow on the ground Yes & we enjoy the no snow fact not just at Illuminations but every month from November to May 🙂

16. Go to Universal Catie has been to Universal on a school trip but the rest of the family has not made it yet

17. Go to Sea World A few times- we especially love the new Antarctica attraction.

18. Explore the beaches of Florida–kids have never been to the ocean before. We plan to go to both sides of Florida: The Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean Yes and yes. We’ve been to Anna Maria Island and Treasure Island on the Gulf side, and Cocoa Beach on the Atlantic side.

19. Dinner with Amy and Craig Petermann No, it never worked out.

20. Being able to meet Facebook friends who do not live in Florida but come to Walt Disney World on vacation. Shelley Urick Jones , we look forward to meeting you! This is another awesome benefit of living so close to Walt Disney World, the ability to meet up with our Facebook friends! There are too many to mention here, but we love meeting up with you all!

21. Lou Mongello’s WDW Radio Meets of the Month We have been to some!

22. Exploring the city of Clermont and getting to know our new home city Yes we know our way around fairly easily. We really like the area and enjoy living here.

23. Spending time in the Parks with Stephen and Judy Demeritt We always enjoy spending time in the Parks with our friends.

24. Meeting Marilyn Johnson in person! Marilyn and her husband Dan were extremely gracious and made us feel very welcome after we first moved to Florida. We’re blessed to have met them.

25. Go to Gatorland Still on the bucket list!

26. Enjoy the Osborne lights at the Studios as many times as possible These are incredibly awesome and guaranteed to instill the Christmas spirit in you! We do try to go as many times as possible during the season.

27. Enjoy making new friendships with all our Facebook friends who live in Florida Absolutely!

28. Walking through the World Showcase at Epcot while our kids are in school. We have not been able to explore all the countries because of the kids not wanting to spend time there. Exploring the countries is still on our bucket list. We pulled our children from the public schools and homeschool them. Can we say field trip! 🙂

29. The various shopping opportunities, not only at Walt Disney World, but at the many outlet malls in Orlando and the surrounding areas. Ikea! Yes, IKEA rocks, and we love being able to visit any store we want to within a short driving distance. We have discovered a few Disney Outlet Stores in the Orlando Area, which can be hit or miss on the merchandise available, but definitely worth checking into it.

30. Just enjoying the whole adventure of relocating to a new state! 🙂 🙂

31. Day trips to explore Florida: cities in particular that pop into our heads for no particular reason are Tampa, Naples, St. Augustine, and Jacksonville. We have not yet had any day trips, but two that may happen in the next year are St. Augustine for the historical aspect of it (another field trip!) and Naples…..can we say Culver’s! Ok, that is not the only reason to visit Naples, but it’s definitely an incentive!

32. Shelling at Sanibel Island We have not done this yet; we have heard it’s not as good as it was in years past, but we would still like to visit.

33. Chuckling to ourselves in February when the temperature is 80 and sunny, knowing that back in Wisconsin it is probably blowing and snowing and bitterly cold. Will we miss snow? No we will not! We apologize to all our Wisconsin friends, but yes we do chuckle 🙂

34. Taking in Bob Jackson’s show at the Port Orleans Riverside resort! We haven’t, but the main reason is the noise level is just too unbearable for Ben. He has noise sensitivities and he can’t tolerate it.

35. Staying at the Port Orleans Riverside resort for old times sake! Definitely on the want-to-do-list SOON! We have eaten in the food court a few times.

36. Christmas shopping at Downtown Disney Every year- we love the atmosphere at Downtown Disney!

37. Riding down the Sassagoula River from Port Orleans Riverside to Downtown Disney (and vice versa) No not yet.

38. Exploring the cities of Lake County Yes, we’ve visited Leesburg, Fruitland Park, The Villages, Mt Dora, Eustis, Astatula, Tavares, Lady Lake, Minneola, & Groveland

39. Visiting Celebration for leaf drop (to replace the Fall we will be missing in Wisconsin) No not yet

40. Being there for opening day of the new Fantasyland No, but we were for opening weekend 🙂

41. Resort hopping at Christmas to see all the different Christmas decorations This is in the plans for this year. We have been to the Grand Floridian, to view the Gingerbread House and the Christmas decorations, which are incredible.

42. Counting garbage cans to make sure the Demeritts caught them all 😉 No.

43. Trying on every hat that is sold on Disney property We’ve given up the practice of trying on hats, after a cast member friend of ours mentioned how everybody tries on hats and do you really want to put something on your head after hundreds of people have put it on their head? Um, no.

44. Food and Wine Festival 🙂

45. Enjoy a carrot cake cookie No, but we have enjoyed a Butterfinger cupcake. Actually it was too rich for our tastes, would not buy it again.

46. Visit Star Wars weekend Yes

47. Dinner, lunch and/or breakfast with Lou Mongello Not yet, hoping to one day!

48. Movie at the Downtown Disney AMC theatre We saw Wreck It Ralph there before it was released, courtesy of a special meet-up with Disney Parks Blog.

49. Trying all 500 flavors in the Coke Freestyle Dispenser Not all the flavors- that would take gobs of money & tons of time.

50. DisneyQuest We love DisneyQuest. It was the main reason we renewed our premium passes this year.

April 25, 2012
by wishesandpixiedust 1 Comment

Happy Nine!

Today we are celebrating our ninth month anniversary of arriving in Florida as residents! The interesting thing about a moving blog is that it gives you an opportunity to look back at your thoughts prior to the move. On April 13, 2011 we wrote this blog: 100 days and we thought it would be fun one year later to take a look at a few of the items on our “Top 100” List to see how we feel about them now.

10. Start a new tradition of celebrating birthdays at Walt Disney World

This is an awesome tradition that we have started and will continue. In February we purchased the Tables in Wonderland card and we anticipate that we will not only receive back the membership fee, but also extra savings above and beyond the initial cost. We purchased our card from Guest Services at the Magic Kingdom, and received our card immediately.

14. Have lunch at Le Cellier

Reservations are set for August 8!

18. Explore the beaches of Florida–kids have never been to the ocean before. We plan to go to both sides of Florida: The Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean.

Done and done! We have been to Anna Maria Island and Treasure Island on the Gulf side and Cocoa Beach on the Atlantic side. We definitely intend to schedule in more beach days this summer.

22. Exploring the city of Clermont and getting to know our new home city.

We haven’t done this as much as we expected to. We even missed the annual festival Pig on the Pond due to inclement weather, something that we had been looking forward to ever since we made the decision to move to Clermont.

26. Enjoy the Osborne lights at the Studios as many times as possible.

We never tire of this.

27. Enjoy making new friendships with all our Facebook friends who live in Florida.

We really have enjoyed meeting y’all and we feel blessed that we are able to spend time with two different couples who we consider good friends of ours. Facebook is a really great way to connect with people to begin that friendship.

33. Chuckling to ourselves in February when the temperature is 80 and sunny, knowing that back in Wisconsin it is probably blowing and snowing and bitterly cold. Will we miss snow? No we will not!

Yea, we’ve done that 🙂 Although we feel it is ironic that Wisconsin had a mild winter this year.

34. Taking in Bob Jackson’s show at the Port Orleans Riverside resort!

35. Staying at the Port Orleans Riverside resort for old times sake!

We have not done either one of these yet, but it is definitely in the works. We’d like to stay in one of the new Princess rooms.

37. Riding down the Sassagoula River from Port Orleans Riverside to Downtown Disney (and vice versa)

See above!

40. Being there for opening day of the new Fantasyland.

We were not there for the soft opening of Storybook Circus. The crowds were absolutely packed in, and we’ve discovered as residents, it’s simply not worth it. We went a couple of days later when it was not as busy.

50. DisneyQuest

Yes, we’ve done this a few times, and thoroughly enjoy ourselves every time we go. It’s a great alternative to a rainy day. Our philosophy is that we do not go to the parks when it rains- it’s simply not worth the hassle of dealing with the ponchos. We have been a couple of times, and it does detract from the magic of the parks.

54. Flower and Garden Festival

We are not garden people by any means, but walking around Epcot looking at the various topiaries and displays was enjoyable.

66. Take a family Christmas picture at WDW

Hmmm. We did not do this at Christmas; may be a new tradition we need to start.

69. Move in to our new apartment in Clermont

It was quite exciting to have that newness of being able to discover everything and experience many “firsts” but it was also overwhelming to not have the basic necessities with us those first weeks. While it is fun to buy all new items, it can be scary to walk into Target knowing that you need to buy “everything”. Nine months later there are still a couple of pieces of furniture that we need to purchase, and a few assorted kitchen items, but we want to let our readers know that everything does not need to be purchased right away. To do so requires gobs of money or extending yourself on credit, the latter being something we would never advise.

70. Find the best pizza places in the area.

We have found two good pizzerias, and this is a goal we are still working on!

71. Our first Saturday library visit to our new “home” library.

We still regularly visit the library every Saturday. The kids are currently into the ‘Harry Potter’ series, and we pick up other books as well. It is not as nice, nor as big, as our library back in Wisconsin. There are no tables and chairs to sit at, and the kids used to enjoy doing that. So consequently, our visits are shorter.

88. Swim with the manatees.

We have not swum with the manatees, but Ben has become a huge lover of manatees, loves to visit them at Epcot, and we all are looking forward to visiting Sea World for the first time.

89. Explore Florida’s state parks.

Between the poisonous snakes, alligators, bears and black panthers, this is not something we are so eager to do anymore. 🙂

96. Enjoying the scenery of Florida, knowing that it will stay green year round, and not become brown and dead for six months out of the year.

This is still huge for us. Love, love, love seeing all the palm trees, and it is so nice to see flowers in bloom in January! Yesterday and today it was cool enough to open our lanai doors and let the fresh breezes blow in.

99. Take a yearly family picture in front of Cinderella Castle.

We have not done this yet, but will need to do soon! Another new family tradition!

We had heard prior to our move that it may take as long as one or two years after relocation to adjust fully to our new environment. We still feel that we are in the adjustment process, but that it gets better every month. We couldn’t have picked a better apartment complex to move into, for which we are very grateful. The cost of living is higher here than in Wisconsin; but we knew it coming in. The only negative thing to report is the school situation for Ben, but we know God is in control with it and he will lead to us to the right school or option for Ben.

March 17, 2012
by wishesandpixiedust 1 Comment

Downtown Disney

We resolved about a month ago to go to Downtown Disney every Friday night, simply because it’s awesome and up to then we really hadn’t been going all too much. We’ve discovered that committing to an ‘every Friday night’ plan isn’t realistic, as we tend to plan spur of the moment. However, we have been averaging 2-4 times a month, which is more than we were. Today we went to the Marketplace so Ben could spend his birthday money on Legos, and then we spent a few hours at DisneyQuest. It definitely is turning out to be one of our favorite places to go, and makes the purchase of the premium annual pass more cost effective.

August 17, 2011
by wishesandpixiedust Leave a comment

Friday night we took advantage of our premium annual passes and decided to check out Disney Quest, located at Downtown Disney West Side.

Disney Quest offers five floors of interactive adventures, and we will briefly go through each of the floors and describe what each offers. Ben was amazed that they have the same turnstiles to enter as he sees in the parks….lol

Floor 1 offers the Virtual Jungle Cruise, Pirates of the Caribbean Battle for Buccaneer Gold, and the Disney Quest Emporium. Both kids decided to ride the Virtual Jungle Cruise: you enter an inflatable boat and are given oars to steer the boat through the course. We felt it was an okay experience, but they seemed to have trouble navigating the boat with the oars so the virtual experience was not as good as it could have been. We all went on the Pirates attraction, and give it two thumbs up! An excellent experience and worth the 30 minute wait time. The Disney Quest Emporium offers various Disney souvenirs for purchase.

Floor 2 offers the Radio Disney SongMaker, Animation Academy, Living Easels, Sid’s Create-A-Toy, Aladdin’s Magic Carpet Ride and CyberSpace Mountain. We did Aladdin’s Magic Carpet Ride, which was fun but not something we’ll feel the urge to do everytime, and CyberSpace Mountain, which is Ben’s dream come true 🙂 You can design and then ride your own roller coaster. This was awesome and we’re sure a must-do every time we visit.

Floor 3 features the Underground Arcade, Mighty Ducks Pinball Slam, Race Zone, Classic Games and Buzz Lightyear’s AstroBlaster. This floor offers a lot of video games that you will find in a typical arcade. Mighty Ducks Pinball Slam puts you in control of your ball, and you use your body to navigate it on the screen–you definitely get your exercise from this game. Buzz Lightyear’s AstroBlaster is a bumper cars style attraction; you can choose to be a driver or a gunner, and try to spin your opponent’s car by firing cannons at them.

Floor 4 offers the Sports Arena Arcade, Ride the Comix and a Kid’s Area for children ages 2 to 7. We just briefly walked through this floor and didn’t participate in the attractions.

Floor 5 offers Invasion! An ExtraTERRORestrial Alien Encounter, Ride the Comix, Classic Games and Food Quest. We did not travel up to this floor yet.

Let’s say you’re planning a Disney vacation and trying to determine its value: is it worth the $43 admission price per person? If you are an individual who really enjoys gaming, and who can devote a good portion of one day to staying at Disney Quest, then yes, we feel it is worth the price of admission. For a Florida resident, it definitely is worth the extra $10.65 you will pay more monthly to obtain a premium annual pass (as opposed to the standard annual pass); which allows you free entry to not only Disney Quest but also the water parks, golf course and ESPN’s Wide World of Sports.

August 12, 2011
by wishesandpixiedust Leave a comment

How Y’all Doing?

We took a break today from visiting the Parks and worked on the getting the office area set up, and also assembled a bookcase for Ben’s room. One important consideration to remember if you plan on discarding your furniture is that you don’t have to replace every single piece right away: focus on what’s important to you to have right away, budget that amount, and then gradually incorporate the rest in the following months. We are still waiting on our security deposit from our previous landlord and another check due to us, and then we are looking forward to adding more items, but in the meantime we make do. The important thing is not having a fully furnished house; the important thing is that we are here. 🙂

We have found the furniture stores to be very reasonable. Two furniture stores in Clermont that we were pleasantly surprised with were Clermont Furniture and Badcock Furniture. The offerings resemble what we would find back in Wisconsin, but without the huge mark-up in prices. If you looking to relocate to the Florida area and need an estimation of furniture prices for your budget, we would be more than happy to help you out: just ask.

We are doing very well! Tonight we plan to eat an early dinner at home and go to Disney Quest at Downtown Disney, and visit the World of Disney store as well. We haven’t heard overwhelming positive reviews of Disney Quest overall but who knows? It may surprise us 🙂

We have blogs in the work regarding our experiences with getting our driver’s license and car plates, enrolling our children in school, Disney, and a lengthy post about Clermont: what we like, how it’s different, and what’s available in the area. Be sure to check for those in the coming week. We’ll also write about our experience with Disney Quest and what we thought of it.

Sending pixie dust to all our readers!