Well, here we are in August and before we blink, it'll be Christmas time once again! In my thinking and reminiscing about Christmas at the parks, I was reminded that I never finished our November trip recaps, so here's the final one for you today! :)
Although we disembarked the Disney Dream on this day and it was technically our last full day before flying home, we seriously didn't waste a single minute of it!
We awoke to the sunrise that morning in Port Canaveral and it was beautiful! It was definitely a mix of emotions as we enjoyed being able to split this trip with land and sea, but we were sad to only spend 4 days on board the Dream!
This was our very first time to utilize the pull out couch, so I had to capture our final morning! :) At least we didn't have "chocolate face" that morning!! Hah!
Breakfast on our disembark day was at Animators Palate and it was nice to be able to say goodbye to our servers.
Something I noticed on our previous cruise were these signs in the hallway, just before boarding the ship and just after disembarking the ship. One side says "Welcome Aboard" when you're walking the hallway towards the ship and the other side says "See You Real Soon" when you're walking away from a ship. What a play on the emotions, huh? :)
For our trip back to WDW, we used Happy Limo again and everything was great! They text the name of our driver to me while we were eating breakfast and our timing worked out great.
Goodbye Disney Dream!
Something I loved about this trip was the way we split it into pieces. Our first segment was at Walt Disney World for the Wine & Dine Half with a stay at Pop Century. We then boarded the Disney Dream for a four night cruise, followed by a one night stay at All-Star Sports and a trip to the Magic Kingdom for the very first Mickey's Very Merry Christmas party of the season!
All-Star Sports was a new-to-me resort and another one marked off my list!
Although it was not yet updated (like Pop Century) during our trip, I found everything to be in working order and just fine!
Our room was located in the tennis section and I thought it was super cute!
After getting settled in our room, we hopped a bus to Disney Springs for lunch at the Polite Pig and to check out the Christmas Tree Trail (both new-to-us experiences)!
Lunch was delicious! Jason, Brayden, and I all split this tray and it was perfect! I'll definitely be back! :)
Even though we were stuffed, we still left room for our trip-tradition, ice cream from Ghirardelli! Note to self, paper straws are terrible with shakes - always pack reusable straws in the future!
We LOVED the Christmas Tree Trail! Everything was so cute and festive! The trees truly reminded me of the old character themed trees in the (now non-existent) Camp Minnie Mickey at Animal Kingdom, these were just on a much larger scale!
See what I mean?! How cute!
I also loved the little extra touches that surrounded the trees.
Take this poster next to the Mulan tree for example!
My husband (who truly earned his magic band name of "bah humbug") said this was his favorite tree of them all. He knows I always go overboard for Christmas, so there's that...
A few of my favorite trees included:
Toy Story
TANGLED!
Fantasia
They were all so cute, it was hard to pick a top favorite.
Remember those magic bands I mentioned? Well, we all decided to order red magic bands for this portion of our trip and theme them with Christmas names (hence Jason's "Bah Humbug")! Mine was Noelle from the soon-to-be-released Disney Plus movie of the same name.
Spoiler alert: the movie did not disappoint!
After leaving Disney Springs, we returned to our room to drop off our purchases and change our shirts for the Christmas party. We were so excited to spend the evening at one of our favorite places during one of our favorite times of the year! If you'd like to check out a recap of our night at Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party, (and a video recap on YouTube), check out the links below! :)
We loved being able to spend this vacation with our friends and hope to be able to do so in the future. It truly was a wonderful trip, one I'll cherish and remember for the rest of my life!
Thanks for coming along with us! Have a magical day!
Disney Travel Day: Wine and Dine Expo & Animal Kingdom
Disney Day 2: Wine and Dine 10K & Kids Races & Hollywood Studios/Epcot
Disney Day 3: Wine and Dine Half Marathon & Magic Kingdom
Disney Day 4: Boarding the Disney Dream
Disney Day 5: Castaway Cay
Disney Day 6: Nassau
Disney Day 7: At Sea Day
Disney Day 8: Disney Springs and Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party