Anniversary Trip

Intro

Is Disney your go-to vacation to celebrate special occasions? Disney is the perfect place to spend your birthday, anniversary, or other special day. My partner and I are going to Disney World to celebrate our wedding anniversary and we are so excited! As many of you may know, we got engaged at Disney, so it holds such an important place in our story together. This week, I thought I would share our plans for this upcoming trip. I will also be circling back after we return to reflect on how the actual trip went, since we all know it could look very different from what we planned out. We are so excited to share this special celebration trip with you!

We are doing a Land and Sea vacation, so we are spending 4 days at the parks, then heading to Port Canaveral to board the Disney Dream for 4 nights! I haven’t been on a Disney Cruise since I was younger and my partner has never cruised, so this is super exciting for us to get to do together! With the pretty high price tag for the cruise, we decided to stay at a value resort while we are at Disney to offset that cost a bit. I also just officially became an Annual Passholder, so my park tickets are already taken care of and we will get extra discounts on select merchandise and food!

Breakdown

• Theme: Anniversary Celebration
• Length: 1.5 weeks
• Age and Group: Adult couple
• Spending: $$$

Check-In        

We’re checking in to Pop Century, a value resort on the Sky Liner route, on a Wednesday to hopefully avoid the weekend crowds. After check-in, we are heading to Disney Springs for some lunch and snacks! After Disney Springs, we will head back to the resort to get changed and make our way over to Grand Floridian for dinner reservations at Narcoossee’s. Depending on how long dinner lasts, we’ll do a quick stop at Magic Kingdom before heading back to the resort to rest up before our first full park day.

Food

When you go to Disney Spring, you absolutely have to try Gideon’s Bakehouse! Gideon’s opened in 2020 and has a great atmosphere and really unique theming. For dinner, we have Advanced Dining Reservations at Narcoossee’s, which is located at the Grand Floridian. This signature dining restaurant serves mostly seafood, but also has non-seafood dishes if that isn’t for you. It does have a dress code and the restaurant is a little more upscale. The restaurant is right on Seven Seas Lagoon, so it has a great view of Magic Kingdom while you eat!

Day 1: Magic Kingdom

Personally, my Disney trips always have to start with Magic Kingdom! There is just something magical about taking that walk down Main Street to see the castle for the first time. It never stops blowing me away, no matter how many times I see it. The first park day at Magic Kingdom is the perfect opportunity to rope drop and really be sure we are able to pack in everything we want to do!

Rides

Really the only reason I rope drop is so I can be the first in line for my personal favorite ride, Space Mountain. I would truly ride Space Mountain all day if that was possible. After an exciting ride through space, we’ll head over to Haunted Mansion. We will be sure to get to Pirates of the Caribbean and Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, two of our favorites! After lunch in the hub, we will go back to Tomorrowland to hop on the People Mover. We’ll try for a few classics like Jungle Cruise and Peter Pan’s flight before dinner.*

*We plan on taking advantage of Disney Genie+ and Individual Lightning Lane selections and will let you know how it goes in the follow-up blog post when we return!

Food

For lunch, we will mobile order some Corn Dog Nuggets with plastic cheese (shout out to Disney Food Blog) and eat a little picnic on the hub grass. This is a super relaxing and affordable way to enjoy your lunch with castle-views! Dinner will be at Columbia Harbour House, specifically up on the second floor. Not everyone who comes into Columbia Harbour House knows there is an upstairs, so it isn’t always as crowded at meal times! We will also almost certainly eat more snacks than necessary, including Mickey Premium Bars, Cheshire Cat Tails from Cheshire Cafe, and a Cinnamon Roll from Gaston’s. Side note, Gaston’s is a great place to pop in if you weren’t able to get an ADR for Be Our Guest and still want some Beauty and the Beast theming. Plus, those Cinnamon Rolls are the best ones in the parks in my opinion! 

We’ll end the night with our first viewing of the new fireworks show, Enchantment, then check out the Emporium and the newly renovated Main Street Confectionary before getting in line for a Disney bus to take us back to the resort!

Day 2: Hollywood Studios

Today, we have a jam packed, Star Wars-filled day planned at Hollywood Studios! We haven’t been able to go to Disney since Galaxy’s Edge has opened, so we are extremely excited to finally see it in person. We’ll hop on the Skyliner from our resort bright and early to make our way over to Hollywood Studios for rope drop.

Rides

One of the biggest rides in Hollywood Studios and Galaxy’s Edge right now is Rise of the Resistance. We plan to try for an Individual Lightning Lane Selection to ride Rise of the Resistance, since we haven’t been able to check it out yet and want to be sure we get on.

We’ll explore Galaxy’s Edge for a bit, then get in line for Millenium Falcon: Smuggler’s Run. If I can pull my partner away from Star Wars, we’ll explore other parts of the park and ride Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway. This is also a ride we haven’t been able to ride yet and I am so ready to check it out! Other musts for Hollywood Studios are Tower of Terror, Rock n’ Roller Coaster, and Toy Story Mania.

Food

I was so excited to find Advanced Dining Reservations for Oga’s Cantina on our Hollywood Studios Day! The idea behind Oga’s is that it is a “local cantina” in Batuu and serves unique drinks and snacks. We’ll stop in Oga’s late morning for a break from rides, but won’t eat too much in order to save room for a Ronto Wrap from Ronto Roasters for lunch. After lunch, we go straight to the Milk Stand to wash down our Ronto Wraps. No stop to Batuu would be complete without trying the famous Blue (or Green) Milk. I haven’t been able to try it yet, so I will definitely let you all know how I like it! Dinner is over in Toy Story Land at Woody’s Lunch Box. We’ll enjoy a Grilled Cheese and a Lunch Box Tart for dessert!

Extras

As an additional experience in Galaxy’s Edge, my partner will be making his own Lightsaber at Savi’s Workshop! This is a separate, paid extra in Galaxy’s Edge that does require reservations. 

After we’re done in Hollywood Studios, we’ll park hop over to EPCOT to catch the new nighttime show, Harmonious! Luckily we can get on the Skyliner to get over there quicker than the Disney buses.

Day 3: EPCOT

It’s time for EPCOT and I am so excited to see all the new things that this park has to offer. EPCOT has affectionately been called “Wall-COT” for the past few years because of all the construction. EPCOT is going through a complete transformation and I can’t wait to finally see it all in person. We also will be going during the EPCOT Food and Wine Festival, which takes place in World Showcase and offers food and beverages at booths from all over the world.

Rides

One of the first rides we hope to be able to get on is Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure! It is the newest ride in EPCOT and is so adorable. We were able to ride it in Disneyland Paris when we went for our honeymoon and can’t wait to ride it at Disney World! While in World Showcase, we’ll also ride Frozen and Gran Fiesta Tour. After exploring World Showcase, we will head out and ride a few more favorites, Soarin’ and Test Track. We’ll end the night with relaxing rides on Living with the Land and Spaceship Earth.

Food

The newest restaurant in EPCOT is Space 220. It is an immersive experience that sends you up 220 miles in space to dine in a space station with panoramic views! We are so ready to try it out and have been trying to get Advance Dining Reservations since the first day they opened with no luck. Our plan is to either try to see if they had any cancelations or get in the queue for the lounge. Many signature dining restaurants at Disney World have lounges that you can get into without a reservation (Nomad Lounge is the lounge for Tiffin’s, California Grill at the Contemporary has a lounge, etc.). If you’re hoping to get a reservation for a signature dining restaurant and aren’t able to, be sure to check if they have a lounge.

Instead of a sit down or quick service meal, we plan to snack around the Food and Wine Festival for dinner tonight! A few booths we are going to be sure to try are the Alps, Appleseed Orchard (this booth actually has a cider from a Cider Mill in Michigan that my partner grew up going to!), Flavors from Fire, Mac and Eats, and India. I’m sure there will be more we want to try after we see all the booths, so we will be sure to share what we actually end up eating and drinking!

Now, we settle in with our snacks and find a good spot to watch Harmonious in World Showcase to close out the night. Hopefully we aren’t too full and can make our way back to the Skyliner to get to our resort to get a good night’s sleep before our last park day.

Day 4: Animal Kingdom

I am so excited for our Animal Kingdom day! Animal Kingdom is definitely a favorite of mine, because it is just so unique compared to the rest of the parks. It is extremely immersive and you truly feel like you are in a whole different world while you’re there. 

Animal Kingdom opens the earliest and closes the earliest out of all the parks, so it’s important to get there early to make sure you see everything. Also, the animals are the most active in the morning, so it’s a great time to go.

Rides

At park open, we immediately go towards Kilimanjaro Safaris to see the animals first thing in the morning. Most people will go to Pandora first thing, so the Safaris shouldn’t have a long wait. Next, we’ll get on the Wildlife Express Train to Rafiki’s Planet Watch. This attraction is often missed, but the train takes you to an area of the park dedicated to the care and conservation of animals. If you watched the Magic of Disney’s Animal Kingdom on Disney+, you get to see the behind the scenes, veterinary spaces where this show filmed a few episodes! After getting off the train, we head to the Asia section of the park and ride Everest (probably a few times in a row because we’re obsessed). Depending on the wait time, we will use the single rider line in order to ride it multiple times in a row, pretty quickly. As the sun starts to go down, we make our way over to Pandora to take it all in after dark. We plan on purchasing an Individual Lightning Lane Selection to ride Flight of Passage, because it is definitely a must for us!

Food

Lunch today will be at Eight Spoon Cafe, over by the Tree of Life. They have Baked Mac and Cheese that I have been dreaming about for years! For a midday break, we will join the Walk Up Wait List for Nomad Lounge. Nomad Lounge is a hidden gem in Animal Kingdom, with speciality drinks and snacks to enjoy while you cool off and enjoy the ambiance of the park. For dinner, we will stop by Satu’li Canteen, in Pandora. It is set up kind of like a Qdoba, where you can create your own bowl with a selection of meat and toppings. It is one of the most unique and individualized Quick Service options on property. You also have to try the Cheeseburger Pods while you’re there!

Something I always try to do, is to both start and finish my trips at Magic Kingdom. So, since Animal Kingdom closes early, we’ll park hop over to Magic Kingdom after it gets dark. We might not ride any rides (unless Big Thunder Mountain Railroad or Space Mountain has a short wait), but we’ll watch the fireworks and just spend one last night taking it all in. It’s always so hard for me to leave Disney World, but this trip isn’t quite over yet! We’ll get on a Disney bus and go back to the resort to pack and get ready for the next leg of our vacation.

Day 5: Cruise Day! 

Our cruise is finally here! A little backstory, we booked this cruise originally for our one year anniversary and it was canceled, which we definitely agree was the right move by Disney. We wouldn’t have felt safe to travel at that point, so we ended up pushing back our whole vacation. That all to say, that we’ve been planning and saving for this trip for almost two years, so we are so ready to finally get on the ship and enjoy our cruise.

We opted in to the Disney transportation to get us to Port Canaveral, so we will be given a pick up time the night before and will be ready at the lobby when the bus is arriving. Once at the port, we will get our COVID tests done, wait for the results, then be able to complete check-in and board. We’ll be sure to include all the details on how the check-in and testing process went for us in the next blog post. 

For this cruise, we did not make many reservations ahead of time, because we want to be able to relax and just explore the ship and what it has to offer. The first day, we plan to get our bearings on the ship, enjoy our first dinner in our rotational dining, and potentially see what is showing at the Walt Disney Theatre. 

Lastly, something special we did for this cruise was order an on-board gift to celebrate our anniversary. We chose the “Luxury at Sea” package that comes with Disney Cruise Line (DCL) robes, chocolates, a rose, and sparkling cider. It should be in our room the first day and we can’t wait to try everything!

Day 6: Nassau

On our first port day, we are scheduled to stop at Nassau in the Bahamas. It is very possible this will be switched to another day at Disney’s private island, Castaway Cay, due to restrictions, but either way, we are excited to get off the ship and have a good port day!

We don’t have any excursions planned for Nassau, so we hope to walk around, shop, and just take in the sights!

Back on the ship, we’ll have another great dinner, then either watch a movie in the Buena Vista Theater or find another activity for the night. There are planned games and events, such as Disney Trivia or Animation Sessions, happening all the time around the ship, so we can’t wait to find fun things to do each night!

A while back, I remember watching a Disney Food Blog video that shared tips and tricks for Disney Cruises and one really stuck with me. They said that you can order Premium Mickey Bars from room service at any point during your cruise. Honestly, this may be why I booked this cruise in the first place! Unlimited Mickey Bars delivered to my room whenever I want may just be my version of heaven! So tonight, we will order Mickey Bars, enjoy them on the verandah, and say thank you to Disney Food Blog for sharing this amazing tip!

Day 7: At Sea

Today is our actual anniversary and we are so excited to have a day at sea to celebrate. We don’t have any extra planned for today, so we may try and see if there are any openings for Palo Brunch. Palo is one of the signature dining options on the ship, so brunch and dinner sell out pretty quickly! If not, we will lounge around in the adults only section of the ship and enjoy the pools! Overall for our anniversary we hope to just relax, enjoy some desserts from Vanellope’s, and maybe go to a few activities around the ship before dinner. 

Day 8: Castaway Cay 

It’s Castaway Cay day! Castaway Cay is Disney’s private island and I can’t wait to get out there.

We booked a Glass Bottom Boat tour here that we know will be a blast! After the tour, we will grab some lunch, walk around the island, and relax on the beach. 

Back on the ship, we want to be sure to check out anything we haven’t been able to get to yet, since it is the last night. Shopping is a must for me, since there are souvenirs that you can only get on the ship. We always get a Christmas ornament from every trip we go on, so we hope to find a good one in the shops onboard. 

We’ll take in one last night on our verandah and maybe get a few more Mickey bars!

Debarkation Day

Sadly, today is Debarkation Day, meaning it’s time to get off the ship and head to the airport to go back home. We are so sad that it’s over, but feel so lucky that we got to do this to celebrate our anniversary. I can’t wait to share how this trip actually went and hopefully give some tips and tricks from our experience at the parks and on the ship. Also, be sure to follow along with our trip on Instagram!

How do you celebrate special events or occasions? Have you ever celebrated at a Disney park? Let me know in the comments!

Overview

• Resort: Pop Century (Value Resort)
• Check-in Day: Disney Springs, Grand Floridian
  • Food: Gideon’s, Narcoossee’s 
• Day 1: Magic Kingdom
  • Rides: Space Mountain, Haunted Mansion, Pirates of the Caribbean, Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, People Mover, Jungle Cruise, and Peter Pan’s Flight
  • Food: Casey’s Corner, Columbia Harbour House, Snacks – Mickey Premium Bars, Cheshire Cat Tails, Cinnamon Rolls
• Day 2: Hollywood Studios/EPCOT
  • Rides: Rise of the Resistance, Millennium Falcon: Smuggler’s Run, Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway, Tower of Terror, Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster, Toy Story Mania
  • Food: Oga’s Cantina, Ronto Rosters, Milk Stand, Woody’s Lunch Box
  • Extras: Savi’s Workshop
• Day 3: EPCOT
  • Rides: Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure, Frozen, Gran Fiesta Tour,  Soarin’, Test Track, Living with the Land, Spaceship Earth
  • Food: Space 220 (hopefully!), various Food and Wine Festival booths
• Day 4: Animal Kingdom/Magic Kingdom
  • Rides: Kilimanjaro Safaris, Rafiki’s Planet Watch, Expedition Everest, Flight of Passage
  • Food: Eight Spoon Cafe, Satu’li Canteen
• Day 5: Cruise Day
  • Extras: Luxury At Sea Package
• Day 6: Nassau
  • No excursions planned
• Day 7: At Sea
• Day 8: Castaway Cay
  • Excursion: Glass Bottom Boat Tour
• Day 9: Debarkation Day

• Instagram
• Twitter
• Pinterest
• Mail