Thankfully we landed in JFK without much delays, though I was asked sooo many questions at passport control. I think the person must have thought I’m not that smart. But anyways, I was glad to get out of there. We got our bags rather quickly and had to proceed to Terminal 5 for our connecting flight to Orlando via JetBlue

Just had to snap this for memory. lol

To our horror, the line at the TSA check was snaking and it just didn’t seem to move, at all. So by the time we finally cleared the checks, we had to make a dash to our gates since they were boarding already. As soon as we stepped onto the aerobridge, we heard the door slammed shut behind us. So exciting. Totally don’t recommend taking a risk on this 1.5 hour connection time at all, and that’s coming from the priority of getting out of the plane first

Anyway, that marked a 3-hour flight onwards to Orlando

3 hours later, we landed at Terminal A, collected our luggages and tried to find Mears Connect, the shuttle that would take us to the Disney resorts but there was no desk at the terminal at all. We were just walking up and down feeling very puzzled, only to find out the shuttle is located at Terminal B -.-

Well, we did find it eventually

Paid up and proceeded to the queue

Line #14 that would take us to Pop Century Resort

The shuttle came rather quickly, thankfully, cos exhaustion was kicking in and 30 minutes later..

Hello Pop Century! Home to the next 7 nights

The resort had an old school vibe, with 60s/70s design as its theme. Well, that’s the thing about Disney. They go all out with everything, price too

Did check-in, requested a room change which took awhile cos we couldn’t reach them via online/fax/phone call and part of us couldn’t understand why they need to call so many people to check

And since it was my first visit to WDW, I got my ‘1st visit’ pin! 🙂

Also collected our Magicband+ which we had pre-ordered online previously. Basically that’s the pass to everything – key/charge/photo pass etc. They also had a feature where you can interact with figurines while you were inside the parks though I did find it pretty useless

Souvenir shop/Food court area

We also pre-ordered groceries from Garden Grocer and that’s the friend+husband pushing the cart all the way to the room cos it was a little too heavy 😀

The staffs were doing a dance at the reception area. I was so entertained by them dancing I knocked into the pole.. and it hurt 😦

Also checked out the foodcourt cos the friend’s husband was hungry. And us? We were just too full still

I was just very happy I could finally rest after 30 hours of travelling. It has been a long journey

Pop Century is also branded as a value resort, hence is not as fancy. It kind reminded me of chalets. lol

Here’s our basic but adequate roomVery clean and it has most things you need, though the friend did mention the price for the room also went up alot as compared to years back

All the details

And here’s breakfast for the next 8 days. lol. I have to say I was pretty impressed with their bread and ham. They were really good

Showered, knocked out at 8pm but strangely woke up at 11pm. I blamed it on jetlag. Forced myself back to sleep and the body decided to wake up at 5am -.-

And so we got ready for park day – day 1 for Epcot!

The good thing about Pop Century was it has access to Disney’s Skyliner and I personally think this Skyliner can be an attraction itself. At certain points, it just felt like a roller coaster to me. Well, IYKYK.

Very early still

Early entry starts at 8am so we wanted to get there by 7.30am in hoping the park would open earlier for the unofficial early entry according to DTB

And here’s the crowd at 7.15am

The park did open at 7.30am so yay!

Well well, guess which popular ride had a long queue at the start?

Here’s the start to Remi’s Ratatouille Adventure!

We waited about 30 minutes but cos the line was constantly moving, it actually didn’t feel that long

It was a very cute ride. By the time we exited, the wait time has gone up to 75 minutes and that’s even before the park officially opened. Well done

Epcot is divided into different worlds/pavilions and France is actually quite pretty. Well it really looked the part

So here’s one pretending that I’m in France with my cute Pooh headband that had many compliments throughout the day 🙂

We had to get to Norway to see Elsa so we made our way there on foot (lol). If we could walk from France to Norway on foot in reality, it would be amazing. keke

But first, passing by Japan

Making use of the early mornings to take photos without the crowd

which would definitely be impossible in a few hours

Italy, which had a wedding shoot going on

This was taken later in the day when it was so damn hot

China; the colours are so pretty right? I know

We finally got to Norway

Where the queue for Frozen Ever After snaked out

Entertained ourselves while waiting and that came in the form of appreciating our Magicband+ which is basically useless outside of Disney. lol I mean, they can’t be even used as watches. This land of the Mouse is good at making people spend their money willingly

The ride was not bad. If you are a fan of Frozen/Elsa, you would probably love it

And the queue went up to 60 minutes after we exited 😡

We walked further down to Mexico so we could take the ride – Gran Fiesta Tour Starring The Three Caballeros

First, dropping by the Mexico marketplace which was indoor and had aircon

And also selling lots of random stuffs like Sombrero hats that were pretty heavy Moving onto the boat ride

Which had pseudo fireworks. It really felt like you were on a boat ride enjoying some festival in Mexico

Before exiting, we spotted this restaurant – San Angel Inn that looked so pretty it felt like you could hold a wedding here.  Vibes at Disneyparks are simply amazing

So we walked around a long while killing time which we found ourselves at United Kingdom bumping into Mary Poppins who also looked like she was pretty tired cos her meet-and-greet ended pretty quickly 😀

The next thing you know, we found ourselves a bench, sat down and stoned out for a good half an hour while waiting for Food & Wine to commence at 11am. lol

We were hungry, so decided we shall start walking and since there was still time, we popped in Beauty and the Beast Sing-Along that had a 5 minute wait time *cues more seating/resting* and by the time we came out, the booths were ready. yay

Ireland

Roasted Irish Sausage w Colcannon Potatoes & Onion Gravy

Fisherman’s Seafood Pie

Bunratty Mead Honey Wine

First stop. We felt like they had gone a little too much on the gravy, like it was salty. Well sausages tasted like sausages. The fisherman’s pie definitely fared better. I thought the pie had enough seafood ingredients in it and was actually decent. The honey wine was what it seemed. Honey + wine

Australia

Grilled Sweet-and-Spicy Bush Berry Shrimp w Pineapple, Pepper, Onion & Snap Peas

Roasted Lamp Chop w Mint Pesto & Potato Crunchies

Overall, a very okay booth. They were.. okay. lol

Canada

“Le Cellier” Wild Mushroom Beef Filet Mignon w Truffle-Butter Sauce

Canadian Cheddar & Bacon Soup served w Pretzel Roll

Collective Arts Lager

The beef tasted better than it looked. Like it looked so dry I had my doubts. The soup was really cheesy and salty like after 2 mouthfuls, I had enough. lol

Brazil

Pao de Queijo: Brazilian Cheese Bread

The cheese bread was actually quite tasty but the friend said the previous years were even better

Feijoada: Black Beans w Crispy Pork Belly, Brazil Nut Pesto & Ben’s Original Long White Grain Rice

This was a tough pork belly. Highly recommend to skip this. Moving on..

Hawai’i

SPAM Musubi Nigiri w Sushi Rice, Teriyaki-Glazed SPAM, Spicy Mayo, Eel Sauce & Nori

Florida Orange Groves Sparkling Pineapple Wine

Strange. This was just strange. The rice was too soft/mushy, sauce a little too much and the spam tasted strange. How can spam go wrong? This is puzzling. But the pineapple wine was pretty refreshing. At least it could wash down the food

Belgium

Beer-Braised Beef served w Smoked Gouda Mashed Potatoes

It looked better than it tasted. The flavour of this dish was a little on the sour side so I’m not sure if it’s meant to be this way. Would preferred a more flavourful version of it

Beer Flight

Chilled Coffee w Godiva Chocolate Liqueur

Thought I needed a perk-me-up. I perked up. Not cos of the caffeine but from the sweetness of it. Not much taste of coffee. You are better off buying a normal cup of latte from Joffrey’s

Shimmering Sips

Guava Mousse, Sugar Cookie w Coconut-Lime Whipped Cream

To sum this up, this tasted like sugar. I stroke off all the desserts from Food & Wine after this

Traditional Buffalo Wings w Celery and Ranch

Central 28 Beer Company Groveland Road Blood Orange IPA

We were tired and so we found ourselves indoors near Mexico enjoying the aircon. The friend’s husband wanted to try the buffalo wings. All I could say that the sourness of this woke them up. lol. I didn’t try. I could sense it from their reaction

I wanted to rank it from good to bad, but I struggled to find the good. lol

After a feast, we were ready for food coma. So we explored the different pavilions a little before we went back to United Kingdom and stone out for a good half an hour, again

A happy but tired us at Morocco

While the friend got her iced green tea from Japan, we caught a Matsuriza performance there as well

Not sure if we were entertaining ourselves or the flamingos in China

Then back at UK, our favourite spot! Shade + bench was a good decision. We also camped to get our virtual queue for Guardians of the Galaxy where slots opened at 1pm and it was a game of fastest finger first. So. Stressful

lolThe heat was so bad we hid inside American Heritage Gallery and caught Voices of Liberty, which was an A capella performance before moving out to catch the ride Mission: Space

The friend and I went for the green mission while the friend’s husband went for the more intense orange version. I can’t take circular/spinning motion so I decided that green would be good enough

And soon it was time for our turn at Guardians

You can only enter when your turn is called and we scanned our Magicband through

To be honest, I had no idea what I was getting myself into

But I got excited cos we were seated in the first car and you know first car for roller coasters = best seat

I really love this indoor roller coaster ride. It was so good. The ride was smooth with not much jerks so you don’t feel like you were gonna be thrown out of the seat and I love the sets/designs while you fly through the space. I would take this again anytime

Told the friend to pose and she gave me a helpless I’m-so-exhausted-right-now. lol

The plan was to continue having Food & Wine for dinner but we were so exhausted we decided to have Teppan Edo instead. So saved us all from walking around and getting the food/drinks

So we took the Friendship boat which would take us across the pond..? Ha. Yah. That was how low on energy we had

And soon the boat arrived! yay

Located in Japan, Teppan Edo shared the same space at Tokyo Dining and is a table service restaurant. So technically we had to have reservations to dine there. We decided to just try our luck and walk-in and they said they would prepare the table for us. Well, we should have guessed the turn-out when they said they have availability. lol

Tokyo Dining on the right

Teppan Edo on the left

We waited a long while for the chef to arrive cos the said chef was still busy cooking at other stations and we got a combination of shrimp + chicken and NY cut steak to share cos one knows how big American portion is

The said chef finally appeared and showcased his skills to 5 very unimpressed Asians and 3 of us looked so bored /zoned out. lol it’s not that we didn’t want to participate and pretend to be interested. We really can’t. Jetlag was real

All entrees/combinations come with garden salad, udon noodles, vegetables and steamed rice

The garden salad, which they mentioned was drizzled with a really yummy sauce. In my head, I thought can say not yummy meh? lol. Anyways we thought the salad would probably taste better without the sauce. Felt that it was a little salty (and that was just the start)

Well. When we saw how much salt/soya sauce he drizzled over every single thing, we should have known. This would be a disaster. And a disaster indeed. He has just spoiled a good cut of steak

Since when shrimps need so much soya sauce! Aiyo. I think I could probably cook better! Seriously

The chicken was a little dry else I thought it was actually charred just right. And, it was salty

And it was an equally salty plate of udon noodles. So salty we woke up from our slumber

We concluded the best dish of the night was the iced green tea. And half of us were thinking if we should just reject the food on the first service. But we didn’t. Cos we just wanted to eat and go back to sleep. lol

And that wrapped up our clearly exhausting Day 1

Day 2 started dark and early cos we planned to get to the park at 6.45am and that meant leaving our hotel at 6.15am. OH GOSH. lol but thankfully the body was still adjusting to US hours so it was actually very doable

And that’s our shuttle that would take us to Magic Kingdom

You thought we were early at 6.50am? There were many earlybirds like us, kids even. I was amazed that these young kids (read: young) were awake and energetic in their stroller. How do they even wake up? I joked if any kid need sleep training, try sending them to Disneyland. Disney magic is indeed m a g i c a l

The park did look really pretty with all the lights up

If only everywhere we go is empty like this

But noooo, look at the crowd. lol

While everyone had their sights on the rides/attractions, we went straight for the castle

So that we can have the place all to ourselves

The castle was specially dressed up in the 50th colours, so definitely need a shot or two to keep!

And we made it for rope drop. We went straight for Jungle Cruise, Adventureland cos supposedly the wait time can get quite long

The ride was pretty entertaining, though abit lame and definitely need some sense of humor

We got to Peter Pan next but I was rather disappointed with the ride. I remembered the Shanghai one was much better. Kudos to the staffs for being in character though, that’s probably the only thing I enjoyed

Then we made it to Big Mountain Railroad before taking a break at Sleepy Hollow  for a snack cos the friends were hungry

which came in the cutest form of Mickey-shaped Waffle w Strawberries and Powdered Sugar

and Fresh Fruit Waffle Sandwich

I have to say the waffle with the hazelnut one was much better. The Mickey waffle was all for the gram. lol. I mean the batter is good just that it gets quite soggy with the sauce

We caught Mickey’s Magical Friendship Faire under the hot hot sun and decided to find some respite from the heat with Haunted Mansion

Sidetrack: I really pitied the people inside the characters. If we felt this hot, I wondered how would they feel

And on the way out/hiding under the tree (yes, tree was our best friend), we caught Mickey’s Celebration Cavalcade

In my opinion, this was quite a short parade. So if you missed it, it’s okay

Soon, it was time for lunch at Columbia Harbour House! I got the Grilled Salmon with Fries (kids portion) while the friends shared the Trio Platter. I’m not sure about theirs but my salmon was actually quite decent, so much I wished they gave me a bigger portion of it. lol

The weather was hot outside but anything indoor was blasting aircon like no other, so much that the hot & cold was driving me quite unwell

After lunch in a pretty cold environment, we got back under the sun and caught Disney Festival of Fantasy Parade while still hiding under tree. lol. We clearly had different priorities

🙂

Look who we found while we were on the way to Mickey’s Philharmagic *cues indoor + aircon*

Though I don’t understand why Tigger and Pooh had to stand so far away from me..? 😦

And then exhaustion started to kick in again. I blamed it on the sun. lol so we went back hotel to nap for abit before coming back out for Mickey’s Not-So-Scary Halloween party. It’s actually a separate ticketed event so those without the wristbands will be chased out of the park. Okay they don’t really chase you out but you can’t really enter the premises as well

We went to collect our treat bag where we could go round the park that had booths marked with a candy sign to collect our treats. Well, I heard the bags in the past were bigger. They had clearly downsized

They have lots of figurines in the parks and your Magicband supposed to interact with them

Though I don’t really quite get how it works. I mean it will just light up and vibrate and then..? lol #seriouslyconfused

I wanted to find with Mickey so we went to Town Square Theatre to hunt him down and in the process of queuing..

A+ for effort

The locals really put in alot effort in dressing up

while the 2 of us clearly don’t care. lol

Love all these Mickey-designed pumpkins. Wished they had more designs around the park

I was hungry so I wanted to have hotdog for dinner. Went to Casey’s Corner cos I saw so many people buying from this shop

It’s called regret

I got the foot-long hotdog which was clearly too much for me. And the hotdog was just salty. omg. I felt so queasy after eating I wanted to throw up

And while I was trying to digest my dinner, I accompanied the friend to hunt for her dinner. Never knew salad/fruits were so difficult to find in Magic Kingdom. More so cos the park closed early for Halloween, most places were not operational for dinner. So in the end, the friend had some pan-fried gyoza which were clearly not gyoza

We cheered up when we saw Pooh & friends in their getup that was just simply too cute

We were just wandering around the park then we saw ropes being held up and that could only mean a parade is on the way. So we found a good spot, sat down and never moved. lol

Mickey’s “Boo-to-You’ Halloween parade in which the song was stuck in our head for awhile. Boo-to-you! Happy Halloween!

Watching the parade just put a smile on your face 🙂

We walked back to centerstage to find a spot for Disney’s Not-So-Spooky Spectacular which was a special fireworks show specially for this halloween event

All I can say is Disney really knows how to do a spectacular fireworks show. That’s where all your money from merchandise is going into. Ha

We wanted to catch Pirates of the Carribean cos they had some specials for this Halloween event, only to find out the ride was closed -.-

So while the friend went on to her favourite Splash Mountain, I went to ride the Space Mountain

Our mountains were clearly different

The queue took about 20 minutes which was not that bad as it could go up to even longer waiting times in the day. I saw this was classified as Halloween special so I was anticipating something different. The only thing that was special was they switched off all the lights? So it felt like you were riding in complete darkness. Well, I didn’t really enjoy this ride cos I felt like I was thrown all around

Here’s our treat bag at the end of the day. I threw away 3/4 of the sweets cos clearly it was too much to bring back home

Ended the night past 11pm. It was a good decision to go back and rest in the afternoon. By the time we got back to hotel and ready for bed, it was already 1am and we had to be up at 530am the next day for a new park. omg. Crazy has a new definition when you are in Disney. lol