So this year will be my 3rd year in a row at mickeys not so scary Halloween party and obviously I love it! I love the atmosphere, the Magic kingdom at Halloween looks amazing and the parade and shows are out of this world. This is a separate ticketed event at WDW so is not included in your general park admission. The ticket costs between  $72-105, but is well worth the price.The event usually runs from September through to Halloween,  and is on selected nights only at the Magic kingdom.

I usually find that the day I attend the not so scary party is usually a day that I have scheduled to spend at the Magic kingdom anyways, so I usually have a chilled out morning and head over at around 11am. At any point during your day at the park you can go to guest relations to swap your ticket for your wristband .The park closes to general ticket holders at 7pm and from then on only guests wearing wristbands are allowed in the park. When picking up your wristbands you will also be given your trick or treat bag! (Keep it safe you will need it later on!). Through out the park they have treat stations (which can be found on your map) you can visit as many times as you like and as you walk through you will be greeted by cast members who will fill your bag with candy! It’s so much fun and is for any age!

Halloween treats!!!

Halloween in America is huge but nobody does it quite like Disney! And I have to give praise to many of the guests I see from 7pm onwards who go that extra Mile to dress up! I have seen some amazing costumes over the years and it’s great to see whole family’s getting involved (please note that adult fancy dress is not permitted any other time except for this ticketed event). The park is full of pumpkins but done the Disney way of courSe! So it’s still as magical as ever but has that hidden touch!

So as well as the rides being open later (thunder mountain and splash mountain are great to do in the dark) you will also be treated to an amazing hocus Pocus show and the boo to you parade!! I loved the hocas pocus show so much I watched twice in one night!! The singing and dancing are brilliant and the 3 main characters of the show really do resemble the Sanderson sisters!! The film itself ”tis one of my favourite’s but even if you are not a fan I’m pretty sure you’ll love seeing it live!

Of course after being treated to that spectacular show you are then treated to the boo to you parade! And what a parade it is! The jaw dropping part comes at the beginning when you get to see the headless horseman wonder down Main Street!, my jaw still drops at this!!

The parade that follows this awesome entrance is one of pure Disney delights mixed nicely with a little evil! Don’t worry if you have young children…. it’s really not so scary!?

But you will be treated to a few grim grinning ghosts and grave diggers along the way…..

And where there is good, there is of course evil!!!

After all that excitement you then have one final delight in the shape of the firework spectacular! You have never seen the castle looking so good as you are treated to a spooky fireworks and Halloween songs!

Halloween at WDW is a truly spooktacular (sorry could resist) event. It is the main reason we choose our vacation in the September/October time, and Mickeys not so scary Halloween party is an event you must attend at least once!! I can’t wait to be there this year!!! The atmosphere is electric, the shows and parades and fireworks are a pure delight. I cannot recommend this event enough!! Get booking now!!!…………

Another WDW blog done for another week!! Of course I will be back next week for a brand new Disney blog.

In the mean time….well you know what to do by now!!!!

Enjoy the read!

Until next time

Little miss keeping it real?

The post Mickey’s not so scary Halloween party (my Disney adventures) appeared first on Lifestyle Lisa.

So you’ve picked your dates, worked out who’s going and decided where you want to stay (on or off park) your Disney trip is all booked and you can’t wait to get there!…..so now what? One thing that blows my mind is how unprepared some people are for Disney! I know from experience how much time you waste sitting around each morning on holiday talking about what you could and should do. My 1997 and 2005 trips were not planned so every morning we’d get up and ponder over the leaflets that we had and work out what we thought we should do that day, Disney, universal, or a water park… etc! So when we booked to go back in 2015 and I saw how much the parks had grown in the 10 years I had been away I knew I needed a plan in order to make the most out of my vacation. For some people this really is a once in a lifetime holiday and you won’t want to miss a thing. 

I’m going to take you through my planning process, of course everyone is different and I am a self confessed planner…. and a little bossy at times so I did kind of take charge of the whole planning the vacation.
We had a party of 8 for both the 2015 and 2016 trips however for 2017 it’s just Luke and I! We’re doing it different this year and have decided to stay in a Disney park resort hotel (Port Orleans – Riverside) the reason why I have never been bothered about staying in a resort hotel is because I love having my own big spacious villa with my own private swimming pool and jacuzzi, and plus when there is a big group of you I find it way more social to head home after a busy day and all chill out by the pool and chat about the day, sometimes a hotel is a little less social, as you head back to your room at the end of the day. However staying on Disney property does come with some benefits (explained below). Pictured below is our beautiful 2016 villa, complete with 3 bathrooms, 5 bedrooms, a swimming pool and jacuzzi.

So here we are, it’s the middle of March my holiday is September 21st 2017, and today we have started planning! That’s how early I like to plan! Plus it’s so much fun to do so.

Before we go on our vacation we always watch Disney vlogs on YouTube, these are great for little tips, but also I like seeing which restaurants people have eaten in and which hotels they are staying in, that way I get an idea of where I want to stay and eat. Vlogs are also a good way of seeing how not to do your Disney vacation (this isn’t by no means directed at all vlogs) but sometimes we sit there and watch vlogs and it’s like day 4 and they haven’t even done a park yet, it’s been all shopping and beach. Most definitely not my idea of a good vacation. I also love vlogs because it gets you even more excited for your very own vacation!

Okay first things first, Luke and I have a whiteboard as the initial planner, we list out the holiday days on the left hand side and then write what we plan to do on that day on the right hand side. This is great as you can just rub things out and change them really easily, at the moment our board looks like this (see below image)Just so you know EMH stands for Extra Magic hours and these can be found listed on the Walt Disney World website, its good to know this when planning your days as the park will generally be busier on these days as it attracts more guests (the ones staying on Disney property). Its then up to us whether we want to avoid the respected park on these EMH days, but saying that you could get a lot done in an extra hour or so…. i.e. get on rides that are less crowded. Its all down to personal preferences.
This is early stage planning (phase one) this is at the moment what we will be doing every day whilst on our vacation. Chances are it will change, except for the 1st and last day which, for us, have always been and will always be spent at Magic kingdom. Here is a picture of last years 1st copy planner which I wrote whilst sitting at my desk at work!!

Now what I did try to do was to be mindful of everyone, doing Disney is tough and you can quite easily do 18-20 thousand steps a day covering 5-6 plus miles. And if you are anything like my family we don’t do lay in’s!!! Lay ins are for lazy Sunday mornings at home! Not for Florida!! Most mornings I was up at 7 and out the door by half 8 sometimes earlier. Trying to stagger the parks will certainly give your feet a well earned rest, for example I do try (not always possible) but where I can not do 2 or 3 hard core days at a Disney park in a row. So I might do a hard day at Disney followed by a day at the malls or Gatorland or Kennedy space centre, these are what I refer to as “rest days”! Don’t be afraid to leave the Disney Magic for a while whilst in Florida, it is a big place and has so much to offer it would be a shame to go home and only have spent your time in the Disney bubble. I will do a separate series of blogs about my Florida adventures and what to do and where to go. Lastly when you are planning please don’t mistake a water park for a rest day!! They are anything but restful!! By the time you’ve walked 30 plus steps to the top of a water slide you are pretty exhausted, especially in the Florida heat which was around the 32 degree mark! Now try an entire day of that!!! Definitely not the relaxing chilled rest day you had in mind right!!… although it is super fun of course.

I have mentioned we are going just the two of us, and staying for the first time ever in a Disney resort! We did a lot of research into this and watched a lot of vlogs! We finally settled on the Port Orleans resort

It was a really really tough decision because all of the resorts look amazing, but we really really liked the look of port Orleans and the Deep South look it has. We booked our holiday mid January, we are flying Virgin premium economy and will this year be going for 2 weeks (last year we did 3).

Okay so as we are staying on Disney property we get the added bonus of:

Fastpasses

Being able to book our fastpasses 60 days in advance (as apposed to the standard 30 days) this could be the difference of going on a ride or not, unless you’re not put off by waiting in line for 80-90 minutes in some cases! This is the main reason why knowing which park your doing on which day is pretty important! This way we already know what fastpasses we want and Luke is very good at keeping track and jumping on it the day that we can book.

Extra Magic Hours

Extra Magic hours!!!! which allows us and other guests into the park before other offsite guests, that just means EXTRA PLANNING!!!! We have never had this before and really want to utilise our time and make the most of it before other park guests are allowed in!

Complimentary MagicBands 

Unlock our Disney Resort room, enter theme parks and water parks, charge food and merchandise purchases, connect PhotoPass images to your account & check in at FastPass+ attraction and entertainment lines

Complimentary transport and parking –

AIRPORT
Disney’s Magical Express Service is a convenient service that transports you and your party between Orlando International Airport and your Disney Resort hotel via motorcoach, including luggage delivery service—at no additional charge.

RESORT
Our complimentary motor coach, ferryboat and monorail services are available to take you throughout Walt Disney World Resort.

PARKING
Guests of Disney Resort hotels enjoy complimentary standard parking throughout the theme parks, water parks, Disney Springs and hotel areas at no extra cost.

We also have a list of restaurants we want to eat at, some are character dining experiences others are just normal restaurants I have researched or seen vlogs on all of the restaurants and have picked out the ones that I really fancy. We will start booking these on Saturday 25/03/2017 when our 180 day window opens and every day thereafter! Again I’m pretty sure that Luke is on it and will book as soon as we can! Its also good to have a couple of contingency restaurants lined up just in case you cant get your first choice.

Part of my planning consists of researching loads of tips from the parks! And listing them all! I do this via google, YouTube and Pinterest.

I like to know everything from people’s favourite rides, to the best snacks in the park. I also like to know if I’m having breakfast out, at a park or in my villa or hotel room, same goes for lunch or dinner. As most restaurants in WDW (except quick service menus) require a booking you can’t just rock up and expect to get a reservation, if you do that you may walk away very disappointed and hungry!

Another really really fun thing  I love doing before my holiday is my countdown sheet!! The first time I did it I went for the full 100 day countdown, but since then I have cut it down to a much more respectable 50 days!!! Plus I was far less annoying on Facebook!!

And of course there are the obligatory selfies that go with the countdown!!

So after all the researching, watching a lot of vlogs, writing planners, re-writing planners, changing planners, booking fastpasses and booking dinning reservations, my planning is finally done and I have my finished itinerary that looks like this!!!….

Luke scales down the size and prints it out! Last year I did one per couple so everyone knew what was happening! I know it sounds a bit much but trust me you need something like this in place! The parks are too big and you will end up missing things!!! But with a little bit of planning you stand a far better chance of doing Disney like a pro!!!

I’ve really enjoyed sharing my Disney planning process with you!!! Thank you to Luke who added in some things I had missed out!!!! Hope you found this helpful and insightful!!!! Of course I’ll be back next week with a new blog!! But until then thanks you very much for reading!!

Little miss keeping it real ?

The post Let’s get planning!!! (My Disney adventures)? appeared first on Lifestyle Lisa.

Now before I start CANNOT stress enough that this is my personal opinion only!

Here we go 

10:Haunted Mansion: This is a ride which takes you through the haunted manor resided by 999 happy haunts in vehicles called “Doom buggies”Over 15 rooms are waiting to be explored within the brick-draped walls of this darkened, spirit-infested abode. You will find the haunted mansion located in liberty square at the Magic kingdom. This is somewhat of a classic feature to the park and earns the number 10 spot on my list because I love Halloween and spooky things, and love nothing more than a good old haunted house! The eerie manor and the dusty decor inside add to the atmosphere,  oh and if you happen to make it through the mansion, be warned that 3 phantoms await you at the exit and shall surely follow you home—but not before performing ghoulish new pranks to keep you in good spirits! The ride time is roughly 8 minutes long, and  I would suggest a fastpass for this attraction. A little fun fact for this ride-If the wait time shows 13 minutes then you will almost definitely be able to walk straight on the ride with little or no queue.

9:Seven Dwarfs mine train:This is a family friendly roller coaster ride, you will find in Fantasyland,where you board a mine train and follow a winding path through the Enchanted Forest and make your way inside the rocky tunnel of an age-old mountain. This is a fairly new attraction which opened in 2014, fastpasses for this ride go very very quickly and you could find yourself in for a 80 minute plus wait if you are not lucky enough to get one! I personally don’t feel the ride is worth an 80 minute wait, it’s very short, it never really seems to go anywhere despite having some twists and turns. I’m not really sure why it so popular, I find it quite disappointing once riding it. Nevertheless I would ride it again, but for this reason it earns a spot at number 9!

8:Splash MountainThis Is a log flume with some dark scenes, situated in Frontier land at the Magic Kingdom.Based on the characters, stories, and songs from the 1946 Disney film Song of the South. What begins with a peaceful outdoor ride causualy going along, takes you into a dark cave, with a climactic steep drop into a “briar patch” followed by an indoor finale of a 50 feet drop! WOW! Okay so I like this ride it’s more than just your typical log flume, as it tells a story along the way (although I am not overly familiar with the characters from song of the south) the surprise drop which happens in the cave is a bit of a shock first time round you are never expecting it! And of course there’s the 50ft drop at the end which gives you a bit of an adrenaline rush!. I’d recommend a fastpass for this ride, and watch out for the time you book it as you will get wet!!

7:Thunder Mountain:This is a mine train roller coaster that you will find in Frontierland. The back story for this ride is that some time in the late 1800s, gold was discovered on Big Thunder Mountain in the American Southwest. Overnight, a small mining town known as tumbleweed town became a thriving mining town. Mining was prosperous, and an extensive line of mine trains was set up to transport the ore. Unknown to the settlers, the Mountain was a sacred spot to local Native Americans and was cursed! Now I believe this ride is actually better at night! It appears faster and you get thrown around a lot more. I rode this at night during the Mickeys not so scary Halloween celebrations, and then rode it during the day a few days later and myself and Luke both decided that at night was the way forward! For me this is another classic attraction , my mum and dad did this ride back in the early 80’s at Disney Land whilst vacationing in California, and told me about before my first trip to Disney world in 1997, so I was very excited to finally get to ride it myself. I think it is a little dated, but has recently gone under construction so I am super excited to ride it when I go in September!

6:Space Mountain:

This is a space-themed indoor roller coaster attraction located in tomorrow land at the Magic kingdom. Space Mountain opened in 1975 and is the oldest operating roller coaster in the state of Florida. Okay yes it’s old (this concerns my boyfriend a little) but it’s a great ride, very fast, great drops, and the fact that it’s pitch black in there makes every twist and turn a complete surprise! It’s definitely worthy of the number 6 spot.

5:Test Track:

This is a high speed racing car attraction at Epcot. The ride is a simulated excursion through the rigorous testing procedures that General Motors use to evaluate its concept cars. The beginning bit of this attraction bores me a little as part of the queue system incorporates you designing your own custom concept vehicle at an interactive design kiosk, so you will choose all your car’s features. Note: if you choose to use the FastPass or Single Rider lines, you will skip this process and will use a custom car designed for you. Once this part is over I love the actual ride itself as you pass through the attraction in a six-passenger SimCar, but your design follows you through the ride in a virtual sense. At the end, you will find out how your design compares to the SimCar in the areas of Capability, Efficiency, Responsiveness and Power. The highlight of this attraction was (and still is) a speed trial on a track around the exterior of the Test Track building at a top speed of 64.9 miles per hour, making it one of the fastest Disney theme park attractions ever built. Unfortunately once again I find this ride a little short which is why it gets my number 5 spot.

4:Soarin:Ahhhhh soarin! I have a lot of love for this ride! You will find it inside the land pavilion at Epcot. the idea is that you are about to take flight in a glider around the world. This is further reinforced in the theming that you are loaded into “gates” and with airport-themed spiels which reference “Flight 5505”, which is a homage to the opening day of the attraction. The cast members wear costumes that resemble flight attendant costumes too. Once seated in your glider your feet are left dangling, you are lifted into the air and your breathtaking journey begins! I can’t get enough of this ride, it amazes me every single time I ride it!

3:Rock n Roller coaster: This is an enclosed roller coaster ride which accelerates from 0 to 57 miles per hour in 2.8 seconds (making this the second-fastest attraction at the Walt Disney World Resort, behind only Test Track). You as the  rider will experience 4.5 G as you enter the first inversion, more than an astronaut does on a space shuttle launch!…. intense! The cars you sit in are made out to be stretched limos and Aerosmith tunes blast out as you make your was through the loops and inversion! Unfortunately this also seems to be the shortest ride in the park, it’s over so quickly that if you blink you miss it! My boyfriend Luke particularly likes this ride but for me it’s gets the number 3 spot.

2:Expedition Everest:This is a steel roller coaster which you will find at Disney’s Animal Kingdom. The ride is themed around the Yeti hiding in Mount Everest. It is listed in the 2011 book of Guinness World Records as the most expensive roller coaster in the world. Including sets and extras, its total cost was reported to be US$100 million, following 6 years of planning and construction. This is an amazing thrill ride, full of unexpected twists, turns and drops! When you reach the top of the mountain you can get the most amazing view of the whole park!…. although you also get the full view of how high up you actually are! The queue line is equally as interesting and starts at the office of the fictional “Himalayan Escapes” travel agency, progressing to a replica temple with little holy figures. You next enter a tea garden, followed by a room with equipment from a successful expedition, and then the “Yeti Museum”, which contains information on the Yeti and a moulding of a Yeti footprint. This ride is very fast the drops are steep, it doesn’t go upside down, but everytime I ride this there is a section of the ride in the dark where I swear it feels like you are going upside down! It is the weirdest feeling! This earns its number 9 spot because this is a longer ride than some of the others at 2 minutes 50 seconds, it’s fast it’s thrilling, it’s basically everything I want from a ride!

1:Tower of Terror:The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror, commonly known as the Tower of Terror(or as I like to call it terror tower) is an accelerated drop tower dark ride located at Disney’s Hollywood Studios. So riders get into a seemingly ordinary elevator and as you begin your journey you will get the told the fictional backstory in which people have mysteriously disappeared from the elevator under the influence of some supernatural element many years prior. As you begin your accent to the top it’s very disorienting as it’s so dark so you have no idea how high you are climbing, but it feels like you are going higher and higher until you stop, lift doors then open , you hear and loud shattering of glass, and………..? no my lips are sealed!! Anticipation is just one of the many reasons this is my number 1 ride! Having originally rode this back in 1997 when the ride featured just one drop, I instantly loved it! And now having done this ride a total of 10 times over 4 trips I still get the same feelings of anticipation and nervousness before riding it, even though I know exactly what will happen and when. I also love throwing my arms in the air for the photo opportunity and trusting that my lap belt will keep me safely in place!! The elevator drops at a top speed of 39 miles per hour,Randomized patterns of drops and lifts have been added, where the ride vehicle will drop or rise various distances at different intervals. The Hollywood hotel itself is a spectacular site, situated at the end of Hollywood boulevard and is the 2nd tallest structure found at the Disney resorts. At 199 tower of terror just missed out to Expedition Everest who stands at 199.5 feet! I really can’t give this attraction enough praise! It’s certainly my best thrill ride! Don’t forget your fastpass!!!
So there you have it MY ?10 rides at Walt Disney world.

I have to take this moment to give a special shout out to both mine and Luke’s parents who tackled all of the rides at the parks. But as you can see from some of my pictures Luke’s mum was less than impressed with some of the things we got her on, but she never gave in, and with some gentle persuasion we got her on them! 2 impressive up ????

This list was a lot more difficult than I thought it would be, honestly all rides at Disney are brilliant, and you really should try them all before you decide on your own top 10.

I’m done for another week, but I’ll be back next week with a brand new Disney blog.

Until then you know what to do

Enjoy the read, like, comment, share, and subscribe!!!!! Link is on my blog page!

Until next time

Little miss keeping it real ?

The post My TOP 10 RIDES! (My Disney adventure’s) appeared first on Lifestyle Lisa.