For the past five years, every November I've made some sort of appearance at my mom's AMATYC (American Mathematical Association of Two-Year Colleges) Conferences. Back in 2014, Peyton and I stopped by Nashville on our way to see Peyton Manning play. My mom was president of AMATYC at the time, and we helped her host a little reception in her giant room. We did such a good job, she invited us back when she was in New Orleans, so we drove over to help with the food for the receptions and enjoy another impressive hotel room. That was the end of her presidency, but as past president, you get pretty sweet digs as well. As a bonus her friend, Jane, was now president and asked if I wanted to come help her with receptions and food. So, Calib, Peyton and I flew out to Denver to piggyback off that trip as well. Last year, we helped Jane again in San Diego. This year, there was a new president- and after two years you don't really have any 'past president' duties, so we didn't think we'd be attending. BUT, then we discovered it was being held right here at Disney World. So while the days of big fancy rooms were over, I don't mind piggy backing off a trip to Disney even in a normal old run of the mill room.
When we were looking at going, we realized the Monday of mom's check in would be the very last day of the Food & Wine Festival. We hadn't been, because on these new passes we were blacked out of Epcot on the weekends. Asa and I decided on our Disney Quest, we also decided we should make it to all the Epcot Festivals (that would be the Food & Wine, Festival of the Holidays, Festival of the Arts, and The Flower & Garden Festival.
So here we are at
Epcot Festival #1: Food & Wine Festival
3 festivals to go! We will be able to go to Food & Wine again next year if we want though, since our passes will extend to next years festival.
Oh, and you'll notice a lack of Peyton in these pictures- he stayed home because he's a party pooper and he hates Disney World.
Our first stop was to get the various poutines at the refreshment port. I was a huge fan of the sweet potato poutine.
We also stopped by some booth and got some wine and cheese pallet plate thingie. (Usually I tell you all the official booths and titles- but I lost my little book thing, and I don't want to look it up!)
Oh! The Butternut Squash ravioli was delicious though, as were the scallops.
And we stopped by the Light Lab- where they mix all these fun concoctions for you.
And you use a decoder to find out what flavor everything is. But, the color doesn't necessarily match up with the flavor you'd think- so there's a bit of your eyes screwing with your taste buds. We tried them all, made our guesses and then used the decoder to figure out what we were having.
Also, there were fun little glow cubes in them!
Asa and I hadn't been to Epcot yet on these passes. There's no real rush on this park- since it's the park we're blackout out of the least. But it did mean that every ride we went on was one checked off the Epcot list.
#1 Journey into Imagination with Figment
And at the exit to Figment we hit
#2 Image Works – The ‘What If Labs’ (at the exit to Figment)
So we played around with stuff and even made our own figments.
Next Up we went to see
#3 Pixar Short Film Festival
Our first fastpass of the day went to
# 4 The Seas with Nemo & Friends
(Hayden photo bombed us here)
There's lots of 'attractions' at the Nemo exit, and we skipped most of them this time around. But, we decided we should do
#5 Bruce’s Shark World
since we had some people along with us to take our picture inside Bruce's mouth.
Back outside at the booths we stopped by Coastal eats for some Shrimp Scampi dip. I really like this stuff- it's like spinach and artichoke dip, but it replaces the veggies with seafood!
Our next fastpass was for
#6 Test Track
We built our cars...
And took a spin around the track.
Then we stopped for some nachos over at the Mexico pavilion.
We went to a few more of the outdoor kitchens for some dessert (and a chicken leg for Asa- it was much too spicy for me!)
Oh, and did I mention Christmas decorations are up at Disney? I LOVE LOVE LOVE Disney at Christmas
The sun was starting to set, and it was about time to head out.
But we had one more fastpass to use...
#7 Spaceship Earth (in Japanese)
But, we like to pick a different language on Spaceship earth so we never know what our 'future' will look like. We actually decided that we are adding to our Disney Quest, a Spaceship earth in every language offered. There's six of them, and this time we went with Japanese.
Our future was a fun one too!
On our way out we had to stop by Calib's picture with my dad (Calib was just about six months old when this 'picture' was taken). The wall is also listed as an attraction, so there was another one off our list.
#8 Leave a Legacy Wall
We left Epcot and headed over to Coronado Springs to help mom check in. We weren't staying Monday night- but we had plans to come back later in the week.
Those plans were slightly de-railed though, when Calib came down with a sore throat. I knew he'd pick up germs out and about like that, but I was hoping he'd fight them off. Mom was getting her award on Thursday though, so Hayden, Asa and I went over to see her. We needed our name tags to get into the conference.
Calib and Peyton missed out- but they had their little numbered stickers to say how many years they had attended.
We found grandma and headed to the opening session.
Where both grandma and Mary Beth got the Herb Gross award for their work. The guy is kind of a big deal. He even has a Wikipedia page.
Congratulations to my mom!
After the opening session, Asa worked from the hotel room while Hayden and I headed over to Hollywood Studios.
Which was also all decorated for Christmas!
I went to see a few things with Hayden, but unless Asa and I do them together, we can't check them off our Disney Quest list. When he was done with work, he came over and met us so we got a start on our Hollywood Studios list.
#1 Star Tours
And #2 Toy Story Mania
I went with Hayden, and was victorious.
But of course Asa was the top scorer in our car.
It was also Hayden's first trip to Toy Story Land! We of course had to get a little something from Woody's Lunch Box. So, the lunch box tarts and the totchos were in order.
We decided to go on a little food tour and took the boat from Hollywood Studios over to the Boardwalk, where Hayden also got to go to Ample Hills for the first time.
Then we took the bus from the Boardwalk over to Disney Springs. (And yes, it was cold enough that I needed my scarf).
Over at Disney Springs we discovered the World of Disney refurbishment is complete!
We stopped by the Taco truck for a taco cone, but it was so spicy, Asa ended up eating the whole thing himself and Hayden and I went over to get poutine (they had a seasonal Thanksgiving Poutine with turkey, gravy and cranberry sauce that I can highly recommend!)
Oh, and Disney Springs is also decorated for Christmas!
We headed back to the hotel to get some sleep.
And then we were up before 7 the next morning to be able to go to Extra Magic Hours at the Magic Kingdom (for those of you unaware, that's when they open the park early just for hotel guests). Since it was so early though, Asa could tag along for a little while before he would head back to the hotel room for work.
But, when we got in, we discovered it was super crowded. Not only were there extra magic hours, but since it was Mickey's 90th Birthday they were having a special passholder merchandise event (that we weren't going to), and they were filming GMA up by the castle. So not only was it busy- but there were all these roped off areas for various groups.
We navigated our way around and headed over to Buzz Lightyear. Since we'd already done 16 attractions at the Magic Kingdom, we continued on our list with
#17 Buzz Lightyear Space Ranger Spin
Despite the crowds, there were very little waits for things that early in the morning.
We took advantage of the short lines to check off a normally long wait...
#18 Astro Orbiter
You can't get Fastpasses for this one either, so being able to check it off with an under 5 minute wait was great news!
Asa took Hayden on the teacups, but I passes since I already checked this one off our list.
We also noticed the Sword is gone from the Stone. What's that all about, Disney?
Up next we were among the first people of the day to go on
#19 Big Thunder Mountain Railroad
Asa had to get going for work, but not before a quick stop for breakfast at Sleepy Hallow where you can get waffle sandwiches. Asa went savory with a ham and cheese waffle, and Hayden and I split a fruit and nutella one (we had other stuff we wanted to eat- so we didn't want to fill up).
Asa was off to work, and Hayden and I were off to our fastpasses of Seven Dwarfs that I had nabbed the night before. Those are usually hard to get- but sometimes people cancel and you're able to get them on short notice.
We also stopped by Wonderland for a Cheshire Cat Tail. It's like a warm light, fluffy, chocolaty donut.
After we had used our first three fastpasses of the day, we decided to just nab whatever came up for right away, so we wouldn't have to wait in lines. That meant another spin on Buzz Lightyear. This time I showed Hayden all the good spots, and his score greatly improved.
We took a trip on the People Mover- Notice my cute new Disney socks. They even have tails on them!
We rode a few more rides (we nabbed Peter Pan Fastpasses on the fly too!!)
and then grabbed some mac and cheese tater tots for lunch.
We stopped for a quick picture at the new instagram-able wall next to the purple wall.
We hit a couple Pokemon raids too-- the Walt Statue is a gym. And then we did some holiday shopping.
Of course, the Magic Kingdom is also all decorated for Christmas!
We got back to the room and waited until Asa's 'lunch' hour to head home. It took almost two hours in the traffic- I swear Land O Lakes is becoming the new Brandon, traffic wise. Anyway, it was nice of mom to share her room with us at Coronado Springs, even though we were only there for a night.
Next Up: November Odds & Ends and Thanksgiving!
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