It's An Old Dog; New Tricks; Pop And Fort TCD Trip Report

I told you that there would be another trip report coming along.

And, here it is!

This one is a bit different.

The TCD gang slummed it on this trip.

We stayed in a hotel!

Disney's Pop Century Resort.

Why, you ask?

Well, the TCD twins had Monday, March 7 off of school.

But, we had just been camping at the Fort in February, and were planning to return at the end of March for Spring Break.

So, it seemed like the perfect time for a one-night trip.

We do that sometimes.

Sometimes we even stay two nights.

We have stayed at every Walt Disney World resort.

And we like the Fort the best.

But on this trip, it was Pop. We have stayed there before. It's OK. That's not the "new tricks" part of this report.

The "new tricks" part was that we tried the Disney Dining Plan.

We have never tried it before.

But, since we weren't camping, I figured this would be our chance.

We just did the quick serve option.

Which provided us with new refillable mugs.

I needed those anyway, so that was good.

The rest of it was so-so. No big surprise. We got two quick serve meals and two snacks. If we had paid out of pocket for everything, we most definitely would have paid more. But, it is unlikely that we would have ordered the desserts, beverages and snacks that came with the plan, so I'm not sure that we saved money in the big scheme of things. However, I can now say that I have tried the DDP.

Since this was a one night trip, we arrived early. Very early. Like around 8 am. We checked in so we could get our parking pass. The room was not ready, but they took my cell phone number and promised to text when it was.

We headed to Epcot.

The Flower and Garden festival had just begun, and we wanted to check it out.

We had another cold winter in Florida this year, and the landscaping in most places around central Florida was still showing the effects- a lot of brown and dormant plants.

But not at Epcot.

The place looked great!:

Maybe this doesn't look like a big deal to you, but think about how many plants had to be planted all around that lake to create this effect. It really is an impressive sight. Especially considering that everything else outside of WDW was still brown and dead.

For the past couple of years, the Butterfly garden has been over in the area near the Test Track exit. This year, it was moved over to the area near the Imagination pavilion. Also new this year was the Bambi theme. Here we are heading toward the Butterfly garden:

So, have you heard of the Disney Fairies?

In the past couple of years, they set up a meet and greet area in the Magic Kingdom called Pixie Hollow. Then, they invented a bunch of fairies to be friends with Tinkerbell, and hang out there. i never made it over there, but I'm sure that there was a gift shop involved. Well, with the expansion currently underway at the MK, the Pixie Hollow area was closed. They moved the fairies over to Epcot for the Flower show. I'm not sure where they are now. But, as luck would have it, one of the fairies entered the Bambi Butterfly Garden right after we did. Look!:

I don't know.

Somehow, I expected more.

I am not sure which fairy this is.

But, there you go.

Here's a couple of shots from inside the Butterfly Garden:

Typically, our day at Epcot will begin with a ride on Test Track, and then a stop at Soarin'. While at Soarin' , I snapped a photo of this seating chart. I had never noticed it before, and I didn't realize that some of the rows held less passengers than others. Now I know:

As I mentioned, we were visiting Epcot on one of the first weekends of the Flower and Garden festival. This sand sculpture was new, and I wondered whether it was going to be there for the entire festival, or just until it got washed away. The answer is that it was there the whole time. They must have touched it up daily. You can see the men working on it here:

Here's another shot of those flowers around the lake:

We ate an early lunch at the Mexico quick serve as soon as it opened. This place is great. With the dining plan, we each got and entree and an order of churros. That is a lot of churros!

After lunch, we started around International Showcase to take a look at some of the topiaries. Our plan was to duck out through the International Gateway after we passed France and to head over to Hollywood Studios.

But first, we saw these pandas in China:

And some Lion King topiaries at the area you come to after you pass China:

At Germany, we were greeted by Snow White and the dwarfs:

And Germany also had this display from the movie Tangled:

One of the TCD twins said that she had seen a video posted somewhere showing that this display was really cool at night. We did not get to see that on this trip, and we tried on a couple of subsequent trips ,but we never got to see the light effects in this display. Supposedly, they were pretty cool.

We were proud of ourselves for spotting Rapunzel's pet lizard, Pascal, sitting on top of this bush:

In Morocco, we were greeted by a faceless Aladdin:

It was about here that one of the TCD twins received a very urgent text.

A friend of hers was at Hollywood Studios and was letting her know that she needed to get over there ASAP. A big deal was about to happen!!!

As luck would have it, we were almost to the International Gateway anyway.

So, we hurried on over there, and hopped on the boat, and we were on our way to Hollywood Studios in time (we hoped) for the BIG DEAL!

Up next . . .

Did we make it on time?

Was it really a BIG DEAL?

And was it worth it?

TCD

p.s. Don't worry, there will be a visit to the Fort, complete with photos in this report.