Past Trips
September, 2025: Halloween on the High Seas!
My first EVER Disney Cruise! My sister and I did a short-but-sweet 3-night “Halloween on the High Seas” cruise on the Disney Wish. It was supposed to go from Florida to Nassau to Castaway Cay and then back to Florida, but a looming storm cut out the Nassau stop. For obvious reasons, we referred to the trip as Sisters on the High Seas! Ha. I have heard that the theming on The Wish is among the best of the DCL fleet and it was pretty great.
Until recently, I’d been resistant to the whole idea of the Disney Cruise. I have no idea why. Perhaps I thought the lack of rides would somehow make it less… fun? Or maybe I felt so much attachment to the parks that I felt like a being anywhere else wouldn’t cut it. It’s really all about the theming and the vibes, though, so I can definitely see going on another Disney cruise some time in the future. From what I could tell leading up, this cruise was basically going to be Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party, but on a (very) large boat, and spread out over several days, which sounded fantastic to me! It wasn’t quite that; and I think expecting it to be on a par with MNSSHP rather than a 3 day cruise with some Halloween stuff might have been an over reach! I did really enjoy it, though.
My sister and I live on opposite coasts so we met up the night before the cruise. I took my usual LGA - MCO early morning flight while she schlepped out from LA. I headed out a couple days early for a little park time - and to go to Beak & Barrel, Geo-82, Storybook Dining at Artist Point, and fireworks at the California Grill. What is that saying about “the best laid plans of (the) Mouse and Me”? I managed to get a bad cold before the trip and was on the tail end of it for the WDW leg. I spent most of the two days holed up at the Contempo (Garden Wing) sleeping. I cancelled everything except my rez as Geo-82 (whiskey is good for colds… is something they probably believed during the California gold rush)
I did my split stay at The Contemporary with a second night at Pop Century - a value resort on the skyliner route! I’d never stayed at Pop C before so while I was definitely underwhelmed about the room itself - the value rooms are all identical - I had been excited to walk around the PopC/Art of Animation area and check out the theming, especially around AoA. None of that happened! I was too tired! (I did see a cute bunny rabbit hopping along a pathway though.) I didn’t watch any fireworks from the CA Grill terrace or do any Disneybounding. I did make my way over to EPCOT for my GEO-82 rez, though. This involved going on the skyliner.
As far as the cruise itself goes, I didn’t do any Disneybounding there either. And my carefully curatied “Cruise Lookbook” kinda went out the window (porthole?). I did most of it, though! We dressed up for Pirate Night and we did our Jack and Sally looks on Halloween. We also decorated our door with a fish extender - although our door look was tame compared with some of the elaborate decoration we saw. The food was great! The rotational dining was very cool - it was nice having the same servers and, I won’t say “getting to know” but at the very least “developing a nice banter with” them. We were sat at a table with two women who were traveling solo. They seemed nice, but while we asked them lots of questions about their lives and now know a great deal about them (and their family medical histories!), they asked nothing about us in return. Perhaps the little we volunteered - that we were from NYC and LA respectively and that we each had a kid - was more than enough.
Disneyland Paris, June 2025
This was my my birthday trip, and a trip to celebrate 50 years of going to these damn parks, and a trip to celebrate my oldest friend’s very first time going to Disney! I’m originally from Leicester in the UK, and she lives there, so I zipped over to London for a couple of days and she came down to hang out. Then we hopped on the Eurostar and headed to Disneyland Paris for 4 days. We met up with her partner to spend the last few days of the trip in Paris proper, and then I headed back home to NYC.
It was such a fun trip! It was really great seeing it all through her eyes. I was a little worried at first that she would hate it, but she got the vibe - I would say fully embraced the vibe - right away and we had a fantastic time.
One of the many highlights was going to the hotel gift shop and trying on the princess dresses “to see if they would fit [our] daughters.” I don’t think the staff bought it for one second - and mine wouldn’t be seen dead in a princess dress anyway… but they let us try them on nonetheless. For future reference I am a girls age 12 to 14 (they’re stretchy!).
Highlights:
Chez Remy: I loved the theming here! I cannot understate how much I love a theme. It’s not that I think everything has to have a theme - far from it. I just appreciate it when a theme is executed so well that it’s basically perfect. The chairs are little muslets (the wire cages that go over wine corks) bended into chair shapes. The booth backs are dinner plates… The conceit being that you are Remy-sized. Not only is the theming excellent in there, but the food was great, too. We had a prix fixe dinner - just the starter & main so we could get dessert somewhere else. We both had the a potato & leak soup, which had vache qui rit in it, making it extra creamy. I had steak and fries and T had roasted cod with crushed potatoes. Good stuff! Sadly, we never got dessert - anywhere - because as we were about to pay, I realized I had lost my wallet. (Classic move to avoid paying for dinner!) I rushed off in a panic. The TL;DR is that my wallet had been found in the main park by a Cast Member and was waiting for me at the lost & found at City Hall. Drama!
Skyline Bar: This is the New York themed bar at the Marvel-themed hotel. I felt right at home! Kidding. (That’s a joke because I live in New York, which is like a giant bar…) The back of the bar is a giant screen window showing a view of the skyline (get it!) “outside” - including Stark Avengers Tower. Every so often a jet flies across and/or Spider-Man shows up dangling from a building. I had a Strawberry Daquiri and a Bee’s Knees, and we had some various nibbles like brioche and crudités. There was no A/C.
Frozen Musical
Pym Test Kitchen
Massage at the Clarins Spa
Fleur de Lys
Royal Banquet + birthday cake and singing
Captain Jack’s
Hong Kong/Shanghai/Tokyo, April, 2025
📷 Photo Album
The Big One. The Bucket List. The amount of planning that went in to this was crazy - especially getting the Vacation Package for Tokyo and that one night at Fantasy Springs. They changed the whole access policy for DFS at the beginning of April, which I think made it a little easier. The trick is to understand how queryStrings work - that and treat the whole thing like you’re ordering at a deli in New York: You don’t get to the counter and then decide what you want. You have literally 5 seconds to put your order in, finalize, and pay when it’s your turn. Am I talking about a deli order or booking a Fantasy Springs hotel room online 4 months in advance. The answer is: Both. It’s literally both.
Making online credit card payments to mainland China was not easy either. Alipay worked initially, then it didn’t after the November elections (seriously!). In the end, I was able to use a VPN and a specific credit card but I doubt that still works. My advice if you’re planning to go to either the Hong Kong or Shanghai resorts: use a travel agent who can handle that for you.
Disneyland, Christmas 2024
An experiment to answer the question: “What if we went to Disneyland at the absolute busiest time of the year and spent xmas day there!?”
It was insanely crowded and, yes, we all got sick toward the end!
It’s definitely not something I feel the need to do again, but it was lovely to spend time with family - and I got to hug Bing Bong in the lobby of Pixar Place (nee Paradise Pier) where we stayed for our first night before everyone else arrived (and we checked out a concierge room just for fun! My Hot take is: wasn’t worth it - maybe if this was my first time at Disney..? or at a hotel..? I ate some M&Ms and sat in a small lounge.).
After our first night a Pixar Place (nee Paradise Pier), we did a 2-bedroom lock-off at Grand Californian. The 3 of us had the studio, and my sister & her husband and my neice had the 1-bed. On boxing day, my brother drove down from LA with my two nieces and we all hung out. Then he drove back up (with C in tow) and the 3 girls had a very rowdy sleepover and a full park day the next day. It ended up working out really well. My sister and I got to have a little us time at Sam’s grotto to boot.
Our last night, we stayed at the Camelot Inn, one of the “Good Neighbor” hotels. Rather than try to do a full park day and then head back to LA we thought it made more sense to find somewhere to crash. Good Neighbor is Disneyland’s version of the moderate and value hotels. Or, rather, these hotels sprang up right next to the park and Disney didn’t really have much say in the matter. These hotels are nothing like the moderate and value hotels you find at other Disney resorts where you find the same standard of theming and service you’d expect from a Disney property. On the plus side, Good Neighbor hotels are a lot less expensive and they are right next to the park, which is… good assuming you’re not going to spend any time there*.
I highly recommend resort days. You don’t have to spend the entire time running around the parks to enjoy a Disney trip!
*While the parks at Disneyland are fantastic, the “Good Neighbor” hotels skew the average way down on the hotels. You’ve got your three deluxe hotels, which are great, but they’re priced out of reach for most people and of course there’s only 3 of them. Everything else just feels tatty and kind of shit by comparison. It’s a real shame. This is where WDW benefits from having started life as a swamp in the middle of nowhere and why Disney was smart to secretly buy up as much of it as they could before anyone caught on. You can stay at one of the All Stars, or PopC/AoA, at WDW for the same price as the Camelot Inn and still get the full Disney experience. And maybe you hop on a bus (or the Skyliner, which is objectively cool!) to get to the Parks, but the bus is clean and comfortable and smells nice… You’re in the bubble! At all times! And when the kids are small, All Star Movies is just as magical as any of the deluxe hotels - that giant Buzz Lightyear butt is hard to beat! When we checked into Camelot at the end of our stay, the drop in quality was steep. TBH it was a depressing end to the trip.
This is where split stays can be really useful. If you want to have Park time and resort time without completely breaking the bank, here’s what I would suggest: start your trip at the cheaper hotel and go at the Parks from dawn til dusk so you’re not in the room too much. Then book a Big 3 for the remainder of your trip, starting with a resort day so you can take a break after those dawn-to-dusk days you just had. Wrap it up with another park day (or two), then take your time on checkout day, maybe with a character brunch or something special at the resort. You can spend that entire day at the resort even after you’ve checked out so, depending on how far you have to travel, make it count. It’s tempting to think that the way we did it makes sense and that the last night is what counts. If you’re someone who likes to sleep til 2 in the afternoon the jump straight in the car - or if you have a 7AM flight and have to be up and out of the room at 4AM - that could work… but if you’re planning to wake up and have breakfast or do anything but leave immediately, I recommend making your last day a proper Disney Day!
Highlights:
Breakfast with Minnie at the Plazza Inn
Holiday Pajama Party Breakfast
Sam’s Tiki Bar
Cute dessert plate at the Palm Breeze Bar on one of our resort days
Lobster mac & cheese at the Lamplight Lounge
Walt Disney World Solo, September 2024
This is The One where I really got into the planning part like it was an olympic sport. Something got unleashed. Up til then I had mostly been winging it, tapping into years of past experience. A reservation here, a booking there… and lots of last minute seeing-whats-available-on-the-app-ing, which usually worked out - especially when I took the kid in 2019 and it was just the two of us. The more people you have in your party, the more difficult it is to just show up - it’s the inverse square law of spontineity. But I’ve never done anything like the level of planning I did for this trip! And I have to say it was almost as much fun as being on the trip.
That’s when I knew… who I really was.
Anyway, the second Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party was cancelled due to heavy winds from Hurricane Irene, which was a bummer because I didn’t see the text until after I had gotten into my Tinkerbell costume and walked over to the Park! After asking some Cast Members if they could bring out the special Halloween merch pieces I missed out on but wanted to buy, which they very kindly did, I walked the 5 minutes back to my room at BLT, changed into an Oswald the Lucky Rabbit bounding outfit, and went to diner at Kona Cafe at the Polynesian instead.
Bonus - met Chewbacca!