I've been thinking about Disney for many of my waking hours of late. I even dreamed about it recently. We went on a pretty big Disney vacation in October but I am again in the throws of planning for an upcoming May trip for our daughters sweet 16. The other day I realized I forgot something. It is also our 20th wedding anniversary. Our anniversary and our daughters birthday are less than a week apart but I had been so focused on her, I forgot about us!
I was talking about this with my husband and we realized that Disney has been part of a few big milestones in our life. We went in 1994 for our Honeymoon. We had a great time! I had been several times as a kid and teen but we never went for more than 1 day and we never stayed on property because we had family in Vero Beach and Tampa. My husband had never been but loves all things Disney. When we stated planning for our honeymoon it came up as a possible destination and we went with it! We stayed at the Caribbean Beach Resort for a week with park hoppers. (There were 3 parks back then) It was the first year of the Flower and Garden festival and I remember it being so magical. We had a character breakfast with Aladdin and Jasmine and loved meeting the characters. My husband was like a kid when we saw the Star Tours area. He stopped dead in is tracks at the sight of Endor! We spent one romantic evening in one of the massive hammocks on the beach at our resort looking at the stars and talking about our future. It was a wonderful way to start off our life as a married couple. We always said we would come back for out 10th anniversary, whatever was going on in our lives.
When 2004 rolled around we not only were we getting ready to celebrate our 10th wedding anniversary, but our daughters 6th birthday was also around the corner. So we decided to have a double celebration. We told a family we spent lots of time with about our plans and the idea launched for us to all go down at the same time. The other family was not there as long as we were but we got to share in the birthday celebrations. They had 2 girls, one a year older and one a year younger than our daughter as well as an infant son. The girls attended a Mad Hatter and Alice party at the Grand Floridian and had such a wonderful time. We also scheduled a Birthday Cruise, complete with cake and ice cream and we watched the Magic Kingdom fireworks from the lake with them. During the second part of the week our friends left but another family we knew and spent lots of time with had moved down to Orlando the year before. So they joined us to help celebrate our anniversary. We had so much fun seeing them and catching up. The kids had fun playing and we spent a lot of time swimming. We went to Typhoon Lagoon on that trip. It was also our first time going during Star Wars weekend and we all love Star Wars so this was a bonus. We celebrated our anniversary by attending the Ice Cream Social at the Garden Grill and getting "Re-Hitched". We even have a certificate and a cast member took photos with our camera for us. It was so much fun! Again, another wonderful time spent at Disney and this time we got to share it with two other families we love.
As our daughter got older we kept playing with the idea of going back down but life kept happening and we never committed to a trip. We went down to Weeki Watchee in May of 2012 so our daughter could attend Mermaid Camp. We really enjoyed this area of Florida but it was strange being so close to Disney and not going to Disney. It was then that we decided we needed to plan another trip.
As we started planning, we decided to go in late September or early October so we could attend Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween Party. We all love fall and Halloween and had only ever been to Disney in May in the past. We also were able to take our daughters BFF on this trip. She had never been to Disney before so planning was really fun. As it turns out, we went over my 49th Birthday, so we ended up celebrating my birthday on our most recent trip. This was not really planned on purpose, it just worked out that way with our dates, but I didn't complain. We had another wonderful fun filled and exhausting Disney vacation. We really did not expect to return so soon. As you can see, we tend to go about every 10 years. (which is just way to many years apart.)
I started asking my daughter what she wanted to do for her 16th birthday. She really wasn't feeling anything we talked about. In a moment of not knowing what else to suggest I asked if she wanted to go to Disney and be a teenage princess, wear a tiara, a sash, etc. Her eyes lit up and she said, "can we eat at Cindy's castle?" I knew this was the perfect way to celebrate sweet 16 in that moment. So I talked about it with my husband and we decided, why the heck not! We went ahead and began booking the trip. We were a little worried for a while because it seemed like hubby was not going to be able to get the whole week off. However his boss found out about our plans and said he had to go, so she managed to get him those days off. We have also decided that on the way home we would stop off at St.Augustine, because my daughter loves history and my husband loves forts. So I have been so busy getting the teen princess aspect together, and researching St. Augustine, that it slipped my mind that our 20th Anniversary would fall into this vacation.
Most of this upcoming trip is going to be about our daughter turning sweet 16. However we are going to take time out to celebrate us. Garden Grill no longer offers the Ice Cream Social or the Re-hitchin'. However a favorite restaurant that we always like to have a meal at is Rose and Crown. So we have booked dinner reservations and I am going to order an anniversary cake for our dinner. We have decided to have t-shirts made with images of Mickey and Minnie and the phrase "Celebrating 20 Magical Years" to wear on the day of our anniversary. Because it has been 20 years and that is something to celebrate, and Disney has been a part of the magic.
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