The countdown is on!! In only 9 days I will be leaving for my Christening Cruise on the Disney DREAM!! The details are still fairly secretive but here is what I know so far...

On January 18th we will check into Disney's Wilderness Lodge Resort. We plan on checking in early so we can get our park tickets and head off to the fun! That evening there is a private party at the Magic Kingdom. It will be closing to the public at 6:00 PM and then our event will begin. I have always wondered who those luck folks were who got to attend parties in Disney World! Well, now I guess I know! For the 18th at least, I will be one of them!! :)

On January 19th we will be taken to Port Canaveral for the official Christening ceremony. This is another event where they are being pretty tight lipped about the details. But after it is over I promise to return and give you the details!!

After the ceremony we will board the DREAM and head off to Castaway Cay!! I am traveling with my sister, Becky, who is a professional photographer. We plan to take pictures non stop and will post many of them when we return! We are both so excited we can hardly contain ourselves!

So, let the DREAM begin!!!!

I realize I am a poor excuse for a blogger. I think the requirement is a little higher than one post every six months. Oh well....! It's not that I don't have anything Disney related to share. I almost have too much to share! But I'm going to start with the biggest Disney news in my life...

Ready? If you thought my winning the Disney Cruise Line clock was cool (which I did!!), you won't believe what happened now...

For most of the summer I entered a travel agent contest with Disney Cruise Line. I do not know exactly how many times I entered, but it was a lot! :) AND, in September I got a phone call letting me know I was one of the winners!! What is my prize?!

I will be on the CHRISTENING VOYAGE of the Disney DREAM!! Yes, I will be setting sail on her before she even opens to the public! I'm so excited I can hardly stand it!!!

The prize includes one night at Disney World prior to the cruise. It also includes some kind of event at the Magic Kingdom but we haven't been given any details on that yet. The next morning we are transferred to the port for a 3 day cruise on the DREAM---including a stop at Castaway Cay. I don't know know too much more at this time except for the fact that this cruise is mainly for press and VIPs!! I'm expecting a pretty awesome trip!!! :)

I am able to bring one guest and I will be bringing my sister. She is a professional photographer so I promise to post real photos soon after we get back (sailing Jan 18-21)....I won't wait 6 months to get those up here!!!

There is a lot of Disney news---new additions to Magic Kingdom; major expansion at Downtown Disney; new restaurants and more... Those will have to be for later posts. Today I am going to bask in the glow of my prize cruise!!! YAHOO!!!

Via Napoli Opens Next Month at Epcot

Oooooh! A new restaurant on the horizon!! I can't wait to try this one!! Here's the word straight from the Disney press release....

Pastas, wood-fired pizzas, scoops of sweet gelato – here’s a first look at the menu for the new Via Napoli Ristorante e Pizzeria at the Epcot Italy Pavilion. Opening next month the 300-seat restaurant expands dining choices (our favorite Tutto Italia stays). Created by the Patina Restaurant Group’s CEO Nick Valenti, the menu is based on his travels in Southern Italy and his time developing and overseeing the successful Naples 45 Ristorante e Pizzeria in New York. Valenti spent time in Naples studying the art of dough, crust, sauce and oven temperatures at the famous pizzerias Da Michele and Trianon. A feature at Via Napoli is its wood-burning ovens, cleverly named after the three active volcanoes in Italy – Mount Etna, Mount Vesuvius and Stromboli.

Appetizers: Sicilian eggplant with olives and raisins; salad of lettuce, fagiolini (string beans), fennel and tomatoes; arancini (fried saffron risotto balls) with meat ragù, mozzarella and pomodoro sauce; corn-crusted fried calamari; and minestrone with basil pesto. Or share a plate of arancini, mozzarella, calamari, portobella mushrooms, asparagus, zucchini and carciofi (artichokes).

Main course salads: Manzo (filet of beef) with greens, red onion, gorgonzola, apple and cucumber with a red wine-mustard vinaigrette; chopped salad with lemon chicken, greens, cantaloupe, cucumber, red pepper, green beans, onions, almonds and pasta crisps with honey-citrus vinaigrette; calamari with arugula, carrots and fennel with orange vinaigrette.

Pastas: candele (long, tube-shaped pasta) with sausage ragù; linguine with seafood; malfadine (ribbon pasta) with guanciale (unsmoked Italian bacon) and pomodoro sauce; lasagna verde.
Piatti alla Parmigiana: (dishes topped with Parmesan and mozzarella gratinée): veal, chicken and eggplant.

Wood-fired pizzas: made with caputo flour imported from Southern Italy, San Marzano tomatoes, handmade mozzarella and water from a local spring just like in Italy’s Campania region – 10-inch, 20-inch or 1/2 meter to share: a dozen choices, from a simple pizza Margherita with tomato, mozzarella and basil to carciofi with artichoke, potato, pecorino cheese, prosciutto and cantaloupe.

Sweets: tiramisù, zeppole di ricotta (ricotta cheese-fried dough, whipped cream and chocolate sauce); apple cake with almond sorbetti; gelatie; and vanilla gelato with almond cookies and amarena cherries.

Changes at the Toy Story Mania! Ride

New characters from the Disney•Pixar film “Toy Story 3” have been added to the adventure of Toy Story Mania! at Disney California Adventure and Disney’s Hollywood Studios. In addition to playing with new characters in Toy Story Mania!, there are opportunities in both parks for up-close fun with a new character from “Toy Story 3” – Lots-o’-Huggin’ Bear. He’s the bossman at Sunnyside Daycare in the animated feature film. Woody, Buzz, Mr. Potato Head and the gang are joined by a whole new set of characters from “Toy Story 3.” The new game greeting guests, “Rex and Trixie’s Dino Darts,” invites riders to shoot their virtual darts at all-new balloon targets in a primeval world filled with volcanoes and lava balloons. Game players are welcomed by Rex (the nervous Tyrannosaurus rex) and his new friend Trixie (a blue Triceratops and one of the toy characters from the new film) cheering them on. The new game (it replaces “Bo Peep’s Baaa-loon Pop”) turns up the fun with more hidden surprises. Other changes: The “Hamm & Eggs” game is now hosted by Hamm and Buttercup (a toy unicorn with heart-shaped nostrils). In the prize scene, Trixie, Buttercup, Dolly (a doll), Mr. Pricklepants (a lederhosen-clad hedgehog) and one other surprise – all from “Toy Story 3” – appear with Woody and Jessie.

Ok, I just can't help myself. Check out these new photos of the Disney DREAM!!!




This is the bow in its unfinished state at the ship yards. But you can tell it is going to have a very similar feel to the MAGIC and the WONDER. Construction started over a year ago and it is fun to see the pieces starting to come together. The maiden voyage is scheduled for January 26, 2011. Tell me again why I am not booked on that???? I am currently scheduled for 3 and 4 night cruises (back to back) in October of 2011. But I am starting to think that won't be soon enough. Come on....who wants to join me in early 2011 to check out this amazing ship!?!?

Originally Posted by Orlando Sentinel

Walt Disney World is about to begin building its first new hotel in seven years, a 2,000-room resort that will open in 2012. Disney’s Art of Animation Resort will feature 1,120 suites with room for as many as six people each and another 864 traditional hotel rooms, with a design theme based on four of the company’s most popular animated movies. The complex will be priced as a “value” hotel, at the low end of Disney World’s scale, similar to Disney’s Pop Century and All-Star resorts, where standard rates begin at $82 a night. The announcement is one of the strongest signals yet from Disney that it thinks a sustained recovery is under way from the long travel slump brought on by the global recession. Disney executives, who have been weighing construction of a family-suites hotel for several years, finally approved the project in January.

The Art of Animation Resort will be built on a 65-acre plot across a lake from Disney’s Pop Century Resort. The location will allow Disney to use a pair of long-neglected, unfinished buildings that Disney originally constructed as a second phase of Pop Century but which it abandoned amid the 2001 recession. Pop Century’s first phase was completed in 2003. Plans for the new resort show 10 wings of rooms and a separate building housing the check-in lobby and restaurants. The hotel wings will be separated into four distinct groups, each with a theme from a different animated movie: The Little Mermaid, The Lion King, Finding Nemo and Cars.Each section will have separate courtyards anchored by icons from the movies — such as a 35-foot-tall King Triton presiding over the Mermaid section — and the entire resort will use bright-color palettes evocative of the lush scenery of animated movies. Hotel designers say they have been soliciting input from artists at Walt Disney Animation Studios and Pixar Animation Studios on everything from building elevations to which scenes to depict at the swimming pools.“The hope is you walk into this courtyard and you’re kind of like seeing it as a character in the movie,” said Frank Paris, a senior project manager with Walt Disney Imagineering, the company’s in-house attraction-design unit.

Yahoo! A new Disney resort! You can bet I will be trying this one out in 2012!! Plus, the addition of more family suites will help a lot of larger families be able to do a "value" Disney vacation! Way to go Disney World!!!

Ok, this is enough to make me want to get married again! (Again to Kermit, I mean...!). Check out the new Pirate wedding reception you can have at Disney World....