Disney Event #2: Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween Party!

Event # 2 was the MNSSHP on 9/23. I had purchased the ticket to go early in the month and had planned to go with my roommates Kryssy and Kat. However by the week of the party I found out that they were no longer going and I was left with no one to go with. OH NO! It turned out all right though because I found another friend who had the same thing happen to her and we ended up going together.

I elected to wear my Pirate costume which my grandmother made me about 5 years ago. It is an epic costume if I do say so myself and I have worn it many many times on International Talk Like A Pirate Day, to Renaissance Festivals, and of course during the Halloween season. My friend Morgan dressed up like Alice. 

Since we are both performers, we love characters and decided to make the priority of our night to meet characters. We started of with Mickey and Minnie. There was a long line of people waiting to meet them in their Halloween outfits and hardly anyone in the regular queue. Since I am all knowledgable and knew when Mickey would be out in his fancy costumes and how much time the line takes, we jumped in the regular queue and were some of the first people to see them in their Halloween outfits. Basically we were sneaky sneaky and jumped all those people. BAHAHAHAHAHAAAA!

We of course made a stop to see Alice and Mad Hatter for Morgan. At this point we were joined by one of Morgan's friends whose name I of course can't remember. 

I make wonderful faces yes?

Soon after our visit with those Wonderland folk we went to watch the Villans Mix and Mingle. May I just say that the Villans show is THE BEST THING EVER! It needs to be a priority in anyones MNSSHP evening. After the show the Villans that are in the show do a short meet and greet. Short as in 15 mins. So be smart and get there early and stand in the general area of your fav villain. We watched the show and then jumped in line for Maleficent. 

We made stops to see various other characters not often seen in the parks such as Terk and Jane as well as Timon. 

We hit up the second parade since that one tends to be a little less crowded and got a good seat right at the beginning of Main Street (which is actually the end of the parade route). I took a good number of pictures but also made it a priority to enjoy myself. Many of the wonderful pirates came to visit me including the great Barbossa. Peter Pan came and asked me to a sword fight, but I couldn't get my sword out and then he had to run. :) It really is an amazing parade. 

After the parade we scurried up the street to hit up the Hub were the Villans roam. While we were waiting in line for Gaston I got a text from one of my amazing CP #1 training group family, Ryan. Turns out he was sitting across from us during the parade and recognized my voice. :) He and his wife have moved back to Orlando which is an awesome surprise. I hope to be able to hang out with both them and the other guy from my training group Patrick (and his fiance Toni). Yes that means I will be like a 5th wheel but who cares! I love them all. :)

We finished out the night dancing with some of our favorite toys at the Diamond Horseshoe. We saw Woody, Bullseye, and my favorite Cowgirl Jessie. It was quite fun and a great way to end the night. 

 All in all Event #2 was super fun. I haven't bought tickets for another party yet and I'm not sure if I will. I do have one more costume to sport but maybe I won't wear it this year. I don't know of anyone else going to another party but maybe I can convince someone to go again.

-M

Disney Event #1: Trick or Meet Up

I have decided to make a post about each of the Disney events I went to this past week. This is post #1 (obviously) about the Disney Parks Blog Trick or Meet Up.

I mentioned in the first post that I "won" a ticket. What I really meant by this is that there were a limited number of people that could attend this event and that I managed to RSVP early enough to get myself a spot on the list. Each person who RSVPed could bring one guest and was encouraged to dress up in costume.  Im not sure exactly how many people went but it was definitely more than 100.

The meet up basically revolved around the Haunted Mansion and Halloween. We met up at 9pm at Blizzard Beach and were bussed over to the Magic Kingdom from there. While we waited for everyone to check in and the busses to get there a DJ was there playing some music and facilitating a Disney trivia contest. I recognized him as the DJ that was at my first CP completion ceremony aka graduation ironically doing the same thing. I think his name is DJ Miles.

Anyway, I think we managed to get to MK at about 10pm although I'm really not sure about that. We were bussed to what is called Splash Gate which is also where the Parade Control building is and where all of the parade floats are kept. They had some of the parade floats lit up in the barn so we got to see some of those as we drove past. After we were let into the park, we were walked to the Hall of Presidents. Right outside the entrance to the Hall of Presidents, Gene the Disney Parks Blog photographer was taking pictures of guests in costume. Guess who got a picture taken of them... ME! and my twin who was my guest.

As you can tell I wore my Daisy Duck costume although stupid me forgot my bracelet. Whoops. Once we got inside and were all seated Imagineer, Jason Surrell, came in and talked to us about the Haunted Mansion and answered questions from the crowd. It was very interesting to say the least. I'm not a Disney parks/imaginer/rides expert by any means so there is a lot of things I didn't know that probably a lot of the crowd did. One of the cool things I learned was that the Haunted Mansion was completed in April of 1971 and basically they just locked the door of the ride for 6 months until the park opened in October.

After he was finished they let us go free to tour the new Haunted Mansion queue with an Imagineer, ride the Haunted Mansion, take pictures with some characters, or trick or treat. I of course did all of the above with a focus on characters. As soon as we walked out of the Hall of Presidents we saw Daisy and Donald Duck. Since I was in my Daisy outfit I dragged my Twin to the line and made him wait with me. Daisy of course thought I was the bees knees and Donald got down on one knee for me. I guess he was momentarily confused and thought I was Daisy. Twin then proposed to Daisy and it went down hill from there. I love fun interactions with characters. :)

 

I also met Dr. Facilier which was super awesome. And saw some ghostly singers serenade the guests.

Sitting outside of the Haunted Mansion was 2 wonderfully funny ghosts, Renata and Carlotta DuBois. They are totally hilarious and can be found outside the Haunted Mansion during the Halloween parties, or so I have heard.

The night was finished off with a run of the Headless Horeseman.

It was a great night and I had a ton of fun. I hope that if there are future meet ups at WDW I will be able to go. I don't know if I have ever mentioned it but a dream job for me would be to work for the Disney Parks blog. Hopefully one day I can make it to that dream.

In PI news... I have my interview for the Entertainment Management Internship (MI) tonight at 8. I finished applying for the rest of my Comm internships last night. I have a grand total of 9 internships I have applied for. 1 MI, 6 communication related PIs (all but one social media related), and 2 Alumni only PIs. I really hope I will get one of them. Wish me good luck on my interview tonight!

-M