Tag Archives: disneyland

What I’m wearing – Vintage Minnie

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Minnie Mouse is a total style icon, but so often her original looks are overlooked! This is an attempt to Disneybound a vintage look of hers, where she wears a blue skirt and a red pillbox-style hat with a daisy on top (which I’ll be attempting to make as well before my trip).

The skirt is one I made myself, yellow espadrilles were from New Look and the ears were from ASOS. I’ll be wearing this outfit to Disneyland in California, and I can’t wait to skip down Main Street USA and meet my favourite girl!

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Friday Favourite Five – Instagrammers of Disneyland

I recently shared my favourite Disney World Instagrammers with you, and to be fair, today I’m doing my favourites from Disneyland California.

While Disney World will always be the most magical place on Earth for me, Disneyland holds a special place in my heart, mainly due to the fact that it was the first Disney park I’d visited in about 7-8 years. As a toddler/young child, we visited Disney World and Disneyland Paris quite often, but I have very few memories from those trips, so my trips to Disneyland, aged 13 and 15, were really my first ‘grown up’ memories of park life.

1. @jreitz1

This man is a legend in my eyes! Why? Well he’s visited Disneyland every day since 2011, and is currently on day 1364, how mad is that?!

2. @disneyfor2

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HAPPY BIRTHDAY OSWALD! #DisneySide

A post shared by AJ and VJ Escote (@escoteadventures) on

I actually started off following Alyssa’s solo account, before she met VJ, and since they started their joint account I’m even more obsessed – they’re adorable!

3. @lotso_at_disneyland

Probably one of the most famous Disneyland accounts (in my eyes anyway!), Lotso hangs out in the parks and you can find and meet him and take lots of selfies!

4. @diningindisney

I talk a lot about how much I love DisneyFoodBlog, right? Well this is the Instagram account of the Disneyland contributor, and her and her family are hilarious to keep up with! Plus, they’ve got dachshunds, nuff said.

5. @nanjer_0121

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I’m somewhat bias here because this is the joint account of my lovely Instagram friend Nancy and her partner Jeremy. I met Nancy after featuring a pair of her ears in a wishlist, and to say thank you she actually sent them to me! Since then she’s been an absolute doll doing a few favours for me, and I really hope I can repay the favour when I’m in the parks in January!

I’m SO excited to be returning to Disneyland in January, and I really hope I might be able to catch a couple of these amazing people in the parks, even if its just to fangirl from a distance!

Do you follow @lottiedoesdisney on Instagram?

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RunDisney 2016: 17 Weeks to go!

Yep, we’ve flown through another week already! One more week closer to my birthday, one more week closer to Christmas, and one week closer to our races, eeek!

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In fact, we’re not far off the 100 day mark, and by the time I get back from Europe it’ll be closer to 80, and all the fun starts! November is really the month where everything happens – fastpass+ choices, paying off Disney World and Disneyland, and booking any dining in California, and once all that’s done then we’re practically there! (I also finished the first of my running costumes!)

We’ve taken it fairly easy this week, with three short-ish runs, but that doesn’t mean they weren’t good ones. I’ve had a pretty nasty cold this week but actually running seems to have helped me sweat it out a bit! With this in mind, we kept our first two runs this week fairly short, around 30-40 minutes, but fairly continuous, and we kept a pretty good pace. Saturday though..

Originally, we were planning on doing ParkRun, but due to timing issues we decided to do our own 5k earlier in the morning, but to run it at race pace, with Dad really hoping he could hit a new PB below 30 minutes. We set off fast, taking a familiar route through the town centre to the pier and along the beach, and were easily keeping a pace below 6 min/km, and, after managing a sprint finish, not only did we finish <30, we actually did it in 28:43 – Dad’s fastest time and only 30 seconds away from mine. Not only that, after a short walk to get our breath back, we actually ran the rest of the way home, bringing our total distance to about 8k!

Now Dad’s proven to himself that he can do it, he’s definitely got the bug, and we might actually go for another run this evening!

Next week we’re back onto big distances with a 10-miler, so we can start working on pace and stamina again. Until then, see ya real soon!

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RunDisney 2016: 19 Weeks to go!

So we’ve already completed the first 4 weeks of our new training programme; time is flying by and we’re creeping ever closer to the 100 day mark!

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Remember last week was a bit of a bust? Well this week was always going to be more of a success, and it was for the most part. We did three decent runs: a 45 minute one, and two 5ks, and I think what we’ve noticed most this week is how much we’ve managed to cut down on walking intervals during our runs.

I’m also really happy to be at the end of August now and heading into autumn – I’ve spent the last week getting erratically angry with the sun. Goodbye summer heat and hello brisk winds and running in the rain! My body sucks at regulating its own temperature and I’ve been finding summer running pretty horrendous, even doing it at 7am when its a little cooler.

Next week I’ll be running our first ‘mini rebel’ – 5k on Saturday and 7 miles on Sunday. Its essentially half the distances of the real Rebel Challenge races, designed to get us used to running big distances with no rest day. Unfortunately Dad’s away on Saturday so won’t be doing the 5k with me, but he’s not getting away without 7 miles on Sunday!

That’s all for now, folks!

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Friday Favourite Five – Rides at Tokyo Disney

I can’t believe its been over a month since I was in Tokyo Disneyland already! This year is flying by, but I can’t complain because every day that goes by, I’m a day closer to my next Disney trip, so I can’t lose!

Today’s FFF are the rides I loved most during my time in Tokyo, so here they are!

1. Splash Mountain

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Yes, Splash Mountain is in every Disney park, I know, I know! BUT there was something about this one, I can’t really put my finger on what exactly, but it just seemed better than all the others! I love it, and I rode it more than all the other rides, k.

2. Monsters Inc. Ride & Go Seek!

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While its not as exciting as Buzz’s Astro Blasters, and there’s no scoring involved (which bothered my super competitive mum!), this was really fun, and the setting was perfect!

3. Indiana Jones Adventure: Temple of the Crystal Skull

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Another ‘non-unique’ ride, but again, this ride blew me away! We had a Fastpass so we got to skip the enormous queue (always makes rides better), but it would’ve been worth the wait!

4. Journey to the Center of the Earth

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The ride inside the volcano! Totally different from anything at any other Disney park, and the perfect combination of gentle ride and rollercoaster!

5. Caravan Carousel

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A double decker carousel of fun! Ride an elephant, a camel, or even Genie himself!

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RunDisney 2016: A New Schedule

Let’s not even talk about this week.

Yes, we did start running again this week, but I’m not even sure you can call what we did ‘running’, so moving swiftly onwards..

When we first started training back in January/February, we stuck to the recommended training plan provided by Run Disney and Jeff Galloway, and we worked our way through most of that leading up to our Japan trip last month, but with our trip looming ever closer, now we’re back into things, we need to modify and increase our training to prepare us for the grand finale of our holiday: Rebel Challenge. On their own, a 10k and a half marathon wouldn’t faze us too much; we’ve run plenty of 10Ks, and our training so far puts us in good stead for a half marathon, which we’ll of course be completing the week before in WDW. Rebel Challenge, however, is both these distances one day after the other.. Yikes, right?

All our previous training has left a recovery day between runs, so now we need to learn to push through and run on consecutive days, and with this in mind, I’ve written us our new training schedule:

Its fairly similar to the Jeff Galloway plan, alternating shorter distances with longer distances, but I’ve added in what I like to call ‘Mini Rebels’. As the name suggests, they’re basically two consecutive runs, just smaller distances that the main event – 3 miles and 7 miles, 4 miles and 8 miles etc – and we’ll be doing one of these every month or so in addition to our regular training, and we’ll also be increasing the length of our midweek runs to at least 45 minutes.

This coming week marks 22 weeks until we leave for Florida, so we’ve got 22 weeks of training (including over Christmas..), 5 mini Rebels and a whole lot of powering through to do!

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RunDisney 2016: A Training Update

It has been a long time since I’ve written about our RunDisney training, for a few reasons:

1. I was finding it a little repetitive each week; ‘woo, we ran three times, woo, we were a little faster this week’

2. Due to injury/our recent Tokyo trip/various other excuses like the weather, we’ve really not been as into training as we were when we were at our peak

3. We haven’t run since pre-Japan

Everyone takes breaks, and knowing that that is ok is important; a work, work, work mentality doesn’t do anyone any good. Sure, we’ve enjoyed a little break, but we know we have to get back into our proper training schedule this week as tomorrow marks 23 WEEKS UNTIL WE LEAVE FOR DISNEY WORLD. No biggie or anything.

So we are now totally 100% officially confirmed for all our races – Disney World 5K, Disney World half, and Star Wars Rebel Challenge (10k and half). While we’ve been confirmed for all our races since June, because we’re booking the California leg of our trip through a RunDisney sponsored travel agent, we only officially entered Rebel last week. We’ve also entered all of our Proof of Times, due to our estimated finish time for the halfs being under 3hrs 15; we’re aiming for around 2.5 hours.

All of our accommodation is sorted! In Disney World we’ll be staying at Port Orleans – French Quarter, which includes a quick service dining plan, but we’ve also made a few Advanced Dining Reservations which I’m really excited about. Its still too early to book Fastpasses, and we’re having some problems with booking the Keys to the Kingdom tour, but we’ll cross all those bridges when we get to them! In Disneyland California we’ll be staying at the Paradise Pier hotel, booked through the travel agent, which means we won’t get our confirmation details til November, but we know that’s where we’ll be and that’s good enough for us!

So now its just a case of buckling back down into a training routine. Next week will just be a case of easing ourselves back into it, and then after that we’ll begin ramping it up to hit the bigger distances, and also do a little challenge training to get ourselves used to the idea of running long distances without a rest day in between.

23 weeks, lets do this!

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Tokyo Disneyland Day 1

So after almost 26 straight hours of travelling, we finally arrived at Tokyo Disneyland Hotel just after 12.30am Sunday morning. I was totally and utterly exhausted, and unfortunately it had all taken a toll on my poor little body, and after just two short hours of sleep I was awake again with stomach pains, and promptly spent the next few hours feeling rough as hell, and heartbroken at the thought of being too ill to head into the park for opening.

Fortunately, it didn’t take too long for my system to flush (if you get my drift!), I scraped a little extra nap and we got straight down to business!

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So we’re staying at the Tokyo Disneyland Hotel, which is literally 100m walk from the entrance to Tokyo Disneyland (and also the monorail station that connects us to DisneySea), so we were in the park within minutes, and first priority was breakfast, so we hit up The Great American Waffle Co. in the World Bazaar before starting our park exploration. Naturally, as we were out that way, Pirates of the Caribbean was our first ride, and from there we worked around the park clockwise: Adventureland to Frontierland, to Critter County for Splash Mountain followed by a quick Mickey churro before continuing on to Fantasyland and onwards.

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Still running on definitely not enough sleep as a family, we began to flag early afternoon, so we sat down to eat at Queen of Hearts Banquet Hall, a restaurant I’d read about while researching the trip and was desperate to try, and it did not disappoint! Food was on point, theming was on point; we were impressed.

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At this point, we decided to take the rest of the day fairly easy; we were tired, feet were sore, so we opted to finish up the main rides, watch the  Dreamlights Electrical Parade, which we did nomming on a Mickey burger (the bomb), and call it a night so we can get a head start on DisneySea in the morning!

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Guess who’s planning again?!

This week I’m starting to get my Disney buzz back as our Tokyo trip is less than 3 months away, so we’re starting to get into details like itineraries and booking hotels, and also because with sign up a week away, Dad and I are starting to make our arrangements for our Run Disney trip in January.

Buzz buzz!

So as far as Tokyo Disneyland goes, its totally un-chartered territory for us. Planning-wise, my expertise are in Disney World, so I really am a fish out of water, which is exciting and a little scary for me as I’m terrified of not being able to fit everything into the 3 days we’ve got set aside for the parks. Now I’m very much a DIY person, and have never been one to turn to guidebooks for advice, but in this instance I decided to, so I bought two – Top Tips for Visiting Tokyo Disney Resort, and Elijah’s Ultimate Guide to Tokyo Disney Resort 2015 – just to be on the safe side!

Quite honestly, I chose them because they were the first options that came up on my Amazon search, but I’m pretty happy with my choices having them read through them; they both cover different things which is ideal. Top Tips is very much a planning guide, which covers everything from picking a hotel to useful Japanese phrases. Its full of great information on the important park stuff like Fastpasses, dining, transport and shopping; for a little book its packed to bursting!

Elijah’s Guide is more of a breakdown of the parks: rides, restaurants etc. It covers a little about choosing when to visit the parks and other planning basics, and then launches into a blow by blow review of each attraction. It splits everything into its area (Disneyland>Area>Attractions/Restaurants/Shops>individual reviews) and Elijah gives every attraction a rating, a bit of information (when it opened, who its aimed for etc) and a short description.

Our main issue at the moment however is the language barrier. While you may not think it, speaking English isn’t a priority for the Japanese, so we’re struggling to book hotels as not all the staff at the other end of the phone are capable of understanding my dad.. We’ll work it out though!

BUT..

Dad and I booked our flights for January today! Eeeek!

I am so excited. Now we’ve booked flights, we know how long we’ve got in each place, which means planning can begin! We’ve yet to pick and book our Florida resort to stay at as we’re waiting to see if we’re booking through the Run Disney travel company, or just directly through Disney, but by the end of the week we’ll have a plan and right now we’re in no rush to worry about the California leg of the trip just yet, but I am BUZZED.

This is happening, stay tuned for more!

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RunDisney 2016

Right, so one of the items on my Disney Bucket List is to participate in a RunDisney race. These event weekends happen about 3 times a year at both Walt Disney World in Florida and Disneyland in California, and each weekend consists of a marathon, half marathon, 10k, 5k and a selection of races for kids.

I’m not a professional runner, but Dad and I took up running last year with the target of running a 10k, which we did back in October in a very respectable 1 hour 7 minutes. So I got a little excited when the first races of 2016 were announced, and the Disney World Marathon Weekend and Star Wars Weekend at Disneyland fall just a week apart, and a crazy idea popped into my head.. Why not do both?

I mean, if I’m going to fly out for one, I might as well.. I proposed the idea to Dad, a 10k at each weekend, and rocking the parks in between, and he’s in, but today he offered an alternate plan..

A half marathon at each.

That’s right 13.1 miles, twice in two weeks. That’s a whole marathon altogether, and the longest we’ve ever run to date is 10k.

There is a little method to the madness; first of all we have 11 months to train, which is plenty of time (RunDisney provides training programmes, and to go from beginner to half marathon takes 20 weeks), and second, and more importantly, it means we complete the Coast to Coast Challenge; completing a half or full marathon at both Disney World and Disneyland in the same calendar year gets us an extra medal!

The race entries don’t open til later in the year, so our plans aren’t 100% finalised, but we start training next week, and I’m going to be starting a new series following our journey.

Wish us luck!

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Why get #fitfordisney?

Alongside a number of other upcoming events in my life, Disney is a big reason for improving my fitness levels.

‘Why do I need to be fit to go to Disneyworld?’

Yes, its a theme park, not an assault course, but there are still a number of reasons for hitting the gym before your trip;

1. You underestimate how much walking you’re going to do – the average guest covers around 7 miles per day in the park (I’m going to do some research on this during my trip with the help of my Fitbit), and if you’re not accustomed to walking long distances, or if you’re going in the scorching summer season, it can be a shock to the system.

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2. Disney food is to die for – the last thing you want on your holiday is to be on a diet; where’s the fun in that?! With ice-cream sandwiches, bakeries on every corner and some of the coolest restaurants in the world, you shouldn’t have to be concerned with calorie counting, skipping meals or feeling guilty about what you eat.

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3. Disney workout clothes – check out what Lookhuman have to offer, but Etsy and other places have amazing stuff too!

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4. If you’re going to run just one distance race in your life, runDisney – runDisney organise running weekends and festivals, and yes, the course you run is around the parks! Each weekend/festival usually has a 5k, 10k and half marathon, as well as a Fitness Expo, and these events run throughout the year at both Disney World Florida and Disneyland California. A runDisney half marathon is very high on my Disney bucketlist!

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5. Looking good on your holiday – whether its a summer bikini body or just slimming down for photos, a holiday is one of the most common reasons people give for wanting to get fit. It also gives you an excuse to splurge on new clothes, especially if you’re going to be hitting the outlets!

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I’m not a total selfie nut, promise! These pictures are from my Instagram @lottiedoesdisney and I tag my workout pictures with #fitfordisney 🙂

Now.. how #fitfordisney are you?

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