*ALL VIEWS ARE MY OWN AND NOT OF THE WALT DISNEY COMPANY, CENTRAL MICHIGAN UNIVERSITY OR YUMMY JOBS*
Hey there, pals!
Unfortunately, a few weeks ago, I had caught a very nasty illness. And this week I definitely was not feeling my best. Fairy classmates, my roommates and other program participants had caught this illness too. Nevertheless, this post is filled action-packed adventures and finally concludes my Disney stories from 2019 and the festive season. So, without any further or do, let us jump right on in.
First of all, I cannot even believe that I'm now bringing to you my final updates from my Fairy Godmother training at the Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique! The end of 2019 saw me practising my sewing, accounting and pumpkin to carriage transformation classes more than ever before, especially on Christmas Day, which turned out to be incredibly successful and something that I was really proud to be a part of to this day! One of my highlights was helping another Fairy Godmother in Training (FGIT) pass along words of encouragement to a shy Queen Elsa. We managed to talk with Queen Elsa herself and kept the shy Queen Elsa in complete control. In the end, the shy Queen Elsa had a really great time thanks to myself and the other FGIT using what we had learnt in fairy school to help the shy Queen Elsa enjoy herself.
My 1000 years of fairy school were coming to a close, and I have taken away nothing but amazing fairy friends and memories that I will cherish for a lifetime. I am so incredibly proud of my accomplishments over the last six months and I could not have done it without the leadership team and other Fairy Godmothers in Training.
To everyone at the Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique in Disney Springs, I love you endlessly! 💖
While my family were here in Florida, we were able to hang out a lot over the festive period. We were able to visit all four Disney theme parks together and spend a couple of nights in their apartment. Included in their apartment was a games area, a cinema room with a pool table, and both a Harry Potter and Princess themed bedroom!
Our Christmas celebrations certainly had a different setup to what we would normally have back in the UK. To start, we did not have a 6ft Christmas tree in the living room, more like a 20cm Christmas tree 🎄🤣
After opening all our gifts that the family had bought for each other, we were somewhat able to do our own version of a traditional British Christmas dinner! And can I just say, the Christmas roast dinner turned out better than any of us expected! 🤣
The rest of the day was spent doing a family tradition that we have done ever since I was young. We would each buy small gifts for each other and then play a game as a family to win those presents. But, the order of the opening the presents would be in reverse order of where you placed... For example, if you finished 1st, you would open your present last and if you finished 2nd, you would open your present second to last and so on. As a family, we are very very competitive and there are always arguments from someone not playing by the rules haha
One of my Christmas presents to my family was a surprise dinner reservation at Crystal Palace in the Magic Kingdom literally a few days after Christmas Day. Initially, I wanted to tick off another thing off my bucket list by eating at the Be Our Guest restaurant. However, they didn't have any availability when I was looking for dining reservations because Be Our Guest is such a popular dine-in facility. Nevertheless, the experience that we had at Crystal Palace was everything I could have asked for from a character dining location and we were able to create some of our favourite family memories. I am so grateful that I was able to say thank you for every single investment they've put towards putting their 20-year-old on a plane to fly over 4000 miles for the Disney Academic Exchange Program! We had some amazing interactions with the characters and just looking back at the smiles on all of my family members' faces, including my dad's behind the camera, made this very special trip and gift for them all worthwhile!
As well as the hanging out at the theme parks, my family and I spent a couple of evenings in Disney Springs. We ended up shopping around the different stores for a little bit, while my sister was trying to look up some cool places in the area to have dinner. One place that she (and I) really wanted to try out was Rainforest Cafe. They had availability, so that was where we went!
The atmosphere was awesome (check out the video below for their volcanic eruption sequence they were doing every 30mins!) and there were soooo many food options, so it was really hard to pick what to eat. But I ended having a really nice chicken-based pasta! I even had enough leftovers to be able to make my lunch for the next day at fairy school!
The last full day that I had with my family was spent at Cape Canaveral to see the Kennedy Space Center – we are all fascinated by astronomy. We were only able to send a few hours up there, as I had a very early start at fairy school the next day, but we managed to cram a lot in such a short amount of time!
We managed to explore the Rocket Garden and saw an entire exhibition dedicated to the Atlantis space shuttle before boarding a two-hour bus ride. The bus ride drove around the various different rocket launch pads and the very large buildings where NASA construct individual rockets, which was really intriguing. For instance, each individual star on the American flag pictured below are 6ft in size! The two-hour bus ride replaced my family and I eating with an astronaut, which was originally on my bucket list, but it was well worth it to get up close and personal to the rocket launch pads, as well as find out about NASA’s past and present work to gain a better understanding of the outer world that we live in.
I had such a wonderful festive season with my family here in Florida, so a very special thank you to my family for coming to see me! And also, a very special thank you to everyone at fairy school too for a lovely holiday season. I cannot believe that I have finished fairy school, as it still feels like yesterday when I had begun my 1000 years of Fairy Godmother training. I am honestly having the most amazing adventure of a lifetime and I cannot wait to bring you a very different set of updates from PCI (Pandora Conservation Initiative) Technician Hannah at Avatar’s Flight of Passage in Disney’s Animal Kingdom!
Thank you so much for reading and have a magical day!
-Hannah
DISCLAIMER: this blog is my personal experience on the Disney Academic Exchange Program (DAEP) 2019-2020 and may not reflect everyone’s experience. Other programs and future participants on the DAEP may have slight adjustments to their programs that may not be featured in any of my blog posts. That being said, if you do leave any questions, I will try to answer them as best as I possibly can 😊
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