August 20, 2018 - Like Mother, Like Daughter - Kelsey Plans Disney World Trip and Tanya is back in SoCal sharing cruise pics

Elisa's Daily Scoop
Covering Long Island & NYC Boroughs 
CURRENTLY IN: LONG ISLAND

Like Mother, Like Daughter - Kelsey Plans Disney World Trip

Hey there! And Happy Monday!!
A new week! All new articles for you! New Travels to share!!!

Yesterday was a very relaxing day.  I cannot tell you how much I got accomplished with writing stories, trip research for Sicily and Disney trip planning!

First, I hung out at Starbucks for nearly three hours, completely engrossed in writing and working on our blog.

We will have a few all new pages on the blog, including a day by day journey recap of Tanya's recent Caribbean Cruise to Aruba, Curaçao and Grand Turk. 
​

Curacao (c) travelincousins.com

This will mark a new format for us, whereby, not only will be upload photos from the trip, but have done so in a chronological manner, along with blog text from the specific day.  It should be published this week- we'll furnish a link when it is and look forward to your feedback!!
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New Little Trip Planner in the Making...
Well, this is next bit of information, very much proves that the apple does not fall far from the tree.

Enamored with all things Disney, Kelsey's favorite place in the world is Disney World!

If you remember, I gave each of my girls the option to select where they would like to travel to for their 13th Birthdays.

Gianna chose London (for which we visited last April 2017.  Click Here for more on this trip).

My little trip planner, Kelsey, making Disney restaurant reservations (c) travelincousins.com

Kelsey chose - you guessed it - Disney World!!

As Disney Vacation Members, we have visited Disney World every single year since the girls were babies.  However, my Kelsey never gets sick of it.

I believe the reason for this is that she stays on top of everything new at the park. This includes attractions, restaurants, rules, regulations and procedures and anything else you can imagine.

She watches YouTubers who vlog about Disney vacations, she is on the Disney site regularly and with the gift of planning and organization that she inherited from her mom, she keeps track of all of this information in her head!

In Disney World in December 2017 (c) travelincousins.com

So, when it came time to plan her birthday trip, which we'll be doing early - February 2019 (her actual 13th birthday is in September, 2019, but, February was the best time for our family's schedule), I asked her if she wanted to take the lead and plan it.

It was a resounding YES!! And if I tell you, this kid is amazing, it's an understatement!
Not only is she a walking encyclopedia of Disney World, but in just looking at a food item photo on Instagram, she can tell you at which restaurant it was taken!!

Yesterday, she and I went over her 'still-evolving' itinerary.  This kid did not leave one stone unturned from trying new things, to the necessary timing between things to do, to eateries and everything in between. It is better than most professional itineraries I've seen.

Our main focus yesterday was on the meals and getting our plans straight for making our restaurant reservations.  I'll keep you posted on this in the coming weeks.

With Disney's new system of using Magic Bands to store all of your trip and account information as well as for entry into the parks, Kelsey also found a Disney blogger with an Etsy Shop for getting decor for all of our bands!! 

​I'll be doing more on this adorable, charismatic and talented Vlogger in the coming weeks as well!!

I have to tell you, there is no way in the world I could have planned out a trip like this, with so much attention to detail, at 11 years old.  I guess it's all part of the family business of travel planning and wanderlust passing onto the next generation!!


And with all this Disney talk today - I'm happy to bring you today's article:

Elisa's Top 5 Favorite Disney Items on Amazon to Bring to the Theme Parks

(c) travelincousins.com

Click Here to read more. 

Well, folks, have a magical day and I'll see ya back here tomorrow!!
-E
xoxo

Tanya's Daily Scoop 
Covering the West Coast & the World
​CURRENTLY IN: SO CAL 
NEXT TRIP DEPARTS IN: 11 DAYS

Back in SoCal

Yup you read that correctly. I'm back and boy oh boy do I have a lot of catching up to do!

How are you guys all doing?  

I know that I've missed some and that my wonderful TC partner and best cuz Elisa was doing an amazing job at keeping you up to date on my whereabouts as well as providing you lots of fun information about each location - as I was there doing the visiting.

I've got to admit that was lucky enough to be able to communicate, share photos and somedays even share my Daily Scoop with Elisa as I was bobbing around at sea or in some far off land.
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But of course the service wasn't the greatest and I really shouldn't complain...
Let's just say that it was frustrating because I'm usually spoiled by super speed wifi and leave it at that.

HOLY SMOKES FOLKS - While traveling, I was thinking about all of the miles that I've traveled over the past few weeks, be it by land, air and sea.
       
      I've logged in over 15,000 miles!!!
​                       And that's a whole lot!

When booking our flight back from MCO (Orlando) I had assumed that leaving on a Sunday morning would be easy breezy. This however was NOT the case whatsoever. The crowds and lines were insane. TSA was terribly unorganized and a complete mess. And although we arrived 2 hours prior to our domestic flight, I felt lucky to make it to the gate in a timely fashion.

Lines at baggage drop off (c)travelincousins.com

Smiling through the frustration (c)travelincousins.com

People everywhere (c)travelincousins.com

Leaving Orlando (c)travelincousins.com

Flying over New Mexico (c)travelincousins.com

We arrived back home around 4pm yesterday afternoon. We did a bit of story telling and catching up with the fam bam and then I went up to Dave's to unload some of his belongings - as we shared luggage space on this trip.

While up there I was also dropping off some of the professional photos from this recent cruise and of course when dealing with photos, you know I just had to take a peek at past professional pics that we've either taken on board cruises and/or other various vacation locations.

​It was great fun to take a stroll down memory lane! I didn't take any of those down here with me, but I do have the most recent professional shots that were taken of us from ​our Caribbean Cruise to Aruba, Curaçao and Grand Turk.

​Here's a sampling:

And if you could believe it we have even more!!

Here's something that I'm sure you can believe - while on board and cruising away, I was busy shopping around even more cruises.

I think we settled on a location of our 2019 Anniversary Trip. It's a location that has been pending and was almost even in the mix but we swapped it out...
We think it's about time for us to head to GREECE!!
*More travel updates below

After a partial unpacking, we took the kids (as promised) to the new location of Hug Life - Anti Dairy Ice Cream. This was a treat that I had definitely been looking forward to coming back to.

The new location just had it's Grand Opening and is both a bit closer to home and larger in space.
The place was packed full of ice cream lover last night and the scoops and shakes were delicious as always!

It turned out to be a fairly long day/night. I think both Dave and I were pretty beat by the time we finally wished everyone goodnight.

​Today is a new week and a workday for Dave.

I've got some grocery shopping to do and than we'll all be heading to choir rehearsal later tonight and back to our semi-regular schedule...until our next trip!

Now back to our travel updates:

• Our gang will be heading up to the mountains for our annual camping trip in 10 Days.
• I'll be heading up to Tahoe right after that for a bike tour - Tour de Tahoe
• All before we head to Hawaii - which is in less than a month from now!

Lots more on the horizon, but since my mind has been on cruising, the countdown for our next cruise is less than 21 weeks away!! And yet so much in between. Yes I'm an addict.

On that note, I'll catch you all back here tomorrow,
-Travelin' Tanya