5 Reasons We Loved Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party!

We were lucky enough to attend Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party at Magic Kingdom not once, but TWICE on our most recent Walt Disney World vacation - and I wanted to sum up the experience to share why we loved the holiday party!

Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party is a special Christmas-themed ticketed event on select nights in November and December. Like Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween Party, it has its own parade and fireworks show, as well as some special perks only available at the party! My girls were ages 4 and 6 on this most recent trip, and they LOVED the magic of Disney at Christmas time!

Check out night 1 of Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party on November 10th, we focused on watching Mickey's Once Upon a Time Parade and riding rides:

And on night 2 of Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party on November 11th, we focused on characters, treats, and more!

Here are 5 reasons why we loved the party!

5. Riding Rides

Some of my girls' favorite rides are within the Magic Kingdom theme park, and going to the special ticketed parties give them an opportunity to ride the rides over and over, without using up Fast Passes and usually waiting in much lower (or no!) lines! They sell a limited number of tickets to the party nights, so the crowds tend to be lower than the daytime crowds during high volume times of year and allow you to ride your favorites all night long at the party if you so desire!

4. The Treats

Complimentary treats were served throughout the theme park and new for this year - different treats were served at different locations! On our treat tasting night, we enjoyed the Apple Cider & Cookies from Pete's Silly Sideshow, Snow Cone & Cookies from The Friar's Nook, and my personal favorite - Peppermint Chocolate Chip cookies and Hot Cocoa from The Lunching Pad!

These special treats keep you fueled up as you take part in the party festivities and if you try to make it to all of the treat stops keep you moving from land to land within Magic Kingdom!

3. Christmas Parade & Fireworks

We love the party entertainment, including the dance parties, stage shows (new for this year was Mickey's Most Merriest Celebration which we caught on the second night!), and lighting of the castle. Our two favorite entertainment events are the special parade and Holiday Wishers fireworks show. I love that you can see these both from a number of different vantage points around the park!

We watched Holiday Wishes from the Big Top Souvenir area the first night, and then near the carousel while waiting in line for the princess & prince meet and greet the second night!

We watched Mickey's Once Upon A Christmastime Parade from Frontierland and then caught the second showing of the parade on our way out from Main Street, U.S.A. - both vantage points were great! I do have to say, there is something magical about watching the parade with snow coming down from the roof tops around you on Main Street, U.S.A. Make sure to stake your parade spot out a bit earlier if you plan on viewing in the front of the theme park.

One of my favorite pictures was as we were exiting the first time, I caught the princess parade float coming past the Christmas tree at just the right moment!

2. Party Specific Characters

My older daughter is very ride focused, but one of the favorite parts of the parties for my younger daughter and myself is meeting those party specific characters you can't meet during the regular daytime hours! We stood in line to meet Nick and Judy from Zootopia, which are two of her favorites!

And also met Snow White with her Prince, and Sleeping Beauty with Prince Phillip!

Lines for the party specific characters do fill up quickly, so if you know you have a specific character you'd like to meet - I would make it a priority to get to their line early, or head to their line at least an hour or so before the end of the party to make sure you have time to see them!

1. The festive holiday spirit!

What a magical way to begin the holiday season! Seeing the snow on Main Street U.S.A. was one of my favorite parts of the party, and especially my younger daughter could have played in the snow falling all night long if we would have let her!

The decorations, the Christmas music, and special lights on the castle just make it a truly unique experience that we would love to repeat!

It was a great trip and our family thought it was a great way to kick off the holiday season! We've been to Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween Party the previous two years and after having such a great time at those, we were excited to take part in it's Christmas counterpart.

I'll do a comparison post in the future, but to answer questions I've been asked on YouTube - YES, I do think the special party nights at Magic Kingdom are young child (specially preschooler and younger) friendly... My girls have added as young as age 2! And they hung in there a long while after their normal bedtime of 7:30pm! The excitement of being at Disney and all of the special events gave them some extra steam to run on and most party nights we've been two, one of them - or both - have made it the entire evening with maybe nothing more than a quick cat nap.

Also, I think it really enhances the party experience (although is NOT required) to dress up festively for the parties. Halloween costume for Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween, and in festive holiday attire for Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party. Our outfits weren't quite as elaborate for the Christmas Party, but we did wear Christmas shirts and the girls had on Christmas skirts. I also purchased them the holiday Mickey & Minnie sweatshirts on the trip and purchased a Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party commemorative t-shirt for myself!

It was an amazing experience! Make sure to check out all of our Disney World Holiday vacation videos in this one handy playlist:

I hope this review was helpful! Let me know if you have any questions in the comments below!

** We received complimentary tickets to some events. All opinions are my own.

Deck the Halls! Vlogmas 2016

Christmas spirit is in full swing around our house! We had a festive time at Walt Disney World and I was ready to decorate the house after we returned home! I started putting up Christmas decorations over Thanksgiving weekend, and one of the first videos of Vlogmas will be Christmas decorating!

We also celebrated Natalie's 5th birthday! Her birthday vlog will be posted at the end of the week!

I will be doing Vlogmas again this year! Videos every day from December 1st through Christmas Day! And then special vlogs of our Christmas Day opening packages and sharing what the girls received! Looking forward to sharing in the magic of the holiday season with you on YouTube!

** This is not a sponsored post. All opinions are my own.

Disney World Holiday Trip Review

Disney vacation vlogs are LIVE on Being Mommy with Style and I have a trip recap coming up at the end of the videos, but I thought I would give you some of our quick thoughts on the trip in a little trip recap preview here on the blog!

We went to Walt Disney World from November 8th - November 14th, and our main intents for this trip were to: try staying on property for the first time as a family of four, try out the Disney Dining Plan for the first time to see how it worked for our family, and mainly... take the girls to Walt Disney World during the holiday season to take part in holiday events and enjoy the holiday decorations!

It is the most magical time of year and I have been to Walt Disney World during the Christmas season previously, but my girls hadn't been during that time period. I knew after seeing them play on the opening day of Osbourne Family of Lights last year that we needed to do a FULL Christmas trip. Christmas party, Christmas outfits, the works! And I was not disappointed in the least, the trip was magical, and there is just something special in the air at Disney during the holiday season.

The decorations were amazing and we loved the holiday spirit! We went to Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party twice, and I'll have a full review of that coming up - but it was a great time and we would definitely do that party again!

Here are our thoughts on the different parts of this trip...

Resort
On this trip, we stayed at Caribbean Beach Resort, a first for our whole family. I figured it was a good starting point and we could figure out what we liked and what we wanted to change for future trips.

The resort was gorgeous, and BIG. The location of our particular building seemed to be a bit far from different things around the resort that we felt it would be handy to be closer to, like the pool and quick service locations - so we agreed that if we stayed there on future trips, we would want to 100% be in a preferred room. (Which I had originally booked, but lost the preferred room when we changed our dates slightly to accommodate my husband's work schedule.) Overall though, the resort was beautiful and we liked the vibe there.

On future trips, we do plan to try other resorts because we'd like to see what kind of fit other locations are for our family. I do think we would consider Caribbean Beach Resort if we were looking at a moderate level trip in the future, however I think our room would have to be a preferred room to stay there again.

Dining Plan
The dining plan... oh the dining plan. How I deliberated on whether or not to get it. And at the last minute, I almost DIDN'T get it. On our previous trips we had stayed off property at a family member's house, so getting the dining plan wasn't an option - so this was all new territory for us. I knew what it had cost us to pay out of pocket for food, and based on all of the caluclators we should have saved a "bit" of money using the dining plan, I was just apprehensive on whether it would be too confusing for us or not. Whether we would actually save anything??

Well... we did, and it was AH-mazing! I am SOLD, on the dining plan! We will definitely be getting them on future trips and I added the dining plan to our bounce back that we reserved at the end of this trip. (Yes, I did. We're going again. #sorrynotsorry)

The Disney Dining Plan is the middle range dining plan, and it cost us just over $1000 for our family of four on our 6 day, 7 night trip. (Prices may vary depending on your resort booking, time of your you visit, and other promotions.) We LOVE doing character meals and using always do a number of character dining experiences on our vacations. Because of this, I assumed we would come out ahead with the Disney Dining Plan and that did turn out to be true.

Where we REALLY came out ahead, where the added bonuses of the Disney Dining Plan, the refillable cups that were included. (Which we would have used more had we been located more conveniently to the quick service at the resort, see point above about the resort.) Also, snacks were something I never really took into account in our food totals, but over a week - they REALLY add up. Once I took into account all of the quick service meals and snacks we got along with our table service meals on the Disney Dining Plan - we definitely came out ahead money wise, AND we found it easy to use & stress free to just swipe our MagicBand and go!

Christmas at Disney
Okay, so we kind of cheated on this one, just a bit! I knew how busy it was during ACTUAL Christmas time and we had a mini Fall break during this week in November, so I decided to use that to our advantage to take a bit longer vacation and try to miss the HUGE crowd during Christmas season at Walt Disney World. I knew the parks would be decorated for the holidays by this time, and the Christmas parties had just started before we headed down there. It was crowd level of 9-10 on a few of our days, due to vacation days that week and also a marathon on property at the beginning of the week - however overall it was manageable and things like dining reservations were still able to be reserved fairly easily.

It was a great way to take advantage of our vacation for both my husband and girls, and also miss the large crowds between Christmas to New Year's week. We attended Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party on two nights, November 10th & November 11th - and I felt like it took us both nights to see and do everything we wanted to do! On the first night, we focused on seeing the parade, watching the fireworks, and riding rides. On the second party night, I took Natalie to see a few of the party specific characters she wanted to meet (while Dan & Bella rode rides) and we tried as many of the treats they were handing out for partygoers as possible!

Watch Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party Night 1- parade & rides, here:

Watch Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party Night 2 - characters & treats, here:

It was amazing to experience the joy of the Christmas season with my girls at Walt Disney World! I'm so glad that we planned this trip, and I feel like it "checks the box" for that type of trip, since we've been there at Halloween the past two years.


What about the future?
Well, we're definitely going back, I don't know that it was even a question, ha! We booked a bounce back vacation at the end of our trip, and plan to try out a new resort on our next trip. On our next few trips, we'd like to rotate time of year to try different times of year and different resorts, to try to settle in on what type of trips are our favorites.

Resorts we have considered for future trips include: Contemporary, Polynesian, Animal Kingdom Lodge, and Beach Club. Bella has also requested we stay at the Grand Floridian at some point.

I do think that we if have a "party focused" trip in the future, like a Halloween party or Christmas party trip - we will likely try to stay on the monorail loop if possible on that trip. The convenience of being able to walk of our Magic Kingdom at midnight and board a monorail to our resort instead of waiting for a bus would definitely make it worth it on that type of trip to make that our resort choice.

All in all, it was another magical vacation and watching the joy of Disney through my girls' eyes makes me so happy that we've found this special type of family vacation to go to together.

** We attend some events complimentary. All opinions are my own.

Disney's Moana Giveaway

We watched a preview of Disney's new movie Moana at Hollywood Studios while we were in Florida, and it is full of action-packed FUN, I'm loving Moana's personality! We are looking forward to watching this one and I can't wait to see how "The Rock"'s character turns out at the end of the movie!

I've teamed up with a few other bloggers that are a part of "The Hopping Bloggers" for a Moana giveaway! We are all excited about this one! Check out the details of everything that is included below and don't forget to enter to win!!


  

To help celebrate the release of Disney's highly anticipated new film, Moana, The Hopping Bloggers have put together an incredible prize pack! These will make perfect gifts for the upcoming holiday season. Moana is sure to be as big as Frozen (or bigger!). This amazing prize pack includes the following:

• Moana Soundtrack
• Moana & Maui Funko POP! Collectors Set
• Moana Adventure Canoe Playset
• Moana Fishhook Mug
• Moana Magical Seashell Necklace
• Pua Plush
• Little Golden Moana Book
• Moana Doll

  Synopsis Three thousand years ago, the greatest sailors in the world voyaged across the vast Pacific, discovering the many islands of Oceania. But then, for a millennium, their voyages stopped – and no one knows exactly why. From Walt Disney Animation Studios comes “Moana,” a sweeping, CG-animated feature film about an adventurous teenager who sails out on a daring mission to save her people. During her journey, Moana (voice of Auli‘i Cravalho) meets the mighty demigod Maui (voice of Dwayne Johnson), who guides her in her quest to become a master wayfinder. Together, they sail across the open ocean on an action-packed voyage, encountering enormous monsters and impossible odds, and along the way, Moana fulfills the ancient quest of her ancestors and discovers the one thing she’s always sought: her own identity. Directed by the renowned filmmaking team of Ron Clements and John Musker (“The Little Mermaid,” “Aladdin,” “The Princess & the Frog”), produced by Osnat Shurer (“Lifted,” “One Man Band”), and featuring music by Lin-Manuel Miranda, Mark Mancina and Opetaia Foa‘i.

Moana sails in to theaters everywhere November 23, 2016!

Like MOANA on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/disneymoana Follow MOANA on Twitter: https://twitter.com/disneymoana Follow Disney Animation on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/disneyanimation/ Visit Disney Animation on Tumblr: http://disneyanimation.tumblr.com/ Visit the official MOANA website here: http://movies.disney.com/moana

Enter to win the Moana Prize Pack using the form below. GOOD LUCK!

Entry-Form

Items in prize pack are subject to availability. If no longer available, they will be replaced with something of equal or greater value.

Are you a blogger looking to connect with brands? Join The Hopping Bloggers database and get started today! Are you a brand looking to connect with a network of over 1,000 professional bloggers? Click here to see all that we have to offer and get your personalized quote!

Enter to win through the links above! Don't forget to watch our Walt Disney World blogs that are live on YouTube now!! Check out the playlist below!

** This is a collaboration between bloggers. All opinions are my own.

Disney Holiday Vlogs - Year in the Life Preview!

Disney vlogs start tomorrow and as always, I wanted to share a little preview of the upcoming videos but this time I did something a little different!

We went on three amazing Disney vacations this year, a trip to Walt Disney World in April 2016, a cruise on the Disney Dream in August 2016, and a second trip to Walt Disney World in November 2016! To capture the essence of the magical year of travel we've had, I compiled a "Year in the Life overview to a song that I thought was perfect to capture the essence of how we feel about going on a Disney vacation! (It IS always a good time!!)

Included are clips from all three vacations and some of our most memorable moments! I hope you enjoy this sneak peek and coming up next on my channel are Disney World Holiday Vacation Vlogs!!

** This is not a sponsored post. All opinions are my own.

Black Friday Deals! HP on QVC 15 Series Laptop Deal

The Holiday shopping season is upon us and it's time to start finding the BEST deals for Black Friday weekend shopping!! I always look forward to this time of year, not just because of the decorations, lights, and music - but also because I think it is fun to go shopping to find the perfect gift for people and I love watching them open the gifts as well!

If a laptop is on your list to buy this Black Friday weekend, you're going to want to head over to QVC.com to check out their Black Friday weekend sale, because they are going to be offering the LOWEST-priced laptop QVC has ever offered during their Best Black Friday weekend sale!!

The HP 15 Series laptop has a 15.6" screen and is loaded with a 2TB hard drive. It is available in an awesome range of colors - White Silver, Turbo Silver, Dreamy Teal, Iris Purple, Cardinal Red, Noble Blue, and also two new exclusive colors available on Saturday November 26th... Minty Green and Soft Lilac! It was a tough choice, but I chose the Minty Green for myself since it is one of my favorite colors, and it goes PERFECTLY with my home decor.

I love that the keyboard area is even Minty Green.

The laptop runs fast and has plenty of space for all of the things I need to place on my computer, like photo and video files. I also tried out the CyberLink Power Directer program that was included on the laptop and thought the extra editing features it had in it were great. As a YouTuber, it is always great to try out new editing systems and while that might not be one of the main details for some people, I thought it had a number of great custom effects and appreciate the ability to download more directly from the Internet.

It was quick and easy to set up right out of the box. I opened it up, plugged it in to power, and immediately got it running after a quick setup. I was able to directly connect it to wifi and get to work on photo editing.

Here's a look at my first day at home working with style on the HP 15 Laptop series in this Day in the Life video on my YouTube channel!

Check out more information on the HP on QVC sale at this link: http://qvc.co/HPonQVC

I will be sure to post more information once the sale is LIVE on Saturday November 26th!! I'm loving the color ranges on these and the different colors would make a great personalized tech gift for a spouse, parent, child that is going off to college, and more!

Follow hashtag #HPonQVC on Instagram, Twitter, & Facebook for more real time updates!

** This is a sponsored post by HP & QVC. I received the HP 15 Series Laptop complimentary for review. QVC is a service mark of ER Marks, Inc. The QVC.com domain name is registered to QVC, Inc. All opinions are my own.

Our most recent magical Disney vacation!!

We are BACK from our most recent magical adventure at Walt Disney World and I'm excited to share the upcoming vlogs with everyone on my YouTube channel! I thought I would do a quick sneak peek on the blog of some of our favorite moments of the trip! We had 6 nights and 7 days at Walt Disney World at Caribbean Beach Resort, and this was our first time for our family of four to stay on property at a Disney resort!

Spoiler alert... I will do a full trip recap after the vlogs to share our favorite parts and thoughts on our choices for this trip (as well as plans for future trips!) - but we LOVED staying on property... and we also enjoyed having the Disney Dining Plan!

Christmas Tree inside Old Port Royale located at Caribbean Beach Resort

Our room was in Barbados 16, which was close to the Custom House and a short walk away from Old Port Royale. It was a little chilly for the pool during the evenings, but we did go down to the pool area on our first night there and the pirate themed splash area was a huge hit with my girls!

We visited all four theme parks while we were there and attended Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party TWICE! I'll do a full recap of our experiences on our party nights, however if you know my love of all things Christmas - then I'm sure you already know that I had a BLAST!! All of the Christmas decorations, holiday music, and characters in holiday gear were my favorite!

During our vacation we also went to a number of dining experiences that were new to us, and we thoroughly enjoyed all of our choices on this trip! New experiences for our family included Ohana breakfast at the Polynesian, 1900 Park Fare dinner at the Grand Floridian, and Minnie's Holiday Dine Dinner at Hollywood & Vine. My husband and I also had a date night at California Grill inside the Contemporary Resort while my girls went to Lilo's Playhouse supervised children's activity center!

All in all, this was a wonderful vacation full of lots of firsts and magical memories!

** This is not a sponsored post. We received complimentary tickets to some events. All opinions are my own.