Top Ten Free/Cheap Disney Souvenirs

Disney is expensive.  Airfare, hotels and park admission.  Paying to get there and stay there is just the beginning.  Fortunately, there do exist SOME souvenirs you can take home without spending too much.  Here are my top ten:

1. Pressed Pennies.  Costing a total of 51 cents, these are some of the least-expensive souvenirs.  They may be small, but they have always been fun for me to find in my purse long after my trip has ended!  Disney also sells little collectible books to keep your pennies in (but probably worth more than your collection)!

2. Mickey Ear Shampoo Bottles.  If you've already paid for a Disney hotel, why not take a bunch of these home?  If you use one even a little bit, Mousekeeping gives you a new one when they clean your room, and leave the old one, too!  I love the little mouse ears on the caps.  I have a small collection myself!

3. Disney World Pens.  Another room freebie, but I think you only get the one.  I took mine home and it adds just the right touch of magic to the mundane.

4. Postcards.  I don't remember how much a postcard cost when I was there, but it didn't break the bank.  They have some pretty cute ones.  I keep the one of Mickey and Minnie riding Dumbo with the castle in the background on my bookshelf.

5. Mickey Swirley Straws.  If you are dining at a Disney restaurant, you have the option of Mickey straws for about 50 cents (actually 40-something, but I'm rounding up).  I know this because when Jim & I last ate at Be Our Guest Restaurant, we ordered using the kiosk instead of ordering ahead (I recommend ordering ahead--you'll miss the suits of armor getting into coughing fits, which isn't too appetizing), and one of the options was a Mickey Straw!  We got 2 and they are so cute.

6. Mickey Foam Keychains.  They have these up next to the registers at most souvenir shops in Disney--little one-inch balls of foam with 2 foam ears glued on, on a short ball chain.  About a dollar each, they are great souvenirs!  Simple and durable, they come in a couple different styles--Mickey, Minnie, Tinkerbell, princess, and rainbow!  There are probably more by now.  Tinkerbell has cute little wings on the back, and the princess one has a tiny tiara!

7. Photos.  If you can't spring for the Memory Maker (which is a great deal if you're using PhotoPass anyway), just use your own camera.  The Disney photographers (especially the enthusiastic ones) love taking pictures using your own phone or camera.  You can also look at and share the pictures as soon as you have them taken, which you can't do with PhotoPass!

8. Park Maps.  For friends who love Disney but can't get down there often, an up-to-date map can be a great thrill!  It's also nice to have for yourself!  I have one from my Disneyland Paris trip years ago, and from the new Disney Springs in FL!  I like looking at maps and remembering my favorite rides and experiences, and it's fun to see if something has changed since the last map!

9. Drawing Lessons.  The Art of Animation resort offers daily free drawing lessons of your favorite Disney characters!  I have one of Tigger and one of Mickey!  They used to offer these in Hollywood Studios at the Animation Pavilion, but since it is going under a great overhaul, they have moved this experience to the resort (I only know this because I asked. I was very indignant about my favorite part of the Studios being taken away!)

10. Stickers.  I see a lot of large, circular, doctors-office type stickers floating around the parks, having fallen out of pockets, bags and small hands.  There are some specific to certain events, experiences and places, but the only source I have found so far was my hotel.  I was in the Pop Century gift shop and there was a dry erase board with trivia questions on it.  I asked the cashier if there was a prize for getting all the answers right, and she said she'd give me a sticker (I'm 31 and this got me excited)!  They were all about Big Hero 6 and I had recently seen it, so I got all the answers correct, and she gave me a whole bunch of stickers (probably because of my glee and air-punches after "winning") of all different characters!

There are, of course, hokey gifts you could bring back to friends and family, like an empty water bottle labeled "Disney Air" or one you filled at the Cinderella fountain labeled "Disney Water," which, for the right audience, I'm sure would be a hit.  I hope these not-so-hokey souvenir ideas make your shopping easier, lighten your load, and provide lots of good memories from your trip!

Finding Remy

This past year's Food & Wine Festival at Epcot featured a fun new addition: Remy's Ratatouille Hide & Squeak!

For about the price of a pin (I think it was $10), I picked up this adorable game board map of Epcot with ovals around it.  Here's how to play:

The ovals each had a country written on them, and a corresponding sheet of stickers of Remy with different ingredients.  You had to find which ingredient Remy was posing with in that country and match the corresponding sticker.  

Here he is in Germany with some bread:

China with tomatoes:

And so on and so forth...

We also made sure to enjoy all the food & wine, of course!

And continued our search!

Peek-a-boo!

The less-obvious ones were the best (frustrating yet rewarding), like in France (above) with the garlic in the middle of the "jardin," and in the gondola in Italy!  

(I love all those poles with Spaceship Earth in the backdrop)

We found someone else during our Remy search!

I have to say, the one in England was the hardest to find!  I heard a desperate father asking a security guard if he knew where Remy was in the UK and he had no idea.  I hope he did and just acted like he didn't, you know, to preserve the magic!  

After finding them all, we took the game map to the Port of Entry to claim my prize:

You could pick from an array of these Remy pins, which were replicas of the drawings on the game stickers.  It was hard for me to decide, but I thought this was the cutest!

They stamped this on the back of my map so I could keep it and not cheat!

Reading the small print now, it seems I didn't even have to put any stickers on--just buy the thing and you get a pin!  But that wouldn't have been worth it at all!  The search was a fun thing to add to our enjoyment of the festival, and I felt I earned this pin!  I hope they do something like this again next year!

Duffy Goes to Hong Kong

On our October '15 trip, I was very excited to meet Duffy, the Disney bear, as I had in 2012.  At that time, he was in his pumpkin suit, greeting visitors to the left of the entrance for the World Showcase.  This time, it was Daisy who was greeting guests, so I decided to come back later for whenever Duffy was due.

Duffy was never due--it seemed to be Daisy's new spot.  We didn't ask anyone, but we got some news before we left the park.  I have my own little Duffy with magnetic hands and feet (and back of head) who we had in our PhotoPass photo in front of Spaceship Earth.  The photographer said, "Oh, Duffy!  That makes me so sad!"  We asked why, and she said it was Duffy's last day a few days earlier, and that he was going off to Hong Kong Disney!

This was a display at one of the Downtown Disney stores--it had tons of cute stuff, plus a large array of Duffy merch.  This giant Duffy happened to be in that pumpkin costume I remembered!  They were still selling the bears you can dress up, purses of his face, and lots of outfits.  I don't know if they'll be phasing Duffy out of the park completely, but all I know for right now is that he is no longer greeting guests in WDW.  I wonder if he is in CA, and I wonder if we have seen the last of him!  I know he originated in Tokyo Disney, and I guess he did not catch on over here.  Sorry, Duff!

Towel Animals Extinct?

I love Disney's towel animals.  When my dad & I stayed at All Star Music in 2012, we had 2 towel ghosts with pipe cleaners and sticky eyes hanging in our window.  It was the cutest thing!  I have always appreciated this unnecessary gesture from "Mousekeeping."  I told Jim about the towel animals we'd get on his first trip with me last year, and all we got was the Mickey head on the bed (I think I posted a picture and wrote about the lack of towel animals in a previous post).  When we returned to Pop Century a couple weeks ago, we didn't even get the Mickey head!  Nary a towel animal was seen in our room the entire 7 days of our trip.  I was pretty upset.  I was thinking of leaving a note asking for one, but part of the magic was getting one out of nowhere, not having to ask for it.

Then I read this:   http://disboards.com/threads/no-more-towel-characters.3422508/

It's a discussion board about how towel animals are apparently no longer allowed to be made and left for guests because of a recent survey where people said they'd rather have cleaner rooms than towel animals.  Can't someone clean a room and then leave a towel animal?  I thought it was part of the Mousekeeper training, in addition to cleaning a room!  I'm very upset if this is how it continues.  We want our towel animals.  Maybe we can start a secret code to let Mousekeeping know it's okay to leave us towel animals, like those pins people wear that say "It's OK to wish me a Merry Christmas!"  If I knew how to make pins, I'd probably try that.  And we can leave them on our night stands.  But if the towel-makers are getting reprimanded for doing that, we still might not get our towels.

Dole Whip RIP?

Given all the choices of flavor combinations and floats at the Dole Whip stands in Walt Disney World, I have never been sure of what constitutes a real "Dole Whip."  Is it pineapple soft-serve?  By itself or on top of a cup of orange juice?  The Dole Whip air freshener my mom brought home for me last year for my car is a pineapple-vanilla twist in a cup--is that it?

Anyway, with the swapping of booths in Adventureland as some sort of preparation for the forthcoming Jungle Cruise-themed restaurant (which is a whole other story--is this something we want or have asked for?  Will the "skipper" waiters make puns of our orders?  What will the cuisine feature?), you can now only find pineapple soft-serve at one stand, and orange and vanilla at another.  I don't know about the floats.  But I do know that pineapple-vanilla twist did not find a new Magic Kingdom home in the shuffle.  It is gone.

Photo and great opinion piece from blog.wdwinfo.com.

When we asked about this, we were told that since Disneyland in CA did away with their pineapple-vanilla twist, WDW was required to follow suit.  This cast member added that the Polynesian resort serves it.  I don't understand why we now have to take a ferry over to the Polynesian just to get a treat that was always available in the park.  (There is a very in-depth article on the new Pineapple Lanai shop at the Polynesian from Disney Food Blog--you now have the option to purchase your whip in a souvenir cup or bowl!) 

Apparently you used to be able to make your own pineapple-vanilla soft serve towers at a restaurant in the Polynesian called Captain Cook's--I love this picture from the blog easywdw.com!  They used chopsticks to make a very impressive tower!

 I settled for an orange-vanilla twist and was sorely disappointed. At least this interaction kept us in the area long enough to realize that Rafiki had shown up for photos!  Is that new?  

BFFs!!

Still to come: Duffy, Dapper Day, Pirates of the Caribbean, cute merch, Mickey's Not-So-Scary Halloween Party 2015 edition, Epcot Food & Wine, pins, Downtown Disney/Springs!

Dapper Day/Dining Reservations Catch 22

I made reservations for Be Our Guest Restaurant a long, long time ago for our upcoming October WDW trip (180 days in advance, and I set my alarm!) and was SO happy to snag a spot for quick-service lunch.  It's what I've been looking forward to this whole time besides our "Disney Trifecta" which I wrote about in my last post (Dapper Day, Mickey's Not-So-Scary Halloween Party, and Epcot's Food and Wine Festival).

Jim and I wanted more freedom to decide which park we were going to each day, instead of being bound by lots of reservations (especially since we didn't buy ParkHopper).  So I thought, why not book it the day I know we'll be in Magic Kingdom, for Dapper Day!  We'll be in our nice outfits and have a fancy meal to look forward to and really enjoy ourselves.

Well, it turns out Dapper Day is going to be at Hollywood Studios.  I was distraught!  So I used the Disney website chat people (who really couldn't tell me much) and the e-mail help to see if it was possible to purchase a ParkHopper for one day.

It is not, if you've purchased through Magic Your Way.  I also asked about the stand-by line to get in to Be Our Guest.  The chat guy said "it's a gamble" because of the restaurant's popularity.  The e-mail person said the stand-by is NO LONGER AVAILABLE.  Also, they are no longer offering the free quick-service lunch fastpass if you stay on Disney property.

So then came the question: which is more important?  Dapper Day or Be Our Guest Restaurant?

I reminded myself I'd been hoping to go to a Dapper Day for the past couple years and this may be my only opportunity.  But then I thought of that carved turkey sandwich on garlic bread from Be Our Guest.  And the grey stuff.  And those deep blue windows with the gently falling snow!  So Jim & I have decided that we will keep our reservations and, if we feel like milling about with a dapper crowd, we'll take the bus to Hollywood to look around at the entrance gates, and then walk down to the Dolphin & Swan for a sushi dinner with some karaoke!  Fancy people are sure to be around--maybe even people like us who made dining reservations at a different park!  And we can still get our own Memory Maker photos with the castle and all the other beautiful MK photo ops!  Problem solved!

Disney Planning 2015

Jim and I are back in the saddle of planning a Disney trip, which is always a very nice place to be.  We once again used the Magic Your Way package and booked Pop Century.  Even though we had a problem with Pop during our last visit (I'd written a review called "Mop Century" on the forum, as our floor was flooded by the door and window our entire stay, for which Disney offered to reimburse us in part and we were very glad for it), we figured the chances were low that we'd encounter the same problem, and besides, we didn't spend much time in the room.

We decided to go in October for what we've begun calling The Disney Trifecta: Dapper Day, Epcot's Food & Wine Festival, and Mickey's Not-So-Scary Halloween Party.  On my 2012 visit with my dad, we made it to the Food & Wine Festival and the Halloween party, but I wasn't yet aware of Dapper Day, an unofficial-to-the-parks meet-up of people who celebrate style by dressing in vintage or otherwise fancy outfits!  Some take it even further by "dapper bounding," which is a dapper take on Disneybounding!

Now that it's under 180 days until we arrive, I've been able to start making dining reservations.  However, we were restricted to certain parks each day of our visit last year because of all our dining plans, so this year we are taking it easy on the reservations.  The only one I woke up at 6am for on the 180th day prior to our trip was lunch at Be Our Guest Restaurant.  We loved it last time, and since we stayed on property, they issued us a fast-pass for the quick-service lunch reservation.  I thought we'd have the same luck this visit, but after reading other Disney blogs and speaking with the chat people on the Disney website, I found out that they are no longer offering this perk.  Hence making my own reservation!  And we already know we'll be at Magic Kingdom our first full day for Dapper Day, so we'll be all fancy for our castle lunch!

I also recently found out that tickets are now available to purchase for MNSSHP, so I went ahead and got those, too.  The website said they sell out quickly so I recommend doing the same, tout-suite!

We are staying for a full week this time--Friday to Friday (of course we arrive after all the parks are closed our first night, but we will also spend some time in the parks before our flight on the last day), so we're hoping to be a little more relaxed on this trip (besides Jim's concerns of packing 2 different costumes for our events).  I'm hoping to have ample time to mill about Downtown Disney, which we missed out on our last trip.  Jim wants to spend more time pool-side, and we both want to order pizza to our room with those delicious caesar salads we miss so much!  It'll also be nice choosing which park to go to each morning!

I've been revisiting our last trip through Shutterfly--Jim & I haven't begun scrapbooking our last trip (something I'd been very excited over and he wants to help me with), so I spent my sick day and time waiting to visit the doctor by ordering all the prints we need for the scrapbook!  It definitely made me a little cheerier.  I don't know if you're familiar with Kellogg's rewards, but there are certain Kellogg's cereals with codes inside, and some are to enter for a free trip to Disney World!  That's why I started with the codes, but I also collect points towards other rewards, like Shutterfly.  I had 3 rewards I used on my Disney photos purchase today!  One was my birthday coupon for $20 off an order, another was a free reusable tote bag with a photo on it (for Earth Day), and the last was a free set of 2x2" magnets of your photos!  It was an excellent deal, and I saved about $80!  After adding on all my rewards, my prints order went down about $30!

More updates to come as our planning continues!