As the end of the conference weekend neared, we were all excited for the finale party, but also sad that we'd all have to say goodbye. After spending the morning {Shane, Lacey & I} at the Animal Kingdom, we headed to Epcot in the afternoon before the party for a look around.
Epcot was one of my favourite parks {heck, I love them all}. It has a large body of water in the middle and then paths around housing the World Showcase. As we walked around there were little mini countries with mini restaurants. It actually feels like you're in the particular country that you're visiting. They even hire staff from the country so it feels really authentic.
{The centre focus of Epcot is the golf ball type feature as you enter the park. It's HUGE!}
{Epcot had a flower & garden festival when we visited. They were all throughout the park}
{We stopped by Paris for a little while before our party started}
{We listened to the team from Disney's Magic of Healthy Living speak about how they want to change the way children & families eat. Find out more here}
{Our table}
{Our healthy entree}
{My credentials}
{The room}
{The entertainment}
{And Mickey shaped confetti fell in bucket loads from the ceiling}
We then headed outside for a healthy dessert party {think strawberry shortcake & apple crumble}, and had our own private area for viewing the illuminations show. By this time Lacey was well and truly exhausted so we snuck away early to catch a monorail back to our room, where another special bag of goodies was waiting for us.
The whole conference was so well organised, and so fun to be part of. I made great friends, blogging connections, learnt loads about Social Media {my mind was near exploding!}... we all had the time of our lives. It was the most amazing experience I've ever had, and it was so sad to see it come to an end.
I'll share more about the non-conference things we did in the next few days. x
While I was busy learning new things and networking at the conference Hubby & Lacey had spent most of the day getting lost on the monorails, hanging out at Epcot and then chilling out at the pool, where I met them at the end of the conference.
We changed, donned our credentials and headed for the bus to a private party just for us bloggers {Social Media Moms} at the Hollywood Studios. The park was closed to the public, so to have the whole park to ourselves was a huge treat. We celebrated the launch of Disney Junior {just like Australia's Playhouse Disney - it just had a makeover around a month ago in the States}.
The night was spent dancing, chatting with friends and eating delicious food, so basically a good time!
{Waiters greet us as we walk in with trays of drinks}
{The tables are set up beautifully again with flowers and colouring-in for the kids}
{The party is where the stunt show is usually held. Check out the colourful dancefloor!}
{Disney Junior}
{The DJ rocks it out as the guests keep arriving}
{The food was amazing - a kid's buffet with cupcakes, chicken, macaroni cheese, salad & more, and the adult's buffet was out of this world}
{The Neverland Pirates rock it out! I don't know if we have 'Jake & the Neverland Pirates' in Oz yet, but the show is too cute... and the songs the pirates sing are pretty catchy!}
{Lacey loving it on the dancefloor - the girl LOVES to dance!}
{Lacey & I meeting Daisy Duck for a dance on the dancefloor - on a side note: how impressive are Hubby's photo-taking skills!}
{Stars from Disney Junior got everyone dancing - oh yes!}
{Lacey in awe of Donald Duck}
{The DJ finishing the night with a big dance off!}
{Disney flew us back to our resort via Air Mickey... just kidding! We caught one of the buses behind the plane back to our resort}
{We arrived home to find a bag of Disney Junior goodies left in our room for us. Joy!}
We shared lunch with my new-found friends, and I was surprised to see on every table they had a glass of brownish coloured drink.
"What on earth is this?" I asked my new blogging buddies, who found it amusing that I wasn't familiar with iced tea.
I took a few sips and decided it tasted pretty much like the tea I drink back at home that's gone cold between emails and tending to a toddler, and put it to the side.
The room was buzzing with chatter, networking and hungry mouths munching on the delicious fare {Disney food is amazing}.
We then returned to our conference room to find a Duffy Bear waiting for us, wearing a Social Media Moms tshirt. He's so super soft and Lacey's new best friend. I feel sorry for Lacey's other favourite bear who has been sadly neglected since.
By this time in the conference the jet lag had well and truly kicked in and Duffy Bear was looking like a rather attractive pillow and the corner of the room like a cosy place to have a wee lie down. I fought the fogginess {with a cheeky diet coke} and kept on conferencing.
{Minnie stopped by to say hello!}
We then had a sharing from the audience where bloggers shared their favourite memories briefly. One blogger stood up to share and then stormed the stage to go on and on and on about her niece. I thought it was odd, but Shannon beside knew that Disney always like a trick and that it was an act.
The blogger turned out to not be a blogger at all, instead it was Fran Capo, the world's fastest talking woman. Fran shared her inspiring story and urged us to always "just say yes".
Next up to the stage was Chris Brogan. Chris was the person I was most excited about hearing speak. I'd heard of him before, and I'd also seen him at the Disney events prior to the conference and he was super friendly. So friendly that he even offered for me to sit with him at our finale night. The guy is just so darn likable, and smart too!
Chris shared so many brilliant insights that I could probably write posts for a month about them, but my favourite of all was when he said, "Stop saying 'yes' to things". {I know, I know, a contradiction to what Fran said, but there is a difference!}. Chris doesn't own a TV and says that being online can be a huge time zap. He suggests not having too many browsers open, stop reading so many things, stop being enticed by Twitter and Facebook. He doesn't deny that these forms of Social Media are vital for blogging, but we need to watch the amount of time we spend on them. So true!
{Chris Brogan}
After Chris finished speaking the music once again started, this time playing Be My Guest from Beauty & the Beast, and in marched waiters with trays of champagne.
To finish off the day of learnings we were entertained by Georgia Stitt and Susan Egan who both sang and shared their stories of motherhood. Georgia is conductor and lyricist, and Susan is a broadway actress who played Belle {from Beauty & the Beast} for years. She was also the voice of Megara in the Hercules movie.
Susan and Georgia performed the hilarious Mum Song for us, among a whole host of other performances whilst we sipped our champagne.
We then all headed to our rooms to see our families for a quick catch up, and then we boarded the bus for a private party. More on that a little later on. xx
Friday was a day-long conference for the Social Media Moms, so at 8am we all turned up {bright-eyed & bushy-tailed, of course} for a group breakfast.
As we walked into the restaurant, before we even reached our tables, we were stopped at the buffet to hover over the selections. Whilst hovering I met Shannon of Traveling Mamas, one of the nicest people I've ever met. Shannon honestly made my experience at Disney so much richer.
After a delicious breakfast {by the way American bacon is to die for!} we headed for the conference centre. It was set up like a wedding with flowers on every table, stunning chair covers and a castle on the main stage.
Meg Crofton was the first speaking on the stage. She's the President of Walt Disney World Resort. She urged us all to make magical memories during our stay, as that is what Disney is all about. She said, "Let the magic of this place move you." After she finished speaking the music started up {it felt like I was at an Oprah show or something} and out came a goodie bag with a beautiful frame inside to put our favourite memory inside.
{the goodie bags}
The next speaker was Matt Jacobson from Facebook. His role is the Head of Market Development. Matt is the 8th ever employee of Facebook, and the whole time he spoke I kept wondering if he appeared in the movie, but was too scared to get up and ask.
Managing Facebook pages is part of my day job so I loved listening to Matt speak. He was funny, relevant and really insightful. My favourite piece of advice from Matt was regarding separating personal profile pages and fan pages. He suggests that we do a regular clean up and we all laughed when he suggested we do it during "boring conference calls".
He also shared with us that just recently he had told his friend Kanye West that he should ease up on the Facebook updates because he was becoming a spammer. I love a celebrity friend mention!
When bloggers stood up to ask him questions, he'd reply with "I can help you with that" and even shared his personal email address with the room. He's a brave man!
Rene Syler of Good Enough Mother was our next speaker. She was a news anchor for the Early Show {like the Today Show in Australia} and after being fired she started blogging around 4 years ago. There were tears and laughter as Rene spoke from the heart about her story. She was a hit with the whole crowd, and mingled with us throughout the whole conference.
Rene blogs from her closet at home, and says, through tears, she's never been happier, "Every day I'm in my closet blogging. Every day I eat a $2 Lean Cuisine meal for lunch. Every day... I am happy."
I loved this gem Rene shared about choosing what you do with your life, "You may not know what you want to do, but you know what you don't want to do."
The Fairy Godmother then stopped by for a quick visit and prize giving. There were watches, handbags and an overnight stay in Cinderella's castle to be won. Unfortunately, I didn't win.
We then had a break and headed back to the resort for lunch with our fellow bloggers.
1. White Shoe Shuffle I don't know if this is an American thing, an Orlando thing... or even just a Disney thing but everywhere I seemed to go, I seemed to be surrounded by super white shoes. It was just a small thing, but it made me smile so big - to catch a glimpse at a pair of blindingly white shoes, and imagine how proud the owner must be to have them so white. Part of me just wanted to 'Christen' them like we did at school. I got all sniper-like and snapped these photos as evidence...
{the owner of these should be proud of these shiners!}
2. "Your dress is so cute!" The parks at Disney are so filled with people that it's like combining the Easter Show, Grand Final Day and Thursday night shopping on steroids into one place and doubling it. It's all sorts of busy! So imagine my surprise when each day {oh except one, perhaps I won't wear that dress again} I was stopped by a stranger and complimented on my dress{es}. People would go out of their way to say a kind word. The first time it happened a girl walked straight towards me, through the sea of people, just to tell me, "Your dress is so cute!" Joy!
3. It's just like the movies! Perhaps I just watch too much CSI and Law & Order, but I had to laugh when I walked into the airport terminal and saw the man in shackles and prison outfit... but when we were driving to Miami and spotted a prison bus beside us, I cracked up. There was a man peering out the window at us. I know this sort of thing happens in Australia too, but it's so much fun when it happens while on holiday.
4. American food is gooooooood! I'd been prepped by well-traveled friends and family that American food was big, and at times nasty, but I have to say we enjoyed it. We were spoiled at Disney with delicious food at the events we attended, but even a pizza we grabbed in Miami was perfection. Best of all food is so cheap. We were spending way less than what we would spend in Australia, even with a tip. I actually even managed to lose 2kg while in America. Who knows how... but I like it!
5. People love to work at Disney Disney World has 62,000 employees. They're all smiley and friendly {well all that we encountered}. They're efficient. Someone spills a drink outside on the cement, and within seconds a Disney staff member is there mopping it up. The thing is though, that they're not referred to as staff... they're called Cast Members. Disney is like one big performance. It feels like you're on the set of some sort of surreal movie. Cast Members is so fitting. I love it!
6. Americans are {mostly} super enthusiastic I know that it's a sweeping generalisation but seriously... that's how it seems. We visited the Magic Kingdom on St. Patrick's Day and about 36.8% of visitors were wearing green. How's that for spirit? It amazed me how many families were wearing identical personalised t-shirts with things like, "Spencer Family's Annual Vacation 2011" or "We're holidaying for Val's 50th!" Next time we go to Disney we're going all out and getting caps and tees just to fit in. We even saw a couple get engaged near the Cinderella castle. Magic moments, I tell ya!
Have you ever been to the States? If so, what made you smile?
I can {and do} talk to anyone. I can spark up a conversation with almost anyone, and give me a drink {or three} and I'm your new best friend, like it or not!
I hadn't given much thought about how I'd go with being the odd one out at the Social Media Mom's Conference. I actually only realised that the conference was about to start ten minutes before it kicked off. I was still on Australia time... so I quickly slapped on some make-up and headed to our meeting point, the Wedding Pavilion.
As we arrived we were handed a pair of Minnie Mouse ears with a veil, a glass of champagne and given free reign on a very generous candy buffet {I only noticed the candy when we were being ushered into the pavilion for a presentation, so no photos unfortunately}. The Minnie ears were a great ice breaker, but it only hit me as I was standing amongst all the new faces how much of a misfit I really was. I was 'gate-crashing' a tight-knit community of bloggers who had no idea who I was or how I fitted in {I found out later that a handful of the bloggers read my blog}. I really was a fish out of water. Thankfully the American Mommy Bloggers are just as friendly as the Australian bloggers that I've met and friended over time, and I was forming new friendships in no time {even with the crazy Minnie ears on!}.
We were lead into the pavilion by a over-the-top actor wedding planner named Fronk. He was hilarious and a great MC for the event. The room was filled with media and 200 bloggers and, as you can probably imagine, loads of cameras, iPhones, iPads and everything else a Social Media Mum should own.
Firstly, we heard from Alfred Angelo who exclusively announced that he'd just designed a range of wedding dresses just for Disney, with a dress for each Disney Princess.
Disney does things differently to anything I've ever experienced. Fronk was brilliant, but even the speakers were welcomed with much fanfare. There was music, and then the doors would suddenly open and in each speaker would come, walking down the aisle.
David Tutera arrived next. I had no idea who he was, not being an American, but one blogger cried... so I quickly learned that he was pretty amazing. He is a host of a popular TV show, My Fair Wedding, where he makes people's dreams come true. For those that are getting married in the next 12 months, David told us that when it comes to weddings "pink & brown are out and purple is in."
Carly Roney, CEO & founder of The Knot, The Bump & The Nest, was next to burst through the doors. I was so enthralled with her talk that I didn't even lift my camera. She shared great tid-bits on Social Media and how she grew her site from just 700 hits a month, to the 7 million she now gets.
Carly shared, "Twitter is like a cocktail party. Don't walk into the room and say, 'Hey, look at me!' Instead you need to be witty and charming, and not just talk about yourself. You need to be relevant and compliment others."
One of the highlights of the evening was witnessing a couple who married at Disney two years earlier renew their vows. It was nice to see them still so in love.
{the bridesmaids & groomsmen dancing down the aisle}
{the couple renewing their vows}
{the couple walking back down the aisle after saying their vows}
We all then ventured outside to see off the couple as they were whisked away in a glass chariot led by 10 white horses, with fireworks in the sky behind them. Absolutely romantic {besides the 200 odd bloggers crashing their party!}.
It was then time for our families to rejoin us with a party on the beach. We had drinks, music, sideshow games, delicious food, toys for the kids, a sand sculpture, Minnie & Mickey and other characters too.
When the party was over we caught a boat to the Magic Kingdom, watched the light street parade and headed back to our room for some much, much needed sleep.
