Our Favorite D23 Expo Announcements!

What is D23, you ask? It's the official Disney fan club! D for Disney, 23 for the year (1923) Walt moved to Hollywood and founded the company. The D23 Expo is like Comic Con for Disney fans, with major announcements and panels and shopping all weekend. It's like Christmas for Disney nerds and we've been following the Expo news on social media all weekend. Here are the big announcements we're most excited about!

1. STAR WARS! There have been rumors for years about Star Wars Land at Hollywood Studios, especially this year as several attractions closed, and rumors about a major park expansion at Disneyland as the company has acquired land in Anaheim, but I don't recall anyone hypothesizing that BOTH PARKS would get a 14 acre Star Wars themed expansion, the largest single-theme expansion ever. Some new Star Wars experiences will be added as early as this year!

2. Francis's Star Wars pick is the cast announcement for Rogue One. Check out starwars.com for a photo and more details!

3. Toy Story Land - Also at Hollywood Studios, this seems to be a "quickie" expansion that will keep people happy while they build the Star Wars expansion. Toy Story Midway Mania is getting an additional track, which will hopefully reduce the 2 hour wait, and there will be a new ride based on the green aliens from the claw machine, and a family friendly roller coaster that takes you for a ride on the back of Slinky Dog.

4. The new Jungle Cruise themed restaurant, Skipper Canteen. We are huge fans of Adventureland in this house, as you can see from Lilly's room, and we always kick off visits to the Magic Kingdom with the Enchanted Tiki Room and Jungle Cruise. This new restaurant will be staffed by Jungle Cruise skippers and will have several themed rooms. The rumor is that it will be like Be Our Guest - quick service lunch and table service dinner.

5. Sunset Kilimajaro Safaris - Animal Kingdom has never been a big priority for us because we have a really amazing zoo here in St Louis, but I am excited about the park being open later! I hear my spirit animal, hyenas, will be a feature of the Sunset Kilimanjaro Safaris.

The Triumphant Return of Francis + Beth! Now With Lilly!

Welcome to Franceth Travels! Many of you may know Francis and me (Beth) from the blog I started in 2008, Craves, Caves, & Graves. In the 6 years of writing that blog, I met, married, and had a baby with Francis, and also learned a lot from him about photography, and changed a lot of my philosophies about writing a travel blog. I also became a travel agent just for the joy of helping people plan their Disney Vacations, and I started a home based business so that I could stay at home with Lilly, spend more time writing, and generally spend more time having fun. That's a lot of changes! There was so much I wanted to change about CC&G that it got overwhelming, so I decided to take a break when I was pregnant and see how things went when Lilly was born.

I am happy to report that at three weeks of age, Lilly seems to be fairly portable, happy in the car, and a great sleeper, so we have started venturing out of doors! Not only that, but we just booked our next Disney Land & Sea vacation for October 2016, so I feel like every excursion in the next 15 months will be practice for taking a baby on a major vacation. I'm hoping we can share lots of fun and funny tips for traveling with a new baby in the coming months!

Here's our first tip that Francis discovered when we went to WDW in December when I was pregnant, and we were just starting to scope out other people's strollers: The squirrels know where you are keeping the good snacks, man. Consider packing Tupperware! (This is not our video, but I was delighted that it came up when I Googled "squirrel bandit".)