With it being such a short trip I don’t want to start a new ptr for it. Here is the Where, when, and why for our March trip.
When: Just a way to short trip down for 4days/3nights on 3/17 – 3/20.
Why: We have a close family friend’s wedding to go to in Orlando and I just couldn’t be THAT close to Disney and not get at least a taste of it.
What Little Miss knows: Right now we’ve told her nothing about staying or going to Disney. She knows we are going to Orlando for a wedding. She knows that Nana and Grandad (My Parents who are not Disney people and have opted out of joining us in our Disney time.
) are also going to this wedding. We’ve gone ahead and mentioned that the wedding is VERY CLOSE to Disney World (Not a Disney wedding. The Bride’s family just lives in Orlando so the wedding is actually like 30-40 minutes away in Downtown Orlando) and Mommy and Daddy would love to spend time at Disney but it may not be possible. ( I tried not to lie and be too misleading but at this point we may be stretching the truth pretty far into lie territory with the 3 yr old...
Anything to keep the secret right?
) We’ve also been quick to defuse the “are/can/when are we going to Disney World?” bomb with statements like, “Well, Mommy and Daddy would LOVE to go back to Disney sweetie but it is a very expensive place and we can’t always go when we want to.” And “Want to take a pretend trip to Disney today?” (We take pretend trips by pulling up videos of riding Disney buses, Ride POVs, Videos from the Monorails, resort videos, etc.) So far, we are pretty sure she suspects nothing and we plan to lead her on to think that we are staying at the conventionish hotel where Nana is going to stay. (Though my mom is actually worried that Little Miss will be disappointed when she finds out that she isn’t staying in the same hotel as Nana.
)
Where: This was a very hard one and some may recall a few months back the waffling that we did going back and forth between going cheap and staying at the hotel where everyone else is staying {The Doubletree and The Courtyard in Downtown Orlando}, staying off property but close to Disney so we could be in a family friendly hotel{We had a reservation at The B Resort for a while}, or staying on property.
After some serious number crunching it turns out that food wise we actually save about $100-$200 by getting the quick service dining plan. The savings on the food budget plus the savings from winter discounts coming out made it slightly cheaper to stay on property than the off property but family friendly and close to Disney hotel options we were going to go with. Then there is the added bonus for me that you can’t get the dining plan without buying at least one park day.
So with that decided, we had to narrow it down to WHICH on property resort. We did consider POFQ for a brief bit but decided that with a goal of making this trip as cheap as possible we would be better suited in a value. We also thought that with this trip being so short, it would end up being a great opportunity to try out a value and see how we really feel about the smaller space and smaller beds. From there it was a crunch of numbers trying to decide how cheap we wanted to go. Before the deal was released I had my eye on Art of Animation. If we were going to go value and skimp on tickets to the parks then we could at least have fun with the room we stayed in. Then the deals came out and as guessed, the little mermaid rooms weren’t included.
That left us with either the All Stars or Pop. While All Star Music was cheaper, we weren’t thrilled with the age of the resort (we’ve heard its getting worn out and seeing as it looks exactly like I remember it looking when I stayed there in ’03 with the marching band that tells you something…), nor were we thrilled with the fact the buses share (This would bring back the issues we had at POR). We also weren’t as thrilled with the food court options.
Having read so many positive things about Pop here on the disboards, and the fact that it is a simi-sister resort to Art of Animation so we could still spend some time browsing around and enjoying that food court should we want to, we decided that Pop was the better option.
We are now booked in a Preferred Pool Room at Pop. This will be our first Value as a family. (I did stay at All Star Music in high school but that was 13ish years ago) It will also be our first pool view and our first preferred. It will also be our first time using the dining plan. I really hope that we don’t regret being that close to the main pool. (I’ve heard it gets loud) Since making the decision to stay there I’ve started to get rather excited about it. I’m looking forward to trying out a preferred room.