Mickeyd's PTR – Disney Fantasy and WDW! (Oct-Nov 2015)

mickeyd78

Mouseketeer
Joined
Jul 24, 2011
Welcome to the PTR for our upcoming October / November 2015 Disney vacation.

I love planning Disney trips, but I’m not so good at documenting pre/post trip reports. I have benefited so much from reading tips from other people’s trip reports her on Disboard, so I want make more of an effort to document this trip in the hope that it helps others!


Cast:

Me – mickeyd
DW
DD (4, turning 5 not long after this trip)
DS (1, turning 2 about a month before the trip)

Growing up I always wanted to visit Disneyland or Disney World. I finally visited WDW in 2000 and have been a huge Disney Parks fan ever since. Over the past 15 years I’ve been fortunate to visit WDW 9 times (just counted the trips in my signature to get that number, can’t believe it’s that many!), Disneyland twice (for the D23 Expos), and Aulani. The highlight so far was completing the inaugural runDisney Dopey Challenge in 2014.


The idea:

In 2012 we visited WDW for 10 days with my then 2 year old DD. As we were sitting on the Magical Express bus heading back to the airport, and my wife said “Let’s plan for another visit in 2015, before DD starts school and we are restricted to travelling during school holidays. But next time, let’s stay a bit longer. Maybe three weeks”. Now I’m a pretty big Disney fan, but I had never considered staying at WDW for that length of time. Surely we’d get ‘Disneyed’ out?

But the more we talked about it, the more sense it made. Travelling with a 2 year old on our 2012 visit meant heading back to the hotel room for a sleep each day, which really slowed down what we could achieve. We had 2-3 hours in the park each morning and then back to the hotel for a sleep. We’d then make it back to the parks around 4pm, which gave us maybe an hour or so before dinner. We had a great time, but it was certainly a different style of park touring than what we were used to (I’m a reformed Disney Park commando).

Staying longer we can pace things a lot better. Dip into the parks for a few hours – head back to the hotel for sleep / pool time, then back out in the late afternoon for more park time and / or dinner. With a three week stay we can do everything we want at leisurely pace. We’re aiming for more pool time at the resort, time at the water parks and maybe some mini golf.

The question then arose – “What else will we do while we are in the USA?”. Heading straight to WDW seems a bit like only eating dessert for dinner. We normally stop-over in LA for 24 hours on our way to and from Orlando. I don’t particularly like LA, but flying all the way through from Melbourne to Orlando was too much for us before kids, and is certainly beyond us now with little ones.

We love New York and Washington, but they are not ideal places for a 2 year old – and heading back to the hotel for sleeps would once again limit what we could do in a day. We also considered a stop-over in Hawaii (pricey on the airfare front), or a trip down the Florida Keys (I hate driving in the US, and certainly don’ find it relaxing). Then we had a stroke of generous – a Disney Cruise!.

We've done a number of cruises before on Royal Caribbean, and loved them. I've wanted to do a Disney Cruise ever since having kids and particularly after seeing Disney Dream docked at Port Canaveral – she is a classy looking ship. But the price for DCL is certainly a premium over Royal Caribbean. But (and here is where my Disney logic kicked in), the price for a Disney cruise works out cheaper than a week in NYC once you take into consideration that you don’t need to pay an additional set of airfares from NYC to MCO for four! (Call it Disneynomics - where you talk yourself into paying the Disney $$$ because it actually SAVES you money, LOL).


So there you have it – our thought process on how we decided to do a Disney Cruise and 3 weeks at WDW. Next up…… The Plan.
 
The Plan

November is kind of our sweet spot for WDW. My wife is a foodie, so we enjoy the Food and Wine Festival. The weather is pleasant. The crowds are manageable (except for Thanksgiving), and the parks start to get decked out in Christmas decorations.

Also, after enjoying the Dopey Challenge, I was keen to do another runDisney event – the Wine and Dine Half Marathon. So we planned our WDW visit from end of October into November to incorporate the Half Marathon, the Food and Wine Festival, and the start of the Christmas season.


Which Cruise shall we choose?

You can start and end your WDW vacation on any day you like, but cruises are more structured with specific itineraries and sail dates. Choosing the right cruise for us took some time. We started looking at doing a 4 night Disney Dream cruise (we knew 3 nights would be too short). But eventually decided to make the most of it and do 7 nights on Disney Fantasy. We already know that we enjoy cruising, so a 7 night cruise would give us time to fully enjoy the ship. I also had a preference for Fantasy over Dream, as she has a few added features that Dream doesn’t (although that will probably change after the upcoming Dream dry-dock).

I really wanted to do a Christmas themed cruise on Fantasy – but the only way to make that happen with our dates was to do the Thanksgiving cruise, which was super pricy (just over $6,000 for the four of us). So we settled for the 24 Oct Eastern Caribbean cruise. We’ll cruise first and then head to WDW. The only negative is that this is a Halloween themed cruise. We’re not Halloween fans, and I’m a bit concerned that the Halloween activities may freak the kids out. But they’ll be in bed by 7:30 each night, so hopefully we can avoid the scary bits.


WDW

With our cruise locked in, it was time to book the WDW part of our trip. Our favourite resort (so far) is Port Orleans Riverside. We just love the mansion area. We managed to book a 21 night package with POR Garden View rooms, length of stay park hoppers (inc waterparks) and ……. FREE DINING!!!. (Did I mention my wife is a foodie). 21 nights of the Disney Dining Plan is going to leave us the size of houses! Lucky we plan to run the Wine and Dine Half Marathon to run it all off. In all seriousness though, I’m not sure how we are going to feel after 21 nights of table service dinners. But the deal has saved us a stack of money. Even if we don’t use all the credits we’ll still be ahead (although I have a sneaky suspicion we’ll end up using all the credits).


Itinerary so far:

· Day 1 - Fly Melbourne to LAX. Stop overnight

· Day 2 - Fly LAX to MCO. (Stay 2 nights at Hyatt MCO)

· Day 3 - Shopping (Florida Mall?)

· Day 4 - DCL Transport from MCO to Port Canaveral and Disney Fantasy

· Day 5 - At Sea (Disney Fantasy)

· Day 6 - At Sea (Disney Fantasy)

· Day 7 - St. Maarten (Disney Fantasy)

· Day 8 - St. Thomas (Disney Fantasy)

· Day 9 - At Sea (Disney Fantasy)

· Day 10 - Castaway Cay

· Day 11 - Back to Port Canaveral and DCL Transport to Port Orleans Riverside

· Day 12 – 31 - WDW (Port Orleans Riverside)

· Day 32 – Fly MCO to LAX. Stop overnight.

· Day 33 – Fly LAX to Melbourne
 
33 days???? And 3 weeks at WDW?????

WOW!

I'm definitely here for the planning......and the coming home the size of houses! popcorn::

(ps. Congrats on getting another run in!)
 
Oh I like the sound of Disneynomics, I must take a class. lol Your trip sounds amazing. We arrive at WDW on the 28th of November but we missed free dining by days. We have a group 6 including 2 teenage boys so free dining would have been wonderful. I hope you and your wife are big photo takers because I'll be expecting lots :)
 


I'm thinking some training round the decks (on split shifts or while the kids are in the day club) will be needed on board the cruise-I'd be waddling off and there's still all that dining at WDW to fit in....Lol! Sounds brilliant and with littlies taking it slow sounds the right thing to do!
 
We're also not big on Halloween but hopefully the cruise is a "disneyfied" halloween with people dressed up sweetly.
 


Congrats on your next trip MickeyD! It sounds fantastic!

I'm not a big fan of Halloween either, but generally the Disney Halloween stuff isn't too scary. I would expect to see more villain type characters on the cruise, lots of pumpkins, orange and black decorations, and maybe some 'cobwebs' hanging around the ship.
 
I'm not a big fan of Halloween either, but generally the Disney Halloween stuff isn't too scary. I would expect to see more villain type characters on the cruise, lots of pumpkins, orange and black decorations, and maybe some 'cobwebs' hanging around the ship.

My DD still doesn't like the 'Nasty Lady' from Snow White. So we'll see how we go. From what I've seen online from previous Halloween cruises it should be ok. I just don't 'get' Halloween. A Christmas cruise would have been nice, but the thanksgiving cruise would have cost as much as our 3 weeks at WDW, so we just couldn't justify it.
 
My DD still doesn't like the 'Nasty Lady' from Snow White. So we'll see how we go. From what I've seen online from previous Halloween cruises it should be ok. I just don't 'get' Halloween. A Christmas cruise would have been nice, but the thanksgiving cruise would have cost as much as our 3 weeks at WDW, so we just couldn't justify it.

Looking at the positive side, with the Halloween cruise you'll get to experience something a bit different, and it will be a bit more American culture for your kids :thumbsup2
 
How did you manage to get accommodation with hopper tickets for the whole time? That's amazing. We have to buy annual passes for our 14 days there. It seemed to be the cheapest option but if there is another option I'd love to hear about it.
 
That sounds like a fantastic trip - can't wait to hear more. And I'm sure we're all Professors in Disneynomics here aren't we?!
 
Wow, what a wonderful holiday. Looking forward to hearing all about your plans. And love the term 'Disneynomics'.:laughing:

Personally, I love Disneyland/Disneyworld at Halloween. Hopefully your children will be charmed by their favorite characters in costume (if not, perhaps your DD will be charmed by the lollies during trick and treating!)
 
How exciting! We are not Halloween fans either and our kids are pretty innocent. But we spent Halloween at Disneyland when they were 4 and 6 and they loved it. The theming was fun and a celebratory atmosphere. We did not attend the Halloween party though as we were unsure how we would go, but honestly it's so much fun and more of a family get together party, iykwim?
 
<snip>

Personally, I love Disneyland/Disneyworld at Halloween. Hopefully your children will be charmed by their favorite characters in costume (if not, perhaps your DD will be charmed by the lollies during trick and treating!)

I second that. We only experienced it once in 2013, but it was a great experience. Disney do most things pretty well and the "holidays" they do exceptionally well in my view. Halloween is one of them. Here is my Halloween post with lots of pics from my 2013 trip report if you are interested
 
Our ADRs!

As I mentioned, we managed to score the dining plan for this trip. My wife is a bit of a foodie, so much time has been spent deliberating on where to make our ADRs. And for a 21 day trip, a decent amount of time was actually spent physically making the ADRs. For a couple of weeks I was sitting at the PC at 8pm ready to make reservations at 180+10 each day. The Disney World website didn't always play nice, but in the end we got everything we wanted, including... (drum roll please)...... the Chef's Table at Victoria and Albert's on the night of our wedding anniversary.

So here are the plans:

Day 1 - Yak and Yeti (D)

Day 2 - Be Our Guest (L), Victoria & Albert's - Chef's Table (D)

Day 3 - Sanaa (D)

Day 4 - Be Our Guest (L), Ohana (D)

Day 5- California Grill (D)

Day 6 - Raglan Road (D)

Day 7 - Be Our Guest (L), Ohana (D)

Day 8 - Boatwrights (D)

Day 9 - Chef's de France (D)

Day 10 - Be Our Guest (D)

Day 11 - Rose and Crown (D)

Day 12 - Mama Melrose Fantasmic Package (D)

Day 13 - La Hacienda de San Angel (D)

Day 14 - Be Our Guest (L), Raglan Road (D)

Day 15 - Artist Point (D)

Day 16 - Be Our Guest (L), Citricos (D)

Day 17 - Beaches and Cream (D)

Day 18 - Be Our Guest (D)

Day 19 - Via Napoli (D)

Day 20 - Be Our Guest (L), Kona Cafe (D)

Day 21 - Flying Fish Cafe (D)

Seems like an awful lot of food when it's written on a list like that. As you can see I booked a number of lunches at BOG, as I think it is the best QS meal in MK, and a hard to get ADR. I basically booked lunch at BOG for any day we plan to be at MK, but I'm pretty sure we won't want to eat there all the time, so we will likely cancel some of them when we are there.
 
That is a lot of BoG ressies! You guys must love it. Sounds like an awesome trip. I can't believe you got 21 day tickets and FD. That's crazy! For the cruise, you said the kids will be in bed by 7:30pm each night. I would consider letting your older child stay up a little later to see the shows. They are brilliant. Our kids have a 7:30pm bed time but when we are on holidays I relax that to enjoy what's on offer. Just a suggestion. Either way sounds like you'll have a fantastic time.
 

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