Three Trips in One: 12 Days, 6 Parks, and One Half Marathon; A 2/16 PTR

Hello! I'm starting my very first pre-trip report, so please bear with me while I figure this out. I am anxiously counting down the days (139 I believe!) until our next trip to the World in February. I thought maybe a pre-trip report will help me pass the time, plus get me some good advice if anyone happens to stumble upon this. So, let's get to it! This upcoming trip will be many trips in one. One of my best friends and I have been talking about running a Disney race (princess half marathon specifically) for a few years, and we decided that 2016 was the year to do it! Part 2 of this trip will be my family's (and my) first trip to Universal. I am HUGE Harry Potter nerd, and I'm trying my best to convert the kids (quite successfully I might add! ) We decided if I am going to Orlando, we may as well all check out The Wizarding World of Harry Potter while we are it! Part 3 of our trip will be Disney World!! Needless to say I am sooo excited!
Some quick introductions:
This is me:


Jenny, a 33 year old stay-at-home mother to 3 wonderful, crazy kids. My hobbies are running, watching TV or a movie at night with DH, listening to audiobooks, volunteering a ton for my church and kids' schools, and obsessing about trips to Disney Parks!

Here is DH:


AKA Erik, AKA one hardworking son of a gun! He keeps busier than anyone I know, and is always willing to lend a helping hand. His one flaw is that he is quite a reluctant Disney vacationer. It took me YEARS to convince him to go to Disney World back in Feb. 2014. He had a great time, but honestly he would be fine if I said let's just do Disney every 10 years or so. Aaaaand that's not happening!

Let's see here is DS9, DS6, and DD4


This picture was taken just over a year ago now, so they are quite a bit bigger, but I love it because it shows them at their best: deep in imagination play (I believe they were in the middle of some sort of "Quidditch Game"). These three keep me on my toes and are generally my favorite people on earth!

A couple more introductions:


My aforementioned Princess Half marathon partner, Amanda! I love this girl so much and am so excited to have a fun weekend with her!!

Also:



DMIL and DFIL. I seriously lucked out in the in-law department! They came with us on our vacation in 2014 and will join us for 4 nights this time.

So now that the cast is known, here are some plans!

Princess weekend will be a friend weekend with Amanda. I will fly out on the 17th and stay one night solo on-site and then await for Amanda to join me either on the 18th or 19th. If you can believe it, we have not totally figured out where we are going to stay the rest of the weekend! Amanda is in a very busy time right now- about to move states, so I'm just kind of waiting until she can think about Princess weekend (so ya know, opposite of what I'm doing, thinking about this daily haha) I do have my on-site reservation for the whole weekend, but in past conversations, Amanda seemed to really want to stay off-site to want to save money. I'm OK with this. It's good to travel with a person that's a little more cost-conscious than myself!

My family will fly in on the 20th and stay in our off-site condo we've rented. There was a LOT of back and forth between off-site and on-site. But in the end, it just made more sense to stay off. DH HATES the idea of a split stay, with my in-laws with us for a few nights it is quite the large group, and since we are needing to rent a car for Universal anyway are among the most compelling reasons for us (oh and the minimum $800 savings is pretty compelling too!

So that leads me to my first question: Have you stayed off-site and been OK with it? I really am at peace with our decision now, and I am able to just look forward to all of the things we are going to be ABLE to do on our vacation!

So I already have several things in place: flights for my departure, my family's departure, and our return home on 2/29 (leap day!), I have dining booked, and my portion of the Disney trip paid for (my one night on-site stay, memory maker, my 9 day ticket, and my princess half registration). We've put some down on our off-site condo. We still need to buy the family's 7 day WDW ticket, all of our Universal tickets, and then save money for our food, and souvenirs.

Here is a rough outline of our plan so far:
2/17 I arrive (yay!)

2/18 solo day at MK or go over to the Expo on the morning it opens. I would rather not do this, since Amanda will need to go to Expo once she arrives anyway. I'd rather go with her. The only reason I would go by myself is if there is some souvenir that I just must have and that I think will sell out. At this point, my only must have is a car magnet, so I doubt that that will be the cast, but we'll see. I'm also really, really excited at the prospect of going to MK on my own!

2/19 Amanda and I are actually going to just focus on Harry Potter, in terms of park time during Princess weekend. She's as big an HP nerd as I am, so she definitely couldn't pass that up! I think that would be the best day to tackle those parks.

2/20 expo and Disney Springs? We haven't nailed down our plans yet

2/21 Princess Race! I cant wait to run this race!! At this point I think Amanda's plan is to leave that evening? Maybe she will decide to stay longer though (I hope!). My family will have flown in the night before. The next day, I'm sure they will sleep in quite a bit (we will be working off MST so it's going to be rough waking up 2 hours earlier just to be on Eastern). Their job that late morning/early afternoon will be to get the groceries we need for the next week and swim and relax. Then we will all head to Epcot to tour around the world showcase and have dinner at Akershus.

2/22 Universal, focusing mostly on Harry Potter stuff. My in-laws will be with us at this point.

2/23 Universal, focusing on Marvel rides and characters and anything else.
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2/24 Magic Kingdom I have a pre-park breakfast reserved at BOG and dinner at 1900 Park Fare.

2/25 Magic Kingdom pre-park breakfast reserved at CP and dinner at BOG, but that may change.

2/26 Hollywood Studios. I'm thinking we will need to sleep in this day. This would mean no Jedi Training (or whatever it will be called at that point) which would be sad for DS6. We will have to play that by ear.

2/27 Animal Kingdom Again, we will sleep in on this day, if we need to.

2/28 Epcot Breakfast at Garden Grill and dinner at Via Napoli.

2/29 late breakfast at Ohana, then everyone can pick one re-ride at MK, and then sadly we will depart!

Following along! Looks like a fantastic trip!

Sounds like a great trip you have planned! I will be doing Princess Half too!

We stayed offsite on our trips when my kids were younger. Though I really wanted to stay on site, I don't think the kids ever minded. But since my family had a time share in Orlando, that was the only way I was going at that time. It was really nice to have the extra space, multiple bedrooms and bathrooms and a kitchen. I think with a big group, young kids, and going to Universal there will be a lot of pluses to offsite as well.

MouseketeerKelsey said:

Following along! Looks like a fantastic trip!

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Thanks for checking out my PTR!

kathleen27 said:

Sounds like a great trip you have planned! I will be doing Princess Half too!

We stayed offsite on our trips when my kids were younger. Though I really wanted to stay on site, I don't think the kids ever minded. But since my family had a time share in Orlando, that was the only way I was going at that time. It was really nice to have the extra space, multiple bedrooms and bathrooms and a kitchen. I think with a big group, young kids, and going to Universal there will be a lot of pluses to offsite as well.

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Thanks for stopping by! That's awesome you are running Princess as well! Have you done that race before? I am super excited!!

Well, one aspect of vacation planning that a) I love and b) further cements my status as a crazy lady is that I love to plan my outfits. DH and I along with Amanda and her hubby went on a Caribbean cruise this past February and I loved the outfit planning! Amanda I were texting often about what we were thinking we would wear which day. So anyway, a Disney vacation is just like that except a bit more extreme-- I can plan my family's outfits too! *loud, evil laugh*

For PHM weekend, I have not thought about this too much. This will be super fun to figure out once I'm ready. I mean wearing a costume was half the reason to sign up for Princess! However, once our family vacation starts I have things planned out for the most part:

Our first day at Universal, we will be focusing on Harry Potter so we will wear . . . HP attire! I have two shirts and I'm going to see if MIL can wear one of them, I bought DH a shirt, DS has a knock off HP shirt from a "Potter 5K" we ran this summer (that thing was nerd-tastic by the way-- so much fun!). I've been checking Etsy for possible shirts for DS6 and DD4. Hopefully I will find something I like (that isn't too expensive!)

Next day at Universal, we will be wearing our Marvel shirts. DH, the DS's, and myself wore them on opening night to Avengers: Age of Ultron
Our first day at MK, I was thinking we could all wear Mickey or Minnie shirts. DH, DFIL, DMIL will probably just wear the shirt they wore in 2014. DS6 could possibly fit into DS9's shirt from 2014. And DD4 and I have some choices :

These are my Disney shirts I have acquired over the past couple of years. I only buy these types of shirts on clearance, because for the most part I don't wear these day to day. But I feel like I have to be Disney themed at Disney!

My clearance finds for Anna. Mostly found at Target. They have lots of cute Disney things for little girls . . . boys? not so much!


Our second day of MK will be (hopefully) when we meet Anna and Elsa, so I figured the kids could wear some Frozen clothes I found at Target on clearance These are the ONLY Disney boy shirts I have found. I've ordered shirts from the Disney store before, but to be honest they have funky sizing and it seems more of a bother than it's worth.
I am planning on Disney bounding Ariel that day.

Up next is our HS day. In our family HS=Star Wars and that is even without Star Wars land!

For DD4, I am hoping I can make a simple circle skirt out of some SW fabric I have . . . We'll see if I can upgrade my sewing skills from "Oh shoot how do I thread my machine again??" to "I got this!"

And believe it or not, that is the end of micromanaging my children's outfits! Anna will continue to wear various Disney/Minnie shirts and the boys will just wear what they want.

Am I crazy? Yes, I am!

I learned about Disney Bounding a few years ago, and immediately loved it! I LOVE dressing up, showing my nerd love for Disney characters, and getting creative with things I already have. I've gathered stuff together for 3 princess outfits so far.

This is my Rapunzel. I'm not super crazy about it, but the color reminds me of Rapunzel's dress and the flower hair clip and bracelet finish it off. I'm thinking I will wear this on my solo MK day. Better fast pass that meet and greet!


My version of Ariel! I was so excited when I found that sea shell/star fish jewelry! Also those jeans are SO comfy!



Here is my Snow White! I have some cute little apple earrings that aren't in the pic. My plan is to wear that on our last Epcot day.

So question, have any of you ever done Disney Bound outfits? How did it go?

Followed you from your comment on my trip report/on Facebook. I am totally in the same position with clothes. I have purchased quite a few things on eBay for DH and I, and finding Disney clothes for the girls has been very easy. I plan on packing the outfits in Ziplocs and labeling them by day. Obsessive much? But DD2 has to wear her Sophia shirt on HS day, and so on.

I love your Disney Bound outfits. I think my friend that is coming with us is going to do some of that. I'm looking forward to seeing what she puts together. Myself, I just have different Disney themed t-shirts I'll be wearing.

Well in honor of reserving fast passes tonight (eek!) I thought I would organize some stuff for our trip and update on my PTR. One thing I loved last trip was buying "gifts from Mickey" and leaving them out for the kids to find in the hotel room each night. They were at the perfect age for that where any magic presented to them was very real. DS9 (who will be 10 on our trip) has since become much more cynical about "magic" (I'm fairly certain he knows about Santa, but doesn't want to let on. He definitely does not believe that our elf on the shelf is real!). Anyway, it's still fun for me, and it also saves me money. I buy all of the gifts on sales and clearance and then we tell them that we don't do souvenir shopping during our trip to save time for rides, shows, and meals and Mickey leaves them all of their souvenirs Here is what I have so far:

the first morning the kids and DH are in Orlando, I will not be with them. They will check in to the condo on Saturday night, but I will be with Amanda in a different hotel getting ready for PHM! Anyway, I will have DH put out their first gift. Disney lanyards that will have a couple of pins on them each. The kids think pin trading sounds like a lot of fun, so this will be their small start to that world

On Monday, their gift will be money to buy interactive wands at HP. Then Tuesday (again at Universal-this time focusing on Marvel stuff). They will get these Spiderman cups along with some Marvel pencils or pens that I still need to get.
Wednesday will be our first day at MK as a group. Goofy hats for the boys and this adorable Ariel ears for DD4. I'm hoping to find some cute tsum tsums at Target that would go with them.

Our second day at MK. I'm going to add some Mickey suckers with these.

This is what I have scheduled for Friday when we will be at HS, but I kind of can't believe that I don't have Star Wars stuff planned for that day . . . I may need to rethink this!
Animal Kingdom Day on Saturday.

Our second Sunday will be spent at Epcot. I think I'm going to switch out the princess jewelry and find an art case for DD like her brothers. I will probably save the Princess jewerely case for one of her friend's birthdays.

Last but not least is our last Monday there. We will be having a late breakfast at Ohana before doing just an hour or two at MK. When I saw these cute little Stitches, I knew they would be perfect! I will be getting a Minnie mug for DD!

Well, it's a good thing, I pulled everything out because there are definitely some things I need to switch around!