angierae
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Mar 4, 2010
Hi everyone! I've never done a PTR before because I usually plan my trips so far in advance I've done all the real stuff way to far out to do a PTR.
However! DD21 and I had planned a trip to Disney in October of 2016 with two days at Universal. Her dad had gone to Universal with his wife and stepkids in 2014, and she hadn't been able to go. I promised her a "make up" trip, and we hoped to incorporate it into a Disney trip.
However, this summer my husband was out of work for a while, and when he went back to work he took a slight paycut. We had to burn through some of our savings, and the new job made us reevaluate our budget, which meant less money going to my discretionary "vacation fund".
However, there was still enough in there to take a trip to Universal, which would cost about half what the longer trip was going to cost. And since we didn't have to keep saving up, we could go earlier. Despite not really liking cold weather, we decided to go in January of 2016 because of the low crowds and became I'm impatient.
Before we get started, here's some pics of DD and I. She'll turn 21 a little over a week before our trip, so I'm looking forward to being able to grab a drink in the evenings with her.
Here's us recently with my great-nephew Braydon. My sister Denise has metastatic lung cancer (Has been fighting since 2007) and she was so excited to welcome her first grandchild on NYE 2014.
And here's us at MK during our 2013 trip. We went down for a music festival called "Nerdapalooza" and then spent a couple days at Disney afterwards. We went to MNSSHP on Sunday, and Monday we spent a ridiculously long day - started out at MK for morning EMH, then went over to Hollywood Studios, then returned for late EMH after Fantasmic. It was exhausting!
The Plan:
We’ll leave Friday morning, arrive at MCO and head to Cabana Bay Resort. We opted for one of their family suites, even though there’s only two of us, because it was a bit more room, and only $37 more a night. I agree, looking at pics and layouts, that I would absolutely not want to stick six people in there, but for two it’ll be super nice to be able to spread out a little bit. We travel well together, but no one has ever suffered from too much space in a hotel room.
Don’t know when we’ll be able to check into our room, but we’ll drop our stuff off with Bell Services if need be, and head over to Citywalk to check things out. Have dinner down there, and get to bed early to enjoy the parks on Saturday!
We got the Harry Potter package, which didn’t seem to be any different than buying the things we got separately (Breakfast at the Three Broomsticks and the Leaky Cauldron, and the photo package at Shutterbottoms) so we have three day park-to-park tickets. We’ll head to IOA, which seems to be who has early entry at that time (according to Touring Plans, anyway, I realize this is subject to change) and ride everything we can during that extra hour, then do as we please until our 10am breakfast reservations. We’ll eat breakfast, and then we’ll continue touring Hogsmeade until we’re ready to take the train over to Diagon Alley.
We’ll check out Diagon Alley for as long as we want, and then spend the rest of the day exploring USF.
Sunday we’ll start at USF, explore Diagon Alley some more, ride Gringotts, and then train over to IOA and spend the rest of the day there.
Monday will be for whatever we want to revisit. (I think our breakfast plans are at USF that morning at 9:30, so I suspect we’ll roll out of bed just in time to make that.)
That's it so far! I'm really enjoying reading people's trip reports and learning about all the little things at Universal beyond rides.
Thanks for reading!
However! DD21 and I had planned a trip to Disney in October of 2016 with two days at Universal. Her dad had gone to Universal with his wife and stepkids in 2014, and she hadn't been able to go. I promised her a "make up" trip, and we hoped to incorporate it into a Disney trip.
However, this summer my husband was out of work for a while, and when he went back to work he took a slight paycut. We had to burn through some of our savings, and the new job made us reevaluate our budget, which meant less money going to my discretionary "vacation fund".
However, there was still enough in there to take a trip to Universal, which would cost about half what the longer trip was going to cost. And since we didn't have to keep saving up, we could go earlier. Despite not really liking cold weather, we decided to go in January of 2016 because of the low crowds and became I'm impatient.
Before we get started, here's some pics of DD and I. She'll turn 21 a little over a week before our trip, so I'm looking forward to being able to grab a drink in the evenings with her.
Here's us recently with my great-nephew Braydon. My sister Denise has metastatic lung cancer (Has been fighting since 2007) and she was so excited to welcome her first grandchild on NYE 2014.
And here's us at MK during our 2013 trip. We went down for a music festival called "Nerdapalooza" and then spent a couple days at Disney afterwards. We went to MNSSHP on Sunday, and Monday we spent a ridiculously long day - started out at MK for morning EMH, then went over to Hollywood Studios, then returned for late EMH after Fantasmic. It was exhausting!
The Plan:
We’ll leave Friday morning, arrive at MCO and head to Cabana Bay Resort. We opted for one of their family suites, even though there’s only two of us, because it was a bit more room, and only $37 more a night. I agree, looking at pics and layouts, that I would absolutely not want to stick six people in there, but for two it’ll be super nice to be able to spread out a little bit. We travel well together, but no one has ever suffered from too much space in a hotel room.
Don’t know when we’ll be able to check into our room, but we’ll drop our stuff off with Bell Services if need be, and head over to Citywalk to check things out. Have dinner down there, and get to bed early to enjoy the parks on Saturday!
We got the Harry Potter package, which didn’t seem to be any different than buying the things we got separately (Breakfast at the Three Broomsticks and the Leaky Cauldron, and the photo package at Shutterbottoms) so we have three day park-to-park tickets. We’ll head to IOA, which seems to be who has early entry at that time (according to Touring Plans, anyway, I realize this is subject to change) and ride everything we can during that extra hour, then do as we please until our 10am breakfast reservations. We’ll eat breakfast, and then we’ll continue touring Hogsmeade until we’re ready to take the train over to Diagon Alley.
We’ll check out Diagon Alley for as long as we want, and then spend the rest of the day exploring USF.
Sunday we’ll start at USF, explore Diagon Alley some more, ride Gringotts, and then train over to IOA and spend the rest of the day there.
Monday will be for whatever we want to revisit. (I think our breakfast plans are at USF that morning at 9:30, so I suspect we’ll roll out of bed just in time to make that.)
That's it so far! I'm really enjoying reading people's trip reports and learning about all the little things at Universal beyond rides.
Thanks for reading!
.
