"“I've Got A Dream: I Just Want to See the Floating Lanterns Gleam!”" May 2015 PTR! **NEW 5/3!!!

[princessesandpascal]

Be Prepared! Preparations, Switching, and FP+!​

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Before talking about our FP+ planning, I just wanted to add that we made two little changes to our dining reservations (first of many, let's be totally honest here). We switched our Kona Cafe reservation to the morning of our last day in the parks(after our 2am EMH we want the option of being able to come and go to the MK the next morning as we please because we are insane and still trying to make a 9am RD Mother's day), and we also switched our Sci-Fi reservation to earlier in our trip, on May 7th. We're changing our last park night from DHS to Epcot because we realized almost everything we do is closed during EMH which is the opposite of fun.

In other non-FP+ news, I finally made my Etsy purchase that I was going to make back in january. Basically, for my 21st Birthday, Mom said she would purchase something off Etsy for me for our Disney trip. After weeks of deliberation, I finally decided on some Tangled Minnie ears from the store called mouseishly!
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They are so pretty and I can’t wait for them to arrive!! And yesterday while at a mall a few cities over, I found the cutest backpack that I had to scoop up for the trip. Mom and I have been discussing and after five trips of being the pack mule, Mom is handing the reins over to me. I don’t even mind being the one to carry the backpack when it’s this cute, plus we aren't planning on bringing as much to the parks this time around so it'll be lighter. All I'll be carting around that isn't mine is Mom's refillable mug and her umbrella/poncho: everything else goes in her small bag. (The backpack is from Hot Topic for those who are interested!)

Blonde girl not included.​

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Now, onto the good part! So I’m home for my mid-semester Reading Week right now and since our FP+ date is March 5, Mom and I took some time to decide what rides we’re going to Fastpass which days. It was really easy to do every park but MK but we think we’re happy with our choices. Hopefully we get what we want and when we want it! Without further adieu… *drumroll*
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Day 1: 7DMT, Haunted Mansion, Talking Mickey
Day 2: Meet Ariel at her Grotto, Under the Sea: Journey of the Little Mermaid, Pirates
Day 3: Expedition Everest, Kilamanjaro Safaris, Dinosaur
Day 4: TSMM, VOTLM, Frozen Sing-Along (we don’t do TOT or RNR so this was really tough considering the tiering system, the enemy of my FP+ plans, won’t let me get both TSMM and GMR)
Day 5: Test Track, Spaceship Earth, Turtle Talk with Crush
Day 6: Jungle Cruise, Meet Rapunzel and Cinderella, 7DMT
Day 7: Meet Anna and Elsa, 7DMT, Buzz Lightyear
Day 8: Soarin, Spaceship Earth, The Seas with Nemo and Friends

We have a ton of 7DMT options so we don’t have to battle crowds for it in the morning and can just ride it via FP+, and we’ll change the others to Splash or BTMRR if we don’t like 7DMT the first day we do it. We are going to schedule some FP+ for our morning parks so we can get more at our night park, and some days we've scheduled them for the evening park to avoid lines in the late afternoon/early evening. I have my fingers crossed that we get the good times that we're hoping for! We're only 73 days away from our trip and I could not be more excited ​

 

[accountingbabe08]

Looking forward to more...Your plans look great

 

[princessesandpascal]

Update: Only 18 Days Away!

Hello! First of all, I am so sorry for not updating this PTR more often. The last month or so have been incredibly busy for our family, Mom has been working two jobs and I've been trying to make it through the end of the school year! I had my university dance club's end of year showcase as well as tons of papers and assignments due. Luckily now, I only have one final left to write on Saturday and then I can focus on Disney planning until our trip arrives!

We made our FPs at the beginning of March, and were incredibly happy with what we got. Here's the final attractions and our final plans (as they've changed a little from earlier in the TR).

Day 1: Arrival, then MK Afternoon. FPs at Talking Mickey, SDMT, and Haunted Mansion. Then dinner at Chef Mickey's and back to the MK for Wishes and MSEP if we're up for it!

Day 2: Epcot EMH, with breakfast at Akershus. Then hopping to MK to see FOF, with FPs at Under the Sea, Ariel's Grotto, and Buzz Lightyear. The hours got extended for that night but we still plan to leave either before the first MSEP or after Wishes.

Day 3: AK for most of the day, with FP+s at Kilamanjaro, Everest, and Dinosaur. We'll leave early-midafternoon and then freshen up and chill before our evening at Downtown Disney and trying Wolfgang Puck Express for the first time!!

Day 4: MK Morning, we'll stick in Fantasyland for the first hour, then probably head to the Frontierland mountains afterwards. After brunch at Ohana, we're bussing from the Poly to Hollywood Studios for the afternoon. FP+s there are Frozen Stage Show, Indy (a throwaway FP+ because we made it and then realized that we have a dinner reservation 20 minutes later), and TSMM, and dinner will be at Sci-Fi!

Day 5: Morning at DHS, with TSMM our first stop, and then likely lining up for the Big Hero 6 Meet before 10. We'll leave after lunch, then back to the resort for a rest before heading to Epcot. We have FP+ for Soarin, Nemo, and Spaceship Earth that night and dinner reservations at Via Napoli. Our dinner looks like it'll end right near Illuminations, so we'll likely stay in Italy to watch since we won't really be able to leave for Future World.

Day 6: Saturday morning we're leaving open for whatever we want to return to. It's marked as Epcot right now, but we might go to AK to re-ride some favourites, or to DHS if the BH6 meet and greet takes up too much of Friday morning. After that morning's park, we're napping for much of the afternoon before grabbing dinner at Pop and heading out to the MK for late night EMH. We have FP+s at the Rapunzel meet and greet, SDMT, and Splash Mountain (timed so we hopefully crest the drop during Wishes! We've done it once before and it was amazing!). We're planning to close out the park that night until 2am!

Day 7: Mother's Day! We're going to sleep in because of the busy night at the MK the night before. We made our FPs in the late morning instead of the afternoon, and they are at SDMT, Buzz, and A&E. We'll stay in the MK as long as we feel before hopping to Epcot for our dinner at Garden Grill and some evening fun!

Day 8: Our last day We are having a last morning in the MK followed by brunch at Kona! Depending how tired we are, we'll either hop right there, or go back to Pop to change and refresh before spending our last afternoon eating around the world in Epcot!

Day 9: Departure day Our flight is at 2, so our DME pickup will be around 11. We're going to have a last breakfast in the food court and a last minute browse through the gift shop before the bus picks us up to head home.

We're so excited for the trip! 18 days to go! We've been planning outfits, shopping for supplies, and planning our must-dos! ​

 

[Gracefulskinny]

Hi there! Its been awhile not sure why I missed a few of your posts but I'll catch up now.

We will be returning to defend our title in May.

I am sorry to say that you won't. The Where's the Fire? Game is/was in the innoventions west side which closes at the end of the month.

Day 7: Mother's Day! We're going to sleep in because of the busy night at the MK the night before. We made our FPs in the late morning instead of the afternoon, and they are at SDMT, Buzz, and A&E. We'll stay in the MK as long as we feel before hopping to Epcot for our dinner at Garden Grill and some evening fun!

I see that we reverse our schedule this day. We start mother's day in Epcot and end in MK.

 

[princessesandpascal]

Hi there! Its been awhile not sure why I missed a few of your posts but I'll catch up now.


I am sorry to say that you won't. The Where's the Fire? Game is/was in the innoventions west side which closes at the end of the month.

I meant to mention this when I updated! We found out the other day and were super bummed We're big fans of the Great Piggy Bank Adventure too! We'll still give Habit Heroes and Stormstruck both a try and we'll find new ways to unleash our competitive side this year

I see that we reverse our schedule this day. We start mother's day in Epcot and end in MK.

We were thinking of doing that before we booked the dinner at Garden Grill, it happened to work out to switch the schedule! They're the greatest parks to be in that day, I think!

 

[princessesandpascal]

Update: One Week to Go!

We are very quickly approaching the end of this PTR! I definitely overestimated how much I'd have to talk about during the planning process, but hopefully these last few days will be active ones since we are in full planning mode around here. Writing a PTR when almost three hours away from the trip partner is a tough one, but it's fun to see how things have changed! And by things, I mean the closing of Innoventions West, and by fun, I mean heartbreaking. We still are not over the loss of our beloved Where's the Fire. We can do without the great Piggy Bank Adventure, home to the strangest CMs we had ever encountered. Not bad CMs, just... strange ones.

(based on some attraction photos and videos, we have a feeling some of those CMs were recruited to Habit Heroes. The weird lives on!)

Anyways- the trip we've been freaking out about for months is finally only a week away! Bring out the confetti cannons! Launch the streamers! We are a week away from hot weather and magic! (According to the weather channel, it comes along with rain for a couple days, though the forecast has changed every single time I've checked it. I'll be twenty-one with grey hairs by the time next week rolls along.) I picked up this adorable little journal at the Disney Store on sale the other day to be my TR journal, and I'm very excited about it. The Little Mermaid is my favourite classic Disney film!

The plan is to make it a little bit of a scrapbook too: we're bringing some stickers along to stick receipts, etc in it as well as adding any stickers we may end up getting and a few character autographs among my journaling notes. We tried to do the "easy" scrapbook-as-you-go thing last trip and it just didn't work out well at all. This is a little easier to handle.

We've also started packing (well, I've started packing). The suitcase in the corner of my room is already brimming with a few things I've been tossing in, though we haven't done any formal packing yet. And my bed now looks like this:

With outfit planning. We have been outfit planning like crazy people. The little slips of paper indicate the park, the ADRs, and any experiences we know we have FPs for (the Ariel shirt, for instance, will be worn to the Grotto which we have FPs for. Not the Ghetto, like I thought it was very briefly as a child). The trip looks a lot longer when you have a change of shirt for partway through the day (something we've done for our last few trips, and every time we're so glad we do. Carrying an extra shirt in the backpack is worth being able to remove a sweat-drenched item from one's body halfway through a busy day.)

And of course, because of this, my packing list is out of control.

(The reason it says "toot is confirmed" next to toothbrush and toothpaste is from a Disney video blog series of four twenty-somethings from back in 2010, and while they make fun of how overpacked their one friend is, one guy holds up her half-written "toothbrush ziploc" that just says "toot" and says "We have toot! Toot is confirmed!" and we're constantly quoting lines from those vlogs whenever we're prepping Disney stuff. Well, I am. Mom grins and bears it.)

Also, we've officially elected not to bring the laptop even though it's still on the list. Yeah it was nice to upload photos every night to the computer from the room and to view them on the computer on the way back, but the effort of bringing it on the plane, having to possibly leave it with Bell Services if the room isn't ready or dragging it through the park, being too tired to actually use it each night... the cons outweighed the pros. The iPad is coming instead.

To finish this quick update off... we've been playing the "in _ days we'll be..." game all week. So in one week... we'll be arriving at Pop Century via Magical Express.

We'll be going to the Magic Kingdom (riding SDMT for the first time!)

And we'll be eating at Chef Mickey's!

Over the next few days, we have so much to do: but it'll be so worth it!
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[bunnyboo]

ONLY 1 WEEK LEFT?! so excited for you!!
Those ears you ordered are very cute and unique. I applaud you for the outfit planning, and especially the mid-day outfit changes!

 

[cajunfan]

WOW! 6 DAYS!!!! Congratulations!

 

[kcpinwdw]

Have a great trip! we'll be there the same time too. I just wanted to tell you I LOVE your tangled ears, very cute. My daughter's favorite is Tangled too. I've made her a Rapunzel dress for our trip. Now I am going to be looking for your ears in the MK on Saturday...

 

[princessesandpascal]

ONLY 1 WEEK LEFT?! so excited for you!!
Those ears you ordered are very cute and unique. I applaud you for the outfit planning, and especially the mid-day outfit changes!

I am excited too!! Thank you! I think I mentioned the store above, but they're from mouseishly on etsy. They had some fantastic holiday ears and Up themed ears too. Took me ages to decide which ones I wanted!

Every trip we do it, it saves so much stress packing. It's a pain now, but we'll be thankful later!

WOW! 6 DAYS!!!! Congratulations!

Thank you! We are so excited! I see your trip is fast approaching, almost single digits!!

Have a great trip! we'll be there the same time too. I just wanted to tell you I LOVE your tangled ears, very cute. My daughter's favorite is Tangled too. I've made her a Rapunzel dress for our trip. Now I am going to be looking for your ears in the MK on Saturday...

I am heading over to check out your PTR now! It looks like it'll be a great time to be in the Parks. Thank you!! Your daughter has good taste Tangled is just so funny and wonderful, I wish there was more of it in the parks! I've heard a rumour of a Tangled show replacing BatB, which seems like the only thing that would make BatB closing less of a hardship.

If you see us make sure you say hi! It'll be a busy day, but I think it'll be a fun one!

 

[princessesandpascal]

Update: One More Sleep!

It is so weird to be sitting at my kitchen table finishing up this PTR right now! I can hardly believe that tomorrow is the big Disney Day and this is the final update on our pre-trip report! I was going to try and update tomorrow as we left but I figure I can tell you all about what happens between now and the flight when I get back and start my TR.

The last couple days have been a whirlwind of errands and packing (as all day-before-the-trips are!). We did make one final change to our FP+s before the trip: we changed our FP at Soarin' on May 8th to one at Test Track, and we're now planning to go right to Soarin' after rope drop on Tuesday morning. This is mostly to please Mom, as she is not as big a fan of Test Track as I am, so we agreed to start the trip with Soarin' instead. (I'm so nice!) Everything else is still the same, which I'm pretty impressed by as I figured things would change a little bit more in regards to our times or experiences! The suitcases are almost completely packed, decorations for the window made (SO excited to show those in my TR when I get back, we've decided not to post them yet as we don't want to identify our room if anyone happened to be lurking about), and of course, my Disney Nails are done:

(sorry for the huge picture, Photobucket refused to resize it for me!!)

Lastly, if you are there at the same time as us, feel free to come up and say a quick hello if you see Mom and I out and about in the parks! I'm slightly socially awkward and notoriously bad with names so I may not remember yours, but your username will ring a bell and either way, meeting Disers is always fun whether or not you are a lurker or a commenter! I don't think I have a LGMH lying around in the Disney box (side note: I did find a congratulations card from Garden Grill and a ton of SOTMK cards in our Disney box that I was surprised to see), so we'll be going incognito unless I stumble upon one tonight. Honestly, following the giant Stitch through the parks will be an easier way to pick us out

Well, that seems like that's all we've got to say! Thank you so much to everyone who followed along with what has been a very sparse PTR. We didn't have too much to plan for a couple months, and my life is definitely not exciting enough for regular updates on, but my TR will be more filled with information from this great trip and updated way more frequently! I will return here with the TR link once I start it: probably a day or two after returning home to keep the magic alive and the memories fresh!

As our friend Mickey says, see ya real soon!

-Shannon ​

 

[Glittercat]

Following along and hope you find those lanterns! I'm a Tangled fan as well, and look forward to any all Tangled references in the Parks. Love the idea of soft scrapbooking and taking your trip journal with you. Hope you and your mom are enjoying yourselves greatly!

 

[princessesandpascal]

Thanks again to everyone who followed along with this PTR! We are back from the most amazing trip and I have started to share the memories...

The trip report has officially started! Check it out here: "All Aboard the Seven Dwarfs Whine Train!" May 2015/Mother's Day TR!

I can't wait to share all the amazing memories we made on this trip! ​