Australians heading to disneyworld.

[kbainbridge]

No, we are doing one with RC Are you there in early or late September? We are pretty much going to be there the whole month! I am so excited - we holiday all the time but this is our first time to the US

We are at WDW from Sept 18-23 I was born and raised in Canada so we are over in North America pretty often

 

[Sinders99]

Hi All!! Childless Disney fans here travelling from North Queensland to Orlando in 14 weeks!! We've been planning this trip ever since our visit to Disneyland 6 years ago. We have a fairly jam packed itinerary:

2 - 8 Sep @ Hilton Grand Vacations Club Seaworld visiting Universal / Medieval Times Dinner / Kennedy Space Centre & the Outlet Malls

8 - 12 Sep @ POP Century touring the parks intensively with our 9 day park hopper tickets and picked up the free dining on our booking when the promotion got released. Paid the extra $20 per person per night to upgrade from the Quick Service plan to the Regular plan. VERY HAPPY!!

12 - 16 Sep Onboard Disney Dream to the Bahamas. Taking part in 2 Fish Extender Groups (VERY EXCITED!), mixology class and running the Castaway Cay 5k. Going to try and get a Palo Brunch booking as well! Oh and our cruise is a Halloween on The High Seas sailing which we're super excited about seeing as though Halloween really isn't celebrated that much here.

16 - 20 Sep @ Port Orleans Riverside (Royal Room). We were lucky to get a room discount that allowed us to upgrade from a preferred room to a Royal Room at no extra cost. Leaving plans much more relaxed for the last part of our trip with only 1 structured park touring day. The other days we have loose plans. Attending MNSSHP on the 18th and booked to do the Jet Ski tour around the lake as a surprise for DH (good think he doesn't get on the boards). Looking forward to also catching the Food & Wine Festival at EPCOT on the last few days of our trip.

Definitely using our time well but we plan on remaining flexible and changing our plans if we feel like doing something other than what our itinerary says. We're sure to be back in a few years. DH is a HUGE Star Wars fan and I really want to see the new Avatar section once it opens.

Keen to hear any tips / thoughts / advice you all might have on touring and hidden gems

 

[lffam]

12 - 16 Sep Onboard Disney Dream to the Bahamas. Taking part in 2 Fish Extender Groups (VERY EXCITED!), mixology class and running the Castaway Cay 5k. Going to try and get a Palo Brunch booking as well! Oh and our cruise is a Halloween on The High Seas sailing which we're super excited about seeing as though Halloween really isn't celebrated that much here.

Mixology is great, lucky you don't have to drive after, I was certainly feeling it afterwards!

palo Brunch is also a fantastic experience I highly recommend it. We would have done it a second nc time if we could have !

 

[Montanabel]

Hi Sinders99, we will be at Disneyworld in September as well, staying at Caribbean Beach Resort and Art of Animation. We managed to score free dining for CBR and the room only discount for the AOA (staying in Cars Suite).

MNSSHP on 13 September.

Your did well to score on Port Orleans Riverside, their Royal Rooms look lovely.

The countdown is on in our house as well

 

[Sinders99]

Hi @Montanabel

I really loved the Royal Rooms from the beginning but the pricing put them out of our budget so we settled for a preferred room. When the room only special came out though we ended up with the Royal Room for the same price as a preferred

Trying to break in shoes for the trip at the moment but I'm not having much luck. I bought a couple of pairs of naturalizers. I bought two of exactly the same shoe in different colours but as always seems to happen to me one pair is definitely constructed differently from the other. So the blue pair are perfect but the black pair are useless Any tips on shoe choices??

 

[Montanabel]

Hi @Sinders99

Yeah, we always buy new good quality shoes before our USA trips. I don't have any specific recommendation, I usually wait for the 'end of financial year' sales and visit the sport stores looking specific for walking shoes.

Maybe someone else here can recommend a particular brand?

 

[LeanneDownUnder]

I love my Sketchers "Go Walk" but each time I get a pair it's always been in the states! In saying that I have never needed breaking in time, have always been able to just put them on and go walk!! So light and comfortable I highly recommend them.

 

[Sinders99]

Is there really any saving to be made by waiting to buy Sketchers when we arrive in Orlando? I was thinking of buying a pair in the end of financial years sales but if they're going to be cheaper once we get there I might wait. We have an outlet shopping day scheduled for early in our trip (pre Disneyworld) so I was seriously considering buy a pair or two then

 

[LeanneDownUnder]

If you have an outlet day planned I would get them over there. I have found more variety and far cheaper for shoes in the USA. and some of the shoe wearhouse outlets like DSW have amazing sale prices.

 

[Sinders99]

So I noticed we haven't had a post here for a while and I thought I'd provide a pre trip update! Lots of exciting and scary things have been going on in our household but we're now 33 days away from departure and paid our holiday in full just last night. SO WE'RE GOING TO DISNEYWORLD!! I can't believe that after over 400 days we're so close. The year has flown by even though I've been counting every single day.

So we've been lucky enough to afford a few luxuries since our last trip update. We've added Parasailing on our Castaway Cay day (Disney Cruise), booked tickets to attend Club Villain (16 Sep), booked to attend the Star Wars Desert Party (9 Sep) and added Memory Maker to our package.

We're so very excited!!

 

[Montanabel]

Hi Sinders99, totally understand your excitement, we leave in 32 days. Today's very important job is to create a calendar with Disney characters so each day in August DD11 and DD8 can take turn in crossing off a day as part of our big countdown.

I've been thinking about adding the memory maker to our package. We have a friend who will be in Disneyworld with us, if I have read the information correctly, he will be able to access it too, making it better value for money?

Star Wars Desert Party sounds cool....might have to look into that one

 

[Twilight Terror]

We have annual passes so the memory maker is included with those, so don't have to worry about it. I think if you are purchasing it, as long as you make it worth while, then it's a good thing to have. Especially if you have one member of the family who is generally the photographer and therefore is very rarely in the photos, it's a great opportunity to get everyone in. If the ride photos are included too, then that is a bonus and makes it pretty cool too!

We have a countdown on our fridge using the magnetic alphabet letters and numbers. It started at about 315 and now we are fast approaching single digits!!!! It will be time shortly to pack them all up and put them in the suitcase ready for cruise room decoration!!!!

 

[Sinders99]

@Twilight Terror you make an excellent point about one party never being in the pics. That's why I ended up springing for it. I'm the photographer in our family and I end up with heaps of photos from our travels but I'm only ever in 5-10% of them!! Our trip is is a split trip with 4 nights at WDW, a 4 night cruise and then back for a final 4 nights at WDW so we should get great value out of memory maker and intend on stopping at as many photographers as possible. We get the ride photo's and on ride videos as well. Plus because we're going to the Halloween party we'll get magic shots with the hitch hiking ghosts and stuff as well. TOO EXCITED!!

 

[Twilight Terror]

@Twilight Terror you make an excellent point about one party never being in the pics. That's why I ended up springing for it. I'm the photographer in our family and I end up with heaps of photos from our travels but I'm only ever in 5-10% of them!! Our trip is is a split trip with 4 nights at WDW, a 4 night cruise and then back for a final 4 nights at WDW so we should get great value out of memory maker and intend on stopping at as many photographers as possible. We get the ride photo's and on ride videos as well. Plus because we're going to the Halloween party we'll get magic shots with the hitch hiking ghosts and stuff as well. TOO EXCITED!!

Yes, I was always the photographer too! Thankfully, the rest of the family have started to take an interest in photography now, and take just as many photos, if not more than I do now! However, we still take very few photos of us as a group - they tend to be individual or landscapes! We too are doing something similar - 2weeks WDW, 4-night cruise then 1week WDW. We are also going to MNSSHP (2nd Sept). Whilst we might not make the most of all photopass opportunities, mainly because its not costing us anything extra, we will certainly be doing so on Halloween night, especially as we will be at a loss of what to do for the night (we normally spend the night riding BTMR back to back, but it's closed this year )

 

[Montanabel]

@Twilight Terror you make an excellent point about one party never being in the pics. That's why I ended up springing for it. I'm the photographer in our family and I end up with heaps of photos from our travels but I'm only ever in 5-10% of them!! Our trip is is a split trip with 4 nights at WDW, a 4 night cruise and then back for a final 4 nights at WDW so we should get great value out of memory maker and intend on stopping at as many photographers as possible. We get the ride photo's and on ride videos as well. Plus because we're going to the Halloween party we'll get magic shots with the hitch hiking ghosts and stuff as well. TOO EXCITED!!

OK, so I have been reading up on Memory Maker (and watched the funky video) but want to make sure I have understood this correctly. If I purchase the Memory Maker all photos of our family taken by official Disney photographers and / or on select rides I get to download for the price of $149 (if I do the advance purchase). I can then store those photos and make my own arrangements to print which ones I want. But if after downloading I decide I would like Disney to print them for me, that will cost extra?

Does that sound right?

 

[Sinders99]

@Montanabel you are correct. You pre purchase Memory Maker for $149 at least 3 days prior to your trip. Your memory maker is activated upon first use in the parks and you have a 30 day period to collect as many pics as possible at any of the 4 parks, special events or character dining. You also get one ride photos at no extra cost, magic shots (with disney characters inserted) and animated magic shots. The icing on the cake is that you get on ride videos Once you get home you have a window of time (I think it's 14 days) to download your pictures to your PC. You can also add borders and stuff as well but make sure you download the originals first. Once your downloaded the files you're free to reprint anyway you like for personal use.

I'm planning on using ours to create a coffee table book. We create a new book using snap fish after each holiday we take

 

[Montanabel]

@Montanabel you are correct. You pre purchase Memory Maker for $149 at least 3 days prior to your trip. Your memory maker is activated upon first use in the parks and you have a 30 day period to collect as many pics as possible at any of the 4 parks, special events or character dining. You also get one ride photos at no extra cost, magic shots (with disney characters inserted) and animated magic shots. The icing on the cake is that you get on ride videos Once you get home you have a window of time (I think it's 14 days) to download your pictures to your PC. You can also add borders and stuff as well but make sure you download the originals first. Once your downloaded the files you're free to reprint anyway you like for personal use.

I'm planning on using ours to create a coffee table book. We create a new book using snap fish after each holiday we take

Thanks @Sinders99, that's what I was hoping, but wasn't 100% sure, thank you for confirming.

The coffee book table is a great idea. I am struggling to think of what to get my parents and DH's mum for Xmas, some photos of the grandkids at Disneyworld might be the perfect gift!

 

[TandCmum]

We are looking to start planning our trip over to WDW for 2018, our first trip since we moved to Oz. We haven't been to Disney since 2009 when our kids were 5 and 7 and when we go they will be 16 and 14 so we wanted to do a trip before they get too old to come with mum and Dad. We are planning to go over for 28 days, 21 of those onsite Disney and do offsite and universal the first week. So much has changed since we last went and getting there from Oz is a whole new ball game too ( and a more costly one)

 

[Montanabel]

Wow TandCmum, sounds like a great holiday

Yes, the cost is the unpleasant part of planning, especially with the Australian dollar dropping even more in the last few days. Lets hope it starts to reverse that trend in 2017