Cheers to Friendship A ladies weekend Oct. 12 PTR NEW only 2 days till Disney

[MRYPPNS]

I actually went to the MNSSHP in 2009 solo. But I did watch HalloWishes that night with Kat and her family.

 

[Native NYer]

How fun!
You're going to have a fabulous time!

 

[JPFamilyMom]

Hooray for MNSSHP, can't wait to see what you all dress up like

 

[Halloweenqueen]

How could pass up "Boo To You"?!!!!!!!!!!

Glad to see you are going.

 

[mousescrapper]

How fun!
You're going to have a fabulous time!

I think so too...

Hooray for MNSSHP, can't wait to see what you all dress up like

I am so looking forward to going too and dressing up YAY!

How could pass up "Boo To You"?!!!!!!!!!!

Glad to see you are going.

I agree, it was great fun! love the music...so catchy

 

[mousescrapper]

Only 2 days till our ADR day…wow can’t believe we are up to the 180 day mark…seems like we have been planning forever…it always starts to go a bit faster at this point!

I know you all have been salivating at wondering where we have decided to eat and let me tell you it was a fun task figuring and narrowing down our list.

We began thinking about ADR’s early on as we were formulating our itinerary for the 4 days and had been thinking 4 off the top. We figured a few dinners and a breakfast.


We knew early on that a dinner on Arrival day at EP would work best and Amy had requested Via Napoli in Italy

She had eaten there in 2010 on a different ladies weekend trip and had loved it. Heidi and I have yet to dine there. I was a little hesitant planning an ADR for Day 1) especially at EP w/ all the great F&W booths but then realized that Heidi’s suggestion of looking forward to a nice relaxing sit down meal after a full day of travel is a nice thing…

The idea sunk in and we have not deviated from this plan.

I hope my pizza isn’t cooked in the Vesuvio oven cause he looks like he is about to sneeze….

I’m not sure if the other ladies are thinking pizza but the above margherita pizza looks delish!


We had also early on discussed how we would all LOVE to go to the new Be Our Guest restaurant in MK if it is open in time…but we knew we’d need a back-up ADR plan for this night too. We decided that MK and the monorail resorts would be our target area for this meal so then the crazy charts, emails and ranking began.

Heidi devised a chart that we ranked the various restaurants as either a Yes, Maybe, or a No (I’d rather eat a crustable) and then we each emailed backed our choices and came up w/ a top ranking of restaurants. From there we went back and ranked them by number…I know Amy and I read thru menus to help w/ the decisions. Here is a picture of my notes as we were figuring this out:

After some debate we narrowed the some 20 choices down to 5

The Wave
Kona Café
Grand Floridian Café
O’Hana
Plaza in MK


In the end Kona won out, Amy was a bit nervous about eating here, not sure if she would find something for sure on the menu she liked, but both Heidi and I reassured her (as we both have eaten here a few times) she would love it!

The next ADR to decide was for our evening out the FREE night…we decided to look over the gazillion choices at EP and the TS restaurants at the Y&BC, BW and Swolphin….wow this was a BIG list

By lots of discussing we narrowed down that list to a top 4


Chefs (France)
La Haciendenda (Mexico)
Captains Grille
Yatchsman



We weren’t quite unanimous in our decision on this one. I know I favored Chefs and CG. We bounced around a few more idea like Rose and Crown as well.


In the end I believe we decided on Captains Grille.


Now I say I believe because once we began talking about attending MNSSHP we knew we’d have to knock out one dinner ADR.

We then had the free night dinner to re look at. And since we were pretty excited about eating at Kona and had already decided that we’d eat at Captains Grille for breakfast another morning

We talked about how we wanted this free evening to flow. That’s when Heidi came up w/ a really fun idea of going to a monorail resort for dinner; taking the monorail back to EP, walking through grabbing a drink from F&W and walk back out to the Boardwalk for our night of singing and dancing…

Amy and I loved that idea and we just knew Kona was the place to stick with…

So if you followed all of that this is how our ADR’s line up:

1) Via Napoli dinner

2) Kona Dinner

3) Captains Grille breakfast

How that looks in the itinerary:

Day 1) Thursday

B: airports
L: F&W booths
D: Via Napoli ADR (shooting for a 5:30 time frame)

*****

Day 2) Friday

B: room/bakery
L: F&W booths
D: snacks @ Boardwalk/MK before/during Party

*****


Day 3) Saturday

B: room/bakery
L: QS @ DHS or ??
D: Kona (shooting for 6:00 pm)

*****

Day 4) Sunday

B: Captains Grille (shooting for arriving btwn 7-8:30 am)
L: MK QS
D: airport

So what do you think?

I have you all caught up to as far as we are w/ the planning…I’m sure once Amy and Heidi get back from their Spring Trips to WDW we’ll began the fun stuff of fine tuning and coming up w/ our daily touring plans…so stay tuned

Thanks for reading, J~ for A & H​

 

[MRYPPNS]

Stromboli looks like he has hay fever!

 

[MRYPPNS]

comments in red

We knew early on that a dinner on Arrival day at EP would work best and Amy had requested Via Napoli in Italy

She had eaten there in 2010 on a different ladies weekend trip and had loved it. Heidi and I have yet to dine there. I was a little hesitant planning an ADR for Day 1) especially at EP w/ all the great F&W booths but then realized that Heidi’s suggestion of looking forward to a nice relaxing sit down meal after a full day of travel is a nice thing…

I did this last November and it really worked out well to have an ADR where you know that you can sit and relax to eat and make it thru the rest of the night

The idea sunk in and we have not deviated from this plan.

I hope my pizza isn’t cooked in the Vesuvio oven cause he looks like he is about to sneeze….

I’m not sure if the other ladies are thinking pizza but the above margherita pizza looks delish!

That will be my first choice!

We had also early on discussed how we would all LOVE to go to the new Be Our Guest restaurant in MK if it is open in time…but we knew we’d need a back-up ADR plan for this night too. We decided that MK and the monorail resorts would be our target area for this meal so then the crazy charts, emails and ranking began.

Heidi devised a chart that we ranked the various restaurants as either a Yes, Maybe, or a No (I’d rather eat a crustable) and then we each emailed backed our choices and came up w/ a top ranking of restaurants. From there we went back and ranked them by number…I know Amy and I read thru menus to help w/ the decisions. Here is a picture of my notes as we were figuring this out:

After some debate we narrowed the some 20 choices down to 5

The Wave
Kona Café
Grand Floridian Café
O’Hana
Plaza in MK


In the end Kona won out, Amy was a bit nervous about eating here, not sure if she would find something for sure on the menu she liked, but both Heidi and I reassured her (as we both have eaten here a few times) she would love it!

I'm sort of stuck in the middle of my two friends here. Amy is a non-adventurous eater (that's code for picky) and Julie doesn't like to spend too much on dining. But's it's more about the dinner conversation then the food so we'll have a great time

The next ADR to decide was for our evening out the FREE night…we decided to look over the gazillion choices at EP and the TS restaurants at the Y&BC, BW and Swolphin….wow this was a BIG list

By lots of discussing we narrowed down that list to a top 4


Chefs (France)
La Haciendenda (Mexico) How did we every expect Amy to eat here? lol
Captains Grille
Yatchsman



We weren’t quite unanimous in our decision on this one. I know I favored Chefs and CG. We bounced around a few more idea like Rose and Crown as well.


In the end I believe we decided on Captains Grille.


Now I say I believe because once we began talking about attending MNSSHP we knew we’d have to knock out one dinner ADR.

We then had the free night dinner to re look at. And since we were pretty excited about eating at Kona and had already decided that we’d eat at Captains Grille for breakfast another morning

We talked about how we wanted this free evening to flow. That’s when Heidi came up w/ a really fun idea of going to a monorail resort for dinner; taking the monorail back to EP, walking through grabbing a drink from F&W and walk back out to the Boardwalk for our night of singing and dancing…

Amy and I loved that idea and we just knew Kona was the place to stick with…

​

 

[DisMomAmy]

My comments in purple...

Only 2 days till our ADR day…wow can’t believe we are up to the 180 day mark…seems like we have been planning forever…it always starts to go a bit faster at this point!

I know you all have been salivating at wondering where we have decided to eat and let me tell you it was a fun task figuring and narrowing down our list.

Fun? A little scary for this non-foodie!

We began thinking about ADR’s early on as we were formulating our itinerary for the 4 days and had been thinking 4 off the top. We figured a few dinners and a breakfast.


We knew early on that a dinner on Arrival day at EP would work best and Amy had requested Via Napoli in Italy

She had eaten there in 2010 on a different ladies weekend trip and had loved it. Heidi and I have yet to dine there. I was a little hesitant planning an ADR for Day 1) especially at EP w/ all the great F&W booths but then realized that Heidi’s suggestion of looking forward to a nice relaxing sit down meal after a full day of travel is a nice thing…

And I was scared to rely on F&W booths to fill my belly!

The idea sunk in and we have not deviated from this plan.

I hope my pizza isn’t cooked in the Vesuvio oven cause he looks like he is about to sneeze….

I’m not sure if the other ladies are thinking pizza but the above margherita pizza looks delish!

That's exactly what I'm thinking! That's what I had last time (along with their sangria) and it was a great meal. And very inexpensive for a TS at Disney!

We had also early on discussed how we would all LOVE to go to the new Be Our Guest restaurant in MK if it is open in time…but we knew we’d need a back-up ADR plan for this night too. We decided that MK and the monorail resorts would be our target area for this meal so then the crazy charts, emails and ranking began.

I hope BoG is open!

Heidi devised a chart that we ranked the various restaurants as either a Yes, Maybe, or a No (I’d rather eat a crustable) and then we each emailed backed our choices and came up w/ a top ranking of restaurants. From there we went back and ranked them by number…I know Amy and I read thru menus to help w/ the decisions. Here is a picture of my notes as we were figuring this out:

After some debate we narrowed the some 20 choices down to 5

The Wave
Kona Café
Grand Floridian Café
O’Hana
Plaza in MK


In the end Kona won out, Amy was a bit nervous about eating here, not sure if she would find something for sure on the menu she liked, but both Heidi and I reassured her (as we both have eaten here a few times) she would love it!

A bit nervous? I was very nervous, but after a second look at the menu & the suggestion of looking at what accompanies other dishes (to make substitutions) I was actually looking forward to this meal!

The next ADR to decide was for our evening out the FREE night…we decided to look over the gazillion choices at EP and the TS restaurants at the Y&BC, BW and Swolphin….wow this was a BIG list

By lots of discussing we narrowed down that list to a top 4


Chefs (France)
La Haciendenda (Mexico) I was very scared of this one... I would have been eating chips for dinner!
Captains Grille
Yatchsman



We weren’t quite unanimous in our decision on this one. I know I favored Chefs and CG. We bounced around a few more idea like Rose and Crown as well.

I had always thought I'd want to eat at R&C but after looking at the new menu... nope!

In the end I believe we decided on Captains Grille.


Now I say I believe because once we began talking about attending MNSSHP we knew we’d have to knock out one dinner ADR.

We then had the free night dinner to re look at. And since we were pretty excited about eating at Kona and had already decided that we’d eat at Captains Grille for breakfast another morning

We talked about how we wanted this free evening to flow. That’s when Heidi came up w/ a really fun idea of going to a monorail resort for dinner; taking the monorail back to EP, walking through grabbing a drink from F&W and walk back out to the Boardwalk for our night of singing and dancing…

I love taking the monorail into Epcot! And I really like the idea of resort hopping! But it's our "free" night so we'll see what happens.

Amy and I loved that idea and we just knew Kona was the place to stick with…

So if you followed all of that this is how our ADR’s line up:

1) Via Napoli dinner

2) Kona Dinner

3) Captains Grille breakfast

How that looks in the itinerary:

Day 1) Thursday

B: airports
L: F&W booths
D: Via Napoli ADR (shooting for a 5:30 time frame)

*****

Day 2) Friday

B: room/bakery
L: F&W booths
D: snacks @ Boardwalk/MK before/during Party

*****


Day 3) Saturday

B: room/bakery
L: QS @ DHS or ??
D: Kona (shooting for 6:00 pm)

*****

Day 4) Sunday

B: Captains Grille (shooting for arriving btwn 7-8:30 am)
L: MK QS
D: airport

So what do you think?

I have you all caught up to as far as we are w/ the planning…I’m sure once Amy and Heidi get back from their Spring Trips to WDW we’ll began the fun stuff of fine tuning and coming up w/ our daily touring plans…so stay tuned

Thanks for reading, J~ for A & H​

Thanks for keeping this PTR alive Julie!

 

[brookelizabeth]

I am finally here!! I'm loving all your plans - you have a FANTASTIC trip planned! I have heard rave reviews of the Captain's Grille for breakfast, it looks great and you can't beat that location when staying at the lovely Boardwalk.

Are you keeping your MNSSHP costumes a secret until the TR?

 

[teekathepony]

Holy cow! I totally missed this PTR until now. I'm joining for the rest!

 

[eandesmom]

The Captains Grille breakfast menu looks SO good, that's been on my list to try so I can't wait to hear what you guys think of it!

 

[mommytothreeboys]

The back and forth planning in this PTR is so much fun!

 

[mousescrapper]

So it all started earlier this week after we began some debate on the cost of our MNSSHP tickets for Friday night (as they are non discounted and worried this night may be pretty busy).


Heidi posted in our little planning FB group on Monday (5-15) afternoon:

“Hi! How about some Fuzzy Disney Math. I’ve had 2 things on my mind about the October trip, MNSSHP and felling like we don’t have enough time to do everything that we want and relax. I’m game for re-visiting going down to Orlando on Wednesday. [I had proposed this question early on to go down on Wed. so we could attend MNSSHP on Thursday, at the time we didn’t know a Friday party was an option…but we decided against it] Mine and Amy’s flight would be $5 more. MNSSHP would be $15 less on Thursday. If we switched our resort to OKW it would be less than $4 each."


Following?


So after a flurry of 59 replies back and forth on this…in less than a full 24 hours….we got 3 husbands on board, all changed our flights to Wednesday and booked another night at Disney

I had opened a fortune cookie Tuesday morning that said

“All your plans will work out”

Apparently so!

So how did that fuzzy Disney math work out?

I’m not positive on Amy and Heidi’s end, but my flight change cost me nothing because I had already had a time change on my original flight on Thursday morning to 30 minutes earlier I was able to call and have my flight changed to Wed for no fee and my new flight was less it all worked out grand!

We still all are leaving and arriving at basically the same time, I will arrive at MCO about 10-15 ahead of the NH girls…

We first thought of moving our ressie from BWV to OKW but when I checked the availability of studios on the DVC member website but found that the only studios available for our days were SSR for the whole stay but at 60 pts a lot more pts than our current ressie or OKW for just Wed and Saturday nights.


We debated for a bit not really wanting to do a split stay and how we would go about doing the additional ressie…but in the end Amy contacted her DVC guy and he booked us our 1 night at OKW and put us on the waiting listing for that night at BWV w/ our existing ressie already there.

Maybe luck will be with us and something will open up but we’re ok dealing w/ the change, 3 adult ladies how hard can it be…


Up next came the fun of adjusting our itinerary…

Who thought this would be easy

After more and more discussion in our group we each made new itineraries and emailed them to each other:

This is how they basically looked:

(Julie-green, Amy- Purple Heidi-orange 3 agree-black)

Wed 10/10

Day: travel Night: MK DHS EP

***********

Thursday 10/11

Day: EP Night: MNSSHP

*************

Friday 10/12

Day: rest morning EP-WS for F&W Night: GNO MK DHS

************

Saturday 10/13

Day DHS-AM EMH/EP-Mouse Gear AK –EE Night: GNO EP-Eat to the Beat Concert

************

Sunday 10/14

Day: MK Night: Travel

As you can see we were in agreement for our mornings and the party but the rest of the night we were all over the place…


This is how it stands now w/ some ADR’s in place:

Wed 10/10
Day: travel Night: EP 1-4 MK 5-9 (approx times here)
B: airport L: F&W D: Pecos Bill (most likely)

************

Thursday 10/11
Day: EP (RD-1pm) resort break 1-4pm Night: MNSSHP
B: room/resort L: F&W D: tbd
************

Friday 10/12Day: rest morning EP Night: OpenB: Captains Grille L: TBD D: possibly Kona

************

Saturday 10/13
Day DHS-AM EMH Night: GNO/Open
B: room/resort L: DHS CS D: early 4:30 @ Via Napoli

************

Sunday 10/14
Day: MK Night: Travel
B: room/resort L: MK CS D: airport


So what do you all think? and can you believe our mutiney on DIS planning and have two open nights

Julie for Amy and Heidi too!​

 

[KathyRN137]

Hooray for another night! (And I love OKW, BTW... so relaxing!) You're right... with three uber-planners I can't believe you have so much "open" time in your itinerary!

MNSSHP on a Thurs sounds much better than the original Fri; it will definitely be less crowded!


Kathy

 

[irish dancer]

Nothing like good old Fuzzy Disney Math!

I think the Thurs party will be much better than a Fri one and plus how can you go wrong with more Disney time!

I'm sure you'll all find a way to fill that extra time.

 

[eandesmom]

Open time is a VERY good thing in my book!!!

Love the extra night, I'll cross my fingers that the waitlist comes through but OKW will be fun, even if it does mean moving.

I know if it were me...an OKW night would turn into a DTD night!
YAY for an extra night!

 

[brookelizabeth]

for an extra night!!! Love the Fuzzy Disney Math! I have been contemplating a bit of that myself since JetBlue changed our flight time in October.

I think your plans look great! Open time is good, it always seems to end up some of the most magical moments of our trips!

 

[teekathepony]

Extra nights are always good!
Love the plans, especially the open time. That's my favourite. Then I get to do whatever I feel like at that moment!

 

[MEK]

Congratulations on the extra night. Hey, why not? Right? I got an extra night on my October trip so I know how you feel!