Confessions of an obsessive planner... Let the countdown begin!!

[Twoboysnmygirl]

Oh and I know you accounted for the savings in the refillable mugs since they are included but did you figure in the savings on tips you would have been spending as well on 7 TS meals?

I'm going to have 2 itineraries going, one with QS and one with DDP in case they actually do release DDP for values. It's hard though b/c I can't "fall in love" with one b/c then we might be doing the other! It's going to be a long 2 months until they start releasing fall public discounts!

 

[-Hope-]

Ooooh, I forgot about tips! Thanks for reminding me!

I did keep thinking about the pics I could get if we eat at Crystal Palace but in the end I'm leaning toward (nothing set in stone until I make the ADR right?) what is best for the group, not just me and my camera. although I do that a lot and end up always thinking of everyone else and never myself! At any rate, I wasn't really going to try to do CS at either park for breakfast I just wanted the option just in case I couldn't get people out the door on time- I always have to have a contingency plan!!

I have two plans going as well and printed one out to bring with me this morning!

 

[-Hope-]

Okay, I have my plans all adjusted for Quick Service dining- and I LOVE my them!

There were still a few TS meals that we wanted to do no matter what so that helped to round out the QS plan- we are going to have WAY more food simply because we'd have never eaten everything in one sitting but the QS lets us spread things around to when we're actually hungry. So, we'll still have two full meals per day and now with QS we'll have an extra snack leaving us 6 extra snack credits for everyone to use at their own discretion instead of 3. Since I know the kids wouldn't have really eaten that much at a buffet and would just be hungry later so this really works out better for our family.

I was also worried that it was going to be too expensive for us to still enjoy the TS that was most important to us. After subtracting the refillable mugs (which are included in QS but not DDP) and tips for all of the extra TS meals I only have to budget an extra $75. I also don't think we'll spend as much on drinks because most QS places simply don't offer alcohol and even if they do I'd be much less likely to want it with a QS meal than a TS meal. There is just something about a sit down meal in a restaurant that makes me want to order a drink. So, I simply deducted the $75 from my 'misc.' budget so my overall budget is the same.

A couple of other perks to having fewer ADRs in our schedule: 1) we now get to eat at Flametree BBQ at Animal Kingdom. Everything I've read proclaims it to be the best CS at the park but I just couldn't make it work before and still have my other meals make sense. Since both my dad and Robbie love ribs I think this place will be a big hit. 2) We now have Food and Wine in our schedule with plenty of snack credits to enjoy it. I kind of had in the back of my mind before that I'd try to make it over with my mom while Robbie took the kids to swim. But even then I would've had to either save my snack credits, save from the misc. budget or just miss it. Now I know we're going and I'm really looking forward to it!

So, my new plans:

Saturday September 25:
-Travel Day
-DTD & Disney Quest*
-CS (1) lunch at Wolfgang Puck Express
-take water taxi to POFQ for CS (2) dinner @ Sassagoula Floatworks OR eat at ASMu and watch poolside movie (based on movie choice)

Sunday September 26:
-sleep in, S (1) breakfast at Boardwalk Bakery
-World Showcase @ 11:00
-CS (3) @ Liberty Inn or Sommerfest for late lunch
-Cantina de San Angel for CS (4) dinner and drinks
-Illuminations (watch from Cantina patio- arrive about an hour early)

Monday September 27:
-DHS* rope drop, S (2) breakfast @ Starring Rolls
-S (3) at DHS then late CS (5) lunch at ASMu
-back to resort to swim/relax
-Cosmic Ray’s CS (6) dinner
-Wishes/Spectro

Tuesday September 28:
-CS (7) breakfast at ASMu or Main Street Bakery
-MK rope drop
-CS (8) lunch @ Columbia Harbour House or Pecos Bill’s, back to resort
- TS (oop) dinner @ Park Fare, followed by Hallowishes from Marina

Wednesday September 29:
-sleep in, CS (9) breakfast at ASMu
-Blizzard Beach*, S (4) lunch at BB
-AKL for CS (10) dinner @ Mara

Thursday September 30:
-Epcot: Future World* rope drop, S (5) breakfast at ASMu
-Sunshine Seasons* CS (11) lunch with Karen
-Kim Possible Mission with Karen, break
-CS (12) dinner- opposite of whatever we choose Sunday

Friday October 1:
-Tusker House Character Breakfast TS (oop)
-AK rope drop
-CS (13) lunch @ Flametree BBQ
-S (6/7/8) @ Epcot F&W (if can’t find anything for kids then they can use their last CS and just have a snack for breakfast)

Saturday October 2:
-CS (14) breakfast at ASMu
-use any left over snack credits- can take these with us for trip home!
-check out by 11 am
-travel home

Six extra snack credits each.

 

[-Hope-]

Alright, Karen mentioned Contempo Cafe in her new plans so of course I had to look at the menu. It's a sickness- seriously, I may need help.

The real reason I want to do this has nothing to do with food and everything to do with wanting to try lots of different things. In our old plans we were going to get to ride the monorail when we ate at Chef Mickey's and I think the kids (especially Jace) would really enjoy it. In fact I think he'll be disappointed if he sees the monorail and never gets to ride it and this way we actually have a purpose.

IF we aren't totally worn out when we are ready to leave DHS (big if and we can always just go back to plan A and eat at ASMu if we're too tired) then I thought we might try to go to Contempo for our late lunch instead of heading back to the resort. I thought it could be fun if we take the boat from DHS to Boardwalk and then walk over from Boardwalk to take the monorail from Epcot to Contemporary. After we eat we'll just take buses back to the resort.

Tell me if this sounds too complicated- it looks simple enough on the map but I'm not so sure. The Friendship boat seems like an easy and relaxing way to get from DHS to a monorail stop, well at least near a monorail stop. I can't really tell from the map though how close Boardwalk and the monorail stop are though. Maybe we should just take a bus from DHS to Epcot. Any feedback would be appreciated!

 

[Twoboysnmygirl]

Mmmm, LONG walk. I think Epcot's monorail entrance is at the FRONT of Epcot and you would be entering out in World Showcase if you take the friendship boat.

How about going back to the resort for your lunch as planned or back for a snack and then heading to Contempo before going to Spectro and Wishes? You could skip Cosmic Rays or move it to another time?

 

[-Hope-]

I was afraid it would be longer than it seemed on the map. We could also just ride the monorail around once without actually needing to... I'll have to puzzle over it and figure out how I want to do it.

 

[-Hope-]

Hi hope, I'm just coming over from Karen's PTR, don't know why ,but I didn't realize you had one going to until I just read about it! Your kids are adorable and that's really neat that you are going to disney with a friend. You guys are gonna have a blast!

Your bugs life movie night was super cute, I love the apple/peanut butter bugs, my girls would LOVE that. I may have to scoop up this idea!

I somehow missed this! Sorry about that and WELCOME!

 

[Twoboysnmygirl]

AND, I don't know if you can take the monrail straight to Contemporary or you have to go to the TTC first. The best thing to do is go ask on the transportation board, they know ALL the best routes!

 

[-Hope-]

Okay, after pouring over the transportation boards I think our best option is going to be to take the bus from DHS to Contemporary and then after we eat at Contempo to take the monorail to TTC where we can take a bus back to the resort. Of course all that assumes we'll be in the mood for that- if we are hot and tired we'll head back to the resort and just take the monorail around sometime without any specific purpose if the kids really want to.

I'm not really sure why I insist on making things so complicated.

 

[Twoboysnmygirl]

It makes sense anyway b/c once you are at Contemporary, the easiest way back to your resort is to get on the monorail anyway, at least to MK to grab a bus. There's no resort to resort buses, so I think you'll get your monorail ride!

 

[jodi90]

Cute smiley!

Jodi, you'll have to tell us all about that week! How busy were the restaurants? How about the parks? Wait times? Did you use TGM or UG? How busy was F&W? (we will be there on opening day so I know it will probably be crazy, but it's our last park day and my dh loves f&w) Where did you stay? Were the buses long waits? Do you think that is enough questioning? [/QUO




Hello!! It's been awhile since I've been on the boards. But I'll try to answer some of your questions.

The restaurants were crazy!! They were the longest waits that we had. With most families on free dining reservations were hard to come by. Our first ADR was at CP. I was crazy to make an ADR at MK on a Sunday afternoon but with the 3 little kids in our group we had to go to MK first. There were people everywhere waiting to get into CP. We got there 20 mins early and then waited and waited and waited. They were running about 45 mins late. The wait was rough because it was soooooo hot. But, once we got seated it was a lot of fun. I love Winnie the Pooh and Eyeore. The food was okay. Nothing outstanding. I'm not a huge fan of buffets. The character interaction was great!! If I ever figure out how to post a picture I'll show you.

Oops, gotta go. If you want I'll give you more info about my trip later.

Jodi

 

[-Hope-]

Thanks for that info Jodi! I'd love to hear more, especially about buses since we are going to completely rely on Disney transportation for our trip. Hearing about the dining issues makes me even more happy with my new quick service plan!

 

[-Hope-]

Just to let you all in on just how crazily obsessive (or maybe controlling!) I can get about planning I'll let you in on what I'm working on right now.

I started looking at menus for the counter service places I picked. I was trying to do a little fine tuning and I've ended up with a MAJOR project on my hands. When I picked the CS places I looked at location and checked to see if there was something on the menu everyone would enjoy. However today when I was looking at those menus I realized that a lot of the places I picked serve the same things and we are going to get tired of hamburgers and pulled pork sandwiches. Sooo.... I copied menus from allears into a word document and organized them by location. I printed them all out and am about to go spread out on my bed with my schedule, maps, and menus so I can make sure I've not only got a good plan for getting a variety of food without a lot of backtracking and running all over.

Sounds crazy I know but my dad and my husband will both be unhappy if they have to eat the same thing all the time and I don't want to waste our park time waiting in three different lines for food.

Or maybe I just wanted a WDW planning project for the afternoon.

 

[Twoboysnmygirl]

How about showing THEM??? I know, I know, this would mean they would realize how crazy you really are, but there MUST be something they would like to eat on this amazing vacation that is semi-exotic? (and I wouldn't really consider most things on CS menus exotic at all?)

 

[Twoboysnmygirl]

Oh and did I ever show you the CS booklet I made? Natalie (DISIGN board) has all the options for CS on cute cards you can print out and take with you. I made it so my IL's could look and see if there was anything they wanted, but I don't think they ever even looked at it! But, I don't think it had the resort CS menus.

 

[-Hope-]

I kind of came to this conclusion- I narrowed down the choices on my own and figured I'd show them the menus and let them decide for themselves from those choices. I think if I tried to show them ALL of the menus they wouldn't look because they'd think it was too much trouble and they'd just randomly pick something. BUT if I just show them a few menus they will pick something. And it isn't that the CS food is exotic its that they are really picky. I think I have it figured out though so no big deal.

I also took your idea and figured out where to put TS in the same schedule so if they do offer the ddp then I'll still have my new and improved plan.

 

[-Hope-]

An 'almost' movie day!

Our first movie day was a huge success, the following week was still fun but Jace didn't come and the girls were definately less interested in the movie. This week, our third week, we never got around to watching the movie! I suppose I should start at the beginning though!

We were having a hard time getting out the door. Jace, once again, didn't want to go with us. He told me that if he wanted to be a hermit. I indulge him when there is a place for him to go, which there usually is. However on this particular day everyone he would normally stay with was busy. I convinced him to just bring his DSi and that it would be fine. Hurdle cleared, it looks like we're going to get out the door on time!

Squeaking out the door at EXACTLY the time we need to in order to meet Karen on time I think we are in the clear. But then THE COOLEST thing happened. We live on a gravel road in the middle of nowhere. This usually means nothing exciting happens. However, once it a while it is just the right environment for great things. I was reminded of this when out of the corner of my eye I spotted- A BALD EAGLE! He was just hanging out in a tree so I stopped (in the middle of the road) and grabbed my camera. I was shooting away when I realized I should put my telephoto adapter on so I could get better shots- so, back to the car. Again, happily clicking away when I decided to preview a pic only to discover- I had no memory card in the camera! Back to the car one more time. I finally got some decent shots (decent not great because it was a gray, overcast day and my telephoto adapter isn't the greatest).

Of course all this excitement meant we were late to meet Karen and Savannah at the rec center. Thankfully Karen is also a photographer not to mention an animal lover so she completely understood. We walked for a while-I'm not really sure how long, just until we were tired and couldn't walk any more! After walking we headed over to Karen's house (as soon as we can walk outside I'll host so we aren't always invading her!) for our Monster's Inc. movie day.

I should've seen immediately that we were in trouble. The kids went straight to Savannah's room and weren't at all interested in the activities we had planned. We just let them play for a while and eventually they wandered in ready to do some things. They all grabbed the activity packs Karen had printed out and worked on those together.

They all seemed ready for cookies so we started to get the ingredients together for that- and Karen realized she didn't have sugar- no sugar, no sugar cookies! So, she ran to the store to grab sugar. While she was there she realized it would be just as cheap to buy a roll of sugar cookie dough as a pack of sugar so that's what she did! The kids didn't mind because they were most interested in decorating and eating the cookies.

We divided the frosting into ziploc bags and added food coloring to the bags, snipped off the ends and voila- pastry bags! The kids had a good time decorating their door and eye cookies. The girls printed out a picture of Boo's door and since it had flowers on it so did their cookies. Mike's eye is blue so they covered their round cookies with white frosting, blue in the middle and then had their choice of a chocolate chip or a chocolate covered peanut for the 'pupil'.

At first Jace wasn't interested- he was playing Rockband with Karen's son, Dallas, and decorating cookies wasn't going to top that! Eventually they quit playing though so he joined us and had a good time!

Of course eating them was even more fun than decorating them!

After that the girls disappeared into Savannah's room- Jace was with them for a while but then came into the living room with us and played his DSi. We never did get around to watching the movie but it was a fun day!

 

[PixieDustPrincess05]

Hi Hope!!!! I have been reading Karen't PTR for a while, and decided to come over to yours . You have great ideas, and that is great that you are getting your parents to come along with you!!!!!! I tried getting mine to come, but my mom hates flying and I refuse to drive!!! I look forward to hearing more!!

 

[-Hope-]

Hi Hope!!!! I have been reading Karen't PTR for a while, and decided to come over to yours . You have great ideas, and that is great that you are getting your parents to come along with you!!!!!! I tried getting mine to come, but my mom hates flying and I refuse to drive!!! I look forward to hearing more!!

WELCOME!!

Could your parents meet you there? If the difference in transportation is the only obstacle you could overcome that.

 

[-Hope-]

I booked our room today!!!

I called this afternoon and got all 6 of us booked at ASMu. Of course the CM couldn't make any promises about adjoining rooms or putting us in Jazz but the request has been noted.

When it came time to add on dining he immediately offered me Quick Service. I hedged and admitted that I was hoping for free dining to be released. He assured me that I could canel the dining later at no penalty (I already knew that ) so I let him put it on. He told me that he'd offered me the QS plan because that was people staying in values would most likely get if free dining is offered. Honestly, I love my QS plan so I'm happy about that. More time in the parks, less sitting in restaurants.

I'm not sure I've filled everyone in on my latest dining decisions. So I guess I can do that now as well. We decided to do TS oop because there were a few things we were really looking forward to. Park Fare was on our must list and still is, we'll be having dinner there on Thursday evening. This is also the night the kids will get to ride the monorail. We'll take the bus from ASMu to MK and then the Monorail to GF. I'm hoping to get a 6:15 ADR and that we'll be finished eating in time to watch Wishes from the Marina. There's a small possibility that this could be a party day which would be awesome- we're not attending a party it would be great to have an opportunity to see Hallowishes from outside the park.

Our other TS is going to be at Crystal Palace. I originally thought we'd do our breakfast TS at Tusker House but this worked better for a variety of reasons. I'm excited about getting early shots of a nearly empty Main Street.

Like I said earlier, I really like the QS plan better HOWEVER, one of the things I love about the DDP is that the dinners we had planned were events to look forward to instead of just grabbing a meal. I didn't want to give that up when we switched gears to do the QS instead of the DDP.

Obviously this isn't all of our CS meals- the ones not listed are just simply grabbing something at the resort or in the park and that hasn't changed much from my original plans. The ones listed here are the ones I tried to pair with another activity to make it more special since we won't be do as many character meals...

• We're headed to DTD on our arrival day- we'll probably grab something from Earl of Sandwich for lunch and then take a water taxi to POFQ for dinner at Sassagoula Floatworks.
• We'll have a snack from Boardwalk Bakery for breakfast on our WS day. We are planning to take the bus to DHS and the boat to Boardwalk.
• Dinner that night will be at Cantina de San Angel (if they're finished with the refurb!!!) and Illuminations from the patio.
• Columbia Harbour House for Dinner followed by Spectro/Wishes
• Dinner from Intermission at ASMu followed by the pooside movie
• Mara at AKL for dinner followed by walking around to explore this resort and hopefully spot some of the animals
• Snack credits to be used at F&W on opening day
• back to DTD for lunch at Wolfgang Puck's Express and some last minute shopping