Double the Anniversaries, Double the Fun! Jan 2013 PTR | TR HAS STARTED! 2/13

[Stringbean&Wingnut]

That Draw Something is hilarious!!!!

Glad to hear you're enjoying your new job!!

 

[Twoboysnmygirl]

That is hilarious!!!

So glad the job is going great, cannot wait to hear more plans!

 

[Flo's Mum]

Happy to hear you are loving your job and looking forward to more details

 

[danimaroo]

Joining in!

Oh, and we usually go the week before President's Day. Early February has always been great for us!

Glad you're here!! I'm hoping it'll be a great time to go! I've heard of a few horror stories about early February, but I'm not too worried about it!

I'm here!!
did I make page 1?????

Haha you DID make page one! I was not expecting so many people to join my PTR, too! But it definitely makes me feel special! Glad you are here!

I'm joining you as well. It's nice to have some TR and PRE TR to read so the times go by until my own trip to WDW.

Awesome, glad you've joined! I love having TRs and PTRs to read before the trip! Especially when it's closer and you're just ITCHING to get there.

Here!

Joining in too!

Glad you are both here!

I'm here as well! I LOVED your TR so much, so I'm back for another installment. Looking forward to this PTR. You've actually inspired me to try my hand at a TR. So, thank you.

Thank you so much! I am happy you loved it enough to join in on the PTR! You totally should write a TR! It's such a fun way to relive a trip.

I'm here!!

AWESOME! Super excited.

I hated for your TR to end so I just followed you right on over to here!

Haha do you know the first time I read this I thought it said "I hated your TR..." hahaha. I'm glad you hated that it ended though! And enough to join me here!

I'm joining in the fun.. I'm trying to finish reading your TR from your last trip.

Hopefully you've had the time to finish reading through our silly antics!

I thoroughly enjoyed your last pre-trip report and your last trip report. I can't wait to hear more about the upcoming trip. If Bruce and Amy are with you, who will be taking care of the pets?

Thank you! And I'm glad you have read both my PTR and TR! It's funny you bring the pets up, because that is something we have thought about and will have to figure out. We're hoping for another friend to be willing to house sit/pet sit... Shouldn't be TOO bad since we do have a hot tub as an incentive!

Can't wait to hear all the details. Lurker on the last TR, which was great by the way, very excited for this one!!!

Followed you over from No Way

Glad you guys have both joined!!

Joining in!
I caught your TR about a week ago and I am all caught up now. I loved it! You made me feel like I was there!!

Can't wait to hear about your plans!

Awesome, glad you loved it so much! I tried to write it like that because I love TRs that make me feel like I was there with the person/people!!

Subbing! I lurked on your trip report and thought I should get in on the ground floor for this one. And board games are awesome - have you ever played Bezzerwizzer? It's pretty much our go-to game right now.

So jealous of your Up Castle t-shirt! I wanted one so badly but there weren't any in stock in my size in December.

Awesome, glad you are here for the long haul!! I LOVE board games. But I've never played Bezzerwizzer! I'm thinking I need to look into this one!

That's a bummer about the t-shirt! I love that one so much... Maybe I'll wear it tomorrow to work!

YAY! I loved your TR. Can't wait for another one. I suppose a PTR will do in the meantime

Awesome, I can't wait to write another one! So far away, so yes, a PTR will have to do for now! Haha.

I'm on board!

YAY! Glad you're here!!

Sad to see your TR is over but excited to follow along in your plans for your trip next year!!! I may have been more of a lurker but I thoroughly enjoyed your TR!!

Yeah it was sad to have it over but it ended at a good time! I've been so busy with work my TR would've never gotten finished. Lurker or not, I'm glad you read it and enjoyed it so much!

(to comment on your final thoughts update from your TR)
I live like an hour from NYC and had no idea there was an EOS there! Lol. I DO know there's a Disney store in Times Square. . And my daughter reminds me Of it often as she asks me every weekend if we can take the train down to go! Lol. (I trained her well)

YES! I looked it up and apparently there is one! Now I want to go to the Disney Store in Times Square next time I'm in NYC!! Totally doing it. Your daughter is trained well, hahaha.

Can't wait to see what you guys have planned!!!

I can't wait to share it with everyone as things unfold!!

I loved reading your TR each day! I'm excited to read about more adventures!

Awesome, glad you are here! This trip sure should be full of adventures!

I'm here and ready to tag along on another Disney vacation with ya!!!

Awesome, so happy you are here!!

I'm here (of course)!

YAY! I'm so happy, it just wouldn't ever be the same without you!

Duh, I'm here, my favorite goober!! I'm late, but what's new!?

Haha so happy you're here of course! And don't even worry about it, I've been SO out of the loop when it comes to the DISboards, it's bad.

Cannot WAIT to follow you again on another trip! AND, I think your TR really made me think about how much Rey & I would love going solo...so we are planning a short 3 night trip in November! I'm so excited to go just the two of us and celebrate our anniversary!

YAY! I'm so excited to follow yours as well! I am so excited that you and Rey are going in November! That is going to be a BLAST! OMG. I have so much to catch up on!

I'm so excited to follow you on this trip! Your last TR was so wonderful to read. Looking forward to reading about your plans!

Aww, thank you, I'm glad you are here and you're on board for a fun PTR!!

This sounds like it is going to be a lot of fun! I am so in!!

Awesome, glad you are in! I think it will be a ton of fun, and it's very different than anything I've ever experienced!

YAY for another trip!!! Looking forward to following along with your planning!

Woohoo! I'm very happy we have another trip on the horizon, even if it's still far away! Planning is pretty fun in the meantime, especially as we get closer!

Hi, of course I followed you over here. Sounds like you are going to have a great time.

Woohoo! Glad you followed me over and I didn't lose you! I think it'll be a blast!

Hi! I just read your last TR "No Way" and loved it so I had to join in for the next adventure!

Awesome, glad you loved it so much! That TR was a blast to write and relive! This should be quite a trip for us!

I just discovered your recently finished TR and read through the entire thing this weekend. It was so great! Can't wait for more.

AWESOME! I love going through TRs like that and knocking it out in one fell swoop! Glad you are here!

Of course I've got to follow you over here from your TR. Love reading your updates, so I'm along for your planning extravaganza!

YAY! Happy you've followed me over here! This should be quite a planning extravaganza!

I'm here, I'm here! I was so excited when I saw the link on your other report! I'm so glad you decided to start this one right away! I can't wait to read all about your plans!!!

WOOHOO! Yeah, at one point I didn't think I'd do a PTR but I just can't help it! My last one was really fun, so I have to do another!

I'm in! I can't wait to hear all about the details!

I can't wait to have everyone here as things unfold! My last PTR started after we'd already booked stuff, but this one we are starting off super fresh! So everyone gets to ride the roller coaster with me as we plan away!

Following along! Your hubby and you remind me soooo much of me and my hubby its ridiculous!

Haha awesome! I love hearing that there are others like us who love Disney just as much!!

Hey, sorry I'm so late. I never commented on your last update of Norway but obviously you know how I loved it so. Can't wait to hear all about your plans.

Doooon't even worry about it. I'm like 9423873498 days behind on your TR, or so it feels like it! I'm hoping this week isn't as intense as last week, buuuut that's not looking so good, haha. I WILL CATCH UP SOON!

Your smiles make me smile!


Put this thread on my favorites.

Happy planning.

Aww thanks, that's super sweet! Can't wait to plan away!

 

[danimaroo]

That is absolutely hilarious! Love it!!

HAHAHA I was dying, we both were actually.

That Draw Something made me laugh out loud! Thank goodness I was alone because everyone tends to look at me weird when I laugh at the iPad.

Hahaha oh my gosh I do the SAME thing sometimes and Matt will ask me what the heck I'm giggling about... Or he'll say, "What are you laughing at over there, Chuckles?!" Glad you thought it was as funny as I did!

I was wondering how your job was going! Thanks for letting us know..I can imagine how exhausted you are at night...we'll be here!

Cute drawing...is that from "words with friends"?? I have heard of it, but never saw it...

Oh my gosh, it's SO much busier than my previous job but it's actually a good thing! It makes the day go by a heck of a lot faster, and I'm enjoying everything I'm learning about! It's super exhausting though, so I'm hoping it's not as crazy this week now that I'm starting to get the hang of a few things!

It's actually from a game called "Draw Something". It's free and totally fun to play on the iPhone or iPad!!

That Draw Something is hilarious!!!!

Glad to hear you're enjoying your new job!!

Hahaha yeah, I was laughing as I drew it. And thank you! I'm happy I am, as well, even though it's leaving me so pooped when I get home!

That is hilarious!!!

So glad the job is going great, cannot wait to hear more plans!

Haha, thank you! I know, I want to start getting into the plans and stuff. It's just between it being early and this new job deal, I haven't had any time to even think about Disney! But I will have an update with more details on a few things here quite soon!

Happy to hear you are loving your job and looking forward to more details

Thanks so much! I can't wait to get into all of the fun details of this trip and plan it out here! Should be an interesting 9 months!

 

[dara00]

hi! I am here. I was away in NJ visiting family when you posted your new link and felt like it was too hard to read and comment on my ipod! But I'm here now, so yay.

Our trip this year was on MLK day and the day after and the crowds were not bad at all! But hopefully your dates work out great for you!

I just got into draw something. I can't draw so well on it though! I think because I have an ipod and not a droid? not sure. But that was a great Brazil drawing for sure!

I'm glad your new job is going well!

 

[okw19]

I promise I'm still here. Honestly since your TR ended, I haven't felt the everyday urge to hop on the DIS like I used to. I think it's because that was the last thing keeping our trip alive. I love that Draw Something. When you sent it to me, I forwarded it to another one of my Disney loving friends who was there the same week as us. She thought it was hilarious.

I'll try to sit down and email you this week so we can catch up.

 

[kayely]

I'm here to read your PTR! I followed over from your TR. I am so excited to read all the adventures you have planning your next trip! Yay!

 

[archdandy]

Just wanted to pop in and check for updates. I'm glad you're enjoying your new job so much!

 

[kimbo0569]

Loved your last TR! Can't wait to hear the details on your next trip. We were hoping to go this year but we decided that we wanted to try and save for a different resort this time, so we're putting it off til next year.

 

[danimaroo]

So remember how last update I was all, "Oh hey you will hear from me this weekend with a new update! Blahblahblah..."? Well, obviously I totally lied.

I had so many responses I wanted to get to, and then ran out of energy to actually, you know, update my PTR.

So I totally understand if some of you guys have just left me, haha. I've been a terrible updater, and it's for 2 reasons.

#1: New job. We've already gone over that, so I'll spare you that. But I will say that it's going really well!

#2: After finishing my TR, I don't think I realized it but I just needed to step away from the DIS for a little bit. Partially because I was feeling bummed out about the trip AND TR being over, and also because I just do not have the time to be on the DIS like I did before. I honestly probably should have held up on starting my PTR right away, but I really wanted a place for people to hop over to, so I guess it's a good thing I did it!

Honestly, my old job gave me SO much free time, more than I ever knew existed. New job? Not so much. But that's actually nice, since my days go by WAY faster. But yeah, because the new job had me training a LOT (and still does, just to a lesser extent), I just needed to step back for a little bit until I felt a little more comfortable in my role and things slowed down a little bit..

I guess there is kind of a #3 here, being... I didn't have anything to update you guys on! I like to be able to come in and announce really awesome things, you know? Unfortunately, there hasn't been a lot of movement on this trip, until very recently, which I'll get into here in a just a moment.

But basically, I just wanted to say I'm super sorry for being a bad DISer recently, but that I am here, I still care and I promise I will update this PTR more regularly.. or at least once a week, with responses inbetween of course... And probably WAY more as we get closer to our trip!

So, let's get into why planning things has been so slow!

The past two times we've done to Disney World, Matt's parents have let us use some of their DVC points. They've had this in the family for nearly 20 years, and we've been the only ones the past few years to actually go to Disney World and use the points.

There had been talk about us possibly taking over the payments for the points, because his parents don't use them much anymore since Matt and his sisters are older. We figure we'll probably be the ones to get the most use out of them, as we love Disney World and typically can financially afford the trip.. plus, when we have kids in a few years, we'd obviously like to make it a yearly trip.

Buuuut they've decided to hold onto them for now, which is fine, though there is a little guilt that we sometimes feel when we use the points and they don't want money from us for them...

Anyway! This year there are a ton of points to be used... 700ish to be exact. Matt's parents have been planning to take my SIL and niece to Disney World, and they've been thinking about taking them this year/next year. They'd probably do a 2-bedroom, and so we figured out for this trip to work for us point-wise, it'd make the most sense to do 2 studios. It's way less points than a 2BR, and would allow us to go on our trip, while they could go on theirs.

Oh, and yes, we are taking care of Bruce and Amy's room, mainly because they've been amazing friends to us and have come through for us in so many ways. As I've mentioned in the past, they've taken care of our dogs and our house (for free, by the way) every time we've gone to Disney World, and even during some other shorter trips we've made. Outside of just watching our dogs/house, they're great people and we figure if we have the points for the room, why not take care of it so we can all stay at a deluxe resort?

That's the other thing.. out of the 700 points, 290 of them MUST be used by February 1st, 2013, because they are banked from 2011. Matt's parents won't be using these before then, so it should work out pretty well considering 2 studios for 9 days comes out to around that amount.

Okay, so, we originally thought there'd be no problem on the points... until his parents suddenly thought about going to Italy and using a bunch of points on it.

We came up with the plan to offer to basically rent the points from them, paying them so they could use that money towards going to Italy and not waste points on Italy (because the points are basically wasted when trying to use them outside of DVC).

If they decided they still wanted to use the points, we'd then look at either renting points through the DIS or look into staying at a moderate and hopefully get free dining.

We gave them time to kind of figure things out, and asked them last weekend about it. Looks like Italy is probably not going to happen, and we SHOULD be able to use the points.

We're hoping to solve it all this weekend, and if they give us the green light, we will probably book at their home resort, Old Key West.

Are we planning on staying at OKW? Well, it's not our first choice, but we figure if we at least book that now, when the 7 months comes up and if for some crazy reason our number one choice (which I'll get into NEXT update) is booked, we still have a guaranteed resort that we're staying at.

SO! That's where everything currently stands. Again, we're hoping to have this all solved this weekend, but we'll see!

Next update is going to include our resort choices, why we're doing this trip and why it's a special one for us.

Thanks for hanging in there with me, and I PROMISE I will be around a bit more, especially as things start to get rolling with booking our resort and all that fun stuff.

 

[danimaroo]

hi! I am here. I was away in NJ visiting family when you posted your new link and felt like it was too hard to read and comment on my ipod! But I'm here now, so yay.

Our trip this year was on MLK day and the day after and the crowds were not bad at all! But hopefully your dates work out great for you!

I just got into draw something. I can't draw so well on it though! I think because I have an ipod and not a droid? not sure. But that was a great Brazil drawing for sure!

I'm glad your new job is going well!

Well as you can see, I've been MAJORLY slacking on updating my PTR! Ugh. So don't even worry about being late at all.

I think our dates will be good, but it's definitely good to know that MLK isn't as bad as I've heard!

I haven't played a ton of Draw Something recently, I always forget I have it on my iPhone! Hahaha. It's hard to draw on! I like it better on my iPad.

And thank you! It really is wonderful.

I promise I'm still here. Honestly since your TR ended, I haven't felt the everyday urge to hop on the DIS like I used to. I think it's because that was the last thing keeping our trip alive. I love that Draw Something. When you sent it to me, I forwarded it to another one of my Disney loving friends who was there the same week as us. She thought it was hilarious.

I'll try to sit down and email you this week so we can catch up.

Well we've talked since you left this comment but yeah, I was feeling the same way as you! I just wish you were planning a trip for the same time as me again. One, so we could just be excited about it together and two, so we could hang out together again!

I'm here to read your PTR! I followed over from your TR. I am so excited to read all the adventures you have planning your next trip! Yay!

I am so glad you are here! I saw your comment over on my TR and am so happy you loved it so much. I swear I normally update way more often but things have been a little crazy around here lately!

Thanks for joining!!

Just wanted to pop in and check for updates. I'm glad you're enjoying your new job so much!

Well I FINALLY updated today! Ugh, total slack alert on my part. Though I do have the excuse of being really busy, haha. But thank you! It's a great team I get to work with and I really enjoy it here!

Loved your last TR! Can't wait to hear the details on your next trip. We were hoping to go this year but we decided that we wanted to try and save for a different resort this time, so we're putting it off til next year.

Thanks so much! Glad to see you hopped over here! That's a bummer about not going this year, though it makes TOTAL sense. I'm having a hard time knowing that we have to wait until January of next year to go, buuuuut that's okay!

Where are you thinking of staying next year?

 

[407-W-DISNEY]

We are still here- no worries!!
I hope it all works out with the DVC points...sounds like it will...
can't wait to hear why your doing the trip....??? hmmmmm..should we start guessing????

glad your new job is working out well....

 

[kimbo0569]

Thanks so much! Glad to see you hopped over here! That's a bummer about not going this year, though it makes TOTAL sense. I'm having a hard time knowing that we have to wait until January of next year to go, buuuuut that's okay!

Where are you thinking of staying next year?[/QUOTE]

Well, my fantasy would be to stay at the Beach or Yacht club but that might be a little too over amibitious on my part...LOL. I have two daughters, that will be 8 and 11 by the time we're planning on going and they would totally love to stay at the Animal Kingdom lodge. So I would love to do that for them, if we could.

 

[Joyciemc]

Hoping things are squared away with using those points!

DH and I are traveling with another couple in October and we are also treating them to the accommodations. We feel like we're gaining so much by having our best friends in WDW with us, there's no need for them to pay! Add to that, we are sharing one studio, so it's the exact same point usage as just DH and I.

So where do you wanna stay??

 

[NancyLuvsMickey]

700 points to use??? I'd be at Disney every month for a year...

 

[Twoboysnmygirl]

TOTALLY get the having-to-step-away from the DIS for a bit. I did the same thing after my TR and then my PTR lagged a bit. It's actually still a little bizarre b/c it's my BFF PTR but everything I'm posting about is the November Anniversary trip with Rey! I guess more planning that way??

So what will you do with the pups this time if your friends are coming with you? I'm glad that my next two trips are not with the whole family and my boys (17 & 18 in November!!! ) will be staying at the house and watching all my furry kids so I don't have to worry about them!

 

[amyrella]

Yay!! I always enjoy your updates! Hope everything works out with the points!

 

[mouseketeer70]

Still here! Totally understand being busy. I keep my calendar using my iPhone and I swear if anything ever happens to that phone I will be totally lost because I can't keep it all straight, especially this time of year--baseball, dance recitals, end of year testing and awards days and field trips etc at school, graduation... But it's all this busy busy busy that makes all of us appreciate the peace of a Disney vacation so much!

 

[Stringbean&Wingnut]

I totally understand the new job/less DIS time thing too! It's hard keeping things updated on a regular schedule!

The DVC points thing completely confuses me, but it sounds like you've got a good plan!!