Our "Because I Love You" Trip DVC Style...DAILY UPDATES STARTED 8/8/09

Ok, I warned ya'll how we have the hardest time ever making up our minds right? Well, we do! And, this weekend we kept talking about our trip to WDW and all the great things we are going to do etc etc etc. But then, we realized that this is our vacation and we are packing it full of stuff to do. Almost each night we have a "fancy" dinner to get to and even though that sounds like loads of fun we decided that we should try to "mellow out" our agenda a little bit :scared1: In the process we have also managed to save some money :cheer2:

You see when I was talking to our DVC guide the last time he had mentioned that because we are switching hotels it is considered two completely different reservations. So, that means that we can do the regular dining plan for one reservation and no reservation for the other or whatever combination we choose. Well, Candi doesn't know about the two reservations but I silently started doing some figuring in my head and came up with a plan that would work. I ran the restaurant deletions/additions by Candi and he made a few change requests and then I made the end result. He is happy because it's a more "relaxed" schedule and I'm happy because we will be saving some money!

So, just in case you haven't guessed yet...we changed our ADR choices...shocking isn't it :rolleyes1

Candi's isn't aware of this yet but we are doing the regular dining plan for our stay at Wilderness Lodge which will give us 4 Quick Service credits and 4 Table Service credits. Then we will be doing the deluxe dining plan for our Animal Kingdom stay which will give us 15 credits to use however we like. In doing this we will also be paying for a couple of meals out of pocket (but it still ends up being cheaper than doing the whole stay on deluxe dining). So, the moment you have all been waiting for :rotfl2:

ADR WISH LIST - THE "MELLOW" VERSION:

September 4:

Lunch: Earl of Sandwich (or any other quick service that sounds good) 1 QS credit
Dinner: Fulton's Crab House Paying Out of Pocket (Approx. $89.46 before tip:eek:)

September 5:

Breakfast: nothing planned (not huge breakfast eaters)
Lunch: A quick service meal in Magic Kingdom 1 QS credit
Dinner: Order Pizza in the room and check out some DVDs from the DVC desk to watch Paying OOP Approx. $28.96 before tip

September 6:

Breakfast: 1900 Park Fare 1 TS credit
Lunch: Flame Tree BBQ 1 QS credit
Yak & Yeti1 TS credit plus Approx. $22.40 OOP for egg rolls and lettuce wraps since Apps aren't included on basic dining plan

September 7:
Breakfast: nothing planned
Lunch: Quick Service at Blizzard Beach 1 QS credit
Dinner: Artist Point 2 TS credits

September 8 - Check out of WL/ Check In to AKL - Start Deluxe Dining Plan:
Breakfast: Akershus (only if I cannot get reservation to CRT later in the week) 1 TS credit
Lunch: Rose & Crown 1 TS credit
Dinner: Le Cellier 1 TS credit

September 9:
Breakfast: Boma 1 TS credit
Lunch: Sci Fi Dine In 1 TS credit
Dinner: Yachtsman 2 TS credits

September 10:
Breakfast: Nothing planned
Lunch: Coral Reef 1 TS credit
Dinner: Teppan Edo 1 TS credit

September 11:
Breakfast: nothing planned
Lunch: Beaches & Cream 1 TS credit
Dinner: Whispering Canyon Cafe (early dinner and then go to MNSSHP) 1 TS credit

September 12:
Breakfast: Cinderella's Royal Table 2 TS credits
Lunch: Plaza Restaurant 1 TS credit
Dinner: Narccoossees (sp?) 2 TS credits

September 13:
Breakfast: Main Street Bakery with snack credits


So, there you have it. I'm not too sure how much more it will change. Doing it this new way kind of restricts how much I can change things, because I have to make sure to stick within my credit limits for the basic dining plan.

If anybody is interested here is the money breakdown:

ALL OOP: Estimated at $1466.26 before tips

ALL DELUXE MEAL PLAN: $1385.28 ($71.99/person X 9 nights + OOP for Fultons)
This equaled a savings of $80.98 over doing ALL OOP

1st Half Basic / 2nd Half Deluxe: $1180.64 ($39.99/person X 4 nights; $71.99/person X 5 nights; OOP for Fultons, Pizza and Yak & Yeti Apps)
This equals a savings of $204.64 over the all deluxe option and a savings of $285.62 over all OOP!!!

I think this time I am really happy with our decisions!!

Have a great night everyone :goodvibes
 
Wow!! So many updates! :) I'm so glad you had such a great time with your family. I have to say--I'm 1/2 Brazilian, and I LOVE Brazilian food. :thumbsup2 YAY for getting your MNSSHP tickets! :yay: And way to go on saving money and time with your new dining plan!! :woohoo:
 
Wow!! So many updates! :) I'm so glad you had such a great time with your family. I have to say--I'm 1/2 Brazilian, and I LOVE Brazilian food. :thumbsup2 YAY for getting your MNSSHP tickets! :yay: And way to go on saving money and time with your new dining plan!! :woohoo:

Thanks for all the "yays" :goodvibes My updates will be slowing down for a little while after this weekend because we are off on our Anniversary trip, so I guess I wanted to pack in all the updates I could now :confused3 I just love to get on here and see what everyone else has planned and then it inspires me to look at my plans...I just love the Disboards :goodvibes
 
Hey everyone :goodvibes I haven't updated in a while, so I wanted to say "hi" to ya'll! There isn't too much going on in the planning world right now. We got back from our CA trip last week and are paying for it at work (aka ... loads and loads of work to catch up on :rotfl:).

We can make our ADRs on Saturday which I'm super stoked about, but it looks like we may be changing our minds again. Candi started looking through all our menu printouts again and now he thinks that we left out some places that he really wants to eat at :confused3 See, I told ya'll we couldn't make up our minds:laughing: I'm currently running a post on the dining section to try and get more information to help him ... ok, fine, us (I may have decided I wasn't sure about our decision too :rolleyes1) decide. It is my goal to have an outline with a back-up plan (and quite possibly a back-up to the back-up - we are going during free dining after all :lmao:) made by Friday morning.

Other than that I am just (not so patiently) waiting for the September hours to be released so I can make some more solid plans. And then change them a billion times :rotfl2: I am guessing they should be up sometime this week :confused:

Hope everyone is having a great start to their week!!
 


Finally ...... some REAL updates!!!

Today was the big day ... ADR DAY :woohoo: I learned this morning that this is actually the first of two ADR days for us. I never put two and two together and realized that having two hotel reservations meant two different ADR days :sad2: I'm not sure how I'm going to pull off the next one since it's Thursday and I have to work AND go to school ... man oh man! I am going to pooped. Anyway, on with the fun stuff ....

I was up at 4:45 am (our time) :scared1: with my outline of ADRs all ready to go. I have to stop here and give Candi mucho recognition because he voluntarily sat up with me :lovestruc Now I had been really stressing out about this process because we are going during free dining and I had read numerous horror stories about the process. Let me just say it wasn't nearly as bad as I had prepared myself for. I was on hold for about 25 minutes before I got through, but it wasn't so bad, I just sat there listening to the Disney Love Song Collection they had playing ... which I might want to buy now :rolleyes1 Hmmmm....I'm guessing that's their plan and I'm a great big sucker for falling for it :laughing:

Ooops, back to the ADR process.

At around 5:25 am (my time) a pleasant CM came through and started the process for me. Now I am calling her pleasant because she didn't have the friendliest persona but she proved to be extremely helpful, maybe she is like me and just isn't a morning person :confused3 Ok, so I decided I was just going to go through the days in order and hope for the best instead of jumping around trying to get the "hard" reservations first. I mean, it was still dark out meaning I was still supposed to be sleeping and I didn't want to confuse myself :lmao:

Here is how things ended up:

September 4 - Arrival Day:

Dinner:

Requested - Fulton's Crab House - 8:00 pm
Received - Fulton's Crab House - 8:00 pm

September 5 - Magic Kingdom Day:

Breakfast:

Requested - Cinderella's Royal Table - First available seating
Received - Cinderella's Royal Table - 8:10 am (BEFORE park opening :yay::yay::yay::yay:)

Dinner:
Requested - Le Cellier - Anytime after 7:00 pm
Received - Narcoossees - 7:35 pm

September 6 - Epcot Day:

Breakfast:

Requested - Kona Cafe - 9:00 am
Received - Kona Cafe - 9:00 am

Lunch:
Requested - Coral Reef - 2:00 pm
Received - Coral Reef - 2:00 pm

Dinner:
Requested - Le Cellier - Anytime after 7:00 pm
Received - Teppan Edo - 7:30 pm

September 7 - Golf Lesson/Blizzard Beach:

Dinner:

Requested - Artist Point - 8:00 pm
Received - Artist Point - 8:00 pm

September 8 - Hollywood Studios Day:

Lunch:

Requested - Sci Fi - 1:00 pm
Received - Sci-Fi - 1:15 pm

Dinner:
Requested - Le Cellier - Anytime after 7:00 pm
Received - Le Cellier - 7:50 pm


Overall, I am VERY happy with the outcome. The only "road blocks" hit were having to switch around to get Le Cellier, which I was completely prepared to do. And then, I goofed up and forgot to call DVC to add on the dining plan so I had to pay for CRT, but they said when I contact DVC and get the dining plan added I can call back and get credited for CRT, so really no big deal. The only other thing that caused conflict with that is I also wanted to do Spirit of Aloha on our Magic Kingdom day (if we didn't get Le Cellier, which we didn't) but I didn't want to have to pay for that one up front. I did pay for CRT because I figured a before park opening seating was too good to pass up :thumbsup2

Hope everyone is having a great weekend - this was definitely an awesome start to mine!!!
 
Great ADRs!! :thumbsup2 I'm so glad you finally got a LeCellier ressie--and it'll be nice to have it on your last day! I'm nervous about making my ADRs. But they're not til the 22nd... It sounds like you got a lot of really great places!!! :goodvibes
 
Great ADRs!! :thumbsup2 I'm so glad you finally got a LeCellier ressie--and it'll be nice to have it on your last day! I'm nervous about making my ADRs. But they're not til the 22nd... It sounds like you got a lot of really great places!!! :goodvibes

Thanks! It really wasn't as bad/difficult to get into the places we wanted as I had prepared myself for. As long as you are prepared with back-ups then you will be ok :thumbsup2 What I did was make a list of all the places we wanted to eat (in order of preference) and then went through my list as I made the ADRs, if choice #1 wasn't available that day then i requested choice #2, then when we got to the next day I started back at the first one we hadn't got yet and went through the list again ... it worked great for us. I hope you have extra good luck as well :goodvibes
 


SOOOOOOOOOOO....I know I have been a bad, bad Diser and have been away from here for WAY too long, but I pinky promise it's been for good reason. Today it became official that ................

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WE ARE HOMEOWNERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

As some of you may recall we have been working really hard on repairing our past credit mistakes. Unfortunately, in the real estate world they aren't very forgiving. We started to understand and be at ease with the fact that we would either a) stay in an apartment for another year :sick: or b) get a very small starter home and pray that it would be worth something when we were ready to sell. And then we got some really sad news mixed with really good news. Some of our friends are having to relocate to Las Vegas for a job. Now, don't get me wrong, we are very sad to see them go and hate knowing that we won't get to see them all the time anymore. And I guess this means we may have to take a vacation to somewhere OTHER THAN DISNEY :scared1:. However, in the midst of all that they offered to do a lease to own agreement with us on their house. Now, I know "technically" this means we don't own the home yet, but we will and they are being very generous in the terms of the agreement. I could honestly never say thank God enough for giving us friends like them and will be eternally grateful for their friendship and generosity :hug:

You guys have no idea ... this home is more than I ever could have dreamed of for our first home together. It is huge and beautiful and has the ideal layout for us and the list goes on and on and on ....

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Obviously, this is the front of the house. It's already xeriscaped and pretty and well maintained. It isn't a corner lot but there is quite a bit of space between us and the houses next to us (compared to a lot of other neighborhoods here anyway).

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This is the view of the front door if you are standing in the living room. On the right is the half bath and on the left is the coat closet and stairs. The entry way, dining room, kitchen, laundry room and bathrooms all have this same tile. It's 18" ceramic and a beautiful color that goes with all our decor that we already have :thumbsup2

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This is the room I am most excited about - the kitchen!!! My current apartment kitchen is an alley kitchen which I hate and if I lay on the floor (don't worry it was clean when I tested this theory :laughing:) I am longer than the kitchen ... completely sad considering I am only 4'11"!:scared1::scared1: This kitchen however, is big and beautiful and has tons of room for everything. It has cherry wood cabinets and grey/black granite countertops. I totally see some Tuscan decorating going on in here :goodvibes

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Ok, the last picture I have is the dining room and the double french doors lead out to the backyard. I know this sounds nuts but I have NEVER had a backyard before ... not even in my house growing up. I can't wait to get a dog and have a garden ... I'm so stoked!!

Ok, I'm done bragging now :rotfl: Hope nobody minds! I promise some Disney updates SOON!!!
 
So, So, So, So exciting!!! :dance3: Congratulations!! That is so awesome. I know how you feel about finally being in a house where you can have a garden. Even though we don't own ours (we rent from my parents) we have a ton of room and we've planted lots of flowers. You are going to LOVE IT!!! :woohoo: I'm so happy for you!
 
So, So, So, So exciting!!! :dance3: Congratulations!! That is so awesome. I know how you feel about finally being in a house where you can have a garden. Even though we don't own ours (we rent from my parents) we have a ton of room and we've planted lots of flowers. You are going to LOVE IT!!! :woohoo: I'm so happy for you!

Thank you soooo much! I remember reading about how excited you were to garden when you got your house .... glad to know others share in that same excitement :goodvibes
 
Hello all my Dis friends :wave2:

We have been moving, slowly but surely, into our new home and I haven't had a lot of computer time lately. I've spent all afternoon trying to get caught up on everyone's TR and PTRs ... if I haven't responded to yours yet, I'm not avoiding ya, I just haven't made it over there yet :goodvibes

It is amazing to me how much stuff we have crammed into our itty bitty apartment. I promise it felt like Christmas as we came across stuff we forgot we had because it's been in the storage for so long. I am so excited to finally have all our wedding gifts out and be able to use them ... I hear the wok calling my name tonight ... stir fry = YUMMY YUMMY:thumbsup2

Now, I promised some Disney updates so here we go ......


We have one month and four days to go and I am slightly freaking out. Now, we are very lucky to be moving into a house, but it has dipped into our vacation fund quite a bit. Our original plan was to forgo the WDW trip and book a Disney Cruise instead. Our rationale was that the food is already paid for - technically we could get back on the ship and eat even at port if completely necessary. Not to mention that almost all the entertainment is paid for as well. The only "out of pocket" expense would be airfare, the booking fee for DVC and excursion money. However, when I called to do that I realized I couldn't because of the booking rule with DVC and non WDW hotel properties.

Our second idea was to push the trip back - end of October was ideal because that's Candi's birthday. Well...that didn't work either. I spent over an hour with an incredibly patient and helpful DVC representative and there is nothing for a complete week (+) at any resort in October or November (Food and Wine Festival is going on causing full bookings).

So, now what do we do? I definitely don't want to cancel - especially since I don't want to lose our DVC points we have left for this year. At the same time I know we cannot afford the trip we have planned as we have it planned.

Here is what we have determined so far:

1. We will (once again) re-evaluate the dining plan (this saddens me because we have some AMAZING reservations lined up)

2. We will look at switching the flight to Orlando (we haven't booked the return flight so we can use the credit towards that flight)

3. Evaluating other areas to cut back money (no park hoppers, less days, no WPFM ticket option, no Fulton's since it isn't on the dining plan etc)

Any help you guys could give me on cutting back some money would be incredibly appreciated and helpful :goodvibes

Off to work on the Vacation Budget with Candi ... will check in later tonight. Hope to have good news and see lots of helpful hints when I get back ;)
 
So, we have been working really hard at reducing the cost of our WDW trip, but have been having an incredibly hard time letting go of anything. Now, I understand that we are blessed just to be able to go, but we have been looking forward to all these things for so long ... it's just so hard :littleangel:

Here is what we have gathered so far:

We are going to cut one day :scared1: This was a really hard choice to make, but it really does save so much money. We have a budget that we always try to stick to on our trips and by cutting one day we will be saving almost $300. I know that sounds crazy - here's how it breaks down:

$71.99 per person / day Deluxe dining plan = $143.98
$25.00 per day for tips = $25.00
$100.00 per day "go crazy" money = $100.00

Total savings by cutting one day = $268.98

This also works out well, because we will be coming home on Saturday, which will give us Sunday to rest before going back to work on Monday :sad2:

I also decided to switch our flight to get to Orlando. Originally we had a flight booked that left home at 11:00 and was non-stop to Orlando with an arrival at 4:00. We decided to go ahead and switch it to the "crack of dawn" flight which will leave at 7:00 am and has a layover in Houston with an Orlando arrival time of 2:40 pm. This one wasn't such a hard decision ... for me that is :rolleyes1 Since we have not booked our return flight we will use that credit towards the flight home

Flight switch total savings = $61.80

Grand total savings so far = $330.78

This is an excellent start but we still need to cut $669.22 (our goal was to cut $1000.00 because that's how much we had to pull out of our vacation fund for the house).

I know it should be simple - take away the deluxe dining plan, but we have been looking forward to that for such a long time. In the end, we may have to do this - it is still better than cutting the trip.

However, after all the moving we did, we realized we have a bunch of stuff that is nothing but "junk" to us. So, we decided that next weekend we are going to have a yard sale to try to get rid of it. I am hoping that the phrase "one man's junk is another man's treasure" holds true for us. I am not, by any means, expecting to earn the entire $600 from this but anything will help. Plus, whatever we don't sell we are going to donate.

In the meantime we are hoping to come across some more ways to cut and/or earn money for the trip. Any ideas???

Have a great weekend everyone!!
 

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