that was painless! (making PS)

[Alex2kMommy]

We were at the zoo Monday with some friends, and the first stop was the elephants. They were wandering around in the yard by the pond, but the kids (ages 6,5,3 and 2) went on and on about the mailbox-sized poop all over the enclosure!

 

[daffidyll]

Glad you had fun at the zoo Bumbershoot and you got one worry crossed off! We took DD last year when we went to Hawaii and she freaked out pretty much the whole time. Some people have suggested we try taking her to the Australia Zoo or DreamWorld (we live in Australia) before we go overseas to try to help adapt her more but I'm still not sure....would also hate for it to have the reverse effect and just make her hate all these places even more! Ah well.....we'll get there! I'm still having hope as at least she's talking about it all with so much excitement!

At the moment I'm torn between the Camelot Inn and the Carousel Inn and now again Disney Hotel since they do have coffee/tea makers....er....I hope you can make tea as well....I'm not a coffee person....just need my cup of tea I do!!!!! I really want a king bed and sofabed but I think only the Camelot has that..... and I want a nice clean bright room with room to move and easy to get to DL and a good view of fireworks at night and really it's only for 4 nights.....I should stop stressing over it already!!! I ACTUALLY did phone the Camelot today to ask about the price of the king suite and he told me he couldn't book it as they wouldn't have their prices up until Dec/Jan.....found that interesting because I could have booked on their website for the standard room and it worries me because someone else had said alot of places had already booked out for March....see, ya actually finally make a phone call and get nowhere!

 

[ShawnaF]

Do you have access to the Disney DVDs to play in your area - not sure what versions you can play in Australia? There is one called Sing Along Songs, Disneyland Fun, It's a Small World - has ALL the characters as well and scenes of the rides and images you see at Disneyland.

We OVERDOSED on that one prior to taking our daughter for the first time on her 1st birthday - nothing scared her! It has songs from some of the rides too. I really think that video helps, some of it is dated, but it's really fantastic and puts YOU in the mood too.

I highly recommend that video and over 2 years later it's still a favorite here!

 

[daffidyll]

Thanks so much for the tip ShawnaF!!!! The sing-along one sounds fantastic.....most of our DVD players here can also be set up to play region 1 so I just bought that one off Amazon and ordered the vacation one from Disney and will have both sent to my mom's in Santa Barbara and I'll have her post them to me! Oh, I can't wait to get them!!!!!

 

[bumbershoot]

We were at the zoo Monday with some friends, and the first stop was the elephants. They were wandering around in the yard by the pond, but the kids (ages 6,5,3 and 2) went on and on about the mailbox-sized poop all over the enclosure!

Were you up at Woodland? DS cannot NOT comment on the elephant poop. Today at Point Defiance zoo, he went on and on about the "pellets" in the muskox enclosure... Nothing about the huge, impressive beasts in front of him, no, just the poop. Oh, and he ALWAYS has to find a stick at the zoo.

Today I had to play superhero (I had to be Jetstream) from Sky High in order to get him up a hill towards the exit...



Ooh daffidyll, you're from Australia! What a long trip! How exciting.

Remember, the Carousel has that breakfast room that doubles as a place to watch the fireworks. Not YOUR room, but A room. I was paying a lot of attention to that, before I realized that we're not going to be there when they have fireworks.

 

[ShawnaF]

My pleasure, hope you love the videos as much as we do!!!

 

[Alex2kMommy]

Were you up at Woodland? DS cannot NOT comment on the elephant poop. Today at Point Defiance zoo, he went on and on about the "pellets" in the muskox enclosure... Nothing about the huge, impressive beasts in front of him, no, just the poop. Oh, and he ALWAYS has to find a stick at the zoo.

Today I had to play superhero (I had to be Jetstream) from Sky High in order to get him up a hill towards the exit...

Yes, Woodland Park, though would like to go to Point Defiance one of these days.

Nice to know this obsession with poop is normal behavior...

 

[bumbershoot]

It's a nice zoo. And has an aquarium, too. It's smaller, but pretty. GREAT view of the mountain and of Commencement Bay, though the water being right there makes dressing appropriately tricky sometimes! We had a picnic just outside the zoo over mem Day weekend once, for DS's b'day, and it was FREEZING as soon as it hit 5pm. Dang water.



Back to Disney...does anyone know what is in the chocolate covering on Mickey Bars? Is it pretty purely chocolate, or am I going to have to worry about corn syrup?

 

[daffidyll]

Yeah, the breakfast room at the Carousel is one of the things I liked about there and alot of people have said the Camelots pool area is fantastic for viewing as well but gee, didn't even really think that they might NOT be doing fireworks when we go....hmmm...will have to do another post and ask about that unless anyone here already knows....we'll be there March 12 thru 15th.

Definitely not looking forward to the looooong flight though. I actually grew up in LA and didn't move to Australia till I married DH so don't think I count as true aussie.....and as much as I love it here it's not until you have a child that you really really miss 'home'. Amazing how much I took for granted just being able to do Disney or any of the other places any time I felt like it and now I have to go through planning planning planning!!!

Sorry, don't know about the Mickey bars.....what ARE mickey bars???....they sound good though!!

 

[bumbershoot]

Mickey bars are, unless I'm dreadfully mistaken, are ice cream covered in chocolate (or chocolatey sauce, which is where the high fructose corn syrup worry enters the picture) in the form of mickey's head and ears.


Hey, you're more of an Australian than I am! Though having seen the art-film Walkabout MORE than once, I used to feel like I had seen the outback. (awful film, even worse when you see it with your divorced father and you and your brother are the same ages as the children in the movie, and you start wondering "just what is he trying to tell us?")


I'm the opposite about missing things. I grew up in San Jose, and while I sometimes think about going back, it's mainly people that I miss and wish would visit me more often. But especially after having Eamon, I would be perfectly content to just move to Fiji or Tahiti (whichever has the calmest gov't) and be DONE with this place entirely.

 

[daffidyll]

Oh wow.....I remember seeing that movie when I was a little kid!!! Though at the time I had no idea it was Australian...just thought it was some weird movie about being stranded in some desert and it made me really really THIRSTY!!! I still haven't been to the outback either. My mom is always telling that it's not the same back home anymore.....this will be my first trip back to LA in.....wow 10 years! Doesn't seem like it's been that long! Sometimes I'm not sure if it's good or bad not having my family around....it would be nice to have them close but not TOO close iykwim and I get really really nostolgic around the holidays like Thanksgiving which we don't have here and Christmas because it's summer here and not winter and we don't have the christmas trees like back home, and Halloween which we don't really have and oh dear....here I go again!!! But having said that....I do think this is a fantastic place to raise a child and I guess we have a lucky little girl who will get to experience two sets of holiday traditions.

 

[bumbershoot]

ooh I bet she has an absolutely adorable accent...


What were our parents thinking, letting us watch that movie??? After I saw it as an adult, I had to have a talk with my dad about that...

 

[daffidyll]

Yes, I'm envious....DD is a true little Aussie and I am soooooooo american sounding STILL! I love their accents!

I will have to have a look around for that movie.....I'm sure it will have a completely different meaning to me now than when I was little. I remember my mom dragging me to all sorts of movies that certainly weren't kid movies....usually I'd fall asleep through them!

 

[bumbershoot]

So cute.

You really still have an American accent after all that time? It's so hard for me to imagine not picking up the accent inside a few years. Then again, my natural CA accent has really stuck around, despite trying to get rid of it. Like, ya know?



Yeah, that movie's disturbing. The actress is much loved, though. Also from Logan's Run (another movie I watched as a child). She has a following.

You were talking about conceirge and DLH in another thread...I personally can't imagine that the combo of the two is worth 1600 bucks. I used to do concierge when on business trips, but it was NOT that much more than the regular rooms (not disney, just normal hotels for seminars). I'm trying to add up the 'free' food, and I'm just not getting 125/day, not even for the three of us in my family. You'll probably have fireworks during your stay, but my mid-September, non-Saturday-including stay doesn't have them. So that part, fireworks watching, doesn't help me out, so I don't know how I would value that financially.

I switched to PP for a cost of $300 more, and that added another day (adding another day at Carousel would have been 120, so really it was only 180 more than it WOULD have been, I suppose). Otherwise I wouldn't have felt it worth it.

BUT we might be in different worlds, money-wise, so what is easily doable for you might not be for me.



Can you book directly through WDTC, through disneyland dot com? They allow you to book the good neighbor hotels, too, just in case you didn't know that. Do they have those dates out yet?

Bringing it back to the point of this thread, lest anyone think I've veered too much....talking to WDTC people is quite lovely. Even though they COULD have charged me $25 for each change I've made, they haven't, which has "saved" me $50. (sorry to those of you who have had different experiences, I don't know what I did differently!)

 

[daffidyll]

LOL! Like, totally!! It's not that easy to pick up the accent or should I say 'lose' the american one. I've met people who have been here about 20 some years who still have it. I'm always envious of all the australian actors on american shows who speak perfect 'american' er....for lack of a better word.

Yeah, $1600 extra seems like quite a lot to me...even just the $1000 more does! I'm just not sure it would be worth it....the only way it would be is if we can't book into any other hotel and it's the only one we can get! DH and I were just talking last night about all the things we could do with that money...like just about pay for one of our flights! Nope, we haven't won the lottery yet so it's not pennies to us....we'll still be flying sardine class DRAT!

Thanks for the Disney.com tip. I didn't realise they also booked the good neighbour hotels.....I did search them but everything had "no availability"...I'm really starting to stress now! Just might have to start making those dreaded phone calls....again! Do you know if disney will also book good neighbour hotels on the phone or only on their website?

 

[ShawnaF]

You can also send an email through the Disneyland.com website to have them contact YOU. Keep checking too - the 2008 dates should be up soon.

 

[daffidyll]

Thanks ShawnaF...might do that....I guess what I can't figure out is I AM able to input the dates I want but when it responds with "no availability" do they mean "all booked out" or 'really don't have the schedule up yet". ....guess I'm hoping for the latter!

 

[bumbershoot]

My brain has lost track of your actual dates, and what sites you've tried so far.

But just for fun, I put March 14 through 17 into Carousel's and Camelot's reservation system, and got availability for both. Even got Camelot's deluxe family suite, which I noticed b/c I remembered you saying *something* about a suite.

April 14 through 17 for the Camelot came up with availability too...

If I had it all to do over again, I would look much harder at booking things separately, especially staying off site. And booking in the future, we most surely will, b/c we're planning to upgrade to APs (my brother lives in San Diego, why not have 'em for little visits, right?).

****

Just re-read your other post. I was almost right in my March dates!

I noticed that with Camelot, the suite had internet-only pricing, so when you call they really wouldn't know that price, and might not even know there's a price like that.

For 12 through 15 I just got the:

Deluxe Family Suite
Deluxe Family Suite-2 Queens / 1 King -pull out sofa bed-mini bar-fridge-microwave-iron-desk

with availability again. Is that the one you wanted? Or was it a different suite?


Disneyland's website is NOT wanting me to look into March...of course a few times I went through with 2007 still chosen... so maybe it just doesn't trust me to know what I'm doing.


OK so here's an interesting thing. I was going through the front page of d'land dot com, and had NOT chosen any resort. But here's the wording:

"No availability was found at the hotel you selected for the dates you requested. We did find alternates. "

What hotel had I selected? None. And it shows me GC and DLH as possibilities.

Then I'm trying the good neighbors, and it's not being as easy on me...Camelot doesn't even show up for me. I noticed that making my own reservations, too, some hotels just never showed up for me. Which likely meant that the rooms they set aside for booking through WDTC are gone, but they might stil have rooms available to book in other ways (phone to hotel, hotel's reservation website, etc etc).

Ooh now look at that, the Camelot DOES come up for me, when I chose "moderate" good neighbor hotels.

I don't know how many of you there are, but I put in two adults and 1 4 year old, and it gives me the Camelot for 971.06, with 5-days-for-price-of-3 tickets, Mickey's toontown morning madness and character phone call. I click to review or edit details and it shows me that that's a Deluxe room, and to switch to a 1 bedroom suite it would be 228 more. 1 bedroom suite is then defined as:

"2 Queens with a double sofa sleeper

Sleeps up to 6 combination of adults and children using existing bedding"



Man I hope that helps!

I wonder if you're seeing the "no availability" wording, and reacting to it (it's hard NOT to, with that bold red font!) before going further on the page?


I really really hope this helps, or at least doesn't annoy. I'm more than happy to help in any way, even to making phone calls for you (my cell can call there for free, unlike what I'm sure you're paying). DH has his usual 3 day weekend (he works 4 10 hour shifts during his work week), so I'm free as a bird.

 

[daffidyll]

Aaahhhh Bumbershoot you're the BEST!!! !!!

LOL! You really were pretty darn close to the right dates! I swear TRULY that disney site was not working for me the other day! I just know they went and snuck it all in there just to make me look like the idiot I probably am! Or maybe it was because I didn't go through the front page....anywhoooo....just did it now and yep, you're right it IS showing up! I followed your instructions and isn't that funny but I got a quote of $965.02 (weird!)...BUT when I click on review & edit I don't get an option of another room type....still just says 'standad' room. Hmmmmm.....anyway........

Yesterday I emailed Bei-Hotels directly and asked for the price of the mini king suite....that's just one room with a king bed plus a sofa bed (we can't afford the family suites and probably don't need it anyway with just 3 of us). He said it would be $141.75 per night plus 15% tax which is the same price of the standard room (2 queen beds) on their website so guessing there isn't really any difference for a king bed vs 2 queens...I just need to make sure that's the room I get though so wonder if I can book it online and then call to specifically request that room? Also just booking through the hotel and buying park hoppers separately still is $165 more than doing it through Disney......Or maybe I SHOULD phone Disney direct to book it.....I really like having it all done as a package vs doing everything separately too.

Oh yeah, I also put in the Carousel and got "not available" so that answers that unless I book through them directly.

I think I am going to book this one (unless my DH hears a better deal through our travel agent....still waiting on that) but have a few quetions about booking through Disney first:

1. Do you know if the quote they give you is including the taxes or will that add that on when you go to pay? I just went as far as to where they gave the total package price + the deposit amount that would be due.

2. Package includes "mickey's toontown madness" which I'm not sure exactly what it is but something about getting to meet the characters an hour early before the park opens (am I right??) anyway...the question is...Is this something you do on your parkhopper early entry day OR is this in addition to your early entry day so that you sort of get 2 early entries????

3. Definitely want to get the goofy's kitchen breakfast...and have been thinking about Ariel's grotto for lunch too. I'm pretty sure I read that the grotto is increasing their prices as of September or something but the price they are quoting me with the package is less SO.....if we buy this now would we still get the meal at the price we paid or will they make us pay extra at the time?

4. They also give an option of buying 'meal plans'....what the heck are they and are they worth it?

5. Lastly I read something about printing out "E tickets" or vouchers or something like that, that you then redeem at the ticket booth. Anyone booked through disney.com and done this? When booking the package would I be able to print it out that way?

6. I guess what I like about booking online is the actual paper confirmation of everything....if booking by phone would they email me any confirmation do you know? Or do they snail mail everything to you or do you get it when you check in?

Okay....think that's it......THANK YOU SOOOOO MUCH AGAIN Bumbershoot for all the research you did for me! I'm still not sure exactly what getting 'dreamed' at disney is but from what I can gather it's something really really cool so I hope it happens for you!!!! Actually for everyone who has helped me on these boards!!! I am one step closer and wouldn't have made it this far without everyones help!!!

p.s.....so sorry for the long babble....probably wasn't making much sense...thoughts going faster than my typing!

 

[bumbershoot]

You make sense, no worries. (ooh, did that sound Australian?)

Weird, the price difference.

Also weird how it didn't show you the extra rooms. If only we had a LIVE chat here, we could each be on our own little computers, talking each other through things.

When I was figuring out what I wanted to book, I noticed this one hotel that had this SUPER cool room, with a little outdoor patio. I decided that I only wanted THAT room, and if I couldn't have that room I didn't want that hotel. Well, the disneyland.com system didn't show me that room, and I decided not to risk it.

I wonder what I did different that got me to the page to change rooms...hmm.



I'm fairly sure that, once you get to the page where you see the deposit, that you're looking at the total price.

Oh wait, could it be trip insurance that's causing the difference in costs? No, that would make it go UP, since I hadn't gotten to the page where they include the trip insurance (it's not shown in the price until you get towards the end, and then it's an "opt OUT" situation).

Mickey's ToonTown Morning Madness is something that is offered 4 days a week, ONLY to people booking packages with Good Neighbor or DLR hotels. ToonTown normally opens one hour after DL opens, but when you have the MTTMM voucher, you get in an hour early, so, at the same time the park opens. I hear they have a little parade, and the "mayor" presides over it, and there might be a certificate that the children (or everyone?) gets for attending. It sounds like bunches of fun, at least to do one time.

I don't know if you'd find yourself paying extra for the breakfast, if they sell it at today's prices...that's a good question.

The dining plan is something that really isnt' worth it, to many people. WDW has their dining plan that can be a great deal, allowing you to eat at fancier restaurants and get an entree, a dessert, and so on, plus snack credits, and counter service restaurants, etc. BUT the disneyLAND dining plan is almost like buying Disney Dollars. You're not getting anything extra, it's just a different form of currency (and you'll already be doing enough of that!). I priced the 3 day plan, and you got a "breakfast in the park", meaning vouchers for a certain place for b'fast, you got another character meal, and then the rest was $5, $10, and I think $15 and even $20 vouchers, which pretty much was what you paid for them. BUT, unlike handing over a $20 bill for $18 worth of food, if you give a $20 *voucher*, you don't get change back. So then you add in another lemonade or whatever, and have to pay OVER that $20 voucher... It's a good way to pre-pay for some of your food, but it's not really all that cost effective. So we opted to NOT do it. I've only heard of a few people do it here, and those people basically used it as a pre-payment plan.

The voucher thing for the tickets, I don't really know what that involves, other than it seems like you print something, take it with you, and turn it in for tickets when you get there.


uh, DS got up on my lap, hate typing one-handed, be back later!