15 Years Ago......A PTR

[Woth2982]

15 years ago a decision was made. Two college Best Friends were going to take their husbands and Kids to Disney! We would not meet those husbands for quite some time, and then the kids would come later. So who are we?

Lets start with ME!

I am Katie. Accountant. Wife. Mom of two



DH - Andrew. Dont know exactly what he does for a living, but he could say the same about me.



DD - Savannah hence forth known as S. She will be two months past her second birthday for this trip. She LOVES Moana, Minnie, Encanto and Frozen. She is headstrong and feisty, and oh so cute in my not so biased opinion.



Last but not least is DS - Jackson. Sadly J wont be joining us on this trip. He is five months old and sweet as can be. He is the happiest baby alive. He is so good he could easily trick me into having a third child. Fortunately I am smarter than a baby (most days) and he is our last baby.



Next up is my BFF and her family

Brie, Dan, Julianna (J for this report) and Tessa (T for this report).

Brie and I met back in 2006. We became fast friends and bonded over our love of Horror Films and Disney. We had our first trip planned starting 15 years ago and went on the trip 14 years ago for Spring Break in March 08. After college she went and did the DCP for a year and I got a "real job" (boring). She and her DH moved to SC in 2014 or 2015 and got married in 2016. I was in the wedding and my DH was my date. J came along in 2018 and will be 3.5 on this trip. T arrived in 2019 and will be just shy of her 3rd birthday by like a week (this trip was strategically planned so she would still be free)!

We have been best friends for 16 years. Here we are at my wedding rehearsal (she was in my wedding)

Back in our college days
(we won the best friends award)

And a pic of T and S. They are just too cute giving each other hugs!


Brie's girls (especially J) love all the princesses. They love to play dress up and wear princess outfits all day long. I cannot wait for the three girls to play together in Disney. We will be using a lot of rider swap since the little ones are too short for the "big" rides. We think J can ride all but Rockin Rollercoaster, but time will tell!

Up Next. Where are we staying?

 

[rdkeim]

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[Woth2982]

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Thanks for joining in and welcome!

 

[Woth2982]

My family lives in MA just south of Boston. We we are the midway point between the airports in Boston and Rhode Island. If I ever have a choice I prefer to fly out of TF Green in RI. It is a tiny one terminal airport and I can park there for a week for $60. When we booked our flights we booked them on Jet Blue for an 8 am-ish flight out, and a noon-ish flight home from Providence. Well they cancelled our 8 am and put us on a 3 pm flight. We lost an entire day of our vacation. So I chat with hubby and get on the phone with Jet Blue and move our flight from October 12 at 345 pm to October 11 at 845 pm. DH and I prefer to fly in at night anyway since I am not a morning person. Our flight has since changed again and is now around 630 pm, which is better for my DD, but not great for work. But it is what it is. Now instead of being able to drive ourselves to and from the airport we need a ride since we leave and come back to two different airports. Thankfully my mom and dad will both be retired by then, so getting a ride should be easy.

When we arrive in Orlando I have booked a car with Hertz. I have a good friend who works for them and he has me on his friends and family list, so yay for discounts!

Our first night we are staying at Port Orleans French Quarters. I booked us a King bedroom.



This was pretty strategic. My friends will arrive the next day and this is where they are staying. They are driving from South Carolina. DH and I are DVC members so the remainder of our stay is somewhere else, but we figured this way we could save a little money since it is a one night hotel stay, and be able to spend the day with our friends at the pool.

Around check in time we will head over to our hotel for the rest of our stay. Bay Lake Tower in a lake view studio.



When we originally booked back in November of 2021 I booked our home resort which is Copper Creek, but I wait listed BLT and Beach Club. BLT came through so I cancelled the BC wait list. I stayed at the Contemporary back in the day, but have never stayed at BLT so I am pretty excited to try something new. It is also super convenient to be on the monorail when you have a toddler and a stroller. We do plan to drive on our DHS and AK days and monorail it on MK and Epcot Days. Possibly even walk on MK days if it isnt too hot.

Brianne has requested to see our room, so either before or after dinner we will come to our room for a bit. We are going to try and go to the BLT DVC lounge and watch the fireworks, but we are not positive how it works yet. My girlfriend and I are going in a couple weeks for the weekend after we get off the Wish so we will know what is up then.

Our dinner plans for this evening are at Chef Mickey!


I am really hoping I can get a reservation when our window opens in just a few days. We think this would be a really great way to kick off the trip. I made all the girls some autograph books so it will be fun to see how that goes.



Dinner could either go really great or really bad. Savannah has met Minnie before and LOVES her, but no clue how she will do. I am hoping she eats something with all that is going on.

You can see the joy in her face here. There was a local restaurant that had a Dinner with Minnie event and my parents and I took her. We were supposed to have Minnie and Mickey at her birthday party, but they got Covid and had to cancel. My sister is convinced it is because it was a 9,000 degree day and they didn't want to dress up, and it easily could have been the reason since the party was outside.


Next up......our Plans!

 

[Woth2982]

57 Days until we leave, 58 until we arrive to BLT. SO what does that mean? It means over the weekend we booked our ADR's!

Our plans was Chef Mickey on "arrival" day, and Tusker House breakfast on Animal Kingdom day.

Well, the best laid plans don't always pan out.

We have nothing on arrival day.

We were able to get Chef Mickey at 6:45 PM on our Epcot Day 10/16

We got Tusker House lunch at 11:40 on Animal Kingdom day.

I think this is the first time we have never gotten exactly what we wanted. I have TP alerts set up for both meals for where we want them, so we will see what happens.

Our plan NOW is to do quick service dinner at Contemporary arrival day with our friends, then watch the fireworks from there or the Poly beach.

 

[Woth2982]

Well we are ONE MONTH out from our trip! It has come so fast. I thought there would be a ton of planning, but there isnt as much as I thought.

Brie's girls are going to have some princess dresses for the trip and while I was out shopping this weekend I found a really pretty Snow White dress at TJ Maxx (I love TJs). S doesn't know who Snow White is, so I am going to read her some stories with her. She is on a huge Elsa and Tiana kick (two year olds are so fixated on one thing) and I found some Elsa pajamas at BJs this weekend as well, so I grabbed those too.

I have started the painstaking process of packing for this trip. I have pulled out some outfits for S that I want her to wear while we are there. I need to go through my own stuff this weekend as well. It may be my last completely free weekend before the trip so I want to get stuff done. I also have to locate our stroller. It has gone MIA. I thought it was at my parents house, but I have been told it isn't there. Of course this is my husband telling me this, so the odds are it IS there in plain sight and he didn't bother looking the way I would look. So TBD on the stroller situation. It is a pretty large item to just go missing so stay Tuned

 

[Woth2982]

We are just about 3 weeks away from our trip. It is really coming up fast. Our stroller has been located (I know you were worried). I had been wracking my brain, WHERE could this stroller have gone. The sitter doesn't have it. Not in hubby's truck. Not in my moms car. Not at my in laws house. Where!? I sat back and thought long and hard. When did we last have it? Oh! I remember! When we did family photos my parents brought the stroller from their house. It was in my dads trunk! It has been since JULY! He swore up and down it was not there. My mom went out and looked yesterday and low and behold. There it was!

I have been trying to prepare S for this trip as best I can, but she is 2 and 2 years old's can be bum holes. She is in a mood where she ONLY wants to watch Frozen Fever 7 billion times. However I was able to distract her this weekend with some videos on my phone. I got on you tube and showed her videos of kids meeting Anna, Elsa, Goofy and Mickey. Then I showed her the video from last April when we took her to Dinner with Minnie at the local restaurant. She was enamored with the video. When Minnie waved, she waved back. She was blowing kissed and just so excited to see Minnie. So I am very hopeful that when the time comes she will still be in love with Minnie and excited to see her in person. When we took her at 15 months she was definitely excited to see Mickey, but it was social distanced. The Mad Hatter made her cry when he said "Hi Princess" to her during the parade, so I am not sure how face characters are going to work.

On the real life front, she has started back in gymnastics, playgroup, swim and has started dance classes. I am hoping this helps her learn to socialize with other kids. I am also hoping almost a week with my friend and her kids will help too. Time will tell.