***1st Week of December Thread ADR Plans, Park Hours, and dealing with Pop Warner***

[Talby]

@areno79 I wanted to send some hugs and healing vibes your way! Family stuff can be...well, it can be tough. Best wishes that it all works out the way you want it to.

@Mintycake I love your technique for going to sleep!! Gratitude ranks right up there with one's attitude I think. I've found that grumpy and grateful can't mutually coexist. During hard days or tough times, I start putting my focus on what I'm grateful for and it usually helps. Not always! lol But often. I'm going to try listing things at night as you mentioned. That's a great idea!! ETA: Congrats on the contract--very exciting!!

Thanks to everyone who played 3 Great Things! Heart-warming to read what everyone shared!

 

[Lisa F]

We arrive Disney 12/4 but we leave on 12/1 to drive down to cocoa beach for a few days so the trip feels really close for us now, less than 30 days even though Disney is 32 days away!

And on the counter issue mine is right in internet explorer but wrong on chrome and safari, so I guess it's a browser thing?

oh i don't know! it's sometimes right for me and sometimes wrong. I am using chrome at home and firefox at work

 

[Lisa F]

Okay, here are my 3 things:
1. I got my personalized Disney t-shirts that I've been waiting to arrive for weeks! Very exciting package to get and see that they turned out great (and DH loved them!)
2. Getting to chat with my awesome Dis friends today and share in excitement and concerns and all of the awesome Christmas things with all of you!
3. This is non-Disney related, but without going into the whole story, me, my sister, and my aunt (who's like a sister) haven't spoken to my mother since January. There was some ugly stuff that went down and for my own mental health I had to step back and take a break from her. I know it was really eating away at my aunt because they are the only 2 siblings left out of 5 (my other 2 aunts, my uncle, and my grandmother all died within the last 3 years, at fairly young ages.) Anyway, my aunt called me tonight to tell me that she decided to be the bigger person and call my mom to meet and talk things through, and my mom agreed. I'm not quite there yet, but I think this paves the way for me to get the ball rolling and start talking to my mom again. It's scary and something I've been avoiding for the last 10 months, but this makes it a little easier for me to start taking steps toward reconciliation.

I haven't spoken to my sister in like 5 years. we are the only two siblings, have never been close, and she was awful to me during my divorce. When she first heard about it she called my now ex and said "I don't care what my b**** sister does, you are always part of the family." Which might even be a reasonable response if someone had asked her to take sides... but no one had. She basically took it upon herself to take his sides when no one even made it about that. We had a fight about it and she told me that she could not support something that was a bad decision... she "tells it like it is." Whenever we have argued before I was always the one to go crawling back to her and apologized 100% because of course everything is my fault... for the sake of peace and family unity. Well I did not do that this time and hence we have not spoken. She got custody of my parents in the divorce and I haven't spent a holiday with my family since getting divorced. My parents are EXTREMELY wrapped up in her life (they are over there several times a week, do her laundry, care for her kids etc) and there is just no room for me. I'm not asking them to give up being where they really want to be for holidays and they have never offered. That's why I've been bumming... I figured out my vacation time for the rest of the year and took off the week between xmas and new years also but it just makes me so sad to not even be welcome with my own family.

But honestly I don't miss her. she was a toxic force in my life and I don't miss the drama, the hate, the anger that she spews forth on a constant basis. But it is a little hard feeling so alone in the world. I don't spend holidays alone, I spend them with BF and his family... and I see my family a day or two after or maybe for a couple of hours on xmas day between times they are at my sister's house for xmas eve and xmas day dinner. just doesn't feel right though.

It's tough. It doesn't really bother me except around holidays and the 2x a year my parents come to visit my son here when my mother is on the phone or texting constantly with my sister.

 

[Talby]

@Lisa F

That's your whole Disney family here surrounding you with love, hugs and support.

 

[Wood Nymph]

Here are my three grateful things - at the moment:

1. I'm happy that the Cubs made it to game 7 of the World Series I never thought I would see the day that this would happen.
2. I'm grateful for all the nice people I have interacted with, and met, on this forum, especially this December group I've had some Dismeets in WDW and every one of them has been fun

3. I'm grateful to the TA who offered us a free upgrade to the Grand Floridian for this December trip. I know I'll miss the convenience of staying at the BC. But this December trip will be a whole different type of trip with lots of non park activity, although now I've decided that I need to see the new Once Upon a Time projection show rather than just watch fireworks from the GF

Gratitude ranks right up there with one's attitude I think. I've found that grumpy and grateful can't mutually coexist. During hard days or tough times, I start putting my focus on what I'm grateful for and it usually helps. Not always! lol But often. I'm going to try listing things at night as you mentioned. That's a great idea!!

I agree with you. I kept a gratitude journal for awhile and it really changed my attitude toward my life. I realized that I had much more to be grateful for than I thought. I also have a framed copy of that Attitude poem on my nightstand. It goes right along with Abraham Lincoln's quote that people are as happy as they make up their minds to be. (paraphrased here )

 

[BDFmom]

I haven't spoken to my sister in like 5 years. we are the only two siblings, have never been close, and she was awful to me during my divorce. When she first heard about it she called my now ex and said "I don't care what my b**** sister does, you are always part of the family." Which might even be a reasonable response if someone had asked her to take sides... but no one had. She basically took it upon herself to take his sides when no one even made it about that. We had a fight about it and she told me that she could not support something that was a bad decision... she "tells it like it is." Whenever we have argued before I was always the one to go crawling back to her and apologized 100% because of course everything is my fault... for the sake of peace and family unity. Well I did not do that this time and hence we have not spoken. She got custody of my parents in the divorce and I haven't spent a holiday with my family since getting divorced. My parents are EXTREMELY wrapped up in her life (they are over there several times a week, do her laundry, care for her kids etc) and there is just no room for me. I'm not asking them to give up being where they really want to be for holidays and they have never offered. That's why I've been bumming... I figured out my vacation time for the rest of the year and took off the week between xmas and new years also but it just makes me so sad to not even be welcome with my own family.

But honestly I don't miss her. she was a toxic force in my life and I don't miss the drama, the hate, the anger that she spews forth on a constant basis. But it is a little hard feeling so alone in the world. I don't spend holidays alone, I spend them with BF and his family... and I see my family a day or two after or maybe for a couple of hours on xmas day between times they are at my sister's house for xmas eve and xmas day dinner. just doesn't feel right though.

It's tough. It doesn't really bother me except around holidays and the 2x a year my parents come to visit my son here when my mother is on the phone or texting constantly with my sister.

Families can be be so difficult and unfortunately as much i we try not to let it affect us it hurts at the core. I have not talked to my sister since my mother passed away. We have never been close as she is 11 years older than me and left home at 17. She's lives on the west coast. When my mother passed all her anger, rage and jealousy was pointed in my direction. She accused me of terrible things. I tries numerous times to 'connect' with her and she leaves me in tears every time. It's been 5 years since my mother passed and I only gave up on my sister 6 moths ago after her husband yelled at me. Telling me that i need to apologize for the things I have done to my sister. I asked exactly what I had done. He responded that I knew ... Honestly, I don't.

on a positive note she has 5 wonderful children that I do stay in contact with. He eldest is actually closer in age to me than her.

I still breaks my heart as I know that it's not what my mother would have wanted.

 

[Candycane83]

I haven't spoken to my sister in like 5 years. we are the only two siblings, have never been close, and she was awful to me during my divorce. When she first heard about it she called my now ex and said "I don't care what my b**** sister does, you are always part of the family." Which might even be a reasonable response if someone had asked her to take sides... but no one had. She basically took it upon herself to take his sides when no one even made it about that. We had a fight about it and she told me that she could not support something that was a bad decision... she "tells it like it is." Whenever we have argued before I was always the one to go crawling back to her and apologized 100% because of course everything is my fault... for the sake of peace and family unity. Well I did not do that this time and hence we have not spoken. She got custody of my parents in the divorce and I haven't spent a holiday with my family since getting divorced. My parents are EXTREMELY wrapped up in her life (they are over there several times a week, do her laundry, care for her kids etc) and there is just no room for me. I'm not asking them to give up being where they really want to be for holidays and they have never offered. That's why I've been bumming... I figured out my vacation time for the rest of the year and took off the week between xmas and new years also but it just makes me so sad to not even be welcome with my own family.

But honestly I don't miss her. she was a toxic force in my life and I don't miss the drama, the hate, the anger that she spews forth on a constant basis. But it is a little hard feeling so alone in the world. I don't spend holidays alone, I spend them with BF and his family... and I see my family a day or two after or maybe for a couple of hours on xmas day between times they are at my sister's house for xmas eve and xmas day dinner. just doesn't feel right though.

It's tough. It doesn't really bother me except around holidays and the 2x a year my parents come to visit my son here when my mother is on the phone or texting constantly with my sister.

 

[Talby]

I agree with you. I kept a gratitude journal for awhile and it really changed my attitude toward my life. I realized that I had much more to be grateful for than I thought. I also have a framed copy of that Attitude poem on my nightstand. It goes right along with Abraham Lincoln's quote that people are as happy as they make up their minds to be. (paraphrased here )

Gratitude sort of forces perspective, in a gentle way. Abe was spot on, too! Love your list!!

 

[DisneyBelle27]

Okay, here are my 3 things:
1. I got my personalized Disney t-shirts that I've been waiting to arrive for weeks! Very exciting package to get and see that they turned out great (and DH loved them!)
2. Getting to chat with my awesome Dis friends today and share in excitement and concerns and all of the awesome Christmas things with all of you!
3. This is non-Disney related, but without going into the whole story, me, my sister, and my aunt (who's like a sister) haven't spoken to my mother since January. There was some ugly stuff that went down and for my own mental health I had to step back and take a break from her. I know it was really eating away at my aunt because they are the only 2 siblings left out of 5 (my other 2 aunts, my uncle, and my grandmother all died within the last 3 years, at fairly young ages.) Anyway, my aunt called me tonight to tell me that she decided to be the bigger person and call my mom to meet and talk things through, and my mom agreed. I'm not quite there yet, but I think this paves the way for me to get the ball rolling and start talking to my mom again. It's scary and something I've been avoiding for the last 10 months, but this makes it a little easier for me to start taking steps toward reconciliation.

Happy to hear about the family progress! I hope everything can eventually be worked out for the best!

I LOVE how the Disney planning goes around here! The only thing better than having something really exciting happen (ADR capture, plans coming together in all manner of ways, etc.), is having a wonderful group of people who GET IT, get as excited as you do when you share it with them. I mean....that's just really cool! I think everyone feeds off each other's excitement and it escalates and before you know it, it feels like a party on here!!

This is so very true! It's like my excitement gets amplified to new levels sharing it with all of you guys!

oh i don't know! it's sometimes right for me and sometimes wrong. I am using chrome at home and firefox at work

hmmm, I just did a little experiment on my work computer. Chrome, which is what I always use, is still stuck at 1 month and 10 days. Explorer shows 1 month and 3 days, which is actually correct. Interesting!


@Lisa F and @BDFmom I am so sorry to hear about your family strife! Kudos to you for being so strong and continuing on with your life and being happy! You have wonderful strength, and don't ever forget it! Hugs from your Disney Family!



This morning, fb showed me memories from this day, and one of them was this, from 3 years ago! What perfect timing! And it came true, I AM getting to WDW during the Christmas season!

 

[Candycane83]

@areno79 @BDFmom @Lisa F im so sorry to hear about your family troubles! I wish you all the best for this. My mom is in a similar situation and is still in the middle of it all. I live far away in Canada so I have a tendency to ignore everyone.

@Talby @Party.Of.4-NY>>>FL im a happy person but my outlook is just like Eeyore and his rain cloud

 

[Lisa F]

Families can be be so difficult and unfortunately as much i we try not to let it affect us it hurts at the core. I have not talked to my sister since my mother passed away. We have never been close as she is 11 years older than me and left home at 17. She's lives on the west coast. When my mother passed all her anger, rage and jealousy was pointed in my direction. She accused me of terrible things. I tries numerous times to 'connect' with her and she leaves me in tears every time. It's been 5 years since my mother passed and I only gave up on my sister 6 moths ago after her husband yelled at me. Telling me that i need to apologize for the things I have done to my sister. I asked exactly what I had done. He responded that I knew ... Honestly, I don't.

on a positive note she has 5 wonderful children that I do stay in contact with. He eldest is actually closer in age to me than her.

I still breaks my heart as I know that it's not what my mother would have wanted.

people are nuts. Even those related to you and sometimes moreso, lol. Sometimes it all seems so artificial - this notion that just because someone is related to you by blood that they are an asset to your life. It can be problematic when the people related to you are not people you would ever choose to be friends with if not for the genetic connection. I took stuff from my sister for YEARS that I would NOT take from a single other person in the world merely because of the blood connection. Meanness (if I told you some of the horrible things she has said about me you would ... and also the horrible things I've witnessed her do.) I am basically done emotionally prostrating myself to her for the sake of family peace. I am no longer willing to bear the entire burden of that. If she were ever to apologize for me for something I feel she was 100% wrong in, I would forgive her and never mention it again because it is how I am... but I am not going to beg forgiveness for lack of support during my divorce and my displeasure at that. I'm just so done.

I do have 3 nieces and a nephew but I only ever developed a relationship really with the oldest two girls... the third (boy) she would not even let me hold as a baby (right before we had our last blowout). I asked if I could hold him and she said NO. Why not? because I "never let her" hold kiddo. I asked her if she ever asked and I refused? She said no, but I never offered. I mean, what kind of crazy is that? Maybe I should have but I was breastfeeding and he was colicky and I was exhausted ALL THE TIME and honestly whatever "etiquette" there is about me having to offer that to her was lost on me and even if it wasn't I may not have thought of it in my exhausted haze. But if she had asked I would not have said no. How can you argue with someone like that? she is still angry at me for not letting her play with me and my friends when we were kids (4 year difference). And then the 4th was born after we stopped talking. Kiddo still sees his cousins when we are in NY but without me... and I really have no relationship with any of them because they were so young when I divorced. So that makes me sad too.

But I will be buying xmas gifts for all of them probably while I am at disney, so at least I get to drop a few hundred $$ on kids I never get to see!

 

[LBlovesM&WDW]

@areno79 @Lisa F and @BDFmom Relationship troubles with family are so difficult. It's amazing to realize that many people have the same struggles. You think you're alone, but you are certainly not. There are family members I don't speak with and some relationships that are luckily working out okay, but M has no relationship with his mother. I hope you all get whatever result is best for you.

@Wood Nymph M is an OH boy, so we're cheering on CI. I will say Cleveland dropped the ball, pun intended, during last night's game and the Cubs played well.

 

[Lisa F]

@areno79 @BDFmom @Lisa F im so sorry to hear about your family troubles! I wish you all the best for this. My mom is in a similar situation and is still in the middle of it all. I live far away in Canada so I have a tendency to ignore everyone.

@Talby @Party.Of.4-NY>>>FL im a happy person but my outlook is just like Eeyore and his rain cloud

yeah there is a reason I like living on my island. I joke that I have put an ocean between myself and my family, lol.

so now with that dark turn over with

AND to celebrate being 30 days out... I have a Disney question for everyone!!

What is the first DISNEY thing you're going to do when you get to Orlando? I mean the first "event" or thing you are looking forward to the most. Not the necessary stuff, but your first "whiff of Disney"... the moment when you say "YES, I am HERE and I am ON VACATION?"

 

[Lisa F]

@areno79 @Lisa F and @BDFmom Relationship troubles with family are so difficult. It's amazing to realize that many people have the same struggles. You think you're alone, but you are certainly not. There are family members I don't speak with and some relationships that are luckily working out okay, but M has no relationship with his mother. I hope you all get whatever result is best for you.

@Wood Nymph M is an OH boy, so we're cheering on CI. I will say Cleveland dropped the ball, pun intended, during last night's game and the Cubs played well.

I think that people don't talk about it... it's taboo to say anything bad about your family and you feel like a huge personal failure when you can't get along with your own blood. So a lot of people carry those feelings inside for their whole lives.

But it is nice to know you are not alone.

 

[Talby]

@areno79 @BDFmom @Lisa F im so sorry to hear about your family troubles! I wish you all the best for this. My mom is in a similar situation and is still in the middle of it all. I live far away in Canada so I have a tendency to ignore everyone.

@Talby @Party.Of.4-NY>>>FL im a happy person but my outlook is just like Eeyore and his rain cloud

I've always adored Eeyore because you just know he has a huge heart under that bit of cloudy exterior!

I had some MDE struggles I needed to talk to WDW IT about. During our conversation, difficult ADRs came up and the girl shared how she had been trying for forever to get a BOG dinner. I gave her the ole up the party number trick and she was all excited about it. Made me think of you guys and how lucky we all are to be more in the know about this sort of thing than even Disney's IT Department! lol

 

[Lisa F]

What is the first DISNEY thing you're going to do when you get to Orlando? I mean the first "event" or thing you are looking forward to the most. Not the necessary stuff, but your first "whiff of Disney"... the moment when you say "YES, I am HERE and I am ON VACATION?"

So for me, I can't WAIT to start off my trip by walking down main street. I am SO glad I was able to add the MK day to the front end of my trip. Without that I'm not sure what I'd most be looking forward to, maybe dinner at Sanaa lol, or walking into the resort and seeing thta huge lobby and big tree.

But with MK first, I love seeing the castle, love hearing the music, and can't wait to see the xmas decorations that remind me of the way the streets were decorated in neighborhoods in Brooklyn where I grew up.

 

[Candycane83]

What is the first DISNEY thing you're going to do when you get to Orlando? I mean the first "event" or thing you are looking forward to the most. Not the necessary stuff, but your first "whiff of Disney"... the moment when you say "YES, I am HERE and I am ON VACATION?"

Ok, I'm headed to universal first like @JamieOak so my first thing after check in is to have dinner at Toothsome Chocolate Emporium! Nothing better to kick off a vacation like dessert and more dessert! and I will cheat and say the first thing at Disney will be to check out EPCOT and buy some pastries at Les Halles! Of course it's jbjb on my first night at Disney

Anyone notice a trend here? All food

 

[Talby]

So for me, I can't WAIT to start off my trip by walking down main street. I am SO glad I was able to add the MK day to the front end of my trip. Without that I'm not sure what I'd most be looking forward to, maybe dinner at Sanaa lol. I love seeing the castle, love hearing the music, and can't wait to see the xmas decorations that remind me of the way the streets were decorated in neighborhoods in Brooklyn where I grew up.

Walking down Main Street and seeing the castle (and tearing up! lol) was how I had envisioned starting off our trip! Many, many plan incarnations later, we end up starting off in HS on RnRC. I did that for a really specific reason. There's a bunch of stuff geared towards DD since we are celebrating her graduation. I wanted to find ways for DS to feel "special". (Not like a Disney trip isn't special enough!!) But RnRC is his absolute favorite, so I felt like starting the whole trip off on HIS favorite attraction would be be one of my son's "special" things. We're going to run around HS for a bit before heading over to Epcot for the rest of the day. We all voted to see IllumiNations the first night since we've never seen it before and that'll be our dessert party night! We're definitely ending our trip in MK but I hate talking about that part! lol

 

[Lisa F]

Ok, I'm headed to universal first like @JamieOak so my first thing after check in is to have dinner at Toothsome Chocolate Emporium! Nothing better to kick off a vacation like dessert and more dessert! and I will cheat and say the first thing at Disney will be to check out EPCOT and buy some pastries at Les Halles! Of course it's jbjb on my first night at Disney

Anyone notice a trend here? All food

lol you must have a killer metabolism, you're such a tiny little thing.

 

[Lisa F]

have a nice day, everyone. I need to be a good girl and put my nose to the grindstone at work. Breakfast and coffee consumed, email and voicemails answered. I am at the end of what I can multitask with the DIS.


catch you all later (only announcing it because maybe I will stick to it lol)