I've started trip reports before and never finished them, but I swear I'm really going to do it this time! 
Cast of Characters:
Sara-Me! 35, RN, lives for Disney vacations!
Scott-DH 36, grocery manager, as much of a Disney freak as I am!
Kristi-DD14 8th grade, home schooled for health reasons, won't let us go on a cruise because we might hit an iceberg and sink (in the Carribean
)
Emily-DD11 6th grade, public school, Justin Bieber lover, planned this trip around her spring break
Kathy aka Grandma Scott's mom, 58, cook, 1st trip to Disney, 1st time flying since 9/11, scared of airport security
Miles aka Papa Scott's stepdad, 54, unemployed, 1st trip to Disney, go with the flow kind of guy who likes to have fun
We originally had 2 2BR villas booked because both of Scott's brothers and their families were going to come also, but they both ended up cancelling. We cancelled one of the rooms and will use those points for ourselves later in the year! We now have 1 2BR villa standard view at Kidani booked for Saturday 3/19-Thursday 3/24.
We usually fly out of Bloomington IL (airport is a mile or so from our house and free parking), but because of spring break the prices were outrageous and we wouldn't have been able to fly direct on the dates we needed, so we are driving to Chicago MDW. Kristi and Kathy both suffer from anxiety, so a direct flight both ways was important for this trip! Kathy and Miles live practically half way between Bloomington and Chicago, so not too big of a deal for them. We will drive to their house Sat. am, get our 1 checked suitcase put together, squeeze into Kathy's car (the only car either of us have that seats 6-I hope we all fit with the luggage!) and head to Chicago for a 6:24 pm flight arriving in Orlando at 9:55 pm.
We are using ME, and I'm hoping to be in our room by 11. Depending on our energy levels at that point, we may go to the pool for a bit, or we may go straight to bed. I have a feeling we'll be exhausted but too excited to sleep!
My family will have APs and Kathy and Miles will have 5 day park hoppers.
Now, my job is to get everyone out of the room and to the bus stop at 8 am for a 9 am rope drop at MK. If they're not ready, I'm going without them! We have a 5:10 ADR for 1900 Park Fare, Wishes is at 10, and the park is open til 2 am! If the park gets to crazy in the middle of the day from all the people wanting to do EMH that don't have hoppers, we may go to a different park til after dinner. We try to stay flexible with our plans for the day, but we know we'll have to take advantage of EMH to get everything done!
Monday is EMH at HS til 11:30, so we'll plan on spending the bulk of our day there and catch Fantasmic at 8:30. We'll probably head over to Big River Grille for lunch. Kathy's boss's home resort is BWV, so I know she'll want to check out that area a little bit.
Tuesday's plan is to be at Epcot at 8 am. We have an ADR for lunch at 12:55 at LeCellier. Gotta have my chocolate moose!
Wednesday we'll do AK, and since they close at 7, we'll probably head to DTD after that.
Thursday we'll probably have to be on the ME bus around 1 pm, so we'll have a little time in the morning to catch anything we missed or they want to do again.
I'm really hoping that since Easter is so late this year, not everyone in the country will be on spring break the same week as us!
We thought we would have our income tax return by now, and that was what we were going to use to purchase our tickets. As it turns out, the IRS rejected our return
so we now have to send it in the old fashioned way and wait for the check the old fashioned way too! H&R block thinks that someone must have a SSN that's just one off from Scott's, and that person or their tax preparer accidentally typed Scott's # in by accident, because they think we already filed!
We also just moved into a new (not brand new, but new to us) house in Nov, and we close on the sale of our old house on March 2, so there is money on the way, but we don't have any right now since we've been making payments on both houses for the last couple months, so we are just praying that the closing goes off without a hitch or we are not going to have any park tickets!
Another thing I'm waiting for DH to decide on is if he's going to offer his parents the master bedroom in the villa. I think it will make more sense since we could share the 2nd bedroom with the kids and then we could leave the couch and chair folded up in the living room all week, and he agrees that would be kinda nice, but he doesn't want to give up his king size bed and huge master bath! I'm hoping he'll decide to give it to his parents, especially since we go pretty much every year and this will probably be a one time thing for them. They've never stayed anywhere quite like this either, so this is a huge treat for them.
22 days to go, and we better not have some freak ice storm that keeps us from being able to get to Chicago!
Cast of Characters:
Sara-Me! 35, RN, lives for Disney vacations!
Scott-DH 36, grocery manager, as much of a Disney freak as I am!
Kristi-DD14 8th grade, home schooled for health reasons, won't let us go on a cruise because we might hit an iceberg and sink (in the Carribean
)Emily-DD11 6th grade, public school, Justin Bieber lover, planned this trip around her spring break
Kathy aka Grandma Scott's mom, 58, cook, 1st trip to Disney, 1st time flying since 9/11, scared of airport security
Miles aka Papa Scott's stepdad, 54, unemployed, 1st trip to Disney, go with the flow kind of guy who likes to have fun
We originally had 2 2BR villas booked because both of Scott's brothers and their families were going to come also, but they both ended up cancelling. We cancelled one of the rooms and will use those points for ourselves later in the year! We now have 1 2BR villa standard view at Kidani booked for Saturday 3/19-Thursday 3/24.
We usually fly out of Bloomington IL (airport is a mile or so from our house and free parking), but because of spring break the prices were outrageous and we wouldn't have been able to fly direct on the dates we needed, so we are driving to Chicago MDW. Kristi and Kathy both suffer from anxiety, so a direct flight both ways was important for this trip! Kathy and Miles live practically half way between Bloomington and Chicago, so not too big of a deal for them. We will drive to their house Sat. am, get our 1 checked suitcase put together, squeeze into Kathy's car (the only car either of us have that seats 6-I hope we all fit with the luggage!) and head to Chicago for a 6:24 pm flight arriving in Orlando at 9:55 pm.
We are using ME, and I'm hoping to be in our room by 11. Depending on our energy levels at that point, we may go to the pool for a bit, or we may go straight to bed. I have a feeling we'll be exhausted but too excited to sleep!
My family will have APs and Kathy and Miles will have 5 day park hoppers.
Now, my job is to get everyone out of the room and to the bus stop at 8 am for a 9 am rope drop at MK. If they're not ready, I'm going without them! We have a 5:10 ADR for 1900 Park Fare, Wishes is at 10, and the park is open til 2 am! If the park gets to crazy in the middle of the day from all the people wanting to do EMH that don't have hoppers, we may go to a different park til after dinner. We try to stay flexible with our plans for the day, but we know we'll have to take advantage of EMH to get everything done!
Monday is EMH at HS til 11:30, so we'll plan on spending the bulk of our day there and catch Fantasmic at 8:30. We'll probably head over to Big River Grille for lunch. Kathy's boss's home resort is BWV, so I know she'll want to check out that area a little bit.
Tuesday's plan is to be at Epcot at 8 am. We have an ADR for lunch at 12:55 at LeCellier. Gotta have my chocolate moose!
Wednesday we'll do AK, and since they close at 7, we'll probably head to DTD after that.
Thursday we'll probably have to be on the ME bus around 1 pm, so we'll have a little time in the morning to catch anything we missed or they want to do again.
I'm really hoping that since Easter is so late this year, not everyone in the country will be on spring break the same week as us!
We thought we would have our income tax return by now, and that was what we were going to use to purchase our tickets. As it turns out, the IRS rejected our return
so we now have to send it in the old fashioned way and wait for the check the old fashioned way too! H&R block thinks that someone must have a SSN that's just one off from Scott's, and that person or their tax preparer accidentally typed Scott's # in by accident, because they think we already filed!We also just moved into a new (not brand new, but new to us) house in Nov, and we close on the sale of our old house on March 2, so there is money on the way, but we don't have any right now since we've been making payments on both houses for the last couple months, so we are just praying that the closing goes off without a hitch or we are not going to have any park tickets!
Another thing I'm waiting for DH to decide on is if he's going to offer his parents the master bedroom in the villa. I think it will make more sense since we could share the 2nd bedroom with the kids and then we could leave the couch and chair folded up in the living room all week, and he agrees that would be kinda nice, but he doesn't want to give up his king size bed and huge master bath! I'm hoping he'll decide to give it to his parents, especially since we go pretty much every year and this will probably be a one time thing for them. They've never stayed anywhere quite like this either, so this is a huge treat for them.
22 days to go, and we better not have some freak ice storm that keeps us from being able to get to Chicago!
but I think she'll be happy with it overall. We also talked about what kind of things they wanted me to put on the grocery order form so we'll be sure to have stuff everybody likes. 
