9/24 - 10/3 - Trip for professional development and... who am I kidding? FUN! PTR

[JReneeW]

I've never done any kind of pre-trip report or report otherwise. But these boards have helped me so much, I thought I'd give it a go and let others know how our experience turned out.

So, the trip will mainly be my husband (30) and I (26). My parents (50-something) will be joining us for part of the week.

This spring I completed a professional designation and the confernment ceremony happens to be in Orlando, so my company is paying for DH and I to go to Orlando for 5 days, we're paying for the rest. Not a bad deal, I say!

We'll all be staying at POFQ. Last time DH and I went down (June 2009) we stayed at POP. So, we're really looking forward to trying out a mod. And POFQ seems like a nice, quite, (possibly romantic?) place. Unfortnatly, when I originally booked somehow they booked me in POR - when I called to change (after I realized the mistake), I wasn't able to get a King room. We'll deal - but it's nice to have one bed.

Once it looked like we would likely be going to WDW, we did the GAD program and had my parents do it with us. We plan on redeeming our vouchers for the GAD Fastpasses (since my tickets are already paid for!). We'll have four total (one from each of us) so that should be a great help.

One of my DH and my favorite parts of WDW is the food. So, of course, ADRs are at the top of our planning list. We've made a few changes, but here is where they stand (note: these are all dinner reservations):

Friday - Chef Mickey's (Was Tony's Town Square)
Saturday - Le Cellier (This is perfect, because it's after my "confernment ceremony" so it'll be a fun one to have as our celebration dinner!).
Sunday - Yak and Yeti
Monday - Cape May Cafe
Tuesday - Raglan Road (Was Boatwrights)
Wednesday - 'Ohana
Thursday - Via Napoli (Was Coral Reef - but we really wanted to try the new restaurant - plus, we LOVE pizza!)
Friday - California Grill
Saturday - No real dinner

Also, once we booked I was poking around doing some research and I found out about the Wine and Dine Half Marathon. Well, my husband and I just started running in May. We've run in a couple of 5Ks and we thought that it would be totally awesome to do this, espically considering we'd already be in FL! So, we decided to stay one more night and do the relay version of the half marathon.

While we were registering, we had to come up with a team name. Spur of the moment (I was already half way through registering before we knew we needed a team name!) we decided on "Beauty and the Beast". Well... on the marathon's site, it says that costumes are encouraged. SO... with a little convincing of the DH, we'll be dressing up as Belle and Beast.

My Costume - Yellow running tank top, yellow/gold tutu (made by yours truly), yellow headband, elbow length (fingerless) golves, and for now, black shorts.

DH's Costume - Custom made sleevless t-shirt - it will be made to look like beast's blue jacket at the end of the movie and black shorts.

We're currently tossing around different schedule ideas. We know we want to go to a waterpark (which one?) this time, check out DTD (which we haven't done before), and definatley see Fantasmic.

Well - let me know what ya'll think. I'll keep you posted with any and all updates!

 

[JReneeW]

Our ME documents came at the end of last week. I'm a bit confused though - we weren't planning on taking it TO the resorts, only back to the airport. We've never used it back to the airport... how does that work?

We've been thinking about the half marathon and have decided it would be much more fun if we could run the entire half together. It would be more work, of course, but we'd have the memories together - and that's really what would be the most fun! We have a call into the marathon people and hopefully they'll let us switch.

What else? Let's see - we've been playing with our schedule - it gets really confusing to try to balance everything you want to do with what days are supposed to be the least busy (we're touringplans.com subscribers). As much as I think park hoppers are going to be awesome, it really does complicate planning!

Now I'm really trying to think of interesting things to "stop and smell the roses" so to say. I want to be sure that we have time to enjoy our vacation and see as many new things as we can. Any suggestions of things we might not have seen or done before that we should do?

I'm also very excited about the food and wine festival. We've decided to dedicate our entire Friday to this. It should be fun! Any words of wisdom to make it better?

 

[JReneeW]

So - the bad news is this - they won't allow us to switch so both of us can run the entire half marathon together. It'll be fine, I suppose. Maybe I'll make a new friend to run the first half with me?

The good news is - DH's running shirt/costume is finished! I've only seen photos, but what I saw I am super happy with! It looks so much like Beast's "tux", or as much as a sleeveless t-shirt version of it can!

I think we've finally settled on which parks to go to which days. Sometimes I think having too much information just makes things more confusing! We are touringplans subscribers, so using their per park crowd data is helpful but makes everything more complicated! Hopefully it'll all pay off and their data is correct!

All of our ME and Disney Travel Co. documents have arrived, so that's awesome. We're not using ME to get to the hotel, only to get back to the airport.

I'm so excited that vacation is in a meere two weeks! Not only do I finally get to leave the office for a week, but I get to go to Disney - and my work is paying for (most) of it! YAY!