A 16th birthday extravaganza! A teen's October 2012 PTR!

[StephaniexMarie]

Hello! Welcome and thanks for joining in. My name is Stephanie and I am 14 years old right now. I'm going to be a Sophomore this school year. I'm very new to the Disneyland boards and everything Disneyland - but I have been to WDW 6 times so far! I love pretty much everything Disney, but doesn't everyone on these boards?

My partner in crime for this trip and all of my others is my mom! She loves Disney a lot, but isn't quite obsessed as me. She works at a media company in the city (We live in NYC) so she gets some fun perks, which I'll mention later on!!

I'll put a few of my WDW and Disney favorites so you can get to know me better.

Favorite park: Epcot
Favorite hotel: Only stayed at two, Pop Century and Caribbean Beach Resort, so both!
Favorite snack food: Kakigori from Japan!
Favorite meal: Filet mignon and cream cheese mashed potatoes from Le Cellier.
Favorite show: Mickey's Philharmagic
Favorite attraction in each park: Magic Kingdom - Splash Mountain and TTA Peoplemover
Epcot - Soarin'
Hollywood Studios - Toy Story Mania
Animal Kingdom - Kilimanjaro safaris
Favorite movie - Beauty and the Beast & Tangled

So how did this trip come to be? Well it didn't. Not yet. We're still in the planning stages, and nothing is booked because it's pretty far out still. But there's so much to learn about Disneyland Resort - so I wanted to start this PTR! I'll be going in detail of different aspects soon so I can post chapter links, but for now, here's some pictures of my mom and I so you know who you're reading about.

Table of Contents:
Chapter 1 - Introductions
Chapter 2 - Why Disneyland?
Chapter 3 - Dates, rooms, and all of that fun stuff!
Chapter 4 - Special Events in October?
Chapter 5 - Dining! Who doesn't love Disney food?

 

[PlutosRHM55]

I'm here, Stephanie! That's awesome you get to go to DL for your sweet 16! I'm very jealous, I REALLY want to go to DL! Can't wait to hear all about your plans!

 

[StephaniexMarie]

I'm here, Stephanie! That's awesome you get to go to DL for your sweet 16! I'm very jealous, I REALLY want to go to DL! Can't wait to hear all about your plans!

Yay, Timmy! Thanks for joining! And I MIGHT get to go, but I think my mom's really for it. Like probably 85% haha! I'm gonna start posting about them in a few minutes!

 

[PlutosRHM55]

Yay, Timmy! Thanks for joining! And I MIGHT get to go, but I think my mom's really for it. Like probably 85% haha! I'm gonna start posting about them in a few minutes!

OOOHHH... so our trips are quite similar... I mean trips in the works Gotchya!

 

[StephaniexMarie]

OOOHHH... so our trips are quite similar... I mean trips in the works Gotchya!

Exactly! Haha I can't wait to see how both of ours turn out.

 

[StephaniexMarie]

Well, as I mentioned earlier, I'm a huge Disney fan! I love the feeling you get whenever you're there, listening to Disney music, watching Disney movies or just thinking and planning vacations! Plus, people who love Disney are possibly the nicest people I've met.

My birthday's kind of at a strange time for vacation, but I do have Columbus day helping me out! For a while now, I thought it would be so much fun to be able to go to a Disney park on my birthday. I've witnessed many others with their birthday pins on and the CM's give them so much extra attention. For example, when I was watching the Move It, Shake It, Celebrate It parade on Main Street, all the cast members walking by before the parade started said Happy Birthday ______ to the girl next to me. That's Disney magic.

Since I live in New York, California is quite a bit away and I know there is so much to do and see there. But for my birthday trip, I'd be fine with just doing Disney stuff like....

The two parks:

Downtown Disney:

And maybe even the Soda Fountain shop:

Hopefully we'd be making another trip to CA to see LA and the beautiful beaches my mom's coworkers tell her about in the future. We wouldn't have time this trip.

I'd want to see everything they have to offer the couple of days we'll be there, but that could be hard since there is so much to see! So here are a few things in particular that I'm excited about:

The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh. Their ride vehicles are super cool.

TOONTOWN! It reminds me of how the game version looks:

Flynn Rider. They took him away in Florida, but he's still over in California!

Walking through the bridge to Fantasyland rather than around the stage:

Carsland. They say it's opening summer 2012, so hopefully most of it is done by the Fall!

World of Color. I watched it on ustream when it first started and it was amazing, but I'm sure it's 10000x better in person.

And much much more!
​

 

[skiingfast]

Why Disneyland? Because you have to see it, it's awesome.

 

[StephaniexMarie]

Why Disneyland? Because you have to see it, it's awesome.

Great answer.

 

[PlutosRHM55]

...And my jealousy increases It seems you have a good plan for this. I pretty much want to see and do the same things as you like World of Color, Sleeping Beauty Castle Bridge (you do know there's a walk-through inside the castle too?), Toontown, etc. if I ever get the chance to go. Hopefully Cars Land will be opened if, I mean, when you go.

 

[StephaniexMarie]

...And my jealousy increases It seems you have a good plan for this. I pretty much want to see and do the same things as you like World of Color, Sleeping Beauty Castle Bridge (you do know there's a walk-through inside the castle too?), Toontown, etc. if I ever get the chance to go. Hopefully Cars Land will be opened if, I mean, when you go.

Ahah! No way, I didn't know that about the castle. :O That's SO cool. See, it's good I started this PTR so early because I have tons of things to learn.
I also hope it's open WHEN I go. Haha, you should plan a trip to Disneyland too! Airfare's not as bad as I thought it would be and Good Neighbor Hotels are incredibly cheap.

 

[WDWJonasGirl]

Love your PTR so far!!

 

[StephaniexMarie]

Love your PTR so far!!

Thanks! I like your username. Haha I looove the Jonas Brothers. I wanna see Joe in concert (he's actually in NYC the day after my birthday) but it's 16+. Go figure.

 

[mimiloveswdw]

Wow I barely made the first page!! This is so exciting!! World of Color looks AMAZING. I can't even...gosh...anyway, it would be so awesome if you got to go! I didn't catch it: would you do some other California stuff or just Disneyland?

I'm here reading!!

Also, doesn't Joe get it that the bulk of his existing fan base will be a *bit* (not too much younger!) younger than 16? I don't understand. But my sister's the Jonas person haha!

 

[StephaniexMarie]

Wow I barely made the first page!! This is so exciting!! World of Color looks AMAZING. I can't even...gosh...anyway, it would be so awesome if you got to go! I didn't catch it: would you do some other California stuff or just Disneyland?

I'm here reading!!

Also, doesn't Joe get it that the bulk of his existing fan base will be a *bit* (not too much younger!) younger than 16? I don't understand. But my sister's the Jonas person haha!

Yay! Thanks for joining! I know right? Ahaha it's great! And no, I don't think we'd have enough time for other California things that trip. But I'd wanna go back for a longer trip!

Haha I love the JoBros. I've seen them at GMA last May and was front row at soundcheck and 6th row at their concert in Camden last August. Both were like the best days ever! & I know! They used to be 18+, then he changed them to all ages EXCEPT New York City.

 

[WDWJonasGirl]

Yay! Thanks for joining! I know right? Ahaha it's great! And no, I don't think we'd have enough time for other California things that trip. But I'd wanna go back for a longer trip!

Haha I love the JoBros. I've seen them at GMA last May and was front row at soundcheck and 6th row at their concert in Camden last August. Both were like the best days ever! & I know! They used to be 18+, then he changed them to all ages EXCEPT New York City.

That sucks.

Thanks! I like your username. Haha I looove the Jonas Brothers. I wanna see Joe in concert (he's actually in NYC the day after my birthday) but it's 16+. Go figure.

Good thing I'm 16 but too bad I don't live in New York.

 

[StephaniexMarie]

DATES

The dates we are currently looking at are Wednesday, October 3rd to Monday, October 8th. That would give us 5 nights and 4 full days. Of course, I have school then and mom has work, so I was thinking we'd fly out Wednesday night so we could both take half days. We'd both miss two days (Thursday and Friday) but that's not bad because I'll be missing 5 this November for a WDW trip! (Which isn't a big deal, because I'm a pretty good student so I won't get caught behind.)

ROOMS

I'm not 100% sure how Disneyland room discounts work. I saw somewhere that around the time we plan on going they have 30% off weekdays and 15% of weekends. So complicated! They should make a happy medium and go with one number. I'd have no problem with calculating myself but the Disneyland site isn't as easy to navigate as the WDW one. So, until a good discount appears, we'll be staying at one of the Good Neighbor hotels. If a good discount pops up, I'd LOVE to stay in the Disneyland Hotel. The rooms are awesome.

But for now, we're highly considering the Hilton Anaheim. For 5 nights, it would be around $680 since they give you the 4th night free.

TICKETS

Like I mentioned before, my mom works in the media which means she is able to get free tickets! She works with ABC, and ABC is Disney so when the time comes she is going to ask them and see what she can get. She doesn't think she'll be able to get 8 tickets (4 DCA, 4 Disneyland) so we'd just buy whatever else we need by ourselves. It saves us money!

PLANS

I have so much more to learn, but here's a rough idea of my plans so far:

Wednesday, October 3rd - Leave school for a half day (12:30) and get home and get our bags together. We'll fly JFK-LAX. We plan on just bringing carry ons because it is a short trip and there won't be a Magical Express getting our bags. I'm thinking a flight around 5:00pm or sometime around there. Since we have the time difference, we should get there by 8:30 California time. I don't know when we'll actually get to the hotel, but once we settle in I'd want to go to the Disney Soda Fountain shop for dinner! I'd be a nice little way to kick off the vacation.

Thursday, October 4th - Our first full day! If my mom gets tickets from her work friends, they won't be hoppers. So I was thinking we could do DCA first so that we could go to Disneyland on my actual birthday! I'll be wearing a birthday button for the whole trip, though. I don't know what October hours are, but I downloaded an app on my phone and it said hours are 10am-10pm.

Friday, October 5th - MY BIRTHDAY! Today, we'll go to Disneyland! I want to make some kind of reservations for a restaurant. DL doesn't have the wide variety WDW has, but I'll find something fun! Now, I know Disneyland has Halloween parties on Fridays, but I'll talk more about that in the next chapter. I'll just say that we'll be doing that this night!

Saturday, October 6th - I've read on these boards that you should have 1.5 days for DCA, so I was thinking we could head here in the morning and do what we want, and then check out Downtown Disney. We could always head back to the park after that.

Sunday, October 7th - This will be our last full day, so we'll end it with a full day at Disneyland.

Monday, October 8th - I was thinking we'd get an early flight out this morning because of the time difference. Going back, we add hours. It's Columbus day, so school is out and I'll have an extra day to rest.

I'll get more specific with plans later, but these are the basics! ​

 

[StephaniexMarie]

That sucks.


Good thing I'm 16 but too bad I don't live in New York.

It does. But I'll get over it!

 

[WDWJonasGirl]

Love the plans so far!!

 

[blabbermouth]

Hi, great PTR so far! I agree, it's too bad all of the DL hotels are about $200/night and up! But there are some decent good neighbor hotels for much less.

One thing to note is that the Disney Soda Shop is actually in downtown LA, so it's not that close to Disneyland itself. I'm not sure if you said you're renting a car or not, but you'd need one to get there I think!

 

[ladylyons]

I'd recommend trying the Blue Bayou. It's the restaurant inside Pirates of the Caribbean. I've been a few times with my husband and we've never been disappointed. How fun it will be for you to be able to celebrate your birthday at Disneyland!!