A Dream is Coming True

[PoohBelle]

My Dream Coming True
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Hello. My name is Amanda. I am a 27 year old expat teaching English in China. I am huge fan of many things, but especially Disney!

For as long as I can remember I have been a disney fan. I cannot remember a time in my life before Disney movies and books and most of my huge stuffed animal collection was made up of mostly Disney characters.

My first Disney park experience took place at Disneyland when I was just two years old. I don't remember any of it, but I have a tiny Winnie-the-Pooh hat and lots of pictures to prove that I was there (and so my parents can prove they took me!). I grew up in the central valley of California, so my family and I made several more trips to the happiest place on earth several more times during my childhood. I loved it and would dream about going back in between trips.

From the time I can remember knowing about Disney World I have wanted to go. I think I figured my family would go eventually, but as a child I had no concept of how expensive this sort of experience would be. As a teenager, I started to plot to try to save up money to pay for myself to go someday.

In March 2013, I moved to China to teach English. My younger brother had recently moved from California to Georgia and my parents became empty nesters. That Christmas my parents sent me a package for my birthday and Christmas. There were many nice surprises, but one specifically stood out. It was a book about the Magic at the Magic Kingdom. I was skipping with my parents and my mother had a huge smile on her face as I picked it up. "That's just a part of your gift," she said. "Next time your home, we want to take you to Disney World!" Wait...what?!?...Seriously!?! To say I was excited would be an understatement.

Life continued to get in the way a bit, however. Just a few months later my cousin T.J. was diagnosed with a brain tumor for the second time in his life. We were basically the same age (he was 9 days older than me) and we were really close, so I decided I need to come home to get to see him before He passed. I am really glad that I did, but we postponed our Disney plans so that we could spend as much time with him before he passed.

I did end up going to Disneyland while I was home for a friend's bachelorette party. I was able to get this Jedi Mickey for T.J. Here they are with his older sister Heather.

A year and a half later, my Disney dream is finally within sight! My parents have made our room reservation, I've done tons of planning, and I am well into counting down the days. I am still fairly new to the Dis and this will be my first trip report. I have enjoyed reading others' and I am looking forward to sharing my experiences. I am still figuring out how to imbed photos and links so please be patient with me .

 

[LinderInWonderland]

Joining in! I am very sorry for the loss of your cousin. He does look happy with Jedi Mickey.

A friend of ours is a Dutch ex-pat living in Beijing. He works as an interpreter (mostly Russian and English) and has started teaching a few English classes as well.

 

[PoohBelle]

Thanks!

 

[PoohBelle]

I'm Going to Disney...where do I start?
Part 2
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I've decided that until I catch up to where I am now in my planning that I will go through my process by subject rather than chronologically. I've been planning for almost 2.5 years now and I have gathered lots of different ideas at different times from different sources. When I was starting out I mostly used pinterest to find information about planning for our trip. On there, I found a graph that showed when you should take care of each part of your vacation. This was a big wake up for me because I had no idea that it could take up to 9 months to plan a Disney trip. This was much different from my Disneyland experiences.

So I realized there was a lot of planning ahead. I love planning and it gave me an excuse to spend time dreaming of Disney! We need to figure out where we were going to stay, where we wanted to eat, what Fastpass reservations we wanted to get...WOW!

It seemed like the best place to start was trying to figure out when to go. I knew I would be coming home during the summer, so I was a little nervous as I looked at the crowd calendars. However, after seeing that September has much lower predicted crowds I thought maybe this would be a good option for us. Though I will probably miss a week or two of teaching, this might be my only trip to Disney (though I hope not...they are adding so much I hope to be able to go back but idk when that might be) so I decided to make a selfish decision and push my return date back to make room for a hopefully less busy vacation. I am fortunate enough to be working in an area with very few foreigners so it very likely that I will have no problem returning to my job or finding a new one when I come back.

The last piece of this puzzle was to wait for my dad to ask for time off work. He is a blue collar worker at an eye glass coating facility and can usually get a couple weeks off at a time, but has to wait until about November/December to ask for time off. Luckily, he was able to get August 31-September 14 off which gives us a great window for our trip!

So, the final timeline for our magical vacation:
- August 30 or 31 : Parents and I fly to Georgia to visit my brother.
-September 4 : We all drive from Georgia to Florida for our WDW vacation!!!
-September 5-12 : tour the parks
-September 13 : head back to CA
- September 16/17: Head back to China

 

[PoohBelle]

Table of Contents​

My Dream Coming True (Intro) A Dream is Coming True
I'm going to Disney...where do I start? A Dream is Coming True
A Place to Rest [URL="http://www.disboards.com/threads/a-dream-is-coming-true.3482769/#post-55151228"]A Dream is Coming True[/URL]

*If anyone has advice on how to do these, please let me know

 

[PoohBelle]

A Place to Rest
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The next issue I decided to tackle was where we should stay. My Dad insisted we stay on Disney property and in a hotel that would require a minimal amount of walking to and from the parks. My parents are in good health, but all the walking and the heat can get to them after days and days of fun, so Dad felt this would hopefully help them get the most out of their trip.

So I began looking at the hotels that have access to the monorail. The Grand Floridian looks amazing but expensive. The Polynesian seemed very beautiful but from what I read it can be a bit spread out. The Contemporary looked like it might work for our needs, but it's also quite expensive. I decided to look into some of the moderate resorts too, but they all seemed to be more geared towards family with the theming.

After talking with the folks, it seemed that the Contemporary was going to be the place for us. My parents were okay with the price, really happy with the location, and we all felt my brother would appreciate the lack of over the top Disney theming
Sometime in-between deciding we wanted to stay at the Contemporary and booking our room, I found the Dis Unplugged shows. After listening to many of the Universal shows, I put forth the idea of possibly splitting our stay between the two resorts as we are planning on spending a couple days at those parks as well. The reviews of the hotels were positive and it seemed like there might be a few benefits. However, my parents were more comfortable with stay at the same resort the whole time, and since will be driving down with my brother, we will just use his car to get to and from Universal.

My parents had been planning on using a local travel agent to book our trip, but since I'd been listening to the podcasts I suggested they at least look into using Dreams Unlimited. I am SO glad we did. My mom has been really impressed with the service and help already. Since my brother is in the military, our agent was able to get us a deal on a room with a Magic Kingdom view! Even though before this I had told myself that the view didn't really matter since we usually only use our hotel rooms for sleeping, I was surprised how ridiculously excited I was about this news. We haven't even arrived yet and we've already received a magical surprise!