A somewhat last minute, Mommy and Me trip to Disney World

[writergirlpam]

This is my first (pre) trip report, and only my 2nd trip to Disney World. Our trip is only 2 weeks away, so we shall see how much detail I actually get down in this trip report. I thought I should write one though, because so much thought and planning and has gone into this trip in a relatively small time frame and also because of how much time I have spent on these boards getting prepared for what is to come.

So…
Onward!

I am Pam. (That's me on the left) I’m 43, a single mom and a teacher. Also, I love Disney. We live in California, and have had annual passes off and on at Disneyland since I adopted my daughter a few years ago. We live close enough that we can get up early early, drive down to Disneyland for opening and make it home that night. This makes it super convenient to go often, so I’d say we have at least 30 trips to Disneyland under our belt during the time with an annual pass. Sadly, prices for Disneyland annual passes shot up last year, and left me thinking this is no longer such a good deal, so only one day of Disney in the last year.

My daughter is Madison, she is 7 and also a Disney fanatic. She doesn’t really understand the difference between Disneyland and Disney World yet, but she will soon. I kept the trip a secret from her for a quite a while and then after the magic bands arrived, I left that plus some other things out to surprise her.

She was kind of low key about the whole thing, but we talk about it every day, she looks in on my planning and she has a countdown going until the trip.

This trip was intended to be a trip for next summer, originally. I started saving for a Disney World or Disney Cruise line vacation and then got a chance to take on an after school job that paid me decent money for a few months, that actually paid for almost the entire cost of the trip. I wound up renting out a room in my house to a friend who was waiting for her house to be finished being built, and that extra income made up the rest of the cost of the trip. So, now, we moved our vacation up by a an entire year!

Woo hoo! Disney, here we come.

 

[writergirlpam]

I actually meant to post this on the pre-trip report board, the trip is so close, that it's probably okay, that I started it here.

 

[JuliaIsabella]

Can't wait to hear more about your trip. Love reading mommy and me trips. I'm a teacher too and my son and I will be going to WDW in 3 weeks. We've been doing mommy and me trips since he was 3.

 

[VACamm]

This sounds like a terrific Mother / Daughter trip!

 

[writergirlpam]

I'm new to creating trip reports, so haven't figured out the multi-quote thing or anything yet, but I'm sure I'll pick that up as I go. So glad to see I already have people joining in!

 

[writergirlpam]

So we shall see if this works...

This is the video I took of my daughter when I revealed that we were going to Disney World. I'm going to have to work backwards but I'll explain why this was kind of necessary later. As you can see, she doesn't quite get the whole Disney World thing, because she's been to Disneyland and she hasn't heard all that much about Disney World. Anyway, here goes...

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=10207199175992691

 

[writergirlpam]

You're going to do what now?​

When I first started thinking about Disney World, I asked my friends what they thought about this trip plan. And, surprisingly, they were not as excited about it as I was. I had been to Disney World once when I was in high school. At that point, I think we stayed for 2 days. I went with my Dad. And then we spent the rest of the time at beaches. Being from Indiana, beaches are also very exciting. We used to occasionally go to somewhere called Indiana Beach. Indiana is completely landlocked, so you get the idea.

However, now, I live in California. And when you say you are going to Disney, people generally think you mean Disneyland. (Funny fact- my daughter is so excited we are going on this trip and so she keeps telling people she is going to Disney World, and without fail, they go Disney LAND? Then she looks at me in frustration and I say, no, Disney World. Then they look at me like I’m crazy.)

See, we do know what Disneyland is...

My friends weren’t so much in the Disneyland is right here camp, but rather, do you know it’s in Florida. In the summer. And also, there are a lot of people there… All of which are important considerations. The funny part of this is, I live in a place that regularly spends almost the entire summer above 100 degrees, often reaching upwards of 110. However, it’s that darn humidity. And also, while it’s that hot, we try not to be outside so much. So that was a consideration. And also the crowds. Being close to Disneyland means we can try to be strategic about when we go and avoid the crowds as much as possible. That is not a possibility with this trip. I am a teacher, so Disney World is pretty much spring break, Christmas or summer. And also, my child dances and has a recital in late June, so unless she isn’t going to participate, I can’t even do early summer, it has to be July or early August. That narrowed things down a bit.

One friend told me I need to watch Jim Gaffigan’s skit about Disney World before I went. I love Jim Gaffigan so decided to check it out. Um,hilarious. I truly doubt I’ll feel the same, but I love it!

Despite the naysayers, I still settled on the idea of Disney World. In the summer. With all the crowds. Because, why not?

 

[JuliaIsabella]

Can't wait to see her reaction when she sees where she is going

 

[Thing2008]

Following along! Sounds like fun!

 

[writergirlpam]

Can't wait to see her reaction when she sees where she is going

I can't wait either! She's going to be so excited!

 

[writergirlpam]

So when is this trip, then?​

As of today, we are actually 8 days away from leaving for our trip. These actual dates took a lot of negotiating. I had originally planned this trip in August, as a kind of last hurrah before it was time for both of us to head back to school. And then I decided, why not move it up if we could, so maybe it wasn’t quite so hot and also so we could get to Disney faster. Because, why not?


Also, when I first planned this, I booked Wilderness Lodge for fewer days. But then I heard about the construction that Wilderness Lodge was going through and also realized that the trip I had booked just didn’t seem long enough.


So finally, we settled on, Port Orleans Riverside, in a Royal Room from July 25th - July 30th. We will actually leave on the 24th and take an overnight flight. I debated this, but decided, if we could actually get some sleep on the plane, we could plan this trip so both our arrival and departure days were park days and give us just a little bit more bang for our book.


I will also say that I have been obsessively planning this trip. Reading everything I can on the DIS boards, reading books, talking to friends, looking at menus, watching online videos. Seriously obsessive. I’m actually to the point where I’m almost sick of the planning at this point. But that could be because I feel like I’ve been doing it non-stop for months. I have changed my park days around so much, changed our ADR’s, etc. I debated changing something around this morning, but realize there is no chance I could get the same fastpasses, ADRS, etc, if I change at this point.


If you saw my video posted earlier, you know that I kept this a surprise from my daughter for a while, but at some point realized it was getting trickier and trickier to make plans without giving it away, plus well meaning people keep coming up and talking to me about the trip in front of her, so I decided to do a reveal once the magic bands got here. And also, she has been to Disneyland a lot, so she knows a lot of what to expect, just not everything. Even though she knows about the trip now, I’m trying to keep some of it a surprise. She doesn’t know that we are in the Royal Rooms or what that means at Port Orleans. I told her there will be a pool at the hotel, but not how much stuff there is to do there, like the campfire and hopefully getting to watch Zootopia outside our first night. She doesn’t know that we have fast passes for the Frozen Ride or that Animal Kingdom is a thing, because I think some of those surprises are what will make the trip for her.


Because we are not huge fans of crowds or heat, are general plan will be rope drop every morning, go until we get tired and hot, go rest at the resort and swim/ nap and then come back late in the evening for dinner and more fun.


We are getting super excited and now have to think about packing and what we still need for the trip. This is hopefully minimal, but I made the mistake of getting on one of the packing threads this morning and in my head, I went “Crud! I don’t have any of that!”

 

[JuliaIsabella]

8 days, yikes! I've been doing the exact thing lol. YouTube videos, Dis, allears etc. I love reading the pre trip reports about the packing and shopping and stuff that deals with all the things that are done right before you get on that plane.
We will be doing the same thing early mornings, lots of fastpasses and trying to stay cool during the hottest part of the day. My son and I are at 17 days. Can't wait to read your report.

 

[writergirlpam]

8 days, yikes! I've been doing the exact thing lol. YouTube videos, Dis, allears etc. I love reading the pre trip reports about the packing and shopping and stuff that deals with all the things that are done right before you get on that plane.
We will be doing the same thing early mornings, lots of fastpasses and trying to stay cool during the hottest part of the day. My son and I are at 17 days. Can't wait to read your report.

Wow, you will be getting there right as we are leaving. I know, I have been reading so much to make sure I am prepared! I hope you guys have a great trip, too!

 

[writergirlpam]

3 More Days until DisneyWorld!

So I have been frantically checking last minute details for our trip. I have made so many changes to what we will be doing, what days we are going to which park, etc, but I have to be happy with where we are now, because trying to make acceptable changes now would be really difficult. To organize myself, I came up with this...

So my friends think I'm a little nuts, but this keeps me sane. All of my information is in one place, and if my phone dies or I have a bad connection, I still know what our plans are. A lot of this is still really flexible, but I want to know what the plan was for each day, because I tend to forget from day to day what I had planned.

We are leaving on Sunday, taking a red eye to Orlando. We are staying at Port Orleans Riverside. I hope we can sleep on the plane, and I really hope we can get into our room early, but if not we'll go get some rides in until we can.

This is our countdown to the trip:

And just for fun, this is my daughter on one of our first trips to Disneyland. She is so excited for our upcoming trip!

 

[JuliaIsabella]

I was thinking about creating a spreadsheet for my trip this morning lol. My friends have gone beyond thinking I'm nuts for loving Disney so much, they have learned to accept it and now they are surprised when I don't have a Disney trip planned. So I'm looking forward to hear more on your trip.