A Surprise January 2012 Vacation!!! TRIP REPORT has begun!!

[lledman]

Just wanted to put a little post..I am at work and illegally posting

Anyone happen to notice my countdown?
ONE MONTH!!!

Very exciting!!!!!!

 

[ash-n-brensmom]

Ferb and I had our work Christmas party last night...picture us in our wedding finery. It was fun,but I really like to dance and we had a table of serious stick in the muds! I got my butt up there, though. Gonna have a nap,but I hope to have an update on later today...no sleep+a few drinks makes for a pretty fuzzy head.

 

[BMC423]

Yay! Less than a month lol!

We are going back May

 

[ash-n-brensmom]

Yay! Less than a month lol!

We are going back May

Oh that's so exciting! What are your plans like...where are you staying?

 

[BMC423]

Oh that's so exciting! What are your plans like...where are you staying?

I will be writing a PTR, I'll probably start next week. But we are staying at Caribbean Beach in one of the Pirate Rooms... very excited about that.

 

[ash-n-brensmom]

I will be writing a PTR, I'll probably start next week. But we are staying at Caribbean Beach in one of the Pirate Rooms... very excited about that.

Oooohhh..I'm so jealous!! CBR is so far my favorite resort and I really want to try out those pirate rooms!! Good for you, I'm sure your DS is gonna LOVE it!!! Post a link to your PTR when you get it started!

 

[ash-n-brensmom]

We had a productive day yesterday as far as Christmas is concerned. We ordered a lot from Amazon and it's all been sent to my parents in the US. They sent it all separately it seems and we have been slowly bringing it back over the border and hiding it all. We got our new camera yesterday and two more things for the girls. Stitch is getting my "old" Kindle for xmas and we bought her an Amazon gift card to buy some books for it. Plus the autograph books we ordered from Artscow were there too! Then we took the girls to see Arther Christmas and came home and started our Gingerbread house. (It's a bit wonky and needs to be fixed today after school) But it was a busy and productive day. Now, on to our plans!

Day 7!!
Sadly, our week is dwindling way too quickly..
Today we are revisiting Magic Kingdom.
I love this pic from 2010 of Ferb and Stitch!

This is our third day here and we will have done all the headliners many times by now and we can concentrate on meeting characters today. I have a surprise planned for Stitch and Rapunzel this morning. I actually can't believe the pixie dust I scored here!

Last week I was thinking about this day of our plans and wondering what I was missing from our ADR's and what needed to be cancelled. I remembered that I had wanted to make an reservation at Harmony Barber Shop for the girls to get their hair all funkified. I called central reservations with the hope that I could get a somewhat early reservation so most of our pics that day would be with the funky hair. Well, to my delight she had a 9AM reservation available and the park opens at 9. She told me we can enter the park EARLY for this res. I am going to take this info with a grain of salt, we all know that the CRO people tend to be a bit off with their information. But if it's true we can sneak a few pics of Main Street and the Castle without all the crowds!

I know that Stitch and Rapunzel really enjoyed getting their hair all gelled and confettied in March.

And now we can tour the park with funky hair and concentrate on meeting all the characters we can find. Park hours are shorter today..9-8 and we don't have any ADR's today so we can eat on the fly and not worry about rushing to a meal, this will help us to optimize the shorter hours.
We will want to hit the new M&G in Town Theater for sure...gotta meet the big cheese..this is all they had in March:

And then the princesses of course...and again it was all very temporary in March when we met them:

Some we have never met but hope to meet this time are the Brer animals, Woody and Jesse, Pinocchio, Alice and the White Rabbit. We have spots for them all in the girls' autograph books. And we have all the time in the world today. Will we ride anything...of course, but we won't have the sense of urgency today like we did earlier in the week with the knowledge of Dumbo and BTMRR being down.

As for eating, we would like to try Pinocchio's this year...we always see people eating here when we ride IASW...here is my fave pic from that ride:

But maybe we will eat at CHH as we like to sit upstairs there....then again, with no ADR's we might eat at both restaurants...it feels VERY weird to have a day with no ADR's planned!

So that's it for that day....Characters, Characters and more Characters!




Tomorrow we go home....
But! Not before we finally make it back to Animal Kingdom!!

 

[ash-n-brensmom]

Day 8.....
I should go back to the end of day 7 only because we will need to be out of the condo before we head out to AK. So, on the night of Day 7 I will be feverishly packing up everything in preparation of departing. We will probably need to change clothes before we hop on the plane so that will need to be packed in our carry ons.
Day 8! or should I say Day 8
Yep, it's our last day here in WDW and we have a doozy of a morning planned. Breakfast will be at Tusker House for Donald's Safari Breakfast at 8:05. Then with any luck we can tour most of AK and get as many character autographs before we need to leave around 1:30 at the latest! The park opens at 9 so at least we will get a head start there. I don't expect breakfast taking more than an hour. We will get a hard to come by autograph this morning with Daisy, if we don't get to see her otherwise in the week, then this will make this breakfast worth it. I cringed at the cost of this one, but the food looks good and it's a fun way to round out the week. We never ended up going to AK in March because the weather was all wet and cool that day and we went to MK instead and had a fabulous morning there. So this time it's AK for sure to catch up on those missed memories!
We will try to ride Expedition Everest at least 2 times today..Rapunzel will be sitting this one out, so at least Stitch will ride twice..once with me and once with Ferb. We will take her on Triceratop Spin for sure, and I want to ride Primevel Whirl. This was down in March (horrible circumstance having to do with a death of a CM...very sad). We don't do Dinosaur because it would scare the daylights out of Rapunzel and I have a bad back..I hear it's pretty jerky. The last time we did make it to AK the girls got their faces painted in Dinoland...depending on our spending this week we may let them do it this year as well.
So pretty!

They were so quick!

I'm thinking we won't be able to ride KRR because of the weather. And to take the train to Rafiki's is going to take too much time..we may do the safari, although that is getting old. (sorry) But, what we have never done, and I really hope we will have time for this, is watch the shows. But, knowing Ferb and the girls we will definitely need to check out Camp Minnie Mickey...it will be interesting to see what will win out. Characters, or shows. I have heard that getting in line at CMM when the first FOTLK starts is a good time. Little to no waits...it's all in the timing. This is going to take some more planning..me thinks.

Our flight home that day is at 4:10. We need to return the rental car and make it through security, which can take a long time in the afternoon at MCO. So, if we leave the parking lot by 1:30..drop off the car around 2ish...then head through security we should be right on time...or am I being too ambitious with the time? What do you guys think? Should we leave by 1? Maybe grab some lunch at the airport then? We have a layover in BWI for an hour and 20 minutes if all is running smoothly ..so we can hopefully grab some dinner there. If not we will get something on the way home from the airport in Buffalo.
And then back to regular life the next day...school and work.....urgh!!! But at least we will have October to look forward to. With or without Ferb's sister we are going and when we get back in Jan we will have to write a TR and start a new PTR!!

 

[ash-n-brensmom]

With 28 days left til our trip I am going to try to update every day with something that we are looking forward to. It's going to be hard because Stitch and Rapunzel aren't in on it...but I think I can find out some stuff from them using the old "Hypothetically speaking....." trick!
I'm up first!
I am looking forward to the sunshine! It is gray and gloomy here right now and I haven't needed to wear sunglasses in like a week! That is soooo depressing!!! So, I am most looking forward to sun and sunglasses! I don't care how hot it is or isn't just as long as I have to wear sunglasses!! I fact, I think I might buy a new pair tomorrow!

 

[ash-n-brensmom]

Four weeks exactly!!

Four weeks from now we will be standing in line to get through security at the airport....

I asked Rapunzel what she is most looking forward to on our next trip to Disney...(little does she know she doesn't have to wait until Oct!)
Can anyone guess what her answer was?
Yep!
Big Thunder Mountain Railroad...This here's the wildest ride in the wilderness!!

 

[ash-n-brensmom]

As promised, I am going to attempt a short TR within this PTR of our adult only WDW/DCL extravaganza!
Who..Me and Ferb:

When:
Oct 26th-31st

Where:
Wyndham Bonnet Creek:

DCL The Dream to be exact:

And the Holiday Inn at Downtown Disney...no pics, sorry.

Why:
Ferb and I had a rough year last year...but things are good now and we wanted to celebrate...it was our 14th Anniversary on the 25th and boy did we celebrate...Disney Style!!

 

[ash-n-brensmom]

Oct 25th we dropped the girls off at my parents' who watched them for the first two nights followed by my cousin for the remainder. Early in the morning around 3:30 we got up on the 26th for our 6 AM flight out of Buffalo. We were worse than kids we were sooo excited! It had been 13 years since we had a vacation as just us..

Our plan took off on time and we had an uneventful flight.
Obligatory in flight shot...

We landed a little early and Ferb headed down to grab our luggage while I headed further down to the car rental area and did all the paperwork for our rental for the day. We rented with Budget for one day on either side of the cruise. Just as I was walking away from the counter Ferb was getting off the elevator with our bags!

We had no trouble finding our way to our car and the keys were in the ignition. Ferb got our GPS set up and we were on our way to Epcot!
I drove and Ferb was in charge of taking pictures...maybe I shouldn't have let him..he was a little obsessed with these things...

But he did a great job with this:

We were making great time and before we knew it here we were!!

Once we parked we realized it was pretty warm and we changed into shorts in the car...we waited until there wasn't anyone around . As we walked up to the entrance...no tram, we were parked pretty close, we took a couple shots of this:

We bought our one day entrance ticket..., and headed into the park. When I looked at my watch it said 10:30! We made awesome time!!

 

[ash-n-brensmom]

We headed straight for Soarin and grabbed some FP's. As we walked back towards Test Track we saw these guys setting up and stopped to watch...they are so great, really good at getting your blood pumping!

We got to Test Track and rode using the single rider line. This was awesome! I can't wait until Stitch and Rapunzel are old enough that they are comfortable with this...no wait practically! We headed over to WS because we were hungry and we had plans for F&W!! I had a sheet of paper with everything we wanted to eat and drink...we didn't get to all of it. There is just too much for one day, but we did pretty good. First up was this little beauty from Hawaii. It was a pork slider...

After this we forgot to take pics...everything was delicious and we were having such a good time wandering and not having kids saying "I'm bored..when can we go swimming, I'm hungry, Can you buy me this.". Well, you get the picture!!

We were feeling almost stuffed when we saw off to the side on a terrace there was a film crew set up. I thought I recognized the guy on camera...was it Mr Food? Yes it was...if you don't know him, he is a syndicated chef. He does bits for local news programs. And he is sort of a local to Upstate NY. Anyways, we were taking pics to show my family back home. I headed over to the Poland booth for pierogies and Ferb came running over saying that Mickey was there with him and took the camera to take more pics....next thing you know they are asking Ferb if he wanted to come closer for a better shot:

Then...they asked if we wanted our pic taken with Mr Food and F&W Fest Mickey...um, yeah?!

This one was funny because Mr Food told the girl with my camera he wanted one more and he wanted to know when she was ready...this is what he did!

Talk about Pixie Dust, huh? Gotta go...girls will be home from school in a minute and they don't know we were in Disney without them...

 

[BMC423]

Oh the things parents do when there are no kids around... (changing in the car in a parking lot!?

Sounds like you guys were off to a wonderful start! I'm kinda sad you guys didn't take more pics of F&W, I really really want to do this one day (just us grown ups too) but I do understand how being free to just be you not mom and dad can be so overwhelming you forget about everything else!

BTW... I didn't mention it before but happy to hear you guys are doing well!

I think its so funny your girls don't know you went to Disney... where did they think you went?

 

[ash-n-brensmom]

Oh the things parents do when there are no kids around... (changing in the car in a parking lot!?

Sounds like you guys were off to a wonderful start! I'm kinda sad you guys didn't take more pics of F&W, I really really want to do this one day (just us grown ups too) but I do understand how being free to just be you not mom and dad can be so overwhelming you forget about everything else!

BTW... I didn't mention it before but happy to hear you guys are doing well!

I think its so funny your girls don't know you went to Disney... where did they think you went?

I know, we are a couple of crazy kids, right? Sorry about the lack of pics..but I'm sure there are lots posted around here! Thanks for the well wishes..yeah, it was a rough time, but it made us a stronger family so that's good!
Oh, and the girls think we just went to the Bahamas...technically true, we DID go to the Bahamas...just in a round about Disney way....

I will be back to update more next week, considering the content of this mini TR I need to be more stealthy with the updates. I don't think it would be a good idea to have pics of us at Disney up on the computer when the girls are walking through the room.

 

[ash-n-brensmom]

I'm already missing days with my countdown and what we are looking forward to! Sorry...
Okay, I am looking forward to spending an uninterrupted 8 days with my family. Because Ferb and I work in Travel and Tourism (sort of) we have to work through the holidays. He is on Days and I am on Midnights...he has Mon and Tues off and I am home all day Wed and Thur. See where I am going with this one? We both have to work Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, New Year's Eve and New Year's Day. So, having this week long vacation to spend with our daughters and each other is so wonderful...it is worth taking them out of school for 4 days....

I am not complaining about working the holidays..it's not nice and can be a bit depressing if I let it..but we have good jobs, with decent pay, and fantastic benefits. We are lucky after everything that has happened with this economy to still have our jobs. But, boy do we need a vacation after the holidays!!

 

[ash-n-brensmom]

When asked what she is looking forward to on our next WDW vacation, Stitch answered, "The Halloween parade". Hmmmm......little does she know she will be back LOOONNNGGG before the Halloween parade will be running...muahahahaha! (Is that how you spell an evil laugh?)

 

[okw19]

When asked what she is looking forward to on our next WDW vacation, Stitch answered, "The Halloween parade". Hmmmm......little does she know she will be back LOOONNNGGG before the Halloween parade will be running...muahahahaha! (Is that how you spell an evil laugh?)

Ahh! That has to be an awesome feeling, knowing you're going to be able to give her such a huge surprise! I haven't commented much, but I am still here!

 

[lledman]

When asked what she is looking forward to on our next WDW vacation, Stitch answered, "The Halloween parade". Hmmmm......little does she know she will be back LOOONNNGGG before the Halloween parade will be running...muahahahaha! (Is that how you spell an evil laugh?)

I love it - I'm still amazed that you are pulling off this surprise trip - I would have spilled the beans many times over by now.

 

[ash-n-brensmom]

Ahh! That has to be an awesome feeling, knowing you're going to be able to give her such a huge surprise! I haven't commented much, but I am still here!

It's funny because last time I jugded how well our PTR and TR was going by how many people posted, this time I look to see how many viewings we have and as long as that number goes up I know that you are all out there!
We are excited about this surprise. Still working out the details of the reveal though.

I love it - I'm still amazed that you are pulling off this surprise trip - I would have spilled the beans many times over by now.

Haha! I have never been good at keeping a secret...well, unless it was a serious one. So, having to keep all these secrets is hard....but the payoff is worth it!