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

[Ferb]

Well I'm finally making an appearance in our surprise January PTR, thanks to my DW Great job so far!

Just conting down the days, hours, minutes, seconds, milliseconds......

 

[ash-n-brensmom]

The Duggars! Nope, 5 is definately "it" for me! We are in Newmarket. Have you ever tried Hotwire for your car rentals? I've done a couple of last minute rentals, and can get cars (without the insurance mind you) from 11.95 a day! (That's from Orlando though)

Thanks for that tip...I just checked them out and it would cost more than what we have and the insurance we get is better. Feels good to know we made the right choice. I sort of know where Newmarket is...I was in Markham for the wedding on Fri....you guys are sort of near each other, right?

Actually there was three trips, but I'm done with the October trip. But I started writing about the January trip, which was the second one I planned, and then a friend and I decided to do a quick December trip and the 3rd trip came about. We might have a few more trips on the horizon.

I know...I kept reading and was like...WHAT? Three trips? Now I REALLY am jealous! Good for you...good luck with the reveal for your cousin!

Just catching up! Nice to see you all dressed up for the wedding. Last wedding I went to I wore heels and danced all night. I couldn't walk properly for days. I haven't worn heels since!

We are both into the 40's with our countdown . Can you give us an outline of your touring plan? I'm thinking we are just going to go with the flow (well that's what DH and the DD's think) but I'd like to see what a TP looks like.

Thanks! We had a great time..especially since I had flats in my bag to change into when it was time to start dancing! Yay for the countdown! It's getting so close now! I am going to post the TP right now...

Well I'm finally making an appearance in our surprise January PTR, thanks to my DW Great job so far!

Just conting down the days, hours, minutes, seconds, milliseconds......

Well, it's about time! Usually you have more to say than this....you're welcome by the way!

 

[ash-n-brensmom]

As promised here is what we have planned for our first Magic Kingdom day...

Arrive early for RD! Essential in any Touring Plan.
Head straight to Dumbo..especially since this will be taken down on the 9th! Next up will be a whirlwind touring of Fantasyland, such as it is. Winnie the Pooh, Mad Tea Party, PPF, Snow White..
Again we will deviate from this plan to meet any characters that are out and about...we plan on taking advantage of the cooler weather to stand in line without sweat dripping EVERYWHERE!!
Next we will head over to Frontierland and grab FP to BTMRR and then hop on! This is supposed to close on the 9th as well. It's Rapunzel's favorite ride so we will be on this multiple times both MK days!
If the weather is nice and the jets are off we will try Splash Mountain. If not we will head over to Adventureland for a ride on Jungle Cruise and POC and if Rapunzel won't ride again this year we will alternate with her on Magic Carpets. Then it will hopefully be time to grab another FP...yep BTMRR!
Now we will head back over to Liberty Square and finally get to do HM with the new que..Ferb and I got to see this last month...can't wait to play here with the girls!

I'm going to need a ride on Space Mountain so we will probably head over there and either grab FP or ride depending on the wait..Ferb hates this ride. So I will need to take Stitch..she doesn't like it either..might take some bribery. We will definitely hit the laugh floor! We all love this! When Ferb and I were there last month I got picked to tell a joke..it was quiet and they must not have gotten too many jokes texted in. I was so scared when he asked me to tell a knock knock joke...all I could think of was the banana one ...you know "Orange you glad I didn't say banana again?" It was a hit and fun...but boy was I scared!!

Of course at some time we will need to eat lunch..depending on the weather we may head back to WBC for lunch and a swim. More than likely we will stay and eat at either CHH or Cosmic Rays. It all depends on the weather. And of course as I mentioned earlier the characters available. We will want to see Mickey and the Princesses in their new setting as well as the fairies...we have three whole days planned so we may leave the characters for the third day as it's after the closing of Dumbo and BTMRR.
But there you have it...our step by step plan of attack that may or may not work...as I said it's all in the name of research.

I apologize for the lack of pics in this post...
but here's one from 2010...I know it's old, but we look pretty happy here..of course we are it's Magic Kingdom!!

 

[OziJo]

Thank you for the TP! You've inspired me to do my research and make a TP for Hollywood Studios (as a start).

BTW lovely pic of the family

 

[ash-n-brensmom]

Thank you for the TP! You've inspired me to do my research and make a TP for Hollywood Studios (as a start).

BTW lovely pic of the family

Thanks! It was a good night. I had surprised Ferb with the Wishes Dessert Party for his birthday!
As far as the TP is concerned...we use touringplans.com and then tweek it fit our needs...we aren't allowed to post their info...but since I have changed it from it's original format I figure it's okay! Check them out..it's a good website.

 

[Ferb]

Started on the www.artscow.com make your own Autograph/photobook using their online software (microsoft silverlight enchanced), last night after DW went to bed. NICE website and amazing prices. Using the character designs for the pages of the DISign section of the DIS Boards. I'm experiment with the sizes 8"x 8" but I like the 6"x 6" (but the regular photobook (Deluxe is too thick - the pages are from card stock, not paper) The pictures get a low resolution, the larger they are streched into the layout. Sooo, I'll post more as it delevops

 

[ash-n-brensmom]

Started on the www.artscow.com make your own Autograph/photobook using their online software (microsoft silverlight enchanced), last night after DW went to bed. NICE website and amazing prices. Using the character designs for the pages of the DISign section of the DIS Boards. I'm experiment with the sizes 8"x 8" but I like the 6"x 6" (but the regular photobook (Deluxe is too thick - the pages are from card stock, not paper) The pictures get a low resolution, the larger they are streched into the layout. Sooo, I'll post more as it delevops

And with that in mind, Ferb...I posted on Otterpop's thread to request a couple of pages be changed if possible to fit our needs. Mary Poppins deserves her own page! And there was no Pirate Goofy..definitely want him if possible. And Rapunzel had Flynn on her page...we all know that he is no longer available except for the parties......so she needs a page of her own as well. Hopefully he will have enough time to edit those pages and create the new ones for MP and Goofy..I hear that it takes a couple of weeks to get the books from artscow so we need to get on this soon...especially with the holidays and that discount coupon we got! We made need to make do with what he has available for this trip and get new ones for the next vacation.

 

[2 princess 3 princes]

Thanks for that tip...I just checked them out and it would cost more than what we have and the insurance we get is better. Feels good to know we made the right choice. I sort of know where Newmarket is...I was in Markham for the wedding on Fri....you guys are sort of near each other, right?



Glad you checked HW, it's hit and miss with all the car rentals. I feel like the price of rentals has gone up a lot in the last couple of years. Yes, Newmarket is a little further north of Markham.

 

[ash-n-brensmom]

A new development has come along for our vacation later next year. As you all know this Jan trip was a surprise for Ferb. We already had a vacation in the works for later in 2012, Oct we figured. We plan on still taking that vacation and moved it to the first week of Nov to be able to get to the first MVMCP and maybe even the last MNSSHP if we can swing it financially. Then my DSIL sends me a message on Facebook about wanting to come visit and stay with us in Dec 2012. She and her boys live in the UK. It's her 30th birthday and her son's b-day that week as well. So, I freaked a little thinking...where can they sleep, what about my midnight work schedule..when would I sleep? Would we need to take another week of vacation for this visit? Can we afford this? Let's face it, when you have people staying with you, it can get expensive..feeding them, entertaining them...
So, I thought..why don't we offer to move our WDW vacation to that week, have them fly into Orlando instead of Toronto (which BTW, is a VERY expensive airport to fly into because of high taxes and fees). We can all fit into a two bedroom condo at our timeshare and maybe we can even pay extra to get a 3 bedroom. Her kids would get to have a whirlwind WDW vacation and we can all have a wonderful family visit on neutral ground. I wasn't sure she would go for it..she would have to buy park tickets, there's the cost of food at the parks..we would buy groceries and eat in as much as possible to help. But she jumped right on it...she thinks the flights aren't too expensive..and with the prices of tickets for UK visitors she can get a great bargain there, too! Not to mention the exchange rate for the British pound, while not what it used to be, is still more than the dollar.
So, I moved my vacation week to the first week of December. Ferb still has to do all his vacation picks next week...so we are still waiting on him. But my DSIL said she will book the flights as soon as they are available after the holidays.
This will be a great opportunity for us to meet our DNephews and our DD's are excited to finally meet their cousins! We can't wait to show them WDW!
So that's our big news as of now...gotta work on our autograph books in the next two days to be able to take advantage of a coupon we got. Other than that, we are at a standstill.


Edited to add...I just got off the Wyndham website and was able to upgrade our one bedroom deluxe to a two bedroom deluxe at discounted points!! YAY!! We would have been fine with the one bedroom, but it will be nice for the girls to have a real bed, not a pull out couch..and they each will get their own. Privacy is nice too..isn't it Ferb?
I had to borrow some points from next year...but hey who cares..I figure I will borrow points until the end of time if it will get me a bigger unit!

 

[ash-n-brensmom]

Today Ferb and I worked on and ordered the autograph books for Stitch and Rapunzel! They turned out pretty good. I would change only one thing next time and instead of setting the pages up in alphabetical order, I would set them up to have a better flow page by page...Here is a link to see the book we made for Rapunzel:
http://www.artscow.com/gallery/book/brenna-wshx4dtbraqu

We made an identical book for Stitch that is red with little black mickey heads and had a different page for Ariel and Eric..with primary colors instead of pink. Like I said the flow of the pages doesn't make too much sense when you do it in alphabetical order. But that's okay. We will make more when we go back in Dec and we will spend more time on layout. We had a special coupon for 25% off and free shipping so we were in a time crunch to get it done and ordered by tomorrow. With my work schedule it was a quick job!

So that is our update for the day. I'll be back with an update for our next park day and a tentative touring plan for that day as well. Hope everyone is doing well!

 

[ash-n-brensmom]

Thanks for that tip...I just checked them out and it would cost more than what we have and the insurance we get is better. Feels good to know we made the right choice. I sort of know where Newmarket is...I was in Markham for the wedding on Fri....you guys are sort of near each other, right?



Glad you checked HW, it's hit and miss with all the car rentals. I feel like the price of rentals has gone up a lot in the last couple of years. Yes, Newmarket is a little further north of Markham.

I totally agree with the price of rentals....also flights have gone up quite a bit in the last 4 years! So, how long does it take you guys to get to the Buffalo airport? And do you guys get a room for the night before?

 

[ash-n-brensmom]

On with day three!!
We are going to be heading over to Epcot today!

Sadly, the opening ceremony here is gone. One more cut! Anyways, I am interested in seeing how they handle the Soarin Stampede. Certainly no rival to the TSMM rampage..but still people can get out of hand when they are charging towards this ride. This is a park that we won't need to follow a TP for. We will of course head over to Soarin, grab a FP and wait in line for that one. Then we will wait in line for TT if it's not too long. This will all be after we wait in line to meet Stitch! This was a fun find a few years ago, we were there for RD and saw no one waiting to meet Stitch by the park entrance. We had so much fun with him! He tried to get in our stroller, he signed his name using a couple different colored sharpies at the same time..it's a cool signature!

So once we are done with Stitch, we are free to roam as we please...Soarin, Test Track, Mission Space are all on our list for that day. We may take a relaxing ride through The Land. We haven't ridden that since 2008..
We definitely need to ride on Imagination..not my pick, but of all people, Stitch was upset that we didn't get to it in time in March, apparently it closes early.

We have a lunch ressie for LeCellier at 1:15! Love, love it here!
Love me some pretzel bread dipped in Cheddar Cheese Soup!

We may head back to Bonnet Creek to swim if it warms up enough, not counting on it though. We will probably tour the WS for the rest of the day, ride Maelstrom, the ride in Mexico....have a snack for dinner..
Thinking some Nachos would go down just fine!

We are only doing one day here this week, which will be incentive for us to stay all day instead of taking a break. We will try to get two rides in at least of Soarin and Test Track. The rest should be easy to manage with only one day. My guess is we will be out of the park by 7 or 8 so we can be in bed early. We won't care about missing Illuminations. We had front row seating for that in March with a perfectly timed ADR at Rose and Crown.

Anyways, we will need our sleep because we have a very early ADR the next morning!

 

[ash-n-brensmom]

So, I'm a horrible Disney Mom!! My oldest DD loves Stitch soo much that we call her Stitch in our Trip Reports. She owns Stitch hands...this morning she just told me that for spirit day at school this Fri they are supposed to dress as a famous person...yep you guessed it..

So when I make our ADR's for every trip I scour the disboards looking for the best ADR's to match our family. We have tried many, we have found some core restaurants that are our favorites. We have never once eaten breakfast at O'hana's. When I told Ferb about this breakfast he was like, wow..when did that start? Yeah, needless to say this was like the first ADR I booked for this trip.

Okay, confession time over...
On to Day Four!
We have an ADR for O'hana at 7:45 this morning! I can't wait to see Stitch's face!
The we are off to the Magic Kingdom. We will be hitting up all the majors again today. The park closes at 8 for us. It's EXMH til11pm. Normally I would have us avoid this day like the plague, but since it's our last chance to ride BTMRR and Dumbo, it will be worth the risk of crowds. We will be there early and ready for RD. And using FP's pretty much exclusively for BTMRR again today will help. It has been a struggle to get Rapunzel to ride pretty much everything since her first ride in 2008 was Stitch's Great Escape. Pretty much everything after that was too scary for her. But in 2010 she found BTMRR was right up her alley and we have to get as many rides in as possible!
I mean, this is a miracle that only BTMRR could create!

So, back to basics...we are going to ride as many headliners as we can today, and eat lunch on the go. We have no plan other than BTMRR and Dumbo. Dumbo is first just because it's an annoying loading process that slows down the line later, and we can't FP it either. We will head directly over to Frontierland after that. The rest of the park will be fit in between BTMRR rides. See a theme here?
We will stay here most of the day, I think. The early closing makes it near impossible to have a mid day break. We will probably leave as soon as our last FP is used for BTMRR and head back to WBC for dinner and sleep. It will have been a VERY early morning! The next day is our rest day...well, we like to call it our shopping, eating and swimming day...will we get to swim? Maybe...I can handle the cold, so can the girls...Ferb, not so much!

 

[ash-n-brensmom]

I am the update Queen today!! I'm in the zone! Replace that cup of coffee for a Diet Pepsi and you've got me!

So here we are on day Five!
As I said in the last post, this is our shopping, eating and swimming day. I have a feeling we may be doing more shopping and eating than swimming. I really hope we get a couple of warm days..it will hurt to look out the window and see this and not be able to use it!

We will sleep in today, have breakfast in our condo. Then head over to DTD for shopping and lunch at T-Rex. People have been known to give T-rex low marks..we liked it in March. Ferb and I got this sampler:

It was delish and just enough for us. The girls really enjoyed the kids rib meal.

You can't beat the ambiance in there!

I mean who doesn't love re-living the demise of all the dinosaurs while having some lunch?!

Moving on...we will probably have dessert at Ghirardelli

Then a little shopping. Not too much...it can get out of hand here:

Any excuse to use that pic!

It will be dinner at WBC and then off to slumber land early. This is the day we get to recharge our batteries! We will be needing our rest...the next day Ferb gets to participate in a different kind of Disney Marathon...The TSMM kind!

 

[ash-n-brensmom]

Changes!!! We might switch our Day 3 plans at Epcot with our Day 6 plans at DHS. As of now Fantasmic will be dark for most of Jan and we would miss it on day 6. We could see it on Day 3, but it's not only a Fantasmic day, but also a AM XMH day... So we would not be able to do the TSMM dash in the morning and have to rely on FP's for that one, plus that would put us in the exact same situation at Epcot on our Day 6 with AM XMH, and how that would effect Soarin.... Decisions, decisions...

Any takers on some advice with this...
We have ADR's that we want for both scenarios and we will cancel the extras as soon as we make this decision...
HELP!!!

 

[lledman]

I enjoy fantasmic but with that being possibly one of the last shows for a while I bet it's going to be super crowded - are you willing to give up 2 hours of your park time to stand in line and get seats???? I think I would just skip it this trip and continue on like you are planning - then when you go back later in the year you can put that on your must do list.

 

[ash-n-brensmom]

I enjoy fantasmic but with that being possibly one of the last shows for a while I bet it's going to be super crowded - are you willing to give up 2 hours of your park time to stand in line and get seats???? I think I would just skip it this trip and continue on like you are planning - then when you go back later in the year you can put that on your must do list.

Well said..I totally forgot about having to wait in line for so long just to get a seat! You're right, I think we will skip it this time. At least we know we can catch it in Dec! Thanks!

 

[ash-n-brensmom]

After much deliberation....well, not that much..we decided to leave our park days as is and not try to see Fantasmic this week. As lledman says, it's not worth the time it will take to wait in line just to get in. There is always the next trip! I will be on next week to update more dates...as for now, I am at work illegally posting..
Thanks to everyone out there who is reading...you don't have to post for us to know that you are out there....we are seeing the number of viewings go up! Thanks for following along.

 

[okw19]

I think you made the right decision on skipping Fantasmic. Your plans sound great so far! Nice to hear a positive review for T-Rex, we might check it out.

 

[ash-n-brensmom]

I think you made the right decision on skipping Fantasmic. Your plans sound great so far! Nice to hear a positive review for T-Rex, we might check it out.

Thanks. It's funny because as soon as Ferb and I made the decision to leave things as is, I was like..."What was I thinking?"
We enjoyed T-Rex. Rapunzel still talks about it, I know she will be very happy that we are going to eat there again.