After An Entire Year Of Planning We Winged It! May '10 with 1477 pics 3/26/11 update

[merbobear]

Started reading this last night and I'm already through day 5! Love your PTR! My dd is 3 and we are heading on our first family WDW vacation in May, so I am really enjoying seeing how your family spent your days and evenings..it helps to get a realistic look at what we can expect to fit in on any given day.

I'm now starting to take a closer look at all of my ADR because 'Ohana looks amazing...I was avoiding it because I wasn't sure if it would offer a fun experience for a child, but it looks like your family enjoyed it.

Your children are absolutely beautiful, by the way!

 

[tracisup]

Started reading this last night and I'm already through day 5! Love your PTR! My dd is 3 and we are heading on our first family WDW vacation in May, so I am really enjoying seeing how your family spent your days and evenings..it helps to get a realistic look at what we can expect to fit in on any given day.

I'm now starting to take a closer look at all of my ADR because 'Ohana looks amazing...I was avoiding it because I wasn't sure if it would offer a fun experience for a child, but it looks like your family enjoyed it.

Your children are absolutely beautiful, by the way!

Thats for the compliment.

Ohana is definitely for kids. Its loud enough that not one will even notice if your little one acts up!

Do you have a boy or a girl?

Care to share your ADR's?

 

[adamsup]

Started reading this last night and I'm already through day 5! Love your PTR! My dd is 3 and we are heading on our first family WDW vacation in May, so I am really enjoying seeing how your family spent your days and evenings..it helps to get a realistic look at what we can expect to fit in on any given day.

We purposefully chose not to go-go-go because that doesn't work well for us (it does for some families but not for us). We probabaly did more than we could handle during our first trip (what did we know, right! but have learned a lot since then! Sometimes you have to experience it, ya know? We had to build in nap-times and down-time just so our kids could manage all that we were throwing at them. A week at Disney World can really take it out of you!

I can tell you though, what we most drastically underestimated, was the time it takes to do stuff or to get from one place to another. This is even more critical when you have ADR's where you have to be somewhere at a certain time.

I'm now starting to take a closer look at all of my ADR because 'Ohana looks amazing...I was avoiding it because I wasn't sure if it would offer a fun experience for a child, but it looks like your family enjoyed it.

Your children are absolutely beautiful, by the way!

'Ohana is one of our favorites. It's not a character diner but there are activities for the kids like coconut hockey, singing and parades that happpen throughout the meal. It's pretty noisy and the food comes at you fast and furious, but it's a fun atmosphere. We love it.

Heading over to your PTR.

 

[adamsup]

Day 6 - May 13 - Magic Kingdom Fantasyland

Today was supposed to be breakfast at the Grand Floridian Cafe at 8am then Animal Kingdom until 1pm for a lunch reservation at The Wave. Looking back, I don't know what we were thinking (we had no idea obviously!).

Breakfast would have been over by 9-9:30-ish... then we would have had to make our way to Animal Kingdom so it probs would have been 10:30 before we were inside the park. That would have given us until 11:30-11:45ish (an hour or so in the park - how much could we have done in that time!) until we had to make our way out of the park in order to make it to our lunch reservation!

Soooo... we nixed that idea and instead decided to go to Fantasyland in Magic Kingdom and take our time there for a while before heading back to the CR pool and beach.

We're on our way to Magic Kingdom... we love that monorail ride every time!

We made it through the bag checks quickly, not much of a crowd.. good start!

We mozied down Main Street and saw the dancing show

then we stopped for some Photopass pictures

then we stopped for more pictures off to the side by those nice flower gardens towards the end of Main Street.

We spent some time in Fantasyland riding Mickey's Philharmagic (my fave)

Peter Pan's flight which Brooklyn really loved and Dumbo, and the carousel

AFter that excitement, we headed back to the resort for some downtime at the pool and beach.

peekaboo

By now we were pooped! It was definitely time for lunch and then naps before dinner at 'Ohana... even though the girls didn't think they needed them

They were wrong!

 

[pwdebbie]

Long time no see! I was surprised to see another update. Your kids are cute, especially the napping girls. I'm glad you nixed the plan.

 

[PoohGal05]

I am loving your trip report and am looking forward to reading more. Sure makes me homesick!

 

[tracisup]

I am loving your trip report and am looking forward to reading more. Sure makes me homesick!

Thanks for reading. I see you are going in 4 1/2 months!

 

[Jazzabelle508]

I'm in It sounds like you had a great time I love all the photopass pictures

 

[Ritse]

I love, love, love your trip report. Can't believe we will be going soon too! First time as a family for us!!

 

[tracisup]

I'm in It sounds like you had a great time I love all the photopass pictures

Thanks! We prepaid photopass for $99.00. We have hundreds of pics after edits. We did it both trips in 2010 and will be doing it again in June. Its suck a great way to get high quality pics and also a great way to get pics of EVERYONE in ONE shot!

 

[tracisup]

I love, love, love your trip report. Can't believe we will be going soon too! First time as a family for us!!

Thanks for reading! What are you doing to plan?

 

[Dizney73]

Thanks! We prepaid photopass for $99.00. We have hundreds of pics after edits. We did it both trips in 2010 and will be doing it again in June. Its suck a great way to get high quality pics and also a great way to get pics of EVERYONE in ONE shot!

I also love taking advantage of Photopass! I usually just spend the extra $$$ and create a Photobook with my pictures. I love that I can add my own photos to it too! Everyone who looks at our Photopass books loves them!
I did get the CD 2 times... once I paid for it and once I got it free with a tour that I did. I really can't say that I get enough use out of the disks... but if there is a photo that I LOVE... I usually pay to download it!

 

[tracisup]

I also love taking advantage of Photopass! I usually just spend the extra $$$ and create a Photobook with my pictures. I love that I can add my own photos to it too! Everyone who looks at our Photopass books loves them!
I did get the CD 2 times... once I paid for it and once I got it free with a tour that I did. I really can't say that I get enough use out of the disks... but if there is a photo that I LOVE... I usually pay to download it!

I look through my Dis ney pics almost every day. I can't help it!

 

[adamsup]

Day 6 May 13 Dinner at 'Ohana

After naps, we got ready to go to 'Ohana. We were actually supposed to be eating at Kona Cafe at 6:40pm but that time didn't work for us since we had rearranged our plans for this day. We were lucky to get a reservation for 'Ohana since we called the same day.

So, off to 'Ohana we went. We needed to make a stop at the CR front desk to cancel our Luau reservation for tomorrow. It was at 5:15pm - and we had a lunch reservation at 1:00pm AND we were supposed to be going into the park after lunch so we knew we couldn't pull all of that off. I cringe at the thought now though because as we were canceling the front desk lady told us we had been upgraded to Tier 1 for the Luau

The front desk lady seemed clueless and really slow! Then she didn't credit our account correctly so we had to wait for her to fix that. It took forever and all the while we were worrying we wouldn't get to our reservation on time. The girls didn't care though...

We finally made it onto the monorail. Here's Paris looking expectantly out of the window

We had time to snap a quick pose on the Poly wall before dinner

No food pictures this time around, but we posted plenty in a previous 'Ohana post. The dinner was amazing as usual - delicious food and a fun atmosphere made it a really good experience. The only bad thing was ...

We realized about half way through that the CR front desk lady had kept out KTTW card (in addition to being clueless and really slow!). We told our waitress who thought the Poly front desk could create a new one for us so Traci left to try and take care of that. Unfortunately they couldn't do that though so our only option was to ride the monorail back to CR. That wasnt really an option for us though because that would really disrupt our meal. In the end, the 'Ohana manager said she would take care of it and someone went to the CR to pick it up and deliver it to us. We were so thankful because we wanted to enjoy our last 'Ohana meal before we had to leave.

When we left 'Ohana and found our stroller, Paris soon realized she had lost her magic wand. Luckily, the front desk person found it in the Lost and Found. Phew!

Here's Paris posing with it

Exhausted again, we made it back to our room and were definitely ready for bed. This vacation was really taking a toll on us!

Tomorrow, Paris turns 4! We had a special day lined up - lunch at Cinderella's Royal Table and late night swimming!

 

[Jazzabelle508]

Great update Both your daughters had really cute hair! Before joining the DIS I never really cared much about Ohana's and now I really want to try it!

 

[pwdebbie]

Great update Both your daughters had really cute hair! Before joining the DIS I never really cared much about Ohana's and now I really want to try it!

It was because of Adam's post earlier about 'Ohana that we did try it. It is now on our top to-do list for the next trip. Give it a try, I think you will enjoy it.

 

[adamsup]

Great update Both your daughters had really cute hair! Before joining the DIS I never really cared much about Ohana's and now I really want to try it!

It's loud and fun and the food is delivered in fast and furious waves! Way too much food, but the dessert is really delicious.

It was because of Adam's post earlier about 'Ohana that we did try it. It is now on our top to-do list for the next trip. Give it a try, I think you will enjoy it.

I knew you'd like it!

 

[tracisup]

Great update Both your daughters had really cute hair! Before joining the DIS I never really cared much about Ohana's and now I really want to try it!

Thanks. I hope you do try it. Its Adams FAV! We have been there 4 times and never disapointed!

It was because of Adam's post earlier about 'Ohana that we did try it. It is now on our top to-do list for the next trip. Give it a try, I think you will enjoy it.

I agree! Give it a try!

 

[adamsup]

OOPS I really need to finish this!!

In the mean time, we have posted our June 2011 trip - please join us by clicking here

 

[pwdebbie]

It's been so long I can't remember, but did you finish the second trip report?