Am I really writing a Trip Report???

[Cotta]

I just can't resist starting a Pre-trippie. I'm 25 days out and I am getting SO excited!

I guess I should start with a little background... I was raised on WDW vacations. Not every year or anything but I can remember only a couple vacations that weren't to WDW and that was basically because my brother and I were getting burned out in our teen years. : Anyway, we always stayed offsite... and probably spent a day or two max at the actual parks. Can you imagine? The first time I stayed onsite was the summer after I graduated high school (1995). My mom and I stayed at Dixie Landings and we loved it. We couldn't believe how much better it was! And another addict is born... It was quite a memorable trip, we had our first character meal (stumbled into it, no ADRs back then. Can you imagine??), first time we spent any considerable time at the "other parks" (Epcot and MGM), and my mom and I had a huge fight in MK in which I left and took a bus back to DL BY MYSELF. Can you imagine the horror?? My mother, to this day!, still yells at me about that. Come on, I was 18! But I think she was going through abandonment issues or something because I was getting ready to go off to college (and I was the youngest). I think she was more worried about being by herself than me being by myself. Anyway, we survived and all in all had a great time.
My next trip didn't come until I was out of college and finally able to make it on my own (2000). I went with three friends (one was my SIL) and we had a BLAST. We stayed offsite to save money. Highlights of that trip was my first time at Animal Kingdom, lots of time eating and drinking our way through WS, and riding the "extreme" rides over and over again.
The next trip has a special place in my heart as it was the first time I got to take my family to WDW (March 2004). First time for my DH, DSD Payton, who was five at the time and DD Marley (3 mos.)! I think most people thought we were crazy for taking Marley so young but the trip was really for Payton and Marley was the perfect age to travel I think, not mobile yet, still easily feed and put to bed! Payton had a GREAT time and so did I. My mom went along as well and she was a great help. And she even let me (& DH) go to dinner by ourselves one night! We stayed at the Boardwalk and we absolutely LOVED this resort. There are so many highlights of that trip I wouldn't know where to begin. This was the first trip I had a Digital camera so I can show you some pictures!
Here is my family (I can't believe how much it's grown in three years!):

Here's Payton and my mom:

And here is Payton with some friends:

Ok, I am going to break here, and finish in my next post!

 

[Cotta]

Ok so were did I leave off... ah yes the year was 2004 and it was the year of the mouse... Anyhoo, I got real busy raisin' little Marley Sue and then that Christmas we got a surprise little present. I was pregnant again! DS Ryne was born in July of 2005 so that pretty much took up much of my WDW touring time. This poor little guy has yet to lay his pretty brown eyes on WDW (I know bad mommy) and he isn't along for this ride either but he is still pretty cute so I will show ya some pics...

And here he is today (Ok it was a couple weeks ago but work with me people!):

So let's fast forward to summer of 2006 and I am hankerin me some WDW time by this point. Mention it to DH who is very anti. Kids are too little, blah, blah, blah. Yeah but little means free and we have a DD princess who is about to turn three! OK, I put it on the back burner until I found out about free dining, now as I have said I have been out of the WDW loop and a little busy so I didn't know this existed... hmm... then I heard about little ones magical beginnings I have fifteen words to describe an event that only lasts an hour so by the time you say it is over! I was hooked! But DH was still anti, so who else can I con into? Mom wanna go to Disney? That took about a ten second conversation. But I was concerned about Ryne handling the trip. He is not a traveler like his mom and I was concerned about keeping up with a 3 and a 1 year old. So DH saw this as his "good excuse" for staying home. And I bought it. I was hoping Payton could join us but her mom vetoed taking her out of school at the beginning of the school year. And she was having some difficulties at the time so I understood. But I still felt guilty. Anyway, so mom and I just took DD Marley in Sept. of '06 and we stayed at the Contemporary (14th floor concierge, with an amazing view of the castle! I felt like a princess too!). I was really stressed about this trip but it was amazing. It was SO nice to be able to concentrate on just one child though and cater to what she wanted to do. Unfortunately she came down with hand, foot, mouth disease (sounds much worse that it is, kinda like chicken pox) while we were there. It really only kept her down for one afternoon though. BTW, Disney is amazing when it comes to sick kids! It may have helped we were on concierge level but it was a godsend. A Dr. actually came to our room to check her out within an hour of us calling and our insurance covered it! I wish I had this service at home. Almost made me glad she got sick there! We also went to our first hard ticket event MNSSHP! What a blast! Marley is by far my disney child... she is obsessed. DH says I have created a monster and *sometimes* I have to agree. Ok here are a few pics:

That is the view from our room!

Ok, now I realize I have pretty much given you the shortened condensed report on all my Past trips, but at least now you know what you are in for! My next post will include our plans for this trip! Did I tell you 25 days???

 

[Avivasmom]

Bet you gave your mom a good scare when you left.

We will be staying at the Boardwalk in 16 days..we just miss each other. Cannot wait to hear more on your trip!

 

[Cotta]

Avivasmom: Yay! Someone read it! Sorry we are going to miss you! I love your daugther's name, btw. I noticed it on some other threads. I see you haven't stayed at the Boardwalk before. You will LOVE it! So convenient to Epcot and all the restaurants and entertainment. We will definitely stay there again, but probably wait until the kids are older and more interested in Epcot... And trust me my mom will never let me live down leaving her at WDW. I still feel twinges of guilt every time we split up!

 

[Cotta]

Ok, now that you know more about my vacationing history than most of my closest friends... here are our plans for our much anticipated trip Aug. 7-13!

Cast:
Amy (30) (Sorry I could come up with some creative names for us but I think I would forget half way through) I am full-time working mom who pretends that I am a SAHM. I actually work for my family's business where we manufacture commercial water heaters and boilers. I actually am in charge of human resources and bookeeping... keeps me quite busy but I pretty much make my own schedule so I am constantly running from one thing to another (and spending way too much time on the DIS lately)! It's pretty boring but allows for some great perks. My DH works here too (I sign his checks ), as well as my entire immeadiate family (not the little ones, no child labor here just my brother, mom and dad.

Nana (hmm... we will just say 50ish to be nice) My mom is probably the main reason for my disney addiction and helps me support it to this day... if you haven't figured it out yet, she has one too! We have a pretty unique relationship in that we see each other everyday (we work together, remember?) and she is still my best friend. Her hobbies include spoiling my children rotten (REALLY helps at WDW) and traveling.

Payton (9) Can you believe she is 9 already? I sure can't. She just had a birthday July 2nd and she got a Mix Max (Disney ipod) for our trip! Very very exciting. She is the best step-daughter a stepmom could EVER ask for and I love her VERY much. She helps out tons with the little ones. She is very excited to be able to ride ALL the rides this time around, especially TOT! I must admit last time we were pretty leery of her riding anything (not even Splash), she was five but she's a tiny little thing and we weren't sure she was "emotionally" ready either... have to make up for that this time.

Marley (3) Marley is best described as a ball of energy. She is more 'full of life' than anyone I have ever met. She is in constant motion and very entertaining. If you happen to be at Disney when we are, you will probably meet her. It takes hours to get through Wal-mart with her because she stops to chat with everyone we pass. She is always telling me "I love people mommy!" And she does. She will make a great CM someday.

Ok that's everybody!

So here is our plan of attack:

Aug. 7: Arrival Day. We should get in about 1 pm. We are staying at the DTD Hilton. What? Gasp, she isn't staying on site?? I know . This was really hard for me too. But my mom had tons of points and offered to get the room, she smokes and after Disney went smoke free she said she won't stay there anymore. I seriously considered staying on our own, but what can I say? I was bought. Anyway, I am hoping it won't be too big of a letdown and we are rarely in our room anyway. So, I am thinking we will probably get settled in the afternoon maybe go for a swim, then head to MK. I have to go there first... it's tradition. We have an ADR for Tony's at 8:25. Will we get a coveted outside table (so we can see Spectro)? Stay tuned... if not I covered our butts because there are two Spectros that night!

Aug. 8: Today we plan to hit Animal Kingdom. This park seems to elude me every time. The first time I went to AK it had just openned, so there wasn't too many attractions, the main one Safari was a mad house, so we didn't even do that. Next time we skipped it for another MK day... not my vote. And last year, this is where Marley got sick... so we did Safari and headed back to the CR. So I PLAN on being at rope drop this year (EMH even)! I really want to do EE but we will see if anyone (my only option is Payton) will do it with me. I'd love to see Nemo too but we will see how the day goes. We won't commando this park, it's just too hot in my opinion to storm AK. And we have 4:25 ADR's at the 50's in MGM for this night so it will be a split day and hopefully we make it to Fantasmic.

Aug. 9: Today will be a much more relaxed day... I am sure we will be worn out already! It's an exciting one though because we have ADR's at Akerhaus with the princesses at 2:55! Back in 2004 we did CRT... except it was just Cinderella then, and we walked right up and got a table??!! Can you believe that? It was really nice but I thought it would be fun to try something new. I have "done" Akerhaus back when it was just a reg. restaurant so I am not too scared of the food. That being said... I am a little worried about the food. But come on that's really not what we are going for, right? It's EMH at Epcot this night and I hope to do Soarin' (it's another goal!) at some point if possible.

Aug. 10: This day is kinda open. I did make an ADR for CP at 8:25 so we can see MK before it opens but I am not sure if we will keep it. Depends on our stamina at this point. Other than that... no plans but to hit what we have already missed!

Aug. 11: IT'S PPP DAY! That's right we are going to the Pirate & Princess Party! As I said before we did MNSSHP last year and we thought it was fantastic! Hope this isn't a letdown! We are really into Parades and Fireworks so I think we will like it! Other than that it will be a relaxed day... oh except we are also doing BBB at 1pm!! Yippity! (Sorry, just realized I exclamation pointed everything in that paragraph, hope that wasn't too annoying) Oh! and we don't have any ADR's for today... not sure what I want to do here. We may just wing it at DTD for a nice lunch and then CS at MK for dindin??? Any ideas?

Aug. 12: Our last full day. It makes me sad already! It's wide open basically... we do have an ADR for Garden Grill at 11:25 but we aren't married to it. It just depends on what we have accomplished at this point I guess.

Aug. 13: We go home Nothing planned... but we don't leave till almost 6 so we could possibly... hit a park one last time!

I'd love to hear any comments or ideas on our schedule... I am always willing to change! In fact Our actually trip probably won't even resemble this itinerary, but I GOTTA have a plan... even if I don't stick to it :

 

[Cotta]

Ok. Time for an update. We are three weeks out and we just made a significant altercation in our plans. We are now staying at the Dolphin!!! I am SO much MORE excited! Over the weekend I was surfin the DIS and I discovered that there is still smoking available at the Dolphin. So I talked Mom into switching our reservation! Much better location! Yay! My mom is still super stressed about the whole situation as they do not gaurantee smoking until arrival (same at ALL hotels). At this point though I think she just needs to give up the fight. But, if worst comes to worst (or best case scenario in my mind :shh: don't tell my mom!) and they tell us when we get there that they don't have any smoking rooms, we can just say well we are dissatisfied and they can move us to another Disney deluxe!! hehehe yes, I am evil.
Anyway, the Epcot hotels have the best location in my opinion so I am super jazzed. Heck, I really don't care where I stay as long as I am at Disney! But the faster I can get to a park, the better! This is going to somewhat affect my plans though, guess it's time to revise my ADRs and schedule. I will let you know of any changes!
Well today is my DH's b-day, although I don't think we will be doing much. He doesn't like any fuss. I already gave him his present and cake this weekend. Plus, we are going to Chicago on Wed. so we will probably wait and celebrate there.
Hope everyone has a good Monday!