Any Suggestions...kinda long

[scrdofbugs]

I have been a larker for awhile and decided to today to register. I am planning my family's 2nd trip to Disney. My family consist of me, DH & DD 11.5. We have reservations for Poly Oct 2 - 7 for a garden view room. We didn't do the dining plan. We have park hoppers with water parks. We didn't do park hoppers or water parks before so this will be new to us. This is my plan. Please tell me what you think of it and how the weather & crowds will be during our time. We stayed end of april/beginning of may 2005 so a comparison in weather and crowds would be greatly appreciated.

Oct. 1 - Mon -- Leave Tennessee for drive

Oct. 2 - Tues -- Arrive approx 12:00 - check in, eat lunch head to MGM. We have dinner ressie at Sci Fi. It's our 15th wedding anniversary. I have this noted on our ressie at the Poly.

Oct. 3 - Wed -- Magic Kingdom - no ressie. My family is a counter service type so we will be eating on the fly.

Oct. 4 - Thurs -- Epcot - no ressie

Oct. 5 - Fri -- AK -- no ressie

Oct. 6 - Sat -- Both water parks (is this doable??)

Oct. 7 - Sun -- Leave early for drive home to Tennessee

I have budgeted the following:
Food $850.00 for 3 people.
Meals - Mon (driving day) $70.00
Tues $120.00 (including Sci Fi dinner)
Wed - Sat $95.00 eash day
Sun & Mon (driving days) $65.00 each day
Snacks - $30.00 per day in parks so x 5 = $150.00

Gas $180.00 I did AAA mileage and gas trip site

Souvnirs (however you spell it) $150.00 ($50 per person) plus I will have another $120.00 for something big for our house.

Hotel going down & back $250.00 (I have ressie at one for the way down)

I have all this saved up so I should be good for money. My package is also paid in full.

What ya think????

 

[Mickeys_n_me]

October is one of the better months to go. I always try to go in October, because I find the parks to be somewhat easy to tour during that time. The weather is in the 80's for the most part.

Since you are driving you should stop at a grocery store and pack some snacks, drinks and cereal. You can ziplock snacks and bring them in the parks as well as bottled water. It will save you money on the snacks in the park. You can also do breakfast in your room with the cereal.

The park hopper is a great option, because some parks close earlier then others. The AK is only open until 5pm so after dinner you could head over to another park for the night time shows (perhaps even MNSSHP if you can find it in your budget)

I am sure you could do both waterparks in one day if you choose to.

Editing to add: You should see if the days you are planning to go to the parks coinside with Extra Magic Hours and take advantage of those. Epcot is pretty large and you may need some more time to tour it.

 

[jcpuppy.com]

Just to point out some math for you the DDP will cost you $600 and you have alloted yourself $500 for food/tips for $100 more you will be able to eat a sit down meal every day a counter meal every day and a snack ever day and won't have to worry about a budget and whether someone is eating more than they were allowed. If you plot and share your cs meals carefully, you can even squeak out some breakfasts/ 3rd meal a day.

now if you are light eaters and don't like sit down meals this could be pointless for you, but for us the ddp was the greatest thing they ever came up with

 

[scrdofbugs]

I tried to convince my hubby to do the ddp but he would rather eat cs than ts. I wish they would let me do all cs instead of ts that would be perfect for us!!

thanks for all the ideas.

I am so excited!!!!!!

 

[Epcot82Guy]

Great time to go.

One piece of advice. On your day at Epcot, since F&W will be going on, you may want to skip doing a "meal" and just grab little snacks all along whenever anyone is hungry. We found this to be a great way to sample lots of foods without having a full-out meal. If you like CS, this may be great for you. It also prevents ordering something you might not like while still trying some adventurous foods.

 

[solferino]

I tried to convince my hubby to do the ddp but he would rather eat cs than ts. I wish they would let me do all cs instead of ts that would be perfect for us!!

thanks for all the ideas.

I am so excited!!!!!!

If you're repeat visitors, do you think you could convince your DH to try the DDP this time just to try it? It's such a nice break in the day to have a relaxing meal and enjoy the atmosphere and fun the restaurants had to offer.

 

[jcpuppy.com]

I bet if your hubby had a few good sit down meals and got to feel how relaxing and enjoyable that can be(especially if he isn't worrying about cost) then he would convert. My dh loves the ts meals, but admits he would refuse to do them if it weren't for the ddp

 

[scrdofbugs]

I will see if I can work on him. I think it would be very nice to try the ts and not have to worry about $$. Do most people use the ts for their diner meal?? and the cs for lunch??

 

[Dizneydaz]

I will see if I can work on him. I think it would be very nice to try the ts and not have to worry about $$. Do most people use the ts for their diner meal?? and the cs for lunch??

Yes, we use most of our TS for dinner and CS for lunch (and when we get towards the end of trip we start using CS for breakfasts too.) The only TS we used last trip was for our last breakfast at 1900PF-it was DD's birthday and we were flying home later that day.

Personally, I wouldn't do both waterparks on the same day. They're only open from 10-5. Normally I wouldn't pick a Saturday, since that's a day locals go, but you should be fine in Oct. on any day. If you are going to only choose one, I would pick TL. TL does close for it's annual refurbishment in Oct. but not until the 28th.

If you choose to only go to one waterpark then you could use the unused plus to go to Disney Quest later that day. The are open until 11 p.m., or midnight, every night.

Have a great trip!

 

[jcpuppy.com]

yes, we use it for dinner the only exception is cellier if we can't get a dinner res we will use it for lunch
we also tend to use a 2ts like hoop de doo or the castle dinner, then we can use a cs for dinner one night

like the other poster towards the end we use cs for breakfast..love my eggs at wolfgangs
because we bring our water from home, we rarely use our snacks for drinks and have extras, at times we make meals out of that.so many ways to work it.
at $100 difference I can hardly see why hubby would complain..he will love being spoiled!!

2 water parks in one day would be a bit much, DQ is worth trying especially the Pirate one and the very top floor, not sure what it is called, but you shoot aliens in virtual reality.
forget the aladdin virtual one unless the line is short it isn't worth the effort

 

[Jill in Chicago]

On allears.net you can check out the menus for all of Disney's restaurants. It also lists prices which will give your DH a very realistic look at the cost of meals. Even counter service is pricey. .

Your DH may be thinking that sitting down at a restaurant is a waste of time. The thing is though, even counter service takes time. October weather is iffy. It could be 70's or 90's. If it is hot outside sitting down for dinner is delightful!
Also I know some people complain about too much food on the dining plan. I really don't get that. Sure you can order an appetizer and dessert, but no one is making you order all that food, nor is anyone making you finish everything you order.

Our family loves the water parks. I cannot imagine doing both in one day. We got there right when they opened and made it to about 2:00. We were done! There is a lot of walking and stair climbing to get to the different slides....

Sounds like you have a good plan going! Have you checked out the Unofficial Guidebook to give you some ideas on touring order for each park?

 

[scrdofbugs]

Thank you everyone for all your ideas. I love this board!!! I have the Birnbaum's WDW 2006 that I bought before our last trip. I think I have read it a million times. I keep rereading it to make sure I don't miss anything. I talked to DH and his biggest concern is making ADRs and he is a hamburger type of guy. He doesn't want to me tied down to eating a certain time. We did all CS on our last trip. We stayed at CSR and we LOVED the Pepper Market there. It was such a great place for the 3 of us to eat. After hearing his concerns and the way we did last time, I think I will stay with not getting the DDP. I think for us it will work out better. We do plan on eating our way around the worlds in Epcot. I was excited to see we would be there during the F&W. SO I guess, I will leave plans as they are. Thanks again!!

 

[MARCIAKAZ]

Hi...I noticed that you said you have park hoppers, yet your itinerary doesn't show any park hopping. The park hopping feature may be an unecessary expense...unless you want to keep your options open.

 

[scrdofbugs]

Yes, we didn't do park hoppers last time and we thought we would try it this time. I am not "planning" on where we may go but thought on AK day we could hit another park and other days as well.