Attempting a trip with the TERRIBLE TWO's. Nov/Dec 2017

[allysetraskos]

FP+ Done but not Fast!​

Yesterday was our FP+ day. I had my plan of attack ready to go, I made a special sheet and everything. It was a slight disaster of a morning, My youngest child's daycare provider called me at 6:45am to tell me she was sick and wouldn't be able to take him, I had to be out the door by 7:20 to get my oldest to school so I was on quite a time crunch... So as I am ready with my plan of attack I now have to panic and worry about where my child is going to go because I had to be at work at 9:30am (It takes an hour for me to drive to work. Well I couldn't find anyone so my boss told me I could work from home.
As soon as I log into MDE the crashing began, Darn Olafs little head... It took me an hour and a half to book 9 days of park tickets! - AN HOUR AND A HALF!!!!​

I have done it in years past 15 min max! Let me tell you it is super hard to do when you have a wild 2 year old running around. I put on Moana what assisted slightly.. [Side note we are now in a Moana phase which means we watch her movie 2 times a day minimum.]
I was able to get all the rides I had planned on thankfully... At pretty much the right times I wanted. I am so OCD so to see times for rides say 12:05 or 12:20 vs 12:00 or 12:30 kills my soul.
I am going to try to minor tweak them from now until the time of the trip but it is all within 15 minutes of my originally planned time I wanted..


So this is what our trip will look like ( We will be utilizing child swap).

Day 1- Nov 24 - Arrive - Stay offsite

Day 2 - Nov 25 - Arrive at Caribbean Beach Resort.

Day 3 - 26th
1. Splash / Thunder
2. Pirates Of Caribbean
3. Jungle Cruise
Dinner: Be Our Guest

Day 4 - 27th
1. Na'vi River Journey
2. Kilimanjaro Safaris
3. Expedition Everest.
Dinner: Garden Grill

Day 5 - 28th
1. Peter Pans Flight
2. 7DMT
3. Haunted Mansion
Lunch: Be Our Guest
Dinner: Chef Mickey's

Day 6 - 29th
1. Test Track / Character Spot
2. Spaceship Earth
3. Mission Space / Frozen
Dinner: 50's Prime Time

Day 7 - 30th
1. Rock N Rollercoaster
2. Tower of Terror / Star Tours
3. Disney Jr
Dinner: Hollywood & Vine

Day 8 - 1st
1. 7DMT
2. Meet Mickey
3. Splash / Thunder
Dinner: Tusker House

Day 9 - 2nd
1. TSMM
2. Star Tours / Tower Of Terrow
3. Indiana Jones Stunt Spectacular

Day 10 - 3rd
1. 7DMT / Space Mountain
2. Buzz Lightyear Space Spin
3. Barnstormer

Day 11 - 4th
1. Flight Of Passage
2. Finding Nemo Musical
3. Expedition Everest / Dinosaur

Day 12 - 5th- Leave.

 

[Smilelea]

Yesterday was our FP+ day. I had my plan of attack ready to go, I made a special sheet and everything. It was a slight disaster of a morning, My youngest child's daycare provider called me at 6:45am to tell me she was sick and wouldn't be able to take him, I had to be out the door by 7:20 to get my oldest to school so I was on quite a time crunch... So as I am ready with my plan of attack I now have to panic and worry about where my child is going to go because I had to be at work at 9:30am (It takes an hour for me to drive to work. Well I couldn't find anyone so my boss told me I could work from home.

Oh my! We had a crazy start to our week as well but not as crazy as yours. Thank goodness for understanding bosses! I'm also thankful that my husband is the planner for these types of things. He made the plan of attack and I just took care of the usual.

I am going to try to minor tweak them from now until the time of the trip but it is all within 15 minutes of my originally planned time I wanted

That stinks that it took so long but I'm glad you were able to get everything. We were able to get all of ours within 5 - 10 minutes of when we wanted them too. Such a relief! But he will be tweaking them up until our trip as well. He's already tweaked a couple and an ADR to go with it. That kind of stuff makes me crazy.

 

[teetee830]

Hi! Just found your trip report. We will be going the same time next year (2018) Ugh! This will be a trip for my son's 12th birthday. I look forward to living vicariously though you this year.

 

[allysetraskos]

1 Month to go! I can almost taste the Dole Whip!​

We are exactly 1 month away! 31 days and I will be just getting off our airplane!
We still have to make it through Halloween and Thanksgiving but we are in the home run stretch.
My youngest loves Moana so much that I ordered him a Maui costume for Halloween (Its a pair of pajamas that look like his body).

I am praying that by some how some way they will magically create a meet and great for Moana again, We really don't want to do the Christmas party as both kids won't stay up that late and enjoy it. So maybe we will get lucky.

I have purchased a penny press books and some cool waterproof shoe covers. How have I never known these existed? Our shoes got soaked at Disney one year and we had no idea they had laundry rooms so we had to individually dry each shoe with a hair dryer. IT TOOK FOREVER. Hopefully these bad boys work, I only spent $7 for 10 pairs.

I am very shocked that I have shown restraint on buying items online. Maybe because last year I spent $400 + on outfits, but I am very proud of myself. I am not proud of my lularoe Disney addiction.. which is even more costly. I have about 10 Disney prints now which are super cute & I wear them to work so I validate the cause. Hopefully the weather will be nice enough to wear them but not too cold.

Oh and how could I forget! We paid off our trip!! Due to my super frugal-ness we spent $3,400 total including airfare for our 12 days 11 nights split stay with 9 days of park hoppers and half the stay of Dining Plan. We are budgeting $100 a day for food for the remaining days which should bring us to $3,800.. We don't do souvenirs other then a special trading pin that we don't trade, and a Christmas ornament. So hopefully once this trip is all said and done we will have only spent $4,000.

I am ready to start packing, my husband thinks I'm crazy.. Maybe if I sneakily start doing it he wont notice.

 

[JK World]

We're heading to WDW this weekend and I just ordered 10 pairs of these shoe covers too thanks to your post! We're expecting one day of rain, and between our ponchos, shoe covers and stroller rain cover I think we'll all stay dry and happy, thanks!

 

[Smilelea]

Oh I love the shoe covers! Definitely something I need to look into for future trips. We are 9 days away so I don't see them happening for this trip. Maybe it wont rain this time .... yeah right, I know!

 

[allysetraskos]

39 degrees to 73 degrees in 3 more days.
​

We are 3 days away!! I cannot believe we are finally this close! I am in the final stages of packing myself and my two youngest. My husband hasn't even started packing, thankfully I pack the children so he is not responsible for that otherwise he would probably have to take a whole day off work to figure it out.

I am so ready for this vacation our family needs this so bad! So much has happened since my last post..

So here is my worst case scenario life for the past 3 weeks:​

My oldest had to go into a outpatient therapy program costing us $500/week; We had no choice but to put him in it so I sucked it up and made a payment plan.
I had some bad test results come back due to cervical cancerous cells, I had prior gone under 4 Colposcopy's and a Leep procedure in the past year to removed them but they are back again so had to get that addressed (Which fun fact I am still paying off last Decembers bills)
The same week my husband had a machine press come down on his finger and almost take it completely off (he has limited mobility in it now).. because he was injured at work they had to do a drug screen which we though oh no big deal that's fine... What he didn't realize was that a weekend prior when he had gone to urgent care due to an infection in his tooth they gave him Vicodin and an antibiotic. As he was doing the drug test the doctor of course asks what medications he is on and he tells him.. The Dr says that Vicodin will show in the results, My husband was a bit concerned but though because he had a prescription no big deal its not like he is buying drugs on the street. My husband went back to his HR department to give them a heads up to make them aware... They didn't make a big deal of it and he went back to work for the rest of the week. My husband gets called into the HR department at the end of the week and they tell him he is terminated because there is a policy that states if you are on medication you have to let HR know because you cannot operate machinery. Now what upsets me is that my husband let HR know after the fact and THEY STILL LET HIM WORK FOR A WEEK!!! - He lost his job of 6 years he was completely devastated.
He held our medical benefits so we had to enroll into my works which is $300 more a month.
He spoke to a buddy and started a new job just a few days later, however is getting paid $3 less an hour with no benefits
Next my youngest son took my car keys and hid them, of course I only had 1 copy so had to pay $200 for a locksmith to come out an make a new key at midnight, I go to start my car the next day and it doesn't work.. apparently he messed it up and I had to wait for him to come out to fix it. I thought everything was great because I found my set of keys (hidden behind the toy box) just recently my car won't turn off when you take the keys out of the ignition so it has been draining my battery.
My husband started that new job and everyone in there chain smokes, he has bad asthma so it has been killing his lungs well he ended up being admitted into the hospital for respiratory issues to to the smoking, there is nothing he can do since its a little mom and pop machine shop... He has been doing breathing treatments but his lungs are so messed up so walking around Disney is going to be a challenge for him.
I also just got a statement for my sons outpatient program remember the $500 fee I paid well apparently that wasn't for everything, they "ala carte" all these other services and DR's he visited throughout the day without my consent totaling an additional $500!!!!! I was totally scammed by this place.
Just when we though nothing else could get worse a pipe in our basement started leaking and broke, the the pipe that runs water from our kitchen sink and washer... Apparently to fix this pipe because it is stripped and super old and requires digging into the basement floor would be well into the thousands - We had a friend come over to "band-aid" the issue for now until we can get back from our trip and figure out what we are going to do with the holidays happening.

As if that wasn't stressful enough we tossed and turned about cancelling our trip but due to the fact we paid in gift cards and didn't get travel insurance we would be screwed anyways.

Everything seemed fine and dandy going well and we literally got smacked in the face by all these medical bills and other nonsense... You can only plan for so much at once you never imagine that in 3 weeks you will be thousands in debt. Very eye opening and a definite test of our marriage. I think that if my husband were to still have his job it would for sure be less stressful we would have at least $800 extra a month to go towards bills, this is just going to be a rough patch for a while. It may also be a sign, he has been wanting to make a change in his line of work for a while and he is applying with my company and is in the final stages of interviews, he also is interviewing for an amazing position at another company which could be life changing so hopefully this is all for a reason... When one door closes another opens type deal.


So as you can see by my lengthy rant / post I am ready for a great vacation to escape our worries and problems for 12 days.


This will most likely be my last post.. So stay tuned for our official trip review coming soon!!

 

[Smilelea]

I have no words. I'm so sorry all of that has happened to you. It is very clear that you need this trip. I pray you all have a fabulous time and maybe even get a little extra pixie dust while your gone.

We are all packed ourselves and are trying to eat up the last of the thanksgiving leftovers. Why throw out perfectly good turkey

Best wishes and safe travels to us all!

 

[Mskia]

I am so sorry it has been such a rough time. I hope your trip brings you and your family lots of joy!