Boo to You!: Sept./Oct. Mega Family WDW Trip-> Updated 7/2 (Sad News & Happy News)

[AuroraRose]

It's been a while since I last came on the boards and interacted with everyone. I wish I could say it was for a good reason, but it wasn't. My grandmother passed away last September, and before that was in and out of the hospital and rehab, so a great deal of my time was spent taking care of her. While I wish that she was still with me, and I am still so very sad about losing her, I am happy that I was able to spend her last days with her.

ETA: I found the picture I wanted to add to this part of my post. It's my most favorite Disney picture of my grams taken during our Easter trip in 2009:

R.I.P 1920-2011

It's because of this that this trip is a bittersweet one for us- but it's going to be a pretty big one as well. At one point we'll need a Grand Villa to fit everyone! More on that in a moment.

I'm actually going to be going to WDW very soon- March 18th thru the 24th, to be exact. I won't do a PTR for that here, since it's less than two weeks away, but if you're interested, you can read about it on my Disney blog: [Kara's Disney Adventures] I am hoping to do a live trip report through my tumblr and a nightly blog post on my Disney blog, but I'll have to assess how I am feeling once that time comes. I'll be trying to do some little vlogs while I am there as well.

Moving on, I want to try and keep this PTR more organized than my last one, so I'll be setting it up a little differently. Index post will come right after this, followed by my (re)Introduction post. I am hoping to connect (and reconnect) with all of my fellow and most amazing Disney fans, and I've really missed hanging out on the boards. I've been so sad and depressed that I just need a bit of Disney magic to help get me through, so I hope you'll join in and follow along on the craziest trip I've planned yet.

 

[AuroraRose]

{1} [re]Introductions: See Below!
{2} Trip Highlights: Post #6
{3} ADR's Booked & Airline Tickets Purchased: Post #8
{4} Movie Night Countdown- Snow White: Post #16
{5} Quick Update Post #21

 

[AuroraRose]

Here we are again. A little bit older, hopefully a little bit wiser when it comes to tackling the WDW parks, but definitely no less of a Disney!Nerd, !!! As mentioned, this will be a special trip for us, due to the people who will be joining us for their very first Disney trip with us, (and for some, their first WDW trip ever), but Bill and I will also be celebrating our 2 year anniversary at WDW this year. We spent our 1 year at DL, so it seems an appropriate progression. So, without further ado, here we go!

Details:
When: September 29th- October 8th of this year.
Where: AKL Jambo (We're DVCers)- 1 Concierge Studio for the whole trip, 1 2-Bedroom from the 29th-5th, and a Grand Villa from the 5th-8th.
{Fair warning- I like pictures, so there will probably be a lot of them.}

The Cast:
First up is me, of course. I'm Kara, and I'm 31 now. I feel like a teenager still, though, and I still get carded, so I say I'm an official member of Club Neverland! And I am a goofball- you've been warned!
Here I am:

I love all things Disney and I am usually the official planner for our Disney trips.

My DH, Bill (Bilbo) who is sbill13 on the boards:

This picture was taken in 2010 during the WDW portion of our Disneymoon. We were picked to be in the parade at the AK! It was so much fun! He's a fellow Disney fanatic, although he didn't frequent the boards as much as I did.

In addition, we're bringing the whole gang with us, though Jefe is threatening to skip out on us in favor of trying to have a baby. Geez. (Speaking of kiddos, this just might be our last kidfree trip. We're thinking of starting a family of our own as well! After this trip. )

This is a portion of the gang, the picture was taken on our May 2010 trip. From l-r: Jeff (Jefe), who is mav77910 on the boards, my dad (Jim), my mom (Mary), Bill, me, and Allison!

We've also got my favorite Princess and her mommy:

My niece Kiera and my sister Lauren! And yes, Kiera was my most favorite princess for Halloween last year! I loved it! And she still loves her princess dresses. She dressed up as Cinderella for her mommy's birthday party over the weekend.

Kyle:

My future Bro-in-law

And new this time around, and the reason we need a Grand Villa for the last weekend of our trip:

My brother Robert, his wife Shana, and their five, yes FIVE kids will be joining us! {Kein, Jacob, Adain, Alec, Liam}

Yes, indeed, we have the makings of a crazy but fabulous trip. What could possibly go wrong with a group of up to 16 of us to coordinate! This trip should be a breeze, right..?

{Up Next: Trip Highlights- the special events we hope to participate in!}

 

[onescgirl]

Wow, what a large, beautiful family group that you have going to WDW! This is going to be a fun PTR to read.
I'm sorry about your Grams. I love the picture of her wearing the ears. That is a priceless picture!!!

 

[FairestOfThemAll]

16 people, wow! And I thought my group of 10 was going to be unwieldy. This should be a fun ride for the rest of us to sit back and watch it unfold.

 

[AuroraRose]

I was gone over the weekend, but I am back and ready to update! Hopefully it won't take me all night to type this up!

•★•°•★•°•★•°•★•°•★•°•★•°•★•°•★•°•★•°•★•°•★•°•★•°•★•°•★•°•★• ​

Just to clarify, I sat down and wrote that yesterday afternoon, and right as I finished that sentence, my niece came running over to me and insisted that I needed to go play with her. So it didn't take all night, just a couple days!

Moving right along, my sister and I were talking about the upcoming trip on our drive back from California on Sunday and it made me even more anxious to update this, so here we go!

The Definite:
√ Mickey's Not-So-Scary Halloween Party: We know that we'll be doing the MNSSHP one night, and possibly two nights, depending on the dates and all that. When DH and I first started going to Disneyland regularly, we would usually go for our birthdays, and since his is Oct. 16th, we would usually end up at the Halloween Party over there every year and we love it! That's where I got my favorite picture with the Bowler Hat Guy!

We have been trying to figure out if we're going to dress up and what we want to dress Kiera up as. So far the jury is out on costumes for us, but we are leaning towards Belle for Kiera, possibly her pink winter dress:

OR Ariel's pink dress:

(Wouldn't something like this be kinda cool?!):

We want something that not everyone will have, so we like the idea of one of the alternate dresses from the characters. And we are going to see if her Grandma would be able to sew it for us, seeing as she used to make all our costumes for us when we were kids! If us adults do dress up, I have a couple of ideas, but I will save them until I know for sure! Stay tuned!

√ Epcot International Food & Wine Festival: We also know we will definitely be spending a couple of days eating around the world at Epcot!
[we interrupt this update for some more playtime with my favorite girly we've been watching Ducktales all day and she was very concerned when Donald was kidnapped and insisted that we had to go save Donald!]
And we're back. As I was saying, we're most definitely psyched about the Food & Wine Festival! When we went for our Disneymoon we really enjoyed it and couldn't wait to share it with everyone else! I'm also excited to see what bands will be playing while we are there. When we caught it, it was Sugar Ray playing, which brought me back to high school, and I missed having my sister to sing along with. (Bilbo claims he wasn't into music in high school, hehe!) We usually try to spend a couple days at Epcot anyway to really take it all in, so it works out.

√ 'Ohana & 50's Prime Time Café: We aren't planning on doing as many ADRs this time around and hope to mostly wing it along the way (I really hope I don't regret this) but I know I want to do 'Ohana on the 2nd for our Anniversary. We really enjoyed our dinner there, and we think the family will enjoy it as well.

50's Prime Time Café quickly became one of our favorites the first time we went in May of 2009:

We had such a blast with cousin Eric? I want to say? That we made sure to go again the next year during our family trip:

Bilbo was purposely being "bad" to get our waitress to react! So she put him to work and made him wear this cap:

And here is the whole clan of us from that trip:

I am hoping that we can go when ALL of us are there, because I really want my brother and his family to experience it as well!

The Maybes:
¿ A Princess meal, because Kiera really enjoyed it when we went to Ariel's Grotto in California Adventure!

¿ DisneyQuest- I will be checking it out when I am in WDW next week because I have never gone before, but I think that it would be something that my nephews would really enjoy! (And I REALLY want to make my own roller coaster!)

¿ Water Parks- Another thing I have yet to do, but I think we might go next week as well, so we'll see. I purposely extended the length of our trip so we could try this stuff out if we want to, though!

¿ Possibly one of the tours. Anyone have any experience/suggestions on this??

Just a few things, but we might have more as time progresses. You know how it goes when you're eating, sleeping, and dreaming of Disney during the planning process, right?!

So, this turned into quite the updating event. I really thought I would have had this posted on Monday. Oh well..

{Up Next: Adventures in booking Concierge (and other) rooms!}

 

[AuroraRose]

Wow, what a large, beautiful family group that you have going to WDW! This is going to be a fun PTR to read.
I'm sorry about your Grams. I love the picture of her wearing the ears. That is a priceless picture!!!

Thank you! I like to think so! And I hope I can pull this off, it's going to be interesting trying to coordinate a bunch of people who like to tell me "we want to do whatever you do!" as their "helpful input" in the planning of our trips!

Thank you, I was very close to my grams, as she was the one who took care of me when my mom was working. I miss her more than I can say, but I adore that picture. We had an awesome time on that trip. ♥

16 people, wow! And I thought my group of 10 was going to be unwieldy. This should be a fun ride for the rest of us to sit back and watch it unfold.

Our first family trip that ended up being 8(½) people was originally supposed to be 10(½) people, but my DH's dad and girlfriend had to cancel because her mom got really sick and ended up passing away shortly after the trip. Even with that amount it was pretty interesting, but we survived it well enough to want to do it again and add more people, so I don't know if we're just crazy or what, but I guess we will see!!

 

[AuroraRose]

Well, the trip feels more official now because we bought our airline tickets last night!! I'm so excited about this! I can't believe how fast the year is flying by, though. We also made our ADR's. so I figured it was about time for another update.

•★•°•★•°•★•°•★•°•★•°•★•°•★•°•★•°•★•°•★•°•★•°•★•°•★•°•★•°•★• ​

Flight Info:
We'll be flying in on Delta- We leave Vegas at 10:40PM on Sept. 28th, and arrive at 6:06AM the next morning. It's basically the same flight we took for our trip in May of 2010, and it worked out well for us. We slept on the plane, and with the baby we wanted to make sure we had a nonstop flight.

Coming back, we are flying on Southwest because we wanted a nonstop flight that didn't leave too early. Plus, 2 free checked bags and a free carry on means more room to bring back our souvenirs! We'll leave Orlando at at 05:40PM
and arrive in Las Vegas at 07:50PM.

Flight prices have gone up, but it wasn't too bad, and I'm happy not to have to deal with any layovers.

ADRs:
Like I mentioned, with such a large group, I am trying my best to be accommodating, so the request was for not too many ADRs because they didn't want to have to feel rushed in the parks. I am hoping it all works out okay- cross your fingers for us!! Here's what we have, though:

9/29:The morning we arrive, we have reservations for breakfast at Boma
10/1: We have a reservation for Breakfast at Hollywood & Vine because the girly loves Disney Jr.
10/2: Anniversary Dinner at 'Ohana!!
10/4: Dinner reservations at Biergarten, per the boys request.
10/6: Dinner for 16 at the 50's Prime Time Cafe!

QUESTION: I know at least on the 3rd, and possibly one other day, we plan on eating around the world for lunch, but I heard that it gets busier in the evening. Would you suggest making a dinner reservation somewhere in Epcot for our Food & Wine days? We only went for a day when we went, and it seemed pretty quiet in the evening. Is it busier during weekends rather than during the weekday? Many thanks for anyone who has any insight to share!

If we get lucky enough to have Be Our Guest open by the time our trip rolls around, I am going to try my hardest to get dinner there one night.

Rooms:
We have a Deluxe Studio Club Level for myself and DH, plus our friends Allison & Jeff. Unless they decide not to come, in which case we will have the room to ourselves. We only got to stay in those rooms for one night during our Disneymoon, so I'm looking forward to spending the whole trip there!!

We would have stayed in the 2 bedroom with everyone else but there was some confusion as to who was going. It started out as a family trip, and then my sister said she wouldn't be able to go, and if she couldn't go, my parents couldn't go because dad would need to watch my niece while her parents were working. And since my SIL was hoping to get all the cousins together, she wouldn't be going either.. Following so far? We decided to go ahead with the trip and booked our rooms. Which we could only book for up to a week out, so Bill had to wake up at 4am every morning after that to add on to the end of our reservation until we had all the nights we needed. He was a little cranky those days, but he got it done and it was all wonderful.

All was good until a few weeks later when my sister decided she was going to go after all, and consequently, so was everyone else. After the trouble of securing the concierge rooms, DH was loathe to cancel those reservations, so we decided to use our banked GCV points to secure rooms for them.. Which, of course, meant waiting until we could use them. We crunched numbers and figured that doing a two bedroom for my parents, my sister, her guy and my niece would be the best option. Unfortunately for them there were only Savannah views left, so they will have to suffer through. Once my brother and his whole crew come for the weekend, they will all be sharing a Grand Villa. I am super excited to see what it looks like, and I know they are going to have a blast!!

Plans So Far:


We're still trying to figure out if we want to do the Halloween party twice (and by "we" I mean everyone else, but I think I might go twice with or without the whole gang.)

Other Stuff:
• Sis is looking into getting a new stroller for her trip. The Britax B-Agile, to be exact, much thanks to Leger13 for the heads up on how great this stroller works at the parks! We're thinking of getting the red one and decorating it for easy identification.

• I am getting antsy waiting for the MNSSHP tickets to go on sale, since we were unable to go last year (thanks to a certain DH who said he was going to order them, but "forgot" until they were all sold out... ) and I REALLY want my niece to experience it. I'm going to be buying them myself this time around.. If you want anything done right, as they say..

• All the talk of costumes over on the Facebook group for the October gang has me thinking again about our costumes. My mom is now saying she doesn't want to make any costumes (I really need to learn to sew) so I am going to see if the girl who made my bridesmaid dresses for me might be up for the challenge if I can't change mom's mind. I have a pretty neat idea, I think, for all the adults, and we're still trying to figure out if Kiera will be a princess or a part of the idea I have cooked up. I just hope I can make it work!

Anyway, until next time! I need to iron out a few things and try and see if I can get a little more input from people.

 

[lledman]

subbing b/c we'll be there at the same time

 

[Kat in GA]

I can't believe how big your group is!! Will y'all actually stay together in the parks and just get together for meals? Even my family of four tends to split up

We have premium annual passes and we love the water parks. But they expire in June and I don't think that I am going to renew this year. My wallet would like to refill at some point!

Looking forward to reading more - and seeing where we might actually cross paths!

 

[silverhaze269]

So sorry to hear about the loss of your grandma ...I was very close with mine and she's been gone for 11 years now. I still think of her often and miss her very much

On to happier things though...

like your Disney trip!

I can't even imagine how much work it must be trying to orchestrate a trip for a group of up to 16 people It sounds like you guys will have blast though! Lovin' the plans!

 

[AuroraRose]

subbing b/c we'll be there at the same time

Yay!!! I can't believe how big the October group is, but it's pretty awesome!

I can't believe how big your group is!! Will y'all actually stay together in the parks and just get together for meals? Even my family of four tends to split up

We have premium annual passes and we love the water parks. But they expire in June and I don't think that I am going to renew this year. My wallet would like to refill at some point!

Looking forward to reading more - and seeing where we might actually cross paths!

I know, it's really crazy, but I am excited because it will be the first time I have done WDW with my brother's family, and the first time at any Disney park with my four youngest nephews.

I'm not sure how it will work during the week. My parents sometimes wander off, and I've already warned everyone that I don't want to hear any complaining about people not getting to do what they want to do like we had the last trip. Everyone decided to stick with us, and then got upset when we didn't have time to do what they wanted when they didn't A) answer me when I asked what people wanted to do, or B) go ride whatever it was when I told them to. I'm doing my thing, and they can follow or not, but NO complaining!! /rant.

The water parks were a lot of fun, and my niece loves the water, so we thought it would be fun to take her. I know what you mean, or costs are quickly adding up as well!

I finally am making some more progress, though, so updates coming soon!

So sorry to hear about the loss of your grandma ...I was very close with mine and she's been gone for 11 years now. I still think of her often and miss her very much

On to happier things though...

like your Disney trip!

I can't even imagine how much work it must be trying to orchestrate a trip for a group of up to 16 people It sounds like you guys will have blast though! Lovin' the plans!

Thank you so much for that. It's been really tough, especially with all the firsts- like yesterday, our first Mother's Day without her.

Disney trip planning has been a good distraction, my niece was so excited when I asked her if she wanted to go build a dinosaur that she wanted to get her shoes on and go right then! And most of my nephews will be experiencing the Disney parks for the first time and are really excited, so their happiness keeps me in a better state of mind most days. Coordinating has been.. interesting, to say the least, and a bit nerve racking for me, since I like to get things planned ASAP.

 

[lbuzz52]

Popping over from the Oct FB group. I love the picture of your Grandma with her ears. so cute! So your sister has 5 boys? wow!

 

[Alysa]

Love your report.
Sorry to hear about your Gran - mine was my best friend too and I miss her dreadfully.
I love big family trips too - we have done 4 (the most was with 18 including my grandparents) and we are planning another one (only 10 this time) next summer.
Our last big trip was MNSSHP and we had Mulan, Shang, Ariel, Indiana Jones, Alice in Wonderland, Dash, Syndrome, Lightning McQueen, Snow White, Minnie and Mickey. We had a BLAST! I highly recommend dressing up.
Prime Time will be fun with so many!
Looking forward to hearing more!

 

[AuroraRose]

Popping over from the Oct FB group. I love the picture of your Grandma with her ears. so cute! So your sister has 5 boys? wow!

I am so happy I got that picture. She wouldn't keep the ears on for long, and at that point the sun was hurting her eyes so I put my sunglasses on her, and she looked so cute I just had to make sure I got a picture. I am truly thankful we got to have that trip with her. It was really special.

And, yes! 5 boys! I don't know how she does it, especially because my brother travels a lot for his work. They're really good kids, though.

Love your report.
Sorry to hear about your Gran - mine was my best friend too and I miss her dreadfully.
I love big family trips too - we have done 4 (the most was with 18 including my grandparents) and we are planning another one (only 10 this time) next summer.
Our last big trip was MNSSHP and we had Mulan, Shang, Ariel, Indiana Jones, Alice in Wonderland, Dash, Syndrome, Lightning McQueen, Snow White, Minnie and Mickey. We had a BLAST! I highly recommend dressing up.
Prime Time will be fun with so many!
Looking forward to hearing more!

Thank you, and I am sorry to hear about yours as well. People try to comfort me saying at least she lived a long life, and while I am thankful for that no doubt, it doesn't help the fact that I still wish I could hug her and talk to her.

The hubby and I have gone many times by ourselves, but there is just something about getting to share it with others that makes me happy. We find ourselves wishing they were with us when they aren't there anyway because we know they would love something or another that we see, haha!

And that MNSSHP lineup sounds incredible! My mom is changing her mind about making us costumes, so I am on to plan b with it, but either way I really want everyone to dress up and get into it.

I'm heading over to subscribe to your PTR as well, I would love to hear all about your trip!!

 

[AuroraRose]

When Chelley00 posted about her movie nights over on the October FB group, I just knew I had to do a movie countdown to our trip as well. She also linked the Disney Theme Night Ideas thread, which made me want to do it even more. And so the wheels in my head got to turning. I had a lot of time to plan for these because at the time I decided to do movie nights, my sister was in school and wanted to wait until she was done so she could really enjoy them. It was torture waiting for her to be done, but we got through it. We've had three movie nights so far, and they have been so much fun.

Our first movie night was Snow White- Not only is it my mom's favorite Disney movie of all time, but the fact that it was Walt Disney's first animated feature film just made it seem like the perfect choice. Now, there are surprisingly few party supplies for Snow White. Well, unless I wanted to pay a crazy amount of money, but I'm not looking to do that, so paying $9 for a pack of eight plates was not an option. I'm a big fan of finding stuff at the dollar store or on clearance, so we just had to improvise, and I think it came out quite nice for our first go:

We had a red/yellow/blue color scheme for the evening, and I used these "poison apple" rings I made as napkin rings:

This was our table decor:

Apples from the dollar store plus 99¢ fabric paint and some glitter= more poison apples for the table! Add some vases and potpourri, also from the dollar store, and some Snow White figurines, and there we go. I thought it was pretty cute. I also got the Magic Mirror and bird at Hobby Lobby on clearance, which I thought were a nice touch as well.

We had a wishing well and we all made wishes and dropped them in! I made these cards to write our wishes on:


Everyone helped out, my sister and husband cooked, and my mom helped me decorate. It was very much a group effort, which was really nice!

And my niece waited ever so patiently for us to finish:

Being that my niece is two and tends to be a picky eater, the menus for most of the parties will be more for the adults. This was definitely one of those times where we catered to the adults a bit more. My niece had some Jello "Jewels" and Mini Pizzas, and our menu was as follows:

German Brotchen Rolls, German Potato Salad, Cabbage and Apple Slaw, Beer Sausage, "Poison Apple" Punch (Kinderpunsch), and for dessert, Easy Apple Dumplings.

Here is my niece calling everyone over to write down their wishes after she was done "writing" hers:

After this, she called everyone over for a dance party before the movie because she loves to twirl around in her princess dresses. And then it was movie time:

It was a really fun night, and everyone really enjoyed it. My niece hadn't watched Snow White since I watched it with her when she was still very little, but she loved it.

Our next movie was Lilo and Stitch, but I'm still working on uploading those pictures.

 

[Alysa]

Oh my goodness - I love it! You're brilliant!
Did you really make those apples yourself? And I LOVE the wishing well idea!
I am so impressed! I can't wait to see what you come up with for your other movie nights! We postponed ours when we had to go babysit my niece and nephew and they wanted to do the muppets. I may have to steal a few of your amazing ideas!

 

[AuroraRose]

Aww, why thank you!

I did indeed make the apples myself! I saw this tutorial when I was looking for pictures of the poison apple, and we modified it a bit to work better for us. I really like the way they turned out!

Feel free to steal away, though! I've been enjoying all your movie night posts, so I can't wait to see what your Snow White movie night looks like!

 

[oboedm]

Signing on! Haven't read through all the posts yet, but wanted to reply and say I am excited to read more! =)

 

[AuroraRose]

Signing on! Haven't read through all the posts yet, but wanted to reply and say I am excited to read more! =)

Thanks for joining!