How exciting that it will be a first trip for all of you! (Well, I know you said you've been before but not for awhile!). Your family is so precious.
At Universal you have to have butterbeer!
No Animal Kingdom day? There aren't great meal options there, but it's a short bus ride or drive over to Animal Kingdom Lodge which has incredible eats, if you decide to change anything
For the CM situation, I would take a bus to MK and then walk to the Contemporary and back to MK after. Driving to MK is a pain anyway because you have to park at the TTC and take a monorail or boat anyway.
Did pick a pearl in DTD and didn't wait at all!
As someone mentioned, you sadly can't get a FP+ for both Soarin and Test Track. I usually make one for Soarin' and then just go to TT first thing in the morning. I don't mind the wait as much at TT because some of that time is spent designing your car and all that, so it always feels like it goes pretty quickly.
- oh well!
so I would suggest keeping the traders in the pouch, and when you find ones you love, display them on your lanyard with the screw on backs!
Oh gosh, ADRs! Honestly, my ADRs are what led me to the Dis - I LOVE picking out restaurants whenever we go places - I love food, it's a problem! So once I knew we were going to WDW I immediately started looking at places to eat. Now, I am a true WDW novice and had NO IDEA about the 180 day window or that you really even had to make reservations at all!Luckily, my obsessive googling brought me to the Dis where I learned about all things Disney dining (well, not all things) and by the time my 180 day mark rolled around (not too long after my Dis finding) I was ready. I have a 4 month old who does not sleep through the night, so checking in on my app to see if the system was up and running at 5am was no problem! I quickly found that I didn't like the app interface for this and switched over to my computer. Now, I had spent hours on the Dis dining boards but hadn't yet learned about recommended park days, looked at crowd calendars and EMH so they are not perfect but when it was all said and done, this is what I ended up with : (VERY subject to change) : Sunday - Arrival Day Dinner at T-Rex I know this might draw an eye roll or two from dining board gurus but I showed this place to DH and DS and they were so excited. I don't plan to have park tickets this day so DTD it is. I need to remember to watch the walk through of the restaurant on YouTube that I saw someone here mention to prepare DS. I somehow think I'll be roped into a build-a-dino too! I mean it does look cool! Pic from orlandocity.com Monday - MK Breakfast - Chef Mickey Dinner - BOG Again, my dining friends will shake their heads at CM but DS is very excited to meet the fab 5 and I have accepted that the food will not be 5 star! The BOG res is the reason this is still a MK day for us, it's not recommended, (I kind of forgot all about it being MLK day) but obviously I'm not going to get another 6:45 BOG res so we are sticking with it! pic from disney food blog Tuesday - Epcot Lunch - Coral Reef Dinner - Biergarten pic easywdw.com This is kind of my nostalgia day. I kind of remember eating at both of these places as a kid and I think both will be fun for DS. People seem to be split on CR food quality so I'll just cross my fingers. This is also a non recommended park day so I may switch these around at some point Wednesday - HS/Epcot Lunch - 50s Prime Time Dinner - Via Napoli Depending on budget and the way the schedule works out, I could get rid of 50s PT without being too upset but we'll see. Via Napoli was a late addition last week after reading some great reviews. I think if we split a pizza it will also be a fairly reasonable TS dinner. pic wdwforgrownups.com Thursday - WWoHP Dinner - Raglan Road We plan to be at Universal during the day and not use Disney tickets. I am really excited to try RR - The bread pudding especially! pic raglanroad.com Friday - park hopping/DS choice Breakfast - Kona Dinner - Chefs de France This is the day we added onto the trip. I really want some macadamia nut pancakes as well as some french onion soup haha - DHs favorite dessert by a mile is creme brûlée so i figured Chefs would be a good way to end the trip - both of those are subject to change though! pics wdwinfo.com ok that's it - any thoughts!?
Awesome! Pin trading is so fun! I got really into it too! Lol!
Tip- when you get there by the pin backs that screw on, you can get them most places, we lost pins on our lanyard through the day
Quick question for all of my new readers. On Monday, we'd like to make RD at MK - we have a 7:30 at CM - we have a car. So what would be your preferred method of getting to CM and then MK? Should we 1. Do a bus from POFQ to MK and walk to CM? 2. Drive to CM - if we do this should we a. park at MK and walk to and from CM b. park at CM and then drive and re park at MK Thanks! And if you have a better plan all together, let me know!
When I booked this trip, I picked the 3rd week of January pretty arbitrarily. I looked at times when crowds were low and then weeks my parents could keep the baby. It never occurred to me that Monday, our first park day was MLK day. This is good in terms of DS only missing 4 days of school vs 5, but bad in terms of Monday's plan - we're gonna roll with it anywaysWe will have hopefully had a relaxing (and early!) evening the night before so that we can be up bright and early for ... pic from trip advisor My plan as of now, thanks to the responses here, is to take an early bus to MK (will check with POFQ upon check in to see when buses start) and ride the monorail over to CM. Our ADR is at 7:30, hoping to get checked in early and then done in time for rope drop at MK. My plan is to get all of my MK FP+ for the morning so that if the crowds are awful in MK, we can head over to one of the less crowded parks for the afternoon. FP's I'm considering: - Tales with Belle - PP Flight - Fairy Meet - Anna & Elsa (may save this for Fri) We will be starting out with rides like IASW and gauging Grant's tolerance of rides gradually. My guess is we will try the barnstormer or something similar before any of the popular 'big' rides and if he doesn't want to do them, it's not worth spending a FP on 7DMT or something like that. Hopefully we will get him to ride - IASW - VOLM - Pirate's - Dumbo - Peter Pan - Barnstormer (?) - the train - jungle cruise (?) -Buzz Also might do Laugh Floor, and any shows/parades that we happen upon. Def want to meet the fairies and I'd love to do tales with Belle Depending on the crowd level, a lot of this may be done Friday when I'm planning on coming back to MK Grant does not nap (hasn't in years) and hasn't ridden in a stroller since he was 3. We don't currently have a stroller that would accommodate his size/weight. So my plan is not to take one and if that turns out to be a mistake, rent one on day 2. We don't have lunch plans, so I would guess that will be about the time we evaluate the crowd level and decide what to do. If we stay in MK, I have heard good things about CHH so I'm guessing we would swing by there. We will for sure need some down time, I don't see us convincing Grant to go back to the room to rest (and honestly, as few days as we are there, I'd love to just stay in the parks). So maybe a few lazy rides on the people mover and we'll hopefully be back at it. I'm totally up for going back to the room if needed! We have a 6:45 ADR for ... photo from disney and more I'm hoping to catch MSEP and Wishes after - MSEP is only scheduled for this night while we are there so really hope that happens. I know this is a long day so I'm open to changing it as it goes along, I think each day I will plan on morning FPs to allow for afternoon downtime as needed.
Good luck with the pin trading! So far I have kept away from it just because it seems like something I can't / won't do half way and just can't handle another full time commitment
Good luck with the pin trading! So far I have kept away from it just because it seems like something I can't / won't do half way and just can't handle another full time commitment
I know there are a ton of thread/tips on pin trading here on the DIS - I know some are that you keep yours facing out if you want to trade and not if you don't want to right then ... also I believe CMs have to accept all trade requests from children - but I am sure there are others with way more expertise that can give you more tips
