Celebrating 21 in the Most Magical Place on Earth! A Feb. 2020 PTR *TR LINK 3/17

[Cloe Colton]

Joining in! Super fun that your cousins are coming too!

 

[the2ndstar2theright]

Joining in! Super fun that your cousins are coming too!

Welcome welcome! I'm so excited!

 

[the2ndstar2theright]

Hotel Update

Hi friends! I know it’s been a hot minute since I’ve updated this PTR, but I promise I haven’t abandoned you! This semester has been nothing short of insane pretty much from the very beginning, so it’s been hard to find time to sit down and write an update.

BUT I do have news! With the release of the room-only discounts, we are officially staying on Disney property! We booked a room at All Star Music and cancelled our reservation at the Best Western. We definitely liked the idea of having the queen beds over the double beds, but staying on site will actually save us some money (particularly in transportation) and is just much more convenient. And Mom and I are excited to check another resort off our list!

We’re still debating about how we’re traveling down, but we’re hoping to make that decision soon. Mom and I currently have a flight booked, but since we used Southwest points, we can get those refunded no problem. These are our 2 options:

Option 1

On Wednesday, I will drive from school back home after my last class. Mom and I will fly out Thursday morning, and Emyle and Kelsey will fly out and meet us sometime on Thursday. We’ll all fly home Sunday morning, and then I’ll nap for a few hours at the house before I have to drive back to school.

Option 2

On Wednesday, Emyle and Kelsey will drive down and pick me up at school after our last class and then drive to the house. When we arrive, we’ll all get in Mom’s car and start driving to Orlando. We’ll go as far as we can Wednesday night before we stop for the night, and then we’ll get up and drive the rest of the way Thursday morning. On Sunday, we’ll drive back to my house, and then Emyle and Kelsey will drive me back to school. Depending on how they feel, they may spend the night at my apartment and drive home on Monday.

Either option is really fine with us. The major problem is just the cost of the flights for Emyle and Kelsey, so we’re really leaving it up to them.

At this point, we are 132 days away from this birthday bash! Our FP+ day is at the end of December, so that’s really the next major thing. I’m working on compiling my drink/snack list and, of course, online shopping for a cute birthday shirt. ​

 

[Cloe Colton]

How exciting that you're getting to stay on Disney property! I feel like just being on property makes it all so much more magical!

 

[the2ndstar2theright]

How exciting that you're getting to stay on Disney property! I feel like just being on property makes it all so much more magical!

That's how I've always felt, too! We're very excited that it worked out for us!

 

[the2ndstar2theright]

Another Hotel Change!

So, in true Disney fashion, we have changed our resort reservation once again! Mom and I had been checking periodically to see if any other resorts had availability with the room discount offer that’s out now. Well it just so happened that I came across some availability for Coronado Springs at a rate that seemed pretty low. So I started crunching some numbers and figured out that the difference between what we were paying for All Star Music and what CSR would per person wasn’t horrible. So, I called Mom and had her double check my numbers. Since staying at CSR would give us queen sized beds, double sinks, and a little bit extra room for the four of us, we decided it was worth the extra money. And the cost ended up being pretty close to the budget we had originally told Emyle and Kelsey, so it all worked out. And we are now officially staying at Coronado Springs!

We also have officially decided that we’re driving. Now that I’ve registered for classes for next semester, we have a better idea of what those plans will look like and can start trying to figure out the logistics of it.

We are getting so so excited for this trip! Pretty soon we’re going to start talking about our plans for FPs, and I’m still working on finalizing our drink and snack list. I’ll apologize now for being so MIA from the DIS over the next few weeks—it’s getting close to finals season and things are getting crazy!
​

 

[missangelalexis]

Sounds like you made a great change!

 

[CindysMice]

I’m still working on finalizing our drink and snack list.

Ooo whats your drink and snack list? Can you tell I am hungry? lol

 

[lvcourtneyy]

Coronado Springs is one of my favorite resorts! Awesome change. The fiesta margarita at the pool bar is delicious also!

 

[the2ndstar2theright]

Sounds like you made a great change!

We're pretty happy with it! It will make getting ready a little easier, for sure!

Ooo whats your drink and snack list? Can you tell I am hungry? lol

Our drinking/snacking around the world list! It's still a work in progress, but I'll definitely share it soon!

Coronado Springs is one of my favorite resorts! Awesome change. The fiesta margarita at the pool bar is delicious also!

We're definitely excited! Ooo I'll have to remember that one!

 

[the2ndstar2theright]

Double Digits!

Hello again, friends, and Happy Thanksgiving!



I hope all of you who celebrate have had a wonderful couple of days with your families and have eaten until you can't eat any more.

I just though I would hop on and give a quick update, since I forgot to make a pretty major update last week. We are officially in the double digits on our countdown to WDW! We actually hit double digits a while ago, and we are now just 89 days away from our magical birthday bash! We are so so excited and can't believe how fast time is flying!

Pretty soon it'll be FP+ Day, so I'll definitely have another update between now and then. We're spending Christmas with Emyle and Kelsey, which is perfect timing for us to talk through our FP+ plans with them. Until then, I hope you all enjoy your Thanksgiving leftovers, and have a magical day!

​

 

[the2ndstar2theright]

FastPass+ Madness!

Hello again, humans! I would apologize for my extended absence, but let’s face it—that’s pretty much the norm for me lately.



I will say that I am back at school, which just makes my life that much crazier, BUT it’s all okay because we are officially 49 days away from WDW!

Despite my lack of updates, we did in fact make our FP+ reservations right around Christmas. Unfortunately, it ended up being slightly more…interesting than we would have liked. We got basically everything we wanted, but we had one major snafu: there were no FP+ for 7DMT. None. Zip. This is actually something that we have (maybe somewhat surprisingly) never encountered before, so we were definitely a little frustrated. But, we just quickly adjusted to plan B, and everything will be just fine.

So, with that said, these are our FPs for this trip!

Friday: MK

BTMRR 12:30-1:30pm

Space Mtn 4:10-5:10pm

Peter Pan 5:45-6:45pm


Saturday: Epcot

Test Track 11:55am-12:55pm

Living with the Land 4:30-5:30pm

The Seas with Nemo & Friends 5:35-6:35pm


Can I just say that I hate the tiering system at Epcot? It is a serious pain in the butt since the only rides that you might actually need an FP for are all in the same tier… but I digress.

On another note, yesterday was my first day of class, and when I got my syllabus for one of my classes, I discovered that my midterm is scheduled for the day we’re leaving. Which means I can’t skip that class. Thankfully, this only delays us by about an hour or so, so it’ll be fine, but it was definitely a little wrench. That said, I think we have most of our plans ironed out at this point, so I hope to be sharing those soon!

​

 

[missangelalexis]

I'm sorry you couldn't get 7DMT FPs but everything else looks great!

 

[lvcourtneyy]

Glad you got your FPs other than 7DMT!

I agree- the tiering at Epcot is terrible but HS is even worse. Hopefully once all the new rides are open, it'll change!

 

[sheri18]

joining in....we are going in February too...me, DS1 and his family...so excitied

 

[the2ndstar2theright]

I'm sorry you couldn't get 7DMT FPs but everything else looks great!

We were pretty happy with what we got overall!

Glad you got your FPs other than 7DMT!

I agree- the tiering at Epcot is terrible but HS is even worse. Hopefully once all the new rides are open, it'll change!

I feel like DHS doesn't bother us as much simply because my mom and I are ToT or RnRC people (I know, I know...). I'll be interested to see what happens when/if they add the SWGE rides to the tiers!

joining in....we are going in February too...me, DS1 and his family...so excitied

Welcome aboard! That's so exciting! I hope you have a magical time!

 

[the2ndstar2theright]

Our Plans!

Hi friends! Now that we’re just 44 days away from this magical birthday bash, I thought I would share our day to day plans. We’re pretty sure these are final at this point, but we all know that they could change tomorrow.

Travel Day 1 – Wednesday

Early this morning, Emyle and Kelsey will leave their house and drive the 5-6 hours to pick me up at school. I have a midterm at 12:30 (go figure ), but as soon as I’m done with that, we’ll hit the road! We’ll then drive the 2.5 hours back to my house, throw all of our stuff in my mom’s car, and set off for Orlando! We’re hoping to leave my house no later than 5 or 5:30pm, but we’re really hoping it will be earlier than that. We’ll pack food to eat in the car, and the plan is to just drive as far as we can get. We have a few options for places to stop along the way, so we’ll be okay no matter where we stop for the night.

Travel Day 2 – Thursday

Thursday morning we’ll get up and drive the rest of the way to Coronado Springs, however far that may be. We’ll get checked in, drop our bags off if our room is ready, then hop on a bus to Disney Springs. We’ll eat a late lunch, shop around a little, then go play mini golf. We haven’t decided if we want to play Winter Summerland or Fantasia Gardens yet. Either way, once we finish our game, we’ll take a Lyft/Uber to the Contemporary to kick off what we’re calling our Highway in the Sky Drink Around! Since the official Highway in the Sky Dine Around is well out of our price range, we decided to make our own version and hit the various bars/lounges at the monorail resorts. (On that note—does anyone know if the pool bar at the Contemporary is inside the resort-guest-only gate?)

Once we finish drinking around the monorail, we’ll get a bus from MK back to CSR to turn in for the night!

Friday

Friday will have an early start with morning EMH at MK! We’ll get there early for rope drop and get as much done as we can before noon. We figure we might rope drop Space or maybe PPF and then work our way around. We know we’ll have to stop for a snack at some point before our BTMRR FP+ at 12:30. We have an ADR at Be Our Guest at 2:05 and then have FP+ for Space and 7DMT (!) later in the evening.

Funny thing about our 7DMT FP+. If you refer back to my FP+ update, we couldn’t get one for 7DMT. Then, a couple days ago, my mom texts me at like 1:00am asking if I’m awake (which I was because I had friends over). She couldn’t sleep and just happen to check FP+ availability and there were suddenly a bunch for 7DMT! So she changed out our PPF for a 7DMT from 8:30-9:30pm, which works out perfectly for us to still be able to see Happily Ever After. We’re going to keep checking to see if we can get anything earlier, but we’re really happy to have one at all at this point!

Saturday

Saturday is our Epcot day! MK is only open until 10pm the night before, so we should hopefully be back to the hotel before midnight to get good sleep before getting up for Epcot rope drop on Saturday. Our plan is to rope drop Soarin’, then hustle over to Norway and hopefully ride FEA and meet Anna and Elsa. Then, we have a FP+ for Test Track at 11:55, so we might even have time to get a drink/snack somewhere in the WS before heading back to Future World. After our FP, then we’ll start working our way around WS. We have FP+ for LwtL and Nemo later in the afternoon, which we’ll do before doing the rest of the countries. Then we’ll stake out our spot for Epcot Forever at 9 before heading back to the resort!

Travel Day – Sunday

We’ll get up pretty early today to drive back to my house. Emyle and Kelsey will pick up their car at my house and drive me back to school so I can go to class/work on Monday (which is not going to be fun at all!). Depending on what they need to do, they might drive the rest of the way home on Sunday night, or they may just spend the night at my apartment that night and drive home on Monday.


And…that’s the gist of it! We’re getting so excited for this trip, and I can’t believe how close it is!! I think my drink/snack list is just about complete, so I’ll be sharing that soon. Until then, have a magical day!! ​

 

[sheri18]

Sounds like a great plan...I too keep changing ADr's...FP ect...hotels...ugh ...on a regular vacation ...I never do that

 

[missangelalexis]

Sounds like so much fun!!

 

[the2ndstar2theright]

Sounds like a great plan...I too keep changing ADr's...FP ect...hotels...ugh ...on a regular vacation ...I never do that

I can totally relate! That always seems to happen with Disney planning!

Sounds like so much fun!!

We're getting so excited!