For the First Time in Forever...we finally get to go back!! a pre trip report

[AprilRenee]

The only thing I'd be concerned about is trying to ride TSMM standby first thing. With FP+, I've read about waits building right away, though I've never paid attention to it. If you're doing it twice more, I'd take a more relaxed morning and just go meet Buzz & Woody first. This way you won't end up stuck in a longer line and feel rushed. (You could even change quickly if you don't want to walk around as Jessie all day! ) Just my thoughts. Early December is supposed to be a slower time, so I could be nuts. It all looks pretty good though!

Hmm that's a good idea. I'll run it past Andrew and get his thoughts. I didn't think about fp+ making it longer right away. In the past we've done TSM then buzz and woody and had to wait about 30 min. It wasn't too horrible. But you're right, we'll be riding it 2 other times. That would make our whole morning more do-able.

 

[STLMickeyMom]

your HS day looks good--the only thing I see is the meet and greet with woody and buzz. we've never met them there, but I have heard that their line gets long quick. i'd probably just go there first if that's a priority then see what's happening at TSMM. since you have a FP for it, I'd probably skip trying to go first thing, but that's just me.

also, you can do the animation class even if caden isn't napping, if you think he'll sit through it. I read another TR where they took their toddler in and he sat on a lap. we took Hannah and maddie in on our last trip and they let them have paper and a pencil and try to draw along. if you really want to do the class, I'd take him in.

also, you probably know better then I do cuz I haven't been paying attention, but I know at some point last month they did a week or so of only letting you in for TSMM if you had a FP. did they change that back?

I know you'll have a great day whatever you do--HS is my second fave park!

 

[AprilRenee]

your HS day looks good--the only thing I see is the meet and greet with woody and buzz. we've never met them there, but I have heard that their line gets long quick. i'd probably just go there first if that's a priority then see what's happening at TSMM. since you have a FP for it, I'd probably skip trying to go first thing, but that's just me.

also, you can do the animation class even if caden isn't napping, if you think he'll sit through it. I read another TR where they took their toddler in and he sat on a lap. we took Hannah and maddie in on our last trip and they let them have paper and a pencil and try to draw along. if you really want to do the class, I'd take him in.

also, you probably know better then I do cuz I haven't been paying attention, but I know at some point last month they did a week or so of only letting you in for TSMM if you had a FP. did they change that back?

I know you'll have a great day whatever you do--HS is my second fave park!

Thanks! Yeah, I'm thinking we are going to just see how things go that morning...we'll plan to head to Buzz and Woody first...however if they open the park early (last time we went in around 8:45) and we can ride TSM before 9, then we'll go for that. If they don't open til 9 then we'll head straight to Buzz and Woody.

I think that TSM FP thing was just a test and it stopped. I'm like 99% sure. Maybe Andrea can tell us when she gets back?

Oh I also killed off lights motors action cause andrew said he didn't care and I definitely don't care and that opened up like an hour of our afternoon so its all looking much more manageable now.

Epcot day will be coming up soon

 

[AprilRenee]

Ok updated HS plan...Basically we killed LMA which opened up the afternoon, and we're going to play the morning by ear. If they open early (8:45) we will ride TSM then go to Buzz and Woody, otherwise we will start with Buzz and Woody and go from there.


And THEN we have Epcot...let me know what you think! And yes, we do need to ride Soarin 100 times... We might kill the first one and only ride during lunch/naptime. Basically, I'd go ride while Andrew and Caden ate lunch, then Andrew would ride while I got lunch and put Caden to sleep for his nap.
In the morning, one of us would chill with Caden at the Nemo aquariums then the other would ride living with the land with Caden or take him to explore. That one is more about what we're feeling at the moment.



Next I should probably tackle MK...I'm scared to do it cause there's SO much to ride at MK and I know we can't fit it all in
I'm thinking I might just need to pull the touring plan for small children from touringplans.com and just follow their plan and skip the things we want to skip. We will have our first night to ride our VERY favorites (but no adv. FP cause we will be doing early pick up for our package tickets. We can make day-of FP but won't be arriving til 6pm ish...so we'll see how it goes)
Then we have 6 hrs on our departure day to hit anything we didn't make it to on our full day. So I could probably stop worrying about it lol

 

[AprilRenee]

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[Jackiemarie21]

I think your plans look pretty good! I always have the hardest time planning out my day like that. I just start thinking, if this happens well then we might do that or if we happen to be in this area, then we might change this plan. My head starts spinning and before I know it, I have moved on. I am crazy..I know.

My one piece of advise for you, is that going with a kiddo is a very different experience. Sometimes they get really into some you never even noticed before. That is where the "magic" really happens, when you see it through their eyes. Make sure you are too married to your plans so you can let those little magic moments slip into your trip.

 

[Dugette]

Hey, April. Reading your PTR while munching on pie in the middle of the night in Hawaii.

Just a brief comment now and I'll try to be a better responder when I get back.

For DHS, you have the non-baby-swap-rider walking through One Man's Dream: if I remember right, they don't allow strollers in there, so you might have to change that up.

Also, very much agree with what Jackie said about needing to be flexible not so much for toddler issues, but for toddler-discovering-new-things-and-loving-it!

Oh, also, was going to mention that Touring Plans lets you customize/optimize a plan too. So, you can plug in your must-dos and it will arrange them and give you an idea how long it will take (you can enter your FP+ too). I used that a lot when trying to figure out how to cram in tons of things on the weekend trip in August.

 

[AprilRenee]

Lol Dugette! Hope your enjoying your pie! I'm loving seeing your pics on fb!

To answer both of you, yes I'm assuming this plan will fall to pieces and for the actual trip I'll be removing the times before I print it out so that I don't feel the need to "be on time." I'll only keep adr and fp+ times in there. That will help me stay flexible mentally. So basically we'll just follow the plan in a "ok we're done with that super fun thing, where are we heading next?" kinda way.

Thanks for the heads up about one man dream. That's super dumb! I was looking forward to enjoying that without chasing a toddler! ugh.

And Dugette I used touring plans to help me make these plans but they don't have character meets in their touring plans so they kept screwing up my HS day so I got mad and threw them out. Lol. I used them for AK and EPCOT though (and to figure out how long each step would take at HS)

 

[AprilRenee]

Update...probably will be another one tonight. I think I'll work on our MK day tonight. I tried cadens Peter Pan costume shirt on him from last year and VICTORY!! A year later and it fits!! I'm SOOOOO happy to get a second year out of it and use it for our trip!! And THEN....I made Caden a Flynn Rider costume this week (for our trip) and Jackiemarie21 and I had an adorable photoshoot with our little ones!! Flynn Rider and Rapunzel!! We had so much fun and the kids were just SO cute together!! So those two costumes along with his buzz costume from Halloween will be our Disney trip costumes! So happy to have them done and that they turned out so well!

 

[Jackiemarie21]

Ahhhh! I love it! They are so stinkn cute together! I cant get over how much Caden looks like a "little man" dressed as Flynn!
I also love that the peter pan costume still fits! Your trip costumes are going to be sooooo cute!

 

[STLMickeyMom]

I adore those pictures! so super cute!

I think your epcot plans look good. epcot is hard for me to plan for some reason, so I think however you can work it is good. have fun on soarin! we never do that ride, it's just not for us, but I know lots of people love it.

 

[THiiNKTiiNKx0]

Omgosh!!! Those pictures are beyond adorable <3 You two have beautiful children and this photo shoot makes it even better !!

 

[AprilRenee]

Thanks everyone

Felt like we needed an update here...It's been a busy couple of weeks with work stuff so I've kinda set aside my disney planning. BUT I've started thinking about some planning aspects again.

First a little pic update...we just got home from seeing Big Hero 6!


We loved it. Way better than I expected! but NOW....I have a feeling we're gonna need to meet BayMax and Hiro. lol Dang it! I just don't even know what we're doing at HS. I think we'll stick with our current plan and when it all falls to pieces we'll just go meet Baymax. The more I think about it the more I'm thinking we'll need that second day at HS. Which is funny cause everyone here seems to think HS is a half day now cause of how much closed down. The problem is that there are a lot of character meets and they're all characters caden knows and loves. So we'll just see how it goes.




Finished paying off our trip the other day. I had it all saved up...not sure why I didn't pay it before our final date LOL
BUT because I waited I ended up with $400 on my disney rewards card from our disney credit card. I was counting on about $100 from that card so I ended up with about $300 left in my disney savings account. So now I need to figure out how much we'll need for tips, food on our first and last day (no dining plan), and souvenirs. I'll probably pull from that $300 to cover the cost of paying my brother to live at my house with my dogs lol




Lets discuss souvenirs...

I know we want an ornament...lets call that $20ish
We'll want to get Caden something...or 5 somethings...I'm thinking at least a shirt ($20), and probably some sort of toy...I'm expecting a monorail die cast toy ($15) EVEN better if they have one that fits on those wooden brio tracks. Yep. He'd love that. I'll probably add in another $10-15 for something else for him that he just can't live without. (lets be honest, he's gonna get a plush even though I hate plushes lol) Oh pooh! We also wanted to get him a potato head box full of stuff ($20) and let him pick out his own ear hat ($20?)
Ok so Caden is gonna end up at $100 for souvenirs lol

I'd like a t-shirt ($25) probably...or a purse?
Andrew will likely want a shirt ($25)
So we'll need about $150-175 for souvenirs I guess (gives us some wiggle room)

Told my brother we'd pay him $125 to live at our house for the week and keep our dogs

And then we'll need about $25-30 for our first night (eating at Art of Animation food court) and then I'm thinking $20 for lunch the last day. I have a feeling we'll have at least 1 counter service credit left or even just snacks but we'll just need to supplement whatever is leftover from our dining plan.

Then we'll need about $10-15 total in $1 bills for tips at the airport/magical express. Plus maybe $20 for lunch on the way there (or maybe we can just take sandwiches to eat in the airplane...cause we'll probably be hungry when we arrive and won't want to stop for food at MCO) and $20 for dinner on the way home (after arriving at the airport)

So I think I'll need about $375 total for all the incidentals...oh boo! tips!

Ok...did some math based on 20% tip...lol all of our meals are either buffets or a set price. (whispering canyon we'll be doing the skillet)
$10 for H&V
$17 for Chef Mickey
$12 for Whispering Canyon
$15 for 'Ohana
$16 for Boma
Total needed for tips: $70ish
cool

So that puts me at needing $475 for incidentals. I already have $300 something. I'll just set aside a little more to fill out the rest needed.

 

[THiiNKTiiNKx0]

All the incidentals always seem to add up so quickly....but yayyyy for extra money! A little bit of pixie dust before your trip even starts

 

[AprilRenee]

All the incidentals always seem to add up so quickly....but yayyyy for extra money! A little bit of pixie dust before your trip even starts

Yeah!

And I knew there would be incidentals. Didn't think it would be almost $500 lol. But oh well! We haven't been in 3 years and I am just excited to go!!

 

[Dugette]

I'm getting so excited for you that your trip is getting closer! I'm a bit jealous - I know we just had a great trip to Aulani, but I keep finding myself wanting to whisk Izzy off to WDW again - the older (and more talkative) she gets, the more fun I see her having! So, I think Caden will just have a blast. I would imagine he knows the characters well and will get a lot out of all the experiences awaiting him. Oh, and you guys will like it too.

Yeah, incidentals. Blah. I was figuring that up the other day for our May 2015 trip and it's crazytown. Amazing how all the little things add up. I did the same for Aulani and I think I did okay in my forecasting, but general rule of thumb is take whatever you think is reasonable and add a random chunk of money to it.

Glad you had so much in Disney Visa Rewards. That's a significant bonus to your spending money! You must run a ton of theater stuff through that card to get so much - good work!

Oh, and glad you all enjoyed the movie! Have you taken Caden to a movie in the theater before? Something we have yet to do with Izzy, so just curious.

 

[AprilRenee]

I'm getting so excited for you that your trip is getting closer! I'm a bit jealous - I know we just had a great trip to Aulani, but I keep finding myself wanting to whisk Izzy off to WDW again - the older (and more talkative) she gets, the more fun I see her having! So, I think Caden will just have a blast. I would imagine he knows the characters well and will get a lot out of all the experiences awaiting him. Oh, and you guys will like it too.

I'm SOOOOOO excited!!! I was pretty jealous when you were there and thinking "oh man caden would have so much fun at this age" but even though I'm sure he WOULD have had fun, now I'm glad we waited (since it'll be a once every few years kinda trip). I just KNOW he's going to love it. He yells out "The Castle!!" at the beginning of every disney movie. A few days ago we were at a friend's musical and the lead in the musical was wearing a purple dress with a long blonde braid and he goes "wow! Punzel!!" and then later something bad happened to her and he yelled out "oh no!!! Punzel!!" LOL
And yes, he knows SO many characters now. So EITHER he's going to have a blast meeting them (which I think will be the case) or he'll get really star struck (which may happen with a few). But he loves Santa and any mascot we've ever met so I'm thinking we'll be good!

Yeah, incidentals. Blah. I was figuring that up the other day for our May 2015 trip and it's crazytown. Amazing how all the little things add up. I did the same for Aulani and I think I did okay in my forecasting, but general rule of thumb is take whatever you think is reasonable and add a random chunk of money to it.

LOL yeah, I was kinda trying to be generous with most of my guesses...and then I'll probably round up to $500 just to be safe.

Glad you had so much in Disney Visa Rewards. That's a significant bonus to your spending money! You must run a ton of theater stuff through that card to get so much - good work!

Yeah, we usually put $5-6000 on it each year just with shows. Plus I've been paying my health insurance with it each month and paying it off right away. BUT what really helped was I had some referral cards that came in the mail. So I posted on FB on my mom's group and my Jan 2015 disney trip group and had several people want one. For each person who applied for and used their card, I got $100 for referring. I can only get a bonus for 3 people but I sent the cards out to 5-6 people. One person so far has fulfilled their part of it. So I had $100 on there just for that! I'm hoping the other 2 come thru on the next billing cycle! *fingers crossed*

Oh, and glad you all enjoyed the movie! Have you taken Caden to a movie in the theater before? Something we have yet to do with Izzy, so just curious.

Yeah we actually took him to Frozen last year and Planes Fire and Rescue this summer. So he's gone to a few. He sits at home and will usually watch a whole movie (depending on his mood and how familiar he is with a movie. Sometimes he just plays and checks in occasionally). But he's done a great job all 3 times. The last 2 movies he sat in my lap the whole time but this one he sat in his own seat for the first 1/3 or so. It's been a good experience each time. We did talk in the car on the way there and discuss how to behave and that we have to sit and be quiet while we watch. He does really well when he knows what's expected.

 

[Jackiemarie21]

I just can't believe how close you are getting! Your ticker says 2 months today, it's getting real! And it's paid off, even better!

I hate thinking about the incidentals, it really adds up quickly! But it's all worth it! And yes, you need some cushion for those, I have to have it moments.

I am glad you enjoyed big hero 6. I had no interest in it at all, but I have seen several great reviews, so maybe we should check it out!

 

[AprilRenee]

I just can't believe how close you are getting! Your ticker says 2 months today, it's getting real! And it's paid off, even better!

I hate thinking about the incidentals, it really adds up quickly! But it's all worth it! And yes, you need some cushion for those, I have to have it moments.

I am glad you enjoyed big hero 6. I had no interest in it at all, but I have seen several great reviews, so maybe we should check it out!

Yeah! It's actually even closer cause apparently I never changed the date on that ticker lol. We're at 1 month, 1 week, and 3 days!

Big Hero 6 was definitely worth seeing. I really had no interest either, but Andrew wanted to see it and I wanted to have a fun family day and it ended up being really good.

 

[AprilRenee]

I'm totally freaking out!!! LOL Our trip is only 35 days away!! And in those 35 days we have Christmas and then a trip to Kansas to visit Andrew's family for the holidays (getting home the evening of the 2nd, Andrew will go to work on the 3rd, and then we leave the morning of the 4th)!!

So really my trip is like 25 days away cause we'll be busy from Christmas eve til the day before our trip.


So suddenly I feel like I gotta get a move on and start gathering things to pack and getting ponchos etc etc. So if you have any "must have" items for traveling with a toddler that I should add to my list, please pass them my way!!



But in happier, less freaking-out-y news, we went to Wild Lights at the zoo and they randomly had an Elsa there. Now I usually avoid badly costumed Elsas...however, I wanted to see how Caden would do. It was fantastic. I asked if he wanted to meet Elsa and he nodded excitedly So we headed over there, waited for 1 kid to finish, and then I said he could get up and go see her. He just jumped out of his stroller and headed right over. Then happily stood for a pic. We're gonna have SO MUCH FUN on this trip!!!