Healing at our Happy Place: making GOOD 2017 memories: Mar, May, Aug, Oct, Dec TRs (3/24 UPDATE)

[KathyM2]

My daughter is the only other one in our family who uses the MDE APP and yesterday she was asking questions about our trip and so she pulled up the APP and of course saw that we were staying at the Grand Floridian. She is over the moon about it of course as she has always wanted to stay there.

Well this is an awesome choice and anyone would be thrilled to be staying there!!

Your plans sound fantastic!!

 

[kittylady1972]

Well this is an awesome choice and anyone would be thrilled to be staying there!!
Your plans sound fantastic!!

Thanks...I keep reading great things about it so hoping we will enjoy it even if it is for a short stay.

 

[kittylady1972]

TRIP #2: AUGUST FAREWELL TO SUMMER - UPDATED PLAN

So no big surprise, we already have some changes to the plan. As I may have mentioned, I've been crazy stalking the DVC Availability site for a while now, just trying to find a way to fill that Friday Night gap. Since I'm already having to pay more for this trip than I had planned with flights and rental car now, not spending on a hotel room, even for one night, seemed like a good idea.

And so, I spent my Friday night checking out availability for DVC for that one remaining night. There were a few options that showed up...and two of those were at Animal Kingdom Lodge. Since our plan is to spend Saturday morning at Animal Kingdom and to have lunch at Sanaa, being at Animal Kingdom for Friday night seemed like a good plan. While I would have preferred another monorail resort, this was a good second choice.

And it just so happens one of the available rooms was CLUB Level at Animal Kingdom. We've never had a stay at club level, and we won't be there for very long, but it was a chance to stay and not pay any cash for it. Therefore we have booked it! We've also (well the kids at least) never stayed at Jambo House, only Kidani, so this will be new to us. So what has changed below is in RED.

• WED: This is going to be a crazy day. I'm heading to work for a few hours in the morning. Due to my time off for funerals and illness/treatments, I need to work whenever I can to preserve the leave that I have now. I'm heading to work, then going home to pick up the kids and then back to attend a ceremony for my DH who is graduating from a 3-year program at work. The ceremony and lunch will be afternoon and should end around 1:30pm. Afterwards we'll all head home, change our clothes, grab our bags and head to the airport. We have a 5:25pm flight with a connection (no plane change) that should land us at MCO around 9pm. We'll grab our rental car and head straight to our resort: Grand Floridian. If we arrive in time, MK is open until midnight so we just might hop over there and try to get a few rides in for the evening.
  
• THUR: This is an early entry day at EPCOT, and with so few ADRs this seems like a good plan. We can grab breakfast at our resort or wait to get to EPCOT. We should get in rides on Soarin' at least, and maybe Test Track as standby. We have a FP for Test Track later in the morning, as well as MISSION SPACE and even one for IMAGINATION. If the weather is as hot as expected, I figure we do the parks until early afternoon then head back to the resort for some pool time. Dinner is at our resort at Citricos - a first for us but seemed like a good place to celebrate my husband's accomplishments. After dinner we can try for more MK time if we want.
  
• FRI: This is an EMH morning at MK, so seems like a good time to hit that park. We can spend the better part of the morning and afternoon here, once again doing as much as possible Standby. Perhaps we can head over to our next resort, Animal Kingdom, for the afternoon if our room is ready by that time. This way we can spend some time at the pool there and take advantage of the club food for a bit. We have dinner at JIKO in case the lounge doesn't fill us up. We have FPs that evening at Hollywood Studios so that's where we will head until it closes. With so few rides even open, we should be able to knock out quite a bit with our 3 FP+ reservations and a few other rides.
• SAT: This is an EMH morning for AK and I think we all would love to do Avatar Flight of Passage again and this may be our only chance with no FPs there. So I know we'd need to get there extra early, and so that's the plan to arrive as close to 8am as we can, especially if we had a late night the night before. I have other FP+ reservations at AK: EE, Dinosaur and PW, beginning at 10am. So I'm thinking FOP, then the Safari, then EE and the other rides. We have a lunch at Sanaa which is a family favorite. Perhaps we'll do one more check into our club food options and then head out. That will end our Disney park time, as after lunch we will head out to Vero Beach. Our evening will be spent at Vero Beach.
  
• SUN: This is our Vero Beach day, so really plans are just to enjoy the resort for one one full day here.
  
• MON: Check out of Vero Beach and head to the Kennedy Space Center for the day. We'll spend all day here before heading back to the airport late that evening to catch a 9pm flight back home.
  

So there you have it, our full plans for August. It seems pretty reasonable and it's not like we need to focus on riding everything this trip since we'll be back less than two months later with a large group of friends. Plus we still have a December trip. PLUS I am even considering another trip to Florida to end the New Year, but most likely we'll do Universal Studios for that one.

 

[kittylady1972]

MAY TRIP DAY 2: Magic and Mickey (CONTINUED)!

So when we last left off, we had finished at the Haunted Mansion. We had a little bit of time to kill before our reservation for brunch at Chef Mickey's and I checked the schedule and learned that we would be JUST IN TIME to catch this:

Oh how I love the Muppets...and my family is kind enough to indulge me from time to time. The Muppets Present Great Moments in American History show was very cute. It was just a bit hot to be standing in the sun watching, but we managed to get through it and at least *I* was glad that we did so. We still had plenty of time before our brunch reservation, but really not enough time to ride much of anything on standby with no FP+ reservations, so we decided to just make our way over to the Contemporary and wait out our reservation there.

We did do a quick photo before leaving:

And one from the non-pro:

It was our hope that we would be seated well before our reservation time at Chef Mickey's.

Yeah apparently that wasn't going to happen, but we had plenty of time to chill and relax on their comfy couches:

We are looking tired a bit already.

No worries though, soon we would be able to enjoy some food at Chef Mickey's, and while I admit I had set the bar VERY low for lunch here (we've done breakfast many times, and one or two dinners years ago but never brunch) I must say I was very pleased with the selections. I had been eating pretty healthy for about a month, and I was able to find some good selections to continue my eating habits:

Ok so I don't have a photo of the healthy stuff, but I did have my share of veggies and seafood, all good stuff, before I decided that one little mini dessert like this would be OKAY despite my clear plan of avoiding sugar MOST of the time these days. It was delicious.

Oh and let's not forget that before sitting down we did get our obligatory photo:

Ok so my youngest son cracks me up with that face! This is a pretty good indication of each of the kids' personalities though.

We had such fun with the characters as always:

Bellies full from a great meal, we headed out of the resort. Our room at the Beach Club was ready so it was time to head there! We must have taken the monorail back to the Poly and then to Shades of Green to get our car and at some point we decided to try to locate our brick at the TTC..and had success:

I purchase this brick in 1999 for our 1 year wedding anniversary as we spent it at Walt Disney World that year. It is looking a bit worn now and hard to read but it's still there and intact.

So we arrived at Beach Club, parked and headed to our room. Just LOVE the atmosphere here. I think we had a little bit of time so decided we could do a quick swim before heading over to Hollywood Studios later that night for our Fastpass reservations there. With a bit meal under our belt, we would survive the rest of the evening on Disney popcorn. I don't know that everybody really believed me when I said that, but I was serious!

It was pretty tough to find anywhere to just put down our stuff at the pool but eventually we managed and did a little bit of pool time. Because of my recent surgery, I was not allowed to submerse myself, but I found a place to sit in the shade and put my feet into the pool for a while.

We got about an hour of pool time before heading back to the room to change and then hit the next park. We headed to the boat launch to catch a boat over to Hollywood Studios.

Before we knew it we were in the park and headed to our first ride...Tower of Terror.

DH was having back issues so opted out of riding sadly. The rest of us made out way to the ride, and of course after exiting the study and heading up the ramp we did NOT chose the left hand side like my DD14 suggested, which made her angry...of course. ((SIGH)) Having fun yet?

I'll tell you who didn't have fun...the kid sitting in front of us on the ride as you can see here:

Yeah he was NOT happy when they got off the ride...I've never seen anybody THROW an attached seatbelt before!

Ok so I can't recall what was next, but I think it may have been Rock N Roller Coaster, which DH and I both decide we were not up for doing.

Instead we thought we'd catch the nearby Pixar Live show, and knew the kids would have no interest. So we sent them on their way to ride RnRC and we told them we'd catch up with them after the show.

We grabbed some snacks at the nearby food stand. I was happy to see 3 mini tangerines to go along with my popcorn, though I had wanted pickles which were on the signs but nowhere to be found. We got some good seats to watch the show:

Now I LOVE the Pixar movies...well any Disney movie really, but in my opinion this just wasn't that great. It was okay if it was about half the length. The music and the clips were cute, but just too long to really hold anybody's interest. Several people left during the show and who could blame them. I think the best part was the audience participation that the soldiers did BEFORE the show started. Anyway I got a survey when I got back and I mentioned my thoughts during that so we'll see what happens.

The kids enjoyed their ride of course:

Then spent a lot of time texting us while waiting outside the theater for us to be done. I can't recall if we told them to just find something else to ride and we'd meet up with them or not.

(TO BE CONTINUED AGAIN)

 

[kittylady1972]

So as you can see, I got in another TR Report for May...yay me! Getting my photos relocated and resized has been a challenge and I'm uploading them to the DIS for now...but looking at that last post I should probably resize a few of them. It also didn't help that I completed WIPED out my entire laptop at home as well. Good times.

I made a slight modification to the August plan and so I just updated the post itself. Basically I cancelled our planned dinner at Turf Club and added a meal at Jiko.

I'm struglling with trying to do this trip on a very limited budget, so it seems to make sense to me to take advantage of any "free" Disney food options whenever possible. With our new plan to stay one night at AKL Club Level, I feel like we should try to take advantage of the lounge food as much as possible. That means I still may drop Jiko on Friday, and even Sanaa for Saturday as well.

I'm happy to know we can use the lounge from the morning of our checkin day until midnight of the day we check out. Unfortunately I don't think we'll ever get the chance to do breakfast there, since I don't plan to make a trip over to AKL on Friday morning BEFORE we head to a park and on Saturday we want to be at the gates of AK close to 7am and that means missing breakfast at the lounge as well.

I'd really like to focus on some new-to-us things this upcoming trip. So far here is what I have in mind:

• Grand Floridian Resort: We've never stayed here at all, actually never really wanted to, but my DD does and I'm reading positive things about it so I'm looking forward to our two nights here now. While we have eaten at 1900 PF and Narcoosee's in the past, we haven't tried ANY other food options here. Our plan is also to try Citricos (thank you 30% off dining discount) and of course some of the quick service options here for breakfast and/or lunch. Plus we'll surely make use of the pool as well. I know with August, the heat will probably get to us early so we plan to do some select rides at the parks in the mornings, have lunch either at a park or back at the resort, hit the pool, dinner and then back for some eveing park time.
• Animal Kingdom Jambo House: Many many years ago, DH and I did an adults only trip and stayed at Jambo House. It was a trip for our anniversary, and after seeing a room with no view, we actually went back up front and requested an upgrade to a Savannah View Room. We had to pay for it, but it was so much better. This would be the trip where DH convinced me to take a DVC Tour over at Saratoga Springs, and while we didn't buy into it that day, we did come home and ended up buying DVC and we've never regretted it. Anyway we've had a few stays at Kidani Village in the past with our DVC Membership, but once I saw this night for Club Level at AKL come up I decided it would be a fun experience as well. So first time for the kids staying at Jambo and first time for all of us with Club Level.
• Rides: Well we've done both new Pandora rides but we LOVED FOP so much that we know we want to try it again. We'll try our best to do rope drop at AKL on the EMH day there and get another ride on FOP, but that won't be new to us. However Mission: Space will have the new GREEN experience running this time so I'd like for us to try that. I'd also like to try to get to the Disney Chase Character Meet and Greet which is supposed to be near Imagination now (we did it way back when it was in Innoventions) and I'd like to try to Pixar Short Film Festival also. That should be a nice place to cool down.
• Food: New quick service options at Grand Floridian and maybe even at AK in Pandora since I wanted to try it last time. I'd love to try out the order on the phone app option to see how that goes too.
• Vero Beach: This will be our very first visit here. Though we had to cut back from 4 nights to 2 for this trip due to all the time off I've taken this year for medical treatments and funerals, I'm hoping we'll still enjoy it there.

It's nice that this is another trip where we shouldn't feel a need to get in ALL of the STUFF at one time. We can be happy doing a little time in the parks, hitting a few favorite rides, then hanging at the resort.

Our next upcoming trip in October will be VERY different. There we'll be a party of 14-15 with some newbies with us where we'll be maximizing park time and ride time to try to fit in everything in a short timeframe. Sadly the fact that we are all staying at SOG is going to hamper my abilities to plan out FP+ reservations as well as I'd like to do so, but I'll do my best.

We'll see if there are any other new experiences that we squeeze in for this trip as well.

 

[KathyM2]

Oh how I love the Muppets

Muppets are the best!! I hope to catch this show too if we aren't dying of heat!

I purchase this brick in 1999 for our 1 year wedding anniversary as we spent it at Walt Disney World that year. It is looking a bit worn now and hard to read but it's still there and intact.

That's so cool! We did something like this at the entrance to Epcot in about 1998 I think...I always try to find it when we go. I wish they hadn't stopped doing that stuff because I think it's neat to go back to...

It's nice that this is another trip where we shouldn't feel a need to get in ALL of the STUFF at one time. We can be happy doing a little time in the parks, hitting a few favorite rides, then hanging at the resort.

This is a tough one. Even though you know you'll be back lol it's hard to take it easy and not always try to do a lot lol. But you have a great trip planned!!

 

[Jenny Sanders]

Beautiful family pics! I'm glad your next trip is coming together nicely!

 

[kittylady1972]

Muppets are the best!! I hope to catch this show too if we aren't dying of heat!

That's so cool! We did something like this at the entrance to Epcot in about 1998 I think...I always try to find it when we go. I wish they hadn't stopped doing that stuff because I think it's neat to go back to...

This is a tough one. Even though you know you'll be back lol it's hard to take it easy and not always try to do a lot lol. But you have a great trip planned!!

YAY another Muppets fan! Yeah even standing out there in May, the sun was pretty brutal at the 12pm show but we got through it. It isn't horribly long and it was cute. We do enjoy looking for the brick but don't do it every trip. Agreed that the kids will want to be on the go and get as much done as possible but we will try to maintain some kind of balance.

Beautiful family pics! I'm glad your next trip is coming together nicely!

Thanks! Yes I am super excited about this trip, since last one I was healing from surgery 2 weeks earlier and avoided a few rides out of caution.

 

[kittylady1972]

Oh my goodness AUGUST IS HERE!

That means our next trip is THIS MONTH!

Just 22 days and about 9 hours or so to go until wheels up!

I still stalk the DVC Availability website out of curiousity...but nothing has come up available at all for our one night. Would I drop the Club level room? Possibly if another night at Grand Floridian opened up but that's not looking likely. I have seen NOTHING in a studio/1BR/2BR even show up again so we lucked out on that AKL reservation Friday night I guess. Pays to have NO life on a Friday night!

I've been also trying to look ahead for our October and December trip. We still aren't sure if my FIL will be ready to join us for October, which is good since right now Shades of Green is not available for all of our nights so I don't know where he would stay for that one. Our December nights are also booked, as are MOST of the Disney resorts so far for that same weekend in December. I guess it's Pop Warner week or something and there is a rumor that some of the rooms could open up again at some point. Right now, I'm on two DVC Waitlists for December and I think if Shades of Green opens up again for our full stay I'll just jump on it and book it. However just to have something, I went ahead and booked (GASP!) a non-Disney off site hotel for the same timeframe. It's the same hotel my DD and I stayed in back on our last minute trip in March and we liked it. I even started looking into the possibility of staying at Ft. Wilderness and booking from an outside company that rents RVs and sets them up there, as that sounds like a fun adventure too. We still have time though...4 more months to worry about that one.

Our MagicBands for the next trip should arrive any day now. I went ahead and DECLINED them for our one night at AKL though. I think we have plenty of bands for now so there was no need for more. We'll now have at least two each of the NEW ones plus many of our older ones as well. We should be good.

Definitely looking forward to another visit with the mouse but mostly the chance to try a few new Disney places. So many things to try that we haven't yet...and people can't understand why we keep going back?

 

[piglet1979]

Definitely looking forward to another visit with the mouse but mostly the chance to try a few new Disney places. So many things to try that we haven't yet...and people can't understand why we keep going back?

My mom does not understand why we go back all the time. She keeps tells me that we need to take the kids other places. Which is funny because our only vacations growing up were to Myrtle Beach. I told her that we were going back until 2021 or 2022 and she told me since the kids would be upper teenagers that they may not want to go and I should take them somewhere else. Nope, I am going to have to wait long enough to go back. If the kids don't want to go (I highly doubt this will be the case) the can just deal with it. She just does not understand and does not share in my love for Disney.

 

[KathyM2]

I even started looking into the possibility of staying at Ft. Wilderness and booking from an outside company that rents RVs and sets them up there, as that sounds like a fun adventure too.

What? Who knew that existed!! That would be so much fun!! As someone who knows nothing about camping...this would be awesome lol

 

[kittylady1972]

My mom does not understand why we go back all the time. She keeps tells me that we need to take the kids other places. Which is funny because our only vacations growing up were to Myrtle Beach. I told her that we were going back until 2021 or 2022 and she told me since the kids would be upper teenagers that they may not want to go and I should take them somewhere else. Nope, I am going to have to wait long enough to go back. If the kids don't want to go (I highly doubt this will be the case) the can just deal with it. She just does not understand and does not share in my love for Disney.

Yeah...non-Disney people just do NOT get it...and that's okay with me. My kids STILL ask to go. Yesterday in the car my daughter was just GIDDY thinking about our return trip (and the stay at the GF) and how it was 22 days away. She is 14, almost 15, and still loves it. My youngest son (13) chimed in and talked about how walking in there just makes him so happy...it's such a HAPPY place. Keep in mind that my 3 kids are teens and LOVE thrill rides...which is not really what Disney is about...and we do tons of amusement park visits when possible. Still they continue to love Disney as much as we do which is great.

What? Who knew that existed!! That would be so much fun!! As someone who knows nothing about camping...this would be awesome lol

OMG yes it does and when I mentioned this possibility last night for December...my kids were over the moon about it! There are 3 companies recommended...I think Touring Plans has a writeup about them...and all deliver and setup at Ft. Wilderness for you. I think this would be so much fun and a great way to experience Ft Wilderness. We will look into it more as we get closer to our dates if we can't find anything else. My preference will still be for Shades of Green if it becomes available...but the camping idea is a great backup.

 

[piglet1979]

Yeah...non-Disney people just do NOT get it...and that's okay with me. My kids STILL ask to go. Yesterday in the car my daughter was just GIDDY thinking about our return trip (and the stay at the GF) and how it was 22 days away. She is 14, almost 15, and still loves it. My youngest son (13) chimed in and talked about how walking in there just makes him so happy...it's such a HAPPY place. Keep in mind that my 3 kids are teens and LOVE thrill rides...which is not really what Disney is about...and we do tons of amusement park visits when possible. Still they continue to love Disney as much as we do which is great.

My 2 are just behind your 3 kids at 10 and 11. My son who is 11 will always love Disney. He is like me. Even though he knows that it is not really the magic is still there and always will be. My daughter well she is a little bit more like my husband. They love it but it is not all magic like my son and I. She would much rather be in a pool but she still loves it. I just have to work a little bit harder to get her really excited about it. She is much more excited about the Disney Cruise we have booked. I am pretty sure the more relaxed less walking is a big plus for her.

 

[benjyt]

Enjoying your Pre-Trip Reports! Here's a vote for FW and renting a camper. We've done it twice before and had a great time - well, maybe me and the kids, not so much my wife...

 

[kittylady1972]

My 2 are just behind your 3 kids at 10 and 11. My son who is 11 will always love Disney. He is like me. Even though he knows that it is not really the magic is still there and always will be. My daughter well she is a little bit more like my husband. They love it but it is not all magic like my son and I. She would much rather be in a pool but she still loves it. I just have to work a little bit harder to get her really excited about it. She is much more excited about the Disney Cruise we have booked. I am pretty sure the more relaxed less walking is a big plus for her.

We LOVED our Disney Cruises. Hoping to go on another one in the future, but might have to wait until the new ships are out!

Enjoying your Pre-Trip Reports! Here's a vote for FW and renting a camper. We've done it twice before and had a great time - well, maybe me and the kids, not so much my wife...

Oh YAY! Awesome! Do you mind sharing the particular company you used (you can PM it to me if it isn't allowed here). I haven't done some serious checking quite yet to see if they even have what we want, but it's definitely up for consideration if our other options fall through.

 

[kittylady1972]

How can we squeeze in EVEN MORE FUN?

Are we crazy enough to attempt a Christmas Week Trip?

Both are very good questions right now. Seems during my recent board readings I've come across some dangerous information...that I can probably upgrade our GOLD APs for PLATINUM PLUS APs with very little out of pocket costs. What does that mean? It would mean that for THIS trip we could have access to the water parks also.

Can we even squeeze those in this trip? I'm not even sure.

It also means that there would no longer be blackout dates on our passes..which means a trip during Christmas week would be possible. Well actually not quite since our current passes expire right before Christmas, but I already had plans to renew them at the GREAT DVC rate...which means it is an option. That's pretty unlikely though given my DHs hate of crowds of any kind.

Oh he's going to love our plans of the early morning cattle call to get to AK so we can ride Flight of Passage first thing in the morning!

In any event, I've put together a calendar of our days at the parks, and I'm just not sure we'll fit in a waterpark this trip. My preference has always been to go the last hour of two of the park being open, when the crowds tend to be lower, and we have dinner plans for both Thursday and Friday night which would prevent that from happening.

Besides the plan this trip is to really try to enjoy our resort stays as much as possible since the chance of us returning to these particular resorts in the future are pretty slim. Well we MIGHT return to AKL in the future, but not Club level.

In any event, it's good information to have for the future and we'll see if we truly do end up doing the upgrade. I'd only do it if I thought we would be visiting the waterparks this trip honestly.

I still love the rest of our plans so far and I'm still looking for ways to make this trip as inexpensive as possible. I have a budget put together so we'll see how we do in keeping to it.

I can't believe we are only 20 days away already!

 

[benjyt]

We used Greenberg our first time - got a really nice travel trailer and a great site at FW. When we drove up, the TT was all set up with decorations for the holidays (Christmas for that trip)! It was a little small for my wife and daughter, so our next effort was for a 5th wheel with Florida Camper Rental. This one was a much larger unit. You may want to check into golf carts, which can make getting around and enjoying FW a good bit easier. Also, my kids probably enjoyed riding the golf cart as much as anything...

Good luck!

 

[Jenny Sanders]

Yay! It's getting closer!!!

 

[kittylady1972]

We used Greenberg our first time - got a really nice travel trailer and a great site at FW. When we drove up, the TT was all set up with decorations for the holidays (Christmas for that trip)! It was a little small for my wife and daughter, so our next effort was for a 5th wheel with Florida Camper Rental. This one was a much larger unit. You may want to check into golf carts, which can make getting around and enjoying FW a good bit easier. Also, my kids probably enjoyed riding the golf cart as much as anything...
My
Good luck!

Great...thanks! Yeah there are 5 of us, and maybe a 6th if we convince my FIL to go (though he may not want to "rough it" like that with all of us) so we'd definitely need something bigger. I'm not sure a golf car would work..again with 5 of us we'd need two of them to all get around together I imagine. My kids thought the golf cart they used at Shades of Green to transport us to the end of the driveway was the BEST RIDE EVER of course!

Yay! It's getting closer!!!

I know...YAY!!

 

[kittylady1972]

Let's discuss airport craziness shall we?

More like my plans to possibly stress out my entire family (well some of them more than others...I'd be good) all in the name of kicking off this vacation even earlier.

So I've been stalking the SWA site...and there is a flight that leaves about 2 hours earlier than our current one, with NO connection, putting us on the ground in Orlando (if all goes well) a good 3 hours earlier than planned.

How great would that be? Plus it saves me about $75 and some points...and I'd splurge that money on some cocktails for my DH because he is the one who this would stress out the most.

No I haven't made the change. It may not happen...but I'm soooo tempted.

Here's the deal...we are attending an awards/graduation ceremony/lunch at work scheduled from 12pm-1:30pm to celebrate my husband. We don't know anything about this ceremony...like is lunch served before or after because if it is AFTER the ceremony...I'm okay with skipping that lunch in favor of celebrating a dinner elsewhere...like in Florida...that night instead. This means we could book out of this shindig even earlier.

Work and our home are about a 15 minute drive to the airport, 20 tops and no traffic issues. So coming from work we'd have to head directly to the airport...in our FANCY clothes (DH will be in a full suit) so that means there's a good chance of us being at the parking lot for the airport by 2pm. Shuttle to the airport is usually right there and quick, so at the gates by 2:15pm. We aren't checking bags, so we go right through security...let's say it's busy so maybe 30 minutes tops? We can be sitting at the gates between 2:45pm and 3pm for our 3:30pm flight.

Too much? Probably. If it were just me, I'd totally do it because I can handle that. However with the rest of the crew...well the kids are good about getting through the airport, but the stress level on DH would be CRAZY for this. Surely. And yet I can't help but want to pull the trigger on it.

I haven't...YET...but I'm very very tempted because being at our resort by 8pm or so sounds so much better than 10:30pm to me.

Perhaps we'll get lucky and this flight will still be available when we arrive at the airport on our travel day and the price will still be the same.

I know wishful thinking but I'm all about wishes!