Hello Disney...here we come! (7 Days to Go!)

[allie_to_you]

This trip report may seem a bit long at first, but we have been attempting to take a Disney World trip now for close to 2 years and there have been many obstacles along the way. But, we are finally going to be going and I hope you enjoy this trip report!


To begin, let's introduce you to all those who will be joining us in this trip report.

Me (Ashley): I am 29 years old, an administrative assistant for an industrial lube oil flushing company and thankfully my job, which is frequently slow in the office, gives me plenty of time to plan my future Disney trips. I have loved Disney since I was a child. My sisters and I went on lots of family vacations as we were growing up and I took a couple trips to Disney for Magic Music Days with my high school choir as a freshman & band as a senior. As an adult, I went to Disney for my honeymoon & 1 year anniversary. This will be the 3rd trip I have taken with my DH and after this trip, our next goal is a Disney Cruise.

DH (Robert): My DH is 36 years old and works as a reservation agent for Hertz car rental (comes in handy when we need a car for vacation time). He & I met online in a chat room in 2003 and over the next year or so fell in love and then got married in November 2004. Robert fell in love with Disney on our honeymoon (his first ever trip) and he loves anything to do with Disney Imagineering.

DS (Jennifer): Besides my DH, my sister is my best friend. Unfortunately we don't get to spend nearly enough time with each other and even though we've tried to convince her to take a trip with us for the last couple years, each time she said she didn't really want to, didn't have vacation time or didn't want to spend the money. Well, she finally caved in a said she was ready to go on a vacation with us and check out all the new things since she went last in 2000.

DGM (Nana): My grandmother, who my sisters & I and everyone else call Nana, loves Disney just like us. She took several trips before we were born and then once we (my 2 sisters & I) came along, she naturally started taking us on frequent trips to Disney, her last trip being in 2000 (she has gotten where she doesn't like long trips as much anymore). Her dream is to one day have lots of money so she can stay in a beautiful suite in the Grand Floridain & take all her family with her.

DGF (PawPaw): My grandfather, a.k.a. PawPaw or Red (by Nana) is not a huge Disney fan by definition. He's taken numerous trips with Nana and us over the years and while I doubt he'd ever just choose to go on his own, he goes along with us like the wonderful, dutiful grandfather that he is and he tags along with all our shenanigans & whims.

Next up...our story begins

 

[allie_to_you]

Our story begins about March/April 2006. Robert & I had a trip planned for February 2007. We had used Magical Journeys to help us plan & book our vacation. It was completely paid for and we were totally excited about going. We had made plans to stay at POP Century resort, go to the parks for 4 days & try out Disney Quest and Pleasure Island.

Seeing that we both love Disney entirely too much (or is that even possible???), we decided that February was too long to wait to take our vacation and we also wanted to stay somwhere nicer and more romantic than POP Century, so we bumped our trip up a month to January and upgraded to the Coronado Springs.

For those who read our Disneymoon trip report, you'll remember that that is where we were supposed to stay at for our honeymoon trip until Disney lost our reservation and we only found out about a week before our honeymoon.

Anyway, wouldn't you know it, after all the planning we did, money problems hit. First off, rent in our apartment complex went sky high, so we ended up having to move. Then, other problems just seemed to snowball from there. We were worried that we weren't going to be able to go on our trip because of money, but we just didn't have the heart to cancel.

With our vacation plans barely hanging by a thread, our 2 year wedding anniversary in November comes around and we realized that we just couldn't in good conscience spend the money on a Disney trip when we needed the money for bills. So, on the day of our anniversary, after much discussion and tears, we called Magical Journeys and cancelled our trip.

We were supposed to go to dinner that evening for our anniversary & my sweet DH was willing to just stay home and let me be depressed, but I told him that we might as well go cause I'd just sit home feeling sorry for ourselves if we stayed there. He asked me why I didn't just wait until the day after our anniversary to cancel our trip, but I just told him that I couldn't have waited. I knew it had to be done and cancelling our trip to me was like pulling off a Band-Aid...if you pull it off slowly, it just hurts longer and I just wanted to get it over with.

So, we cancelled our trip for January 2007 and while it was hard, little did we both realize that it was a good thing we cancelled our trip when we did. Come December (2006), Robert (who is in a wheelchair because of Spina Bifida) had some health problems and ended up having to have a couple surgeries to fix a pressure sore and had to stay in bed for about 6 months. If we had cancelled any later than we did, we wouldn't have gotten all our money back.

 

[allie_to_you]

Let's see...we left off around December 2006. Now, fast forward to around the beginning of April (2007). Due to the thousands of dollars in medical bills we'd accrued since December and on top of all the bills we already had & with Robert being out of work since December, we were left with no other choice but to declare bankruptcy. While it was an extremely hard decision to make, it took a huge emotional & financial burden off of us.

At this time, Robert was still having to stay in bed about 23 of 24 hours a day and wasn't back to work yet. We slowly began picking ourselves back up one piece at a time and were sooooo ready & in desperate need of a vacation to lift our spirits. We knew Robert would only be in bed for maybe a couple more months, so we very tentatively started discussing the possibility of a vacation.

(Robert still stayed in fairly good spirits despite being stuck in bed for 6 months)

We decided that we'd like to go to Disney shortly before Christmas time if possible. For those of you who haven't been during this time, it is gorgeous -- all the Christmas lights, decorations, low crowds, cooler weather -- you can't beat it!

(Osbourne Christmas Lights -- 2006)

We started making tentative plans. We planned to stay at POP century, go to the park for 4 days, try Victoria & Alberts, Disney Quest & Pleasure Island.

 

[allie_to_you]

Well, about a month after we started planning, I found a friend on MySpace that I hadn't talked to in about 10 years (she is the wife of my high school band teacher). We got to talking again & I found out that they she & her family were going were going to Disney World at the end of April & she told me that they owned several timeshares at West Gate Lakes Resort, just a few miles from Disney. She also told me that if we'd give her our dates, she'd let us stay in one of her units for free. The room we'd be getting would normally have run us around $150.00 per night, so this was great. Now, since we didn't have to pay for a hotel room, we had extra money to spend. It felt wiered knowing we we wouldn't be staying on Disney property, but having a free room was an offer we couldn't turn down & we knew we'd still be really close to Disney World and all the fun.

With the money we knew we'd be saving, we started making some new plans. We knew now that we definitely wanted a little bit longer trip and since we wouldn't have to save quite as much money, we decided to move the trip to November 10 - 17th during our 3 year anniverary to make up for having to cancel last year's anniversary trip. We made out a trip itinerary & figured out where we wanted to eat & go each day. Since we would be paying OOP for all our meals, rather than using the dining plan, we knew we wouldn't have any restrictions on the number or TS or CS meals we could eat at, so for this trip, we were going all out.

 

[allie_to_you]

I went ahead & bought our 7 day park hopper passes and had them mailed to us. We got them a few weeks later and they are so cute. We also ordered our Disney Quest tickets & I called Disney to reserve the Keys to the Kingdom tour for us to do while on our trip.

Now, being a faithful Disboard member, i spent time online each day researching reviews for our different restaurant choices, park rides, etc. I started swiping (oops, i mean rescuing) LGMPHC's from the home depot & I ordered myself a Baggalini to use in the parks. I started working on breaking in my crocs & planned on getting another pair, just in case. I also bought several short & long sleeve shirts, found some cool Disney designs & bought some iron-on transfers. I made us several shirts each to wear around the parks on different days.

Shortly before the beginning of May, Robert & I read about Mickey's Very Merry Christmas party & saw that the dates had been annouced for 2007. Now, never having done it before, we were a bit leery of spending $50 each to go to it. I mean, for those of you who have been at Christmas time or shortly before, you know that all the decorations are already up & everyone gets to see them, so we were trying to figure out what the big deal was with the party. Also, we knew that the only date we'd be able to do it would be on the last day or our trip, after we were already exhausted. But, after a lot of discussion & checking out other's opinions of the party, we went ahead & called & got our tickets reserved on the day they were made available to the public. We were looking foward to seeing what all the party had to offer & to see if it really was worth paying the extra money for.

 

[allie_to_you]

Well, no one is reading yet, but hopefully as we get closer to the trip, more people will get interested Now...back to the story...

On May 20th of this year, we hit our 180 mark for making all our ADR's and I was so excited about calling to make our dining plans as this made our trip seem even closer. One complaint I had though was that after waiting for waht seemed like forever to talk to someone, our connection was so horrible that I could barely hear her and by the time I finished making all our reservations, I was glad to be off the phone. I think Disney really should creat some way for people to make & cancel their ADR's online. It would make things so much simpler (IMHO) .

So, for our trip, our restaurant choices were:

11/10 -- Breakfast @ Cape May Cafe & Supper & Ohana's
11/11 -- Supper @ Hoop-de-doo Review
11/12 -- Breakfast @ 1900 Park Fare & Afternoon Tea Time @ GF
11/13 -- Breakfast @ Chef Mickey's & Supper @ Mama Melroses
11/14 -- Breakfast @ Crystal Palace
11/15 -- Breakfast @ Kona Cafe & Supper @ 1900 Park Fare
11/16 -- Supper @ Whispering Canyon Cafe

We had never eating at Ohana's, Hoop-de-Doo, Whispering Canyon, Chef Mickey's or Kona Cafe, so we were eager to try out those places and see how our opinions stacked up to others we had read about on the discussion boards.

 

[OhMari]

Hi,
We have a pre-trip board, and members really like discussing their plans. I can move you over there and hopefully you will get more replies.
Marisa
PM and let me know.

 

[allie_to_you]

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving!

Okay, now that we've all stuffed ourselves over the holiday and enjoyed some much-needed time off, let's get back to the trip report shall we...

The end of June rolled around and Robert finally got back to work from being on medical leave-of-absence for just over 6 months. Unfortunately, his short term disability ran out a couple weeks before he started back to work, so more financial problems hit and while we knew we already had a lot of our Disney vacation paid for, we still had to save all our money for our dining & we had some other bills that had to be paid off. So, again, after much discussion, we ended up deciding to postpone our trip...this time to the first week in February 2008. We figured that the 3 extra months we'd gain by postponing the trip would help us save several hundred more dollars toward our trip & help us gain a bit more of a foothold financially. It was still a really hard decision to postpone the trip since we were going to miss out on Disney for our anniversary a 2nd year in a row. At least though this time we weren't cancelling & we were still planning to go later on.

With the new date in mind, we started rearranging all our plans. On Saturday, June 23rd, Robert & I went out to dinner with my DS (Jennifer). We told her how we had decided to postpone our trip until early 2008. That is when she told us that she had begun to actually thing about taking a Disney trip and how she'd even ordered a planning video. What!?! What's this? You want to go now? Yippee!

So, dinner that evening was spent making plans for a trip that would include my sister & hopefully my grandparents (Jennifer lives with them). The next day, when my DS and DGM picked me up to go to a wedding shower, I checked with my DGM & she said that they wanted to go with us on vacation, so now it was a trip for 5 rather than 2.

 

[allie_to_you]

On Monday morning (6/26/07), I got busy completely revamping our park schedule, meal plans, etc., since we now how more people going with us. Robert & I planned to leave late Friday evening (Feb. 1st) and drive through the night & arrive in Orlando on the morning of the 2nd. Our family wouldn't be leaving Mobile until the 2nd and since my grandparents don't like long drives, they would stop over in Tallahasee, spend the night, then drive the rest of the way to Orlando on the 3rd, where we would all meet up & start our vacation together.

Now, because we had 3 extra people joining us on this trip, Robert & I decided that it would be more fun if we all could stay together, so I decided to start checking into some places that offered multi-room suites(remember, originally Robert & I were scheduled to stay for free in the timeshare my friend owned). We wanted to stay with my family but still have our privacy.

We knew that Disney resorts were out of the question because to get the size unit we'd need, it would cost a lot more than we wanted to spend. So, after much searching, I found a link for Allstar Vacatio nHomes on both Allears & Intercot. I searched their website & found that their prices were great. We would be able to get a 3 bedroom, 2 bath condo about 3 miles from Disney for ony $139.00 per night. That was less that a moderate room at Disney and each family would get their own bedroom, plus we'd have a fully furnished kitchen, full size washer/dryer, 2 full-sized bathrooms, living room w/ flat-panelled tv and it would be accessible for my husband's wheelchair. Super! I went ahead & booked it and cancelled our room at the timeshare. I hated to give up the free nights, but we weren't real thrilled at staying at a timeshare anyway.

Since I had seen discount codes offered through Allears, I was able to get $125 off the 7 night reservation, making our total reservation price come to only $1,050 for the whole 7 nights. Split between the 5 of us, it wasn't a bad price at all.

 

[allie_to_you]

About mid-July, my family got their park tickets that I had ordered for them, so now all we had to do was wait until mid-August to make our ADR's. In the meantime, my DH & I started talking about how we could save a little money on t his trip. We decided that we didn't really have to go to Hoop-de-Doo and that we could just do it on a later trip, so I called and cancelled that reservation which gave us $120 back. I also decided to forgo doing the Around the World on a Segway tour. It would have been fun, and several times I have regretted cancelling it, but since neither of us has been to Disney Quest, we decided to spend some extra time their instead. Also, I hated that my DH wouldn't have been able to do the Segway tour with me.

Well, we finally hit our 180 day mark (again) for making all our ADR's and first thing in the morning, I got on the phone & booked all our dining reservations for the trip. I think I ended up calling Disney Dining back at least 4 or 5 times, changing times, dates, etc. I was trying to get in all the places everyone wanted to eat and places everyone would like. It was so much easier when it was just my DH & I but now we had other people to consider.

The only thing we really had left to do to get ready for this trip was to reserve the Keys to the Kingdom tour. Everyone in my family was excited about this after I told them about it, however, as of early August, Disney was still not taking reservations for 2008.

I decided to try and call again about the 2008 tours in late August and I found out they were finally making reservations. So, I cancelled mine & Robert's old reservation & made a reservation for our group of 5 to do the tour in February.

 

[allie_to_you]

Good morning everyone...it's the start of another long week! I hope everyone had a great weekend. We did, but it was certainly busy. I love the whole Christmas season, but sometimes people just forget to relax and enjoy it. Anyway on with our never-ending tale...I promise there will be an actual trip report later on

On August 21st, my DH & i found out that my FIL was planning on getting remarried and he was offering to let us move into his house and live rent free. He would keep the house in his name and we would just pay for all the utilities and household bills. Robert's sister, who currently lives with his father, would continue to live in the house with us. At first, we weren't thrilled with this idea, not only because it meant losing our nice apartment and our privacy, but mostly we didn't relish the idea of living with Robert's sister. Early last year, she had a brain aneurism and while she had recovered from that is functions just fine, her memory isn't what it used to be so you can tell her some things over and over and she either doesn't remember or she just doesn't listen and pay attention. She can be very annoying and she tends to be lazy when it comes to keeping the house clean and neat.

However, despite our hesitations, we knew the house was bigger than our apartment and had a bathroom that was more wheelchair accessible for Robert. Unfortunately, this is an older house and needs a lot of work and cosmetic changes as well as a major cleaning. So, after much discussion and talking, we decided it was the best option for us financially.

Thankfully, this option to move came at a perfect time. Our current apartment lease would have been up at the end of October and if we had resigned our lease, we would have had to either stay there another year, or else pay a huge fee to get out of the lease.

 

[carissanboys]

Hi Allie!

I'm enjoying reading your pre-trip report. You guys have had a lot of setbacks so I'm really rooting for you to make it to DW in February!

We're also staying offsite, at Windsor Hills and I'm really looking forward to it.

And that's great about being able to live rent free in your FIL's house! I can understand your hesitation, but it'll at least help you get ahead for a while.

Can't wait to read more!

 

[allie_to_you]

Hey Carissa,

Glad your reading and enjoying my pre-trip report. This trip is actually going to happen finally and yes, we have had more setbacks than I could ever have imagined.

Are you guys staying in one of the condo's or a home? Have you ever stayed there before. This will be our first time, but we are looking forward to it. It was hard to decide not to stay on property, but I think it will be just as nice....just hate to pay the $11 parking a day .

When will your trip be?

 

[carissanboys]

We're staying in a 3 bedroom townhouse. It has a Disney theme so that'll help take the sting out of not staying on property at least! We stayed at Shades of Green last time, but I'm really looking forward to having more space this time. I've also heard very good reviews of Windsor Hills so I'm not really worried about it.

We'll be in Disney World January 20-26th. It's coming up soon!

 

[allie_to_you]

On October 19, moving day finally came. Weather the day before had been horrible and by the morning of our move, the movers called to say that they were flooded in and were going to be late. Needless to say, having everything completely packed up, it was a boring day, sitting around waiting for the movers to get there. They finally arrived mid-day and got everything loaded up in the truck within a couple hours. Having never used movers before, I was amazed how fast they got everything loaded. We have a bunch of stuff!

About 3 hours later, everything was unloaded in into the house. Now, this wasn't nearly as easy as loading it onto the truck. Not only did I not have any clue where most of it would go, but you have to understand that we were moving into a house that was already fully furnished and was being lived in by my sister-in-law and my father-in-law. So, the house was already full of stuff & here we were trying add another houseful of stuff on top of it. It was a nightmare to say the least & for me, who likes neatness & order, it was about all I could take.

It's funny now thinking about it, but at the time, all I was ready to do was cry. Our entire living room was so packed, I couldn't even get in it without crawling over boxes. I spent about 4 more hours working on unpacking the few things I could get to and by the end of the evening, I was sore & tired, but at least there was a walking path through the living room and we had our bedroom basically set up.

We've been in the house for about a month & a half now. I have completely finished seting up our bedroom. I've redecorated my bathroom (although it does still need some repairs done to it). I have also done a major cleaning on my husband's bathroom, cleaned out the pantry, reorganzied the kitchen and unpacked most of the boxes. There are still a bunch in storage and some still piled up in the living room, but for the most part, we are settled. Now, we are just trying to raise the rest of the money for our upcoming trip.

I have been selling plasma twice a week for a while now to raise vacation money, but lately, the vein they use hasn't been cooperating so I haven't gotten to do it nearly as much, which has cut out on our money. Wish us luck, we have about 8 1/2 weeks to finish saving.

 

[allie_to_you]

Since we are going to be doing the Keys to the Kingdom Tour on this trip, I wanted to make some t-shirts for each of us to wear on that day. Yeah, it may be corny, but I think it makes for cute pictures when you get a family wearing matching t-shirts.

Here are the designs for our shirt...

Front side

Back side

I bought the t-shirts from blankshirts.com and they came within 2 days I think of ordering them. I ordered some iron-on heat transfer paper from Ebay and I plan on making the shirts this weekend if I have time. This weekend is our church christmas party and I have been really busy helping to plan and decorate for it.

 

[carissanboys]

Love the shirt designs!

 

[allie_to_you]

Well, we're at only 52 days left to go...boy it seems like the time will never get here.

This weekend, it was in the mid-to upper 70's and it so did not feel like Christmas at all. My family & I went to see the Bellingrath Christmas in Lights Spectacular and while it was pretty, it was hard to feel festive when I was sweating.

Well, I have finally completed and finalized all our plans for the upcoming trip. All our ADR's are set and we have each day planned out. Here is a peek at our schedule for the trip...

Friday, February 1
* Leave Mobile, AL at 6:00 a.m.
* Arrive at Disney & Check in at Pop Century
* EMH - Epcot

Saturday, February 2
* Breakfast @ Kona Cafe - 8:40 a.m.
* Animal Kingdom
* Tea Time @ Grand Floridian - 2:00 p.m.
* Check into condo @ Windsor Hills - 4:00 p.m.
* Supper @ Olive Garden
* Disney Quest

Sunday, February 3
* Sleep in
* Shopping with family @ Downtown Disney

Monday, February 4
* Breakfast @ 1900 Park Fare - 8:00 a.m.
* Animal Kingdom Day

Tuesday, February 5
* MGM Day
* Supper @ Hollywood & Vine - 5:10 p.m.

Wednesday, February 6
* Breakfast @ Cape May Cafe - 7:30 a.m.
* Magic Kingdom Day
* Lunch @ Crystal Palace - 1:00 p.m.

Thursday, February 7
* Keys to the Kingdom Tour - 9:30 a.m.
* Back to one of the parks after tour

Friday, February 8
* Epcot Day

 

[allie_to_you]

Last night I finallly got our t-shirts made for our trip. You are supposed to do the iron-transfers on a hard surface and the best thing I had was the floor, so by the time I'd finished doing 8 front/back t-shirt iron-ons, my back was screaming. But, they look really cute though & I can't wait to wear them on our trip.

 

[allie_to_you]

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and New Years. Boy, I sure hated getting back to work, but it was nice to know that I only had 22 work days before my vacation started.

This weekend, I got my Mickey earrings & my camelback hydration pack I'd ordered from Ebay. The camelbak works so great for keeping water cold all day in the parks and its a lot cheaper than buying water.

All our plans are finalized now and pretty much at this point all we can do is wait for the time to finally get here.