How long since we were at Disney World?! - An Oct/Nov 16 PTR - Updated 10/26 Heading to WDW Now!

[LadyD]

Hello there! Renee (and Diana) here. After five long years, we are FINALLY planning a trip back to Disney World. I know I know five years?!! We can't believe that much time has flown by either, so we're correcting this immediately.

Before we dive into this PTR, let us introduce ourselves.

Hi, I'm Renee. I'm the one who will be writing this and sharing our planned adventures.



My wife Diana (the one hiding behind me) is indulging me in my planning obsession and loves to hear about all the little details and experiences I learn about here. I've been silently lurking on these boards for a while now, but now that we're in serious planning mode for our trip, I thought it was time to start my own pre-TR.

We live in southern California with our 5 fur babies and spend our free time in Disneyland. While we love Disneyland, it doesn't quite satisfy our desire to be completely immersed in Disney magic for days.

A little over a year ago, we were married at the Disneyland Resort. Due to crazy work schedules, we were never able to really take a honeymoon. Also due to the crazy work schedules, we have not had a proper vacation in several years. The lack of honeymoon combined with no Disney World for five years and no vacationing for the past few years pushed me to my breaking point. I hit the Disney World or bust phase.



Look at how happy we are here the day after we were married. We thought a trip to Disney World was just around the corner. Not nearly two years away...

Table of Contents

Who are we: An introduction??
The Details
What are we doing on this trip: The Itinerary
ADRs are booked, so what now??
20 weeks!!! I'm going to burst with excitement!
FP+, Clothes, and More - Less than 100 days to go!
More Trip Preparations!
And We're 60 Days Out!!
Less Than 6 Weeks to Go!!!
Less Than 2 Weeks to Go!!!
And We're in the Single Digits!

 

[LadyD]

A few weeks ago we officially booked our trip! The PTO is signed off, the hotels are booked, our flight there is booked, money has changed hands. Nothing is stopping us!

The Details

Originally, we booked a stay October 26th-November 5th. We're both foodies and really want to experience the Food and Wine festival, plus we're super excited for MNSSHP. However, I spent some time looking at the calendar and started to feel like that just wasn't enough time to really relax and get to enjoy ourselves. Then I also noticed the first night of Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party is November 7th, a mere two days after we were scheduled to leave. Well poo.

Weeeeeeeellll after some serious negotiation with Diana, we decided to extend the trip!!

The official trip dates: October 26th to November 8th


We leave Tuesday October 25th and arrive Wednesday October 26th at 5:55 AM. Yep. We're taking the red eye. I refuse to lose a whole day to travel if I can avoid it.

It took us a while to figure out where to stay this trip. On my one (and only) trip to WDW five years ago, we stayed at POFQ. I loved that resort. However, we were only there for six days and we were in the parks open to close, so extra resort amenities did not matter much to us. Since we're staying twice as long this time and I do not think I am capable of doing parks open to close at the same relentless pace as before, I wanted to look into all the resort options.

The deluxe resorts have many of the amenities I'm interested in experiencing this trip, but I have a little bit of sticker shock issues for a long stay like this one. The value resorts are highly economical for a long trip, but they lack a lot of the amenities I am desiring. The moderates fall somewhere in between. We did a lot of researching and weighing all of our options. Ultimately, we decided to rent DVC points for most of the trip since it allows us the amenities of the deluxe at a lower price point as well as letting us experience DVC since it is something we are considering for the future.

We're going to be doing a split stay with 3 resorts. The first 5 nights we will be in a one bed room villa at Animal Kingdom Lodge and then the next 3 nights we're going to be staying in a studio at Old Key West. The last few nights of the trip we will be staying at Pop Century.

One of my memories from our last trip that sticks with me strongly is seeing the long lines at night for the bus to head back to the value resorts. Just swarms of people. My memory is probably playing tricks on me and making it out to be worse than it actually was, but the idea of waiting in those long lines to go back to my room when I'm exhausted and being surrounded by so many people just completely put me off the idea of staying at values. My wife has many more WDW trips under her belt than me and she has stayed at a few value locations. She swears it is not that bad. I realized I really needed to give the values a chance, so we made the choice to spend a few nights at Pop Century.

If the Pop Century stay goes well, Diana is going to regret it. I'll constantly be planning our next trip to WDW.

 

[LadyD]

So now to the important part. What the heck do we plan on doing during our stay?!

The Tentative Itinerary

October 26th

• Arrive at 5:55 AM
• Get over to AKL and eat breakfast at Boma 7:30 AM
• Head over to Typhoon lagoon for a few hours
• Spend the late afternoon at the hotel pool
• Dinner at California Grill 7:30 PM

October 27th

• Grab breakfast at The Mara
• Spend the day at Epcot eating and drinking our way around the world
• 7:20 PM ADR for Coral Reef

October 28th

• Grab breakfast at The Mara
• Head over to Animal Kingdom for the day
• 11:30 ADR at Tusker House
• 5:30 ADR for Jiko
• MNSSHP in the evening

October 29th

• Magic Kingdom all day
• 8:15 AM ADR at Crystal Palace
• 8:10 PM ADR at Be Our Guest (trying to move that early)
• Watch the Parade and Wishes

October 30th

• 7:30 AM AK Photoshoot
• 9:00 AM Epcot Photoshoot
• 11:30 AM ADR Sanaa
• 1:30 PM to 6:00 PM checking out the monorail resorts (and their bars...)
• 6:30 PM ADR for the Queen Victoria Room at Victoria and Ablert's

October 31st

• Our last breakfast at the Mara
• Spend the day at Hollywood Studios
• 12:35 ADR at Mame Melrose (Fantasmic Package)
• 5:35 ADR at Sci-Fi Dine in
• Fantastic

November 1st

• Magic Kingdom
• ADR: 7:55 AM CRT
• ADR: 1:30 PM Liberty Tree Tavern
• ADR: 8:35 PM Narcoossee's

November 2nd

• Epcot
• ADR: 8:20 AM Akershus
• ADR: 7:40 PM Rose and Crown (Here is to hoping for some illumination viewing seats)

November 3rd

• Animal Kingdom
• ADR: 7:30 AM Olivia's
• ADR: 5:40 PM Tiffins

November 4th

• ADR: 8:00 AM Kona Cafe (I dream about Tonga Toast)
• Typhoon Lagoon for the day - we're considering renting a cabana so I can be really lazy and relax
• ADR: 6:45 PM Splitsville
• Go see La Nouba

November 5th

• Epcot
• ADR: 9:00 AM Parisian Breakfast experience
• ADR: 1:50 PM Beaches & Cream
• ADR: 8:00 PM Teppan Edo

November 6th

• Hollywood Studios for extra magic hours in the morning
• ADR: 11:00 AM Raglan Road
• Magic Kingdom for the afternoon
• Dinner at our friend's house

November 7th

• Park hop day!
• Animal Kingdom in the morning
• ADR: 8:00 AM Tusker House
• Epcot in the afternoon
• ADR: 1:10 PM Napoli
• Mickey's Very Merry Christmas party in the evening
• ADR: Jungle Cruise Skipper's Canteen 6:00 PM

November 8th

• Be sad because it's over and we're flying home

As you can see, we like food. A lot. There is a lot of food on this trip and we haven't planned much else. We keep tossing ideas around, but we really need to commit to some plans. I'm also curious to see what some of the Food and Wine seminars/experiences/events are because we may want to check a couple of those out if we can. Our next round of booking for ADRs is tomorrow night. Hopefully I can secure November 1st-3rd without issue.

 

[Ruth B]

Sounds a great line up and some lovely food choices. Have a great time.

 

[LadyD]

Sounds a great line up and some lovely food choices. Have a great time.

Thank you! We just hope we can eat all our dining and not be too full

 

[LadyD]

Tonight is our second round of ADRs! Here is to hoping everything goes smoothly at 3AM!!

 

[LadyD]

ADRs this morning were very successful! We managed to secure all our ADRs for November 1-3 at the exact times we wanted them! Even CRT!! The only one we don't have is Tiffins since that isn't up yet as far as I can tell. One more round of ADRs, and then I can focus on our FP+.

 

[ariane37]

Joining! First let me say I love your wedding picture (or day after wedding picture)? Congratulations and you both look beautiful
Nice job on the split-stays! DH and I stayed at AKL in January for the first time and fell in love. We were only there 3 nights followed by 2 at the Poly - didn't have the kids that time I wanted to go back there so bad for our upcoming Nov. trip but we also rent points most of the time and couldn't get anything. I hope you love it as much as we do! Also want to say we stayed at AoA once for a couple nights and didn't find the lines to come back at night any worse than when we stay at any other resort, so I wouldn't worry about that until you have a reason to lol.

Now I know you've already made your ADR's for these days but going to suggest 2 things anyway You asked for breakfast suggestions on your arrival day. If you don't want to do Mara that day, how about Boma? Breakfast is GREAT. Some people suggest not making any ADR's on arrival day in case your flight is delayed but we usually do anyway. I don't know what time you want to get to TL but you should be fine with a 9:00 reservation-most likely even an 8:30 depending on how lucky you feel! Also on your MNSSHP day, you have Jiko at 5:30. Do you know they let you in to the party at 4? Party activities don't start until 7 but if you're already in the park you can get a "jump" on things, like being in line for a special character you want to meet or something. Even if you don't want to get there that early, I do suggest being there right at 7 and you may be a bit later with that 5:30 dinner. The party goes quick and there's a lot to do!
Looking forward to reading more, sorry this is so long-winded

 

[LadyD]

Joining! First let me say I love your wedding picture (or day after wedding picture)? Congratulations and you both look beautiful
Nice job on the split-stays! DH and I stayed at AKL in January for the first time and fell in love. We were only there 3 nights followed by 2 at the Poly - didn't have the kids that time I wanted to go back there so bad for our upcoming Nov. trip but we also rent points most of the time and couldn't get anything. I hope you love it as much as we do! Also want to say we stayed at AoA once for a couple nights and didn't find the lines to come back at night any worse than when we stay at any other resort, so I wouldn't worry about that until you have a reason to lol.

Now I know you've already made your ADR's for these days but going to suggest 2 things anyway You asked for breakfast suggestions on your arrival day. If you don't want to do Mara that day, how about Boma? Breakfast is GREAT. Some people suggest not making any ADR's on arrival day in case your flight is delayed but we usually do anyway. I don't know what time you want to get to TL but you should be fine with a 9:00 reservation-most likely even an 8:30 depending on how lucky you feel! Also on your MNSSHP day, you have Jiko at 5:30. Do you know they let you in to the party at 4? Party activities don't start until 7 but if you're already in the park you can get a "jump" on things, like being in line for a special character you want to meet or something. Even if you don't want to get there that early, I do suggest being there right at 7 and you may be a bit later with that 5:30 dinner. The party goes quick and there's a lot to do!
Looking forward to reading more, sorry this is so long-winded

Thank you! That is a bummer about not being able to get the points .We're super excited for AKL having only stayed at POFQ previously. My wife and I are huge animal fanatics, so I think it will be quite a treat for us staying there.

Yeah I think the lines I was seeing may have been for the All Stars. Our trip was at the end of August and they had extra magic hours for parks before and after normal hours during our stay, so we were basically in the parks from 8AM to 12AM for 7 days. Needless to say, I was super done at the end of each night and I think my memory may be making things more dramatic than they were. It is encouraging to hear others have not experienced what my mind remembers

Boma is an excellent recommendation! We haven't tried there for breakfast!! Our flight is non-stop (thankfully) and I'm crossing my fingers we don't have too many delays trying to leave and get in around 6 AM. Thanks for the recommendation!

Yeah we knew the Jiko reservation was going to cut into MNSSHP, but we love that restaurant. We're hoping that we can be at the party by 8. We're basically children and our priorities are amassing candy and seeing the fireworks lol.

 

[LadyD]

Who are we??

So now that I've had a relaxing weekend and I have had an opportunity to look back over my PTR, I realized I did a pretty poor job on introducing the main characters in this story. Let's fix that.

Hello there! I'm Renee. As I said before, I am the planner of these operations. My favorite part of planning is probably my spreadsheet. Something about outlining the details of our trip and color coding it just brings me to such a happy place. Planning WDW trips is probably one of my favorite things to do (even if this is only the second trip I have actually planned).

How did my Disney obsession start you wonder? Well, I was fortunate to grow up in Southern California and I was taken to Disneyland by my grandfather for the very first time at 3 years old. On this fateful trip, I met my first set of characters, Winnie the Pooh and Tigger, where I screamed and cried in absolute terror. I've been hooked since that point. Every opportunity I had growing I went to Disneyland. I was hooked on the immersive magic of the park.

As an adult, I went on my first trip to WDW five years ago and I was absolutely blown away. I love that Disneyland is a regular part of my daily life, but WDW was completely addicting. After that first trip, I've been trying to figure out a way to go back, and we're finally planning it!!! It only took five years, but we're going and that is all that matters.



Favorite Disney movie: Tie between Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin
Favorite Disney character: Donald Duck
Favorite Disney attraction: Peter Pan
Favorite Disney food item: This is a little complicated. Disney no longer serves my favorite food items at DL or WDW. The fried green tomato sandwiches from Hungry Bear at DL were my absolute favorite. At WDW, I loved the mango glazed tofu at Sci-fi dine in. Currently, the the cheese Monte Cristo sandwich at Cafe Orelans is my favorite due to the other items no longer existing.

Diana grew up on the east coast in New Jersey and she visited WDW a number of times growing up, including participating in performance opportunities at WDW with a local dance company. She was actually born in Colombia and came to this country as a child, not knowing any english. Disney sing-a-long videos were instrumental in her learning to speak english. To this day, she is a Disney song lyric master and she can belt out just about any Disney classic tune at any given moment. Fun fact: we still have all of those sing-a-long videos to this day.



Favorite Disney movie: Snow White
Favorite Disney character: Tie between Mickey and Goofy
Favorite Disney attraction: Space Mountain
Favorite Disney food item: Disney cupcakes and macarons

A few fun facts about us for this trip:

• We consider dining an attraction to experience
• Halloween and Christmas are Diana's favorite holidays
• We're both vegetarian
• Diana is terrified of thunderstorms
• We love taking pictures of everything
• We love to Disneybound

These facts all come into play for our trip planning in one way or another. Planning a trip for 14 days is definitely challenging, but I am very excited for all the amazing adventures we have planned.

 

[grrrlennyl]

Looks like you've got a lot of stuff figured out for your trip. Super exciting! I used to plan things when my partner and I were together and we would go to WDW, but I'm taking my first solo trip in November. It was fun to travel with someone, but I'm actually looking forward to just doing whatever I want while I'm there.

 

[LadyD]

Looks like you've got a lot of stuff figured out for your trip. Super exciting! I used to plan things when my partner and I were together and we would go to WDW, but I'm taking my first solo trip in November. It was fun to travel with someone, but I'm actually looking forward to just doing whatever I want while I'm there.

I feel like even though we've figured out some major details for our trip, we still need to figure out a lot more. Planning with someone definitely has advantages and disadvantages. Thankfully, since we have such a long trip we're each really getting to do what we want. I hope you enjoy your solo trip! Having the capacity to choose your own adventure with no one else's opinion or desires to cater to sounds like it could be really fun

 

[LadyD]

Updates
This past weekend, we had our final ADR window to book for and we managed to book nearly everything we were looking for . I've updated the itinerary section with how our ADRs are currently set. I did make a few changes!

• We swapped Mama Melrose and Sci-Fi Dine in meals on the 31st, so now we're dining at Mama Melrose's as part of the Fantasmic package
• On November 4th, we opted to eat at Disney Springs for dinner before the La Nouba show. I was looking at how we had it set up with dinner at Coral Reef, but going from Typhoon Lagoon to Pop to Epcot and then to Disney Springs for the show was just too much. Since that is supposed to be an easy, relaxing day it made more sense to eat dinner in Disney Springs before the show (and maybe go bowling)
• I'm still not sure what we're going to do for the day on the 6th, but we did decide to move our Coral Reef dinner to this night
• We made the decision to spend our last day park hopping and checking out anything we feel we missed/didn't experience enough of/have a list of things we want to buy. I'm not liking that 4:30 ADR for Tutto and I think I might move it to more of a lunch ADR if I can so we can spend more time at MVMCP

We also purchased our tickets for MNSSHP and MVMCP. We will be attending those on October 28th and November 7th. DL has its own version of MNSSHP, so we feel less pressure to experience that event from start to finish. There is no MVMCP really at DL though, so we want to make sure we really get to experience it and are there as soon as it starts. I don't like feeling rushed with my meals, so I do think we need to move that Tutto ADR.

The question now is where the heck should we eat dinner on November 7th?! MK has fewer vegetarian options than some of the other parks (that aren't veggie burgers or pasta), so we're kind of drawing a blank on where we should eat. We've tried looking at menus for places we are not already eating at in MK, and the pickings are slim for us.

Any MK dining recommendations for a couple of vegetarians????

 

[Ruth B]

Skipper canteen gets good feedback from Vegies. Although they are apparently changing there menu but not sure when.
You have to book on day currently as still not accepting ADR's. Sounds a great plan. Enjoy!

 

[LadyD]

Skipper canteen gets good feedback from Vegies. Although they are apparently changing there menu but not sure when.
You have to book on day currently as still not accepting ADR's. Sounds a great plan. Enjoy!

Skipper Canteen is on our list of eats. We could eat there a second time and it would work nicely as a little rest before MVMCP. I hope they don't change their menu!! They had a lot of really good looking veggie eats to try, justifying the two stops in one visit haha. Thanks for the suggestions!

 

[ariane37]

Doesn't CHH have something vegetarian? I'm not real up on that so..........and it's QS, not sure if you only want TS. Yeah, MK is like the 2nd hardest park to eat in after HS What about eating in Epcot before heading over for the party? As much as I enjoy Tutto I do agree you'd most likely be happier getting over to the party earlier.

Now, question about your Splitsville ADR if you don't mind . We're planning to go there for the first time in Nov. and I don't really know much about it. Is your ADR just for eating or is that actually reserving a lane, also?

 

[LadyD]

Doesn't CHH have something vegetarian? I'm not real up on that so..........and it's QS, not sure if you only want TS. Yeah, MK is like the 2nd hardest park to eat in after HS What about eating in Epcot before heading over for the party? As much as I enjoy Tutto I do agree you'd most likely be happier getting over to the party earlier.

Now, question about your Splitsville ADR if you don't mind . We're planning to go there for the first time in Nov. and I don't really know much about it. Is your ADR just for eating or is that actually reserving a lane, also?

CHH does have a veggie item! We're eating it earlier in the trip. Something for us to consider is maybe seeing if we like the QS or the Jungle Cruise Canteen and then eating at whichever strikes our fancy. I don't know if I can handle not having it planned out ahead of time though... haha. I agree HS is a sad, sad park for eating, especially vegetarians. The pickings are slim!

We considered eating in Epcot beforehand, but we want to get to MK around 4-5 so we're ready for the party. If we eat that early, we're going be hungry by 10 PM at night.

We booked just dining for right now at Splitsville. They don't do specific time reservations for the lanes ahead of time is our understanding. You can pay more money ($10/person) to get priority access so you end up being the next party assigned a lane ahead of the wait when you arrive. They do the full menu at the lanes. I've assigned the task of looking into this to my wife, so she is getting more information. What we understand right now though, it will cost $60 for the two of us for an hour of bowling adding the priority access, in addition to the cost of food. We're trying to figure out if that is worth it to us.

 

[LadyD]

ADRS are booked, so what now??

We made one more small ADR change this past week. On November 1st, we decided to eat at Liberty Tree Tavern for lunch rather than the Jungle Cruise Canteen. We'll eat there the night of MVMCP. Why did we change you ask?? This:


(Picture from the Disneyfoodblog.com)

Now we're big on dessert in this house, and when we read about this amazing treat, we had to have it. Lunch has a vegetarian entree (we've heard you can get it at dinner for the price of dinner or basically eat of a bunch of sides at dinner), so we decided it would be a nice fit on the 1st. Plus we're considering splitting the sandwich and devouring the dessert so we still have plenty of room for Narccoosee's that night. I'm so looking forward to this dessert!

Other than that ADR, we're working on changing our ADR times for California Grill and Be Our Guest. We also want to move our Tutto Italia ADR to lunch, but there is zero availability, so I'm wondering if there might be a Food & Wine event at that time??

At this point, we're working on filling in some additional activities for the trip. It is looking increasingly likely that we're going to book the cabana for our Typhoon Lagoon day. The cabana is a pricey option, but it does seem like something we'd find useful. I'm not a big waterpark fan, so I'll likely spend the day lounging in a chair reading a book. My wife is terrified of thunderstorms, so having some form of rudimentary shelter appeals to her. I must admit, I do feel I will need an exceedingly lazy day at that point in the trip and the idea of someone bringing me drinks all day while reading a book does sound quite nice. All signs are pointing toward book the cabana!

You may notice that October 30th is pretty empty right now. It is likely going to be up in the air for a while longer. That is the day I'm hoping to do an in-park photo shoot. We're looking at Animal Kingdom. Whether or not we book this all hinges on me winning a bet. You see, 4 years ago I injured my back and it has taken a long time for me to get to a point where I don't have chronic, daily pain. Prior to my back injury I was very active. I finally feel good and I'm slowly trying to ramp up my activity level. Since I was minimally active for so long, I got way, way out of shape. I lost a lot of muscle mass and the process of getting back into shape has been daunting (and somewhat discouraging as I've faced setbacks). To help motivate me, I made a bet with my wife I could lose 10 lbs by the end of June and my reward would be a photo shoot in the parks. We started this bet about a month ago and I'm at about 4 lbs. I have a month and a half to lose the other 6 lbs. While I hope I make the bet and get my photo shoot, the positive is I'm back to running a few miles and I'm starting to feel strong enough to get back into figure skating (my preferred sport). It is going to be close whether or not I make this bet.

If I win the bet, we're (hopefully) going to do the photo shoot and then I was thinking about a monorail pub crawl in all our finery for the afternoon before our V&A reservation. We need some other activities for that day that are fancy dress friendly. Any suggestions?

We're also considering some tours and maybe even some spa time. I'm not a big tour person. I just don't have the attention span for it. Some of the shorter tours do pique our interest, but I'm still not sure if I want to book one. The ones that are most interesting to us are the animal based tours, but we both have a background in animal care and conservation and we have both worked at a zoo, so we're concerned the level of information in the tours might not be worth the price tag for us. Does anyone have any insight to the tours for the pacing and level of information you receive??

 

[ariane37]

Oh man, that picture of the Ooey Gooey Toffee Cake I'm hoping to book LTT for lunch for our Nov. trip - ADR day is Monday but since we have a split-stay I can only do my first few days then while the rest will be on the 27th, including the day I want LTT. Anyway I'm doing it strictly for the dessert!

Good luck on your last 6lbs! I'm not a stranger to losing weight or chronic pain, both stink I'm rooting for your photo shoot! I think doing it in AK would be awesome.

DH and I have only done one tour, the KTTK tour, which we loved. However that takes about 5-51/2 hours so that may be too long for you..........as far as the information I actually knew quite a bit of it already since I read a lot of Disney stuff but there was enough I didn't know to still make it interesting, and DH didn't know what I knew since he "occasionally" doesn't listen to me when I talk And in addition to what you're told you get to see neat stuff which I won't mention here in case you ever do it . I've heard good things about the Marceline to the MK tour and the Wild Africa Trek tour, which I believe is only 3 hours maybe? Then there's the Behind the Seeds tour over in Epcot where you tour the greenhouses you ride through in the Living with the Land ride. That one is inexpensive and not long at all, if it interests you. It isn't one we've ever considered doing but every review I read is positive and the people have thoroughly enjoyed it.

I can't think of any other fancy dress activities other than the monorail pub crawl which sounds good, but I'll keep thinking! Jellyrolls came to mind but that's only at night.......

 

[LadyD]

Oh man, that picture of the Ooey Gooey Toffee Cake I'm hoping to book LTT for lunch for our Nov. trip - ADR day is Monday but since we have a split-stay I can only do my first few days then while the rest will be on the 27th, including the day I want LTT. Anyway I'm doing it strictly for the dessert!

I wish you much luck with your ADRs!!! I hope you get LTT!! We booked it a few days after our ADR window opened and didn't have any issues getting the time we wanted. Hopefully it goes well.

Good luck on your last 6lbs! I'm not a stranger to losing weight or chronic pain, both stink I'm rooting for your photo shoot! I think doing it in AK would be awesome.

Thank you! I really hope I can do it! I want that photoshoot pretty bad.

DH and I have only done one tour, the KTTK tour, which we loved. However that takes about 5-51/2 hours so that may be too long for you..........as far as the information I actually knew quite a bit of it already since I read a lot of Disney stuff but there was enough I didn't know to still make it interesting, and DH didn't know what I knew since he "occasionally" doesn't listen to me when I talk And in addition to what you're told you get to see neat stuff which I won't mention here in case you ever do it . I've heard good things about the Marceline to the MK tour and the Wild Africa Trek tour, which I believe is only 3 hours maybe? Then there's the Behind the Seeds tour over in Epcot where you tour the greenhouses you ride through in the Living with the Land ride. That one is inexpensive and not long at all, if it interests you. It isn't one we've ever considered doing but every review I read is positive and the people have thoroughly enjoyed it.

The Wild Africa Trek is the big tour we're on the fence about. I'm concerned with our backgrounds we'll end up disappointed. I forgot about the Behind the Seeds tour! I think that one is a must for us. It's short and the information covered is super interesting to both of us (we're big science nerds). Thank you for the recommendation!

I can't think of any other fancy dress activities other than the monorail pub crawl which sounds good, but I'll keep thinking! Jellyrolls came to mind but that's only at night.......

Jellyrolls sounds so cool! We've never gone there before! That sounds like something fun we could do after V&A! Thank you