How To Make A Sister Jealous, Our Anniversary Trip Around The World!! w/Pics

[SleepingBeautyDreamr]

Cast

Me

DH

DSIS (my sister)

One day DH turned to me and said lets go to Disney World for our anniversary this year. Me having been twice in my life with the last time 20 years ago said “Ok” all the while jumping up in down inside. We knew we would be getting back a decent tax return so we planned to just use the money from it.

So we start looking at Disney’s web site and start thinking about dates. Our anniversary is October 26 which is in the middle of the week this year. We decide finally on October 23 to October 29. Next we look at which resort we want to stay at. Since DH has never been to the World and I have only stayed off property in the past we were determined to stay on property this time. So let’s see…… Deluxe were out of the question since we are on somewhat of a budget, Moderate was still a bit more than we wanted to pay if we were to have enough spending money while in the parks so we looked at the Value resorts. Now this was not that hard of a decision once we saw some of the virtual tours. I am a big Disney fan and love the animated features so it had to be All Star Movies that we stayed at.

Ok we have the dates and the location decided on now just to decide on the park tickets. Now having been their twice before I knew that in order to truly enjoy the Magic Kingdom and Epcot (Animal Kingdom and MGM had not been built yet when I was last there) you needed at least a day and a half for each park. So since there are 4 main parks I naturally insisted that we do a 6 day ticket. This would give us two days in MK and two in Epcot. Again since I had never been to the other two I was guessing by reading the list of attractions that we would be satisfied with one day each at them.

Now that we have decided on number of tickets as well as dates and resort location it is time to book. We put down the deposit required and figure the rest will be paid once we receive our tax return. Now let me point out we decided not to go with Park Hopper, Water parks or the Disney Dining plan at this time. We didn’t know anything about the dining plan and we figured if we change our mind later about the Park Hopper and Water Parks we could add them on when we got to the resort.

Finally the day arrives when we get our tax refund. So as soon as DH puts it in the bank we are online making the final payment to Disney.


Next Up: I get to go twice and making our ADR’s


Chapter 1 Oh How To Make A Sister Jealous, Our Anniversary Trip Around The World!!
Chapter 2 I get to go twice and making our ADR’s
Chapter 3 Passporter? Is it worth it to get the deluxe?
Chapter 4 “Can I have a Baggallini too?” And “You want me to wear ugly shoes?” Chapter 5 The Trouble With Iron On Transfers
Chapter 6 New Luggage Woo Hoo or so we think
Chapter 7 We Are On Our Way
Chapter 8 Our First Day At The Resort

 

[SleepingBeautyDreamr]

I get a phone call from DSIS asking me to go to Disney with her in September (See my other TR about that - ‘What Do You Need Me To Do?’). As soon as DH got home I told him the news and the fact that Dad was going to pay for that trip for me since I would be going to help baby-sit. DH of course was a bit jealous (can’t blame him) because I get to go twice in one year. Now with two trips to plan I really start to get into the swing of things. DSIS sent me a link to the Disboards and that got me started on all kinds of planning.

I start swiping LGMHPC’s from Home Depot, buy things I have never thought of owning before like a Baggallini, Crocs (always thought they were ugly till now) and t-shirts to put Disney iron on transfers on. I find myself also posting like a mad woman at times to learn a secret handshake just in case I should meet a fellow DISer while at WDW. DH starts to look at me like I have gone over the edge (but he is highly amused by it as he can’t stop laughing at me).

Now I think I should point out that DH is normally the one who wants to plan everything. This trip though he decided to follow my rule and not plan a thing. Little did he know his sweet little wife was going to pull a switch on him. I , the one who never wants to plan our vacations preferring to do things spontaneously, have started to plan out all kinds of things. First thing was where we would eat for our anniversary. This took some talking to DH about as his thought is how will I know what I will want to eat 2 months from now? After many explanations as to what it might be like if we don’t have ADR’s he finally relented and let me choose. So I call and get us a late ADR for Le Cellier. I then start thinking that maybe we should get some ADR’s for the rest of our stay. Again I have to convince DH this is a good thing as some places book up fast and we might not get to eat at the restaurants we would like if we don’t have an ADR.

While we are discussing this we also decide to add another night onto our stay as well as the Disney Dining Plan, Park Hopper and Water Parks and More options. Now we had already paid off our stay up to this point so this means we now have to pay an additional $800+ by the same date we originally had to pay it off by. Ok no problem. DH is finished POST (police academy in LA) so he is back to working overtime. We should be able to do it. DH makes the call and with in minutes we have an extra night plus all the extras. I of course start to get immediately to work on deciding where our other ADR’s will be. Decisions, decisions, I end up with a list of 14 restaurants and only 7 TS dinners on the dining plan. Now I had to start narrowing it down. Since Le Cellier was already scheduled that left me with needing to decide on 6. DSIS and I were going to be going to a few places while in September so I decided to not do those exact meals for October. Liberty Tree was one of them but since we were going to do it for dinner I decided I really wanted to go there for lunch one day. I remember from years past that the sandwiches were really good. So that took care of another one. 5 more ADR’s to decide on. Even though DH and I would be going without any children along (DD lives with her mother during the school year) I really wanted to do some character dining. I picked out a few and decided I would see which ones I could get. We also love German cooking and seafood so The Living Seas and the Biergarten were a must. Another one I really wanted to do was the Rose and Crown pub but I had heard that getting dinner there was hard as many people like to eat there so they can see the Illuminations from the patio. So lunch it is. Now that I have a smaller list I decided to call the ADR line and set them up. Here is what I ended up with: dinner Sunday at 1900 Park Fare (with Cinderella), lunch Monday at Rose and Crown Pub, lunch Tuesday at Liberty Tree Tavern, lunch Wednesday at Crystal Palace (with Winnie the Pooh and friends), Thursday is our anniversary dinner at Le Cellier, Friday is dinner at the Biergarten and Saturday is dinner at the Living Seas. I am proud of myself for the Living Seas one as there were only two ADR’s left for that night and I snagged one. When DH got home he (silly man) gave me a list of the restaurants he thought were a must (3 in all) and wouldn’t you know it but the ones he asked for were on my list. He should have known I would take care of it properly. He did grump a little about the character dining but all I had to do was give him some puppy dog eyes and that was the end of that.

Next up: Passporter? Is it worth it to get the deluxe?

 

[SleepingBeautyDreamr]

DSIS one day told me that she received the Passporter that she had ordered and thought it was a great trip planning tool. So I decided to look into it. I discovered that they had two versions of it. The regular one like DSIS got is a spiral bound book and the Deluxe is the same book but set into a 3 ring leather like binder. After careful consideration (even posting a question on the Disboards as to which others recommended) DH and I decided to get the Deluxe. Our reasons are as follows. We are already planning a trip next summer to take DD and will probably return again many times over the years to come. If we had gotten the regular we would have to buy a whole new book each time. Getting the Deluxe we only have to get refills for it. Now a whole new set of refills costs the same as the regular book but if we go more than once in a year (which we may do at some time) we would not need to order a whole new set, just the pockets. Or we may not feel the need to get the text pages every year (again just getting the pockets) as some things don’t change all that often. Plus we like the idea of being able to add loose leaf paper or take stuff out if needed. So in the end we did decide it was worth the extra money to get the Deluxe. One bonus we did find out is if you order directly from the people who make it they give you a discount on future orders by way of an email newsletter coupon.

Now with all this planning I am doing DH has been looking at me like I have transformed into some strange being from another planet. I can just imagine he is thinking “Who are you and what have you done with my wife?” But I can honestly say I am not the only one enjoying all the planning. He asked me to get him a Birnbaum Official WDW guide book which of course I did. It did not take him long to read the entire thing and put color coded tabs to mark things that were important to him. I would say at this point he is definitely hooked.

Up next: “Can I have a Baggallini too?” And “You want me to wear ugly shoes?”

 

[OhMari]

Oh how to make a sister jealous,

You never really said how you made your sister jealous.

Sounds like you had great plans, how were all your dining expectations?

 

[SleepingBeautyDreamr]

You never really said how you made your sister jealous.

Sounds like you had great plans, how were all your dining expectations?

Oh believe me the jealous part is yet to come (during the actual trip ). All of the dining expectations lived up to what I had hoped. I will be giving descriptions during the report for the meals

 

[SleepingBeautyDreamr]

In my other TR I had mentioned about how I got a Baggallini on the advice of DSIS. Well as soon as mine came DH asked “Can I have a Baggallini too?” So as soon as I could I ordered him one. The color was his choice (I tried to get him to get a LG one but no such luck). He wanted the Plum which is a nice dark purple. He also wanted me to put a LGMHPC on his like I did mine. So you can imagine the reaction I got when I told my fellow SGC DISers about it. One comment was along the lines of him going as Barney to the parks. To tell you the truth though it doesn’t look that bad (the purple is much darker than Barney).

In addition to getting him a Baggallini to use instead of a hip pack (his original plan) I started to try talking him into getting some Crocs. That took some doing. His first reaction was “You want me to wear ugly shoes? No way.” But one day while we were at the mall I convinced him to try a pair on and he was converted. Though we did not buy them at that time because he refused to wear as he put it funky colors. I really can’t blame him on that as all they had in his size were silver and gold. So the day I ordered my Passporter and his Baggallini I also got on Crocs official website and ordered him a pair of black beach (again could not get him to order LG but since I also don’t have that color I can’t complain). I also ordered my Athens that day and let me tell you they are the best flip flops I have ever owned. I can’t wait till I can order my Beach ones but I am holding off hoping to get some of the Disney ones I have heard will be out before much longer.

We now have the main essentials for our trip. Our ADR’s are set and written down in the Passporter, our room is booked as well as our park tickets, we both have our Baggallini’s and our Crocs. Now we just have to take care of things like clothes and other essentials. I have been slowly getting travel sized items like toothpaste and hand sanitizer when ever I go to the store so that is taken care of. Plus one day DH found some shorts he liked at Old
Navy and I found some I liked at Target. Now I just have to come up with some shirts for us to wear (DH has very few t-shirts).

Up next: The Trouble with Iron on Transfers

 

[SleepingBeautyDreamr]

Thanks to some wonderful people here on the Dis I found out about making your own Iron Transfers. I went to Wal-Mart and got the transfer sheets then I spent some time on the internet looking for designs to use. I found one in the design forum that I ended up using and found some others in my search. Once I had printed them out I discovered that the direction on the packaging is not as it seems. It tells you to use the parchment paper between the iron on and the iron so it won’t stick. Yeah right! The transfer didn’t stick to the iron because it stuck to the parchment paper. Since the first one (Peter Pan) was ruined I worked on the second one (this one is Donald Duck as a cowboy). This time I used the backing off of the transfer as the in-between sheet. That worked perfectly. At least until I realized I had some how wrinkled the iron on before it set so the image was wrinkled. Third time is the charm. (Tinkerbelle in a gold frame) This time I remembered both mistakes and the image came out perfect.

A couple of days after the iron on incident DH was sweet enough to buy me an airbrush kit. So for the one that the iron on stuck to the parchment paper I instead airbrushed the design on it. I also decided to do a similar shirt for my self. For DH I had done Peter Pan so for my self I did Tinkerbelle. So that makes two shirts for DH and two for me. I had one other shirt to do for my self that initially I was going to airbrush but as I started to run out of time to do it in I did it as an iron on also. Again I remembered my previous mishaps so it came out alright also (this one was a Minnie Mouse as a witch on a broom). After all the trouble I had with the shirts I was glad I had bought some t shirts while at WDW with DSIS in September. It will definitely be a while before I do anymore iron on t shirts.

Up Next: New Luggage Woo Hoo or so we think

 

[SleepingBeautyDreamr]

For my September trip with DSIS my sweet Dad was kind enough to buy me a set of Mickey luggage which I absolutely love. It is durable and roomy unlike the last set of luggage DH and I had bought. With our anniversary trip coming up DH wanted a set too. The black set (I already had the red) was on sale so DH was going to buy it. I went to ask Dad a simple question of how long it took my luggage to arrive after ordering so we would know when DH’s might arrive by. Dad instead of answering my question asked me if DH had already placed the order. When I said no Dad hands me his credit card and says to use it instead. I tried to argue but my Dad never listens to my arguments when he sets his mind to getting us something. He did eventually answer my question though so we figured we would have enough time for it to arrive (just over 2 weeks). By the middle of the week before we were to leave I checked on the status of the luggage. We had received a shipment confirmation email already the week before. At the time I checked it said it had arrived at our local post office the Friday before yet it had not been delivered. So a trip to the post office was in order.

At the post office we get told that it had never arrived. That it had been miss-shipped to some town in Texas on the other side of Houston from here. Something really got messed up in the shipping because the tracking showed it had been in Louisiana just a few hours of having been in Texas. There is no possible way it could get from there to here that fast unless it was put on a concord flight. So for the next two days both the post office and me were trying to find out what happened to the luggage. Finally it was determined it was lost. I called Disney and they said they would ship out another set but it would not arrive in time for our trip. If by chance the first set should finally be found I was to call them to get a return ticket for one of the sets of luggage. Guess what…… The first set did finally show up a week later while we were in WDW, the same day the second set arrived.

Next Up: We Are On Our Way

 

[SleepingBeautyDreamr]

Ok I have spent the last day before we are to head for Florida trying to find out what happened to the missing luggage, doing some last minute errands and packing while DH is at work. By the time he gets home I am exhausted so instead of loading the car like we had planned we both just go to sleep.

The day has arrived. October 21, 2006, the day we head for Orlando.

We wake up at the way too early hour of 5am and start loading up the car. Luggage: check, pillows: check, ice chest: check, coffee maker: check, DVD player and DVD’s: check, CD’s: check, stuffed animals: check.

Ok yes there is a story behind the stuffed animals. Because of a problem I have breathing at night do to chest compression I have to sleep with something small and soft in my arms. I have tried pillows but they are just too big so I sleep with one or two stuffed animals. Also DH started buying me animals from Build A Bear and I have gotten quite a few Disney outfits for them in the past year. So I am taking them with us and plan on dressing them in the outfits while we are Disney. Another bit of proof that I am a kid inside.

We finally get on the road by 6 after stopping for gas and what not. The computer program I used to create the directions to our motel for the first night then to the resort for the rest of the week showed that it would take 10 hours 45 minutes to get from our house to WDW. I would say that was a bit off if you don’t count the two stops we made for meals or the time change. Total driving time was only about 9 ½ hours.

Because we decided we didn’t want to arrive at our resort tired and then have to go right back out to go to dinner we left a day before our stay was to actually start and spent the night in a motel on Hwy 192 right out side of WDW. This turned out to be a great idea. Because of the time zone change we were in Orlando by 6pm, 5 our time. We checked into the motel then took a ride down the street to find some place to have dinner. We ended up at Ruby Tuesday’s. This is a rare treat for us since the nearest one to us was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. We love the food and atmosphere of the restaurant and no matter which one we have gone to they are all equal in quality.

After dinner it was back to the motel and a good nights sleep. Or so we thought.

Next Up: Our First Day At The Resort

 

[VanniGirl]

Another great report - looking forward to the rest.

 

[dwheatl]

So far so good, Kiki. What motel did you stay at outside the World?

 

[SleepingBeautyDreamr]

So far so good, Kiki. What motel did you stay at outside the World?

We stayed at the Motel 6 on Hwy 192. It is only about 5 minutes to World Drive.

 

[SleepingBeautyDreamr]

Again we wake up way too early (I don’t think either of us could really sleep from the excitement of going to WDW together). It is only 6am so we stay in bed a bit longer and watch some TV hoping to get a weather forecast for the day. Around 7 we get up and start getting ready. It doesn’t take long as the only thing we took into the motel room were a change of clothes and our toiletries bag. By 8am we are checking out and heading down the road. Before we go far though we stop at a Walgreen’s to get some sun screen at a fairly decent price. That didn’t take long and we are soon heading onto WDW property. It was foggy but I still managed to get this picture with out it being too bad:

Our first destination was to the Boardwalk.

I had heard many good things about the bakery there so that is where we decided to have breakfast

While we enjoyed our croissants and orange juice we had this beautiful view to look at

We also had a few little feathered friends join us. A couple of them were looking like they were pleading for a crumb from our breakfast so DH obliged them. It was cute watching how the one that had been pleading quickly snatched the crumb up before his fellow friends could fight him out of it. He was the smallest so I am sure he had to learn how to do that the hard way.

After breakfast we headed over to All Star Movies to check in. The CM who checked us in was great. She was very friendly and helpful with all of our questions and even made sure we had a 1st floor room because more than one flight of stairs and my knee will give out. She also presented us with buttons that said Happy Anniversary with Mickey and Minnie on them and gave DH a first visit button as well.

Because we had to wait a while for our room to be ready we decided to go on over to Downtown Disney. DH got a kick out of the Stitch on top of the World of Disney

He made a point of avoiding it after he barely missed getting hit with a direct shot of water. It did get him a little though.

It wasn’t long before DH asked about lunch. I was also getting hungry so we had the dilemma of deciding on where to eat. Hmmmmmmmm

Up Next: Where To Eat Lunch. Decisions Decisions!!!!

 

[Disneyland_Mama]

Ok, I'm hooked, again!

Your dad sounds like a keeper! How sweet!

I'll just sit here and wait for the next installment. BTW, love the photos of the BW!

 

[blue_river]

I'm subbing!

Wow! Awesome Daddy!

 

[Nurse_Mommy4]

Subbing!

You sure got alot written in one day!

 

[allie_to_you]

Cool TR...when are we going to hear more?