How to plan a WDW trip in less than 30 days **Hurricane Matthew wants us to go TOMORROW!*

[elcmum]

Step one
Plan a myriad of Disney vacations without actually hitting the payment button... just to get an idea of prices.

Step two
Plan a WDW trip in March 2016 and then decide to cancel that to visit DLR and friends instead... and give the most epic surprise to [then] ten-year-old son at the airport right before boarding.

Step three
Walk out of DL in March and think, this was nice. It will be a long time before we hit another park again.

Step four
Con your bosses into letting you have a trip to Orlando under the guise of a business trip. (It wasn't really a con. I actually have a legit meeting to attend and will have to work a bit each day.)

Step five
Book a return airfare, simply because it was a steal. Just in case.

Step six
Decide on whether to go ahead with the whole trip. Think of the kid. Look at dates. Look at dates some more. Try to not get overwhelmed with such a short trip.

Step seven
Suddenly decide the initial two day trip is really not enough, and tack on a few extra days.

Step eight
Call and book.

Step nine
Think to yourself, what the heck did I just do?

Step ten
Start a trip report!


If you've made it this far... I'm Liz.

• I'm an Aussie living/working in the USA.
• I have three kids (the youngest will be joining me; my oldest is in college and my middle child will be out of state for fall break).
• I have started PTRs before and then kind of failed on putting together an actual TR after our fast-but-amazing trip to California in March.
• I have been in love with Disney-everything since I read The BabySitter Club books in the late 80s and Dawn visited Disneyland and it was cemented even more when there was a Super Special book and the gang all went on a cruise and then to DW.
  
• My favourite movie is Beauty and the Beast. And then Cars.

Joining me will be CJ:

• He's eleven
• He's a competitive swimmer, which basically means we live and die by swim practice [read: he is at the pool six days a week] and will be skipping the first giant meet of the season because this was the only chunk of time that could fit into work obligations I have on October 5 annnnnnnd that steal of a flight that is returning us to IND on Oct 11.
• He is a picky, picky, picky eater. But loves hummus. Dining with him is a challenge because he'll pick at a meal, but looooooooves snacks!
• He kind of likes Disney movies but isn't cray-cray about them. He has slept with a Dumbo we picked up at DL every single night since March, though. There is hope for him.
• He's very mellow and easy going, but is not a fan of meet and greets with characters.
• Back in March, I surprised him the day after the state swimming championships at the airport. (He thought we were dropping his sister off for a visit out of state... but she took my car and drove home, and he just happened to think we were carrying her bags in and lining up and going through security to save her space in line. In a nutshell, I surprised my son at the gate with the trip to California.

Here's the plan:
Depart IND-MCO on Oct 6. I'm not sure when. There's a Frontier flight leaving in the evening but I kind of want to spend the entire day in Florida.
We're staying somewhere onsite from Oct 6 through 11.... but at this point, I'm really not sure where. I picked value resorts, just simply because there are only two of us and I literally hung up the phone after typing in reservation numbers. We're probably going to have to room hop a few times.

Here's my current theory on the holiday:
we are just happy to be going there. Everything else is gravy. ​

But, my super-planner nerves are already kicking in... and here are the MOST PRESSING QUESTIONS OF TODAY:
1. Will I find a suitable flight to Orlando?
2. Will there be any decent FPP+ left?
3. Will CJ be suckered into meet-and-greets with characters?
4. Will this be the most epic failure of a holiday, proving the point to others that you need months to properly prep and plan for a WDW holiday?

Stay tuned...

 

[elcmum]

29 days to go

Last night was a frantic rush trying to plan our itinerary and look for flights from IND-MCO.

Here's what was accomplished:

• personalised MagicBands
• I found a flight that would get us to Orlando around 9:30am. Interestingly, this was a flight that I wasn't able to find on SkyScanner online, but popped up during a search on my phone at 1am.
• I realised this morning that I booked a flight that departs first thing in the morning. This means we'll probably not get any sleep the night before, but hey, we'll be in Florida about ten hours earlier.
• I received a call from WDW Guest services; the CSR I spoke with last night was a little concerned about our crazy schedule of changing rooms on a daily basis. She was able to move some things around and now we'll be at ASMo in a preferred room for the entire five days. Love great customer service!
• I'm on the hunt for elusive FEA and 7DMT FPP+. Oh, and a dinner reservation for 50s Prime Time.

Here's the current plan of events:

Thursday, Oct 6
Check in at ASMo. Head out to Epcot. Looks like it will be a quiet day, so we'll try to spend as much time at the park before heading back to the room at crashing. (I'm assuming we'll have to wake around 2am to get to the airport on time.) I'm on the waitlist for The Chew tickets at the noon show, but I'm not holding my breath. I am going to finagle with our FPP on this day, though, since we will have a little bit more time in the park than I originally assumed. Lunch dinner will be at F&W, while making our way around WS.

Friday, Oct 7
MK day. FPP for Space Mountain and BLSRS. I have us scheduled for dinner at Raglan Road, as the park closes for MNSSHP, but now I'm sort of changing my mind. Friday night in Orlando... with my son, who is a picky eater. What non-character meals outside of a park would be good? He likes Chinese food, chicken, fries, ribs, hummus, pizza, and salad. I'll have to look into this.

Saturday, Oct 8
An entire day at AK. When I was originally making these plans, I originally planned for us to be at WDW for two or three days. I have a feeling CJ will prefer AK to Epcot, but I could be wrong. We have plans for EE a few times, and he loved the DCA version of Kali River Rapids... so that should be a hit, weather-wise.

Sunday, Oct 9
We'll be spending the day at HS. I'm trying to work on 50s Prime Time for dinner... right now we're scheduled for lunch.

Monday, Oct 10
Back to MK for our last day. I really wanted to spend the last day of the trip at MK, annnnnnd we're going to go to MNSSHP. My original plan was for us to go to MNSSHP on Friday night, but again, back to the thought of leaving the park and spending our last evening at Disney Springs didn't seem just as fun. We'll be tired and exhausted, but will end the quick trip with a bang.

Tuesday, Oct 11
The real reason for my trip; I need to squeeze in a quick meeting with a work colleague. We'll use Uber and meet up somewhere in Orlando... and may have to bring our bags with us and forgo the Magical Depress ride back to MCO, as we probably need to check in around noon for the return flight.

That's it! That's been the last 24 hours.

 

[elcmum]

Here's the video I found when I surprised CJ in March with our DL trip:

https://www.instagram.com/p/BDOT27EqTb3/?taken-by=elizabethcave

I wish I knew how to insert it, so I'm afraid you have to click to view.

 

[elcmum]

28 days to go

Two things were accomplished today!

1. Garden Grocer
One of the issues of planning a trip at such a last minute is that I wasn't able to place a GardenGrocer order 30 days ahead and save seven percent on the total. Not to worry, I was able to place the order (chips, hummus, bagels, water, PopTarts, fruit, yogurt) that we can keep in the room and help us with running out the door to get to RD.

2. Memory Maker
I'm part of a MM share and actually taking the lead on that, so it's set up. To spare a lot of back and forth on communication, we have a private FB group which I hope will work well.

Things to do

• Figure out dinner plans for Friday evening. MK closes early, and I'm tossing up between adding PH tickets... orrrrrrr... just spending that amount of money on Hoop-Dee-Doo or O'hana (if we can even get in). My other thought was to go to Disney Springs and just have some time around there for the evening.
• I'm working on getting a better time for 50s Prime Time on the Sunday evening. Right now we're at 4pm. Any suggestions on whether an earlier evening dinner time is better than, well, standard dinner time?

 

[elcmum]

25 days to go

All quiet on the Western front! No new dining reservations... but I did receive an alert that our Magic Bands shipped today!

 

[elcmum]

24 days to go

Magic Bands arrived!

 

[elcmum]

20 days to go

I keep playing around with our agenda on Touring Plans.

Things are now changed, for about the fiftieth time.

Thursday - arrival and AK (hoping for Rivers of Light)
Friday - Epcot/F&W
Saturday - MK
Sunday - HS
Monday - MK/MNSSHP
Tuesday - work meeting and fly home

I was also able to find an Uber driver to meet us at our house at 2:15am. The plan is that he'll show up, we'll both log into Uber and because of our proximity, he'll receive the alert to pick up our ride. Hopefully we'll be at the airport right as the desk opens to check in.

 

[elcmum]

17 days to go

MNSSHP tickets are ordered! It is official... we'll be there on our last WDW night!

Now I'm just thinking of the weird things we need to do ahead of time, like getting the fridge fixed because it has some sort of weird leak... oh, and ordering packing cubes.

I may have had a momentary freak out moment when I looked at my spreadsheet and budget and realised I could take the two of us back to Australia for a nice visit for the price I'm spending not this last-minute trip.

 

[elcmum]

16 days to go!

I noticed this morning that 7DMT FPP were available, so I was able to grab one for 8:15am on October 10. Whew! Now, if FEA FPP become available... well, I might just fall off my chair.

The expense of the trip is still weighing on my mind. "Oh," half my brain says, "You work so hard. You deserve this." And then other half chimes in and says, "You are a crazy nutter". To quiet the crazy nutter side of my brain I did some clearing out of my wallet and found a few leftover Disney GC. I figured I should just check to see if there was any sort of balance left over from our Disneyland trip in March and, woohoo, there was a card with $50 left on it!

We'll head to WDW with just over $700 in gift cards for food and souvenirs. We're flying Frontier on the way home, so it will be helpful to remind myself to not go overboard with purchasing bulky items due to the cost of bringing them on the flight back.

MDE luggage tags arrived, too.

This trip is really going to happen!

 

[AAshleySEG]

It looks to me like you are going to have a great time! We love planning last minute trips to Disney, it isn't very often that we don't just decide to go one weekend as long as we can find a room with our points (which is getting way more difficult than it used to be). It's so fantastic that 7DMT FPs were available! Such a great ride, although the standard queue line is pretty amazing also!

And in all seriousness, MNSSHP is so much fun! Even for us adults, so I know you guys will have a blast, definitely one of my absolute favorite things to do at Disney, and being there in the Fall is another huge plus! Food & Wine Festival is also going on at EPCOT, so maybe you could find some dishes your son may want to try, they are all snack size and who knows with that many kiosks, from so many different countries, he may find a new favorite food!! I know we always find too many things to eat there

 

[Teetah]

Joining in!

HOLY. MOLY. You are ON IT! I thought I was bad - we just started planning our November trip (well, we started planning in late August). Sounds great so far - you are covering your bases! Nice job on collecting all those gift cards!

 

[elcmum]

Food & Wine Festival is also going on at EPCOT, so maybe you could find some dishes your son may want to try, they are all snack size and who knows with that many kiosks, from so many different countries, he may find a new favorite food!! I know we always find too many things to eat there

You're the first comment! Yay!

And yes -- I've already made a list for F&W (complete with prices) of what I think we would both like... and they are all items that he would probably be wiling to eat, too.

Here's the F&W plan so far:

Australia Grilled Lamb Chop with Mint Pesto and Potato Crunchies 7.25
Australia Lamington: Yellow Cake Dipped in Chocolate and Shredded Coconut 3
Belgium Belgian Waffle with Warm Chocolate Ganache and Whipped Cream 3.75
Canada Canadian cheddar cheese soup served with a pretzel roll 4.75
Chocolate Studio — NEW! Liquid Nitro Chocolate Almond Truffle with Warm Whiskey Caramel 4.5
Farm Fresh Loaded Mac ‘n’ Cheese with Nueske’s® Pepper Bacon, Cheddar Cheese, Peppers and Green Onions 4.5
Germany Schinkennudeln: Pasta Gratin with Ham and Cheese 3.75
Germany Apple Strudel with Vanilla Sauce 3.75
Greenhouse Guru hosted by Village Farms — NEW! Heirloom Tomato Salad with Goat Cheese, Aged Balsamic Vinegar, and Micro-Basil 4
Hawaii Kalua Pork Slider with Sweet and Sour Dole® Pineapple Chutney and Spicy Mayonnaise 4.25
Ireland Irish Cheese Selection Plate: Irish Cheddar, Dubliner and Irish Porter 4.25
italy Spezzatino alla Toscana con Polenta: Tuscan-style Stew with Carrots, Mushrooms and Crispy Polenta 6.25
Morocco Spicy Hummus Fries with Cucumber, Tomato, Onions and Tzatziki Sauce 5
Poland Kielbasa and Potato Pierogi with Caramelized Onions and Sour Cream 5.5
Scotland The Tipsy Laird: Whiskey-soaked Cake with Lemon Cream and Toasted Oats 3.5
Refreshment Port Pineapple Dole Whip Soft-Serve Ice Cream 4.19
Refreshment Port Croissant doughnut with Cinnamon and Sugar 5

The savoury items are more up my alley... and the sweet are for him. (I added Refreshment Port as a reminder to get a Dole Whip... and the cronut was added to the list because he won't be enjoying it at BOG.)

Anything else worthwhile to add? I don't eat seafood... and pretty much only eat lamb/veal/pork/beef/chicken. No game, no duck, no quail... rather boring.

 

[elcmum]

Joining in!

HOLY. MOLY. You are ON IT! I thought I was bad - we just started planning our November trip (well, we started planning in late August). Sounds great so far - you are covering your bases! Nice job on collecting all those gift cards!

It probably helps that there's only two of us! My friends are going in November and there are 12 people in their group. I cannot even fathom how to herd that group around!

(And now I'm going to check out your PTR!)

 

[Teetah]

It probably helps that there's only two of us! My friends are going in November and there are 12 people in their group. I cannot even fathom how to herd that group around!

(And now I'm going to check out your PTR!)

TWELVE. I thought our group of 6 adults plus 1 toddler back in 2009 was a lot! NOPE!

 

[elcmum]

14 days to go!

When I ask my iPhone how many days there are until October 6, my Australian male Siri (I like a familiar accent!) informs me of the days. When I plug the date into this website it tells me 15.

I am obviously ignoring the website because it means I'll be in Florida one day sooner!

New plans! New plans!

- We now have FEA FPP. Mind you, it's around 9:30 at night and we should be done right before Illuminations... but I don't care! It was the last FPP I was trying to catch and I did it. (We have FEA on our plan for earlier in the day. If the line is manageable at 11am, I'll switch the FPP over to Soarin or TT.)

- I was also a little nervous about our 45 minute connection in Charlotte, especially since our seats put us at the back of the plane. I sucked it up and paid the extra $25 for us to sit closer to the front of the plane... and then did the same thing for CLT-MCO, just so we can hit DME before the other fifty or so people on the flight. Muahahhaah.

And for a bit of nostalgia...

It was only a few months we were in Disneyland and CJ was able to do this... I just have to remember to recreate the photo (with the churro) at MK.​

 

[elcmum]

12 days to go!

Packing cubes have arrived!
One week left of school until fall break!
I feel like I need to say something to add one more exclamation mark!

DD16 leaves next Friday (three hours after school lets out) to spend 15 days in ND... so we have a fun little pre-trip planned to the airport to say farewell to her. While I'm going to miss her being around, I'm looking forward to having a lower water bill for the month and cheaper grocery bill, too.

In the mean time, I keep stalking message boards and twitter to see if there will be an update on ROL, as we'll only be at AK on our first day.

It's getting close!

 

[elcmum]

8 days to go!

I had a momentary freakout moment yesterday when I realised, oh snap, we leave next week and sort of had the Joey face.

It's all good, though.

The forecast looks iffy. I figure the surest way to ensure there will be no monsoons is to spend money on sturdy raincoats.

My apps are ready! I love love love love love Touring Plans and I've been looking through Shop Disney for souvenir ideas (that won't weigh down our bags).

Annnnnnnd, I'm in love with this Food & Wine app. It allows me to add wish-list items, swipe after they've been eaten, and have an idea of a budget, too.

 

[Teetah]

8 days to go!

I had a momentary freakout moment yesterday when I realised, oh snap, we leave next week and sort of had the Joey face.
http://www.reactiongifs.com/r/2013/02/shocked.gif
It's all good, though.

The forecast looks iffy. I figure the surest way to ensure there will be no monsoons is to spend money on sturdy raincoats.

My apps are ready! I love love love love love Touring Plans and I've been looking through Shop Disney for souvenir ideas (that won't weigh down our bags).

Annnnnnnd, I'm in love with this Food & Wine app. It allows me to add wish-list items, swipe after they've been eaten, and have an idea of a budget, too.

SO CLOSE!!! Nice find on that app!!!!

 

[elcmum]

FIVE DAYS TO GO!

(One two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven tweeeeeellllllve)

I saw on DFB that there's a new Wishes dessert party with garden view and there happens to be availability for next Saturday night. I made the reservation and then quickly cancelled it... it's $118 with basically no real guarantee that the fireworks will take place based on weather.

Ughhh.... I hate being indecisive. I think I'll wait a few days to see if there are any reviews. We've never seen Wishes but will be at MNSSHP for HalloWishes, and I'm okay with waiting for HW.

 

[elcmum]

SO CLOSE!!! Nice find on that app!!!!

I'll let you know how it works out!