@3 DD love princesses Thanks for the suggestion to shorten the Pop stay and upgrade to the DxDP (under FD'ing promo). I think we are headed in that direction unless something changes with the AA portal.
We have two rooms booked at Pop. I dropped us to the min for FD at Pop (4 nights with 4 day PH'ers). I only put myself and ds8 on that room and dh and other 3 'adults' on the room booked with just a RO promo. That will give us 5 days to use 24 meals and 16 snacks. We really wanted to do more character meals as we usually only do one. Which has been fine but IDK, we all kind of got the bug that it'd be fun to do more. This will let us do 4 TS! My kids don't know yet but they will be very happy. I still need to crunch more numbers but I think this is a pretty inexpensive way to do this. This part of the stay is about $2600. I'll cover it cashing out UR's and then buying discounted GC's as well as selling some AA GC's...oh,
@Albort, I'll be checking in with you soon
Last 5 nights, I think we are going for the Swan. We are actually super excited! We've wanted to try it for years but Disney has always come through with the deals so there was never much incentive. Not so much this year. I can book both rooms for less than 200k miles. These are upgraded rooms (1 king w/sofa bed, 2 queens, balcony, resort view - will that be a fireworks view??).
Before we book, we are still going to call and see if we can convert our cert (or upgrade it) to a cat 6. If we can, then everything changes cause that would be 7 nights at Swan.
I feel like everything is coming together and I'm pretty excited! Still holding a small bit of hope that AA gets the summer promos added but if not, I feel we have a great plan.
And seriously, we could be at any Disney resort and my kids would be happy. These are kids who've been very spoiled by my current hobby and last hobby of GC churning and they are more used to deluxe than value. Yet, I've asked my dd's over and over about where they want to stay. The answer is always the same, 'we don't care, mom, we just want to go back!' So, I think they will be pleased with this and all the extra dining will be a huge surprise!