"I Love You To the Disneymoon & Back" - Sept 2015 PTR *Updated 5/31*

[DisneyHoover]

One Trip At A Time
​

This phrase has been my poor fiancé's refrain over the past few weeks since I have been looking into general planning for a few of our other trips that we are thinking of taking over the next year to utilize our annual passes (“Hey David, did you know that it looks like the Expedition Everest Challenge will probably fall on your birthday (May 7th) for 2016? Do you want to go down to Disney for that?”). After insisting that rooms book up quickly, especially during the busy season if we’re trying to rent DVC points again, he let me do a little more solid planning for our Christmas-time trip.

When we had told David’s mom (who’s also a Disney junkie like me) that we were getting annual passes she mentioned how cool it was that we’d be able to go to Disney during the different holidays and see all the wonderful events/decorations throughout the year. She then said that she had always wanted to see the Christmas decorations at Disney but FIL had never wanted to spend his holiday season down there.

My wheels started turning, and I just knew we had to invite her along for our Christmas-time trip down to Disney. She was the one who caused me to catch Disney fever in 2013 when she took David and I to WDW. She said that she would love to go with us and couldn’t wait! The trip also falls just before my MIL birthday so hopefully we can make it extra-magical for her. I immediately put in a request to check availability on AKV value rooms for December 12-16th since my MIL had never stayed in a deluxe Disney resort before, and I’d love her to have that experience. However, unsurprisingly, all the value rooms had already been booked for that time period. So, after some pondering we decided to go with Old Key West studio instead and were able to make our reservations! WOO-HOO!

I apologize for the slight break in our Disneymoon planning since that’s what this PTR is all about, but I was too excited not to share! A second trip already booked! We now return you to your pre-trip report in progress! Yoda wants to let you know that we’re under the 200 mark now, with only 199 days left until our Disneymoon!

​

 

[SimplyGoofy]

I'm in for your PTR!

You will LOVE the Animal Kingdom Lodge! It's a beautiful resort, and I would strongly encourage you to take some time to soak up the resort amenities in addition to your time in the parks. I loved spending an afternoon and an evening exploring the resort and viewing the animals! As for a location, I think the best savanna views are when you're facing the Arusha Savanna from either the Zebra or Kudu trails. Overall, though, I think you'll enjoy any spot.

We enjoyed the Deluxe Dining Plan on our 2012 trip, but we skipped it for our 2013 trip. We still ate at tons of restaurants, but we could be more selective and pared down what we ordered. Sometimes those dining plans involved a lot of food (and sometimes it makes more financial sense to go without them!). That said, we LOVE eating in the Disney restaurants! I currently have 27 ADRs for our upcoming trip (in my feeble defense, we'll be there for 16 days, but nonetheless... ). I haven't been to Teppan Edo since 2005, but we very much enjoyed it. My favorite restaurants in Epcot are Via Napoli, La Hacienda de San Angel, and the Rose and Crown, but there are several other great ones as well. Since you're staying at a resort with great dining, I would encourage you to try a meal there, too! I loved our dinner at Jiko a few years ago, and this year we have plans to try both Sanaa and Boma. I'm really excited about trying them as so many people seem to love them! Have fun with your planning!

Darn those ticket price increases , but hooray for annual passes! I dropped mega-bucks for our park passes as well - it's disheartening to spend that much at once! Still, the opportunity to visit during several seasons will be fabulous for you!

 

[DisneyHoover]

@SimplyGoofy

Thanks for joining in and for the advice!

I think we're going to spend our check-in day afternoon around the resort/by the pool. We have one other "relaxation day," and we haven't decided what to do yet so maybe we'll spend another day by the pool/watching the animals/exploring the resort . Thanks for the room request advice

I wish that people in the same room could be on different dining plans. I think I would enjoy the Deluxe Dining Plan (I love trying appetizers) but it would just be wasted on my fiance since he struggles to find even an entree that he likes let alone an appetizer and dessert as well. That is an impressive amount of ADRs! I tried to go fairly ADR lite since my fiance likes to have more flexible plans so I didn't want to schedule too much. I'm thinking about adding an ADR for Jiko for our arrival day since it's so conveniently located at our resort, and I've heard goo things about it!

Thank you for all the input!

 

[JessicaKnits]

Joining in! I think you guys are super smart to wait a few months for your honeymoon. A few of my friends that have gotten married recently all tried to do the "leave for the honeymoon the next day thing" and were so completely exhausted they ended up sleeping through most of their trip. Plus, September is an amazing time of year to go. Low crowds, better weather, win/win!

 

[teekathepony]

How exciting! A second trip already planned! That's awesome!

 

[deedee2177]

Woohoo! for a second trip already in the works. We are planning on going in April 2016 with the kids, but I think my brain would melt if I tried to think about that trip and plan the November trip.

 

[DisneyHoover]

@JessicaKnits

Thanks for joining in! That's one thing I kept reading repeatedly on honeymoon/wedding advice forums--make sure to put time between your wedding and honeymoon so you can rest and recoup from the big day. We're definitely putting plenty of time between, but it means we get to extend the celebration (and enjoy much nicer weather and crowd levels )

@teekathepony

I'm so excited but I am feeling a little spoiled since I know many people only get to go to Disney once every few years and I'm already planning 2 trips within 3 months of each other.

@deedee217

Haha, luckily my MIL is a big planner so she'll probably choose most of our ADRs & Fastpasses, but I definitely wanted to make sure to secure a room early so we could find something affordable. Now I'm putting that trip on the backburner until our September trip is complete!

 

[DisneyHoover]

Downtown Disney Side-Trip

I made a trip down to Fort Myers this past weekend to walk in a 5k to raise money for pancreatic cancer research and visit my parents. While I was down there, I also was able to go to a pottery painting studio with my mom and painted a minimalistic Lion King plate. Here’s a picture of it before firing:

When I was figuring out the best route to take down to Fort Myers a thought occurred to me: “I wonder how much time making a side-trip to Downtown Disney would add to my total drive time?” The answer: less than I thought! It was only about 1/2 an hour longer going through Orlando, and I could stop at Downtown Disney for lunch and to grab some Disney merchandise while I was there

I decided I had to eat at Earl of Sandwich since I had heard good things about the restaurant’s quality of food and it’s affordability. I had a hard time choosing what to order but I ended up going with The Earl’s Club since I always love a good club sandwich! It ended up tasting delicious!! Yum!

After lunch there was only one thing left to do...

I had mentally limited myself to an hour’s worth of shopping so that I could get back on the road so I wouldn’t get home too late in the day. I hit up the Pin Trader’s since I knew what I wanted to buy there and it was right next to Earl of Sandwich. I purchased my new Stitch magic band!

I then moved on to World of Disney since I knew that I could spend hours browsing the shelves if time were unlimited. Sure enough, I spent the rest of my allotted hour browsing and trying to decide what to buy. I decided to get a new Disney Vera Bradley hipster (which I’m dying to use now but I’m trying to wait for our Disneymoon to use) and the bride wedding ear headband since I want to wear them for a few pictures on our wedding day.

After making my final purchases, I reluctantly headed to my car to make the rest of the journey home. It was actually harder than I thought it would be to come to Downtown Disney and not going to the parks when they were so close!

Thankfully, Stitch says there’s only 194 days until Disney!

​

 

[DisneyHoover]

Getting Fit For Disney!

Although I used to be fairly physically fit back in high school when I'd play a variety of sports, over the past 7 years I've gotten out of shape and overweight. So, in preparation for our Disneymoon, about 2 months ago I started Weight Watchers and last week I started running.

So far I've lost 12 pounds from dieting alone, and now I've found that I really enjoy running! Hopefully doing cardio and getting healthier will help me not only look great in our honeymoon pictures but also be able to "do" Disney to the fullest much more easily. Although I'm still in the early stages of running, I've started pondering over the idea of doing a Run Disney half marathon. Any Disney runners want to give advice for best training regiment for a half marathon and which half marathon at WDW is your favorite?

In other news, Pluto says there's 187 days until Disney only 1 week until ADRS!

​

 

[amandagator]

Loving your PTR. Congratulations on your upcoming wedding and then Disneymoon!
Your countdown drawings are adorable!
My husband and I took a mini-moon to Disney (a little less than a month before we got married actually. Haha. Oops.) and it was so much fun. I wanted the Bride ears and they were sold out everywhere! I may buy them when I'm there next week (woot!) if I can find them because we still have a reception happening back home with family over the summer.

 

[deedee2177]

A quick side trip to Downtown Disney...perfection!!! Also congrats on the adventure of a healthier you! I'm on a similar journey. I made some eating habit changes back in December and really cut back on the carbs and sugar and I have lost 25lbs. This is a must for me because I am diabetic and I haven't been taking care of myself as well I as should have been, and it caught up to me. I need to decide on an exercise regimen, I can't see me enjoying running (never been much of one at all) but maybe a Run Disney half marathon would be motivation!

 

[DisneyHoover]

@amandagator

And thank you! I'm no Van Gough but I enjoy doing the little sketches
The bride ears are definitely perfect for some cute photo ops so I hope you're able to find them while you're at Disney!

@deedee2177

That's awesome progress on your healthy journey! Congrats! I have never been a big runner (especially on the treadmill; that's just boring to me ), but the idea of training for a Run Disney half marathon has definitely been the motivation that I need to stick with it! Thankfully, we have pretty good weather in North Florida year round (albeit a bit wet at times) so it's conducive to outdoors running. I do enjoy "game-like" exercise though (i.e. -- soccer, raquetball, etc.); perhaps one of those types of exercise would be more interesting to you.

 

[DisneyHoover]

ADRs... Check!

When I woke up this morning at 5:30 a.m. I’m pretty sure my face looked something like this:

I’m definitely not a morning person, but I’ll was darned if I was going to miss out on one our our top ADR choices because I decided to sleep in for a few hours. In some ways it works out well that our ADR selection day fell on a Monday since I had to be up for work no later than 8 anyways. Since I had previously read on the boards about people having trouble making their 180+10 reservations with a DVC rental stay linked to their MDE accounts, I was more than a little on edge about technical malfunctions. I did not want to watch the ADRs I really wanted slip away as I waited for an hour to call in for reservations. Sure enough, when 6 a.m. rolled around the only reservation I was able to make online was the one for our arrival day. I was able to search and see what reservations were open for my entire trip but I couldn’t actually book them.

The hour between 6 and 7 seemed to crawl by painfully. Finally, at 7 I was able to call in and I got all of my preferred recommendations other than Be Our Guest! The cast member also asked if we would be celebrating anything during our trip, and I mentioned that it was our honeymoon. I’ll be interested to see if we get any pixie dust during our trip.

Without further ado (-drumroll), our final (mostly) ADRs:

Jiko

We’re going to do this for our dinner on arrival day so we can take it easy and not have to leave our resort to eat. I’m super excited to try something a little out of the box especially since I’ve heard some great reviews of Jiko.

California Grill

We’ll be eating here on our Animal Kingdom day at night. I’m hoping that with some pixie dust we’ll be able to get a window seat and a good view of the Magic Kingdom. Maybe we’ll even be able to see the Wishes fireworks while we’re eating our dessert.

Spirit of Aloha Dinner Show

This will be my fiance’s third time seeing this show -- it’s his favorite dining experience so we had to include it. I booked us for Category 1 seating since he’s only ever experienced the show from Category 3 before.


Ohana

I can’t wait for this breakfast! I am so psyched to get a picture with Stitch and eat some Stitch waffles. I can’t wait to try the Hawaiian welcome bread and P.O.G.


Via Napoli

I ended up trading Teppan Edo out for a reservation here since I’ve heard rave reviews about their pizza, and pizza is my fiance and I’s favorite food. My mouth is watering just thinking about it.


Dining with an Imagineer at the Hollywood Brown Derby

This is the reservation I’m most excited for! I was most worried that I wouldn’t be able to get this reservation since there’s only room for 12 people in each dining group, but I was able to get it no problem! I hope we get an awesome Imagineer for our lunch.


Fantasmic Dinner Package at Mama Melrose’s

I think I may be more excited about the Fantasmic part of this reservation than the actual food itself (especially because the latest I could get scheduled was for 4:50 which is weirdly early for dinner for me). Fantasmic is the one night show we haven’t seen yet at Disney.


I’m still hopeful that I can grab a Be Our Guest reservation closer to our trip! For some reason right now dinner is only showing hours from 4-6 for the first two weeks of September and show no dinner hours for the 11th and 12th. Fingers crossed more reservations open up!


Any specific entree/appetizer recommendations at these restaurants?​

 

[LindseyJo22]

Subbing!

My fiancé and I are planning a September Disneymoon too! Just booked it this past week, so I may start my own PTR soon .

All your reservations sound great! I'm jealous of your Jiko dinner; I would love to do some of the AK dining, but am not sure fiancé would be as interested. Can't wait to hear more!

 

[SimplyGoofy]

You picked some wonderful ADRs!

We're returning to California Grill and Hollywood Brown Derby this year - I'm especially excited to try California Grill post-refurb! Via Napoli has become our first day of vacation tradition - both the pizza AND the pasta are fabulous! Jiko didn't make the cut this trip (we're trying Boma instead), but our meals there were great. Feel free to read my dining reviews from my 2012 trip (link in signature), and I'll be including a few additional reviews from our 2013 trip (such as our second trip to Via Napoli) in my current PTR (also linked in signature).

Good luck on nabbing a Be Our Guest reservation!

 

[sailored]

I'll be following along! It looks like our trips overlap (September 15-22) AND we are staying at Animal Kingdom Lodge! We even hope to have some of the same dining choices you have picked out. It'll be fun to read along with someone who has a similar trip.

 

[DisneyHoover]

@SimplyGoofy

Thank you! I'll have to go check out your reviews so I can plan what I should order and get even more psyched for the food .

@sailored
Thanks for joining in! Haha that's so cool that we have so much overlap! Great minds think alike I'll have to check out your PTR so I can check out your plans and maybe steal some ideas

 

[teekathepony]

Ahh you people who enjoy running. I envy you so much. I'd like to get in shape this year also, started running but I am really not good at it and I actually really hate it. I'm going back to it anyway though.

ADR day!

Lovely choices, not much that I've tried (although Via Napoli makes my mouth water whenever I think of their pizza... yum!)

 

[DisneyHoover]

@teekathepony
I never really thought of myself as a runner but after starting it I've been surprised how much I enjoy it (especially since I hate treadmills/ellipticals). Luckily we have nice enough whether down here that you can run outside pretty much year round.

 

[DisneyHoover]

Try the Grey Stuff... and Food & Wine!

On ADR day the only ressie I hadn't been able to snag was Be Our Guest; I didn't make a back-up reservation because I was bound and determined to get a reservation for Be Our Guest. The next morning I was opening my center so I had to be up at 5:30 a.m. anyways so I hopped on the dining website on a whim while eating breakfast. I noticed they had changed the September hours for Be Our Guest so when 6 a.m. rolled around I checked to see if new reservation times were available. Sure enough there were a ton of times open!! I had to wait to call at 7 a.m. again since the online website still wasn't working, but we got a reservation at 6:25 p.m. no problem! So we're going to get to...

I'm so excited since this was my most wanted reservation behind Dining with an Imagineer. Later that day was registration for the Wine & Dine Half Marathon at Noon. My fiance agreed to run the Wine & Dine half with me so I was sitting on my computer refreshing like a maniac waiting for registration to open up so I could register both of us. I got both of us registered quickly thanks to some help from people on the WISH forum (thank you guys!) I felt especially lucky after hearing that a lot of people either weren't able to get through registration at all or only were able to get part of their group registered. So now we've gotten our BOG reservation and our Wine & Dine registrations all on the same day! I'm so excited to try Food & Wine since that's one of the few seasonal events we though we would be missing during our annual pass year!

​