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

[DisneyHoover]

Hello everyone! This is my first Pre-Trip Report (which will hopefully segue nicely into my first trip report) so bear with me while I figure everything out. The title for this PTR comes from something my fiance and I say to each other, "I love you to the moon and back," but with a Disney twist.

My fiance (soon to be husband!) and I will be heading to Walt Disney Word for our Honeymoon, and I hope to chronicle our planning process (and other random life occurrences) over the course of the next several months! We are getting married May 25, 2015; however, since we prefer to go to Orlando during the slower season and have the schedule flexibility to do so, we're waiting until mid-September 2015 to go on our Disneymoon.

Without further ado, let's meet the (short) cast of characters:

That's me, Katie, a self-proclaimed dork with a penchant for all things Disney. I currently live in North Florida (only 3.5 hours from WDW!) and work in the early education field as a pre-school director. As you might imagine my job keeps me on my toes and makes sure I stay busy. My favorite character is Stitch (the amount of Stitch merchandise in our house is bordering on unhealthy), and my favorite WDW park is Hollywood Studios. I am the planner of the family and like to have everything arranged ahead of time.

That's David, my fiance and soon-to-be husband, who tries much harder than me to hide his dorky side (though I'm not sure you can tell by this picture ). He's currently going to school to get his PhD in Ecology & Evolution and also works as a teaching assistant. His favorite Disney character is Yoda , and, being a thrill junkie and Harry Potter nerd, actually prefers Universal Studios Islands of Adventures to WDW. He is much more laid back and go with the flow and, therefore, has left all the planning in my hands for our Disneymoon.

Thank you for reading and I hope you'll find this PTR fun & interesting!

Table of Contents:
Introduction
Tickets... Purchased!
Resort...Booked!
To Dining Plan or Not to Dining Plan
Preliminary ADRs
Tables In Wonderland/Dug Countdown
One Trip At A Time/Yoda Countdown
Downtown Disney Side-Trip/Stitch Countdown
Get Fit For Disney/Pluto Countdown
ADRs... Check!
Try the Grey Stuff... And Food & Wine!
Getting Crafty
Preliminary Itinerary
Real Life Update: Our Wedding!​

 

[TheLittleKatie]

Hello, fellow Katie!

Congratulations on your wedding in May!! I really can't think of anything better in life than a Disney-moon I love the title to your PTR too, so sweet

I love the quiet season too, it's my main priority when booking. I'm not sure of your dates, but we could be there at the same time? My boyfriend Jamie and I are heading out there September 22nd - October 6th

You guys sound just like me and Jamie, he is super laid back and I do all the planning/booking, and he LOVES Universal too (although he [/we] prefer the Studios park to IOA.) Will you be visiting Universal on your trip? We always take a couple of days over there

I'm looking forward to hearing about your plans

 

[DisneyHoover]

Hello, fellow Katie!

Congratulations on your wedding in May!! I really can't think of anything better in life than a Disney-moon I love the title to your PTR too, so sweet

I love the quiet season too, it's my main priority when booking. I'm not sure of your dates, but we could be there at the same time? My boyfriend Jamie and I are heading out there September 22nd - October 6th

You guys sound just like me and Jamie, he is super laid back and I do all the planning/booking, and he LOVES Universal too (although he [/we] prefer the Studios park to IOA.) Will you be visiting Universal on your trip? We always take a couple of days over there

I'm looking forward to hearing about your plans

I was so excited when my fiance suggested we go to Disney for our honeymoon.
It sounds like we will just be missing each other; we're planning on staying from September 12th-18th (we're currently in the process of renting DVC points so we don't have our official confirmation yet).

We do sound similar! Although he prefers Universal, my fiance's favorite WDW park is Hollywood Studios. At the moment we're planning on spending two days at Universal (we want to check out the new Harry Potter area in USF & ride the Hogwarts Express!)

Thank you for reading!

 

[DisneyHoover]

Tickets... Purchased!

It feels a little backwards to buy our tickets for Disney & Universal before we’ve officially booked our resort accommodations, but that’s just the kind of mavericks we are . After reading the rumors of the impending ticket price increase, we decided to just go ahead and buy our tickets now to lock in the current price and save ourselves a little bit of money. I started calculating out the total prices for Disney tickets and, based on our current plans of having 4 days in the WDW parks (1 day per park), I planned for 4-Day tickets. That came out to $398 for the both of us thanks to our Florida Resident discount. I ran this by David, mainly to make sure he was fine with the price, when he let me know that he wanted to have a ticket for each day we were there and have the park hopper option to give us maximum schedule flexibility . Buying 8 days worth of tickets and adding the park hopper option would've upped our total to $916!

So, I investigated an option that I was verrrrrry interested in: Seasonal Florida Resident Annual Passes! We don't like to visit Disney during the busy seasons when the dates are blacked out anyways so the seasonal option made perfect sense for us (and came with all the perks of being an annual pass holder!) For both of us to get seasonal annual passes it was only $680, saving us $236 and giving us a whole year of Disney access.

I'm not sure poor David knew what he was getting himself into by agreeing to us getting annual passes since I immediately began mentally planning a trip to see the Christmas decorations, a trip for my birthday, a trip for Star Wars weekend...
To be fair to my Universal-loving fiance (and because it was only $80 more expensive than park-to-park two day tickets), we also got annual power passes for Universal as well. So we ended up buying $1,000 worth of annual passes in one day-- thank goodness I just got my bonus check!

Next step... booking our room reservations!

Thanks for reading!​

 

[DisneyHoover]

Resort... Booked!

We have officially gotten the confirmation number for our savannah view studio reservation at Animal Kingdom Villas - Jambo House!

This means we also officially have the dates of our stay locked down: September 12th - 19th!

When David & I first started discussing what resort we wanted to stay at for our honeymoon our minds immediately jumped to the Polynesian since we thought it was gorgeous in 2013 when we visited for the Spirit of Aloha dinner show.

(Our Spirit of Aloha 2013 photo--from left to right: SIL, MIL, DNephew, Me, DNiece, DNephew, David)

However, based on all the construction Poly is currently undergoing we decided to choose Animal Kingdom Villas instead for this trip. David said he wanted to stay somewhere with great theming but not as much “in-your-face” Disney as AoA since he wanted a more adult feel for the trip, so AKV fit the bill perfectly.

Thanks to my DISboard research I had discovered the option of renting DVC points to book our stay. Pricing it out, it came out to $204/night for a savannah view studio for which the rack room rate would’ve been $461/night (saving us $257/night! ). We decided it was a great way to experience deluxe accommodations without completely breaking the bank so we went for it.

I can’t wait to have this view from my balcony!

For anyone who has stayed at AKV Jambo house; are there any specifics I should make in terms of room requests? (Being close to the lobby is not a big deal to us as both my fiance and I are pretty physically fit and don’t mind a little walking.)​

 

[teekathepony]

Hi Katie! Joining in.
We stayed in Jambo House last year (not the villas) and we absolutely loved it. What a wonderful place for a Disneymoon!!

 

[DisneyHoover]

Hi Katie! Joining in.
We stayed in Jambo House last year (not the villas) and we absolutely loved it. What a wonderful place for a Disneymoon!!

Hello! Thanks for joining in. I'm so glad to hear you enjoyed your stay in Jambo house! What time of day did you see the most animals?

 

[Sisa]

Hi I'm following you from my PTR. A Disneymoon will be fun to follow.

Congrats on the annual passes, I'd be planning other times I want to visit too!

Way to go on saving on the villas, that is fantastic! I've heard of people renting points all the time, but I never knew how much you really save!

I can't wait to read more!

 

[DisneyHoover]

Hi I'm following you from my PTR. A Disneymoon will be fun to follow.

Congrats on the annual passes, I'd be planning other times I want to visit too!

Way to go on saving on the villas, that is fantastic! I've heard of people renting points all the time, but I never knew how much you really save!

I can't wait to read more!

Hello! Thanks for joining in!

Thank you, I'm pretty I've become addicted to planning Disney trips now
I didn't realize how great the savings were either until we priced it out. We're thinking about staying with rented DVC points over the December time period as well because of how great the savings is.

I love the Stitch hat in your photo! Where did you find it?

 

[DisneyHoover]

To Dining Plan or Not to Dining Plan

One of the hardest decisions in all the planning so far has been whether or not to get the dining plan or not. During our most recent weekend trip, we were on a very small budget since it was a somewhat last minute decision to go, and we brought our own snacks & lunch into the parks to save money. Eating the sad peanut butter sandwiches which had gotten squished in my bag during the morning made me resolve that for our next Disney trip we’d eat like kings (or at least not out of my purse)!

​

With this in mind, as we started planning I looked into the dining plan option for us. I weighed our options and decided that the regular dining plan would work best for the meals we wanted to do, however, the price per night of $60.04 seemed like it may be higher than we’d normally spend on food throughout the day. I priced out the food at some of the restaurants we were interested in, and, overall, decided that wasn’t worth it to get the dining plan for us.

We have two main reasons for not wanting to purchase the Disney dining plan. First of all, David is extremely limited when it comes to food he can eat. He has problems swallowing foods with certain textures (and unfortunately even occasionally chokes on “safe texture” foods). His main repertoire of foods is mostly limited to chicken nuggets/strips, french fries, hot dogs, corn dogs, fish sticks, hamburgers, and pizza. So, most of the food he’ll be ordering will either be the cheapest thing on the menu or an adult-sized/priced portion of a kid’s meal. If he could eat the corn dug nuggets from Casey’s Corner for every meal I’m pretty sure he would.

David & His Favorite Meal Choice

Secondly, I’ve recently been trying to try to eat healthier and having the possibility a snack a day plus dessert with every meal would just be a waste since I don’t plan to eat many snacks/desserts during the trip. I’ve got a few go-to healthy snacks I’ll probably bring into the park with me (fresh fruit, pop chips, graham crackers) with the occasional treat of a Mickey Pretzel or School Bread.

​

I’m trying to decide what snacks/desserts/meals are “must try” while at Disney; so, when you go to WDW what food can you not pass up?

​

​

 

[DisneyHoover]

Preliminary ADRs

Since I started talking about our dining plans last update it seems like a perfect time to segue into our ADRs that we are interested in booking. We’re only 24 days out from our 180+10 ADR booking window opening and I’m starting to get anxious/excited about all the yummy food we’re planning on trying! (I’d love to hear any feedback on these restaurant choices since I haven’t eaten at any of them before other than the Spirit of Aloha Dinner Show & Be Our Guest for lunch.)

We want to have at least one fancy dining night since David loves to dress up and look dapper & it’s our honeymoon after all so a romantic night out seems to be in order. We (or I really should say I) are thinking of doing California Grill for our fancy dining experience; I really want to get a 8:00 or 8:30 reservation slot so we can (with some luck and pixie dust ) get great viewing for the 9 p.m. Wishes fireworks. Has anyone else eaten at Cali Grill and gotten lucky with your seat?

Our next ADR that we’re planning on booking is the Spirit of Aloha show. David absolutely loves this show--it’s one of the very few things he specifically requested for our trip. In the past we’ve sat in Category 2 or 3 seating since we were on the Disney dining plan, but this time I want to go all out and get category one seating so we’re right up front! My favorite Disney song is “Hawaiian Rollercoaster Ride” and I go a little nuts every time they sing it at the luau (or whenever I hear it at all really); that’s my jam!

After eating at Be Our Guest for lunch we decided we wanted to try getting a reservation here for dinner during this trip. It’s our compromise for not doing CRT -- I still get to eat in a castle and David avoids a character meal (for some reason he is not a big fan of character meals). I really want to try “The Grey Stuff” since it wasn’t available when we went for lunch!

Somehow I have convinced David (the anti-character meal guy) to have breakfast at Ohana . Stitch is my favorite character so I tried everything I could think of to convince him that we just /had/ to eat here so I could get a picture with Lilo & Stitch. I think the winning point of the argument was that Ohana serves Stitch waffles in addition to Mickey waffles (and as far as I am aware is the only place that does so). I can never have too much Stitch in my life!

The reservation we’re most unsure about booking is Teppan Edo. I love hibachi and really enjoy watching them cook in front of you, however, I’ve read mixed reviews about this restaurant so I’m a little worried it won’t be worthwhile. Would we be better off doing a different table service meal in Epcot or is Teppan Edo pretty yummy/fun to watch?

We’re also not as sure on our plan to book the Fantasmic Dinner package at Mama Melrose’s Ristorante Italiano. I’m not as worried about the quality of food as I am about the odd dining times some DISers have mentioned in order to get a good viewing spot for Fantasmic.

The ADR I am most excited about and most determine to book is “Dining With an Imagineer.” Considering the fact that there are only 36 openings available total each week (12 slots & 3 days), I’m super nervous about this ADR already being booked up. I’m planning on trying to book for the second to last day of our stay to try to make the most of early booking as a Disney resort guest. Fingers crossed everything goes as planned and I can make this reservation!


Any advice/reviews are super appreciated! Thanks for reading!​

 

[teekathepony]

Hello! Thanks for joining in. I'm so glad to hear you enjoyed your stay in Jambo house! What time of day did you see the most animals?

Good question. Early in the morning they were quite active, we were usually in the parks during the days, but a few days we were at the room (or went back to change or something like that,) there really weren't many animals around. I'd say they probably hid out during the afternoon.


I totally get that the dining plan isn't for everyone. It REALLY works for DH and I, but I can see why it wouldn't be worth it for you guys.

I can't help with your ADRs, I haven't been to many! I did do BOG for dinner. Loved it! They Grey Stuff is really yummy.

 

[Sisa]

My hat is from DL years ago, I love it so much. I wear it for Halloween sometimes and get stopped frequently asking where I got it. I am a huge Stitch fan too, I swear I bought everything DL had available to buy with Stitch on it when we went.

I can't help on your ADR's as we haven't been to WDW yet, but your list looks good. I've heard really good things about Teppan Edo, and is one I am considering too.

 

[DisneyHoover]

@teekathepony

That's good to know! I was hoping they'd be active in the morning and evening since that's when we'd likely have the most time to watch them. And I'm glad to hear that the grey stuff is in fact delicious

@Sisa

It looks awesome! I'll have to see if I can find one somewhere online. I also really want the oh-so-rare Disney Stitch Christmas hat! Thanks for the Teppan Edo information -- I feel better about my choice

 

[deedee2177]

Following along. My DH and I are doing a Honeymoon Redo in November! We have eaten at Teppan Edo and we really enjoyed it. Our Chef was great and the food was very good...and plentiful!

I'm hoping to get an ADR for dinner at 'Ohana and BOG during our trip. My DH is not really a character kind of guy either...he doesn't mind so much when the kids are with us but since it will just be the two of us he will be skipping the characters this time. Well, I might fit in a few when I can

 

[DisneyHoover]

Following along. My DH and I are doing a Honeymoon Redo in November! We have eaten at Teppan Edo and we really enjoyed it. Our Chef was great and the food was very good...and plentiful!

I'm hoping to get an ADR for dinner at 'Ohana and BOG during our trip. My DH is not really a character kind of guy either...he doesn't mind so much when the kids are with us but since it will just be the two of us he will be skipping the characters this time. Well, I might fit in a few when I can

Welcome! Thanks for joining in! Good to hear another positive vote for Teppan Edo I'll keep my fingers crossed for your ressies (especially BOG!). I thought for sure we weren't going to have any character meals but I got lucky suckering my fiance into it.

 

[DisneyHoover]

Tables In Wonderland

While doing food related research (I promise I’ll have some non-food updates soon; bear with me!), I stumbled across some annual pass holders who mentioned that they had a membership to Tables in Wonderland that gave them a discount at a bunch of restaurants. I know that AP already get some discounts at some restaurants during some times (with a decent amount of restrictions as the wording might suggest), however, I’m all about the discounts so I checked into a TIW membership.

Woah! A 20% discount at over 100 restaurants, including several of the table services and shows we want to eat at for this trip AND it includes discounts on alcohol; all this for only $100--sign me up! At face value it immediately sounded like an excellent deal, however, my always-practical fiance wanted me to run the math to make sure it was really worth it. After some quick math, I found that on this trip alone based on our anticipated expenditure we’ll break even. Then, we have a whole year worth of Disney trips still to take which we can use the TIW membership to dine on a dime!

Since the TIW membership activates the moment you buy it, however, we’re planning on waiting until we go to physically pick up our annual passes in September to make our purchase. I’m not sure we’ll ever use the benefit, but I’m also excited to see that TIW members get free valet parking at resorts where they have dining reservations.

In other news, my fiance recently got a new Surface Pro 3 and I’ve hijacked it to draw little disney doodles to help countdown the days until our trip to Disney! First up, is Dug letting us know there’s only 201 days until our trip (which means only 21 days until ADRs!). Enjoy!

 

[brittbrat63]

Following along! We're headed to the World for our Disneymoon in October and also spending some time on rented DVC points at Animal Kingdom. I'm super excited to read your TR and have been debating doing one as well.

 

[teekathepony]

Sounds like TIW will save quite a bit! Nice, love a discount.
Cute Dug countdown!!

 

[DisneyHoover]

@brittbrat63
Thanks for joining in! I'll keep an eye open for your PTR if you decide to write one.

@teekathepony
I love a good discount too! Thank you