Newsies
Headlines don't sell papes.
- Joined
- Oct 25, 2013
- Messages
- 5,265
"I said 'remember this feeling',
I passed the pictures around,
Of all the years that we stood there on the sidelines,
wishing for right now."
-Long Live, Taylor Swift
Oh, hi!
DISboards, we have arrived... at the Newsies' family's March 2025 trip report! And oh, yes: it was (unintentionally) very Taylor Swift coded. Complete with friendship bracelets, dragons, a ton of baked goods, an enchanted tea room, swooning over (big) cats, and a Harry Styles-inspired outfit. We've just come home from our Spring Break era, and I can't wait to share it with you all in my new Trip Report era!
Okay, so maybe "Long Live" is about Taylor's relationship with Joe Jonas and not about a family vacation to Walt Disney World. But this one lyric was all I could think about at one point! Those tender moments that you just don't want to end -- the ones where you sit back and you think to yourself, "this is the story I'll tell my children one day," "these are the memories I'll make with my own children one day," "this is what we'll remember the most about this trip" -- there were tons of them in this vacation. So long live the magic we made -- we had the time of our lives at Caribbean Beach Resort last week!
To continue adding on to the growing list of Taylor Swift references that were scattered throughout our vacation, this was my family's 13th vacation to Walt Disney World since I joined the boards in 2014, and this is my 13th trip report (well... if you count the odd 2 that I didn't finish). Our touring style has changed a lot over the last decade -- those trips we used to take primarily in the summer to accommodate my sister and I's school schedules have turned into March trips, where the weather is a bit milder. And sometimes, I'll go rogue and take a solo trip On My Own, Kid. But at the end of the day, we're still the same family of four that travels to Walt Disney World from New Jersey every year!
Come and meet the Newsies family!
Dad (or Tom!)
Never to be seen without a "Grumpy" t-shirt, you'll find he's more "Goofy" than anything! If you're running to and from an ADR or a LL, don't make the mistake of stopping anywhere near him... he will find a reason to talk to you for an hour and become your best friend! I call him our "Chief Logistics Coordinator" -- he plans the driving and somehow packs all of our luggage in the back of his truck perfectly. Right now, he works on a local township's zoning board, but he's at that age where he's getting ready to retire and move to Florida so he can be as close to the magic as possible. The Polynesian Village Resort is his favorite place on earth! He likes to take it easy in the parks and he's content to just sit around and people watch all day. ADRs have to be given an extra hour of "buffer" time so he can sit at a resort bar and have a drink before meal time.
Mom (or Susan!)
Mom and I are a problem together because we enable each others' Disney decisions. Imagine if you had two different devils on your shoulders and they were both telling you to book another Disney trip... that's mom and I. Now that I'm a big girl with a big girl job and can chip in more money towards these trips, we've gotten into even more trouble booking Disney vacations together! Mom works in corporate real estate and has recently been promoted to senior manager after 40+ years at her job, plus she and I have been on a weight loss journey together in the past year and she has been very successful, so there is a lot to be proud of her for right now! Mom's absolute favorite thing on the entire planet right now is the Skyliner -- she just loves soaring through the air and listening to the various "sounds" of the Skyliner cars! She also really loves the Riviera resort, and her favorite characters are Chip & Dale!
Kait -- that's me!
Hi! I'm Kait, 27-year-old associate manager at a company I very, very much adore. My job encompasses a little bit of brand marketing, a little bit of social media planning, and a whole lot of Customer Experience -- something that I fell in love with while I was working for Walt Disney World Resort on the Disney College Program. You are going to hear SO much about me on this TR, I won't yap about myself for long here, but this is me in my element... Mouse Ears on my head, a Stony Clover pouch draped around my body, a pair of Hokas on my feet... this is my truest form! I'm super independent and have loved all things Walt Disney World since I started planning these vacations for my family over a decade ago.
Grace, my little sister!
Grace and I share a single brain cell and will laugh at the same things, often running a joke into the ground within 48 hours. She's 24 now, which feels absolutely insane to write, because we were celebrating her 13th birthday party during my first TR here on the boards. She's wrapping up Grad school this semester and will be getting her Masters in Education this May. She already has a few interviews lined up for post-grad as a higher ed counselor! Grace loves Disney but is the "chill" one of the family -- she will do whatever mom and dad are doing and doesn't stress out about weather or crowds like I do. Grace is a bit of a Disney foodie and will ask for specific restaurants from time to time, like Crystal Palace or Biergarten.
The Trip Details...
Dates: March 09-15, 2025
Resort & Ticket Package: Caribbean Beach Resort with 5-Day Hopper - booked with Bounceback Room Offer during my September solo vacation
Traveling: Driving from NJ as usual!
Add-Ons: Disney Dining Plan + Memory Maker
Other things you should know before we begin...
I passed the pictures around,
Of all the years that we stood there on the sidelines,
wishing for right now."
-Long Live, Taylor Swift
Oh, hi!
DISboards, we have arrived... at the Newsies' family's March 2025 trip report! And oh, yes: it was (unintentionally) very Taylor Swift coded. Complete with friendship bracelets, dragons, a ton of baked goods, an enchanted tea room, swooning over (big) cats, and a Harry Styles-inspired outfit. We've just come home from our Spring Break era, and I can't wait to share it with you all in my new Trip Report era!
Okay, so maybe "Long Live" is about Taylor's relationship with Joe Jonas and not about a family vacation to Walt Disney World. But this one lyric was all I could think about at one point! Those tender moments that you just don't want to end -- the ones where you sit back and you think to yourself, "this is the story I'll tell my children one day," "these are the memories I'll make with my own children one day," "this is what we'll remember the most about this trip" -- there were tons of them in this vacation. So long live the magic we made -- we had the time of our lives at Caribbean Beach Resort last week!
To continue adding on to the growing list of Taylor Swift references that were scattered throughout our vacation, this was my family's 13th vacation to Walt Disney World since I joined the boards in 2014, and this is my 13th trip report (well... if you count the odd 2 that I didn't finish). Our touring style has changed a lot over the last decade -- those trips we used to take primarily in the summer to accommodate my sister and I's school schedules have turned into March trips, where the weather is a bit milder. And sometimes, I'll go rogue and take a solo trip On My Own, Kid. But at the end of the day, we're still the same family of four that travels to Walt Disney World from New Jersey every year!
Come and meet the Newsies family!
Dad (or Tom!)
Never to be seen without a "Grumpy" t-shirt, you'll find he's more "Goofy" than anything! If you're running to and from an ADR or a LL, don't make the mistake of stopping anywhere near him... he will find a reason to talk to you for an hour and become your best friend! I call him our "Chief Logistics Coordinator" -- he plans the driving and somehow packs all of our luggage in the back of his truck perfectly. Right now, he works on a local township's zoning board, but he's at that age where he's getting ready to retire and move to Florida so he can be as close to the magic as possible. The Polynesian Village Resort is his favorite place on earth! He likes to take it easy in the parks and he's content to just sit around and people watch all day. ADRs have to be given an extra hour of "buffer" time so he can sit at a resort bar and have a drink before meal time.
Mom (or Susan!)
Mom and I are a problem together because we enable each others' Disney decisions. Imagine if you had two different devils on your shoulders and they were both telling you to book another Disney trip... that's mom and I. Now that I'm a big girl with a big girl job and can chip in more money towards these trips, we've gotten into even more trouble booking Disney vacations together! Mom works in corporate real estate and has recently been promoted to senior manager after 40+ years at her job, plus she and I have been on a weight loss journey together in the past year and she has been very successful, so there is a lot to be proud of her for right now! Mom's absolute favorite thing on the entire planet right now is the Skyliner -- she just loves soaring through the air and listening to the various "sounds" of the Skyliner cars! She also really loves the Riviera resort, and her favorite characters are Chip & Dale!
Kait -- that's me!
Hi! I'm Kait, 27-year-old associate manager at a company I very, very much adore. My job encompasses a little bit of brand marketing, a little bit of social media planning, and a whole lot of Customer Experience -- something that I fell in love with while I was working for Walt Disney World Resort on the Disney College Program. You are going to hear SO much about me on this TR, I won't yap about myself for long here, but this is me in my element... Mouse Ears on my head, a Stony Clover pouch draped around my body, a pair of Hokas on my feet... this is my truest form! I'm super independent and have loved all things Walt Disney World since I started planning these vacations for my family over a decade ago.
Grace, my little sister!
Grace and I share a single brain cell and will laugh at the same things, often running a joke into the ground within 48 hours. She's 24 now, which feels absolutely insane to write, because we were celebrating her 13th birthday party during my first TR here on the boards. She's wrapping up Grad school this semester and will be getting her Masters in Education this May. She already has a few interviews lined up for post-grad as a higher ed counselor! Grace loves Disney but is the "chill" one of the family -- she will do whatever mom and dad are doing and doesn't stress out about weather or crowds like I do. Grace is a bit of a Disney foodie and will ask for specific restaurants from time to time, like Crystal Palace or Biergarten.
The Trip Details...
Dates: March 09-15, 2025
Resort & Ticket Package: Caribbean Beach Resort with 5-Day Hopper - booked with Bounceback Room Offer during my September solo vacation
Traveling: Driving from NJ as usual!
Add-Ons: Disney Dining Plan + Memory Maker
Other things you should know before we begin...
- Disney Vacation Club - Membership Magic Beyond was a Photopass unlock and not much else. I will probably not get a chance to talk about this at any other point in the TR, but I purchased the Membership Magic Beyond option (for just myself) for $99 figuring that it would be worth the 30-day Memory Maker package for our trip alone (usually $210). Well, I was absolutely correct. There are other benefits to this program while you're staying at Walt Disney World -- namely, special character M&Gs you can enjoy in EPCOT for exactly 3 hours every evening -- but because this was a cash trip and we weren't stay on points, we wouldn't have been able to use it, even if we had the time or desire to go there. We probably aren't going to the Parks again this year, so the benefits of special ticket pricing and the Magic Kingdom lounge opening this summer won't be any use to us. When I book our next DVC room this year (tbd, will likely be traveling between March and mid May), I may consider taking advantage of the bonus One-Time-Use-Point per One-Time-Use-Point purchase benefit. We were looking at the possibility of staying in a 1-BR suite for the first time at the new Poly tower next year since we'll have some banked points we can use to our advantage, but even with the banked points we'd need to go during a specific week in May if we wanted to stay in a 1-BR. Long story short, Membership Magic Beyond was worth the $99 cost for the Memory Maker alone and you'll probably find even more benefits to it if you plan on buying Park tickets this year.
- Food reviews: when they're 'just okay', they're pretty good. When they're 'excellent,' they're really, really excellent! Unlike years past, I've been pretty ambivalent about Disney food since I started turning my life around with a myriad of different lifestyle changes last year. If you read any pre-2024 TRs of mine, you know that I used to speak about the food of Disney with a lot of enthusiasm -- entire trips were planned around ADRs, there was a lot of food, and all of it was highly rated by me. Things are different now. I still make it a point to eat the things I enjoy while I'm on vacation, but restaurants are planned moreso around the experiences they can offer us and food is no longer at the center of my trips. I had a few really terrific, incredible dishes on this trip and I'll be sure to let you know what they were. But the take the bulk of my reviews -- which are "just okay" -- with a grain of salt knowing food just doesn't interest me like it used to.
- The Disney Dining Plan... leave it in 2019. Now, mom is absolutely tethered to the concept of the DDP because she loves that the vacation feels all-inclusive when it's paid up front. And I definitely feel like we got our value from our DDP credits based on where we ate for dinner, plus we used our DDP snack credits really strategically, so we probably got our worth out of those, too! We ended the week with 11 Quick Service meals left over and the flexibility has been stripped from them -- you used to be able to turn 1 QS credit into 3 snacks. No more. Like so many other Disney experiences, the value of the DDP has depreciated since COVID. Unless you're a family who drinks alcohol with every meal, loves Character Dining/packages like Fant!/Eat to the Beat/Garden Rocks/Candlelight Processional series, OR if you're like my mom and just want an all-inclusive resort feel, this plan is probably not for you given the amount of restrictions it has.
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It was the Lady Gaga double duty episode and I'm glad I got up to watch it, it was one of the best eps this season. 
