Introducing Our Princess to a Whole New World

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Greetings fellow Disney lovers! I know it has been awhile since I have done a trip report (3 1/2 years) but we are finally heading back and since this trip has been two years in the making, I wouldn't be doing it justice if I didn't share the experience. So let's get started with the "who",

First we have me, Amber. I will be the primary narrator and I guess you could call me "assistant planner". This will be my 15th trip to the World and I will be turning 27 mid-way through the trip. My favorite park is Animal Kingdom and my favorite resort is Wilderness Lodge (this may change on this trip). My favorite character will always be Tinkerbell.

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Next we have my best friend of 10 years and husband of 4 years, Warren. This will be his 5th or 6th trip to the World and while he isn't a Disney lover like me, it is definitely getting easier to convince him to go. His favorite park is Epcot, especially during Food and Wine festival. He doesn't have a favorite character or resort



The Princess referred to in the title is our daughter Natalia. She will be 15 months old when we go on this trip and of course this will be her first trip! We are so excited to introduce her to the Disney lifestyle. She loves Mickey Mouse Clubhouse as well as most of the Disney movies and Singalongs. I may have started her out watching Disney from birth. There is always a smile on her face and she is full of energy!



Next would be the master planner, my dad. He is known to the dis world as Tiggersally. This trip will be upwards of number 20 for him (maybe even closer to 25). He enjoys planning the trips just as much as he enjoys going on the trip. He is looking forward to his first trip as a grandpa or grrrrrr as Natalia likes to call him. My mom, also known as gammy to Natalia, will be experiencing her first trip as a grandma and has been almost as many times as my dad has.



My brother Ryne is 23 and we think this will be his 12th or 13th trip. It is getting hard to keep track of who has been how often now that we are all older and taking trips of our own. The last time he went was to celebrate his high school graduation which was May 2011 so I'm sure all of his favorites will change now that he is an "adult". His twin brother Kyle will unfortunately not be joining us on this trip. He landed an awesome job opportunity that will have him very busy that time of year. Ryne is the first picture and Kyle is the second. No, they don't have children. That is Natalia with them. They love being uncles and enjoy spoiling her!




Towards the end of the trip my grandparents will be joining us. You will see them referred to as Meme and Papa F and Meme M (that is what we have always called them). They have taken many trips with us when we were younger and are looking forward to seeing the great-grandparent side of things. A whole week is too much activity for them (we move at a fast pace) so they will join us for the last couple of days.

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When are we going? Our favorite time to visit is in early May. First, the weather is great. 70's-80's everyday and rarely do we see rain. Kids are still in school so the parks aren't busy at all. We are leaving central Illinois on Friday May 5th and driving the distance over the course of two days. We will then start heading home either Friday May12th or Saturday the 13th depending on if we take a detour to visit Kyle who may be closeby at that time.

Where are we staying? Our first night we always stay offsite but within close vicinity to Disney Springs because that is where we typically spend our first day. Believe it or not the long drive down really wears us out so we don't like to do a park on the first day. This time we are staying at Clarion Inn. Then on Sunday we will move to a 2-bedroom villa at Old Key West. This will be our first time staying at OKW and we are so excited to try it out! It will be nice to be able to stay together and have all the comforts of home with a 15 month old. When the grandparents arrive Meme M will stay with us and Meme and Papa F will stay in a studio at OKW. We will have the deluxe dining plan. As far as tickets go my mom has an annual pass but the rest of us did a "buy 4 days, get the 5th free" deal on park hoppers.

 

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Here is our tentative itinerary for the trip! This will probably change at least 10 more times between now and then but the general idea of it all will stay the same.

Friday May 5th: Leave around 7 am and drive to Cordele, GA where we have a hotel reservation for the night (about 8-9 hours of driving time)

Saturday May 6th: Complete the final 5 hours of driving time and arrive on Disney property. Check into the Holiday Inn (the one that used to be the Nickelodeon resort) and spend the afternoon/evening at Disney Springs. DH has a grand opening event for work today so he will be flying down from St. Louis and landing around 9:30pm. He is just going to take a cab/uber from the airport to the hotel so we don't have to worry about keeping Natalia up past her bedtime to pick him up.

Sunday May 7th: Pack up the van and drive over to Old Key West for 9:05am breakfast ressie at Olivia's. The men will then head to Typhoon while us girls spend more shopping time at Disney Springs. The van will just stay at OKW since we will be checking in there later. We will likely eat lunch somewhere at Disney Springs. At some point we will make a quick Walmart run to get food and drinks for Natalia for the week (much easier than packing it all to bring down there). During the afternoon hours we will check into our 2-bedroom villa at OKW then we will get ready for our 5 pm dinner ressie at the Boathouse. Then we may head over to Fort Wilderness for the Campfire with Chip and Dale but haven't decided for sure.

Monday May 8th: Our first park day! Animal Kingdom is the park of choice and there are morning extra magic hours starting at 8am. Hopefully we can all make it to EMH but I may be lagging behind with Natalia. Our first fast pass of the day is for the Festival of the Lion King 9:30-9:45 seating for the 10am show. Natalia loves music and I have no doubt in my mind that she will love this show. We have a reservation for lunch at 12:30 at the Rain Forest Café that is in Animal Kingdom. After lunch mom, Natalia, and I will leave the park and head back to OKW for a little bit of downtime/nap time. After Natalia is rested up we will return to Animal Kingdom for a little fun before our dinner reservation a 5:30pm at Tusker House as part of the River of Lights Package. We have a fast pass for Everest from 4:55-5:55pm then Kilamanjaro Safari from 7:40-8:40pm. We then plan to stay in the park for the River of Lights at 9:15pm.

Tuesday May 9th: Rope drop at MK with a fast pass for the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train from 9:25-10:25am. We will have to hit that towards the beginning of our time slot in order to make it to our 10:10 am breakfast ADR at Crystal Palace so Natalia can meet Pooh and the gang. We then have a 10:50am-11:50am Fast Pass for Winnie the Pooh followed by a 12:20-1:20 pm Fast Pass for Splash Mountain. At some point I will take Natalia back to the resort so she can nap and get ready for our 6:15 Hoop De Doo reservation. That evening will then be open for whatever everyone wants to do.

Wednesday May 10th (my birthday): Rope drop at Hollywood Studios. We never really spend much time here and since there isn't much for Natalia to do, we plan to be pretty well done by our 11:45 lunch reservation at Mama Melrose with the exception of our fastpasses. We have a fastpass from 10-11 for Toy Story Mania and from 11:55 to 12:55 for Tower of Terror. At 1/1:15 we do have a Fast Pass for the Frozen Sing A Long since Natalia love Frozen. From there everybody will probably head to Epcot while I take Natalia back to nap. Meme and Papa F and Meme M will be arriving that day and I plan to be at the resort with Natalia during the time they arrive. That evening we have a dinner reservation at Whispering Canyon at 6:25. I'm not 100% for sure yet but I am thinking that Warren and I will take Natalia to the Poly to watch Wishes from the beach on this night. She loves watching fireworks and the noise doesn't seem to bother her but I am worried the large crowd at MK will be too overwhelming for her.

Thursday May 11th: This will be another Magic Kingdom morning with a lunch ADR at 11:10am at the Plaza. That afternoon we will head to Epcot. We have a fast pass for Soarin from 5:25-6:25pm. Our dinner reservation is at 6pm at Gardin Grill. Then we have a fastpass for Spaceship Earth from 6:45-7:45pm. Keeping with our previous tradition, we will watch Illuminations this night since it is our last night. I do have noise cancelling headphones for Natalia in case the noise gets to her (for some reason I always feel like Illuminations is louder than Wishes).

Friday May 12th: Pack up/check out then head to Animal Kingdom. We have a 9:30-10:30am fastpass for Kilamanjaro Safari so the grandparents can experience it with us then we will head to our 10:10am breakfast reservation at Tusker House. Then we have a fast pass for the 11:30-11:45 seating for Festival of the Lion King and for the 12:30-12:45 seating for Finding Nemo. If all goes as planned we may be able to visit with Kyle and watch him coach on this evening then start the journey home on Saturday with the final arrival on Sunday.

 

[Tigger's ally]

Yep, that's me. Planning is fun and new since I've never planned for a grandtinker before!

Ah, remembering the old days when we had one, then three kids (twin IS a four letter word you know) and spent all our trips at All Stars with an occasional night or two at the Wildernsess or AKL to experience them too. Thinking we will all like the added space at OKW.



Really looking forward to watching grandtink at the Lion King show!

 

[Tigger's ally]

And all the planning is now done. All the magic bands are customized. Still having problems with one ressie's fast passes. The first ressie with the two bedroom has all the plans correct but the second one for my parents studio has the ressie correct, the magic bands correct but the fast passes all up. Was on the phone for an hour this morning with IT and we accomplished zero!

 

[Tigger's ally]

Really sense it coming now, got the magic bands! Hoop De Doo!

 

[Tigger's ally]

Two weeks from today is check in day a OKW

 

[allysetraskos]

We took our son at 15 months last year and it was amazing... At that age they love to people watch. We didn't even take our son back to nap he just napped in the stroller or baby carrier, he was perfectly content. You are gonna have a blast!