Is There A Prize For Most Indecisive DISer? Updated 1/9

[Colleen27]

Well, all of this has changed so much that my original intro is barely relevant. Oh, the cast remains the same but just about everything about the trip has changed, not once but twice, and who knows what the next 7 months could bring? So read on if you want to know how this trip evolved, but know that you can find the current plans starting on page 7.

Our original plans may not have worked out. Plan B may not have fared much better. But we WILL catch that Mouse in Jan 2010! Strike that - Dec 2009!!

The saga begins:
Meet the Cast, post #1
The Original Idea, a Birthday Escape, post #7
The Illustrated Meet the Cast, post #8
The Reason for The Troubles, post 10 & post 11
Consolation Prize, post 14
A New Idea: Food, Wine & Fun, post 58
Same Reason, New Troubles, post 77
The Beginnings of a New and Final Plan, post 88
Gratuitious DISigns, post 90
We Have A Resort!, post 99
So Much For Final..., post 105
The Basics of Our Holiday Itinerary, post 106
ADRs, Version 1.0, post 107
One Last Update

The Trip Report has begun:
We're Home, post 135
Animal Kingdom, part 1
Animal Kingdom, part 2

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

With plans firmly in hand for a holiday trip in 2009, I got home from our trip in Jan 2008 and grimly faced the prospect of a very long 22 months without a return to Walt Disney World. And for almost a year, I resisted the siren call of trip planning, even took a break from reading the DIS.

Then came the 4/3 promo. How could I pass on a deal like that? And better yet, the celebrations theme and promotion arrived just in time for that unavoidable signpost on the road of aging, my 30th birthday.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not one of those women who dreads aging. I’m mostly indifferent to it, really, but after spending my last two “milestone” birthdays (18 & 21) pregnant, I think this one deserves a proper send-off!

So here’s the cast…

Me, Disney nut, planner extraordinaire, and birthday girl. This will be trip #5 for me and my 4th planning adventure. I’m laid back almost to a fault in real life, but when I get on a planning kick watch out! It isn’t just Disney - we’re in the process of moving right now and I’ve got every inch of the new yard and house plotted out to the inch on graph paper so that I can measure, plan, and sketch each and every project in detail! So the planning side of Disney vacations appeals to me almost as much as the vacation itself, and I’m always looking for new ways to make each trip fun and different from the last.


DH, closet Disney nut, and tough guy. Don’t expect him to admit it around his work buddies, but he’s almost as into Disney as I am. I suspect sometimes that he’s really a 15 year old trapped in a grown up body, and nowhere is his kid side as evident as at Disney World. All he asks in a vacation is good food, fun, sun, and maybe a round or two of golf, and he’s more than happy to just go with the flow of my planning.


DS11, the bottomless pit, “too cool” for Disney. He’s my planning challenge, because he doesn’t get wildly excited before each trip the way the rest of us do so it is hard to get him to talk about what he wants to do/see. He always has fun once we’re there but if you asked him today what he wants to do on vacation, he’s as likely as not to say “stay home and hang out with my friends”. He has shown more interest in usual in this trip, though, because it will be his first as an adult on the dining plan. The kid is a big-time foodie who inherited his mom’s good taste, which can make him rather expensive to feed. Nothing like a teenage appetite with grown up tastes… This kid at a sushi restaurant could break me!


DD7, the Princess, in love with all things Disney. She’s more excited about each new trip than the last, writes stories in school about “Mickey’s house”, and watches the Disney planning DVD for fun. This trip is especially thrilling for her because for the first time, she gets to be the big sister. She’s taken to watching Mickey Mouse Clubhouse with the baby, so that the baby will recognize Mickey when we take her to meet him.

DD7mo, the baby doll, just along for the ride. What’s there to say? She’s a pampered little one, thanks to a doting big sister who treats her like a living, breathing Baby Alive doll. She’ll be hanging out in the Snuggli seeing the sights for most of the trip. Thankfully, she’s a mellow baby by nature despite her siblings’ best efforts to spoil her rotten, and she loves new places and eating at restaurants.


DMom, longtime Disney nut, and the other birthday girl. Our birthdays are only 8 days apart, so it only made sense to plan the trip to span both. She’s a Disney lover who was frustrated by financial constraints and uncooperative children when we were small (can you believe I used to *not* want to go to WDW?!? ) and greatly enjoying the opportunity to see the World through the eyes of her grandkids. This will be her 3rd Disney trip with us and we very much enjoy traveling together. She doesn’t do big rides, so she’ll be our “babysitter” when we hit the Mountains and the other thrills.

Up next... The Big Picture

 

[AlohaPolynesian]

Gotta love the "too cool for Disney" people!! No one is too cool for Disney!!

 

[OhioDisneyLover]

Subbing.

Boy, I remember my 30th birthday......hmmm, that was many many moons ago.......

Birthday trips are fun. I have an April birthday and the weather is perfect at that time of the year. DH has a February birthday and although chilly at night, we love spending his birthday at the happiest place on earth!

Happy planning..........

 

[Colleen27]

Gotta love the "too cool for Disney" people!! No one is too cool for Disney!!

I keep telling him that, but you know how pre-teen boys can be.

He told me yesterday that his "girlfriend" (who he's never even seen outside of school) loves Disney, so we have to get her a special pin.

Subbing.

Boy, I remember my 30th birthday......hmmm, that was many many moons ago.......

Birthday trips are fun. I have an April birthday and the weather is perfect at that time of the year. DH has a February birthday and although chilly at night, we love spending his birthday at the happiest place on earth!

Happy planning..........

Our Aug '07 trip was for my older DD's birthday, and Jan '08 was for "too cool for Disney" (who wasn't too cool to ask "Why can't I go to Disney for my birthday too?" after his sister's birthday trip ).

May is a big birthday month around here. DH's is the 3rd, DM's is the 19th, and mine is the 27th. There are some pretty nice perks to having a birthday over Memorial Day weekend and we've done some nice local trips for my b-day, but this will be my first Disney birthday.

 

[bettyann29]

ahhhh... a birthday trip.. that would be my dream, especially since my birthday is a week from tomorrow..

Sounds like you have a well rounded family.. Having your mom around with the little one will definitley be a huge help Im sure..

Your DH sounds like mine.. Cant wait to hear more..

 

[Colleen27]

Sounds like you have a well rounded family.. Having your mom around with the little one will definitley be a huge help Im sure..

It really is. If you'd told me at 18 that I'd still be vacationing with my mom at 30, I'd have thought you were crazy, but it works out so well for all of us. She doesn't like traveling alone, and with the age gap between our kids it is having someone else along makes it easier to fit in the things each kid wants to do. She's a chicken about rides so she's glad to hang out with the girls while we take DS on the big rides. On our first Disney trip, I booked the Princess Tea Party for DD & DM, and while they were enjoying tea with Briar Rose we were at DHS riding Rock & Roller Coaster over and over again with DS.

 

[Colleen27]

The plan so far…

When we’re all traveling together we usually opt for two rooms for the sake of privacy, but because our dates were inflexible for this trip and I wasn‘t happy with the moderates that were available with the 4/3 deal, we‘re trying something a little different this time.

Fort Wilderness.

This is a resort I’ve considered and dismissed a half dozen times. We’re an outdoorsy family and the campground feel is very appealing, but the lack of a hot tub and pool slide have always been a deal breaker. So you can imagine my happiness when I read the main pool was undergoing a major rehab. I popped over to the camping board and sure enough, Fort Wilderness is getting a hot tub and a slide! That sealed it for me. I booked a cabin that very afternoon.

So from May 19 to May 27 we’ll be bunking in a cabin at Fort Wilderness, enjoying a whole new way of doing Disney. And to properly enjoy it, we’ve also arranged to rent a golf cart from a company that will deliver a 6-seater. We’ll be cruisin’ around the fort in style.

Since this is a vacation, I don’t expect the lovely kitchen in that cabin will be getting much use. It’ll be nice to have for heating baby food or washing bottles, but I don’t cook on vacation. And just so that I’m not even tempted to lift a pan to save a buck, we added the deluxe dining plan to our package.

We were guinea pigs on the deluxe plan since our last trip was in the first month it was available and we loved it. There was no doubt in my mind that we’d do it again. We live in a small town where the Coney Island is the nicest restaurant around - actually, the only restaurant in town without a drive-thru - so vacation is the only time we really get to indulge in a variety of yummy goodness, and the deluxe plan is our guilt-free ticket to all the signature meals and overpriced theme park snacks we want. Not once will I think, “$15 for an appetizer? Well, maybe I really don’t want it that much.” Not once will I say. “You really don’t need fudge AND a giant cookie.” to one of the kids. And that is absolutely priceless.

It doesn’t hurt that the deluxe plan means even more reading menus and haunting the DIS dining reviews board and filling in those ADRs on the spreadsheet!

Up next… The Itinerary

 

[Colleen27]

Meet the crew!

My pirate and princess, on our January trip:

The first timer:

Sad, but this is the most recent pic I've got online of my hubby, taken on our first Disney trip in '05:

As the keeper of the camera, I don't have many shots of myself at all. This is the best I can find at the moment, a self-portrait taken after my last major hair color change I'll replace this one with something better when I get around to unpacking the box that has my Photopass CDs in it.

 

[Colleen27]

Well, I'm back... Real life has this habit of rudely interrupting my Disney obsession from time to time.

Originally this trip was meant to be a holiday grand gathering with my brother & his fiancee, but that was looking less and less likely and a birthday trip was really tempting particularly since our birthdays coincide with the Flower & Garden Festival. I've never been at that time of year, and my mom and I are both gardeners so we've always wanted to check it out.

By the time we finally decided to book, it turned out that it was exactly 1 day before our 90 day ADR window so I threw a rough itinerary together in a hurry without so much as looking at a crowd calendar.

Oddly enough, that itinerary works pretty well with the crowd predictions and best parks I've come across since.

So here it is:

19 May:
Arrival day & DM's birthday
Check in, pick up golf cart, take grocery delivery
Dinner at Narcoosees with birthday cake

20 May:
EPCOT Day #1
Lunch at Teppan Edo
Dinner at Restaurant Marrakesh

21 May:
Waterpark
Breakfast at Trails End
Dinner at Artist Point

22 May:
Animal Kingdom
Yak & Yeti lunch
Break at the cabin
Dinner at Chef Mickey

23 May:
EPCOT Day #2
Lunch at Rose & Crown
Dinner at Tutto Italia

24 May:
Magic Kingdom, against all advice because I want to do the 2am EMH
Lunch at Cinderella's Royal Table
Afternoon break
Dinner at Ohana
Late night park time

25 May:
Memorial Day, no park planned
DH golf
Swim, relax, cruise around the Fort
Dinner at California Grill
DH & big kids evening at Disney Quest

26 May:
Hollywood Studios
Lunch at Hollywood Brown Derby
Dinner at Kona

27 May:
Departure day, my birthday
Breakfast at Kona
DM, DD2 & I to Downtown Disney shopping
Late afternoon flight home

Right now, this is just a rough outline, subject to change a bit in the next 65 days.

I'm thinking of adding the Gardens of the World tour for DM & myself on the morning of our 2nd EPCOT day, and depending on our departing flight time we might add lunch at Raglan Road or The Wave on our departure day. I'm still debating whether to switch our dinner at Kona for something in/near DHS so we have more park time that evening, though DHS is our least favorite park and I'm not sure we need much time there. And I'm sure there are plenty of other changes that haven't even occurred to me yet that will in the coming months!

 

[Colleen27]

A slight diversion...

This is what has been pulling my attention away from Disney planning these days - our new house!

This is what 20K buys in new-depression suburban Detroit:

It is liveable as-is but needs some cosmetics and some SERIOUS restoration. Who puts aluminum siding on an 1880 Victorian?!? Thankfully they weren't so careless with the interior - all the original wood trim and carved pocket doors are intact. I'm having such fun hunting for the history of the house at the library and town archive, and we hope to restore it to its original glory over the next 5 years or so.

 

[Colleen27]

Arrrghhh.... What to do, what to do?

The closing on the new house has been pushed back. AGAIN. Long story short, the house is a foreclosure, the bank only uses 1 title company and closing agency for all of Michigan, and they are so swamped that we can't seem to get everything in order. It is so frustrating having the cash on hand to close ASAP and having to wait because of delays on the seller's end!!

So DH is getting nervous about travelling in May because we're quickly running out of time to close and get moved before our trip.

Free dining would be just as good a discount as we have now, and we have a 40% off PIN we could use if we don't want to stick to free dining dates... And of course, that would mean being there for Food & Wine, which I would love. The alternatives aren't exactly terrible.

But I DON'T WANNA change my birthday trip!!!

 

[AlohaPolynesian]

I wouldn't want to change my b-day trip either! I love your ADR's. Yak & Yeti lunch was awesome. They had fried green beans as an appetizer that were delicious!!!! Chef Mickey dinner is always fun. Ohana dinner is my absolute favorite in all of WDW. Cousin Gary is awesome! I was mad because I ate too much dinner that I could barely eat the bread pudding that I had been dreaming about for months. Ughhh.

Just got back from my trip and tried Tutto Italia. We did "Drinks Around the World" that day so my stomach was full from margaritas in Mexico and slushies in Morocoo. The food was good though, we were just rushed through the meal which made me mad.

Also, Raglan Road was AMAZING. My favorite meal of the trip probably. It was my first time trying it and I was NOT disappointed! I ordered the Goats Town and it was amazing! So was the yummy dessert.

If you go to Rose and Crown you need to look for Eddie the bartender from Ireland. We fell in love when I was there last week. (OK, so maybe I just fell in love with him lol)

What is the Gardens of the World tour? I'm trying to convince my mom to go to Disney with me to use our 40% PIN, shes a huge gardener so maybe that's something she would like?

 

[Colleen27]

I wouldn't want to change my b-day trip either! I love your ADR's. Yak & Yeti lunch was awesome. They had fried green beans as an appetizer that were delicious!!!! Chef Mickey dinner is always fun. Ohana dinner is my absolute favorite in all of WDW. Cousin Gary is awesome! I was mad because I ate too much dinner that I could barely eat the bread pudding that I had been dreaming about for months. Ughhh.

Just got back from my trip and tried Tutto Italia. We did "Drinks Around the World" that day so my stomach was full from margaritas in Mexico and slushies in Morocoo. The food was good though, we were just rushed through the meal which made me mad.

Also, Raglan Road was AMAZING. My favorite meal of the trip probably. It was my first time trying it and I was NOT disappointed! I ordered the Goats Town and it was amazing! So was the yummy dessert.

If you go to Rose and Crown you need to look for Eddie the bartender from Ireland. We fell in love when I was there last week. (OK, so maybe I just fell in love with him lol)

What is the Gardens of the World tour? I'm trying to convince my mom to go to Disney with me to use our 40% PIN, shes a huge gardener so maybe that's something she would like?

Ohana and Raglan Road are restaurants we never seem to manage to fit in, so I'm really looking forward to both. Tutto Italia was one of the best meals we had on our January trip, and while I normally plan for as few return visits as possible, my mother wasn't with us in January so I have TI and a couple other repeats on the schedule for her to be able to try.

The Gardens of the World tour is a special tour they only run during Flower & Garden festival. It is led by a Disney horticulturalist that takes the group around the World Showcase prior to opening to talk about the landscaping and how the F&G displays were created. I really want to do it, both because I'm a gardener and because I'm a photographer who would love the pre-opening stroll around the World Showcase. Not being able to take that tour is a MAJOR downside to changing our dates.

I feel like a bit of a spoiled brat for being so disappointed about possibly having to change our dates from May to Sept. Living in Michigan in this economy, I should be thanking my lucky stars that we have a stable place to live, much less the money to travel to Disney, and not whining that buying my dream house (quite literally - I've wanted to restore an old Victorian since I was a little kid) is getting in the way of my travel plans. So when I get too pouty/sulky about thinking about rebooking, that's what I tell myself. It is disappointing that I might not be able to be there on my birthday, and it is disappointing to miss Flower & Garden, but I live a pretty charmed life and I really can't complain.

 

[Colleen27]

With free dining officially available, Dh suggested I look at our options for rebooking for fall just in case we do have to postpone. So with no enthusiasm at all, I pulled together some numbers to compare the free dining package to the 40% PIN at a few different resorts and left them on the desk with no intention of doing anything with them until we know for sure what is happening with May.

DH took one look at the numbers and decided to start on talking me into fall.

First he says "We can go for the start of Food & Wine. We really enjoyed that last time" (our first family trip was during F&W and a lot of our non-Disney/kid-free travel involves winery tours and wine tastings)

I shrug. We've been there for that before. It was fun, but I've never been for Flower & Garden.

Then he says "I'll bet Sept & Oct are less crowded" (as though he was reading my mind; UG just upped their crowd predictions for Memorial Day to put them on par with 4th of July )

I shrug. I'm an uber-planner and a UG subscriber. I know how to have a good time despite crowded parks.

Then he breaks out the big guns. "You know, it looks like we could add an extra night or two and still stay within budget."

Now he's got my attention. I play around with numbers and dates and sure enough, we could book 10 nights in Sept/Oct for a little less than what 8 nights in May will cost.

So I went ahead an booked it. I'm still hoping we can pull off going ahead with the original plan, but a couple extra nights isn't a bad consolation prize if it turns out that we do have to postpone.

 

[Colleen27]

Until I have to make a decision about May, and still no word on when we'll close.

At this point, I have two fears. Either we'll decide to go ahead with the trip and come to find out they want to close while we're gone, or we'll cancel the trip only to find out that we're closing in plenty of time to have gone.

I'm really tired of wondering what to do, and I'm still no closer to an answer than I was a week ago.

Pros to postponing:

• Lighter crowds
• Lower rates
• Longer trip
• Food & Wine festival
• The first-timer will be a bit older

Cons:

• Not my birthday
• Hotter weather
• Chance for hurricanes
• The first-timer will be more mobile
• Not my birthday
• Rainier weather
• No Flower & Garden
• No Gardens of the World tour
• Four months longer to wait
• Not my birthday

Some of the pros definitely have their appeal, but they don't outweigh the cons by any stretch. But if we don't have an answer by the end of business tomorrow, I really don't see how we have any option other than to postpone.

 

[Colleen27]

Well, I put it off as long as I could, but it is time to be a grown up again.

Tomorrow I call to cancel our May dates.

We still don't have the final paperwork on our closing and the latest from our RE agent is that it could be anywhere from 2 to 4 weeks longer, then another week or so to actually close.

So instead of less than two months till WDW, now I've got 2 months before park hours come out, almost 3 months before I can make ADRs, and 175 days left on the countdown.

The house is well worth the hassle and I know I'm being a brat, but I'm still really bummed.

 

[AlohaPolynesian]

HEY! OK, I'm sorry - but you have extra nights in WDW so I'm not allowing you to complain about May!! LOL. The garden tour seems really neat, but the F&G festival itself is seriously just a bunch of topiaries, you won't miss much.

Also, I left the midwest to do an internship down south this fall and there were always hurricanes projected in our direction. I freaked out and everyone laughed at me because it's just a bad rainstorm. However, then we got hit really hard with Hurricane Ike and even the natives hadn't seen anything like that in YEARS! But I survived and now hurricanes don't scare me anymore! As long as you are safe with enough food and water, you will be totally fine.

Look at your longer wait as more time to plan. There's so much to discover on the DIS, ya know? You might find new restaurants you want to try or find out new things to do in the parks.

But best of all, just be glad you're going to Disney!!!!!!!!! Woo woo!!!

 

[Colleen27]

HEY! OK, I'm sorry - but you have extra nights in WDW so I'm not allowing you to complain about May!! LOL. The garden tour seems really neat, but the F&G festival itself is seriously just a bunch of topiaries, you won't miss much.

Also, I left the midwest to do an internship down south this fall and there were always hurricanes projected in our direction. I freaked out and everyone laughed at me because it's just a bad rainstorm. However, then we got hit really hard with Hurricane Ike and even the natives hadn't seen anything like that in YEARS! But I survived and now hurricanes don't scare me anymore! As long as you are safe with enough food and water, you will be totally fine.

Look at your longer wait as more time to plan. There's so much to discover on the DIS, ya know? You might find new restaurants you want to try or find out new things to do in the parks.

But best of all, just be glad you're going to Disney!!!!!!!!! Woo woo!!!

I'm already thinking ahead to a Flower & Garden girls-only weekend next year! That would probably be better anyway, just me, my mom & my two DDs, while DH & DS head off into the woods to do whatever it is that they do for fun when they go up north. F&G has as much appeal for them as sleeping on the ground among the mosquitos has for me, so it is win-win!

I'm a born and raised Detroiter, but my mom's only sister lives in Virginia Beach and we used to spend August down there every summer when I was a kid. So I've got a little first-hand experience with "minor" (cat 2 & 3) hurricanes and they really don't worry me all that much beyond flight delays and missed park time.

I'm shooting for haivng all my ADRs decided by my 90 day date (June 27) so that I don't have to make any changes later on. We've been once before for that last week of free dining/first week of Food & Wine, and the parks were empty but the restaurants full. It'll be nice having the deluxe plan this time, because I hated the free dining season waits for counter service at meal times.

It took a few days of pouting, but I'm really starting to get excited about Sept. If I take the birthday aspect out of the equation, Sept is the better trip - cheaper, lower crowd levels, and the fun of all those snack credits at the F&W booths...

And I think my DH might be up to something... The man hasn't had a single opinion about a dining reservation in 4 years of Disney trips, but this time he specifically requested dinner at AKL/AKV so that we can take a look around. We've been talking about a DVC purchase for over a year now... He has been a little reluctant and has waffled a bit on whether he thinks it is right for our family, so I think him wanting to see AKV is a really good sign that he is coming around.

 

[Colleen27]

The beginnings of a new plan...

I'm starting to work on an itinerary for Sept, as much as I can in the absence of park hours. Surprisingly enough, there's actually quite a bit that can be done without knowing specific dates.

We eventually decided on 9 nights for this trip, so I dropped the 10th to finalize our dates as Sept 25 to Oct 4.

Since we don't make park plans for arrival or departure days, that gives us 8 full days to work with - 1 at Magic Kingdom, 1 at Animal Kingdom, 1 at Hollywood Studios, 2 at EPCOT, 1 for each waterpark, and 1 to spend enjoying the resort. We like evening EMH, especially at Magic Kingdom, and we'll definitely be doing MNSSHP.

Right now, the rough draft of the ADR list is as follows:

Arrival day:
Artist Point dinner

Magic Kingdom day:
Liberty Tree Tavern lunch
Narcoosees dinner

Hollywood Studios:
Brown Derby lunch
Flying Fish dinner

Animal Kingdom:
Yak & Yeti lunch
Jiko dinner

EPCOT day 1:
Teppan Edo lunch
Marrakesh dinner

EPCOT day 2:
Akershus breakfast
Le Cellier dinner

Waterpark day 1:
Kona Cafe dinner

Waterpark day 2:
Spirit of Aloha dinner show

Resort day:
Chef Mickey breakfast or lunch if it is offered
California Grill dinner

Departure day:
Grand Floridian Cafe breakfast
or
Raglan Road lunch (depending on flight time)

 

[onelilspark]

We went from Oct2-5 last year...oh my goodness, it was DEAD. It was awesome to walk around and have no one else there! Great time of year to pick! Seriously.