January 2012 - no husbands allowed

[lledman]

I’m soo excited - I have invited myself along with 2 friends who are planning to go to Disney World in 2012 (February 11/12 – 18/19). The kids have off school for Valentines Day (actually it’s for the primary election but it happens to fall on Valentines Day) and an early dismissal that Friday plus off on the following Monday for Presidents Day so for a week’s vacation they would only have to miss 3.5 days of school.

We are still in the early planning stages - as we have 14 months to go - but I'm excited just the same.

Jessica and Janet are two of my closest friends and we travel/camp with their families a lot. We all have kids around the same ages so it's great b/c everyone has a friend along where ever we go. Our vacationing styles are somewhat different - Jess and I research, evaluate, plan and re-plan everything while Janet just goes along with whatever she's told she’s going to do for the day. We all went together in April 2008 but didn’t really end up spending that much time together – we camped at Ft. Wilderness, Janet and my sister stayed at Pop while Jess and another friend of ours stayed offsite in a house. Jess’ husband is not impressed with Disney at all and has no desire to return. Janet has since separated. So the husband free trip was conceived – sorry Chris I know you’re distraught that you aren’t invited along on this one (my DH is not a Disney fan however goes along to appease me and the kids).

The cast of characters may grow as others may decide to join us but as of now the core group will be (photos from our first trip together in 2008)
My family – me – Lisa - Disney obsessed mom to Tyler (who will be 13 for this trip – he enjoys Disney and likes to help me plan), Devin (will be 6 and is as Disney crazed as his momma) and Tyra (who will be 4 and is my handful – she loves princesses and pinkerbell but don’t let her sweet innocent exterior fool you)

The R Family – Jess (a fellow planner who enjoys Disney but not to my level), Danielle (will be 13), Kiersten (will be 6) and Hunter (will be 4)

The S Family – Janet (just doing what we tell her to do - but seriuosly I think this trip was her idea) and Cameron (will have just turned 4) along with Ashlin (who will be 10)


We are leaning towards staying onsite in a moderate resort in hopes that free dining will be offered for our stay but like I said we are still exploring our options.

How awesome to have 2 PTRs going at once!!!!!!!!!! For anyone interested we are planning to go with my SIL's family in May 2011. We'll be staying offsite at the Cypress Grand Villas and you can read about my ramblings/planning here

 

[Shaniyah]

Im in!!! Your kids are too cute!

 

[lledman]

Im in!!! Your kids are too cute!

Welcome along, and thank you

 

[hollie1974]

This sounds cool! I'm in!

 

[lledman]

This sounds cool! I'm in!

Thanks for joining me - speaking of cool - DHs work gave us 5 complementary tickets to ICE! at the National Harbor/Gaylord Hotel. Today was the first day we had free to use them. It was amazing to see all the carvings. It was also freezing – they keep it 9 degrees inside the large dome/tent/bubble where the ice sculptures are - they give you a parka to wear over your own jacket. This year’s theme was How the Grinch Stole Christmas









There are 4 giant slides in one room that you can slide down. The parkas they give you really get you some speed - poor Tyra sat on her bottom instead of the jacket so she had to keep pushing herself down the whole time.


The boys enjoyed it soo much they went down twice








After Whoville there was a beautiful larger than life nativity scene.


Giant Peeps Christmas Tree




They also had ice skating in there for an added cost (of course) but we passed on that.

And I just had to take this one photo of the kids in front of a store window on our way to/from the parking garage

 

[hollie1974]

Thanks for joining me - speaking of cool - DHs work gave us 5 complementary tickets to ICE! at the National Harbor/Gaylord Hotel.

Now that looks likes tons of fun! Thanks for sharing the pics! Your kids are adorable!!

 

[lledman]

Our travel party is growing. I won’t post pictures yet to protect the innocent but I think we’ve added 3 more families.

Dana and her daughter Haylee (will be 13 at the time of the trip)
Kelly (my sister) and her children Shawn (will be 12) and Kerri (will be 7)
Stefanie and her children Austin (will be 7) and Layna (will be 5)

Janet is also almost certain that her old daycare lady and adult daughter will join us – along with their families, she went with them last summer and had a great time.

And Jess is waiting to hear back from another friend who wants to go but isn’t keen on the husband free idea (which I can totally understand – it’s one thing if he doesn’t care but if he really wants to go of course we will allow it)


So our running total is 6 moms with 13 kids

 

[lledman]

Oh and I forgot to mention, we have room only reservations and a grand gathering set up!!!!!

We are all really hoping that free dining will be offered for our stay next year so we booked at Port Orleans French Quarter!!!!!!!!!!!

We have started discussing dining options – we want to try to plan as many meals together as possible but with large groups it’s sometimes difficult – so we need to plan this early.
Tossing around the Grand Gathering events – the Illuminations Dinner and the Safari Celebrations dinner – both are 2 TS credits so I only want to pick one.
Everyone is in agreement on the Cinderella Dinner at the Grand Floridian – after appointments at the BBB in DTD.
And I think we all want to do one of the Fantasmic dinner packages.
Also considering the Tony Good Morning Breakfast in the MK for grand gatherings but not sure.

If I have any readers/followers out there – what’s your favorite character meal????

 

[lledman]

We are all really hoping that free dining will be offered for our stay next year so we booked at Port Orleans French Quarter!!!!!!!!!!!

Change of plans already. I'm calling later today to change our reservations to Pop. I just read in another PTR that you can upgrade free dining at the values to include table service meals for under $200 - that will save us even more next year. Plus I have never stayed at any of the moderates but I'm not over thrilled with the themes at any of them - since I have little kids the themes at the values just appeal to us. And I love how Pop doesn't share a bus - we used the All Star Sports buses a lot on our first trip (my sister was staying there) - we had to stand a lot.

 

[lledman]

Down to less than a year for this trip

And to celebrate we went to Great Wolf Lodge in Williamsburg for a Valentines weekend get away. You can see photos here in my other trip report

 

[lledman]

Attended the 4-H awards banquet tonight- Congrats to Tyler for his awards

His friend Danielle is the same age as him and one of our traveling companions for next year’s Disney trip. Anyway, it’s a shame her family was out of town this weekend b/c she won a special award for swine showmanship – the superintendant of the building created the award just for her b/c he was soooo impressed with her knowledge of her project and her willingness to help everyone.

Ok, with that being said Danielle’s parents feel bad that she wasn’t there to receive her special award tonight and don’t want to miss the banquet ever again. Wouldn’t you know it that the dates for our trip happen to include next year’s banquet night. That means we have to move our trip up a month – darned the luck The reason we selected the dates we did in February is because the kids would only have to miss 3.5 days of school, well moving it up a month we can still travel for the same amount of time and the kids will only have to miss 4 full days of school. So I think we are now aiming for January 15-22 – but that’s still to be confirmed.

 

[lledman]

Well my sister is bailing on our trip. 3 down.
I don't think Janet is willing to change dates from February. There goes another 3.
No word from Stef as to if she’s willing to change dates or not. Unfortunately between 4-H, Danielle's basketball and Tyler's school play, and a billion and one other things - Jess and I have decided we can't do February like we had originally thought – and March isn’t looking too hot either. January may be too close to Christmas - meaning the wallets will be hurting. So that brings us to April. Easter is in early April and we don't want any part of those crowds so that pushes us to late April. The irony is that our trip together in 2009 was in late April as well.

 

[lledman]

Well this pre-trip report has a new title - so guess what that means - we selected new dates - January 21-28 - yep, we moved the trip up. 326 days and counting!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[lledman]

Yeah for Mickey Mail Not sure why but I received the confirmation for room reservation for our January 2012 trip in the mail today – what an awesome surprise.

 

[Marshay]

Joining in!

as you know we have our trip planned for Jan 2012, too!

Will go back and read and post.

 

[lledman]

Joining in!

as you know we have our trip planned for Jan 2012, too!

Will go back and read and post.

Glad to have you here

 

[lledman]

We are really hoping for free dining which we will pay to upgrade. We are also planning to just get base tickets (no hopping this time) I love to plan so I've taken park hours from this year at the time we are going and use those to predict what I think our park hours will be - Disney is usually fairly consistent with this. Anyway these are my plans - haven't been discussed with the other travelers so you know that means they are going to change - but just sharing anyway
Not sure if we'll leave Friday the 20th after work/school or if we'll do a full day of driving on Saturday the 21st. Anyway you look at it I don't want to make any plans for our arrival day. We can spend some time at the resort or if we want to do something else we'll just wing it.

Sunday, 1/22 - plan to hit the park at rope drop and get in as much as we can. Lunch will be an ADR at Hollywood & Vine with the Disney Junior cast. If we need a break we'll head back to the hotel and then return that afternoon/evening for Fantasmic and then stay for evening EMH (again just going by this year's schedule for these) This will be our only day at the Studios and I am not sure if we'll even make it there next month.

Monday, 1/23 - Magic Kingdom - I want to get Tyra a BBB appointment sometime this morning. I think since we'll be out until after 10 the night before that I will plan a break today. We'll do dinner around 5 at 1900 Park Fare (since the girls will have been princess-fied. And then back to the MK for evening EMH

Tuesday, 1/24 – morning EMH at EPCOT – I don’t know if it’s a mistake to switch back and forth from morning to evening EMH but I think we can probably make it. Anyway today will be dinner at Coral Reef. My family has eaten here before but no one else in our party has and they want to try it. I’m not a seafood person but for the good of the group – count me in.

Wednesday, 1/25 – back to the MK for breakfast with Tony – grand gathering thing.

Thursday, 1/26 - AK day – we want to do the Grand Gathering Safari this night.

Friday, 1/27 – evening EMH at EPCOT so what better way to end the trip – dinner will be at the Garden Grill.

 

[lledman]

I picked up a special treat for myself while I was grocery shopping at Target last night - can't wait to crack into it

 

[lledman]

How about some photos. Yesterday we went to the local Volunteer Rescue Squad and had breakfast with the Easter Bunny. Really we had an all you can eat breakfast and then visited with the Easter Bunny.

Tiny Girl told me - "Him's not really the Easter Bunny, him's a person"


Devin's turn - notice Tyra tormenting the bunny with the blow up carrot


and this was as good as I was going to get at a picture with Tyler


But here's 2 photos from Tyler's play last weekend - he's the one with the dog in both shots

 

[Moira222]

Hello! I followed you over. Read some of your PTR from last year (ok first I though it was this year's PTR then I saw the dates were 2010). We camp a lot, too. We have a Class C, though I often wish we had a travel trailer. Having a Class C means that we use twice as much gas because if we want to visit an area, we need a separate vehicle. Not the best thing with fuel prices they way they are.

Sounds like you are a PA gal as well. Actually your name sounds really familiar...maybe we have crossed paths camping? We have camped at Watkins Glen as well -the KOA is so nice up there & we've done Hershey Campground as well as quite a few others in the area in that general vicinity.

We've done WDW in January twice and have really enjoyed it. Its a much slower pace so you can do a lot more than at busier times of the year. This will be our first "regular season' trip.

I am confused - you said you'd be at WDW when we are -- do you have another trip planned???

Your kids look so great & happy! How nice that your son is so involved in 4H. I think that's something my DD would like when she gets ab it older though I will have to look around to see if they meet locally. I remember seeing a 4H booth at a mall event so they must be.