January in Hawaii....our upcoming trip to the Polynesian

[pbmouseman]

I'm impressed by the level of detail that some people put into their trip reports. I'm also inspired. Let me start with some background for our trip.

We are a family of 6, but there are 8 of us on this trip. The cast of characters is as follows:
Me - 44 YO father of 4 girls
DS - 33 YO mother of 4
DD - 10 (Peyton), 4 DLR trips, one WDW
DD - 9 (Rhianna) 2 DLR trips
DD - 8 (Reagan), 4 DLR trips, one WDW
DD - 6 (Baylee), 2 DLR trips
DMIL - 70ish, 1 DLR trip
DFIL - 62ish, 1 DLR trip
Here's a picture of the whole crew on a trip we took to DLR last year

This will be the first trip to WDW for my in-laws, and for two of my daughters (the ones on each end, one with the Princess ears and one with the Minnie ears). They've been in the US for almost two years now. My in-laws are on each end of the picture, the beautiful redhead is my wife and I'm the guy squinting with the blue shirt. DD10 and DD8 are in front of us, wearing the Pirate ears and the Mickey ears (not sure how to describe hers exactly). We've been to WDW before, but for a number of reasons we didn't really enjoy it. One main reason is we did very little (no) planning. You can get away with that at DLR, but WDW does require some strategizing (or at least I hope that my strategizing makes this trip better for us).

So, here's how it starts. We told ourselves last February that we really need to give WDW another try. We really like DLR, and really like CA weather. The thought of Florida in the summer doesn't really appeal to us, nor do the crowds. So we decided to arrange for a mid winter trip. That also works well for us because we live in the midwest, and by January we are ready for a break from the miserable winters.

We were debating how we wanted to structure this trip. We have only stayed at a Disney resort once (PP at DLR). It was nice, but we really enjoyed our trips where we had a whole house to lounge in after the parks. What we didn't enjoy was the driving and looking for restaurants (or making our own meals). I was looking at some of the vacation home rentals, and they all looked nice, but we decided to splurge this time and really immerse ourselves in the Disney experience. But what resort?

We've never set foot on a resort at WDW (other than to switch busses when going from park to park). We had taken the monorail through CR and past the Poly and GF, so we knew they were nice. But because we were traveling with 8, we needed more space and two rooms made the deluxe resorts a little too extravagant. We heard great things about some of the Value Resorts, but we wanted to make sure our first resort trip was memorable, so we decided to price out the moderates. The decision was easy...the queen beds tilted the scales in favor of CSR. We booked our reservations and started dreaming of our Mayan vacation at CSR.

Next: What should we do about food?
Coming soon: The first of three resort switches (thanks to the 4/3 deal)

 

[pbmouseman]

One of the things that I definitely did not experience during my first trip to WDW was the dining. We arrived in Orlando on December 31, prepared to ring in the New Year at Disney, with absolutely no advance reservations, and no plan for where to go or what to do.

Our park of choice for the day was Epcot. My recollection was that we were practically elbow to elbow in the park, trying to make our way around the international pavilion. Around 5 o'clock we were getting hungry, so I figured we'd just hop into one of the many restaurants. How naive I was. I went up to LeCellier and asked how long the wait was. I was told "We're booked for the rest of the evening." Now that was completely unexpected. I didn't know you could make reservations, and I certainly didn't know that without reservations it would be well near impossible to eat at some places. The lines at the counter service restaurants were looooooonnnnnggggg. We stood in line for 45 minutes to get some chicken tenders and french fries. I kept telling myself that after a couple of days most of these people would be going home and the crowds would thin out.

The crowds did thin out, but that didn't make it any easier to get into a TS restaurant. Not that it really mattered. We were content to use the CS restaurants and to go offsite for table service meals. I basically thought that all of the restaurants at WDW served the same types of food, only with different theming around the restaurant. I did have a book that helped a little with planning at Disney, but I instinctively skipped any sections dealing with dining. After all, who goes to Disney for food. Somehow, thought, I was perusing the book while at Hollywood Studios and saw something about a princess lunch at Epcot. That sounds interesting. So I see that the book suggests you call a number to make reservations, and that you need to do so at the 90 day mark. I figured, what's the harm...maybe I can make a reservation. I call and talk to a CM and I'm told that it's all booked. There is, however, an opening tomorrow. I took the spot and voila...my very first ADR, one day out.

That brings me to this trip. I still didn't plan to bother with dining reservations. My wife thought it would be a good idea to get some sort of dining plan so that her parents wouldn't have to worry about meals. I thought it was a good idea too. So I got the prices and decided to do the quick service dining. After all, that's what we did when we were there before. Now we'd just be able to walk up to the CS restaurants and use our credits for meals. I was content. Until, that is, I started reading the dining section of the board. We knew that we'd want to do the princess lunch at Epcot again, so I started to search. Then I learned that there was a princess meal IN THE CASTLE (maybe it was there during our last trip and I was either oblivious to it or forgot about it). OK, so I decided to make a reservation at CRT (we were still outside of the window for ADRs, so this was just preliminary planning). I also learned about the evening dinner shows. Spirit of Aloha really appealed to me. OK, put that on the list. And we wanted a character breakfast (last time we did that at the Grosvenor, since that was where we stayed). We decided that Chef Mickey was where we wanted to go for that. And then we thought it would be nice to have a place to eat while watching Illuminations. OK, Rose and Crown is on the list. How about watching the fireworks during a meal? I hear that nothing beats California Grill. My wife heard about Cat Cora's restaurant and wanted to try that. I started reading about Le Cellier and decided that I had to try a meal there. As I started to look at these OOP restaurants, I decided to run the numbers for DDP. It really wasn't that much more, and we got TS credits to use. That just made sense, so now we signed up for DDP.

Signing up for DDP is what put me in full planning mode. What park will we be at? How do we get from there to our meal? What nights are the shows offered? What time should I make the reservations for? What if I don't get the time I want and decide to try a different night? Will that throw the entire schedule into disarray? I created multiple color coded calendars on Google to start planning. I've added and changed some items, and things seem pretty well settled for dining now, but it was a major chore. My wife would roll her eyes as I explained that if we plan to eat at Kouzzina we need to hustle out of Fantasmic! and walk to the Boardwalk, and we need to leave the park by 6 to get to our California Grill ADR. Finally she told me she was fine with the dining plan, but didn't want to be a slave to the meal times. I went back to the drawing board and tried to change the ADRs so that we would not be forcing ourselves to leave a park just to catch a meal. I think I've struck a balance.

Here's a screen grab of our calendar as it currently stands (the red shaded items are all canceled...I just kept them on there for some unexplainable reason):

So now I'm in waiting mode. We nixed CG (it sounds nice, but the experience would be lost on our kids), switched from SoA to HDDR (that seems to be a consensus on the board for people with kids, plus we switched to the Poly....another topic altogether), canceled Rose and Crown (nothing on the menu appealed to us...except for the fish and chips, which I'll find a way to enjoy at some point), and added Boma and Teppan Edo. At this rate, though, I'm going to need the vacation to recover from the planning.

Next: From Coronado to New York to Yosemete to Hawaii...or how the 4/3 promotion turned me into the resort planning equivalent of Brett Favre