Join us live from Boardwalk Villa's - 9/15 - 9/23

[lsenquiz]

Welcome to my first ever LIVE trip report which will be coming to you from Boardwalk Villas! We will be at Disney from Friday Sept 14th - Sun Sept 23rd. 9 nights of Disney Fun! I plan to provide updates throughout the trip as well as provide lots of photos and info about the parks and our resort. Also I will be happy to answer questions, so feel free to ask anything along the way!

We travel to Disney every year in September as a large group. My DH(Kenny), myself(Lisa), our DS8(Gabriel), my cousin(Michele) her DH(Dustin) and their DS8(Tony), DS7(Cole) & DD5(Savannah), My Aunt(Pat) & Uncle(Fred)(Michele’s mom & dad). We are all big Disney lovers. All adults have been to Disney 10+ times and Pat, Fred and Michele have been 50+ times. All of our kids have been going since birth.

Kenny, myself, Gabriel, Michele, Dustin, Cole & Savannah are all staying in a two bedroom standard view villa at Boardwalk(rented through DVC points). Pat, Fred & Tony are staying in a Lion King family suite at AoA.

First let me provide a preview of what you will be reading about should you plan to follow along for the next week. We are usually rope droppers(even on EMH mornings) and big M&G lovers(me more than anyone else) Every year we try to do a few things we have never done before. This year we will be doing the Pirates League with all 4 kids followed by the Pirates and Pals Cruise. We also got our tickets(8 day park hoppers with WP&M) through the Y.E.S program this year so Kenny, Gabriel, Dustin and Cole will all be going to the Wild by Nature Class at AK. We plan to play mini golf, and go to the Chip and Dale camp fire at fort wilderness. Our little ones will be riding many rides for the first time(Gabriel & Cole are finally 48” and Savannah is now over 40”). I used Online Check-in for the first time and added a specific room request to our reservation(I will let you know if we get it). We will also be using the new free WiFi with our laptops, tablets and smart phones so I can let you know how well it works.

Some of the less common things we will be doing that we have done in previous years;
The kids will spend one evening at the Sand Castle kids club at the BC while the adults have an adults only dinner(this will be the highlight of Gabriel’s trip as he loves it there), the boys will be doing Jedi Training, and we will go to the marshmallow roast and seeing the movie under the stars at the BC.

I have also been very crafty this year(not normal for me). I made up in room gift bags for all the kids. I will sneak into the room before everyone else once our room is available and put them in the room(my aunt will be in charge of Tony’s). I am also bringing window clings and door magnets to decorate our room. I will post pictures on this for sure along with all the goodies I found to fill the gift bags.
Through the week we will visit all 4 theme parks at least once(some multiple times), Blizzard Beach, Typhoon Lagoon, Downtown Disney & Disney Quest. We will be doing a ton of M&Gs especially Characterpalooza at DHS which we plan to do twice

We have ADRs for dinner or breakfast most days but are not using the dining plan: Sci-Fi, Royal Table, Coral Reef, Rain Forest Café(DTD), Trails End, and H&V.

I have pre-purchased photopass+ to make sure we capture all our wonderful memories.

This is just a taste of what I will post about during the upcoming week. I will also include any unusual or interesting things that happen through the week. We always seem to be blessed with lots of Pixie Dust on our trips. We leave on Thursday Sept 13th to drive from Atlanta to Florida. We have lots of family in Florida so will spend Thursday visiting with them. We will spend Thursday night at the Doubletree in DTD and check into the Boardwalk first thing Friday morning.

Let me know if you have any questions!!! I'm so glad you are coming along with us VIRTUALLY!!!

 

[lsenquiz]

2 more sleeps!
Twas the night before Disney
We're here!
Day 1
Hollywood Studios - Wow we are tired
Blizzard Beach
Animal Kindom/ Pirates Leaque/Pirates and Pals
Down Day
Y.E.S - Wild by Nature Class
Breakfast with Cinderella

Pictures:
Boardwalk
View from our standview view room
Jedi Training
Characterpalooza
In Room Gift Bags
Pirates Leaque
Boardwalk Activities

 

[lsenquiz]

Room Reservations:
As everyone on this board knows a lot goes into planning a Disney trip. We always start 11 months out with our room reservations. We have been renting DVC points for stays since 2005 and love it. We always rent through an individual instead of a broker. We have used 4 different individuals over the past 7 years and have never had one bit of trouble. We always rent a 2 bedroom villa at boardwalk. The last two years we have been lucky enough to get a standard view room which results in a huge cost saving for us. This year we paid $12 a point for an 11 month out reservation. We are staying for 9 nights so the cost works out to $3,480 or a nightly cost of about $386. This may seem like a lot for anyone who usually stays in a standard hotel room on property so just to put point rental savings in perspective, we would have paid $130.00 a night for a studio at a deluxe resort.

Tickets:
This year we discovered an incredible program offered by Disney called Y.E.S(Youth Education Series individual enrollment). How I did not know about this program before I do not know but I am sure glad I found it now. This is how the program works in a nutshell. You sign your child up for a 3 hour class during the time that you will be at Disney and Disney allows you to purchase park tickets for your immediate family at a discount. The discount is substantial. We got 8 day park hoppers with WP&M tickets for $220.16(includes tax). I am including the link for the Y.E.S program incase you want to check it out. The classes are limited to certain times of the year, certain number of participants and certain age groups. http://www.disneyyouth.com/individual-enrollment/

Gift cards:
As you can tell by now I am all about saving money wherever I can while still staying where I love which is in an EPCOT resort. So another way we save is to purchase Disney gift cards throughout the year to pay for food, drinks and souvenirs (we never do the dining plan because I just can not make the math work out to a savings for us). We always purchase our gift cards from Kroger which gives us fuel points to use to reduce the price we pay for gas. Kroger always has double fuel points on most gift cards. About 5 times a year(Spring Break, Mothers day, Fathers Day, Back to school & Thanksgiving/Christmas) Kroger does 4 times fuel points. We usually stock up on our Disney gift cards during the 4x specials. There are some limitations to fuel points use. For our area they are; you can only use 1000 points or $1.00 per gallon per fill-up at a time, the max gallons you can get in one fill up is 35, and fuel points do expire. However, even with this the saving always work out for us. This summer Kroger is running a special which allowed us to use 2000 points per fill up(ends Sept 30th). We always fill both cars up at once(we pull one car up on one side of the pump and the other on the other side and fill them both up using one pump) so we save $70 per fill up whenever we use the full 2000 points.

We use our gift cards to pay off our KTTW card balance and do not carry them around the parks to pay for things. We check in just like we always have and put a CC on our KTTW card for charges. Since Disney does not charge the card(or even reserve money on the card) until you have reached your resort limit we do not worry about our card being charged. In a deluxe resort the limit is $1500. (mod = $1000 and value - $500) . In an abundance of caution I do go by the front desk every few days and pay my balance down with a gift card but I have never come close to reaching my limit before I do that. Then I always pay the remaining balance the night before we leave. Disney does put the charges through to your card in the middle of the night on your last night so this last step is important.

These are some unique steps we go through to plan our trips. Like everyone else we also do our ADRs at 180 days and reserve any special tours as soon as we are allowed. I think the thing I love more than the money we save by doing some of the stuff we do is the fact that our entire trip(including extras) is paid for before we leave. It really takes the sting out of spending several thousand dollars on a vacation!

 

[goofy78]

I'm in!

 

[lsenquiz]

Twas the night before Disney and as is our tradition Gabriel, Savannah and I are all snuggled in my bed waiting for morning when we can head south to the most magical place on earth. Kenny has moved over to a guest room since the bed was getting a little crowded Our plan is to leave by 8am. Let's see if we make it.

 

[lsenquiz]

Checked into the boardwalk this morning. Posting this message live from the boardwalk pool! I will post a full report tonight on checking process and our room.

 

[jackemail]

Checked into the boardwalk this morning. Posting this message live from the boardwalk pool! I will post a full report tonight on checking process and our room.

Looking forward to it!

 

[lsenquiz]

Arrived at the boardwalk at 9am. Checkin was amazing. For the first time I did online check-in. When we arrived someone was waiting out front for us. They welcomed us by name and escorted us into the lobby and offered us seats on one of the couches. About 30 seconds later they brought our packet over to us and we were free to go. The whole process took about 3 minutes tops. It was excellent and I will never come again without using online check-in.

Our room was not ready so we headed to the pool. There wasn't a soul there so we had the pool all to ourselves. We got a page at 11am saying that our room was ready so we headed to the room. Upon entering I was very excited to find out that my room request had been granted. We requested a high floor facing the bus stop with an unobstructed view. We did this because we knew we would be able to see the high fireworks from Illuminations from our balcony.

After unpacking we headed down to the Big River Grill for lunch. This is actually my favorite place to eat in all of Disney. Sitting at an outside table with a panoramic view of the boardwalk is truely my happy place. They also make excellent Mojitos which adds to the appeal.

This evening we picked up our Y.E.S tickets at guest services outside the international gateway in EPCOT. I forgot my confirmation number and the CM had a really hard time looking my tickets up by my last name. Just when I had accepted the fact that I would need to walk clear back to the room and get my confirmation number the CM had the great idea of letting me log into my personal email using her computer to access the original email I got with the confirmation number. Genius I say. Very quickly after that I had tickets in hand.

Now we are back in the room waiting for the rest of our party to arrive. Tomorrow we head to DHS for morning extra magic hours

 

[lsenquiz]

Went to DHS today. Arrived at 7:35am for morning extra magic hours. We ended up walking over from the Boardwalk rather than take the boat. It was a very pleasant walk and took us less than 15 minutes.

They opened the park right at 8am. Part of our group took the boys and headed over to get passes for Jedi training while the rest headed to TSM for FPs. The boys ended up in the 9:20am Jedi class and our FPs for TSM were from 10:40-11::40. Our original plan was to ride TSM first thing in the morning after getting our FPs but the wait was already 40 minutes once the rest of our party got over from picking up the Jedi passes. So we decided just to ride using FPs.

There were still FPs available for TSM when it came time for us to use our FP so we got another set at 10:45am with a return time of 1:40 - 2:40pm.

We accomplished all we wanted to despite the fact that it rained hard for about 1 hour. Pretty much everything we rode was a 5-10 minute wait(with exception of TSM). The boys rode Star Tours 10 times!

We also made it to characterpalooza where we got to see; Bolt, Jaffar, Snow Queen, Queen of Hearts, Genie, Belle(in the blue dress) Mary Poppins and the penguins, Goofy and Max, & Stitch

We ended the evening with dinner at Sci Fi. The kids loved it and the food was excellent. Tomorrow we are headed to Blizzard Beach. Looking forward to sleeping in a little in the morning.


Photo0563FourBySix by Disneyalwaysn4ever, on Flickr


Photo0011FourBySix by Disneyalwaysn4ever, on Flickr


Photo0023FourBySix by Disneyalwaysn4ever, on Flickr


Photo0013FourBySix by Disneyalwaysn4ever, on Flickr

 

[Z28KatCar]

Subscribing!! So excited to here about your trip!

 

[KSL]

I'm in, too!
We're planning our first stay at BWV (1-BR standard) next summer so this will be fun for me to follow & get excited about my upcoming trip, living vicariously through yours! Have a great time.

 

[jackemail]

Really appreciate the "there now" reports!

 

[DBLGRR]

Love it so far.

 

[mmsportsmom]

Loving your real time report! We are staying at BWV for the first time in January and appreciate you sharing your trip!

 

[lsenquiz]

Went to Blizzard Beach today. We got there at 9:45am and the park was already open even though it was supposed to open at 10am. The crowds were no bad. The longest we waited for anything was 15 minutes. We headed back to the boardwalk at 4pm. Ate dinner at Big River Grill again. I just love that place. Plan to post pictures late tonight. We are headed to AK tomorrow for morning extra magic hours. Will let you know how that goes.

 

[KangaFan]

Subbing

 

[lsenquiz]

I got a little behind on my posts. Yesterday was a really long magical day. We started the day at Animal Kingdom for morning extra magic hours. We arrived at 7:55am and they were already letting people in. Rode the Safari first. Alot more animals were out then we normally see. After that we rode Everest with 0 wait. We actually ended up riding 3 times in a row and never waiting at all. In fact they were running some cars empty. Rode everything else we wanted with minimal wait and ended the morning at the Festival of the Lion King show. I think that show is amazing and am really sorry to hear that they are getting rid of it.

Chip & Dale were feeling very playful!

Photo0253FourBySix by Disneyalwaysn4ever, on Flickr


Photo0251FourBySix by Disneyalwaysn4ever, on Flickr


Photo0235FourBySix by Disneyalwaysn4ever, on Flickr

The whole fam

Photo0220FourBySix by Disneyalwaysn4ever, on Flickr

We headed over to Magic Kingdom at 1pm because the kids has reservations for Pirates league at 2:40pm. It was a really amazing experience for them. The three boys did a traditional Pirate package and our little Savannah did the mermaid. All turned out amazing. I think Gabriel had the best experience of everyone though because his pirate maker was excellent. His name was Ken and he really played his part. The pictures we got at the end were great. I was very glad I had the photopass+ because they were included with that so I did not have to pay 14.99 a piece for them.


Photo0301FourBySix by Disneyalwaysn4ever, on Flickr


Photo0296FourBySix by Disneyalwaysn4ever, on Flickr


Photo0291FourBySix by Disneyalwaysn4ever, on Flickr


Photo0288FourBySix by Disneyalwaysn4ever, on Flickr

We ended out day at the Contemporary for the Pirates and Pals cruise. It was a truly magical experience. The first part is spent with Captain Hook and Mr. Smee. They spend a good deal of time with you. First for Photopass pictures and then just mingling with the crowd. One suggestion is do not run to get in line for pictures with Hook and Smee. Trust me everyone gets a picture so just wait until everyone else is done and then go up for your photograph. Chances are good that you will get to spend more time with then and will not have wasted any of your time waiting in line.


Photo0452FourBySix by Disneyalwaysn4ever, on Flickr


Photo0456FourBySix by Disneyalwaysn4ever, on Flickr


Photo0447FourBySix by Disneyalwaysn4ever, on Flickr

Watching Wishes from the boat was just amazing. Coming from someone who has watched Wishes many times it is a whole new experience watching it from the lagoon. Without the distraction of the crowd that usually accompanies Wishes you can truly absorb the experience.

The only complaint of the night was transportation back to Boardwalk after the cruise was over. We were told by the CMs at the Contemporary to walk over to MK and grab a bus to Boardwalk. Well we walked clear over there and were told the buses had stopped running so we had to walk back over to the Contemporary and grab a bus to Hollywood studios and then walk back to the boardwalk. We ended up getting back to the room after 11pm which was not in my original plan.

 

[jackemail]

Been waiting for an update!!!

It all sounds wonderful......except for the transportation snafu.

 

[DBLGRR]

Glad you had a magical day.

 

[lsenquiz]

Today is our down day. We will be spending all day enjoying this beautiful resort we are staying at. Today is also the day I think I will finally have the time and energy to post pictures. So for a full review and pictures of the boardwalk check in tonight!


DSC02048 by Disneyalwaysn4ever, on Flickr

Our brave little Princess

DSC02037 by Disneyalwaysn4ever, on Flickr


DSC01507 by Disneyalwaysn4ever, on Flickr