StarGirl11
Long time DL Runner who is finally coming home
- Joined
- Feb 8, 2012
- Messages
- 3,381
Welcome to my Pre-Trip Report. I am partly starting this to help keep track of my plans and partly keep myself from driving my a fore mentioned Mom up a wall before the ADRs state start. We're eight months out and within the last few weeks I've been driving my Mom absolutely bonkers with researching for a trip this far out.
Concerning the title. I'm the trip planner, and the trip isn't a surprise. It's just more Mom keep saying 'that sounds good' to things I thought she would never say 'that sounds good' to in a million years (see post 10 concerning the Wishes/Illuminations cruises for more detail) brought about the new title (was previously titled Operation: Show Mom the Magic).
First off the cast.
My real name is Sophia! I'm 22 years old as of right now but will be 23 by the time we take the trip (will be celebrating my birthday at Disneyland in September) and the resident theme park and Disney geek of the family.
Favorite Disney World Ride: Space Mountain
Favorite Disneyland ride: A toss up between California Screamin, Indiana Jones (yes I actually like that ride), and their Space Mountain (still want Disney World to install music on their version of the ride)
Favorite Disney World Restaurant: A Tie Between Liberty Tree Tavern and 1900 Park Fare
Favorite Disney World Park: Disney's Hollywood Studios (or as I have a tendency to still call it sometimes MGM)
Favorite Disney Princess: Cinderella
Favorite Disney Prince: Eric (the one that made me fall in love with the character is actually pictured above, I will explain what he did that caused it later)
Favorite Disney Movie: Cinderella
Favorite Disney Villains: The Step Family From Cinderella (notice the pattern here)
Favorite Fur Character: Stitch
Favorite Member of the Fab Five: Minnie
Favorite Pixar Movie: Up
My hobbies include following horse racing, reading up on natural disasters (I want to study earthquakes once I'm finally done with school), reading and writing.
My Mom is of course coming on the trip. She I don't think would want her photos on the internet so you won't see any actual appearances of her other than in writing.
A couple things to note: one she is not a theme park goer and two she hates large crowds. The later will be a bit of an issue on NYE but I'm hoping with some good planning I can make the day enjoyable for her. And with even more planning show Mom what caused me to fall back in love with the Disney parks.
Anyways the whole story behind the trip. So about the beginning of March right after my Princess Half trip (which I will be updating my trip report for that sometime this weekend, school kind of derailed updates) I somehow got in my head that it would be really cool to do NYE at Disney in Magic Kingdom in spite of the crazy crowds. With some crazy researching and looking up things I thought the soon to be open AoA and then presented it to my parents.
It sounded all like a great idea until we hit our first obstacle. You see I like running long distance races, its what I do and usually the WDW Marathon is the first weekend in January. About five minutes after I broached the subject of New Years at Walt Disney World I discovered much to my frustration that they had moved the race back a week. And pretty much watched any hope of convincing my two-non theme park going parents of attending NYE. Or so I thought.
Fast forward to beginning of Spring Break (last week in March). Dad was going ahead and booking the hotel room. During this time something along the lines of the following conversation occurred:
Mom: You do realize how far out NYE is from the Marathon right?
Me: Yeah I know, that's why I gave up on going to it the minute I found out it was moved up a week.
Mom: I just wanted to make sure you knew.
Now I didn't think much of the conversation at the time. I basically assumed that Mom was reminding me for some reason we couldn't do NYE. I figured Dad booked us for maybe a week or so at AoA. Because we all seemed to like the look of AoA.
Fast forward another two weeks to Easter Sunday. I am in line to get something to drink in LAX heading back to Denver after a day at the races before the day before. I am surfing the web and on a chance I decided to check dad's email to see if he had booked the hotel. And sure enough I see that there's a Disney reservation from right around the time of afore mentioned conversation took place. I hit the open button just to see what he booked well you can imagine my shock, surprise, and utter happiness when I see this:
Hotel: Port Orleans French Quarter
Dates: 12/31-1/9
Once I get over my initial shock I realize we have two problems. One we're checking in on NYE. And seeing as we were doing MK that day I realized we may have a problem getting in even if we took the earliest flight which gets in from Denver (assuming we're leaving from Denver, that could very easily change due to doctor's appointments) since the earliest non-stop gets in around 11 due to flight time and time change. The second was we weren't staying long enough for the marathon which was on the 13th.
After two quick conversations with both of my parents we EXTENDED the reservations so we checked in on the 30th (so we could head straight to MK in the morning) and leave the 14th (day after marathon). There's a part of me that's still in shock that my parents actually agreed to a better part of a two week trip at Disney.
Funny thing is as more of a way to keep me sane I had decided to set up a small plan of what we would do if we actually went to Disney for two weeks. It never once occurred to me that it may actually happen when I constructed that first little plan. It was more of a 'if by some miracle' plan then anything else. Well guess who is going to be using a good portion of that plan with a few alterations? Moi!
While most of the trip is going to be Disney-centric as part of a negotiation to keep my Mom sane there is going to be at least one day off-site at a non-theme park. Plans are as of right now to drive up to Crystal River the night before to take a manatee tour in the early morning followed by a nice horseback ride through one of the nearby ranches. Oh and another off-site is going to be a day at Universal Studios and hop parks all day long (I love Harry Potter a lot, so that's the big focus of that side trip including hitting several rides I'm itching to go on). And maybe, just maybe a trip to Discovery Cove (been itching to go dolphin swimming for longer than I can remember).
Anyway that's all for now I guess. I will post again on Sunday with more information (too busy tomorrow). I get the fun task of telling my trainer (a Disney fan) that I'm spending two weeks at WDW!!! Her reaction along with the rest of the Disoids (as they call themselves I think) ought to be entertaining and well worth getting up at 5:00 in the morning for!
Concerning the title. I'm the trip planner, and the trip isn't a surprise. It's just more Mom keep saying 'that sounds good' to things I thought she would never say 'that sounds good' to in a million years (see post 10 concerning the Wishes/Illuminations cruises for more detail) brought about the new title (was previously titled Operation: Show Mom the Magic).
First off the cast.
My real name is Sophia! I'm 22 years old as of right now but will be 23 by the time we take the trip (will be celebrating my birthday at Disneyland in September) and the resident theme park and Disney geek of the family.
Favorite Disney World Ride: Space Mountain
Favorite Disneyland ride: A toss up between California Screamin, Indiana Jones (yes I actually like that ride), and their Space Mountain (still want Disney World to install music on their version of the ride)
Favorite Disney World Restaurant: A Tie Between Liberty Tree Tavern and 1900 Park Fare
Favorite Disney World Park: Disney's Hollywood Studios (or as I have a tendency to still call it sometimes MGM)
Favorite Disney Princess: Cinderella
Favorite Disney Prince: Eric (the one that made me fall in love with the character is actually pictured above, I will explain what he did that caused it later)
Favorite Disney Movie: Cinderella
Favorite Disney Villains: The Step Family From Cinderella (notice the pattern here)
Favorite Fur Character: Stitch
Favorite Member of the Fab Five: Minnie
Favorite Pixar Movie: Up
My hobbies include following horse racing, reading up on natural disasters (I want to study earthquakes once I'm finally done with school), reading and writing.
My Mom is of course coming on the trip. She I don't think would want her photos on the internet so you won't see any actual appearances of her other than in writing.
A couple things to note: one she is not a theme park goer and two she hates large crowds. The later will be a bit of an issue on NYE but I'm hoping with some good planning I can make the day enjoyable for her. And with even more planning show Mom what caused me to fall back in love with the Disney parks.
Anyways the whole story behind the trip. So about the beginning of March right after my Princess Half trip (which I will be updating my trip report for that sometime this weekend, school kind of derailed updates) I somehow got in my head that it would be really cool to do NYE at Disney in Magic Kingdom in spite of the crazy crowds. With some crazy researching and looking up things I thought the soon to be open AoA and then presented it to my parents.
It sounded all like a great idea until we hit our first obstacle. You see I like running long distance races, its what I do and usually the WDW Marathon is the first weekend in January. About five minutes after I broached the subject of New Years at Walt Disney World I discovered much to my frustration that they had moved the race back a week. And pretty much watched any hope of convincing my two-non theme park going parents of attending NYE. Or so I thought.
Fast forward to beginning of Spring Break (last week in March). Dad was going ahead and booking the hotel room. During this time something along the lines of the following conversation occurred:
Mom: You do realize how far out NYE is from the Marathon right?
Me: Yeah I know, that's why I gave up on going to it the minute I found out it was moved up a week.
Mom: I just wanted to make sure you knew.
Now I didn't think much of the conversation at the time. I basically assumed that Mom was reminding me for some reason we couldn't do NYE. I figured Dad booked us for maybe a week or so at AoA. Because we all seemed to like the look of AoA.
Fast forward another two weeks to Easter Sunday. I am in line to get something to drink in LAX heading back to Denver after a day at the races before the day before. I am surfing the web and on a chance I decided to check dad's email to see if he had booked the hotel. And sure enough I see that there's a Disney reservation from right around the time of afore mentioned conversation took place. I hit the open button just to see what he booked well you can imagine my shock, surprise, and utter happiness when I see this:
Hotel: Port Orleans French Quarter
Dates: 12/31-1/9
Once I get over my initial shock I realize we have two problems. One we're checking in on NYE. And seeing as we were doing MK that day I realized we may have a problem getting in even if we took the earliest flight which gets in from Denver (assuming we're leaving from Denver, that could very easily change due to doctor's appointments) since the earliest non-stop gets in around 11 due to flight time and time change. The second was we weren't staying long enough for the marathon which was on the 13th.
After two quick conversations with both of my parents we EXTENDED the reservations so we checked in on the 30th (so we could head straight to MK in the morning) and leave the 14th (day after marathon)
. There's a part of me that's still in shock that my parents actually agreed to a better part of a two week trip at Disney.Funny thing is as more of a way to keep me sane I had decided to set up a small plan of what we would do if we actually went to Disney for two weeks. It never once occurred to me that it may actually happen when I constructed that first little plan. It was more of a 'if by some miracle' plan then anything else. Well guess who is going to be using a good portion of that plan with a few alterations? Moi!
While most of the trip is going to be Disney-centric as part of a negotiation to keep my Mom sane there is going to be at least one day off-site at a non-theme park. Plans are as of right now to drive up to Crystal River the night before to take a manatee tour in the early morning followed by a nice horseback ride through one of the nearby ranches. Oh and another off-site is going to be a day at Universal Studios and hop parks all day long (I love Harry Potter a lot, so that's the big focus of that side trip including hitting several rides I'm itching to go on). And maybe, just maybe a trip to Discovery Cove (been itching to go dolphin swimming for longer than I can remember).
Anyway that's all for now I guess. I will post again on Sunday with more information (too busy tomorrow). I get the fun task of telling my trainer (a Disney fan) that I'm spending two weeks at WDW!!! Her reaction along with the rest of the Disoids (as they call themselves I think) ought to be entertaining and well worth getting up at 5:00 in the morning for!
I was looking online at the other Epcot holiday proceedings as I realized there is other non CP things to do there (Mom and I kind of agree after looking further at it CP isn't out thing) that should hopefully still be going on our arrival night. Specifically I'm hoping that maybe some of the Christmas esque meet and greets will still be happening. So Liberty Tree Tavern Dinner is getting postponed until I figure out another slot for it. Maybe I'll move that Coral Reef dinner from later on in the trip to the first night and move Liberty Tree Tavern Dinner to there instead.
