Make a Wish (and other organizations) - Wish Trippers UNITE! Volume SIX!

[WendyLou]

Congrats!! we will be there 4/29-May 5, maybe we will be there at the same time. I agree, it all sounds fantastic.

Hi everyone!!! We meet we Joseph's wish grantors this past week and they are going to put in for his wish a trip to disney with us staying at GKTW!!! They said there is possible some availability in April or may of this year which scares me a little because I like to plan and I don't feel like I would have enough time to get everything together. But either way I'm super excited. I've been reading a lot of pretrial and trip reports. Everything just sounds so awesome.

 

[WendyLou]

We will be arriving 4/29, we will have to get together. As far as a send off. I have not heard anything about that from our chapter but have read many TR with great ones.

We got our dates already for Jude's wish!
April 24th we leave!
Not much time to plan but we are so so so excited!
More questions:

1. Does anyone sell on etsy? Can you post your link so I can try to find some special things to order for our trip?

2. Send off party. Share yours! Our wish granters are thinking the afternoon before our flight leaves. We are taking an overnight flight. Jude really wants his friends involved...

3. Anyone else going to be at gktw the same time as us? I would love to meet people!
Thanks all
Sarah

 

[WendyLou]

Hi Blondieboo,
Welcome to the boards! My son has had a Wilms tumor, kidney cancer and was treated at Brenners Childrens Hospital in Winston Salem. We are working with the central/western NC chapter of MAW and have had a great experience with them thus far. Our wish granters are awesome!! They did tell us that the villas would hold additional people if we were interested in inviting any family, they would just have to pay their own airfare, park tickets etc. I don't have any information about extending, I would just ask your wish granters. I agree with wanting this ti be a once in a lifetime trip and have been trying to save like crazy, I don't want to say no all week. I would still look at crowd calendars, you will have a "pass" but it is so much easier on lower days. I picked our park days around the activities at GKTW that i knew we did not want to miss and used the crowd calendars for that. We had our dates pretty early on, just didnt get flight times until this past week so hepofully you will have dates soon. Did you give them a few weeks that would work for you to choose from? Maybe you can tentatively book your extras based on those dates and cancel if needed. Best of luck.

I wanted to say hello, introduce myself and ask a few questions! My wish child is 4 years old and has stage 4 rhabdomyosarcoma and unfortunately chance of NED is slim and chances of relapse are way higher than I would like. So we want to make the most of our MAW trip by extending and splurging on extras I normally wouldn't consider. I also have a 4 month old who would be going on the trip with us! We meet with her wish granters today and they were great! Her wish was Disney World and I haven't been to Disney since I was a child and have some questions.

1) Has anyone working with the Charlotte NC MAW chapter been able to extend?
2) Has anyone working with the Charlotte NC MAW chapter been able to take anyone along in a non comp status? We are hoping to take 1-2 additional adults (paying their own way of course) to help with the wish child as well as her sister so the wish child is really the focus.
3) Should I pay attention to the crowd calendars when picking dates to go or does the magic button from GKTW make that a more or less moot point? I'm trying to plan around her treatments and scans, Disney holidays, hurricane season, crowd calenders and it's driving me a little crazy!
4) There are a few extras we would like to do but from reading here it seems sometimes you don't even find out your official dates until the very last minute. How can we make advance reservations under these circumstances?

I'm hoping to figure out how to start a pre-trip report soon!

 

[FaithsWish]

We are home! I can not get over how awesome Universal was!!! They went waaaaay out of their way for Faith. Simply amazing. I will be starting my TR soon. And shhhhhhhhh.......we are planning to go back in Sept!

 

[Roseanne Whiting]

Congrats!! we will be there 4/29-May 5, maybe we will be there at the same time. I agree, it all sounds fantastic.

That would be awesome I would love to meet another wish family from the boards. As soon as I find out my trip dates I will let you know. Either way I can't wait to read your trip report when you get back. I'm thinking about starting a pretrial report when I get dates.

 

[chcmama]

Hello!
My son Jude is having his wish granted by MAW and I have lots of questions that you all might be able to help with.

1. Jude wants to be "king of disneyworld" that is his actual wish. Jude is 6 and he likes to wear a dress shirt and tie to school on most days. He loves his fedora and getting extra attention from the ladies. He said he would like to have a. King costume to wear. I would love to hear any creative ideas that you might have for how to make him feel like the king of Disney.

2. Are there any discovery cove discounts that would be good to know about? It's really expensive but I know my kids would love it so we are trying to make it work.

3. Tickets: we are a bigger family. I am reading about wrist bands? We did a trip a few years back for our daughters wish and the tickets were a bit stressful. Trying to keep track of them even just getting into the gate with a bunch of kids. I would hold onto them and pass them out ahead of time. We wrote the names on them with sharpie. It was still worrisome that they would get lost, confused, etc. I would love to hear any tips and tricks to making this easier and if they are wrist bands now? Is that just for Disney? Help!

4. Medical supplies in the parks
On our last trip we were well into animal kingdom and realized we forgot catheters in the morning when we were packing up. My hubby ran back to the car, drove back to gktw and got the supplies and brought them to the park. Any tips or tricks to be sure we don't forget anything? What has worked for your family?

5. Mermaid training? I saw this on Fridays at gktw on here website. I would love to hear from someone who has participated in it and how it was. Sounds exciting!

6. Character lines: with my daughters trip we were able to skip lines to meet characters. I am reading it's no longer a part of the magic button. Anyone know?

Thanks everyone for your time and input. We can't wait to see Jude have his wish come true!
Sarah

I will only add a little to what has already been said. I tried to pack up our park bag the night before so I had what I needed. We had some refrigerated medicine we had to take with us so part of my morning routine was adding that and an ice pack to the bag. Luckily we never forgot anything we had to have.
You don't officially get front of the line for characters but we were taken to the front of the line. However we did not do too many characters, my son is 9 and the youngest of my kids so characters were just not as important this trip.

 

[chcmama]

Found this board while researching make a wish disney trips.Been reading every Disney trip report I can find.My oldest son had a wish trip in 2000.We stayed at give kids the world village he was 3 and my oldest daughter was 2.My oldest daughter Brittni just got approved for a make a wish trip last week.They said to expect a call from her wish granters in a week or 2.She is wishing for Disney.So excited and I hope we get to stay at give kids the world again.My 3 youngest kids have always saw pictures from their brothers wish trip and have wanted to stay at give kids the world.I think its for the ice cream.Gonna try to g figure out how I can start a pre-trip report.I think it will be a great way to help me pass the time and keep my plans straight.

Welcome, hope you have a fun time planning and this trip is as much fun as your first.

 

[chcmama]

I wanted to say hello, introduce myself and ask a few questions! My wish child is 4 years old and has stage 4 rhabdomyosarcoma and unfortunately chance of NED is slim and chances of relapse are way higher than I would like. So we want to make the most of our MAW trip by extending and splurging on extras I normally wouldn't consider. I also have a 4 month old who would be going on the trip with us! We meet with her wish granters today and they were great! Her wish was Disney World and I haven't been to Disney since I was a child and have some questions.

1) Has anyone working with the Charlotte NC MAW chapter been able to extend?
2) Has anyone working with the Charlotte NC MAW chapter been able to take anyone along in a non comp status? We are hoping to take 1-2 additional adults (paying their own way of course) to help with the wish child as well as her sister so the wish child is really the focus.
3) Should I pay attention to the crowd calendars when picking dates to go or does the magic button from GKTW make that a more or less moot point? I'm trying to plan around her treatments and scans, Disney holidays, hurricane season, crowd calenders and it's driving me a little crazy!
4) There are a few extras we would like to do but from reading here it seems sometimes you don't even find out your official dates until the very last minute. How can we make advance reservations under these circumstances?

I'm hoping to figure out how to start a pre-trip report soon!

1) I can't say specifically about your chapter, we were able to extend with ours but I know some chapters don't allow it. Just ask your wish granters they will be able to tell you.
3) you don't have to focus on the crowd calendars as much but it is helpful to not go when it is super crowded I would think.
4) Our wish granters asked us when we wanted to go, we gave them dates that we preferred and then they checked in to it and got back to us. We still picked the dates we just weren't confirmed until close to our dates but part of that was because they weren't too far away any ways. We didn't have any trouble making reservations but we were there at a less crowded time too

 

[chcmama]

We are home! I can not get over how awesome Universal was!!! They went waaaaay out of their way for Faith. Simply amazing. I will be starting my TR soon. And shhhhhhhhh.......we are planning to go back in Sept!

Welcome back! How exciting that you are planning another trip!

 

[chcmama]

Had some great news from our wish granter yesterday.....We have flight times . We leave here on a 9:25 am flight and will be in Orlando by 10:56, our transportation will pick us up at 5:30 am and our return flight is not until 7:20 pm on our last day so its like we just got 2 whole days of vacation added!!!! DH is so excited about the 5:30 am pick up. Needed that news today, this morning Logan had his oral surgery to fix his numerous cavities from his chemo treatments and had to be put to sleep so needless to say its been a rough day. When we arrived home we had a super special surprise in the mailbox, 2 postcards, 1 for Tyler and 1 for Logan from Spiderman and Harry Potters friends at Universal thanks to disneylove69. Helped put a smile on his face for sure!

yay! glad you got your flight times. sorry it has been a rough day, my son had to be put to sleep to fix cavities when he was a little guy too. Hope it all went smoothly!

 

[chcmama]

I finally got started on my trip report! There is a link in my signature

 

[blondieboo]

Hi Blondieboo,
Welcome to the boards! My son has had a Wilms tumor, kidney cancer and was treated at Brenners Childrens Hospital in Winston Salem. We are working with the central/western NC chapter of MAW and have had a great experience with them thus far. Our wish granters are awesome!! They did tell us that the villas would hold additional people if we were interested in inviting any family, they would just have to pay their own airfare, park tickets etc. I don't have any information about extending, I would just ask your wish granters. I agree with wanting this ti be a once in a lifetime trip and have been trying to save like crazy, I don't want to say no all week. I would still look at crowd calendars, you will have a "pass" but it is so much easier on lower days. I picked our park days around the activities at GKTW that i knew we did not want to miss and used the crowd calendars for that. We had our dates pretty early on, just didnt get flight times until this past week so hepofully you will have dates soon. Did you give them a few weeks that would work for you to choose from? Maybe you can tentatively book your extras based on those dates and cancel if needed. Best of luck.

Thanks for your welcome! We're at Brenners and that's the same chapter we will be working with! Our wish grantors are awesome as well. They did let us know Isabella will be their very first wish so it's a learning process for them and us. They said they would ask and get back to us on extra people as well as extending. We did have a little bit of miscommunication when we asked about the extra items like character meals or pirate makeovers and we were told everything would be taken care of for us. Luckily I've been reading these forums and clarified we were asking about things that aren't covered by admission tickets. Otherwise we would have possibly told our daughter we were going to do things we may not be able to cover. We gave 5 weeks so hopefully one will work! I so agree - no shouldn't be a part of our vocabulary that week. Now .... How to make that happen so if we cancel way in advance we wouldn't be billed?

 

[blondieboo]

We are home! I can not get over how awesome Universal was!!! They went waaaaay out of their way for Faith. Simply amazing. I will be starting my TR soon. And shhhhhhhhh.......we are planning to go back in Sept!

I'm glad you had a really great time! We may be going in September! I can't wait to read your report

 

[blondieboo]

I finally got started on my trip report! There is a link in my signature

Sooooo.....I just read your trip report.....from 2008. Hahaha. Off to read the new one

 

[chcmama]

Sooooo.....I just read your trip report.....from 2008. Hahaha. Off to read the new one

I hope you enjoyed the first one, you will see how much bigger my kiddos are now!

 

[WendyLou]

yes, as long as you cancel in time (when you make the reservation it should state the individual restaurants cancellation policy) it should not be a problem. I know CRT you have to go ahead and pay by CC but it can be refunded if cancelled in time. We thought Logan's character meal at Hollywood and Vine would be covered and it is not and he is super excited about it so we are going to have to make it work!

Thanks for your welcome! We're at Brenners and that's the same chapter we will be working with! Our wish grantors are awesome as well. They did let us know Isabella will be their very first wish so it's a learning process for them and us. They said they would ask and get back to us on extra people as well as extending. We did have a little bit of miscommunication when we asked about the extra items like character meals or pirate makeovers and we were told everything would be taken care of for us. Luckily I've been reading these forums and clarified we were asking about things that aren't covered by admission tickets. Otherwise we would have possibly told our daughter we were going to do things we may not be able to cover. We gave 5 weeks so hopefully one will work! I so agree - no shouldn't be a part of our vocabulary that week. Now .... How to make that happen so if we cancel way in advance we wouldn't be billed?

 

[Momto15]

Is there a group on Facebook for wish families from the dis boards? I would love it if there was. I am excited I will get to meet some of you and your families.
Yea!

I can hardly think of anything but this wish trip for Jude. It's really so fun reading all the trip reports and hearing everyone's plans so if there isn't a Facebook group. Would anyone participate if there was one?
Thanks all
Sarah
(Jude's mom)

 

[FaithsWish]

I have a question for prior Wish families who have since made a return trip....

Is it possible to get close to the "wish experience" at Universal by going at a very low time of year (1-2/10 crowd calendar) and using the Express Pass? The days we were at Universal it was 4/10 and the Express Pass lines seemed quite short.

We learned that Faith does not deal well with enclosed wait areas or waits longer than possibly 5 minutes. Sorry to all those around us in the Soarin queue. I hope your ear drums have recovered.

 

[WendyLou]

I have not seen a Facebook page for wish families but would love to join one!

Is there a group on Facebook for wish families from the dis boards? I would love it if there was. I am excited I will get to meet some of you and your families.
Yea!

I can hardly think of anything but this wish trip for Jude. It's really so fun reading all the trip reports and hearing everyone's plans so if there isn't a Facebook group. Would anyone participate if there was one?
Thanks all
Sarah
(Jude's mom)

 

[chcmama]

I have a question for prior Wish families who have since made a return trip....

Is it possible to get close to the "wish experience" at Universal by going at a very low time of year (1-2/10 crowd calendar) and using the Express Pass? The days we were at Universal it was 4/10 and the Express Pass lines seemed quite short.

We learned that Faith does not deal well with enclosed wait areas or waits longer than possibly 5 minutes. Sorry to all those around us in the Soarin queue. I hope your ear drums have recovered.

Sorry Faith had a rough time with some of the waits. I haven't made a return trip but dh and i kept thinking it was going to be hard to have to wait in lines if we go back again. It seems like buying the express pass at Universal would help a lot, we didn't see hardly any lines for express pass and I think we were there on a 2/10 crowd day