MAW upon a star "Florida, here we come"

[NicoleDisneyFan]

Ok. Well, I will start this pre trip report by saying that this is my first trip report so I am going to try to act like I am doing this right.
Well, as you can see by my post that I am not new at posting. Thank you Misty for helping me!
Now I will introduce our family......

Me-Yes, that is me...Nicoledisneyfan... guess what my name is! I am 28 years old and love disney since we live about 8 hours away from disneyland in Daly City, California and only a 1 1/2 hour plane ride away.

DH-His name is Marat. Born in the Ukraine and came to the US when he was a teenager so fate can bring us together. He is also 28 years old. He is 1 month and a 11 days older than me.(wow, great fact right...j/k) Made to love disney because of me. If you marry me then you will love disney and than the death do us part.

DD-Her name is Sasha. Named after the ice skater Sasha Cohen. She is 6 years old. Born with a disney nursery and a disney baby shower. Sasha is our no fear disney girl! She loves the tower of terror!

SS-His name is Victor. Named after the ice skater Victor Petrenko. I don't ice skate but we wanted Russian names for the kids and the ice skating theme fit in. He is 4 years old. My "wish" child. Victor loves disney too! Obviously! This guy is nuts for the tiki room and its a small world.

I will be posting a picture of our family soon.
We will be visiting Walt disney world in September for the first time! We will be there from the 22-27th.
Well, I will continue to post but I just want to get this started. I hope that you will stick around and read my exciting days of planning and the fun stuff that we do each day, YEAH!

 

[mistymouse5001]

Well we can't wait to see pictures of the WHOLE family and here all about your little wish angel!

 

[Iluvmickeymouse!]

Great start! I can't wait to read more!!!

 

[NicoleDisneyFan]

Ok, well I guess that I will talk a little about Victor's health.
Victor was born at 38 weeks with a emergency c-section. I went in for a non stress test since I am a type 2 diabetic.(actually I am a type 1-2 diabetic since I am still making insulin but got diabetes at 19 and on insulin) Enough about me now. Well when I did the test they could hear his heart beat but there was no heart rate. To make a long story short, we found out that his heart rate was over 250. He was born and had SVT(Supraventricular tachycardia) He also had a enlarged heart which may have been from my diabetes. His SVT went away with medication and got off the medication when he turned 2 years old. A year or so later we found out that he has a cardiac fibroma tumor. Right now we are in a stage that it is a wait and see if it grows and bothers his heart and if it does then he will need a heart transplant since the tumor is inside of the heart. I will just leave the rest of the medical history alone. It is hard to talk about it but this is why he was granted his wish.

Now good news! Planning our trip. Right now I am going to purchase the halloween pass for the 23rd. We love halloween! We are always disney characters. Last year we were the queen of hearts, a card, alice and the white rabbit. I will have to find a picture of us so we can post it. This year we want to do peter pan and be wendy, tinkerbell, peter pan and hook. My mother use to make our costumes when we were younger. A fun fact is that my mom has pictures of me and my sister as snow white and the little mermaid before they even had the costumes in the store or the patterns.

We have our reservations for two restaurants. One is chef mickey and the other is the garden grill. I love character dining. We don't know what type of food or places there really is to eat so I just put down two places for now and hope that if we find somewhere else good when we are there that they can squeeze us in. Any suggestions?

We are going to purchase the water bottles with filters from pure water to go. My family is not use to just good old fashion tap water so I thought this would be a great idea instead of paying 3 or more dollars at the park. Thank you Misty for telling me about the refillable sodas because I know soda isn't good in the heat but I can't make it without my diet coke which is my coffee.

More to come........

 

[PrincessEeyore]

Great start!

I'm so amazed by your little boy's strength! I send him plenty of pixie dust ! Hopefully the waiting stage isn't too long and tedious and everything is healthy! My prayers are with you.

But on the bright side...YOUR GOING TO DISNEY WORLD!!! Especially at Halloween time, lucky duck! Your costume ideas sound so cute! You must post pictures of last year's with Alice in Wonderland.

Great start and I'm so excited to read more! Happy trip planning
If you like character dining, I would suggest Cinderella's Royal Table, for breakfast prehaps? I'm sure your DD will love that! Also, Crystal Palace in Magic Kingdom is excellent! All of the Winnie the Pooh characters come around and the buffet is wonderful! Also, Akershus in Epcot has the princesses as well! I have eaten at all of these resturants before and enjoyed them very much!

 

[NicoleDisneyFan]

I will go ahead and share some pictures of our disney cruise that we took at the end of May. We went on the cruise that sailed out of LA and went to Mexico for 7 days.

Here is a picture of the boat when we had to tender in Cabos

 

[smatterchu]

Hi folks,

I just read a note in the Paying it Forward thread that suggested sending a little pre-trip pixie dust for our MAW friends. I think that's an awesome idea, and I would be more than happy to try and help with that!!

I live down here and work at DHS (Hollywood Studios), so I would love to send a postcard to any of you who are planning a trip (or recently returned from one)...

Anyway, PM me if you would like a card from WDW....and let me know if you would like anything special written on it.

And when you do come, hopefully I'll see you when you visit Studios. These days I'm usually on Hollywood Boulevard and Sunset Boulevard...

See Ya Real Soon...

 

[NicoleDisneyFan]

More pictures...

The kids graduated from Sea University on the ship! Class of 2008 disney style! I am so proud!

I usually don't take pictures of food but had to say how cute that every dinner the assistant waiter made this mickey out of ketchup. Do they do that at the disney world restaurants?

Here is your captain....Victor

Sasha ready to go on the ship. I love the minnie ears in her hair because they just clip right in and she loves to wear them when she is tired of wear her hat.

Our family on a rainy January this year at disneyland. Victor was very star struck by mickey mouse! (Good tip for DL travelers when it rains.... the characters were all at the exit of space mountain... check that place out if it rains on your trip)

Ok, I will get more pictures soon.... I think I over posted today if there is a such thing.

 

[Bill_Lin]

I love your TR, Nicole. You are making us all proud. I am very much looking forward to learning more about Victor's adventures.

Definitely take Tara Laine's (smatterchu) offer for pixie dust. She is awesome. You may even get to see HER there in person at Disney Hollywood Studios. Tara Laine is her first name, a two-part name. She is a super dooper CM.

Bill

 

[NicoleDisneyFan]

I guess I will add on more information about our trip planning. We found out that our plane will have to stop and we will have to land and wait a hour till the next plane takes off before we get to the Orlando airport. Our MAW planner assured me that it will be easy at the airport and I wont have to worry about the transfer. The thing that I am worried about is the kids having to leave around 10am and we will arrive during the late evening at the airport so it will be a LONG trip for us since we have only flew once with the kids to LA and that is a very short trip for us. We also found out that she requested a minivan for us which is great since that is the car that we use at home.
I am still trying to decide if we want to purchase a special needs stroller for Victor since he outgrew his stroller big time! I think it would be great to have one for the trip but also at home but we are still up in the air on what to do.
We found out today that Victor needs to wear glasses 24/7. He had glasses when he was around 6 months old and wore them on and off and the eye doctor said that he didn't need them for the past two years but now she HIGHLY recommends that he wears them all of the time. I guess he will be "seeing" disney world with better vision!
Tonight I am going to plan out what days we are going to which park and how to juggle parades and fireworks and get in as much as we can. I went to the library and took out some books on disney world so I am looking forward to reading them and get some ideas from there too.

Now off to web surfing for disney world 411!

 

[Iluvmickeymouse!]

Don't forget that you will recieve a stroller rental free at the WDW parks. You call go to allears.net and there is a page in there that shows the strollers. My DD4 did well with them. They are very easy to push. I saw bigger kids in them also. 5dwarves was able to upgrade to a double for free. For my DD1, MAW rented a stroller through kidsinsafetyseats.com for us. Don't know if any of those will help, but I thought I would let you know! Happy planning!

 

[Bill_Lin]

Hey Nicole,

When you are calculating the long day, are you allowing for the time zone change. One of the first things we considered was that Orlando is three hours later than Pacific Time. That helped us a lot on the way over, but on the way back.... jet lag city. Still, I am sorry you will get in so late.

How long will you be at the airport lay over? Do you have activities for the kids there? We used Leap Pad and a portable DVD player for the plane, but our layovers were short enough to just kind of explore.

As GKTW guests, we received free stroller rentals at all parks. They each gave us a free upgrade to a double as well. They were pretty practical and we did not have any troubles.

Bill

 

[NicoleDisneyFan]

Thank you Iluvmickeymouse! and Bill_Lin for replying. (I am going to have to start learning everyones name instead of just our screen names.)

Bill_Lin....our lay over I think is maybe a hour so I guess it isn't really that long. I'm thinking that it would be a good time to get a snack or some lunch for the kids. We have the leapsters to bring and I was thinking of buying a portable dvd player and bring some of our disney dvds along.I am hoping that it wont take long to check out the dvds in security but was wondering if they do check the dvds like the laptops, did you have any problems?

Well, new question of the day........is Epcot worth a day? Some people think it is worth taking up a whole day at Epcot and others think that it is not worth going that long.

So far our plans go......
Sep 22.......get to GKTW at night so we will have dinner and sleep and maybe a run to Walmart for snacks. Does GKTW have snacks in the villa? Is there a delivery service for grocery's?
Sep 23.... need to get our tickets and go to the orientation. We will go to the animal kingdom and then at 7pm to go to the mickey halloween at the magic kingdom. (Remind myself to get the tickets now!)
Sep 24.... Epcot for the day..would like to go at 3pm back to the magic kingdom for the parade but think it is the same as the disneyland one and we seen that one ALOT.
Sep 25...... Hollywood studios(maybe until 6pm).... back to the magic kingdom
Sep 26...... Sea World for the day
Sep 27.....Right home on a early flight

So far the plans are working out but I need to find out what day we have reservations at chef mickey and at the garden grill in epcot
MORE TO COME........

 

[bigdisgrandma]

Nicole,
I am so excited to hear your plans. We are lucky enough to be able to fly direct from Salt Lake to Orlando but we have to stop in Atlanta on the way home. Sometimes, I am not sure what is worse, 4+hours on 1 plane or 2 flights with an hour in Atlanta inbetween. We once made the mistake of trying a red eye flight and thought we could sleep on the plane. Trust me, bad, bad idea. What ever, it beats 4 days in a car for me!

Keep up the good work.
Denise

 

[Iluvmickeymouse!]

If I remember correctly, there are a few snacks in the villa, but wal-mart is open 24/7 and it is only a couple minutes away.

I do think Epcot is worth a day. We love touring the countries and they have kidcot stations throughout that the kids can stop at and do activities. A little unknown fact....you can get into the parks at 4 with just your event tickets...so say either MNSSHP or MVMCP...it says seven o'clock but you can get in at 4 with just that ticket. Your plans are looking good.

 

[Bill_Lin]

There is no grocery delivery. The only deliveries are the gifts that appear magically each day, breakfast cart if you order it (Continental) and pizza if you order it.

As has been written, Wal-Mart is right there, but we got about all the food we could need at the Gingerbread House and Ice Cream Palace.

The parks you choose to major on will need to be based on your kids' preferences. Epcot was too academic for our Princess compared to the shows and rides of DHS and MK.

Bill

 

[twinmum]

Hello! With so much to do at WDW, and never enough time, you have to make tough choices. Given the age of your children, I suspect that Epcot might be their least favourite. I know they'll want to spend oodles of time at the Magic Kingdon and the Studios, and I'm sure Animal Kingdom would be popular too. Add to this the appeal of playing around at GKTW and I think you can spend more time at Epcot another time...I just always think of "another time", it's just a coping mechanism! Take a look at the "teme Park" section of the DIS (look at the top of the DISBoards page on the blue toolbar) and you can learn much more detail about each park. The WDW site also has some neat video's etc to give you a good idea of what to expect. I was addicted to both of these before our first trip.

Alison

 

[bigdisgrandma]

I agree with Alison. Your children will just love everything about MK. But then it is probably my very favorite because it reminds me of my childhood. One thing my daughter and I have talked about is that kids won't know what they missed, but they will remember what they did. Don't worry that you might not see it all. Enjoy what ever you do and don't sweat the small stuff! Besides, your kids already have some disney experience so they will be excited just to be there.

I absolutely love Buzz Lightyear though I am not good at it. Splash Mountain is another favorite. I have a friend that I call from my cell phone everytime I get off Splash and we just laugh about how fun it is. (You have to remember that I am a grandma and so is she) Of course there is POC...oh my goodness just thinking about WDW makes it hard to wait.

Happy 4th of July.
Denise

 

[Bill_Lin]

I have to admit (humbly) that Lysi and I were aces at Buzz Light Year Space Ranger Spin and at Men in Black Alien Attack at Universal. So.... if you have any trouble with aliens.... you know who to call.

Bill

 

[twinmum]

Well Bill, whichever son gets stuck with me on Buzz, Men in Black, Toy Story Mania would be SO happy if you could magically appear to ride with them. I am absolutely hopeless at these rides!

There is a ride at Canada's Wonderland (just north of the city of Toronto) called Scooby Doo's Haunted Mansion. Now, Mark is Scooby's Ultimate Fan (and no, he has no idea that Scooby and Shaggy may be seen, possibly, at Universal). When Mark is on the Scooby ride, he wants to totally rock it. It's rather embarassing to see your children clamouring to ride with their father because Mum is no good at it..."well, you know Mummy, you're just not very good at it..." On our annual Wonderland day, we always have to go twice, so each boy can have a shot at riding with their Dad!

Alison