jillrobinson
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Mar 30, 2005
- Messages
- 6,953
So there's me - The Disney Obsessive - Jill wants to be Maleficent, has more in common with Donald Duck in a rage apparently !!!
My long suffering husband - Rob - likes the rides, doesn't get the magic, thinks it's overpriced, has admitted he's looking forward to the trip ! Favourite hotel the Cheyenne, insists we go back to Plaza Gardens because there was a dessert he really liked in there in 2004. Let's hope they haven't changed the menu !
Our eldest - Jamie, almost as keen as mum, but at 14, has to be seen to be cool, loves the big coasters, is really into computers, art, animation and game design, I'm sure he'd make a great Imagineer.
Our youngest - Liam, if he were a character he would be Goofy, class clown, wants Peter Kay's job when he retires, is currently almost as hyper as mum, we try not to talk about the trip too much, we get far too excited.
We had our first family DLP trip in March 2004, "the once only trip" - you know the one I mean, where you come home and go straight to the travel agents to book the 2nd trip "to do all the things you didn't manage on the once only trip" and more importantly because you're hooked, that was October 2004, then I had a big gap made bearable because I had decided I was spending my 40th there in March, 2006. I didn't relish being 40 so I thought I'd go back to DLP where I could pretend to be 8. We had an out of this world stay at the NPB for almost a whole week I was in heaven. After that trip Rob said he'd been there, done it, done it again and again and he'd really had enough Disney.
So in 2007 I took the boys by myself in March and then again in November along with my sister and niece. The March trip turned out to be the press weekend for the 15th celebrations, a rare treat, but a very busy park, not as busy though as the Nov. weekend, if I'm honest that wasn't a good trip, purely from the sheer volume of rude, ignorant people in my beloved park and the magic lost a little of it's sparkle because of it.
When I tentatively broached the subject of another trip to Rob and that we, me and the boys would like him to come, he didn't say no, mind you he didn't say yes either, but I had enough Airmiles for 4 free flights, so I used my initiative
and booked.I plumped for March for a couple of reasons:
It's a good month for celebrations, Liam's birthday is on the 12th, mine's on the 17th as is our Wedding Anniversary and Jamie's birthday is a couple of weeks later on the 1st April.
We had to go on a weekend and it had to tie in with Jamie's GCSE work, he's had Maths and Science exams last week and has been swotting hard for them over the last couple of weeks, I pre-checked dates with his Head of Year and he OK'd the time-off.
All of these dates just happened to tie in nicely with there being absolutely nothing special on in the park, which I'm hoping means no crowds/queues after our last 2 experiences.
and last but not least we had Kids Go Free for Liam and an Extra day & night free.
We're all looking forward to visiting the Studios, I hardly recognise it from photos, we didn't visit it in 2007 at all. So we've Tot, Cars, Crush and Stitch Live to look forward to and Rob can add Buzz to his list. Liam's going to try Indianna Jones and I've agreed to ride SM, I have agreed before and chickened out at the last moment, we'll see.
Dining wise, we've eaten at most of the restaurants at DLP, our choices this trip are
La Grange @ Billy Bob's
Lucky Nugget
Rendezvous des Stars
Plaza Gardens
Agrabah Cafe, this might change to Walt's as we've never eaten there or Jamie would like to go back to the Blue Lagoon.
and of course for the first time I'm visiting as a Shareholder so hoping to grab a coffee and a croissant in Salon Mickey one morning.
I got a bit worried when Rob got hit off his motorbike in January this year, fortunately he's almost full recovered, unfortunately the bank balance hasn't what with his bike being written off, you never get enough insurance to replace like for like and as we're still waiting for 4 weeks loss of earnings, it looked like frugal was the word of the trip, luckily my mum and dad offered to lend us whatever we needed to see us through, so it's down to them, that we have spending money.
We're down to (almost) only 1 day to go, I've packed my "Medicine and Snacks" case and that's it, so really I should be getting on with that rather than doing this, but I've never done a pre-trippie before and I didn't even know where to start or what to write, so I think I've waffled on rather well actually.
Thanks for reading
- hope all the Robinsons have a fabulous time in a quiet park.
