Mickey Power!!! - July 2019 - Once Upon a Time When DHS Opened After Sunrise - 2/27

[Steppesister]

Here! Back to read tomorrow.

 

[LeiaIsAPrincess2]

Mickey Power is adorable! Following along!

 

[Steppesister]

And the fact that Disney just keeps raising prices, we almost felt like we were at the point of making the decision, “is it really worth it?”

For a couple of years, the answer was no.

I almost there myself. There are other places I've been itching to get to like the desert SW, Italy, East Africa and a cruise to the Caribbean. We'll see.

It became work.

And that's when a break is called for.

The week before Christmas we booked a trip. 7 Days, 6 Nights at Caribbean Beach Resort.

I am so stoked for this TR! I hope you get to the resort part before we leave as that's where we're staying.

We told the kids on Christmas day, when each one got a Disney Gift Card and a note saying that they could choose 1 restaurant on our trip and that giftcard would pay for that meal.

That's a really awesome gift giving idea. Love it!

We drive down and I typically try to knock out the first big chunk of the drive at night while the kids sleep. We planned to leave around 11 PM Fri – 1 AM Sat. The plan was that I'd leave work at noon to go to sleep, and whenever I woke up and we got the car loaded we were rolling out. DW was going to keep the kids awake until we left so that they'd fall asleep in the car and we could hopefully get south of Nashville before we have to stop.

This sounds brutal, but one that worrks. Hope it went smoothly!

And I really don’t know what happened when we did this, but it became extremely urgent a few times that we had to stop whatever we were doing and push the button on our Magic Bands (the Mickey Head).

Very endearing in a little one sort of way.

 

[MimiMoments]

Mickey Power! Looking forward to reading your report.

 

[lvcourtneyy]

Joining in! Love the Mickey power story. Can't wait to hear about the trip.

 

[amazingact21]

Whew, I became worried when I saw you had a TR linked that I was way behind. Glad I'm here at the beginning. Happy to see you decided to write a report!
Who are those kids in that intro photo? Surely, they're too old to be the same ones from previous reports. Man, time is flying past....

The Mickey Power story is great. How awesome that you found something that worked with LG and it became an awesome addition to the trip.

 

[Terra Nova guy]

Mickey Power! Very cool story behind your title. Looking forward to reading all about your trip. I’ll try to comment now and then but life has been very busy lately and I’ve been clicking “like” more than commenting these days.

 

[afwdwfan]

First! ha!

Way to be quick on the trigger.

I remember you PTR. Looking forward to hearing how your trip went.

Thanks for following along!

I remember that.

It happens, I guess.

<sigh> I'm seriously starting to wonder when they'll price themselves out of business...

And the answer is... never. They know the gate. When it starts falling a bit, they'll adjust. But for now... they're already filled to capacity, so why lower prices?

You're right... they might price me out though. It's getting close. Not that they'll price me out 100%, but our trips seem to be becoming fewer and farther between.

What were their reactions??

They were happy, but it wasn't some kind of a big exciting reveal where they flipped out or anything.

Uh, oh.... so... what was your reaction to that? Were you initially annoyed, then thought "hey! free babysitting!" Or... ??

Well, I wasn't sure. We had our plans made so I knew that I wasn't willing to just scrap our park days or FP or anything and that was part of the discussion from the get go. To her credit, she made it very clear from the start that they didn't want to have any kind of negative affect from that aspect. But I also knew that we could use a hand with R. Maybe even more. So I wasn't really annoyed, I wasn't really excited... I'd have been happy either way.

Which I'm sure you didn't want to do, necessarily, but... again... not sure how you felt about it.

I was fine with that. It just took some of my downtime that I intended to be resting, but if they're going to help with R... well, when is a 3 year old more of a handful than when you want to sit down to dinner?

Mickey Power, I love it!!! Something he may need to power up his band for your next trip . . .

We just color our Mickey's with black sharpies and then coat them with a bit of sparkly nail polish. Can't wait to read the rest of your report!

That looks good! We thought about getting him an upgraded MB that we thought he might be more excited/willing to wear, but after the whole cluster that was the release of the discounted ones that we got snubbed on I couldn't bring myself to turn around and pay full price for one. Thankfully Mickey Power seemed to do the trick!

 

[missangelalexis]

Mickey Power!! So cute. I'm here and can't wait to hear about your trip!

 

[afwdwfan]

Hi Andy! I'm joining along, I can't wait to read about this trip!

Thanks for joining!

Hopping over from your PTR . Looking forward to reading more

Good to have you here!

Love the story behind the title! Can't wait to follow along!

Thanks, it was just too big of a theme on the trip to not use it!

Hi, Andy!

Awesome, I'm looking forward to reading about your trip!

This is a super idea.

Thanks! We have a good one every once in a while.

That's great! I wondered if you'd have trouble trying to change the plans around to incorporate them, but it sounds like it worked out well.

It did. We did want to add them to ADRs if we could because having help with R at a meal is HUGE. I'm glad it worked out.

Coming over from your PTR. We've ended up having a much longer break from Disney than we had originally planned.

I guess sometimes there just needs to be a reset.

Mickey Power seems like an excellent concept! Looking forward to reading along.

Thanks!

I'm here! I love the story about Mickey Power! That's so cute!

It just became a bit of a theme. I wish we had thought to get video one morning when he got so excited to put it on.

Awesome title! Joining in!

Thanks for joining!

 

[afwdwfan]

Hooray, you're doing a trip report!

We'll give it a go... I did take notes, just not pictures.

I'm excited to hear everything about your trip! I LOVE the "Mickey Power" story... what a great way to encourage R to keep on his magic band! (Also, that's pretty hysterical that he tried to take everyone else's bands to get MORE Mickey power... - what a smart kid!)

It was funny... for a while. Then we all became nervous that we'd lose our own bands because he was getting so good at it and was so sneaky about it!

I'm glad to hear it wasn't too difficult to add your parents to the ADRs! I'm thrilled they were able to join you for even more of the fun.

I'm glad we had extra hands at the dinner table...

Joining in!! OMG I love the Mickey Power idea! Can't wait to read more about your trip!

Thanks for joining!

Oh and I get the feeling on keeping up with 11 people and planning for them I had 12 last year!!

Yeah, that's just really too much. Especially when you're the only one using the app or doing any of the planning. I love Disney, but some of the changes they've made have just made planning a trip too much work in some ways.

Joining in! I love the Mickey Power theme, how fun for your little guy!

Thanks! It was a fun theme that we came up with.

Joining in!

Glad you're here!

I'm here! I'm going to get caught up.

Not much catching up to do yet.

I'm up to speed.

See? I told you!

So happy you're doing another report. I love the title and the story behind it. This may be what we use on JP too. Brilliant idea.

Thanks!

I am here and ready to follow along!

Thanks for joining!

Looking forward to your report- love mickey power!!

Thanks! It was just one of those things that repeated so much that I had to make it the title.

 

[afwdwfan]

Here! Back to read tomorrow.

Mickey Power is adorable! Following along!

Thanks for joining!

I almost there myself. There are other places I've been itching to get to like the desert SW, Italy, East Africa and a cruise to the Caribbean. We'll see.

We've had this discussion a lot. We've got some places we'd like to go, and part of the reason we haven't is that we feel like R is too little to get anything out of it and to let the rest of us enjoy, but we're also getting close to that window when L will be too busy with other activities to be able to plan a lot of long-ish trips.

And that's when a break is called for.

I am so stoked for this TR! I hope you get to the resort part before we leave as that's where we're staying.

Thanks! I'm not gonna lie, we didn't take any pictures at the resort, aside from a few DW got at the pool during B's mermaid school.

That said, we enjoyed staying there, we'd stay there again, but the bus service was "meh" at best. We used the bus 2 days and drove to the parks the rest of the trip.

That's a really awesome gift giving idea. Love it!

It worked really nicely. Especially since we thought at that time we'd be paying out of pocket for any Table Service we had, it was nice to have already "paid" for those meals. Once free dining came out, those gift cards just became the way we paid tips and then bought some souvenirs.

This sounds brutal, but one that worrks. Hope it went smoothly!

It really did. It can be rough if I don't get some sleep before we leave and get to bed early the evening we arrive, but it has never gone better than it did this time.

Very endearing in a little one sort of way.

Mickey Power! Looking forward to reading your report.

I'm glad you joined us!

Joining in! Love the Mickey power story. Can't wait to hear about the trip.

Thanks for joining!

Whew, I became worried when I saw you had a TR linked that I was way behind. Glad I'm here at the beginning. Happy to see you decided to write a report!
Who are those kids in that intro photo? Surely, they're too old to be the same ones from previous reports. Man, time is flying past....

I know the feeling. When I saw the latest pictures of your kids after my hiatus, I couldn't believe it!!!

The Mickey Power story is great. How awesome that you found something that worked with LG and it became an awesome addition to the trip.

DW came up with it and it really seemed to work. He'd get excited to put it on every morning. He still took it off once in a while, but it wasn't the problem that we expected it to be and it was usually easy to talk up the Mickey Power and get him to put it back on.

Mickey Power! Very cool story behind your title. Looking forward to reading all about your trip. I’ll try to comment now and then but life has been very busy lately and I’ve been clicking “like” more than commenting these days.

I'm glad you're here. Don't feel the need to comment on everything. I've been there... trust me, I get it.

Mickey Power!! So cute. I'm here and can't wait to hear about your trip!

Thanks for joining!

 

[afwdwfan]

The Drive ​

​

Let’s knock this boring update out quickly, shall we? ​

​

As I mentioned, I left work at noon on Friday July 5. I went home and spent some time re-arranging ADRS for our lunch at Via Napoli, our Fantasmic Breakfast at Hollywood & Vine and our lunch at Crystal Palace. I wasn’t even going to attempt changing our ADR at Cinderella’s Royal Table. Maybe I could have, but I didn’t even care to try. ​

​

Via Napoli and Crystal Palace were a piece of cake. I think we had to go like 30 minutes later at VN, but CP we added 2 people and had our same time. H&V was tougher. I couldn't find any availability, but I’m a member on touringplans.com so I used their ADR finder tool to watch for an ADR before I went to sleep. When I woke up, I had an e-mail that an 8:15 ADR for 7 had opened up so I snagged it. Really, that part all worked out better than I could have imagined. We added them to the 3 ADRs we wanted to and it didn’t impact our plans or the times in any significant way. ​

​

I woke up at about 10 PM, had something to eat and we finished loading the Suburban and headed out just after midnight. The drive was pretty easy. We usually try to make it to somewhere between Nashville and Chattanooga before stopping and that’s about 1/3 of the way there. ​

​

We made it that far and I looked around the car and everyone was sleeping. ​

​

Hammer down. ​

​

We ended up making it all the way to Calhoun, GA as the sun came up. The kids started stirring and the gas gauge started dipping too low to go much farther. I always like to stop for a restroom break before Atlanta anyway since you never know how long it will take to get through, so that was perfect. We grabbed breakfast from McDonalds, fueled up and sailed right through Atlanta at around 8 am on a Saturday morning. ​

​

We stopped later on for lunch at the Cracker Barrel in Lake City, FL. I don’t think we made more than 1 or maybe 2 other restroom stops the whole drive. ​

​

We hit a little bit of traffic on I-4, but otherwise we never had any problems. For a 900+ mile drive, everything really went as well as it could have. We did drive through a pretty heavy downpour for probably 20 mi or so on the Florida Turnpike just before we got to Orlando, but what else would you expect on a July afternoon in Central Florida? ​

​

In order to save some money to extend our stay a little bit at Disney, we booked our arrival night and a night after our Disney stay at a nearby hotel on points. I like this for our travel day so that we don’t have to be anywhere by a certain time. It gives us a little bit of wiggle room for our ETA and we don’t feel like we miss out on anything since it isn’t our time to explore our resort or anything like that.

Truthfully, I need to get a full night's sleep after driving all night and when we stay on Disney property that first night, I always want to be out seeing or doing things and it is hard to make myself go to bed! ​

​

But, staying on points, it also doesn’t cost money like adding a night to our Disney reservation would have. ​

​

We booked our stay at the Holiday Inn Reosrt, Lake Buena Vista. It is a good neighbor hotel and from the pictures, it looked like it had a nice pool and play area. ​

​

Sometimes pictures are deceiving. ​

​

I like Holiday Inns and HI Express hotels, for the most part. I used to travel a LOT for work and found them to be pretty consistent and they were available about everywhere I had to travel. Hence the fact that I had earned free stays. This one didn’t live up to my expectations of the brand, and especially not for a hotel given the “Good Neighbor” label. ​

​

The hotel was on a busy stretch of 535 and was a pain to get in and out of. We had considered going to Disney Springs that afternoon to have dinner, but after getting into the hotel, I really didn’t want to drive through that mess again. ​

​

Check-in was a pain. They had 2 people at the desk with a line getting backed up and once I got to the desk, it took her 10 minutes to get me checked in. ​

​

This hotel had free parking, but they charged a resort fee. Since I was staying on points, I wasn’t charged the fee, but there was certainly nothing there worth an extra $20 - $30. ​

​

The room itself was very nice and the one saving grace for this hotel. We had a family suite, which was a king bed with bunk beds in a partially divided room so there was lots of space for us and it was a clean room. ​

​

The kids wanted to swim so I offered to take them down to the pool while DW relaxed in the room. The pool was smaller than it appeared in the pictures and it was very crowded, but it was fine. We swam for 20 minutes or so before the clouds moved in and it started raining again. ​

​

The hotel had an Applebees attached to it so we went there for dinner, again, to avoid driving anywhere. They were WAY understaffed. I'd suspect that the rain brought people back form the parks early and they didn't want to go back out either. The restaurant wasn’t half full, but they didn’t have enough servers so we had to wait 40 minutes for a table. The front of the restaurant and the hotel lobby were packed with people waiting to get in. ​

​

While we were waiting, we were approached by a hotel employee from what appeared to be their concierge desk, trying to sell us park tickets. I told her we already had what we needed and weren’t interested, thank you. ​

Apparently, she works on some kind of commission. ​

​

She went on telling us we should sell her our tickets and was telling us she could get us a better price... I don’t know, I was done talking to her or listening when I told her we had our tickets and weren’t interested. She went on this hard sell trying to get us to do something and after telling her “No, thanks” a few times, I just turned my back and walked away. ​

​

It just left a bad taste in my mouth about that place, honestly. The room was nice, so no complaints there, but I would certainly not recommend this hotel, nor would I stay there again if I were paying for a room. Especially with what else is available in the area for comparable cost. ​

​

In fact, I got online and looked at changing our night after Disney to another location, but I wasn’t able to find anything else that was close available using points. ​

​

The place served its purpose though. We had dinner and were in bed by 8:30. Plenty early to get a full night’s sleep and be ready to hit the road early. ​

Sunday would be our first Disney day and our hope was to make it to MK for rope drop! ​

​

 

[missangelalexis]

Glad the drive down went smoothly!

Ah, your "good neighbor" hotel didn't sound all that good! Sorry about that. Especially the hotel employee being relentless about the park tickets.

 

[vamassey1]

H&V was tougher. I couldn't find any availability, but I’m a member on touringplans.com so I used their ADR finder tool to watch for an ADR before I went to sleep. When I woke up, I had an e-mail that an 8:15 ADR for 7 had opened up so I snagged it. Really, that part all worked out better than I could have imagined.

I'm a member too but never tried this. Sounds like it worked well for you.

We ended up making it all the way to Calhoun, GA as the sun came up.

You made real good time.

We hit a little bit of traffic on I-4, but otherwise we never had any problems.

Not too bad. When we have driven we usually hit bad traffic on 1-95.

The hotel was on a busy stretch of 535 and was a pain to get in and out of. We had considered going to Disney Springs that afternoon to have dinner, but after getting into the hotel, I really didn’t want to drive through that mess again.

Not the Disney bubble.

She went on telling us we should sell her our tickets and was telling us she could get us a better price... I don’t know, I was done talking to her or listening when I told her we had our tickets and weren’t interested. She went on this hard sell trying to get us to do something and after telling her “No, thanks” a few times, I just turned my back and walked away.

How frustrating! Again not the Disney Bubble.

Sunday would be our first Disney day and our hope was to make it to MK for rope drop!

I'm looking forward to this.

 

[Newsies]

Via Napoli and Crystal Palace were a piece of cake. I think we had to go like 30 minutes later at VN, but CP we added 2 people and had our same time. H&V was tougher. I couldn't find any availability, but I’m a member on touringplans.com so I used their ADR finder tool to watch for an ADR before I went to sleep. When I woke up, I had an e-mail that an 8:15 ADR for 7 had opened up so I snagged it. Really, that part all worked out better than I could have imagined. We added them to the 3 ADRs we wanted to and it didn’t impact our plans or the times in any significant way.

Glad everything worked out!!!

We booked our stay at the Holiday Inn Reosrt, Lake Buena Vista.

Oh no.

The hotel had an Applebees attached to it so we went there for dinner, again, to avoid driving anywhere. They were WAY understaffed.

YEP. This is the hotel my family checked into the night before our DCP, and the Applebees that my co-workers and I went to once after a late night shift for some apps and drinks. We were the only six people in the entire restaurant and we saw our server maybe three times in the TWO HOURS we spent there. What a mess.

She went on telling us we should sell her our tickets and was telling us she could get us a better price... I don’t know, I was done talking to her or listening when I told her we had our tickets and weren’t interested. She went on this hard sell trying to get us to do something and after telling her “No, thanks” a few times, I just turned my back and walked away.

YEP! Oof, these people are the worst. The guy from "concierge" approached us while we were at the pool during my family's stay.

Sunday would be our first Disney day and our hope was to make it to MK for rope drop!

I hope you make it!!! Can't wait for the next update!!!

 

[Stasieki]

Joining in! Looking forward to reading along.

 

[Isabelle12345]

Joining in too! I can’t wait to hear about the rest of your trip!

 

[disneyAndi14]

I hate when the staff tries to up sell and doesn’t take no for an answer!

 

[MickeyReeds]

Looking forward to hearing about your trip! Totally stealing the gift card/choose a restaurant idea for our next trip!