mickeyd78
Mouseketeer
- Joined
- Jul 24, 2011
- Messages
- 215
Welcome to the PTR for our upcoming October / November 2015 Disney vacation.
I love planning Disney trips, but I’m not so good at documenting pre/post trip reports. I have benefited so much from reading tips from other people’s trip reports her on Disboard, so I want make more of an effort to document this trip in the hope that it helps others!
Cast:
Me – mickeyd
DW
DD (4, turning 5 not long after this trip)
DS (1, turning 2 about a month before the trip)
Growing up I always wanted to visit Disneyland or Disney World. I finally visited WDW in 2000 and have been a huge Disney Parks fan ever since. Over the past 15 years I’ve been fortunate to visit WDW 9 times (just counted the trips in my signature to get that number, can’t believe it’s that many!), Disneyland twice (for the D23 Expos), and Aulani. The highlight so far was completing the inaugural runDisney Dopey Challenge in 2014.
The idea:
In 2012 we visited WDW for 10 days with my then 2 year old DD. As we were sitting on the Magical Express bus heading back to the airport, and my wife said “Let’s plan for another visit in 2015, before DD starts school and we are restricted to travelling during school holidays. But next time, let’s stay a bit longer. Maybe three weeks”. Now I’m a pretty big Disney fan, but I had never considered staying at WDW for that length of time. Surely we’d get ‘Disneyed’ out?
But the more we talked about it, the more sense it made. Travelling with a 2 year old on our 2012 visit meant heading back to the hotel room for a sleep each day, which really slowed down what we could achieve. We had 2-3 hours in the park each morning and then back to the hotel for a sleep. We’d then make it back to the parks around 4pm, which gave us maybe an hour or so before dinner. We had a great time, but it was certainly a different style of park touring than what we were used to (I’m a reformed Disney Park commando).
Staying longer we can pace things a lot better. Dip into the parks for a few hours – head back to the hotel for sleep / pool time, then back out in the late afternoon for more park time and / or dinner. With a three week stay we can do everything we want at leisurely pace. We’re aiming for more pool time at the resort, time at the water parks and maybe some mini golf.
The question then arose – “What else will we do while we are in the USA?”. Heading straight to WDW seems a bit like only eating dessert for dinner. We normally stop-over in LA for 24 hours on our way to and from Orlando. I don’t particularly like LA, but flying all the way through from Melbourne to Orlando was too much for us before kids, and is certainly beyond us now with little ones.
We love New York and Washington, but they are not ideal places for a 2 year old – and heading back to the hotel for sleeps would once again limit what we could do in a day. We also considered a stop-over in Hawaii (pricey on the airfare front), or a trip down the Florida Keys (I hate driving in the US, and certainly don’ find it relaxing). Then we had a stroke of generous – a Disney Cruise!.
We've done a number of cruises before on Royal Caribbean, and loved them. I've wanted to do a Disney Cruise ever since having kids and particularly after seeing Disney Dream docked at Port Canaveral – she is a classy looking ship. But the price for DCL is certainly a premium over Royal Caribbean. But (and here is where my Disney logic kicked in), the price for a Disney cruise works out cheaper than a week in NYC once you take into consideration that you don’t need to pay an additional set of airfares from NYC to MCO for four! (Call it Disneynomics - where you talk yourself into paying the Disney $$$ because it actually SAVES you money, LOL).
So there you have it – our thought process on how we decided to do a Disney Cruise and 3 weeks at WDW. Next up…… The Plan.
I love planning Disney trips, but I’m not so good at documenting pre/post trip reports. I have benefited so much from reading tips from other people’s trip reports her on Disboard, so I want make more of an effort to document this trip in the hope that it helps others!
Cast:
Me – mickeyd
DW
DD (4, turning 5 not long after this trip)
DS (1, turning 2 about a month before the trip)
Growing up I always wanted to visit Disneyland or Disney World. I finally visited WDW in 2000 and have been a huge Disney Parks fan ever since. Over the past 15 years I’ve been fortunate to visit WDW 9 times (just counted the trips in my signature to get that number, can’t believe it’s that many!), Disneyland twice (for the D23 Expos), and Aulani. The highlight so far was completing the inaugural runDisney Dopey Challenge in 2014.
The idea:
In 2012 we visited WDW for 10 days with my then 2 year old DD. As we were sitting on the Magical Express bus heading back to the airport, and my wife said “Let’s plan for another visit in 2015, before DD starts school and we are restricted to travelling during school holidays. But next time, let’s stay a bit longer. Maybe three weeks”. Now I’m a pretty big Disney fan, but I had never considered staying at WDW for that length of time. Surely we’d get ‘Disneyed’ out?
But the more we talked about it, the more sense it made. Travelling with a 2 year old on our 2012 visit meant heading back to the hotel room for a sleep each day, which really slowed down what we could achieve. We had 2-3 hours in the park each morning and then back to the hotel for a sleep. We’d then make it back to the parks around 4pm, which gave us maybe an hour or so before dinner. We had a great time, but it was certainly a different style of park touring than what we were used to (I’m a reformed Disney Park commando).
Staying longer we can pace things a lot better. Dip into the parks for a few hours – head back to the hotel for sleep / pool time, then back out in the late afternoon for more park time and / or dinner. With a three week stay we can do everything we want at leisurely pace. We’re aiming for more pool time at the resort, time at the water parks and maybe some mini golf.
The question then arose – “What else will we do while we are in the USA?”. Heading straight to WDW seems a bit like only eating dessert for dinner. We normally stop-over in LA for 24 hours on our way to and from Orlando. I don’t particularly like LA, but flying all the way through from Melbourne to Orlando was too much for us before kids, and is certainly beyond us now with little ones.
We love New York and Washington, but they are not ideal places for a 2 year old – and heading back to the hotel for sleeps would once again limit what we could do in a day. We also considered a stop-over in Hawaii (pricey on the airfare front), or a trip down the Florida Keys (I hate driving in the US, and certainly don’ find it relaxing). Then we had a stroke of generous – a Disney Cruise!.
We've done a number of cruises before on Royal Caribbean, and loved them. I've wanted to do a Disney Cruise ever since having kids and particularly after seeing Disney Dream docked at Port Canaveral – she is a classy looking ship. But the price for DCL is certainly a premium over Royal Caribbean. But (and here is where my Disney logic kicked in), the price for a Disney cruise works out cheaper than a week in NYC once you take into consideration that you don’t need to pay an additional set of airfares from NYC to MCO for four! (Call it Disneynomics - where you talk yourself into paying the Disney $$$ because it actually SAVES you money, LOL).
So there you have it – our thought process on how we decided to do a Disney Cruise and 3 weeks at WDW. Next up…… The Plan.
