Mom and the QCN do Disney on Labor Day Weekend - who needs to go to school?

[debbiedana]

Hello everyone,
I've never done this before, so what the heck!

Our family is:
Me, 33, certified Disney Crazed
DH, 43, doesn't get into Disney
DD, 9, well on her way to crazed as her mom

Our background is:
*9/02 Our first trip, all three of us. It was the week before DD turned 3. We stayed at the Polynesian Concierge level. Niiiiiice.
*1/04 Me and DD went with my mom and stayed at the newly-opened Pop Century
*1/06 Me, DH and DD again. Back to Pop!
*1/08 Me and DD. Nothin' like a Girls Trip! Again, back to Pop!
*1/09 We went to Disneyland and DCA for a couple days while on vaca in SoCal. Loved it, couldn't wait to get back to WDW!

So mid-July, as I was putting some change into my Disney change jar, I wondered how much was in there. $50, not bad. Then I had a garage sale and sold some stuff on craigslist. Wow, I did pretty good. When I put all the money together (with my super-secret mini-stash-o-cash) I had a pretty decent amount of money. Wow, almost enough for another girls trip to Disney!

Hmmm, I thought, let's see what discounts are around for a trip. Boy, it would have to be something REALLY good, but hey, you never know. I checked out mousesavers. And sure enough, free dining. Hmmm, I thought again. I wonder just how much it would cost. And I'm *sure* I'm not lucky enough to be able to score Pop, where we just love to stay.

But lo and behold, disneyworld dot com had awesome news for me. Just $901 for five nights, a regular (non-preferred) room at Pop, free dining... but could I find airfare? Would it be $400 each?

That very day, our credit card was upgraded, and now all of our points could be used towards airfare. But wait, airfare prices have dropped, a lot! And we have enough points to cover two round trips to Orlando!

Have the stars aligned?
Cheap package?
Free airfare?
The room I want at the resort I want?
SWEEEEET!

I don't know how, but I must have provided an exceptional explaination to DH about how this was a great deal and it would be stupid *not* to go, because he said, sure, it you have the money, go ahead.

SUPER SWEEEEEET! Me and DD are on our way to Pop 9/3 to 9/8!!!

So here begins my story...

 

[debbiedana]

 

[debbiedana]

Mickey Rocks! We found him all alone at Disneyland and we were more than happy to take a few minutes of his time.

 

[debbiedana]

I really am an obsessive planner. In fact, I don't like to make ressies because they get in the way of my park tours. Of course, free dining has changed that.

I'm only 39 days out when I booked, so I knew I'd be in for a challenge with the ADR's. I enlisted the help of DD, who should hereby be known as the Queen of the Chicken Nugget, or QCN.

I sat down with a QCN who was so excited she was crawling out of her skin. I explained free dining, and that we would have five table service meals, and also that we wouldn't have a ton of time to pick our parks. I asked her opinion of which parks on which days, she took my handwritten notes of park hours for our days, and circled the parks she thought we should go to. Took her 30 seconds.

Friday the 4th - Magic Kingdom
Saturday the 5th - Animal Kindgom
Sunday the 6th - Epcot
Monday the 7th - DHS
Tuesday the 8th - open

I didn't see any reason to change any of her ideas, except maybe Monday, but I liked the rest so we stuck with it.

Ok, usually, I spend weeks freaking out about which parks on which days. QCN just did it in 30 seconds. Good for the Queen. And good for me too. Now I have to obsess about dining!!!

 

[debbiedana]

I forgot our itinerary.

We are flying in Thursday night, September 3rd, after QCN gets out of school. I didn't want her to miss more than two days, and her school will hassle me about even two lousy days.

We are flying out at 7:30 Tuesday September 8th.

We have five nights so five days of dining.

We don't check luggage. Ever. Jam it in your carryon or leave it at home. We will each carry a small rolling carryon, and I will carry a totebag with our few things to bring with on the plane. I'm sure this issue will come up again later, so I'm saying it now... no checked luggage for us!

 

[debbiedana]

...to remind you just how much you love Disney. Wow. They're now touting themselves as the cleanest theme park in the world. I wonder if they have actually been there. Nasty. Anway, we were using my daughter's free ticket from the reading program. $36 for my super-discounted ticket, $15 to park, $6 to bring Subway lunch with us, $4 to use lockers outside of the rides, $9 for a pretzel and a bottle of water, $11 for some pizza. That cost $81 to use her free ticket. Plus, the waterpark wanted $17 for a locker. You're kidding, right? $17? I refused to pay it on principal!!!

Anyway, me and DD spent the whole day saying "if this were Disney..." to everything we saw. Answers were things like, this ride would have a theme, this queue would have something to look at for an hour, they would take a few minutes to scrape the gum off this wall, etc.

The good things about yesterday were that I tried out my new Croc flops and they passed the one-day Disney test, and it was also a tremendous reminder. 12 hours in a theme park, plus 2 hours of driving time makes me very sore and very tired. It reaffirmed our motto for this trip - early to bed, early to rise, gets you on more attractions than everybody else.

More about dining soon!

 

[debbiedana]

I booked this trip on 7/26 to leave on 8/3. Obviously, I would have no choice but to take what I could get in the ADR department! Happily, though, me and DD are happy to eat at off times, like 3pm. We can eat a big breakfast and eat a lunch/dinner thing in the heat of the afternoon and be perfectly happy.

So this is how it worked out:
Friday 4th @ MK - 2:40 Crystal Palace
I think we might stay at MK all day b/c it's only open until 7, there is a MNSSHP that night. I think we might have an empty parks kind of day, so we will take advantage. I was also thinking of going to EMH @ EP that night, but I think it will be insane crowded. This is probably a great night to go to the pool and go to bed early.

Saturday 5th @ AK - 7:20 Les Chefs de France
Our plan is to stay at AK until about 1:30, then hop a bus for BB for a couple hours of waterpark fun We'll return to Pop, shower and head to EP for our ADR @ Les Chefs de France. Our minimal time at EP will be slooooooow and leisurely, I don't plan on doing anything other than eating and getting out of there before Illuminations (and the hoardes of people)

Sunday 6th @ EP - 3:10 Coral Reef
Who knows where we'll wind up after lunch/dinner. MK is open until 12 and DHS until 8:30, so maybe we'll hop somewhere else.

Monday 7th @ DHS - 4:40 Sci Fi
Not sure where we'll go after dinner, maybe MK open until 10, or EP until 9

Tuesday 8th @ ???? - 8:20 1900 Park Fare
This day is totally open for us. Maybe MK, maybe we'll feel like we need to go back somewhere else. We're also considering TL for a few hours. DME will be picking us up @ Pop around 4:30, so we have a good chunk of the day for doing stuff.

I think I'm pretty happy with how this all worked out. I'm thinking I might want a little earlier at Sci Fi, but maybe it would work out to have a small breakfast and a small lunch.

So 40 days out I was able to score:
Crystal Palace
Les Chefs de France
Coral Reef
Sci Fi
1900 Park Fare
all during free dining.

 

[debbiedana]

My plan for DHS -

We rode TSM @ DL in January. It's cute and fun we can't wait to go on it again... but there's no way I'm running there with everyone else at Rope Drop.

We are going to get a FP for RnRC
Ride RnRC
Ride ToT
FP TSM - It's fine if it's not until 5:30, we have 4:40 ADR's!
Ride GMR
Ride Star Tours
See MV3D

Then the rest of the day we'll just fill in the rest of the time with shows and such. I think that should work for us!

 

[debbiedana]

Our Magic Kingdom plan start like this:

FP Splash
Ride BTMRR
Ride HM
Ride Peter Pan
Ride Pooh
Ride Teacups
Ride Buzz


We'll be there Friday September 4th. The UG crowd calendar is showing a 4!!!

After we get those down, we'll do whatever we want, which will probably be to circle the park again, much more slowly, picking up everything we missed.

We're pretty sad about Space Mountain, but if they are doing to it what they did at Disneyland, it will be worth the wait. It's exceptional at DL now, we rode it a million times in two days! Much smoother, new soundtrack, and a great feeling of being shot through space. Awesome!

 

[debbiedana]

So there has been a big switch for us.

4th - MK - 2:40 Crystal Palace

5th - TL, then Epcot - 7:20 Les Chefs de France

6th - Epcot - 11:30 Coral Reef, 8:05 Akershus

7th - DHS - 4:40 Sci Fi

8th - DAK - no ADR's Being picked by DME @ 4:30pm

I was really suprised that changing my ressies turned out to be no big deal. I had to do Coral Reef for an early lunch, and would have preferred that to be a late dinner BUT in the grand scheme of things, I think this looks pretty good, and will work well with how DD and I do the parks.