My DD Doesn't Want To Talk About The Trip Anymore. Links to trip report attached

[sand2270]

I can't fight it anymore…I am obsessed. It's been a weird, strange, and at some times difficult few months…which I won't bore you with since this is supposed to be a happy place. One of the things that keeps me going is our upcoming trip to Orlando in October. As a sad result I pour over our schedule daily and daydream about our trip often…at work…in meetings…when I should be focusing on well work….but that's not important. Let's just say I am excited and can't wait to get out of here for a break. I love my friends but they don't get it (specifically my non-DIS friends ) so I finally decided to start writing a pre-trip report and hopefully some DISers can help share in my anticipation.

This trip is for me and my 10 year old daughter…who is sick of talking about it. Seriously…let's say I ask her, "should we do Kona on the day of the Halloween party or a Universal day?" Doesn't care. "On our departure day do we eat at Kouzzina for breakfast or just grab some pastries before wandering around the Epcot resort area?" DOESN'T CARE!! Where did this kid come from because she definitely has not inherited her mom's OCD and talent for planning…planning…and over planning (The sad truth is her mother has a sick obsession with ADR's and I can't stop making/rescheduling/cancelling them...I need a support group and I don't blame her for rolling her eyes at me or tuning me out when it comes up). See why I need you guys? This is us:

Last year at Kona (yeah I know it's a little cleavalicious...but it's a good picture )


...and a more recent picture. Sorry it is fuzzy, I took it with my iphone. I hate fuzzy pictures and promise to keep those to a minimum.

I had been thinking about returning in 2010 since we got back from our May 2009 trip (trip report in my signature). My daughter and I had an amazing time…so amazing we both started crying on our last day not wanting to go home. I have been traveling solo with my daughter since she was 4 (and I got divorced). We travel well together and have similar vacation interests which include, but are not limited to shopping, pool/beach time and eating junk food. We also have pretty similar ride thresholds which definitely makes things easier. We have our moments where we disagree and bicker, but they are usually resolved quickly and we move on.

Our first trip we stayed on WDW property for the entire trip. It was our first real trip to WDW and we had enough we wanted to do on property to fill our vacation time. This time I knew I wanted to stay at the Hard Rock Hotel for part of the trip, see the new Harry Potter World, go to Discovery Cove and do the WDW Halloween Party. My daughter also gets a Fall break in October so October it was. Paranoia will make me a little vague about the exact dates of our trip.

So the plan (let's call it Plan A…since it changed dramatically about a month ago) was this:

1. First 5 nights at POFQ (I stayed there last October for an adults only DIS meet and really enjoyed it). Stay on Disney property for this part of the trip and do the Halloween party our last POFQ night.
2. Second 5 nights at Hard Rock Hotel. In addition to Universal, we will also do Discovery Cove and Sea World. Since the parks close at 6pm most nights due to the HHN party at Universal, we may sneak back over to WDW some evenings for dinner or park time.

Our Disney hotel choice was hard for me and I still keep rethinking it. My first ever stay on WDW property was at Beach Club for a work conference in Feb 2008. I was hooked. I started planning our May 2009 trip once I got home and knew I wanted to stay there. Our final accommodations ended up being 3 nights at POP and 7 at Beach Club.

I have stayed at POP a few times since and POFQ once for some DIS meets. Knowing I wanted to stay at Hard Rock which costs somewhere between a Disney mod and deluxe, to be financially responsible I knew we would have to do a mod or value for the WDW half. I love POP but have stayed there 4 times since last May and wanted a change so POFQ it is.

I loved sitting on the BC balcony in the morning and the sandbottom pool in Stormalong Bay. Plus the short walk to Epcot is pretty great. But I also enjoyed POFQ's compact size, boat to DTD and pretty grounds. One thing I won't miss are the long, freezing BC hallways...that walk from the pool to the room was always so cold! So I may walk by BC and stare at the balcony of our old room longingly a few times but I'll be ok ...just kidding.

Have I lost you? Are you still awake? Have you entered the "Doesn't Care" zone that my DD is in? I hope not cause if I can't count on some interest from the DIS I am in trouble.

It's late so I will start with this and see if I can fit in another update before I turn in for the night.

CHAPTERS

Come on Hotel Deals!
Ok Let's Talk Tickets
Is Renting a Car Really That Interesting? You Tell Me.
How Are We Getting To Orlando?
Where Are We Going To Eat?
Itinerary Take 1
Resort Pictures
What Do You Mean the Fall Break Dates Changed?
Farewell Plan A...Welcome Plan B
Plan B
Adventures in ADR's - What Didn't Make The Cut?

 

[DisneyFirefly]

Hi! I'm in!

When in October are you guys going to be there? I'm traveling solo and will be staying at Pop from October 22-29 I'm sure you won't run out of people who'll help you make those pesky ADR decisions around here Hope to see more from you!

 

[sand2270]

Yay a reader!

We will be there at the beginning of the month.

Pop is great if you haven't stayed there before. I have really enjoyed my solo time at WDW. I usually find some alone time on my trips with my DIS friends. Had a great time in Epcot by myself for a few hours in January...lots of laughs at the Germany wine counter . Have also enjoyed nice solo walks around the Pop property, it is really pretty in the back by the water.

 

[sand2270]

I am happy knowing I am not talking to myself and at least one other person is following along. Not that talking to myself is that unusual for me…but we won't get into that .

I thought I would provide more hotel booking information. This will happen periodically, I will post an update and then remember some little details later on that I want to add. It's that OCD kicking in.

So onto the hotel booking details. After my experience booking for our May 2009 trip (again details of that are in that trip report, link in my signature) I knew booking our rooms over a year out would mean I would have to book at rack rate, put down the deposits and adjust later if (there is usually an "if" but you just never know) and when the deals to come out.

Also, why didn't we do a package? We did a package for our May trip which included dining. It was a split stay…ok wait a second, didn't I say go to the other trip report for details?? Oh well guess I need to provide them here to tell my story. Anyway we did a split stay last May…let me detail our packages:

1. Package 1 -
POP 3 nights at a discounted rate (I can't recall what the discount was, maybe 15%?)
10 day park hoppers with water parks and more option (which would cover our entire trip)
Basic dining plan

2. Package 2 -
Beach Club 7 nights on the 7 for 4 deal
1 day base rate tickets (I had to purchase them as part of the package, I eventually used mine in Oct 2009 to get an AP. I still have my daughter's and will use that towards her ticket this October)
Basic dining plan

So why didn't we do a package this trip?? Because we didn't need tickets, I already have an AP and I have a base ticket I can upgrade for my DD. We also didn't want to do the dining plan this trip. So I just kept my eye out for room only specials.

As I said earlier I booked 5 nights at POFQ and 5 nights at Hard Rock Hotel, both at rack rate…come on discounts!! I should also give props to my Small World TA who I have worked with on most of my trips. She is extremely patient with the multiple changes I inevitably end up making.

I made a trip to POP in January to see some friends. When I got to the room what did I see but a bounceback offer for 35% off moderates for my dates!! YAY! I called and booked it then emailed my Small World TA with the info. I wanted to make sure she got credit for my trips, she said she was able to change it over no problem.

This may also sound silly but I was so happy I finally got to take advantage of one of those super secret only everyone on the Disney property gets one bounceback offers. Everytime I see that little flyer I am itching to book something. 1 down 1 to go.

The Hard Rock offer took some time. The Universal site was showing a 3 for 5 offer that ended about a week before our trip. So I waited and waited and waited. I also started to resign myself to the fact that I might be paying rack rate for the room since we were 3 months out and no discounts.

This is where I love the DIS. I was browsing the Universal resort threads one morning and someone had posted the 3 for 5 deal had been extended and now covered my dates. This was in July (just checked my email resort confirmation). I contacted my Small World TA and she got my reservation modified. 2 down…we were set…for now .

Oh yes as I have stated before this is still Plan A stay tuned for Plan B.

Ok Let's Talk Tickets

 

[charming23]

I'm in. I am also driving my mother crazy with trip details. She hads threatened to cancel if mention ADR's one more time, lol

Can't wait to hear what else you have planned.

 

[sand2270]

Let's talk tickets…cause I needed all kinds for this trip.

I'll start with our WDW tickets. Pretty easy I have an AP that expires in October. As I stated before I have a one day base rate ticket from our trip last year for my DD. I will upgrade that when we get to WDW.

Universal tickets - Back in January there was a $100 unlimited park access ticket offer available and I purchased those. Once the Harry Potter packages started coming out I did some price comparisons. I still think cost wise I came out better with the tickets I purchased and my room rate. I also don't care about the add-on's with the package, such as the Three Broomsticks breakfast.

MNSSHP Tickets - I pre-ordered those using the Annual Pass discount.

Discovery Cove/SeaWorld - Our dates for this showed a price of $250. Again I was waiting and waiting, hoping some kind of discount would be offered. About a month ago, from the DIS I found out about an AMEX offer for $50 off. I used that and purchased our tickets. The Discovery Cove tickets include admission to Sea World.

Pretty boring update .

Is Renting a Car Really That Interesting? You Tell Me.

 

[sand2270]

I'm in. I am also driving my mother crazy with trip details. She hads threatened to cancel if mention ADR's one more time, lol

Can't wait to hear what else you have planned.

Welcome!

LOL well good to know it's not just me.

 

[lindap1]

I'm there with ya in the planning OCD. I have been planning a trip to disney for a year and we're not going for another 405 days....lol...not that I"m counting down or anything. DH did finally start the Disney vacation fund so I"m slowly sucking him into the planning

 

[DisneyFirefly]

Yay a reader!

We will be there at the beginning of the month.

Pop is great if you haven't stayed there before. I have really enjoyed my solo time at WDW. I usually find some alone time on my trips with my DIS friends. Had a great time in Epcot by myself for a few hours in January...lots of laughs at the Germany wine counter . Have also enjoyed nice solo walks around the Pop property, it is really pretty in the back by the water.

I've stayed at Pop once before, but that was only for one or two nights back in 2005 at the end of my CP, and I was with my parents. I'm really looking forward to this trip, since it'll be my first real vacation in a very long time

Your ticket and resort plans look awesome I wish I could justify an AP, but the trips I'm taking over the next couple years all fall around the same time as this one, so it doesn't make sense financially. Looking forward to hearing more about your trip!

 

[Chelley00]

I'm in! We're also going in October. DD and I have done the mother/daughter and we had a great time. This time we have to drag little brother and Granny with us though

 

[sand2270]

While I had more ambitious plans for this Sunday afternoon, I got a root canal Thursday and the pain started kicking in today. So instead I am camped out on my bed watching the Star Wars Trilogy marathon.

It also means I may as well provide another update.

So what other minutiae can I fill you detail junkies in on?

How about transportation? Ok transportation it is!

Originally I was trying to avoid renting a car. I really didn't want to spend the money on it. I knew we could use DME to get to POFQ. There is something about boarding that bus and watching the video that just gets you in the Disney mood. However how were we going to get to Universal, Discovery Cove and SeaWorld? How would we get from Universal to the airport?

Universal offers a shuttle to Discovery Cove and SeaWorld so I figured we were covered. Until I started researching it and realized the shuttle times are very limited…I wasn't crazy about that but figured we would just deal with it. Getting from WDW to Universal would mean purchasing shuttle tickets. Ok fine we can do that. Same for the ride to the airport.

The more I thought about it though the less I liked being dependent on the shuttles. I also wanted to make a trip to a restaurant offsite in Orlando (TuTu Tango) and hit the outlets. When I compared the price of renting a car for the 2nd half of our trip (in addition to the convenience) to all the shuttle/taxi costs I decided it was worth it to rent a car.

I booked it through Alamo and the original plan was to pick the car up from the WDW Car Care Center the day we were moving over to Universal. We would keep the car for the remainder of the trip and return it at the airport. It also meant we would have to pay for parking at Hard Rock Hotel but that was ok.

As with everything…hotel…dining…etc…I book, rebook and rebook again. This will be a common theme of this PTR. The rental car reservation has gone through quite a few iterations. I think I even originally made the reservation with Hertz since I am a Gold Club member (through my employer) and in the habit of renting from them, but found Alamo had better rates and changed to them. I booked through the Entertainment Book site. I tried a few offers and codes (Costco, AAA, etc.) and The Entertainment Book offers were always the lowest.

I am not sure why, but one day I checked what it would cost to keep the car for our entire trip. Because that moved us into a weekly rate and the additional per day cost went down, it was only about $60 more to extend the reservation. What the heck…I changed it so we would now pick up the car at the airport on arrival. Not thrilled about having to deal with luggage claim but figure the convenience of having the car makes it worth it. Plus we can now make a grocery stop on the way to the hotel.

One night I was looking at the car categories and realized while I had rented a midsize, I really wanted a standard. My reason…power windows. Yep…power windows. I swear it's not a joke. Let me explain why. How many times do you think over those 10 days we are going to have to roll those windows up or down? Everytime we drive to a park or a resort! That's craziness! Dangit I'm on vacation and I can't be rolling up and rolling down windows manually the whole time.

Ok so even I realized this was kind of silly but I figured what the heck let me play around with the codes and see what I can come up with. I changed my code to a free upgrade code and it somehow came out to something like $20 more.

So now I have gone from no car and paying for a few shuttles…to a rental for 5 days…to a rental for 10 days…to an upgraded car. Somehow it is easier for me to swallow the additional expenses when they get added on a little at a time.

Wow this is some dry stuff I can't believe you guys are really interested in this LOL.

How Are We Getting to Orlando?

 

[sand2270]

I'm there with ya in the planning OCD. I have been planning a trip to disney for a year and we're not going for another 405 days....lol...not that I"m counting down or anything. DH did finally start the Disney vacation fund so I"m slowly sucking him into the planning

It's just such a pleasant thing to daydream about isn't it? I keep planning these trips something like 15 months out, seems so strange when they finally arrive.

I've stayed at Pop once before, but that was only for one or two nights back in 2005 at the end of my CP, and I was with my parents. I'm really looking forward to this trip, since it'll be my first real vacation in a very long time

Your ticket and resort plans look awesome I wish I could justify an AP, but the trips I'm taking over the next couple years all fall around the same time as this one, so it doesn't make sense financially. Looking forward to hearing more about your trip!

This will be my Annual Pass Expiration farewell tour. It was a great run but I can't afford to keep it up this year.

I'm in! We're also going in October. DD and I have done the mother/daughter and we had a great time. This time we have to drag little brother and Granny with us though

LOL well I am sure it will still be a great time

 

[sand2270]

Flights were pretty simple.

I had a Rapids Rewards tickets from Southwest I wanted to use. After checking it was cheaper to fly out of Phoenix rather than Tucson. Sometimes it is sometimes it isn't. Whenever I am flying somewhere I usually check both. I live in Tucson but the airport is on the far south side and I live on the far north side, so it takes me about 30-45 minutes to get to the Tucson airport (depending on traffic). Getting to the Phoenix airport takes about 1 1/2 hours from my house. So really either airport works for me. As my friends often say, I live in South Phoenix LOL. I also decided to spend a little more and book the direct flights so we didn't have to deal with connections.

The return flights were more expensive than the outgoing flights and were not eligible for my RR, so I used both RR credits for our departing flights. Since I booked the outgoing flights separately (I don't remember why now) I was concerned that when I checked us in we would have different boarding numbers and no way I am letting my 10 year old board alone. I figured we could just use the highest boarding number when lining up (meaning for example if I got 10 and she got 15, I would let 11-14 go ahead of us and I would board with her). I always check in at the 24-hour mark and rarely get anything but an A, but I decided to try and avoid the hassle and added Early Bird boarding to our departure flights.

Funny story about SW check in. When I was in WDW in May for a DIS meet, we were having lunch at Chefs de France during the 24 hour check in time for my departing flight. I brought up SW's site, had an alarm set to remind me and put my phone on the table. But for some reason I put my phone away…I remember thinking I didn't want to be rude and have my phone on the table. ..and completely forgot about check in until about 20 minutes after my window opened DOH! Once I remembered I pulled my phone out and got checked in…still managed to get A boarding passes. Whew!

Since we were flying out of Phoenix I had to decide if we were driving up the morning of our flights or doing a hotel park and stay. We did a hotel park and stay last year and the cost is about the same as parking my car for 10 days. I knew I did not want to stay at the hotel we used last year. It was fine but was a pretty worn out hotel and I wanted to try and find something in a little better condition.

I found a great deal for a Hampton Inn on parksleepfly.com, recently remodeled, free breakfast buffet, airport shuttle, and parking included for $71! Perfect! The pictures of it look nice and they even friended me on Facebook after I made the reservation LOL.

The plan is for me to take the day before our departure off, pick my daughter up when school is over, around 3:30, and drive up to Phoenix. There is an Ikea on the outskirts of Phoenix, so If we have time we may fit in a stop on our drive up. I bought a house in September and even though I have made two treks up to the Phoenix Ikea there are still a few more things I would like to get.

So now we have hotel, tickets, transportation to and around Orlando…I should probably start providing some trip details next.

Where Are We Going To Eat?

 

[sand2270]

At this point I have changed my ADR's so many times I really can't remember all the changes.

I will say this though…

Curse you Disney Dining for putting ADR's online. When you had to call I made one call…maybe one or two follow up calls to make a couple of changes and that was it! Now making ADR's is at my fingertips whenever I want to mess with them. And mess with them I have. However I didn't make too many changes while we were still in Plan A.

As I said earlier we did not add the dining plan for this trip. For our last trip we had the basic dining plan. It was our first trip and there were lots of character meals we wanted to do, CRT, Jiko, etc. I crunched the numbers and the dining plan made sense based on where we wanted to eat. And eat we did…we ate so much we weren't even hungry our last day.

Plus I had done a Garden Grocer order for waters, coffee drinks, water and snacks. That and the dining plan was overkill…we don't need dessert at every meal. We had refillable mugs which we hardly used because we had drinks in the room and drinks with every meal. In addition, the trek to the BC mug station wasn't worth it most days since our room was close to the Epcot entrance.

For this trip we wanted to spend less time in table service restaurants. The amount and cost of the table service restaurants we want to do, plus the fact that my DD would now count as an adult, made it not make sense from a cost sense.

I made the following ADR's at my 180 day mark. My 180 day mark fell on a Saturday so I dragged myself out of bed and took care of the online ones and called in for Afternoon Tea.

Kouzzina - Breakfast
1900 Park Fare - Breakfast (I modified this a few times since the original ADR to get an earlier time)
Sci-Fi Diner - Lunch (we were supposed to have lunch here last May but we never made it)
Afternoon Tea - my DIS friend Matterhorn and her 3 DD's will join us

I later added the following:

House of Blues - dinner, I have a $25 restaurant.com certificate
Kona - dinner
Plaza - dinner the night of the Halloween party

I also added Boatwright's the night of our arrival but have since cancelled it. The plan was to eat there and than go to mini-golf. I changed those plans to dinner at HOB so we could take care of my DD's ticket at their Guest Service counter, then do mini-golf after dinner.


So there you go Plan A ADR's…and as I have hinted before they will change .

Itinerary Take 1

 

[sand2270]

Hoping I have some readers out there…can you give me a WHOOP WHOOP??!! No…well I tried.

I should probably provide our itinerary…our ORIGINAL itinerary…the one that eventually got completely reworked. Why you ask? You are just going to have to wait and see (insert evil laugh). Nothing like a good cliff hanger to keep you readers coming back (I have readers right…not so sure) .

Day 1
Arrive in the late afternoon, pick up rental car, grocery stop, drive to POFQ
Dinner at House of Blues, update DD's ticket at DTD guest services counter
Minigolf at Winter Summerland

Day 2
Breakfast at 1900 Park Fare
Morning at Epcot - F&W Festival
Afternoon swim break
Epcot in the evening - F&W Festival
DTD afterwards if we are up for it

Day 3
Morning at AK
Afternoon swim break
Afternoon tea at GF with my DIS buddy Matterhorn and her girls
Evening at MK including Dessert Party

Day 4
Morning at HS
Lunch at Sci-Fi Diner
Afternoon swim break
Open time - resort, Epcot, MK…whatever we feel like doing
Evening at MK for EMH

Day 5
Spend the morning and most of the afternoon at the resort. Breakfast at WPE in DTD. Pool time, may try cane pole fishing, sleep in. Also work on getting the room ready for our departure the next day.
Dinner at The Plaza
MNSSHP

Day 6
Breakfast at Kouzzina
Explore Epcot resort area
Drive to Hard Rock Hotel
Pool time
Universal Studios or Islands of Adventure
Dinner at TuTu Tango and trip to Outlets

Day 7
US or IOA
Lunch at Mythos
Swim break
US or IOA
Free time in the evening - to explore resorts, Citywalk, maybe head over to DTD

Day 8
Discovery Cove
Evening - same as Day 7

Day 9
SeaWorld
Evening - same at Day 7

Day 10
US or IOA
Swim break
US or IOA
Evening - MK closes at 11pm. If we aren't too tired head over for some last minute WDW time. Maybe dinner at Kona.

Day 11
Spend morning and early afternoon at pool and resorts, maybe some park time.
Drive to airport and head home

Resort Pictures

There you go!

 

[DisneyFirefly]

That looked like a good itinerary Hope the next one looks good, too!

 

[sand2270]

That looked like a good itinerary Hope the next one looks good, too!

LOL it doesn't change too much. I'll try to start working on what happened tonight. Glad someone is interested. I need to take a look at your PTR .

 

[sand2270]

Since I don't have pictures of rental cars, airplanes or tickets...or even food for that matter that leaves me with resort pictures. Everyone likes pictures and they make a report more interesting so I am going to post some I have taken on prior trips.

Oh wait I do have this...

An empty bus...the one and only time I have been on an empty bus in WDW.

We'll start with Beach Club

View from our balcony...loved sitting out here in the morning

View of Yacht Club from boat shuttle launch

Stormalong Bay slide

Beach

Swan and Dolphin

Beach Club Solarium

Beach Club room

bye bye Beach Club we'll miss you this year

What Do You Mean the Fall Break Dates Changed?

 

[mousetravel]

I'm here subbing to your TR! I love reading about mom/daughter trips! I am a single parent, so me & DD travel by ourselves. Wouldn't have it any other way!

 

[beachgirl2000]

I'm in!

Funny -- your obsession sounds eeerily familiar to me -- Maybe we should start a support group!!!!!