NO, don't let the cat.......

[BridgetR3]

Ohhh... I'm loving it! I want to follow along for the surprise. And of course, I love the AKL!!! Joining in.

The closer we get to the trip, the more I want to tell them but I won't. I'm ready to be there like yesterday!!

 

[teekathepony]

I almost missed you here! Didn't realize you started a new one, but very happy you did. So sad that we are going to miss you guys by so little though! I'll tell them to have your room ready on my way out.

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[LB1122]

I saw a blog report that DWD has no intention of removing KTTW cards until maybe spring and you can still double up and get the paper FP. The blogger booked a one night stay to try this out and get a feel for it and was able to pre book FP+ things for the afternoon and did several paper FP in the AM right when they opened. ????

 

[BridgetR3]

I almost missed you here! Didn't realize you started a new one, but very happy you did. So sad that we are going to miss you guys by so little though! I'll tell them to have your room ready on my way out.

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I'm glad you found us!! I would have missed you! I know, I wish we could both stretch our trips for a Dismeet but maybe another time. I know you guys will also have an amazing time! Yes please tell them to get my room ready that I'm on my way!

I saw a blog report that DWD has no intention of removing KTTW cards until maybe spring and you can still double up and get the paper FP. The blogger booked a one night stay to try this out and get a feel for it and was able to pre book FP+ things for the afternoon and did several paper FP in the AM right when they opened. ????

Geez I hope that is true! I don't know what I would do without having anything while the rest of the world has something!

 

[BridgetR3]

I forgot to mention that I have FP+ reservations for our first day as well. So hopefully before our Christmas party, we will use our FP+s for the day. I have Splash, Under the Sea, and Peter Pan reserved. I know that those are weird choices, but we don't do the other mountains and these are some of the busiest rides that we like so......that's what we have at least for now.

DAY 2 - MK with our first ADR

We will head to MK for this day. It's only open until 7 p.m. because of a Christmas party later in the evening but we are hoping that means lower crowds as most people don't want to waste their day in a park with shorter hours. We also have three more FP+ reservations. Hopefully this day will be less busy than the days that are coming up as it is still before Thanksgiving week. I'm hoping that we are able to get other rides in along with our three FP+. Our three FP+ for today at least is Tomorrowland Speedway, Buzz, and Enchanted Tales with Belle. I keep wavering on ETWB because I have boys but I have still heard how cute it is and my DS7 still loves princesses. However, I don't want to "waste" one of my only 3 FPs on that if we won't be able to get anything else.

We will ride as much as we can before park close and then head to Whispering Canyon Cafe for dinner. Anyone need ketchup? We are hoping for lots of jokes and fun at our dinner.

After dinner, we plan to head over to the Poly to watch the Christmas Wishes from the beach. Depending on the time available we may also stop by at the Contemporary first to check out their Christmas decorations. We plan to visit as many places with special Christmas decorations at Disney as possible. So far at this point in our trip, we will have seen AKL Jambo, Contemporary, and Poly.

I'm getting SOOOO excited!!!!

 

[teekathepony]

I forgot to mention that I have FP+ reservations for our first day as well. So hopefully before our Christmas party, we will use our FP+s for the day. I have Splash, Under the Sea, and Peter Pan reserved. I know that those are weird choices, but we don't do the other mountains and these are some of the busiest rides that we like so......that's what we have at least for now. DAY 2 - MK with our first ADR We will head to MK for this day. It's only open until 7 p.m. because of a Christmas party later in the evening but we are hoping that means lower crowds as most people don't want to waste their day in a park with shorter hours. We also have three more FP+ reservations. Hopefully this day will be less busy than the days that are coming up as it is still before Thanksgiving week. I'm hoping that we are able to get other rides in along with our three FP+. Our three FP+ for today at least is Tomorrowland Speedway, Buzz, and Enchanted Tales with Belle. I keep wavering on ETWB because I have boys but I have still heard how cute it is and my DS7 still loves princesses. However, I don't want to "waste" one of my only 3 FPs on that if we won't be able to get anything else. We will ride as much as we can before park close and then head to Whispering Canyon Cafe for dinner. Anyone need ketchup? We are hoping for lots of jokes and fun at our dinner. After dinner, we plan to head over to the Poly to watch the Christmas Wishes from the beach. Depending on the time available we may also stop by at the Contemporary first to check out their Christmas decorations. We plan to visit as many places with special Christmas decorations at Disney as possible. So far at this point in our trip, we will have seen AKL Jambo, Contemporary, and Poly. I'm getting SOOOO excited!!!!

I think those are 3 very logical choices for FP+ on your first day. Splash is always a good choice, Peter Pan is too, always a long wait there, and under the sea is new, so you never know what that will be like.
Great day 2 plans too, I need to eat at whispering canyon sometime!

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[BridgetR3]

I think those are 3 very logical choices for FP+ on your first day. Splash is always a good choice, Peter Pan is too, always a long wait there, and under the sea is new, so you never know what that will be like.
Great day 2 plans too, I need to eat at whispering canyon sometime!

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Thanks!! I think so too but I just keep doubting my choices.

We've never been to Whispering Canyon Cafe but I'm sure we will enjoy it! I'l share when we get back.

 

[Tinker_Tam]

Joining in, if thats ok!! We are arriving the day you are leaving! And we just told our kids last night that we are going. I don't think I am as awesome as you... I couldn't keep the secret any longer! It took all my strength to not give it away before last night!! Can't wait to hear more!

 

[BridgetR3]

Joining in, if thats ok!! We are arriving the day you are leaving! And we just told our kids last night that we are going. I don't think I am as awesome as you... I couldn't keep the secret any longer! It took all my strength to not give it away before last night!! Can't wait to hear more!

Of course, it is o.k. I'm so glad that you are here!

Our "secret" has nothing to do with being awesome although hey I'll take the compliment! Our last trip was also a "surprise" but I gave up and told them about 60 days out. I would probably give in on this trip too but honestly we just went in May/June and are going again next May/June so anytime we want to talk Disney we talk of those times. I just keep this one to myself. It started out as more of a "Let's not talk about it so no one can ask us the dreaded 'Ya'll are going AGAIN?' question" and has now evolved into a Christmas time surprise!

I hope to update Day 3 later tonight possibly!

 

[BridgetR3]

Day 3 -

Somewhere along day 2 or day 3 of our May/June trip, my boys fell head over heels in love with Lilo and Stitch. Now they had seen the show at home and knew of the characters before our trip but somehow they had never expressed a love for them until now suddenly.

As you may know, we had planned on going to Typhoon Lagoon on our May/June trip but Tropical Storm Andrea had other ideas. Since that was the only place that you could meet Lilo outside of O'hana, we were simply out of luck.

So what does a good DIS'er mom do? That's right - even though it is clearly after her 180 day mark and O'hana breakfast was NO where in her plans, she stalks the ADR site for one just one O'hana breakfast to open up anywhere during the trip. Did we get one? You bet!! Except that our breakfast was at 10:45 a.m. on this the third day of our trip and our only (possibly) AK day of the trip. Shucks, 10:45 a.m. is LATE! But I booked it for fear that there would be no other days available and I've played "Stalk the ADR page" ever since.

My luck paid off one day a couple of weeks ago when O'hana opened up at a little before 10 but still on this our only AK day of the trip. I will continue to stalk the ADR page but for now here are our Day 3 plans.

Lazy morning, head over to O'hana for breakfast/lunch

Then head to AK for all of our favorites including our three FP+ - Safari (of course), Dinosaur, and a FOTLK reservation. If the parade were to come available at some point, I would rather that over FOTLK.

We for sure want to see the Christmas parade as we have never been able to stand the heat long enough to see the AK parade and would love to see a festive one since hopefully it will be cooler.

After our AK day is done, we will go out to dinner (my choice as it is my birthday - still no clue on this one) and then over to play putt putt on the winter side of Winter Summerland.

I was leaning towards quick service for dinner or possibly cheaper table service. What would you choose? Thoughts? Ideas? I'm thinking DTD may be a nightmare by this point with construction so although I love Wolfgang Puck Express, it may not be the best option.

After putt putt, we plan to head to our resort to either swim if it's warm enough or enjoy the resort for a little while before an early bedtime.

 

[ZehnJahren]

Day 3 -

Somewhere along day 2 or day 3 of our May/June trip, my boys fell head over heels in love with Lilo and Stitch. Now they had seen the show at home and knew of the characters before our trip but somehow they had never expressed a love for them until now suddenly.

As you may know, we had planned on going to Typhoon Lagoon on our May/June trip but Tropical Storm Andrea had other ideas. Since that was the only place that you could meet Lilo outside of O'hana, we were simply out of luck.

So what does a good DIS'er mom do? That's right - even though it is clearly after her 180 day mark and O'hana breakfast was NO where in her plans, she stalks the ADR site for one just one O'hana breakfast to open up anywhere during the trip. Did we get one? You bet!! Except that our breakfast was at 10:45 a.m. on this the third day of our trip and our only (possibly) AK day of the trip. Shucks, 10:45 a.m. is LATE! But I booked it for fear that there would be no other days available and I've played "Stalk the ADR page" ever since.

My luck paid off one day a couple of weeks ago when O'hana opened up at a little before 10 but still on this our only AK day of the trip. I will continue to stalk the ADR page but for now here are our Day 3 plans.

Lazy morning, head over to O'hana for breakfast/lunch

Then head to AK for all of our favorites including our three FP+ - Safari (of course), Dinosaur, and a FOTLK reservation. If the parade were to come available at some point, I would rather that over FOTLK.

We for sure want to see the Christmas parade as we have never been able to stand the heat long enough to see the AK parade and would love to see a festive one since hopefully it will be cooler.

After our AK day is done, we will go out to dinner (my choice as it is my birthday - still no clue on this one) and then over to play putt putt on the winter side of Winter Summerland.

I was leaning towards quick service for dinner or possibly cheaper table service. What would you choose? Thoughts? Ideas? I'm thinking DTD may be a nightmare by this point with construction so although I love Wolfgang Puck Express, it may not be the best option.

After putt putt, we plan to head to our resort to either swim if it's warm enough or enjoy the resort for a little while before an early bedtime.

I have STILL never seen Lilo and Stitch (or Finding Nemo, but that's another story). It's one of those I keep telling myself to watch and just don't DO it for some reason!!

That's too cool that you got an O'hana reservation! Congrats! The kids will love it!

Why not consider taking the bus to SSR or POFQ after AK? You could then walk to DTD or take the boat and would only have to worry about a bus back to your resort after eating. At least you would cut out the traffic getting in and out of there; the buses will be moving pretty freely.... You could hop a bus to BWI and walk over to Winter Summerland (right??).

You could also consider going over to the Boardwalk and having dinner; they have a few places people like (Flying Fish, ESPN). I think you can walk to the putt putt place from there, can't you? Not sure if I'm mistaken....

edited to add: I'm mistaken. It's the Fantasia putt putt you can walk to from the Swan area.

 

[BridgetR3]

I have STILL never seen Lilo and Stitch (or Finding Nemo, but that's another story). It's one of those I keep telling myself to watch and just don't DO it for some reason!!

That's too cool that you got an O'hana reservation! Congrats! The kids will love it!

Why not consider taking the bus to SSR or POFQ after AK? You could then walk to DTD or take the boat and would only have to worry about a bus back to your resort after eating. At least you would cut out the traffic getting in and out of there; the buses will be moving pretty freely.... You could hop a bus to BWI and walk over to Winter Summerland (right??).

You could also consider going over to the Boardwalk and having dinner; they have a few places people like (Flying Fish, ESPN). I think you can walk to the putt putt place from there, can't you? Not sure if I'm mistaken....

edited to add: I'm mistaken. It's the Fantasia putt putt you can walk to from the Swan area.

You really should see Finding Nemo. That one is worth it. I have personally never sat through the entire Lilo and Stitch but please don't tell them that before we meet them next month!

I hope that I can score an earlier O'hana ADR. If not, we are just going to show up a bit early and hope that they let us in!

We will have a car so could technically drive to DTD or even off property to eat. I was going to drive to the Poly that morning and then take the bus from the POly to AK and from AK back to the Poly but now I'm thinking we may just drive that day instead of using the bus so that I don't have to go all the way back to the Poly that evening. Holy smokes Batman that is a run-on!

Winter Summerland is next to Blizzard Beach which is next to nothing? We will have our car though so we could drive.

 

[ZehnJahren]

You really should see Finding Nemo. That one is worth it. I have personally never sat through the entire Lilo and Stitch but please don't tell them that before we meet them next month!

I'm TELLING! I will see them before you and I'm TELLING.

I have, so far, refused to see Finding Nemo. I watched the first couple of minutes several years ago and turned it off in complete disgust. I just can't get past that dad searching frantically and in complete terror for his kid in the first few minutes. It gets to me!

I hope that I can score an earlier O'hana ADR. If not, we are just going to show up a bit early and hope that they let us in!

We will have a car so could technically drive to DTD or even off property to eat. I was going to drive to the Poly that morning and then take the bus from the POly to AK and from AK back to the Poly but now I'm thinking we may just drive that day instead of using the bus so that I don't have to go all the way back to the Poly that evening. Holy smokes Batman that is a run-on!

Winter Summerland is next to Blizzard Beach which is next to nothing? We will have our car though so we could drive.

That's not a bad run-on sentence! I understood it!

Yeah, I knew one of the putt putt places was right next to the Swolphin/YC/BC/BWI, but it's the Fantasia one, not the Winter Summerland. I had to google map it. Well if you switched your putt putt to Fantasia, you could go to Boardwalk for dinner, or YC, or the Swan, or even Epcot! I've never been to any of them, but if they're Disney I bet they're great!

 

[teekathepony]

Great plans, hope you find your earlier ADR for 'ohana!
You never know about DTD. they might not be too busy because people might stay away from the construction. Could be ok!
I have never seen the AK parade either, need to see it this year!

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[BridgetR3]

Whew, what a day! Our area had severe storms roll through here earlier so we were in tornado positions at school for an hour today. Yuck! We had no tornadoes and no damage around us so we are all good.

During our break today, I logged onto Disney's website to check for earlier availability at O'hana and VOILA!!! I got an earlier time! I'm so excited because this will put us getting to the parks a little earlier in the day. Also, I've decided to move our putt putt to another day. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I don't want to play it in the dark. The courses are so cute that I want to be able to see all the little details. Since it should be a bit cooler than we are used to and since it gets dark earlier in the winter, we will go to putt putt on our day off. Whew, now that all of that is fixed, we can head to Day 4!




Day 4 will hopefully see us up early in the morning for the running of the bulls. I know that we have FPs for Toy Story already but I would LOVE to be able to ride it twice in a day on this trip (at least this day). We will race with everyone else to the standby line to ride it and then go about touring as usual. DH wants to for sure see Backlot Tour since we missed it last trip.

We have fastpasses for Toy Story, Star Tours and Fantasmic although I have been watching all of the threads about Fantasmic closely. If you don't get reserved seating for Fantasmic, I will switch it out for something else because I really wanted to go to the later one anyways.

We also have lunch at a new place!!


Picture borrowed because I don't have one.

Yep we are going to the drive in for lunch!

If we do see the first F!, we will come back to the streets to see the Osborne lights afterwards. You know that when I first heard about these lights I thought they had something to do with Ozzy Osbourne. Ummm....so maybe I was clueless! I still am on most occasions.

Woohoo!!! We are down to 20 days! I can't wait!

 

[MrsDrewsky]

Joining in, although a little late since you leave in 20 days.

I commend you for being able to keep such a big surprise secretive for so long. I know I couldn't do it.

I am interested to hear about your DTD hotel experience. We have a couple of free nights we would qualify for at a few DTD hotels, but I am always too afraid of the unknown to pull the trigger.

We love the putt putt courses. I'm not sure which one you chose, but I think the theming at Fantasia is really fun. I won't spoil it, but the fantasia one has a few surprises that pop up while you're walking throughout the course which was neat.

 

[BridgetR3]

Joining in, although a little late since you leave in 20 days.

I commend you for being able to keep such a big surprise secretive for so long. I know I couldn't do it.

I am interested to hear about your DTD hotel experience. We have a couple of free nights we would qualify for at a few DTD hotels, but I am always too afraid of the unknown to pull the trigger.

We love the putt putt courses. I'm not sure which one you chose, but I think the theming at Fantasia is really fun. I won't spoil it, but the fantasia one has a few surprises that pop up while you're walking throughout the course which was neat.

I'll definitely share about it when we get back. Not sure I would do completely off site any time soon with off site not getting MBs. Honestly if I could move it back on site right now I would just so we could book FP+ for all of our days but it is what it is and we will be fine.

We drove by the Fantasia course and it looked "blah" to us so we didn't even consider that one. Is it fun?

 

[MrsDrewsky]

I'll definitely share about it when we get back. Not sure I would do completely off site any time soon with off site not getting MBs. Honestly if I could move it back on site right now I would just so we could book FP+ for all of our days but it is what it is and we will be fine.

We drove by the Fantasia course and it looked "blah" to us so we didn't even consider that one. Is it fun?

Ahh, good point. I keep forgetting about FP+ and the magic bands.


It is fun, and I think due to the location we found it less crowded than the course by blizzard beach. We never had to wait our turn at any of the holes. I recall it being our favorite due to it being more interactive throughout the course than winter summerland.

 

[BridgetR3]

Ahh, good point. I keep forgetting about FP+ and the magic bands.


It is fun, and I think due to the location we found it less crowded than the course by blizzard beach. We never had to wait our turn at any of the holes. I recall it being our favorite due to it being more interactive throughout the course than winter summerland.

We may give it a try then! Thanks for the info on it. Otherwise, I don't think we would have tried it!

 

[Deesknee]

20 days!! So excited for you. My 2cents about mini golf. We did fantasia when my mom was with us , so I have to remind myself that certainly could have contributed to the experience . The 6 of us preferred fan to w/s land. But my mom was hysterical as she had never played before and kept hitting her ball into the water. Then didn't want to bother anyone for a new ball, so was going to go in the water for the ball. Ah no mom... There are gators in the waters. She nearly jumped out of her shorts. Lol