No Matter How Long the Winter, Spring is Sure to Follow – A Flower & Garden PTR

[ksl5f123]

I'm just stopping by to say "Hi". I am really enjoying your PTR. I love the photo series of Pocahontas! It is so fun to watch them grow up Disney.

I think you will be happy to have switched your DHS day. There really is so little for a 2yo at DHS that having Playhouse Disney/Disney Junior open is important.

I can't wait to hear how you like Via Napoli. It looks so good!

I am looking forward to the rest of your PTR.

 

[Colleen27]

I'm just stopping by to say "Hi". I am really enjoying your PTR. I love the photo series of Pocahontas! It is so fun to watch them grow up Disney.

I think you will be happy to have switched your DHS day. There really is so little for a 2yo at DHS that having Playhouse Disney/Disney Junior open is important.

I can't wait to hear how you like Via Napoli. It looks so good!

I am looking forward to the rest of your PTR.

I'm really looking to Via Napoli, though some of the recent reviews have been not-so-hot. We all like coal oven pizza and the combinations they offer look really good, so I'm hoping it'll be a hit.

I'm happy with the way the plan looks now that I made that switch too. I really wanted the second Epcot day, and I was having an internal battle between my obsessive TGMer planning side and my night owl desire to enjoy some of the late hours. So having it just fall into place so that we'll have 3 evening EMH days put an end to a lot of my second guessing. And Pocahontas is so looking forward to DHS now - we watched a YouTube clip of the Playhouse Disney dance party they do during evening EMH and she thinks it looks "awesome".

 

[Colleen27]

Yep, the new plan is Epcot!

Friday, March 4

Epcot is an odd park experience - none of us have a long list of must-dos here, yet it always feels like we don't have quite enough time to enjoy the park. But with two days, we should be able to take our time.

Pocahontas probably has the longest list of must-dos, some chosen on Boo's behalf of course. And she is very excited about the festival exhibits. She's involved with a 4H garden and entered the county fair for the first time last year, and she's helping plan and plant a fairy garden here at home. What can I say, she takes after her mom (and grandma, and great-grandma... my grandmother grew up on a farm and kept wonderful veggie gardens even on their postage stamp city lot).

Her list:

• Soarin'
• Test Track
• Turtle Talk
• Nemo (for Boo)
• Journey Into Imagination
• El Rio de Tiempo (for Boo)
• Spaceship Earth

The only thing my mom and I add to that is Living With the Land. Not only is it tradition, as one of the rides that I remember most vividly from my first trip, we're both gardeners so the greenhouse portion of the ride never gets old. And my mom actually will ride Soarin' - I think it is the only ride with a height restriction that she'll go on - so we'll have to baby swap that and Pocahontas will get to ride twice.

On Pocahontas' birthday trip, we did the Behind the Seeds tour that takes you though the greenhouses. It was fabulous, but overwhelmingly hot on an August afternoon. Once Boo is a little older we'll do it again at a cooler time of year, but we decided it would be too long for her right now.

Because we're going for Flower & Garden, a lot of our time is going to be left unplanned to stroll the World Showcase. The girls are looking forward to the butterfly house and seeing what they do with the fairies this year. I'm looking forward to taking a billion pictures! We're also planning to do the short tea garden tour in England and the perfume garden tour in France.

Since the World Showcase doesn't open until 11am, the plan is to check off all the FutureWorld attractions early and leave the rest of the day unstructured for enjoying the festival.

So, on to what little touring plan I'm making, all subject to change once the list of speakers and topics for the Great American Gardeners and Disney Gardening at Home events are announced...

Arrival, rope drop 9am
Baby swap Soarin'
Ride Living With the Land
The Seas pavilion, Nemo, Turtle Talk, fish-watching
Journey into Imagination
Butterfly house
Lunch, 12:45 at Via Napoli
Break back at Pop, back to park around 5
Perfumes tour in France, 6pm
Dinner, 6:30ish at Beaches & Cream if the wait isn't too long, otherwise 7pm at Captain's Grill
Evening exploring World Showcase
El Rio de Tiempo
Illuminations, 9pm
Evening EMH as long as the girls are up for it
Spaceship Earth to end the night

If I can fit it in either before lunch or during EMH, I'd also like to catch Captain EO just because I'm part of that generation that grew up on the King of Pop. Thriller was one of the first cassettes I owned, and I played it proudly on my purple plastic boombox!

 

[Colleen27]

Saturday, March 5

Back to Epcot!

I figure we're going to sleep in a bit this morning because of the late night the night before, but my girls never sleep really late. We'll take an easy start with some snacks in the room - I already made a note on my plans to pick up some to-go goodies from Boulangerie Patisserie to take "home" to the room on Friday night.

This day is all about the festival. The only must-see ride left on the list is Test Track, which I left for day two deliberately. DM sometimes has a hard time with all the walking at Disney, so I try to keep the backtracking and criss-crossing to a minimum in my planning. So on Epcot day 1, we entered the park and went right. On day 2, we go left.

Arrive whenever
Just me, run to Test Track for Fastpasses
Meet DM & the girls at Garden Town for the Making of the Flower & Garden Festival if time
Use FPs if time, otherwise use before dinner
Lunch, 12:00 at Chefs de France to see Remy
Perfume garden tour in France if we didn't fit it in on Friday
Tea garden tour in England
Fairies garden play area
Dinner, 6:30 at La Hacienda
Kim Possible mission if the girls are up for it
Play the evening by ear, but leave before Illuminations to avoid the bus lines

 

[ChildAtHeart82]

Your Epcot plans look like a lot of fun! I know what you mean about feeling low on time at Epcot. It seems like no matter how open our plan is, I always feel like I'm rushing by the end to see everything I wanted to see.

 

[ash-n-brensmom]

I'm catching up on your plans...like the pics, they are getting me excited!! We loved the F&G Fest last year, I know some people said that there wasn't as much to see, but we had never been and really liked it. I'm getting so psyched for our trip..just looking out the window and seeing all that snow I can't wait for Florida!!

 

[jenseib]

Sounds like two fun days. I know what you mean, there is so much to just take in at Epcot. I never get enough pictures.

 

[Colleen27]

I'm a photo addict, so expect to see lots more! DH bought me a digital SLR for Christmas right before our huge Jan '08 Disney trip - a trip that was to be a "last hurrah" for a few years at least, but Boo changed that plan! - and I took about 2500 pictures. Many weren't keepers as I was learning the camera on the fly, but it has kind of set the tone of life ever since. I've got about 500 pics still to sort through and edit from DS's football season this year!

Today I've been looking at plans of a slightly different sort - my crafting lists!

As I think I mentioned earlier, Pocahontas is getting the Guide to the Magic for Kids which takes care of her autograph book and Epcot passport all in one. So that just leaves Boo's autograph book, since she's too young to get much out of the passport.

I got a e-mail offer from Snapfish a couple days ago for a free flip-style photo book, perfect timing! So that is my project of the day for tomorrow - to find a good, up-to-date character list, spend some time on the DISigns board checking out character pages, and play around with Photoshop to design a cover page so that I can get Boo's book ordered before the code expires.

If this snow ever lets up long enough for me to venture into suburbia, I also need to get a start on the girls' outfits. I have one set of skirts cut out and Boo's half assembled, but I need plain white tees to applique to complete that outfit for Flower & Garden day one. Pocahontas picked out the "feature" fabric - a remnant of a mod-looking black, white, and red floral that was barely enough to work into patchwork skirts and Mickey head applique for the two of them. But I need bias tape to finish the "big girl" version of the skirt and there's no place to buy it in my little town

I have the fabric for another outfit with a really cool Mickey Mouse comics print that I had planned to use for our DHS day, but with Boo so into Monsters Inc and getting to meet Mike & Sully for the first time, I've been looking at Monsters Inc fabric instead. I'm not sure Pocahontas will be all that into a Monsters skirt/dress so they might end up not really matching for this one!

I do have an idea in mind for her if she doesn't want a clone of Boo's Monsters creation - I have a Mickey movie clapboard design that would be cute in rhinestones or glitter/metallic paints on a tee shirt for Pocahontas, and she's got the perfect black tulle-and-sequins miniskirt and silver metallic leggings to match. She might not be a girly-girl and she's starting to outgrow dressing in character gear, but she LOVES to sparkle! And for a Hollywood themed park, that fits perfectly.

So if I do the other DHS outfits, I'll just use the Mickey comics jumpers for our AK day. I wanted something in a tiger print to pick up on both the animal theme and the baseball game, but I'm having a ridiculously hard time finding tiger print fabric at a halfway decent price.

For the other Epcot day, I have two possibilities depending on how the eBay auctions I'm watching go. I found an auction for a couple of perfect, brightly colored, floral Tinkerbell quilting cottons that I've never seen before, and if it goes for a price I'm willing to pay I'll figure out a pattern to use it with. The fabric just screams Flower & Garden to me, so I really want it, but not enough to pay what some more rare Disney fabrics go for over there. If I don't get it, the girls have matching hot pink and lime green Mickey head jumpers from our last trip that still fit, so they can wear those.

The Magic Kingdom day is turning out to be the tough choice because I have at least three outfits I'd love to make and only one day there on this trip. I bought some adorable classic Pooh fabric a while back, and I have quite a bit of the Thomas Kinkade Peter Pan/Tink collection from a Black Friday sale at a local quilting shop (are you seeing a pattern here? I can't resist cute fabric on sale, even if I have NO IDEA what I'm going to do with it!).

But we have lunch booked at CRT because my mom's never been there, so I'm leaning more towards something princessy. I have instructions to modify one of my favorite patterns into a Belle dress that would be perfect for Boo, and when I mentioned that to Pocahontas my "too old for princesses" girl asked if I had instructions for a Cindrella version too. (I do, thanks to the DISboards' own CarlaC and her amazing blog - about 95% of the outfits I make are from her fabulously easy patterns!)

So that's 5 park days and 5 new outfits to make for each of the girls, plus an autograph book to order. I'd better get started or I'll never finish in time!

 

[Colleen27]

Got the flip book ordered, 45 pages with all the character's we're sure to run into (courtesy of Donatalie's lovely DISigns and a couple of my own for Rapunzel and Flynn)! And while I was playing around in Photoshop to do the Tangled pages and a personalized cover, I also decided to play around with a LGMH tag for this trip. Let me know what y'all think, it is really simple but I've found that the plainer the better when it comes to legibility!

 

[ksl5f123]

Wow!!! I your LGMH! Where are you going to put it? I love that you made it a little more girlie with the flowers.

I can't wait to see all of the outfits you are making. I may have to make a couple for our trip because DD5 really wants a lot of Rapunzel gear and it is hard to find in the stores.

I am a F&GF newbie, so I am wondering about the tours you mentioned. Are they actually tours (like with a tour guide) or just extra pretty gardens to walk around?

 

[Colleen27]

Wow!!! I your LGMH! Where are you going to put it? I love that you made it a little more girlie with the flowers.

I can't wait to see all of the outfits you are making. I may have to make a couple for our trip because DD5 really wants a lot of Rapunzel gear and it is hard to find in the stores.

I am a F&GF newbie, so I am wondering about the tours you mentioned. Are they actually tours (like with a tour guide) or just extra pretty gardens to walk around?

I'll print and laminate a few copies of the LGMH to attach to the backpack I carry in the parks, my camera bag (which sees even more action than the backpack), and the diaper bag/stroller. I usually keep them about 3x5 or so, and put a grommet in one ear for hanging so that they don't tear.

I actually learned to sew just for Disney. It then expanded into matching holiday dresses and such, but when I bought my machine it was all about cute outfits for the girls because I just can't afford that kind of stuff at eBay/Etsy prices!

The tea and perfume tours are short mini-tours that you sign up for same-day in England and France respectively. I haven't really read a lot of reviews of them but what little I have found has been positive and they sound really interesting.

 

[JennyLynn21]

Hello!!

I am from Michigan too, West Michigan by the Lake!! I am also going to Disney in March (3-9) with my Mom for the Flower and Garden Festival and staying at POP as well How strange!! lol


This winter haasss been long! Michigan winters always are I hope you guys have a wonderful vacation!!

 

[Colleen27]

Hello!!

I am from Michigan too, West Michigan by the Lake!! I am also going to Disney in March (3-9) with my Mom for the Flower and Garden Festival and staying at POP as well How strange!! lol


This winter haasss been long! Michigan winters always are I hope you guys have a wonderful vacation!!

Have you found the March '11 planning thread? There are a LOT of us from Michigan going in March! I guess everyone wants to escape this God-awful weather.

We're all the way across the state at the base of the Thumb, just a few miles and a river away from Canada. Fortunately, that means that we've got less of the white stuff than y'all on "lake effect" side get! Still too much for me though.

 

[Colleen27]

Finally, we're off to the Magic Kingdom!

Sunday, March 6

I don't generally leave our first visit here for so late in the trip, but I seldom have just one MK day planned and since that's all we had time for this time I wanted to make it a long one. This is an EMH evening and a late one at that - the park isn't closing until 2am!

We really don't have a ton of MK must dos. We more tend to go with the flow and see some of this and a little of that. This will be our 5th trip since 2005 with another one coming up in 2012 - and I have news about that too, but that's for another post! - and we're so over trying to do it all on every trip.

Poachontas wants to ride the mountains. So far, she's only been on Space and that was years ago, on her 6th birthday trip. It scared her so badly that she cried all the way back to the rose garden and only calmed down for a Mickey bar! It wasn't funny at the time but we over it now. On our last trip she discovered Everest and rode it once with DH, twice with me, and was upset that we moved on.

Of course we'll hit the classics for Boo. She loves Dumbo and Small World - don't they all as toddlers? - and we're all looking forward to seeing the new Winnie the Pooh queue.

One odd must-do that made my list this time is Carousel of Progress. I haven't seen it since my very first trip in '97 and the kids have never been on it, so we'll kill a bit of the more crowded afternoon hours here. And I've never seen the opening ceremony, so making rope drop is a must too.

There's another oddity about the MK - it is home to the one and only Disney World attraction that I absolutely will not ride. See, I can handle coasters and drops and speed, but spinning does me in. So my mom, who is just the opposite on that count - loves spinning rides, despite her general aversion to anything remotely thrilling or fast - will take both Boo and Pocahontas on that one without me!

We're also going to be doing a bit of character hunting. Boo was a little nervous around the characters last year, but going by her reactions to Santa this year I think she'll do a lot better. Last year we couldn't get her to sit with Santa at all - she didn't cry, but she just wanted to watch him from a distance and she was the same way with most Disney characters. This year she ran right to Santa and now says she wants to hug Mickey, so I'm hoping for some cute character interactions!

My main concern on this day is how we'll handle the break. That's actually why I planned a "test" break on our first Epcot day - because with my older two breaks never worked out very well. They didn't want to leave the park, fell asleep on the bus, got to the resort ready to go-go-go, then wanted to swim rather than go back to the park for the evening. All in all a lot of travel time and hassle for almost no rest.

If Boo turns out to be the same way or if she dozes in her stroller as well as she did on her first trip, we'll take our "break" with a nice go-round on the monorail or have an easy afternoon of shows like Hall of Presidents and the Tiki Room.

So, here's the plan so far:

Arrive early, rope drop 9am.
Pocahontas & I to Space
Boo & DM, take some time with the characters in the hub if there's anyone we haven't seen
Boo & DM to Fantasyland, Dumbo, Small World
Pocahontas & I to Splash & Thunder
Meet back in Fantasyland
Tea Cups
Dumbo
Winnie the Pooh
Philharmagic, if time
Lunch, 12:10 at Cinderella's Royal Table
Grab Jungle Cruise FPs for later
Break back at Pop or slow afternoon of shows/parade
Dinner at Cali Grill, 5:35
Back to park for Main Street Electrical Parade, 8pm
Wishes, 9pm
The only thing I want to be absolutely sure to do after Wishes but before the 11pm regular park close is Monsters Inc because it isn't open for EMH. Other than that, we'll just wing it for the rest of the night.

 

[Colleen27]

Have you ever noticed that planning one Disney trip inevitably leads to the planning of the next?

DH & I took the kids to a birds of prey show yesterday at a local hunting club and Pocahontas just loved it. She ended up talking with the presenter for about a half an hour after the show about the ins and outs of caring for the birds, and on the ride home DH and I got to talking about the new animal-focused tour at Animal Kingdom. A friend from another Disney forum went on the inaugural tour and posted a review, and of course I shared it with DH as soon as it hit my inbox.

DH: You were saying something about a tour at Animal Kingdom, is Pocahontas old enough for that?

Me: Yes (rolling eyes because I've told him this no less than three times)

DH: And what about the other one, the one in the aquarium (talking about the Seas Aqua Tour)?

Me: Yes (rolling eyes again because I had wanted to book it for her on the last trip, but Boo was in a clingy-mommy phase so we decided to skip the one-on-one big kid outings)

DH: Well, maybe you're right about going to Disney for our anniversary. (At this point my eyes are about rolling right out of my head, because I've been talking up the adult side of Disney while he's been lobbying for Vegas instead... But I don't even gamble!)

Me: Mmmhmmm (I know better than to say "I told you so" before we have something non-refundable booked )

DH: So if we don't go nuts with our big trip this year, I think we should save the difference and go back to Disney next year to do some of the tours. (Now I'm biting my tongue so hard it is a wonder it didn't bleed, because I really wanted to say "great idea, why didn't I think of that?" )

Me: Sounds good (I'm already making an ADR list in my head ).

DH: But I still want to do the 7 night cruise so we can have plenty of time to enjoy the ship. So it'll have to be a longer trip than usual. (Gee, that'll be tough. )

This is a HUGE "win" for me. I smiled all the rest of the day, seriously.

Don't get me wrong, there are other places I'd like to visit. Europe, Costa Rica and Hawaii are all high on the list, and all came up in our early discussions about an anniversary trip. But right now, or next year? I'm just not interested in a trans-Atlantic flight with a 4yo or trying to keep her entertained while we tour museums or having to go at her pace when I'd rather be doing rainforest canopy tours and horseback riding. And I wouldn't leave the kids out of a once-in-a-lifetime trip like those.

Doing an "adult" Disney trip is just so much easier for us right now. My mom has already offered to come along so we can have some adult time without leaving the kids out of the trip entirely (actually, she made the same offer for Hawaii as well). And there's so much we've talked about doing at WDW that we can't do with the kids - DH wants to golf the "good" courses (he's only golfed the 9 hole course so far), I'd like to take certain tours either solo or with DH and/or one/both of the older kids, DH & I would like to have dinner at V&A. And we all - all 6 of us - have been dying to try a Disney cruise! But for some reason, initially he was pretty against the idea of a Disney anniversary and kept talking about Vegas or Tahoe.

I think he's starting to regret telling me to leave him out of this trip. With me and the girls talking about it all the time, I think he's getting the itch to go back again.

So I'm doing the happy dance just because he is starting to think about the possibilities. And I'm a whole new level of motivated to come in under budget on our summer DC trip so that we can set what's left of this year's travel budget aside for next year!

 

[ChildAtHeart82]

Yay for another trip! Your Magic Kingdom plans look like fun.

 

[jenseib]

YAY!!! I am in love with your DH right now too.
I wish I could get Skip talked into a 7 day crusie. But right now I am happy that we are even going...anywhere.
That new tour does look fun.

As for late nights at MK. We LOVE them. Our plan is to go to Mk the day we get off the Dream and do the late night too. (I think it's open till 2 AM that night as well, but I need to double check that)

 

[ksl5f123]

Your MK day looks pretty low key. I understand what you mean about no longer trying to do it all. We all enjoy Disney enough that I know there will be other trips.

Don't get me wrong, there are other places I'd like to visit. Europe, Costa Rica and Hawaii are all high on the list, and all came up in our early discussions about an anniversary trip. But right now, or next year? I'm just not interested in a trans-Atlantic flight with a 4yo or trying to keep her entertained while we tour museums or having to go at her pace when I'd rather be doing rainforest canopy tours and horseback riding. And I wouldn't leave the kids out of a once-in-a-lifetime trip like those.

I hear ya! We are planning a family trip to Italy when our youngest is 7 and our oldest is 11. At that age they are plenty old to hold their own with all of the walking, but will still be young enough to not have too much attitude about things.

We did Hawaii when our girls were 2 years old and 5 months old. It was a good trip, but we didn't get to see as much and certainly want to go back for the things we missed.

DH and I spent our 10th anniversary in Costa Rica this summer. I probably wouldn't take kids under 10 there. Most of the good stuff involves many mile hikes, zip lines, whitewater rafting, etc.

I think your plan of the cruise with a park visit at the end sounds fabulous!

 

[ash-n-brensmom]

Congrats on the next trip!! Luckily, DH and I are already in agreement on our next trip.
I don't know how anyone can take being at the parks that long without a break! You guys amaze me!!! We always take a break back at the hotel..to swim/nap. Napping is never a problem even for DD 6, and DH needs it too!! A sleepy DH is a cranky DH! I never nap, DD10 and I swim, do laundry..hang out at the shop, grab a snack..basically just have some Mommy and Me time. It's our special time together on vacation .
Once again, loving all those pics..keep 'em coming!!

 

[Colleen27]

As for late nights at MK. We LOVE them. Our plan is to go to Mk the day we get off the Dream and do the late night too. (I think it's open till 2 AM that night as well, but I need to double check that)

It really is so much fun, especially when it gets past about 11pm and most of the families with younger kids are heading for the gates. And the view from Splash Mountain at night is amazing!

I hear ya! We are planning a family trip to Italy when our youngest is 7 and our oldest is 11. At that age they are plenty old to hold their own with all of the walking, but will still be young enough to not have too much attitude about things.

We did Hawaii when our girls were 2 years old and 5 months old. It was a good trip, but we didn't get to see as much and certainly want to go back for the things we missed.

DH and I spent our 10th anniversary in Costa Rica this summer. I probably wouldn't take kids under 10 there. Most of the good stuff involves many mile hikes, zip lines, whitewater rafting, etc.

I think your plan of the cruise with a park visit at the end sounds fabulous!

I've been lucky with my big kids - the oldest is 13 and still doesn't give attitude over museums and cultural sites on vacations. He's kind of a history buff and the Washington DC trip that is going to be our big while family vacation this year was his idea.

We took the older kids to Mexico in 2007, before Boo came along, and they were even a little young to make the most of that trip. We went to Tulum, Xcaret, etc. to see the ruins and the jungles, but Pocahontas was only 6 and too young/scared for the cenote snorkeling and some of the other tours/activities we'd have done if she was older.

Fortunately Boo is a good bit more adventurous than Pocahontas was at the same age, because she's going to get brought along on things we let Pocahontas chicken out on just because we want to do them while the big kids are still traveling with us!

Congrats on the next trip!! Luckily, DH and I are already in agreement on our next trip.
I don't know how anyone can take being at the parks that long without a break! You guys amaze me!!! We always take a break back at the hotel..to swim/nap. Napping is never a problem even for DD 6, and DH needs it too!! A sleepy DH is a cranky DH! I never nap, DD10 and I swim, do laundry..hang out at the shop, grab a snack..basically just have some Mommy and Me time. It's our special time together on vacation .
Once again, loving all those pics..keep 'em coming!!

We're just not nappers. I don't sleep much at all, in case the times that I update this PTR haven't given that away already - I usually call it a night around 3 and get up with the kids at 7:30. On the weekends I'll sleep in until 9ish. DH jokes that he needs a vacation after our vacations, but he really loves it - he's used to long, demanding days at work so a day of "just" walking around the parks is relaxing.

The kids have just sort of gotten used to our pace, I guess. DS13 has a hard time getting up for rope drops, but the girls are so excited to be at Disney that they bounce out of bed at dawn ready to go. And they all gave up regular naps by 3. Boo doesn't nap every day at home but if she's in the car or the stroller and gets tired she just zonks out where she sits, which makes her a wonderfully portable baby!