angierae
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Mar 4, 2010
- Messages
- 3,344
So, ever since my DH and got married in 2007 my MIL had been talking about taking a big family trip to WDW. My BIL is married (they have no kids) and I had DD from a previous relationship. We finally pulled off the trip in May of 2010. We had a fabulous time. It was supposed to be this Once in a Lifetime Mega Trip.
...and before we'd even left, I was making plans to go back. Ahem.
So, cast of characters for our upcoming trip:
ME! I'm Angie, and I'll be 36 on our trip (which will begin one year from today - March 30, 2012. Yay!) I'm a paralegal at a law firm considering going back to school and going to law school someday. I enjoy Disney stuff but I'm not a huge major Disney fan - but I just loooooove WDW. I miss it so much.
DH42 (at the time of our next trip). He is ... not a huge Disney fan. This trip started as "DD and I would like to go back, and if you're interested, you can go too!) But he does want to go, although he gets tired of hearing me obsess about the trip. He's a sportswriter.
DD17 (at the time, blah blah). She's young for her age, wants to be a film editor, loves anime and video games and will randomly post to Facebook "I miss Disney World!"
The BFF, 16 (at the time). Once DH was coming, we decided that we'd bring DD's BFF and that way the girls could have their time together and the adults could have their time together.
We've made a few big decisions already - we went from squeezing into a room at Pop to getting two rooms at Pop to finally deciding to just get a Family Suite at All Star Music so we could have the micro and fridge and more room to spread out. We were concerned that going the week before Easter we might struggle to get connecting rooms, and it's not like we could split up one adult in each room!
We're driving unless the money fairy drops enough $ to fly four people to Florida. Even with gas going up, it's going to be way cheaper to drive, especially since we have friends in Atlanta we can crash with on the way down and back (but man, that's going to be a loooong drive. With four of us to split the driving, though, it should be okay.
The only dining requests so far is that DH would like to go to Yachtsman again, and the girls want to do the breakfast at 1900 PF because they love Alice and Mary Poppins. Hopefully that won't change in the meantime!
Savings are going ...slower than expected. We've had a few emergencies crop up. I wanted to have half of the trip saved up by the time we booked this fall. So far we've got $300 plus probably another $50 in my Disney Bucket - a popcorn bucket I bought at HS last trip JUST to have the bucket.
However, I get an "extra" check in July because of having 3 paydays, plus a small bonus in August, and all of that will go directly into the fund. I've got my next few months budgeted out (including building my regular savings back up - we have a "household savings" but I try to keep some of my own money for my own emergencies.) so hopefully we can get back on track.
So far, our budget looks like this:
Package: $5470 (ASMoSuite, tix for 4 people for 7 days w/park hopper, and DDP)
Photopass: $106 ($99+tax)
Gas for trip: $350 (this may have to change! The AAA Fuel Estimator is already saying $382 instead of $325. I'm watching this carefully!)
Tips: $200
Travel money for the road: $200
OOP Breakfasts: $100 (Want to use those credits somewhere else!)
Spending money for me: $250
So that's $6676. OUCH! But between bonuses and extra checks, that should cover about $3000 of it. But that means I still need to save up $3676!
We -could- do this trip cheaper, but DH cannot handle the heat (early May last year was too much for him) and we don't want to pull the girls out of school during their junior year of high school. So Easter it is!
Well, nothing worth doing is ever easy, right?
Tomorrow night we get to add up our pop bottles for the month (MI has a 10c deposit/return) and empty out the Disney Bucket and see how much more we can add to the fund.
Next post I promise pictures!
...and before we'd even left, I was making plans to go back. Ahem.
So, cast of characters for our upcoming trip:
ME! I'm Angie, and I'll be 36 on our trip (which will begin one year from today - March 30, 2012. Yay!) I'm a paralegal at a law firm considering going back to school and going to law school someday. I enjoy Disney stuff but I'm not a huge major Disney fan - but I just loooooove WDW. I miss it so much.
DH42 (at the time of our next trip). He is ... not a huge Disney fan. This trip started as "DD and I would like to go back, and if you're interested, you can go too!) But he does want to go, although he gets tired of hearing me obsess about the trip. He's a sportswriter.
DD17 (at the time, blah blah). She's young for her age, wants to be a film editor, loves anime and video games and will randomly post to Facebook "I miss Disney World!"
The BFF, 16 (at the time). Once DH was coming, we decided that we'd bring DD's BFF and that way the girls could have their time together and the adults could have their time together.
We've made a few big decisions already - we went from squeezing into a room at Pop to getting two rooms at Pop to finally deciding to just get a Family Suite at All Star Music so we could have the micro and fridge and more room to spread out. We were concerned that going the week before Easter we might struggle to get connecting rooms, and it's not like we could split up one adult in each room!
We're driving unless the money fairy drops enough $ to fly four people to Florida. Even with gas going up, it's going to be way cheaper to drive, especially since we have friends in Atlanta we can crash with on the way down and back (but man, that's going to be a loooong drive. With four of us to split the driving, though, it should be okay.
The only dining requests so far is that DH would like to go to Yachtsman again, and the girls want to do the breakfast at 1900 PF because they love Alice and Mary Poppins. Hopefully that won't change in the meantime!
Savings are going ...slower than expected. We've had a few emergencies crop up. I wanted to have half of the trip saved up by the time we booked this fall. So far we've got $300 plus probably another $50 in my Disney Bucket - a popcorn bucket I bought at HS last trip JUST to have the bucket.
However, I get an "extra" check in July because of having 3 paydays, plus a small bonus in August, and all of that will go directly into the fund. I've got my next few months budgeted out (including building my regular savings back up - we have a "household savings" but I try to keep some of my own money for my own emergencies.) so hopefully we can get back on track.
So far, our budget looks like this:
Package: $5470 (ASMoSuite, tix for 4 people for 7 days w/park hopper, and DDP)
Photopass: $106 ($99+tax)
Gas for trip: $350 (this may have to change! The AAA Fuel Estimator is already saying $382 instead of $325. I'm watching this carefully!)
Tips: $200
Travel money for the road: $200
OOP Breakfasts: $100 (Want to use those credits somewhere else!)
Spending money for me: $250
So that's $6676. OUCH! But between bonuses and extra checks, that should cover about $3000 of it. But that means I still need to save up $3676!
We -could- do this trip cheaper, but DH cannot handle the heat (early May last year was too much for him) and we don't want to pull the girls out of school during their junior year of high school. So Easter it is!
Well, nothing worth doing is ever easy, right?
Tomorrow night we get to add up our pop bottles for the month (MI has a 10c deposit/return) and empty out the Disney Bucket and see how much more we can add to the fund.
Next post I promise pictures!
