Our first trip to the World (surprise trip)..........with Flat Grandma (Pre-Trippie)

Melknor

Mouseketeer
Joined
Aug 19, 2008
Messages
375
I love reading the trip reports and seeing everyones pictures of their trips. (especially those that put the links to each section in the beginning.) Hopefully I can figure out how to do that when the time comes. :confused::confused: To pass the next 20-some days, I thought perhaps I would do a PT of my own and get my plans down in writing, maybe get some critic from you experts out there. This is our first trip to the world and will be a surprise for my boys.

Hopefully you won't find this too boring, so here goes.........................

Cast:

Me: (35) - can't say I'm a die-hard fanatic of Disney, but love the movies. Love Tiggger and I'm a princess (that is what DH calls me anyway) :love: Will be celebrating my b-day while there even though it is on the 17th. We will also be celebrating our 10 yr anniversary as well (also on the 17th - yes, we got married on my b-day)

DH: (39) - active duty military. Currently stationed in a city 3 hours away from us. Drives home on weekends to be with us. Has been to WDW before we were together, but I don't count that, therefore a first trip for us. :rotfl2: Definately ready for a whole week of family time.

DS8: Goofy (8) - 3rd grader. This boy if FULL of energy and has a bottomless pit of a stomach. He will eat us out of house and home within a few years. How much food will he consume on this trip? He is the most caring child with a big heart. (I'm a proud momma :goodvibes)

DS3: Tigger (3 1/2) - active 3 year old for the most part. Loves to be carried around rather than walking on this own. I will definately not forget the stroller for him!! I think he is a lot like me as we butt heads alot.

Flat Grandma - my mom. Never been to Disney, I doubt she ever will. She isn't a fan of crowds or lots of kids...........its a wonder how she raised 3 girls somedays :confused3 She adores the grandsons though while they are visiting! Since she may not ever get there, I decided to take flat grandma with us instead. This idea was inspired by another Disser (sorry, forgot who it was).

I work from home in insurance and have been lucky to be home when DS8 goes and returns from school. DS3 goes to daycare in the mornings and is home with me in the afternoon when he naps. So far this works really well for us. DH was transferred last fall and we made the decision to stay back and not make the move. The reason for this is that we were transferred from PA back to Iowa, where we are originally from. Since we were back home and with the housing market the way it is, we thought it best to stay put. Now if the military does another transfer, who knows what will happen.

Our trip is taking place April 25 - May 2 and we are staying off site at the Westgate Vacation Villas. The whole existence of this trip began 2 years ago when me and DH took a long weekend anniversary trip to Las Vegas. We took a timeshare tour and ended up buying an owners experience to any Westgate resort (yes, I seem to get suckered in to these things - they always look so nice!!) Anyway, we had 3 years to use it by, which is by the end of June of this year.

Since I had heard the end of April was low crowds and great weather, we decided to go then. I'm not much for large crowds, so I figured the summer is definately out. I've had the condo booked since last fall and found the Dis and have been faithfully reading and studying all that I can. The boys know we are going to Disney, they just think we are going in July for DS8's b-day. :rotfl2: Little does he know, we are going in 22 days and it is a surprise!!! I can hardly contain myself :yay::yay::yay::banana::banana::banana:............you would think he would catch on as I talk about Disney alot, but he doens't. Now if I can get the suitcases out and starting packing without questions, all will be good! I'm hoping to start packing this weekend as we are down to only 3 left.

I will try to add some pictures so you can put a face with the trippie.
 
Hopefully this works.................

Me and DS3

melknor


All of us last summer in the Bahamas at Senor Frogs

melknor



Ok, so that didn't work..............does anyone know how to get this to work? I have photos in Photobucket. I copied and pasted the URL, but doesn't seem to show up.
 
Since it isn't working out to pack, I decided to make another update on here..............

So you know when we are going, who and where we are staying............let's see, what else can I write about? How about the details on the surprise?

We fly out late morning on the 25th, so once the boys are up that morning, I made up a scavenger hunt for them. Each envelope will contain a letter and the next clue. At the end the point is for them to spell DISNEY. Hopefully it goes as well as I have imagined in my head. If not, I tried :) I then have a package of goodies for each of them such as coloring books, crayons, an activity book etc for the plane.

Another thing I've been working on is gifts for each morning. I made up letters from characters using my digital scrapbook software for each day letting them know the plan for that day and will have that with a t-shirt or a small trinket for them. Hopefully this will gut down on lots of souvies. I have had too much fun buying stuff and probably have too much. Hey, I got some great deals!! $1 Clone Wars t-shirts at Walmart, clearance stuff from the Disney store, Dollar Tree and Target. Now if I can get this to work without them seeing me do it is the key :wizard:
 
I joined UG and TourGuide Mike to help me plan and research along with the Dis. Since we have never been there, I have no idea about anything at the parks. I finally have an itinery I am happy with, but still need to tweak the actual park plans themselves, which I'm will still change during the days there.

The hardest thing for me so far has been scaling back. My mindset coming into the planning was to do all or as much as we can since we don't know when we will be back again due to the cost. We are by no means rich, but we do OK and I don't want to be a tight-wad on this trip :rotfl: Once we booked the condo, I applied for the Disney Visa with 0% interest for 6 months to pay for our tickets. I got a discount through Undercover Tourist and ordered 7 day tickets. That bill has been paid off then then low and behold Disney releases the Military offer where the service member (DH) can get a 5 day ticket free and up to 5 for $99 each..............:mad: Now what, I thought. I had just spent all this money and we could have saved over $300 if I had waited. Well, since the tickets don't expire until used, I decided to go ahead with the military tickets and save the UT ones for another trip, maybe next year??? So now, we need to get our tickets when we arrive, rather than already having them as we don't live near a base that sells them.

So the plan is to go to DTD to guest relations after we get into town, get our tickets and then check into the resort. Hopefully all goes as planned. The only thing throwing me off, is when do I get to a grocery store to get our food for the week?...........I'm still working on that one.

So going from 7 day tickets down to 5 was a little challenge, especially since I wanted to "do it all". Well that thinking has changed the more and more I read the boards. We will not be able to do it all and maintain our sanity. So we will do what we can and there will definately be another trip since I have the tickets! We decided that with the 5 day tickets, we will just take a day off and enjoy the resort or shop.

So, no parks the day we arrive. TGM says to plan nights and the days fall into place. DS8 really wants to see Fantasmic! (thanks to youtube). Well since they cut back days and shows, that puts a wrinkle in the plan right there. Spectro is also much recommended and I would love to see, but I couldn't get it to fit, so next time that one will move to the top. Since we are not on the dining plan, I don't want to spend a ton of money eating so we have 2 ADR's this trip. We will see how this goes and next trip we can add some more. We are eat at Sci-Fi Dine In (cuz I thought it looked cool) and one character meal. I was back and forth on the meals. With two boys, there wouldn't be any princess meals for me............(maybe some other time?) DS8 wanted to eat with Mickey so I was between Chef Mickeys and Cape May. Well I find out Mickey isn't at Cape May and Chef Mickey's is higher priced. Well, lo and behold Mickey is at O'Hana's...............so that is where we are eating! Plus, it is served family style and is at the Poly (where I REALLY want to stay sometime).

So on our "off" day we are having a late character breakfast! I don't know what else we will do this day. I'm hoping to do some shopping at DTD as both boys will want to build a lightsaber and I want to hit Goofy's Candy Co. See, I never would have known about this stuff without the DIS :worship::worship::worship:

So our week will go as follows: Arrival day, AK, EP, MK, Off day, DHS, MK, Departure Day . No park hopping and no water parks for us this trip. With DS3, park hopping would be too much this time around. We will break each day except for the AK day to nap. Plus we will want to fit in swimming for my two fishies.

I hope I'm not boring anyone too much. My DH says I "babble" alot and apparently I can do that in my typing here too. :rotfl2:
 

Since we aren't on the dining plan and our park time is limited, I didn't want to spend too much time sitting in restaurants. I new I wanted to do at least one character meal and at least one other. So the days my window for ressies opened up, I was on the phone mid morning. I was really hoping I wouldn't be on hold for another since I was doing this from work (on my cell). Luckily I was on hold only for about 5 minutes. Whew! I got the ADR for O'hanas with no problem for the time I wanted as well, late morning at 10:25 so we can sleep in. Yeah!!

The next day was the window for Sci-Fi. Again, I called late morning and got right through. I made the ressie for 1:15. I had planned on being at DHS all day with no break in my original plan. I figured this meal would be our break for the day. Those out of the way, I was happy! :cool1:

Well, after posting my park plans on TGM, some of the suggestions were to not stay for the whole day, take that break, and then return for F! lafter in the afternoon. I decided this might be a really good idea. Our DHS day is at the end of the trip and we might be pretty worn out by then. So I change our ADR and decided to move up the time. I called back and got a 12:14 ADR. Yeah...........they were working out so well for me! :cool1:

I'm already formulating where we should eat next time. I think the character breakfast at 1400 Park Fare sounds cool. So, ADR's are done............our other meals with be CS in the parks. Meals can be a source of frustration for our family if we don't have a plan, so to avoid this, I have printed out the menus for the CS places and put them in my little park planner. I will also be printing out my tour plans and adding them as well. I used a 4x6 flip photo album from Walmart that I got for a $1. I decorated the outside with disney paper. I also did the same for the autograph book that I made for the boys. Just yesterday I bought a small clipboard from the dollar store and will decorate that as well with some Disney stickers. I just need to attached our sharpie to that and we are all set!! :woohoo:
 




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