Ok, I'll admit right up front that writing a trip report terrifies me. I've read some of these reports...so funny...so informative...so emotional...The good writers quickly become gods of their own Disboards sub-cults. 
But...as one other writer said, I owe this to myself and my kids to capture this time in words. So here we go - on with the cast:
DH40: Very skeptical about a DW trip and convinced it can't possibly be worth spending every last penny of our tax refund. He's the practical one, I'm the dreamer. It is also very important to note that he has smoked 1 1/2 packs a day since he was 14 and will decide our trip will be a great time to quit.
Please, don't get me wrong. The kids and I have pleaded and begged for years to get Smokey the Bear to quit, but we also know he has a tendency to be VERY cranky whenever he tries to give it up. So we'll just call him the Bear for this report.
DS12: My sweet little man-child. I'm not sure when it happened, but I sent my little boy in to clean his room one day, and somehow he came out a young man. And while this could be due to the amount of time it would take to wade through the piles of clothes, cd's and food encrusted plates on his floor, it is actually reference to the observation that - gulp - he's growing up. We worry that the magic of Disney might already be lost to him. Will it be cool, hip, phat, whatever enough? We'll just call him Dude.
DD10:Has anyone seen the Tinkerbell hats that say "Mood subject to change without notice"? This describes my middle child to a tee. I'm fairly certain that the Disney animators patterned Cruella's death look from my child. Of course, that makes the rare smiles and giggles that much more precious. The flip side of her personality is that she is a neat freak, painfully organized and has a mind like a steel trap. I will learn to exploit these virtues on this trip. But let's just refer to her as Tink.
DD6: Aaaahhh, the baby. I will be honest and admit, we have pinned much of our Disney Magic expectations on this child. She still "believes"...and you parents understand that the window of time between a child understanding the whole concept of Santa, Tinkerbell, etc. and the time when the cruel world destroys their wonder, is a window that shrinks all too fast. So for this fairy tale time, we will call her Princess.
Me34:From the moment DH even considered the possibility of a Disney vacation, I have been obsessed. Finding the disboards has been like finding the Holy Grail. I started using the terms, reading the boards, and drinking the kool-aid. Even I had to take notice when one day I snapped at my kids, "What do you think I am, mousekeeping?" I am an admitted control freak, so the boards were my little secret. I couldn't let anyone find out my source of knowledge...I had to maintain ultimate power.
"Please step inside the disney vacation pod. Place the mind control helmets on your poor ignorant little heads and give yourselves completely to me. You will go where I say to go, do what I say to do, eat what I say to eat, and you shall have no undisney thoughts. We will partake of nothing on this trip that has not been wholeheartedly endorsed by a large portion of Dis members. We will avoid like the plague anything that Dis members deem unworthy. Now sit back and enjoy the ride."
It is probably important to mention that this is the first trip for any of us. My husband and I grew up in families where Disneyworld was something only those snooty rich folk do. It was like winning an Olympic gold medal, nice to dream about, but not anything we'd actually ever get to do. So when friends of ours went at a price we thought was pretty reasonable, we started talking about it. Just a little at first and then the idea started to seem not so crazy. I was ready to max out the credit cards and book it right then and there. He insisted we wait till we had the money in hand. Silly, practical guy. Ok, ok, IF we get a good tax refund, we'll go. After all, the commercial says it only costs $1500, right?
Up next: We should have stopped at 2 children! or Can we fit the 3rd child in a carry-on?
But...as one other writer said, I owe this to myself and my kids to capture this time in words. So here we go - on with the cast:DH40: Very skeptical about a DW trip and convinced it can't possibly be worth spending every last penny of our tax refund. He's the practical one, I'm the dreamer. It is also very important to note that he has smoked 1 1/2 packs a day since he was 14 and will decide our trip will be a great time to quit.
Please, don't get me wrong. The kids and I have pleaded and begged for years to get Smokey the Bear to quit, but we also know he has a tendency to be VERY cranky whenever he tries to give it up. So we'll just call him the Bear for this report.DS12: My sweet little man-child. I'm not sure when it happened, but I sent my little boy in to clean his room one day, and somehow he came out a young man. And while this could be due to the amount of time it would take to wade through the piles of clothes, cd's and food encrusted plates on his floor, it is actually reference to the observation that - gulp - he's growing up. We worry that the magic of Disney might already be lost to him. Will it be cool, hip, phat, whatever enough? We'll just call him Dude.
DD10:Has anyone seen the Tinkerbell hats that say "Mood subject to change without notice"? This describes my middle child to a tee. I'm fairly certain that the Disney animators patterned Cruella's death look from my child. Of course, that makes the rare smiles and giggles that much more precious. The flip side of her personality is that she is a neat freak, painfully organized and has a mind like a steel trap. I will learn to exploit these virtues on this trip. But let's just refer to her as Tink.
DD6: Aaaahhh, the baby. I will be honest and admit, we have pinned much of our Disney Magic expectations on this child. She still "believes"...and you parents understand that the window of time between a child understanding the whole concept of Santa, Tinkerbell, etc. and the time when the cruel world destroys their wonder, is a window that shrinks all too fast. So for this fairy tale time, we will call her Princess.
Me34:From the moment DH even considered the possibility of a Disney vacation, I have been obsessed. Finding the disboards has been like finding the Holy Grail. I started using the terms, reading the boards, and drinking the kool-aid. Even I had to take notice when one day I snapped at my kids, "What do you think I am, mousekeeping?" I am an admitted control freak, so the boards were my little secret. I couldn't let anyone find out my source of knowledge...I had to maintain ultimate power.
"Please step inside the disney vacation pod. Place the mind control helmets on your poor ignorant little heads and give yourselves completely to me. You will go where I say to go, do what I say to do, eat what I say to eat, and you shall have no undisney thoughts. We will partake of nothing on this trip that has not been wholeheartedly endorsed by a large portion of Dis members. We will avoid like the plague anything that Dis members deem unworthy. Now sit back and enjoy the ride."
It is probably important to mention that this is the first trip for any of us. My husband and I grew up in families where Disneyworld was something only those snooty rich folk do. It was like winning an Olympic gold medal, nice to dream about, but not anything we'd actually ever get to do. So when friends of ours went at a price we thought was pretty reasonable, we started talking about it. Just a little at first and then the idea started to seem not so crazy. I was ready to max out the credit cards and book it right then and there. He insisted we wait till we had the money in hand. Silly, practical guy. Ok, ok, IF we get a good tax refund, we'll go. After all, the commercial says it only costs $1500, right?
Up next: We should have stopped at 2 children! or Can we fit the 3rd child in a carry-on?
But.....I couldn't do it. I started dropping hints, just little ones at first. And then when they didn't elicit the over-the-top crazed enthusiasm that I was looking for, I came right out and told them, "if we get a good tax refund, we're going to Disneyworld." 
So now that I'd dangled the carrot, I was able to lead the little group of donkeys right over the cliff into the kool-aid river. I was also able to use it against them. "I swear by all that is holy, if you don't stop pestering your sister, we're not going to Disneyworld. OR If you don't get your grades up, you'll be sitting at home while the rest of us are at Disney."
going with 2 connecting rooms would be the only way we would get through the week without somebody getting smothered by a pillow in their sleep. It was also during this info-gathering period where I inadvertently fell into flame-throwing dragon pit of the most shocking, terrifying, repulsive question on the dis...."If my daughter is 10, but looks young for her age and doesn't eat much, can I take her as a child?" 
Rest assured, I was quickly steered on to the straight and narrow path.
We wait on W-2's...and wait....and wait. I work 3 different part-time jobs and Bear works 1 full-time and 1 part-time. That makes for a lot of W-2's. And true to form, a couple employers waited until the very last day to mail them out. I had all the other tax info gathered, so the day those long-awaited documents came in the mail, I rushed everything over to the tax office. Our tax preparer is awesome and in a couple days I had a message to come sign the taxes. And yes, I actually prayed for pixie dust on the way there. Would it be enough? If it was close, would we be able to come up with the rest? OMG, what if we owed!!!!????? So I walked into the office and she laid the tax return in front of me. And I kid you not, I think I did the banana dance right there. 
It was enough.
Thanks so much for the great feedback and encouragement. 
Then I had to tell her we weren't leaving until May and this is exactly the look I got 
Yes!! Very nice CM and as I read off the times and days and places we wanted to eat, we were on a roll! Hoop de Doo at 9:30pm - at first I thought this was a little late, but with our plane getting in at 4:30, this would give us plenty of time to check in and then make our way over to Fort Wilderness. Sci Fi at 11:30am - perfect. Mama Melrose - 4:15pm ok, this might be a problem. 4:15 is after school snack time, not supper. Besides, do you seriously think we'll be hungry by that time? ok, don't panic, just take what you can get now, and call back later to try to switch it.
It's usually somewhere at the bottom of his locker. I don't get it, but I 've talked to a lot of parents of kids this age and they they understand exactly what I'm talking about. So, they STRONGLY encouraged him to get a start on his make-up work. And Princess, well, she's in 1st grade - how much homework could they possible have? Here's a news flash...1st grade ain't what it used to be. I didn't have that much homework in college. And Tink, well, she could skip school for 6 months and still come out with straight A's. She had her make-up work done a week before we left.
