Our Son's First Visit To The World Of Princesses And Pirates ~ Updated 3/19/09

[DisneyBabies]

Hi everyone!

I am new here and I love reading others trip reports, so I thought I would contribute my own story . We are actually leaving in a few days for the world so this will be a quick PTR .

A little background info:

This is DH and I on our first trip to Disney on 2007 for our anniversary. We had a great time, and this is when I started dreaming of bringing the children!

This trip is extra special for DH and I because we are taking one of our miracle babies for his first trip to Disney! Long story short, I had been told for years that my chances of having children were slim to none, so even though DH and I planned our life as if children would just magically be there, we knew that may not actually happen. On July 4, 2003 we found out we were expecting . . . TWINS! DH told me over and over how he never believed the drs and didn't this prove they were wrong?! However on July 21, 2003 we lost one of the babies and nearly lost the other. But we were extremely lucky and our baby managed to hang on until he was born on March 1, 2004 .

Fifteen months later, we were blessed again by getting pregnant again! The pregnancy wasn't easy and we nearly had another miscarriage, but in the end we had a beautiful baby girl on February 7, 2006 .

The drs have now figured out that I can get pregnant very quickly and easily, but we have an increased risk of miscarriage. Knowing what could have been makes us even more appreciative of the children we have.

So, we have been greatly anticipating this trip for the last year and a half and although the planning has had its ups and downs, it has been lots of fun for us.

Cast Members:
Me ~ Cassandra: The Disney nut in the house working hard to convert DH and children to be as nutty as I am "Hello, my name is Cassandra and I have Disney planning OCD."
DH ~ Rory: The one who doesn't like planning but gets too excited to sleep the night before we leave
DS ~ Rory II: Celebrating his 5th birthday while we are there and very excited to meet Mickey for the first time. His favorite bedtime activity is "Let's talk about Disney Mommy!"

DD is not coming on this trip with us because it is all about DS this time. She will be going to visit her Godparents in Illinois while we are gone, so she gets a special vaca all her own . Her trip will be in 2011 and I will begin planning when we get back from this trip .

Trip Details:
February 27 - March 6
CBR Pirate room
Deluxe DDP
8 day tickets w/PH

Well, these are the basic details, and I will post more soon. Right now, I have to go pick up DS from school!

 

[DWGal210]

Great start so far!!

I've also been told that my fertility is in question, but your story gives me hope! Your little ones are just darling - looking forward to reading more!!

 

[DisneyBabies]

DWGal210-
I hope you get all the little miracles you hope for. As you know, fertility problems aren't the greatest thing to live with, but live with it we must. Thank you so much for the compliment about my children ! Since most people say they look like me, I take full credit . The drs may be right, but (in my case) God decided differently. And we are hoping He will bless us with one more this year, but if not we know we already have two children that the drs said weren't possible.

 

[DWGal210]

Thanks for the nice words, Cassandra! I appreciate it!

It's neat that you are taking your son by himself; I'm sure it will be hard to leave your daughter, but like you said, she is getting a vacation too. It will be nice to have memories with him!

Looking forward to more!
- Katie

 

[DisneyBabies]

Well, I have to say planning so far in advance gave me a greater opportunity to change my mind about one or two things . Thank goodness we have the best TA ever; we couldn't have planned this trip without her.

So we started off with ASMovies because my DS liked the "blankets" on the beds. Then we changed to ASMusic because DH decided that it would be nice to get a suite and have a little more room so we could put DS to bed and then go in the living room and watch TV instead of going to bed ourselves. But then we found out that there are a lot of student competitions in Feb @ WDW and that most of the families stay at the AllStars, so then we changed to POR to get away from the potental of being overrun by competion families (who, we have heard, don't have the best of manners ~ the parents that is, not the students ). Then we found out that the competition overflow is usually put up @ POR! OH, MY! So then the search was on again for a new resort. A month or so later, we saw that the Pirates are coming to CBR! We didn't know at that time if the rooms would be ready, but DS had seen a picture of them and reeeally wanted to stay in one, so we told him we would see if we could get one. Our wonderful TA made yet another call to Disney and reserved us a room @ CBR even though there was no way to request a pirate room yet. Not too long after that, Disney made the Pirate rooms avaliable and our TA got us one ! We still haven't told DS, so he won't find out about it until we get to our room. He has been in on the planning from the beginning, so we are saving whatever we can as a surprise and I expect a BIG from DS when he see's it.

Even though choosing our resort was an ordeal, there were some things we knew with only doing a bare amount of research were right for us. One of those was getting the Park Hopper option on our tickets. We figured we would start the day in one park, but DS may want to switch to another park in the afternoons and since we were buying 8 day tickets, the PHing was just a drop in the bucket as far as cost was concerned, so it was better to have it and not use it than to want it and not have it. We also figured we would get tickets for every day that we would be there since the cost between a 7 day ticket and an 8 day ticket wasn't that much different. Since we will never know what DS wants to do until we get there, it's better to be prepared for any eventuality.

We did have a big disappointment during the planning of this trip and I still haven't recovered completely from it. Our original dates were February 28 - March 6, but then came the big news: Disney released dates for the & Party! There weren't any dates for the time we would be there, but they had one scheduled for the day before our arrival , so we changed our dates to February 27 - March 6 and the TA of the Year made yet another phone call to Disney . But alas, Disney was just toying with us and a week later we found out that they would not be doing the & Party this year (and maybe never again ). I have never been to any of the parties and I am very disappointed that we will not be able to go this year. All I can do is hope that they bring it back when we bring DD for her trip in two years. But, since we had worked DH's work schedule around to add the extra day for the party, we decided to keep the extra day instead of killing our poor TA with another change to our ressie.

The other thing we knew we wanted to do was the Deluxe DDP. We had done the basic DDP on our trip in 2007 and it was great, except that we prefer to have more table service meals, so the Deluxe plan is perfect for us. I know that a lot of people say eating on the Deluxe DDP is too much food and takes away from time in the parks, but we can't imagine how 8 or 9 hours in the park between meals can't be enough time. See, we really enjoy our food (and you will probably be able to tell when you see the pics from our trip when we get back ; although I have lost since January 2008 ) and we don't just use the time to eat. That is our time to talk to one another and catch up on all the little things that happen in our day that we don't think of telling each of other. And we will use this time to find out from our son what he thinks of the happiest place on earth and what he does and doesn't like and what he wants to do next. I can't wait .

But the extra planning time left me open to changing some or our ressies at least once (and some of them more than once ). We did get everything we wanted for the times we wanted even when we made changes, so I am really excited to try restaurants that we haven't eaten at before. I'll post more about our dining ressies later.

I'll be back later, now I have to get ready for a program @ DS's school. See anyone who is reading later!

 

[DisneyBabies]

Hi again everyone!

Well, we have our final dining ressies made and here they are:

Narcoossee's
1900 Park Fare (breakfast and dinner)
O'Hana
CRT (breakfast)
Chef Mickey's (breakfast and dinner)
Grand Floridian Cafe
Yachtsman Steakhouse
Beach Club (breakfast)
Teppan Edo (dinner)
Donald's Safari Breakfast
Hoop Dee Doo
Play N Dine (breakfast
Whispering Canyon Cafe

We only went to four of these on our first trip, so we are really excited to try new places.

Now, I had a lot of fun planning new things to do for this trip and I got a lot of great ideas from the wonderful and talented people right here on the DIS.

DS decided that he wants to so the Pirate Cruise @ the GF and the Wonderland Tea Party. He is very excited, but he keeps reminding us that we have to sit where he "leaves us" and wait until he gets back so he doesn't miss any other fun stuff .

I also made a Passport for Epcot:

T-shirts for each of us:

And I bought a few things to give DS as gifts when we get there:

DH thinks I went a little overboard . But I had so much fun getting everything ready and since this will be DS's only trip for a while, it's really worth it.

I am also excited because I get to be a fairy godmailer and send postcards to a few DISers kids when we get there!

Well, we have to leave at 3am on Friday morning , so this will probably be my last post until we get back. Have a great week everyone.

 

[DisneyBabies]

Well, we are back from our trip and we are quite sad to be home. I have to start out by saying that the trip was wonderful, beyond anything I imagined before we got there (and YES, I imagined before we got there ).

We were very busy the two weeks before our trip and had more than one thing "pop-up" and by the end of it all, we really needed this trip, quite beyond the wanting we had experienced before that. First the crazy, then on to the magic (that's the best part anyway)!

We had saved for several months to have our "Disney Money" ready before our trip and I am glad we did, because we wound up using most of it before we even left . First, we found out I needed to replace two of the tires on my car. Bye Bye Disney Money . Then two days before we left, Dh's car wouldn't start and we had to have it towed to an automotive place to get a new battery. Bye Bye more Disney Money . By the end, I lost about $400 of my Disney Money and Mommy was not happy (which translates to nobody was happy ). Well, we made it through the financial mishaps, but we still had a birthday party, a school meeting and a school program to attend in the last two weeks plus the regular volunteering I do in DS's classroom. So it was very busy before we left.

Now, most of you know we didn't take DD on this trip since it was for DS's birthday, so I had to take her up north to visit her Godparents while we were gone. We (DD and I) got up at 2am on Thursday (2/26) to head to the airport to catch the first of our flights to get to Indianapolis. We made it to the gate with 5 minutes to spare (I was very lucky I had printed our boarding passes the night before) and I managed to get through security with a stroller, a highback booster, DD's carryon bag, my carryon bag and the two of us without much problem (although DD was not happy about walking on the airport floor without her shoes on ). Our flights went fairly smoothly and DD stayed awake the whole time. The Godparents got stuck in traffic on the way to the airport, which was probably a good thing on the whole since it limited the time for good-byes, but that meant I had to run to security and then run to my gate to get back on a plane to go home. DD did well when it was time for me to go, although she kept saying she wanted to go home, while I on the other hand broke down and cried like a baby all the way through security to my gate and onto the plane. One nice thing about the whole thing was that I somehow managed to be on the same plane with the same crew for three of my four flights; Since they had litterally been with DD and I all morning, the flight attendants were very comforting on the flight back home. They even got me a drink and a snack and brought it on the plane to me and checked on me several times. I finally touched down at 2pm and had a 1 1/2 hour drive to pick up DS from school (just enough time to get there for his 3:30pm pick-up time ). DS and I got home and I wound up putting him in my bed with a movie about 8pm so I could get to sleep since 3am was going to come awfully early. DH apparently got home about 9pm and he and DS had pizza for a late dinner and camped out on the livingroom floor (DS LOVES camping out ).

Up next: On to the magic!