So I've found the DIS and I've joined TGM and off I go!
Here are my guidelines for the trip:
The children should not get over-stimulated (hah!), or over-tired (hah-hah!), my parents and siblings should not get over-whelmed, my hard-working husband should not get over-scheduled, and I should not get over-obsessed!
Well, too late on the last one! I needed to plan, hence, I needed to research. And I mean RESEARCH! There is so much information out there between the TGM forums and the DIS, I was in hog heaven! I didnt get voted Most Prepared in 5th grade for nothing!
Where else could I start, but with our Thanksgiving Day plans! My
original plan was to be at the MK on Thanksgiving, so I started researching the best places to eat for T-giving. Of course, Liberty Tree kept coming up as the place to be. Well, Ok, then! Me, being the good little student, started researching LTT. A few people said it was harder to accommodate a large group, a really hard ADR to get especially if you couldnt do the 180 + 10, yada, yada, yada. So
back to the drawing board.
Maybe eating at a resort on the monorail would be nice! Yeah thats what Ill do! We will tour the park, then hop on the monorail for a nice trip around to eat Thanksgiving dinner! I vaguely remembered a restaurant being in the Contemporary (but of course didnt know anything about it). Click, click, click goes the mouse and boom lots of information on Chef Mickeys magically appears on my computer screen!
Sounds perfect for us! And kind of sentimental! We have an old film of my sister and brother, circa 1975 probably, at the Contemporary outside a restaurant with the monorail running through it, and they are dancing with a mariachi band. I have no idea what the restaurant was called (Im sure it wasnt called CM), but its so cute. It was one of the trips I didnt get to go on because I was still too little I stayed at my grandparents house.

(Maybe thats why Im so obsessed with having the
perfect Disney vacation- Im trying to usurp those sad childhood memories of being left behind!)
Ok, so that was the plan. I moved forward with the planning of the rest of the daily days! I had a few weeks before our 180 day window came up, so I consulted with my brother and sister about things they wanted to try for.
My sister pretty much said whatever would be fine with her. However, she didnt feel the need for a princess breakfast in the castle this time, even though her youngest was the one who missed it on our last trip.
Mini-rant: In fact she sort of feels like this for ALL character meals not just the princess ones! She falls into the category of we can see the characters in the park, we dont need to pay for a meal to see them. Ugh! I fall in to the category of lets kill two birds with one stone! Why wait in a needless line to see a character you could have come to your table while youre eating!"
I mean, you have to eat anyway, right? Sometimes I wonder how we are related! Rant over!
To add confusion to this, the
one thing my brother mentioned was possibly eating in the castle. (They werent on the previous trip, remember?)
Ok, now what?
Well, I made the decision that since our group was so large and the bulk of us
had done it on the last trip, combined with the fact that CRT had gotten so expensive, maybe we should try for the PSB in Epcot. I told my brother that we could watch their son (2 yrs old) and they could take their 4 year old daughter to eat at CRT if they REALLY felt the need to do it for her! I mentioned that getting an ADR for CRT for a group of 3 would probably be a lot easier than a group of 16! I gave him the # and told him when he should call and then left it up to him to decide.

(I dont think he called he probably thinks he can just do it when he gets there!

Good luck with that, bro!

)
So, YAY ME!

Ive got two things decided PSB on our Epcot day and CM for Thanksgiving dinner. The next was a no-brainer the guys are doing Dive Quest again, so put Coral Reef on the list because we love to watch them in the tank from the restaurant!
Ok, 3 meals down! I looked at the other parks, MK, AK, and MGM and made a list of the places we really wanted to try and then tried to narrow it down from there.
I have to say, being the sole planner has its advantages (especially if you are a bit of a control freak,

), but it also has some serious drawbacks! Pressure! Aggravation! Apprehension!
I finally decided on the Crystal Palace for an early lunch on our 1st day!
I thought about getting an early ADR for breakfast (I personally LOVE getting in the parks early and getting pics with no crowds), but I vetoed it after talking to my mom and thinking about how excited the kids will be when they get there, and that sitting down for a meal isnt going to be the 1st thing they will want to do on the very 1st day!
Granted, it worked on our last trip, but that was dining
IN the castle. To them, this would just be eating (well, with Winnie and the gang, no offense, but they would still be itching to get out of there and get on that flying pachyderm!)
Sidenote: I first had that written as eating with Pooh, and then proofed it and thought, yikes that doesn't sound right!
So, the
morning of the 1st day was out, how about an early lunch?

Done! I am really looking forward to eating at the CP! I think I have eaten there once before, as a child, but heck if I can remember what I ate for lunch yesterday, much less a meal from 25 years ago!
Now I started to think that everyone was going to roll their eyes

when they heard all the plans I was making. (Sara, youre going to take all the spontaneity out of this trip if you plan it all out!) They just dont get it well some do but most dont!
But I carried on like a good little student and continued my tireless research on eating establishments at the world! I came upon this quote, and I think it is great:
From the Unofficial Guide when the writers were accused of sucking all spontaneity out of Disney trips:
As it happens, Unofficial Guide researchers are a pretty existential crew. We are big on self-discovery if the activity is walking in the woods or watching birds. Some of us are able to improvise jazz, and others can whip up a mean pot of chili without a recipe. When it comes to Disney World, however, we all agree that you need either a good plan or a frontal lobotomy. The operational definition of self-discovery and spontaneity at Walt Disney World is the "pleasure" of heat prostration and the "joy" of standing in line.
Love it!
So back to planning, keeping that quote firmly planted in my subconscious!
More to come....
Sara