always_learning
Mouseketeer
- Joined
- May 4, 2007
- Messages
- 257
♥Our Very Merry Christmas Vacation: Pre-Trip Report♥
I will warn you this is my first TR (except for my personal scrapbook) so I hope you can follow along with my crazy brain. I have a tendency to talk really fast in person so at times youll see evidence of that in my writing! This trip began its planning stages the moment we were buckled in the van heading home to Indiana last March.
Trip Members♥
Grumpy (dh): 36 year old who is afraid of crowds, hates shopping, and well frankly hates leaving the house. This is kind of strange since he deals with the public on a daily basis at work. He had been keeping my hands tied for years on planning our first trip. He is a huge Star Wars fan and he really loves Epcot. He has been to the world one time with his brother and mom when they were in high school.
Cinderella (me): 31 years old, preschool teacher who loves loves Disney! I am an emotional nut who will cry at most anything. Youll see :wink: I took a trip to the world when I was a junior in high school w/ our marching band. I have been to Disneyland twice when visiting my sister in CA.
Stitch (ds): 9 years old, quite the little professor, video game lover, too smart for his own good, a huge Star Wars fan. He is quite the ride weenie and you will see us pushing him to try new things. This will be his second trip to the world and he has been to the Land twice before with me.
Ariel (dd): 8 year old drama queen, loves High School Musical, dressing up, also an emotional nut. She is timid when it comes to rides but has pinky sworn that she will ride Splash Mountain with me this trip! She has also been to the World twice before and the Land four times before (twice with me and twice w/ my Mom).
Pluto (ds): 4 years old (will be 5 on our next trip); he plays soccer and baseball and swears he will play for the Atlanta Braves one day. He is our little joker and will keep us laughing throughout the long days. He will ride more than the older two! He has been to the World once and the Land once.
Tink (dd): 17 months old, sweet quiet child. She will no doubt have two fingers in her mouth in every picture I show you. She turned one the week after our trip to Disney last March. She has been to the World just once.
Stitch on our March Trip
Ariel, Pluto, and Grumpy on our March Trip
Cinderella and Tink on our March Trip
We took our very first trip March 14th -21st, 2007. We have talked about going for years but Grumpy kept saying we needed to wait until our family was complete blah blah blah. Well once we had Tink and those tubes were tied I started planning!
My Mom was also due to retire this year (just did yesterday from the Air Force!!!) so this was a trip to celebrate. We ended up having my brother, sil and niece go along and we made it a Grand Gathering trip. We stayed at the All Star Movies w/ connecting rooms in the Toy Story preferred building and DDP. I am a TGMer so even though it was a week or two from spring break we never waited in any lines more than 15 minutes. We also hit a Braves/Cards baseball game during spring training. It was a truly magical time for our first family trip. At our last MK rope drop Grumpy even said Crap the Mouse got me. I had tears in my eyes watching the childrens faces.
Okay fast forward we are home a few weeks and we cant stop talking about our trip. Grumpy and I talk and we decide we will make this a yearly vacation for the kiddos. Well that would be March of next year but we decide to go this one alone (no mom
) so lets hit non peak season in January so we can save money and stay at POR because of our family size. Wellll then I found airfare in December for $50 one way plus the great discount code that came out. So we are saving even more money by going in December than January plus we could fly. Oops that means we are going twice in the same year
.but dont tell Grumpy!!
We will be going December 9th-15th and staying at POR. We requested building #14 in the AB section. We will also be doing the DDP. This totally saved our large family money last year but I havent looked into for 08 and beyond
Oh and we plan on surprising the kiddos! This is proving to be a huge feat for me.
I will warn you this is my first TR (except for my personal scrapbook) so I hope you can follow along with my crazy brain. I have a tendency to talk really fast in person so at times youll see evidence of that in my writing! This trip began its planning stages the moment we were buckled in the van heading home to Indiana last March.
Trip Members♥
Grumpy (dh): 36 year old who is afraid of crowds, hates shopping, and well frankly hates leaving the house. This is kind of strange since he deals with the public on a daily basis at work. He had been keeping my hands tied for years on planning our first trip. He is a huge Star Wars fan and he really loves Epcot. He has been to the world one time with his brother and mom when they were in high school.
Cinderella (me): 31 years old, preschool teacher who loves loves Disney! I am an emotional nut who will cry at most anything. Youll see :wink: I took a trip to the world when I was a junior in high school w/ our marching band. I have been to Disneyland twice when visiting my sister in CA.
Stitch (ds): 9 years old, quite the little professor, video game lover, too smart for his own good, a huge Star Wars fan. He is quite the ride weenie and you will see us pushing him to try new things. This will be his second trip to the world and he has been to the Land twice before with me.
Ariel (dd): 8 year old drama queen, loves High School Musical, dressing up, also an emotional nut. She is timid when it comes to rides but has pinky sworn that she will ride Splash Mountain with me this trip! She has also been to the World twice before and the Land four times before (twice with me and twice w/ my Mom).
Pluto (ds): 4 years old (will be 5 on our next trip); he plays soccer and baseball and swears he will play for the Atlanta Braves one day. He is our little joker and will keep us laughing throughout the long days. He will ride more than the older two! He has been to the World once and the Land once.
Tink (dd): 17 months old, sweet quiet child. She will no doubt have two fingers in her mouth in every picture I show you. She turned one the week after our trip to Disney last March. She has been to the World just once.
Stitch on our March Trip
Ariel, Pluto, and Grumpy on our March Trip
Cinderella and Tink on our March Trip
We took our very first trip March 14th -21st, 2007. We have talked about going for years but Grumpy kept saying we needed to wait until our family was complete blah blah blah. Well once we had Tink and those tubes were tied I started planning!
My Mom was also due to retire this year (just did yesterday from the Air Force!!!) so this was a trip to celebrate. We ended up having my brother, sil and niece go along and we made it a Grand Gathering trip. We stayed at the All Star Movies w/ connecting rooms in the Toy Story preferred building and DDP. I am a TGMer so even though it was a week or two from spring break we never waited in any lines more than 15 minutes. We also hit a Braves/Cards baseball game during spring training. It was a truly magical time for our first family trip. At our last MK rope drop Grumpy even said Crap the Mouse got me. I had tears in my eyes watching the childrens faces. Okay fast forward we are home a few weeks and we cant stop talking about our trip. Grumpy and I talk and we decide we will make this a yearly vacation for the kiddos. Well that would be March of next year but we decide to go this one alone (no mom
) so lets hit non peak season in January so we can save money and stay at POR because of our family size. Wellll then I found airfare in December for $50 one way plus the great discount code that came out. So we are saving even more money by going in December than January plus we could fly. Oops that means we are going twice in the same year
.but dont tell Grumpy!! We will be going December 9th-15th and staying at POR. We requested building #14 in the AB section. We will also be doing the DDP. This totally saved our large family money last year but I havent looked into for 08 and beyond
Oh and we plan on surprising the kiddos! This is proving to be a huge feat for me.
The parks aren't very crowded and the decorations are beautiful! I'm looking forward to reading & seeing more! BTW, we're from Indiana, too! 
I have been catching a lot of Hoosiers on here lately!
I read over in the resort threads that decorations go up starting the first week of November and by the 15th they were just about all up. Hope that helps!
She played along until the very end....
