Our Year of Disney! 2016 - post trip & pre trip reports

[mich311e]

Hello! I've seen a few trip reports and I've been wanting to post one but I kept running out of time and didn't have my pictures organized. I finally got some pictures ready to post.

The cast:
Me: Michelle (40), DH (also 40), DS, "Z" - 11 years old.
We live in Phoenix.

We usually go to Disneyland every other year, around Thanksgiving. But in 2014 I thought about spending a year going more often and I started saving my money for Annual Passes! I did money earning websites and rebate apps (Swagbucks, Perk, Ibotta, Reciept Pal, etc.) and saved money each month. I purchased Disney gift cards through Target at a discount. By September 2015 I had enough to buy our 5 Day Park hoppers! And by the time we went on our trip we had almost enough to upgrade to APs. I was only $75 short of my goal (approx $1800 for 3 APs) of earning all the money for the APs. Not too shabby!

So, I present our Year of Disney! We're over half way through it now and it's been fun!

 

[mich311e]

Index

 

[mich311e]

OUR DISNEY PAST

Background: My husband and I have been together since we were 16 years old. Our first trip ever was to Disneyland in 1992 (at 16)! We went on a bus trip with a friend's church. It was fun but I don't really remember too much. I have a few pics from that trip: we rode Splash Mountain, the Train, and met Mickey. I'm sure we did other things to but I can't really recall.

We both previously had Disneyland trips with our families or friends. We kept visiting Disneyland every year or so through our late teens. We got married in 1997 when we were 21 and we had to honeymoon, where else, but DISNEYWORLD. We went for a week and it was really fun. We also had a Disney themed wedding! Our invitations were Cinderella Castle themed. Our colors were red, black, & white. My sister made chocolate Mickey heads on a stick which were wrapped and tied with ribbons with our names on it. We had a few Mickey & Minnie Mylar balloons and Mickey & Minnie cake topper of course!

Our son was born in 2004 and we waited until he was 2 to go. We've been going every other year since then. We started going with family but for the past 3 trips we went with my best friend and her family. Her kids are my kid's best friend and it's always a good time with them.

 

[mich311e]

NOVEMBER 2015 Days 1 & 2

We usually go after Thanksgiving and have had some good luck with crowds during that time. But, the kids are getting bigger and it's hard to keep them out of school. I always feel like a 3 day park hopper is just not enough! We are saving money this trip by staying at the Quality Inn off of Harbor, on Manchester. (We usually stay at the Carousel.)

So my family headed over on Wednesday November 25th to start our Disney visit!
IMG_2586 by michelle m, on Flickr

It was pretty crowded that day.

We ate at Pizza Press on Harbor for dinner. We love that place!!

Thursday November 26
We were so excited to be in the parks on THANKSGIVING! I had never been there on a holiday before. We've been on Black Friday and we knew it was busy but were curious about Thanksgiving. It was crowded but it wasn't too bad. I felt like everyone had an excited energy about them.

We were super excited to try Hyperspace Mountain for the first time and see all the Seasons of the Force stuff!
Chewie hugs!!
57212010030 by michelle m, on Flickr

We used this for our Family Christmas Pic
57212010024 by michelle m, on Flickr

Visiting Big Thunder Ranch for the last time
IMG_2610 by michelle m, on Flickr

57212010035 by michelle m, on Flickr

We entered DCA and got to meet Oswald for the first time!
57212010057 by michelle m, on Flickr

Visiting Viva Navidad! We didn't want a huge meal in the parks because we had dinner reservations! We are also snack takers so we had PB&Js, fruit, nuts, and veggies in our locker and would hit that between parks. I love to eat my veggies while I'm standing in line somewhere because what else are you going to do?

Anyways, we were excited get some elote, chips & salsa, Mexican beer, and listen to the music.
IMG_2621 by michelle m, on Flickr

IMG_2620 by michelle m, on Flickr

I REALLY wanted a pic with the Three Cabellaros! We were in line and we could see them and they were so cute dancing. But, it was the end of their shift. That's OK, we were getting MICKEY & MINNIE!! I love their Fiesta outfits!
57212010072 by michelle m, on Flickr

We headed back to our hotel for a break and then came back to Disneyland for our Indy fast pass return. Then we had dinner reservations for Blue Bayou! Now, it was Thanksgiving dinner and we had never seen Fantasmic! before! All these years of going to Disneyland and never stopping to see the show because it's 'ride time!' and I also never wanted to invest that much time sitting and waiting for the spot. So, we splurged! We got the Fantasmic dining package. We chose the later showing so we wouldn't have much of a crowd. Sure enough there wasn't much of a crowd at all. The show was fabulous! I'm glad we saw it before it went on hiatus. Also, dinner was pretty great. I had the mushroom dish because I'm vegetarian. I thought it was good, a little salty, but definitely good. My husband got the Thanksgiving dinner and loved it. My son get the jambalaya because he's an 11 year old foodie and loves sausage and shrimp. He did like it but it was a little spicy for him (we warned him). My husband ate the rest. We enjoyed the 2 different breadss offered, one was soft and one was hard. I really only liked the soft one but we were so hungry! We also really enjoyed the fresh brewed iced tea. And desserts! We were tired though, so we just relaxed and ate. There was a table next to us also doing the package for Fantasmic. Their kids (teens) put their heads down and closed their eyes! lol

IMG_2627 by michelle m, on Flickr

Loved seeing all those characters on the Mark Twain!
IMG_2639 by michelle m, on Flickr

 

[mich311e]

NOVEMBER 2015 Days 3, 4, 5!

Our friends are here! We actually stayed in Disneyland only on day 3. We had a friend of our friend's daughter with us and she didn't have a park hopper. I have a ton of pics of the kids on rides, etc. The girls met almost all the princesses! But here's a few from our visit.

We had never met Bert & Mary Poppins before!
IMG_2653 by michelle m, on Flickr

The adults do Matterhorn!
57212010083 by michelle m, on Flickr

Day 4
Hyperspace Mountain!
57212010152 by michelle m, on Flickr

Darth Vader!
57212010143 by michelle m, on Flickr

Meeting Olaf!
57212010162 by michelle m, on Flickr

Day 5

And our last day we tried to get our only group pic.
57212010193 by michelle m, on Flickr
(I have never been able to take a great pic in front of the train. We'll keep trying but the kids always have sun in their eyes! lol)

And on our last day we met Jack Skellington!
57212010208 by michelle m, on Flickr

57212010204 by michelle m, on Flickr
I love meeting Jack! He's so funny, we danced! lol

We had upgraded our 5 day parkhoppers to Annual Passes on Saturday afternoon. Thursday, Friday and Saturday were blocked days so we couldn't have done it before then. We also were able to use our Magic Morning that way.

And that concludes our November trip! If you can't tell most of my pics are PhotoPass. I was a fan of purchasing the PhotoPass because otherwise I'm never in the pics! I also love having ride pics.

It was super fun but I still didn't feel like we got to do EVERYTHING. The good news was we were coming back in a few months!

 

[mich311e]

JANUARY 30 - FEBRUARY 1

 

[mich311e]

MARCH 4 - 5

 

[mich311e]

APRIL 22 - 25

 

[mich311e]

Ok, I'm posting in real time now. Planning a trip! I'll have to go back and fill in my other posts. After our April trip our next planned trip was going to be in October for our first Halloween-time visit.

Anyway, we usually avoid summer trips ANYWHERE but the beach. We live in AZ and we don't want to go to a theme park and stand in the sunshine and heat. BUT, given that it's year of Disney and I looked at my son's summer schedule and saw a break this week I decided to go for it. Even though it's summer and even though it's a grad nite we're going tomorrow, Thursday & Friday. (both nights we are there will be grad nites) We're going to see what summertime at Disneyland is all about!

I'm actually really excited to ride Grizzly River Run because I've never rode it! My son has but I never want to be wet! And normally we are there in cooler weather. So, Thursday is looking warm and I'll be wearing shorts. I'm going to give it a try.

We're also planning on taking a break from the crowds and heat and do more Animation Academy and we've never done Turtle Talk with Crush. So we're excited for those!

 

[buttercup3]

Following along! Sounds like a lot of fun!! I'm barely doing my 6th trip ever this year. I'm pretty new to the boards so I'm learning as much as I can from the vets!! Looking forward to your other posts