Pandora Opening Day, Are We Crazy? A May 2017 Trip Report

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Table of Contents

INTRO

 

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Intro


Hey everyone! It’s been about 2 months since my last trip to the World, and I thought this would be the perfect time to get started on the trip report. I did a short pre-trip report for this one, the first time I’d written a PTR.


As always, our family includes myself (duh), my awesome wife Becky, Daughters Liliana, Alexa, and son Gabe.




This was our first trip where we weren’t eligible for the Armed Forces Salute tickets or to stay at Shades of Green. What really stunk was that this was the year that Disney started offering a 5-day park hopper for the Armed Forces Salute, and a discount on Memory Maker. I really hope that if y’all are eligible, you take a look at the military discounts offered by Disney, they are really awesome. Because of this, we had to settle for base tickets (not park hopper) so we could only visit one park per day. This was very different than how we were used to touring the parks. If you’ve read any of my previous trip reports, you’ll see that we really maximize our value, hitting the parks at rope drop and hopping often. There has even been a couple times where we’ve hit all four parks in one day. There would be none of that for this trip, so it was important for us to plan more carefully to maximize the value.


Another thing we needed to factor in was my vacation time. Gone are the days where I get 30 days a year. In order to use as little PTO as possible, we planned around a holiday weekend. As you can read in my PTR, we had originally planned a long June trip. This changed to a shorter trip across Memorial Day weekend. This change was a great idea, and it really worked out well for a number of reasons.

Trip Details: 6 nights Caribbean Beach Resort, 5-day tickets, Disney Dining Plan


Well, I think that’s enough housekeeping and stage-setting, we’d better start the show rolling.