PART THREE! *December 2012 Roll Call* Holidays, FLE & MVMCP!! A very, merry thread!

[PhoenixStrength]

39 DAYS!!!

Can you tell I'm happy? Hope everyone is having a good morning so far!

 

[SAT887]

Oooh, what a great surprise! I hope it works out that they can come

I am so hoping they can. We miss them so much. It's looking like they can come down for 2 nights. We were hoping longer but it will be perfect no matter how much or how little!

 

[SAT887]

 

[JoshMom5]

Love that!!!!

 

[QueenElinor]

There are a couple people in here who are surprising their kids too! How fun is that? Me? There is no way I could pull that off! I don't know your kids' ages so that's probably a deciding factor in how you reveal the big trip. Do they know they are going somewhere.....just not the location? I think someone can chime in in how they are letting their kids know......

I think it gets harder as they get older and have stuff to plan around- they get suspicious when things are cancelled- but little ones don't have much sense of time. Having said that, the best surprise I ever did was a trip to Hawaii for our 10th anniversary- my husband was completely clueless- of course I had to have him take time off but told him we were just going to visit my brother. He is a doctor and it was priceless when the answering service lady called him at 4 a.m. and told him to get up out of bed and go catch a plane! I even had a separate checking account at the bank where I saved up my bonuses (ha ha, remember those days? Does anyone get those now!?) so he didn't miss the money- and everyone- his partners, staff, the bank people, travel agent, etc. etc.-were in on it. It was great! I'll never top that.

So husbands can almost be as easy to fool as kids.

I forget where I clipped this from but I had it saved with my Disney holiday info:

For the past several years, Disney's rolled out holiday-themed cocktails to be sold around the Osborne Family Spectacle of Dancing Lights in Disney's Hollywood Studios. These include a Sleigh Ride combining rum, gin, vodka, and triple sec; a Snow Ball with kahlua, Bailey's, Amaretto, and half and half; and Captain's Hot Cider, which combines hot apple cider and Captain Morgan. My choice? The Merry Margarita. Are you surprised?

Epcot's World Showcase Over in Epcot, Disney opens the Holiday Brewer's Collection in the Germany pavilion, featuring hot Gluhwein (spiced wine popular during the holidays in Germany) and German beers. Also, there are often stands set up in the World Showcase offering wine and eggnog.

Sent from my iPad

Oh, awesome! Cut & pasted to my Disney notes. Thank you.

 

[WedgieSock]

Good Morning my friends! *sings* la la la la laaaaaaa I'm in a sing-y mood today

Thinking about downgrading will be paying off my vaca tomorrow, right now I have ddp it's a lot of food my kids are 5 and 2 picky eaters also, I got the ddp because I love character meals
Anyone think ddp is too much food??
i will have to pay out of pocket for two meals, I'm unsure!! need to make my mind up

Personally, we don't think it is too much (and we are not over-eaters). We get a CS breakfast which fills us up for many hours - with a CS meal you get a dessert so we would grab a muffin or brownie and save it, that would be our snack/sugar booster in the afternoon. Then we would have a sit down meal for dinner which is an opportunity to regroup, reflect & relax. However, I do not have picky little ones so you'll need more opinions.

They are super cute!!! Since you are so creative you could maybe help me figure out how I should surprise my kids?! Before we get on the plane, when we land? We are flying through the night and change planes in Houston.

I don't know?!?!?! How exciting though!

Happy Sunday everyone ONLY 53 more days

I have some free/quiet time right now so I thought I'd let you all see my Disney schedule...any ideas/comments/suggestions are appreciated!!!

12/13 - Arrival day - Trail's End/Ft. Wilderness ADR with wagon ride afterwards

12/14 - Epcot (with PM EMH) Dinner ADR at Chefs de France

12/15 - Kona Cafe breakfast ADR - then head to MK

12/16 - DHS (with PM EMH) Lunch ADR at 50's Prime Time

12/17 - MK - Tony's Town Square ADR

12/18 - Breakfast ADR-1900 Park Fare/ AM - Free/ MVMCP

12/19 - FREE DAY - Kona Cafe late breakfast ADR (technically will be breakfast food, but late enough to be considered our Lunch!)

12/20 - AK with Rainforest Cafe ADR

12/21 - Epcot - ADRs for Norway Princess Breakast and Italy dinner

12/22 - scheduled FREE DAY (can do a park if we feel like it) Cape May Clam Bake ADR

12/23 - FREE DAY - DTD/Mini Golf/Maybe Seaworld?

12/24 - MK Crystal Palace ADR

12/25 - FREE DAY - breakfast ADR Cape May Cafe/resort hopping?/Boatwright's ADR at POR/head to Poly to watch Electrical Water Pageant and Wishes

12/26 - Last Park Day (no ADRs) either Epcot/MK or DHS, depending on what the girls want to do

12/27 - early departure time

Love the fact you have 2 weeks there - how awesome! Great schedule

I just came up with another brilliant idea for our trip (thankfully this one doesn't involve my CC )

A little background info on my family first:

My Dh likes to sleep in while he is on vacation...nothing too extreme...usually I can have him up by 9, but that is a late start to the morning, especially at Disney!!!

My youngest DD takes after her daddy and could sleep until 10 or 11am if I let her.

My oldest DD takes after me...we are both early birds.

My youngest DD is a very nervous little girl when it comes to rides...anything too fast, too dark, too loud etc...and she says, "I am never riding that again..."

My oldest DD is much more adventurous and will try just about anything!

So, I thought how fun it would be for my oldest DD and I to wake up early a few mornings and head out to a park (with AM EMH) to spend the morning at the park, just the two of us. Either my Dh and youngest DD can meet up with us at the park or we can just meet them back at the resort.

By the way, for our last two park days (24th and 26th) I am telling my Dh far in advance that on those days we all have to be ready early to be at the park before rope drop!!!

Perfect

 

[Mom2Cody06]

Good Sunday morning!!! DS6 has come down with what DS2 had the end I last week. So we've just been bumming around all day so far. Yesterday my Mom watched the boys so DH and I could go out for a while. We went to Macy's and I got my makeup done at the MAC counter, and bought a few things. I haven't done my makeup in forever so it was nice to do that for me

 

[Disneyalltheway]

There are a couple people in here who are surprising their kids too! How fun is that? Me? There is no way I could pull that off! I don't know your kids' ages so that's probably a deciding factor in how you reveal the big trip. Do they know they are going somewhere.....just not the location? I think someone can chime in in how they are letting their kids know......

No they don't know a thing. My plan was to still act like we were spending Christmas with someone, still decorate everything here. I have two daughters 10 and 3 and my son is 6. They get out of school around noon and then we fly out that night at 11:55pm. We have to be at the airport by about 9pm to get through customs, etc. My husband was still planning on working a full day that day as well. I'm just not sure if I should let them know before the trip or when we land?!

 

[jodywgirl]

I would think with a 6 and 10 year old they will figure it out when you get to airport since you will be flying to Orlando and they can read and hear. I would tell them driving to airport.

 

[WedgieSock]

Good Sunday morning!!! DS6 has come down with what DS2 had the end I last week. So we've just been bumming around all day so far. Yesterday my Mom watched the boys so DH and I could go out for a while. We went to Macy's and I got my makeup done at the MAC counter, and bought a few things. I haven't done my makeup in forever so it was nice to do that for me

Hope your boy gets better

How nice for you to get your make-up done! That must have been fun

I would think with a 6 and 10 year old they will figure it out when you get to airport since you will be flying to Orlando and they can read and hear. I would tell them driving to airport.

Yes they can!

We gave my DD a Disney autograph book .... she was confused .... then we said "Oh well, spose we better go to Disney to get it filled" ... she still didn't realise we were actually going, she just thought she had to save the book for when we did go.

 

[mom2travel]

I think it gets harder as they get older and have stuff to plan around- they get suspicious when things are cancelled- but little ones don't have much sense of time. Having said that, the best surprise I ever did was a trip to Hawaii for our 10th anniversary- my husband was completely clueless- of course I had to have him take time off but told him we were just going to visit my brother. He is a doctor and it was priceless when the answering service lady called him at 4 a.m. and told him to get up out of bed and go catch a plane! I even had a separate checking account at the bank where I saved up my bonuses (ha ha, remember those days? Does anyone get those now!?) so he didn't miss the money- and everyone- his partners, staff, the bank people, travel agent, etc. etc.-were in on it. It was great! I'll never top that.

So husbands can almost be as easy to fool as kids.

Oh, awesome! Cut & pasted to my Disney notes. Thank you.

That's why I didn't surprise DD for this trip. Plus she's missing 2 days of school. I wanted to make sure she's ok with that

Love how you surprised your husband! That would be so much fun to try. I'd have to open a new account so he didn't notice the charges

 

[mom2travel]

Hope your boy gets better

How nice for you to get your make-up done! That must have been fun

Yes they can!

We gave my DD a Disney autograph book .... she was confused .... then we said "Oh well, spose we better go to Disney to get it filled" ... she still didn't realise we were actually going, she just thought she had to save the book for when we did go.

Too cute!!

 

[ciao_gina]

Thank you everyone for the nice comments on my princess ornaments. It turned out to be a lot more than I was planning on but story of my life...not happy unless I make things complicated. I ended up making 12 of the princess ornaments since y'all made me realize I just couldn't exclude any of them Now what shall I do to pass the time? I already watched Beauty and the Beast today....now hubby and I are watching Peter Pan.

I want to see a pic of the backsplash too!

 

[Valgoof]

Kathy--Love the ornaments!! Glad you gave into the peer pressure and got more frames.

I was reading easywdw and AK has extended hours, open till 6 or 7 now. I have never seen that park in the dark, so will be adjusting the plan a bit. Yay! A reason to tweak.

 

[SAT887]

Kathy--Love the ornaments!! Glad you gave into the peer pressure and got more frames.

I was reading easywdw and AK has extended hours, open till 6 or 7 now. I have never seen that park in the dark, so will be adjusting the plan a bit. Yay! A reason to tweak.

You're back!!! I was getting worried about you!! Haha

 

[PhoenixStrength]

Kathy--Love the ornaments!! Glad you gave into the peer pressure and got more frames.

I was reading easywdw and AK has extended hours, open till 6 or 7 now. I have never seen that park in the dark, so will be adjusting the plan a bit. Yay! A reason to tweak.

I noticed that too. Kind of worries me, as they usually are only going to do that if they are going to have higher than initially expected crowds

 

[Valgoof]

You're back!!! I was getting worried about you!! Haha

Thanks for the concern. I'm fine, just had a busy couple of days.

I noticed that too. Kind of worries me, as they usually are only going to do that if they are going to have higher than initially expected crowds

I hadn't thought about that.

 

[ksromack]

Hidden Mickey at church

 

[Tltorrez]

Oh, I agree that it's great where the program prompts one to set personalized ADRs, and the "break" feature can definitely add time, but if a person hasn't been to the parks before, they might not know that that they need to do that.

For example, the standard times they give, like 15 minutes to tour an entire country in World Showcase, 11 minutes for Rafiki's PlanetWatch or getting to Finding Nemo the Musical with 0 minutes to spare seem unrealistic to me. I would add lots of time to all of those. Also, I wouldn't intentionally show up 10 minutes late to an ADR , but that's popped up a time or two in my plan!

And those were really lovely ornaments, ksromack.

I agree that the customized plan works best if you've been before, or at least if you've read their book.

But in fairness to them, most people do think 15 minutes is sufficient to tour a country. Most people just don't take the time to really explore. That's why so many people think AK is a half day park.

When you're late to an ADR, doesn't it give you that green warning on top of the page? Right now Im getting that warning on everything even when I have plenty of time. Not sure what's up with that.

 

[WedgieSock]

I was reading easywdw and AK has extended hours, open till 6 or 7 now. I have never seen that park in the dark, so will be adjusting the plan a bit. Yay! A reason to tweak.

Booooo! We have a DTD evening of dinner, La Nouba & shopping so I scheduled that for an AK day as it shuts so early .... now I wanna see it in the dark but I can't adjust times that day because of our ADR.

Noticed DHS is also open later and they've added a second Fantasmic soooooo so I stick with my original plan of F! then dinner at Hollywood Brown Derby at 7.50pm (which is late) OR do I have an earlier dinner ... but then I have to look at our lunch ressie because if lunch is late, we won't be hungry for an early dinner.

I had everything sorted