Pre-Trippie..Yet ANOTHER family trip...do we HAVE to go there AGAIN! YES...YOU DO!

[OhioDisneyLover]

Hi Everyone….

After reading pre-trip reports and trip reports on this board, I decided to give it a shot and write my first ever pre-trippie. Hopefully someone will jump on board and help me out with some of my planning decisions. Even though the family is "cooperating" I feel like I'm getting the "do we HAVE to go there again" attitude when it comes to planning.

The Players

Me (46) – Totally Disney addicted. So bad that it’s the ONLY place I care to vacation. I tend to plan “commando” style. I take horrible pictures so this one will have to do.

DH (37) – Loves Disney as much as I do although he had never been before we met 11 years ago.

DM (she’ll be mad if I reveal her age) – Retired. Disney addicted as well. Counts down the days until our next trip. She’s a trooper. Even with her asthma and sciatica, she goes with the flow.

DM is pictured here with DSis.

DSis (31) – Awesome mom to my DNephew. Been to Disney a few times. Seems to like it but I think sometimes that she’d rather be at the beach to avoid my “commando” style planning.

DNephew (11) – Been to Disney several times. For his 5th birthday, again when he was 7, 9, 10 (with just DH and me) and now he’s going back again this year. He seems to stay on track more these days. Our first trip we made a zig zag pattern all over the parks. He digs the thrill rides which makes him better than me. I am still trying to get up the nerve to try Splash. He did get me on Mission Space last year and proceeded to tell me that I “wasn’t doing my job right.”

Background
DH and I were married in September 2000 and go back just about every year for our anniversary. A few years back we turned it into a family vacation and the rest of the group came along as well. At first we would all stay at the same resort, with adjoining rooms.

Our first trip as a family was 6 years ago (my 40th birthday and DNephew’s 5th birthday). We stayed offsite at the Quality Suites Maingate. DNiece also joined us that trip. Can you say….never again? I did not care for that place AT ALL. We were on a tight budget back then and we were there for 9 nights and 10 days so all in all, I guess it wasn’t too bad (except for the rental car getting smashed by a valet at Universal).

We also did Super Soap weekend one year, stayed at ASMo. DH and DM say never again to Super Soap but DSis and I had a good time. Gotta love Jacob Young…………

We’ve also stayed at POR as a family, which none of us were thrilled about. I know, I know, we’re in the minority here.

Last year DH and I stayed at the Dolphin and the rest of them stayed at CBR. They love it there so that is where they are staying again this year. DNIece was with us last year but she is not going this year. DH and I are staying at the AKL.

DH and I go at least twice a year and sometimes three times a year and our most recent trip was Feb 2009. We stayed at SSR in a one bedroom suite (yeah, free upgrade!) Makes me want to buy DVC.

Planning
The family wasn’t sure last year if they would return this year so they did not take advantage of booking the bounce back offer before we left last year. They had free dining last year. DH and I are AP holders and were not on the dining plan. We knew that we were coming back so I started planning right away.

We were originally booked at the YC. We love the EPCOT resorts and have not stayed there before so that was where we booked. In March, the rest of the family decided to join us. Even though we have AP’s and could get a room discount, we opted to book free dining and changed our resort to the AKL. We will use the DDE for any out of pocket meals that we pay for and the AP discount at WOD and other places, etc.

Does anyone think that we made a mistake here and that we should have just stayed at YC and gone with the AP discount instead of the free dining offer? Also, we have never stayed at CSR and I’d be interested in any comments/pictures, etc. as I am also planning a trip next Feb or April and that resort is on my list.

Daily Schedule and ADR’s
Below are our day to day plan and our ADR’s. If anyone has any comments about the ADR selections, I’d be happy to hear them. I’m not sure that we will have much ability to make changes, but I’m always curious to hear what others think and I can always try and make a change.

Day of Arrival
No ADR’s
WalMart for snacks/beverages
Evening at AKL.

Day 2
EPCOT
Behind the Seeds Tour in the Morning
Biergarten for dinner

Day 3
DAK for the day
Tusker House for Breakfast
Fulton’s for dinner (DSis’ favorite place to eat)

Day 4
Sea World (DM got us free tickets)
Raglan Road for dinner

Day 5
MK for the day
Our wedding anniversary
Kona Café for breakfast (yummy….Tonga Toast!)
CRT for Dinner (never done dinner there …. this was my pick)

QUESTION: I want to surprise DH at dinner time. Anyone have any suggestions? Every year he does something to surprise me. Last year I got this at dinner (instead of the dinner menu).

I’d love to hear some ideas of what I can do for him. For some reason, I am struggling with this and that’s unusual for me.

Day 6
DHS for the day
Hollywood and Vine for dinner

Day 7
DTD and Outlet Mall Shopping
CP for dinner
MNSSHP

Day 8
EPCOT in the morning
LeCellier for lunch
DHS afternoon
MK for Spectro and Wishes in the evening

Day 9
Day of Departure
MK for the morning

So, what do you think? I have “commando” touring plans for each park which will inevitably drive my family crazy. I like to at least have a plan but most of the time it ends up being more of a guide than a plan. Thanks to a fellow DISer, I was able to put together itinerary cards just so that I have a method to my madness and my reminders.

Here is one of my first draft cards. They have totally changed but it's an example anyway:

I tend to need to remind myself of the simplest things like to take pictures for scrapbooking and things that normal people would just know to do. It seems that I get so darn excited when we arrive that I forget all the simple things so these things are just handy dandy for me to have. They have changed much since these drafts and I will probably put the final versions together a week or so before we leave.

So, that’s the plan so far. Any thoughts or comments?

Next up, I’m working on getting the family to agree to wearing family shirts. I’ve already got one made thanks to a fellow DISer (again) and am working on a few more but so far DH isn’t all that thrilled about wearing matching shirts. Will I get them to agree?

Thanks for reading!

 

[OhioDisneyLover]

Well, I'm sort of bummed out that I've not received responses to my inquiries on this thread so far but I think I'll continue this pre-trippie so that I can at least organize my thoughts.

I found out that I have to go to Tampa on business next week so I am going to head to WDW for the weekend. It will give me a chance to renew my AP's (I have vouchers now) so that I don't have to take time out when we arrive on 9/13 to do that. Our trip is one month away as of today.

I still need to figure out a surprise for DH for our 8th anniversary. I thought that I might call the Disney Florist to see what they can suggest since I didn't get any responses here. (Can you tell that I am feeling sorry for myself?). I really wanted to send something different, yet Disney, but I am at a loss.

I'd also like to have a basket or something waiting for my family when they check in at CBR but I'm looking for something different here too. Not sure what I am going to do yet.

Seems that Macy's and Kohl's had a huge on line sale so I got a few more things to prepare for our trip. Mom is nearly packed already which is funny to me. All she has to do is transfer her clothes from her "vacation drawer" to her suitcase. . DSister will be doing laundry and packing when the cab comes to take them to the airport.

If anyone is reading, hope you have a great day!

 

[inkedupmomma]

HIIII I'm HERE!!!! Love your PTR so far!! and you go ahead girl with the younger hubs!!! I have the other way around, my df is 10 years older then me. It works!! Love your glasses by the way!! I'm so stoked to meet up with you guys, although, I don't wanna mess up your cards So make sure you print out a little "meet up with inkedupmomma and her motley crew"

ok, i'm subscribing, keep the ptr going strong!!

 

[OhioDisneyLover]

Yay! My link worked! Hey, you learn something new every day. It took me forever to post pictures and I still can't change my avatar so I'm proud of myself that I was able to put in the link. Who the heck knew that it was as easy as it is?

Ok, so I went to my mom's last night and she was SO ready to pack. She said that she wanted to pack and put her suitcase in the living room so that it was ready to go! OMG, we were laughing.

We have a dilemma right now and that it is what type of camera bag to buy. DH doesn't like the one that we have and we're having a super hard time figuring out which one to get. We have a Canon Rebel XTi with three lenses. We don't plan to carry them all at the same time not do we plan to carry the tripod however, it would be nice to find a comfortable bag that can carry the body of the camera and maybe two lenses. Anyone have any suggestions?

I ordered the world-class PassHolder from Passporter. Never cared to have anything around my neck but I spend more time fishing for stuff through my purse so I thought I'd give it a try. Anyone use this before and find it helpful?

 

[OhioDisneyLover]

HIIII I'm HERE!!!! Love your PTR so far!! and you go ahead girl with the younger hubs!!! I have the other way around, my df is 10 years older then me. It works!! Love your glasses by the way!! I'm so stoked to meet up with you guys, although, I don't wanna mess up your cards So make sure you print out a little "meet up with inkedupmomma and her motley crew"

ok, i'm subscribing, keep the ptr going strong!!

Yay, you found me! Yep, DH is just under 10 years younger than I am but hey, it works. Wasn't sure how I felt about the glasses so thanks! DH and my Sis are trying to keep me "hip." They act like I'm a gramma or something sometimes.

I've already added our meeting to my little cards. Told the family last night that I added a meeting to the schedule. It's so funny. I normally get a "you and your board" from my mom.

So, any suggestions for what I can do for DH for our anniversary? It's Sept 17th and it will be our 8th?

 

[inkedupmomma]

Yay, you found me! Yep, DH is just under 10 years younger than I am but hey, it works. Wasn't sure how I felt about the glasses so thanks! DH and my Sis are trying to keep me "hip." They act like I'm a gramma or something sometimes.

I've already added our meeting to my little cards. Told the family last night that I added a meeting to the schedule. It's so funny. I normally get a "you and your board" from my mom.

So, any suggestions for what I can do for DH for our anniversary? It's Sept 17th and it will be our 8th?

Love comes in all ages,sizes and colors..but df being 10 years older than me is about as far as I go Actually, when he told me his age, I almost fell over.. at 22 I swore I would NEVER date an older dude. Here we are almost 5 years later lol. He looks my agethough, so it works out nicely.. don't want anyone thinking hes a perv

John also, thinks I am crazy for meeting random people. Whatever. It's fun, life is short and I don't travel often. I want to do and see and meet as much as I can when I can!! Plus, it's always nice to know there is someone out there that knows about the dis.. or gets the disney obsession!

ok, as for your df... I'm so not sure. My df celebrates his bday while we are there and i'm having a hell of a time trying to do something for him. So far, I have dinner at coral reef a couple days before his bday. He will have special menus, and the diver come down. Also, on his bday I think we are going to hire Kids night out and go out solo... If he liquors me up enough, he may get lucky... wow.. ok, that is dis inappropriate..sawwy!

so, ok.. tell me more about your df (and you really) and I will help from there.

 

[OhioDisneyLover]

When I first met Joe I was heistant because of our age difference but he doesn't mind so what the heck. Here we are nearly 12 years later so I guess it worked!

What can I tell you about DH...... Joe likes all things Steelers (which is tough since we live in Browns country). He loves to collect watches. He digs tatoos (has 5 and wants more). I call him the "upgrade king" because every time he gets any type of gadget it lasts like three months before he wants to "upgrade." He likes to watch anything on the sci-fi channel and is a wealth of useless information. Some of the stuff that he knows is insane. He loves music, all kinds. Hopefully that is enough to go on to get the ideas flowing. I really want to do something to surprise him and for whatever reason, I am clueless as to where to start.

We are going shopping again to add more Disney dollars to our collection. I cannot believe that our trip is less than a month away!

 

[SharpaysMom]

I'm subbing too!

I'll have to put my thinking cap on. Are we talking a gesture or a real gift?

 

[OhioDisneyLover]

Thanks for joining. I'm thinking of a real gift. He really, really wants another tatoo. Right now he has 5 of them and 2 of them are Warner Brothers characters ... obviously before he met me. While I can give him a certificate of some sort, I still want to do something at CRT while we are there for dinner.

 

[OhioDisneyLover]

Today's pre-trip obsession will be working on "the binder." My DH and the rest of the group think I am insane for lugging this thing with me but I disagree. I have a nice little, well maybe not so little, binder that contains the following tabs:

Summary - Similar to a table of contents typed in Waltograph

Air - Contains airline confirmation and a pocket in which to insert our boarding passes, etc.

Car - Holds our rental car reservation receipt and eventually the on line check in information

Resort - Contains a pocket insert with our hotel confirmation and the rest of the fun stuff (vouhcers), etc. that we got in our final package from Disney.

Day-By-Day - This is my favorite. I have a page for each day that outlines the plan for the day. It includes confirmatoin numbers, tour information and anything else that I can think of. Behind each daily page I have included things like the menus for the places that we plan to eat that day, the list of Hidden Gems in the World from TheMouseForLess.com and other items such as a fabulous article that I found on how to take pictures at night since I am still learning our SLR. This section also includes note sections for each day so that I can jot down notes for a trip report after each day.

Tours - This tab holds all of the final confirmation for the tour we selected. Prior to us making out selection, I printed out all of the options so that I could take them to the rest of the family to read.

MNSSHP - Tab holds a pocket that includes our tickets!

Dining Plan List - Since this is our first year on the DDP (we are AP holders and normally just use or DDE card but my mother suggested the plan during free dining. Instead of using the AP for a room discount we got a one day MYW that we will use when we renew our passes last year and took free dinging instead). Ok, back to the dining list. It is a print out of all the places where we can use our dining plan. I print it each year for my mom and it comes in handy.

Maps - There is an envelope that contains our custom park maps as well as maps from our last trip.

Photopass - We pre-paid for the photopass CD and the receipt as well as the location of the photopass photographers are in this section.

Miscellaneous - everything else

After I finish putting the binder in order, I will work on our itinerary cards. The cards are the ones that I posted above. They are two sided, or will be two sided. One side holds the itinerary for the day and the other side holds notes of things that I don't want to forget. Seems that there is always something that I wish I would have remembered to do, purchase, etc.

So I know that this sounds like over kill but it sure beats sitting there for an hour trying to decide what we are going to do everyday. I just consult the binder each night and see what we have planned. If we don't feel like following the plan, we don't.

Ok, now back to planning since I have a nail apoointment at 8 a.m.! I hope to get some things done before I leave. I've been on the DIS since 4 something this morning!!

 

[OhioDisneyLover]

I thought I'd share some photos from previous trips and some scrap book pages that I have done along the way. These are in no particular order. Just some of my favorites.

 

[OhioDisneyLover]

No particular order again. I tend to use these to help me in my pre trip planning. It reminds me of what the family enjoyed most, etc. They are from various trips throughout the years. I've probably done 250 - 300 pages so far. DH got me a Cricut and 7 cartridges so I am ready to go after this next trip. Ok, sorry, just got excited about the Cricut.......

 

[LuccaDrake]

Awesome pics and scrapbook! Sounds like you have a great trip planned. I'm not sure how to help you with doing something special at CRT. I do know that if you tell them it's your anniversary ahead of time they will announce it while your there during the ceremony they do. Also, you will receive a pair of champagne flutes for your anniversary that say CRT on them. I believe there is a whole forum for this type of stuff though. I would do some searching on here and you should come up with a whole bunch of stuff. Good luck! Oh, and what dates are you going? Did you not post that, or am I just numb?

~Beka~

 

[OhioDisneyLover]

Awesome pics and scrapbook! Sounds like you have a great trip planned. I'm not sure how to help you with doing something special at CRT. I do know that if you tell them it's your anniversary ahead of time they will announce it while your there during the ceremony they do. Also, you will receive a pair of champagne flutes for your anniversary that say CRT on them. I believe there is a whole forum for this type of stuff though. I would do some searching on here and you should come up with a whole bunch of stuff. Good luck! Oh, and what dates are you going? Did you not post that, or am I just numb?

~Beka~

Beka,

Thanks for reading! We're going Sept 13 - 21 with my mom, sister and nephew.

I'm going to search the DIS for surprise ideas. I normally don't struggle this much.

 

[OhioDisneyLover]

So today I got the binder in good shape. Nearly ready to go. I always wait until a couple of days before to print my day to day sheets since I change them often along the way.

I am still struggling with an anniversary gift for DH. Driving me nuts. If I can't think of something within the next week I am going to start stressing over it.

All of the shorts and capris that I ordered arrived over the last couple of days. Man is stinks to gain weight.

Tommorow I will work on my LGMH. I was able to snag a couple of them a while back.

DH and I decided that the new transition lenses that we got in our glasses stink. Took them back and got Rx sunglasses. I cannot wait until my nephew sees these babies. He's going to tell me that I look like Harry Potter! They're awesome though. Very "Breakfast at Tiffany" like. I like them. Nothing is worse that not having the right sunglasses at WDW. The last trip we took I didn't have any Rx sunglasses. Since I get major headaches without my glasses I had no choice but to just wear them. It was terrible.

Well, tomorrow is another day. I plan to comb the DIS for some sort of idea for DH's anniversary gift. Suggestions would be appreciated.

 

[LuccaDrake]

I will help you find a gift by scouring these boards if it kills me! I love doing surprises! Oh, and I noticed you mentioned your mother got free tix to seaworld? Does she have a connection or is there something out there I don't know about? We are planning on going to Seaworld, hopefully, but haven't got tix yets as we haven't had the money.

~Beka~

 

[OhioDisneyLover]

Thanks for helping me find something! I'm sitting here thinking about it and freaking out. I didn't think I'd start to panic for at least another week. I keep trying to ask him if there is anything that he wants. So far all I am getting out of him is some XBox 360 game and another tattoo. He's not giving me much to work with here but frankly, I would rather surprise him because he gets me every year. He changes it up though. He's had things waiting in our room and he's had things delivered to wherever we were eating our anniversary dinner. One year I got a Mickey icon ring. OMG, was I floored. I had NO clue. We were at DTD at WoD and as usual, we were trying on jewelry. Both of us collect watches so we were trying them on and he told me to try this ring on. I'm sitting there thinking...why? It's expensive as he** and there is no way he's going to let me have it. Yay, he did! So, I just really want to surprise him big time...and here I am...with a giant NOTHING!!!!!!

Mom got the tickets free from someone that she knows. I believe that they are a client at work or something. I can't really remember but we really wanted to go but it was hard to financially justify it when we had Sea World here in Ohio and had been there a zillion times. DH and I wanted to be able to spend what we had at WDW. It turned out that she was able to get them for us so what the heck! We're going to go!

 

[the4princesses]

No particular order again. I tend to use these to help me in my pre trip planning. It reminds me of what the family enjoyed most, etc. They are from various trips throughout the years. I've probably done 250 - 300 pages so far. DH got me a Cricut and 7 cartridges so I am ready to go after this next trip. Ok, sorry, just got excited about the Cricut.......

Your scrapbooking is very nice!!
we will be gone from WDW 3 days before you get there!! Have a wonderful time!!

 

[Samantha/NC]

While I can give him a certificate of some sort, I still want to do something at CRT while we are there for dinner.

Well there goes my idea for a gift, I was gonna say buy yourself some sexy lingerie--most hubby's love that gift!! definitely don't wear it to CRT

I am enjoy the PTR--we will be there the week before you guys. This will be our first trip on the dining plan. My husbands still says yeah right--I can't believe this is free dining! I'll show him

Samantha

 

[earthfaries]

Hi!!! I'm so glad I found your PTR! I can't wait to catch up. I don't have time tonight, but I will read it tomorrow! I LOVED your last TR too, you take such wonderful pictures!!! Can't wait to read all about your upcoming trip ~ 4 weeks! It's so close!

Night!