Psycho no more! Trying again at a family vacation

[debdebdebby13]

We made some changes!

Now we are flying out EARLY Friday morning, 7:05 BUT then we get to Orlando at 10:30am leave lots of time to play with Friday and all of Saturday. Basically we are gaining almost 2 full days, but only having to add one more hotel night.

With adding 2 days I am thinking about adding a couple of days at Universal. I know there is a ton there that the kids would like and we haven't seen Diagon Alley. I mentioned Molly loving Harry Potter as a little kid, but we truly all love HP. Molly isn't nearly as into it as she once was, she's more into anime now, but HP is still her first love. Henry enjoys HP because he's been around it his entire life and both kids like it because DH and I loved it first!

now I've got to figure out where to go what days!

 

[debdebdebby13]

Well, I finally figured out where we are going on what days!

April 16-arrive MCO @ 10:38a. This will be a resort/rest/skyliner/disney springs type of day. Just explore and chill after waking up at 4:30 for our flight.

April 17- MAGIC KINGDOM
April 18- ANIMAL KINGDOM
April 19-EPCOT
April 20-HOLLYWOOD STUDIOS
April 21-UNIVERSAL STUDIOS
April 22-ISLANDS OF ADVENTURE (I imagine we'll have some crossover between parks during the day since we're doing park to park passes and we want to ride the Hogwarts Express)
April 23-HOLLYWOOD STUDIOS if we don't get ROTR on the 20th, if not we'll go...somewhere else. We haven't yet determined where somewhere else would be.

I mathed out our meals and snacks, estimating $50/day on snacks $60/day on QS meals and actually figured out what we'd spend on our TS reservations and found we'll need approx $1500 for food. I think the snack estimations may be a little high, but I'd rather be cautious. We decided no soda at restaurants, we'll get refillable mugs and get our soda fix at the resort. $4/person/meal would be significantly more expensive! We've had free dining on every previous trip so paying for dining out of pocket is new for us!

I've only made 4 ADRs and I think I'm happy with that. 50s Prime TIme, Via Napoli, Biergarten and Homecomin.

Does anyone have any opinions of the table service restaurants at Universal? Are any worth it? We are planning to eat at the Three Broomsticks and probably the Leaky Cauldron, but that leaves 2 more meals to figure out.


As for life right now, pre-trip, we are living and breathing baseball. Henry is playing coach pitch for the first time. He's practicing 2-3 times a week and playing at least 1 game a week. Man, 7 year old baseball is...comical and frustrating. It's slow and they get bored and then something happens and they are all startled and then they make mistakes. It's a learning process.

Molly is just trucking along with school, figured out how she can get ahead and not get completely bogged down by the school work she's going to miss while we are gone. She's in 3 accelerated classes (geometry, English and biology) and biology especially is going to be hard to get caught up on. That teacher believes accelerated means more busy work rather than more in depth material. She yells at them a lot and tells them they should be working harder and doing more. Molly is not her biggest fan. I'm sure the teacher is going to have some criticisms of us pulling her from school, but I'm prepared.

I've been working on my shopping/packing list. I picked up some necessities at Target yesterday: a small first aid kit, travel bottles for face wash/lotion, a new thing of sunscreen, travel laundry detergent etc.

Question: How does everyone feel about the body wash/shampoo Disney provides at Pop? I'd really like to leave that stuff at home and just use what's there. Do they provide conditioner? I can't remember.

DH is just tooling along, working at his 9-5 all day and then working on his woodworking projects at night. He's currently building a dining table and matching bench for a work colleague. He builds quite a few custom pieces for others each year and a few things for us as well. He's also going to build a coffee table for another work colleague, who he already built a desk for, a set of cornhole boards for my cousin to give her DH as a gift and eventually he's going to build me some steps and a small deck to climb up to our above ground pool. It came with a ladder, but that thing feels super rickety for anyone bigger than Molly. I want to use the pool but I want to feel safe getting in and out.

He's built all kinds of stuff for our house, basically everything made of wood...coffee table, entertainment center, sideboard, bed, desks for both kids, toy shelves...he's really talented! He's also not happy unless he has a project to work on. He's not good at sitting still and relaxing. Luckily I'm good enough for both of us, bahaha! I can share pics of some of his work if anyone is interested.

 

[Bama Mom]

Question: How does everyone feel about the body wash/shampoo Disney provides at Pop? I'd really like to leave that stuff at home and just use what's there. Do they provide conditioner? I can't remember.

I know The wilderness Lodge had conditioner. I like their stuff but can't use it every single day so I take a travel size shampoo, conditioner and body wash and use mine every other day and theirs every other day. That way I can use mine but don't need to pack larger bottles of it.

 

[Where'sPiglet?]

We went again in Oct/Nov of 2012. I have NO Disney pics of this on my phone or FB. I think all of these pictures are on my laptop from way back then that won’t get on the internet so I have no way to get them. The only thing I do have pictures of is our time we spent in the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. Molly was, and still is, a very precocious kid. She started reading when she was 3 all by herself. During this trip she was almost 6.5 and she had been reading Harry Potter independently for over a year (she was reading at a college level by 4th grade so this wasn’t too shocking). She was SO into it. We let her read the first 3 books, but then we stopped her until she turned 7 and then added one book a year until she 10 and allowed to read the last one.

Oh, that's a bummer! If your old laptop has USB ports, you should be able to plug in an external hard drive and back them up.
You could then plug that external into another computer and move them again (or not), or upload them for printing or saving to a cloud-based photo storage site. (Flickr, Photobucket, SmugMug, etc.)

Good call on pausing the Harry Potter books...they get quite dark mid-series!

 

[Where'sPiglet?]

I don't know if I'd want to be a yearly Disney visitor though. I kind of feel like putting a trip every 2-3 years keeps everything fresh and new feeling. We don't feel like we JUST went. Since we can't afford to go every year I guess I'll never know if I'd get tired of it, lol!

April 17, Saturday- we live near Oklahoma City, OK. The airport is only about 25 minutes from us, BUT since OKC is a small market flights from OKC to Orlando are always expensive. Even though we do have non-stop flights they are rarely less than $175 round trip, sometimes up over $250 round trip. I don't like the idea of paying $1000 to get there if I don't have to! It takes us about 3-3.5 hours to get to DFW airport and flights were SOOOO cheap! So I got tickets from DFW to MCO for $52 each round trip! $208 all together for us to get to Disney World and back, woooooo!! We will have to pay to park our car at the airport for a week...unless I ask my family if we can park our car at their house, hmmmm.

Okay, I should be using multi-quote, but your flight prices! I am doing great if I can get round-trip to/from MCO under $500. You're flying 4 people round trip for less than what it would cost just me to get there. INSANE!

I'm flying out of a much smaller airport than OKC and there are no direct flights to WDW - I have to have at least one layover. Those factors both drive up the cost.

I do go yearly, though. At least the last few years. I have started to branch out and see other things in central Florida to keep it fresh. I love going and relaxing and enjoying the pools and resorts too.

 

[Where'sPiglet?]

I stayed at Pop Century in 2018, after they'd done the renovations. They are using the same H20 Products that they were using in the little 2oz containers. I enjoy using them and do not pack my own products. They have shampoo, conditioner, and body wash available in the dispensers.

I took this photo because the spigot was like this when I arrived. Turns out they're really easy to pop back on if you find it like this. During Covid time, they put plastic across the top with a sticker indicating that it has been sanitized between guests.

The renovations are really nice at Pop. I like all the extra storage they've added as well as adding a coffee pot in the room!

 

[debdebdebby13]

Oh, that's a bummer! If your old laptop has USB ports, you should be able to plug in an external hard drive and back them up.
You could then plug that external into another computer and move them again (or not), or upload them for printing or saving to a cloud-based photo storage site. (Flickr, Photobucket, SmugMug, etc.)

Good call on pausing the Harry Potter books...they get quite dark mid-series!

That was a great idea about using a jump drive. I did that and pulled some pics off, and they are all too big! We used our DSLR on that trip and while the pictures are awesome, they are too big to post. Now I guess I need to figure out a photo sharing website. We used photobucket back in the day, but I don't know if that's a thing anymore.

Okay, I should be using multi-quote, but your flight prices! I am doing great if I can get round-trip to/from MCO under $500. You're flying 4 people round trip for less than what it would cost just me to get there. INSANE!

I'm flying out of a much smaller airport than OKC and there are no direct flights to WDW - I have to have at least one layover. Those factors both drive up the cost.

I do go yearly, though. At least the last few years. I have started to branch out and see other things in central Florida to keep it fresh. I love going and relaxing and enjoying the pools and resorts too.

We are flying from Dallas, so it is non-stop, but from OKC it would've been over $200/person. The money savings there was insane. I don't love having to drive and get a hotel overnight, but it still doesn't come close to the price of us all going from OKC.

I stayed at Pop Century in 2018, after they'd done the renovations. They are using the same H20 Products that they were using in the little 2oz containers. I enjoy using them and do not pack my own products. They have shampoo, conditioner, and body wash available in the dispensers.

Perfect. Molly has super thick hair so she needs lots of conditioner. I was worried if it was the tiny bottles she'd go through one a day! The pumps are perfect.

 

[debdebdebby13]

I was notified yesterday by email that our flight to go back home was changed by Spirit. It was 1:40p and now it's 5:45p.

Whatever will we do with that extra time??? Previously I wasn't planning to use that day for doing Disney stuff at all since the ME would be picking us up at 10:45 (always a full 3 hours early! seems excessive, but whatever). Now we won't be picked up until nearly 3pm! That's nearly an entire day!

 

[debdebdebby13]

Since they changed our flight we can change it for free to something that works better. If I can get the website to work I'm going to change it to Sunday early. We originally picked the afternoon flight that way we'd be back in time to drive home before dark. Several years ago we took a trip to Disney where we drove to Dallas first and our return flight home was in the evening. We thought driving the 200 miles home would be no big deal. Well it was probably the worst drive we've ever taken because we were so tired. It was midnight and DH was struggling so hard to stay awake and I couldn't keep my eyes open either and we just felt very unsafe. Don't drive at night after a week at Disney!

So I'm going to change it to an afternoon Sunday flight that will arrive at DFW at 2:45pm. Then we should be back home by 7:30 or so and not midnight.

Which means ANOTHER whole day on vacation! Now that we have so much added time I think we are going to do a split stay. 4/16-4/21 at Disney Pop and 4/21-4/25 at Universal Cabana Bay. It's actually cheaper to do it this way than stay all those nights at Disney and get tickets only at Universal because they are doing a 40% off deal at Cabana Bay.

4/16 relax
4/17 MK
4/18 AK
4/19 EP
4/20 HS
4/21 IOA
4/22 US
4/23 Uber back to Disney to use our 5th park day on the last day we can use it...probably
4/24 maybe add a day at Volcano Bay? Henry loves the water.
4/25 finally heading back home. That's the last possible day we could leave. I think we will be so ready to be home by then.

 

[dez1978]

So you are telling my my 3-year-old "terrible 2 since forever" has a chance???

Lol I’m just jumping in here to say that I’ve described my oldest child the Sams as dear Henry here. Big emotions from the day he was born. Like seriously the hardest baby I’ve ever seen and my sister in law who was working in an infant room in a daycare agreed . He’s 9. Every year I’ve thought maybe next year will be better. Around 8.5 he kind of settled down. He’s still a huge pain sometimes but the terrible 2s only lasted about 6 years there’s hope!

 

[debdebdebby13]

Our stimulus will be dropping on Weds, so we can do our vacation shopping! The kids need new shorts! I need some shorts, heck, DH needs some shorts! We all need shorts! I think we are good on shirts and shoes.

 

[debdebdebby13]

On another note entirely...

This is the kids' spring break. They had off Friday, so we went to a place here called Martin Nature Park. It's in the middle of the city, but so peaceful! We saw a ton of animals and the weather was our version of perfect. it was overcast and 70 degrees with no wind, no wind is rare in OK. We hiked all around. I'll add some pictures to this post after I share it.

Friday was also our 16th wedding anniversary so DH and I went to dinner. He gave me a record player which I've been wanting for AGES. Saturday we took the family, because the kids are also totally fascinated by the record player, to Half Price Books and found a few records to listen to. We had a few at home already, but now we have started a nice collection.

Today DH has to put a coat of polyurethane on a dining table he's built for someone and Henry has baseball practice tonight so I don't think we'll get anything too adventurous done.

Wednesday we are driving to DFW to have a little spring break vacation. We'll stay a couple of nights at a hotel, visit with my best friend and her family and visit a few fun spots. I grew up in DFW and it amused me how, when I was googling things to do, places kept coming up that I visited on field trips when I was in elementary school, but that I hadn't thought about since then. I think we'll visit the Log Cabin Village and maybe the Ft Worth Water Gardens. I've also never explored the Ft Worth Stockyards so we'll do that. We aren't really country at all but it could still be fun. We'll also visit the Dallas Art Museum because it's FREE and Molly is our resident artist. I think she'll love it. The goal is to have a lot of fun without paying a lot of money. We are staying at Fairfield Inn and Suites and I got a good price on Hotwire, plus they have free breakfast, which is pretty much a requirement for me. I'm pretty excited about our little, mini-trip.

 

[debdebdebby13]

Pics from Martin Nature Park, it still looks like winter, which is unusual for mid-March here. The huge winter storm a month ago knocked our spring blooming back by several weeks.

We saw so many turtles! And we saw a small herd of deer that just hung out within 30 feet of us and didn’t seem afraid at all. Molly tried to join the herd, but they weren’t interested


I spy a bright red cardinal

 

[debdebdebby13]

Today we had to let our dog go. She was 12 and had been having issues for a while that all came to a head in the last week. We believe she had a tumor in her sinuses but we couldn’t afford the massively expensive MRI and subsequent chemo that it would have required. This morning she woke up unable to walk and her eye was beginning to bulge. She was very uncomfortable and just in bad shape. We took her into the vet and they agreed it was time.

So we are all feeling down today. We got her nearly 10 years ago. She was such a sweet heart and adored her people. We are definitely going to miss her.

I took this picture yesterday. This was probably the last time she was able to get up and move around. She was watching Henry be silly.


Sweet girl


She always watched for Molly to get home in the afternoon. Somehow she knew when it was about time for her to come home.


This is a cute pic a friend who was keeping her for us while we were traveling took. She's being so studious.

 

[Where'sPiglet?]

I am so sorry.

One of my dogs died yesterday too. It was unexpected and I am so, so sad.

 

[debdebdebby13]

I am so sorry.

One of my dogs died yesterday too. It was unexpected and I am so, so sad.

I’m so sorry you are going through this too!

I cried off and on all day yesterday. Today no tears, but I just feel down and blah. We’ve never been the type of people who treat our pets like our kids, but we were still very attached. She was the first dog I’ve ever had since we never had pets when I was growing up. Every time we come home I keep expecting her to be waiting at the door, but she’s not there

 

[Where'sPiglet?]

I’m so sorry you are going through this too!

I cried off and on all day yesterday. Today no tears, but I just feel down and blah. We’ve never been the type of people who treat our pets like our kids, but we were still very attached. She was the first dog I’ve ever had since we never had pets when I was growing up. Every time we come home I keep expecting her to be waiting at the door, but she’s not there

I came home from work and found him. I knew he wasn't well when I left for work, but I had no idea he would die. I keep thinking about if I had taken him to the vet instead of going to work, that maybe he'd still be here. (Maybe not, but at least I would know I tried.) I have two dogs, but he was the one that was my little shadow. He was always next to me and/or in my lap and so, so loyal. I spoiled him rotten, but I feel like I let him down on his last day. I just thought he'd get it out of his system and be fine, like the other times he'd thrown up.

 

[debdebdebby13]

I came home from work and found him. I knew he wasn't well when I left for work, but I had no idea he would die. I keep thinking about if I had taken him to the vet instead of going to work, that maybe he'd still be here. (Maybe not, but at least I would know I tried.) I have two dogs, but he was the one that was my little shadow. He was always next to me and/or in my lap and so, so loyal. I spoiled him rotten, but I feel like I let him down on his last day. I just thought he'd get it out of his system and be fine, like the other times he'd thrown up.

That’s so hard. It sounds like it was quick though. He didn’t suffer for days or weeks. They do leave an empty spot in our lives and hearts though. This is no fun.

 

[Where'sPiglet?]

That’s so hard. It sounds like it was quick though. He didn’t suffer for days or weeks. They do leave an empty spot in our lives and hearts though. This is no fun.

Thank you.

 

[debdebdebby13]

The kids had spring break this week. We decided to head to Ft Worth for a mini vacation Weds-Fri. We crammed a whole lot of fun into 2.5 days. We started with a room upgrade because our standard room at the Fairlfield Inn wasn’t ready yet. Our upgraded room had a sitting area with a fold out bed as well as 2 queens. So each of the kids had their own bed and Cor and I crammed ourselves in the same queen. That is tough when we’ve been sleeping in a king for quite a while.

We ate at Babe’s Chicken Dinner House which was yummy. The next day we visited Music Go Round and Molly got a bass guitar. She’s been wanting one for a while so that made her day. We met up with my best friend and her husband and we had lunch and then visited a place called Free Play. It’s full of old arcade games and pinball machines. It’s $10 to get in and then you can play all day if you want, you don’t have to pay to play any of the games. We had a blast there and today my pinball muscles, which I didn’t know I had, are sooooo sore!

Then we had dinner and headed back to the hotel. Yesterday was heading home day, but we did a bunch before we left. We went to a park with walking trails and a playground and the kids explored and Molly collected moss. Then we visited the Log Cabin Village in Ft Worth, which was a lot of fun and really educational. Cory and Molly and I all enjoyed it thoroughly and Henry tolerated it Then we visited the Water Gardens, which was pretty neat. It was busy though, lots of people out enjoying the lovely day.

We finally got home last night and crashed. Today I am exhausted! I don’t sleep well at hotels. I’m hoping I’ll sleep better during our Disney trip. It’s a hard adjustment, king to queen. Add in sharing a room with a floppy 7 year old who flails and talks in his sleep and it makes for a LONG night. I am a super light sleeper all the time so it’s a crap shoot as to whether or not I’m going to sleep well on vacation.

Now that our spring break trip is over it’s all Disney/Universal planning, all the time! I’m pretty pumped and it’s less than a month till we leave!

Here are a few pics from our time at the log cabin village and the water garden, basically the only pics I took the whole time we were out of town!


I didn’t make the long hike down to the bottom. My knees don’t love steps like that. I got to take good pics of the family though!