PTR - New year, new trip, new adventures

[Suziewan]

Hello all! Welcome to my (kind of) first ever pre-trip report! After moving our dates and changing who is traveling I decided to abandon the old pre-trip report I had started and take a do over.

Let me introduce the cast for our trip; first there is me, Angie, I'm 42, happily separated and on my way to divorced. I have an employer who is very generous with vacation and I believe in taking advantage of every last minute of it. I also believe that life is about experiences more-so than things, so if I have to choose between the two, I'll always take experience. I have a love of traveling that I haven't fully indulged yet, but I'm in the beginning stages. For now, we are quite happy with our local trips and our Disney trips in North America, but I hope to take my DS to explore other continents in the not so distant future. I spend many hours researching and planning future vacations

That brings me to the 2nd member of our crew on this trip, my son Cameron, who is 7 years old. He is exceptionally talkative and has been since language burst out of him just after he turned 2. Prior to that he had a few words and would occasionally put a couple of them together, but at 26 months he started speaking in complete sentences one day and never looked back. Cam has a great sense of humour and makes me laugh out loud often. He will turn 8 on this trip, so we will be celebrating that as well as just being in the most fabulous place on earth.

You can see us in my avatar, but that is the 'nice' picture...here is what we really look like:

As for the new theme...we were planning to be in The World on December 29th originally; I have always dreamed of spending a New Years Eve there. BUT, with the Stay/Play/Dine offer we could save SO MUCH by just moving our dates forward by 4 days that I couldnt resist, so we have new dates - we will be there from January 2-January 11, 2013. We were just there on a trip with friends in April, but on that trip, we redid many of the things we loved so much on our previous (first) trip in 2010; so my goal on this trip is to try as many new things as possible. We wont exclude all our favourites, but Im sure we can fit something NEW in to each day.

Ill save the third person, and the details related to that for the next post.
Ive enjoyed many nights reading the PTR or TRs of others. I hope some of you will follow along and give me your feedback on our plans, your ideas and thoughts on my PTR in general.

LINKS

Who else may join us?
Daily Plans Part 1
Daily Plans Part 2
Coming soon -- My surprise countdown scheme for DS.

 

[Suziewan]

We may have one more family member joining us, and that would be my mom. First of all, we have to make sure she can come; she'll try to clear that with her employer on Monday, but let me tell you about her anyway. She is not a traveler and likes nothing more than to spend quiet days reading when on vacation. She is also not easily impressed by new places and things, I think because she feels that to be impressed would be disloyal to the everyday and average things in the place we're from. She is a country girl at heart and loves the simpler things in life. You may be asking yourself, "Why would Angie drag such a person to the most fabulous place on earth?" Good question; and I'm not sure it's the right thing to do, but hear me out.

I would love for her to come with us to experience the magic  because it was pure magic for me on our first trip  and to experience the trip with a child. My hope is that our enthusiasm will be contagious and that she will love every moment as much as we do. Frankly, if she enjoyed it half as much as we do that would be enough.

Here is a picture of her on our last vacation. If she joins us we'll have to have a pool to bet on how many pictures will show her with her eyes closed -- this is how most of our family photos look -- she is incapable of not blinking when a camera is pointed her way. I wonder if the PP photographers will be able to overcome this trait??

 

[Suziewan]

THE FIRST HALF:
Here are the high level plans we have for the first half of our trip; some of our dining may end up changing if my mom joins us; all our reservations are for two at the moment, so I anticipate there may be some we wont be able to change to a threesome.
We will be flying from Toronto bright and early...leaving at 6:30 am -- I'd like to get there early for our first day and that also leaves room for any weather related delays As I mentioned previously, my goal is to do something NEW each day.

Wed Jan 2nd Flights are now booked and we should land in Orlando at around 9:20 am, so I figure we will get to Pop Century by 11:00 or so. We have 9 day park hoppers for a 10 day trip, so this day I'm planning to distract Cameron by exploring AOA next door, maybe checking out DTD, then letting him go for a swim in the evening after dinner and possibly catching an outdoor movie. Any 8 year old Canadian boy would be thrilled to swim outdoors in December, and if the air is cold it will just give him more to brag about when we get home! This will be our NEW thing for the day.

Thu Jan 3rd The plan is to spend our first day at Epcot; Cam and I both enjoy it just a teensy tiny bit more than the other parks, so its up first. There are many new things for us to do here...they include arriving in time for Rope Drop, Turtle Talk with Crush, and Agent Ps World Adventure Cameron has done Kim Possible before when we visited the world in April with another family, but is a huge Phineas and Ferb fan, so this will have an exciting new feeling about it. New dining experiences will be to have lunch in Morocco and we have ADRs for Le Cellier for dinner. I'm incredibly excited about this day!

Fri Jan 4th Magic Kingdom! Again we'd like to try to arrive in time for Rope Drop for the first time, well also visit Ariel's Grotto and the Hall of Presidents as our new activities for the day. New dining will be done at Sleepy Hollow I'm dying to try waffle sandwiches and dinner at Be Our Guest! I cant wait! We've never sat and watched a parade, so if were still up for it well try to catch the 9:00 Main Street Electrical Parade.

Sat Jan 5th Today will be our only day at Animal Kingdom. This is not our favourite park, we enjoy it, but its one where we normally feel one day is enough. Newness -- In our previous two trips we've never made it to Asia, so thats one goal and well also try for Expedition Everest (DS is tall enough now, but is he brave enough???) and Kali River Rapids (is it still running in January?). For lunch we'll probably just have snacks like eggrolls and pretzels from the food carts also new for us. We have an ADR at 1900 Park Fare (new to us) at 5:40, I may try to move that one a little earlier because this will be our last day to be able to book the Pirates and Pals cruise which I'm planning on giving DS as a pre-birthday surprise. I need some guidance here I wonder if we had our ADR at 5:00 would we have enough time to eat and get back to Magic Kingdom for a 7:30 cruise? Ive read that they are normally held Friday through Monday and it doesn't really fit for any of those days for us because of the timing of our ADRs, I think Ill try to move the one for 1900 Park Fare a bit earlier...

Sun Jan 6th Cameron's birthday!!! If anyone is reading this...PLEASE...share with me your ideas for starting this day of with some magic. He will have gifts, of course, and we will head to DTD to have lunch at T-Rex (a surprise, and new) and then to make a car at Ridemakerz. For dinner he chose Teppan Edo, so were headed there for 6:15 and then the evening is open. This would also be a good date for the Pirates Cruise, but I suspect he may want to play with some of his new things or go for a swim, he might like to go watch the outdoor movie in the evening....theres no telling. I wonder if he'd like it if we had a birthday announcement or something at the movie I could order cake...hmm....I should call to see what possibilities there are.

 

[Suziewan]

And on the the 2nd half of our plans...


Mon Jan 7th -- Hollywood Studios today! With any luck our new experience this day will be to get Cameron on to the Jedi Training roster along with a first visit to The Magic of Disney Animation and maybe American Idol. We'll have a new experience of dining at Mama Melrose's at 2:20 followed by our 2nd time to Fantasmic at 6:30. Not sure, but it's likely we'll be hungry again by the time we get back to POP and may go check out the food options at AOA.

Tue Jan 8th -- Back to the Magic Kingdom If we missed some of the things we'd never done before on our first day here, we'll try to catch them up this day. Lunch and dinner will be at restaurants new to us -- Pinocchio's Village Haus for lunch and then over to the Contemporary for dinner at The Wave.

Wed Jan 9th -- Back to our favourite, Epcot Lunch plans are at the Liberty Inn and dinner at The Garden Grill with Chip and Dale -- both new restaurants for us. I hope to make it all the way around the World Showcase this day -- a first for both of us -- I've been almost all the way around, and DS has been about half way (he did Kim Possible with a friend on our last trip while I browsed nations).

Thu Jan 10th -- 2nd day at Hollywood Studios. I definitely want to try for Rope Drop here this day, which will be new to us and to get our butts over to TSM asap for some fastpasses. We'll try a new (to us) counter service for lunch and dinner is planned for the 50's Prime Time Cafe. DS is afraid to eat there because we've been watching youtube videos of people being embarrassed there! He's been working hard on keeping his elbows off the table.

Fri Jan 11th -- Our flight is at 2:00, so we'll have to be ready to leave by 11:00, so this will be a short day. Nothing new planned, but we'll start the day off with an old favourite: breakfast at 'Ohana with one of Cam's favourite characters...Stitch. Our last day also includes a flurry of last minute shopping in the resort gift shop as I finally decide on items I've been mulling over all week.

 

[redoschi]

Great Plans Angie!

You mentioned you've never been to Asia in AK. In addition to Expedition Everest (one of my favorite attractions in WDW) I think you can't miss the Maharajah Jungle Trek which are some trails where you can see tigers, bats and komodo dragons amongs other asian animals! Another similar not-to-be-missed attraction is the Pangani Forest Exploration Trail in Africa where you get to see gorillas, meerkats and hippos.

I'm not sure if you've done this as its between Asia and Dinoland, but Finding Nemo the Musical is a lot of fun also!

 

[Suziewan]

Update!

We are just 4 days out and so excited!

• [*]My mom is not joining us as she couldn't get the time off work.
  [*]January 5th plans have changed; we have friends from Tampa visiting us that day and will do something off property with them (Old Town I think). That means we don't have an AK day planned, so we may try to get there on January 2nd, our first day to see if we can do Kali River Rapids before it closes for refurbishment.
  [*]I've cancelled the T-Rex reservation and plan to surprise Cam with ice cream for breakfast at Ghiardelli instead...dinner at Teppan Edo is moved up to 3:40 so that we can be ready for our Pirates and Pals cruise which I've booked for his birthday!
  [*]We have reservations for the Tomorrowland Dessert Party on Jan 4th so I'll finally get to see a parade and Wishes.

 

[redoschi]

Hope you have a happy new year and a wonderful trip!

Can't wait to know how Cam reacts to all his birthday celebrations! Ghirardelli sundae for breakfast would be dreamy when I was a kid! (actually it is still dreamy right now! )

 

[EastYorkDisneyFan]

I always like following along with ptrs and trs of fellows cunucks. What part of Toronto are you from?

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