macsandy1957
Mouseketeer
- Joined
- Mar 23, 2014
- Messages
- 89
So..... Eric and I are planning to return to Disneyworld.
When: Fall 2014, probably being there on his birthday, November 3rd.
Who we are: Sandy (that's me) 56 y/o Mom of
Eric, 32 y/o mentally handicapped son, functioning age 10-11.
We are from Oklahoma.
(I tried to add a pic of us but couldn't figure it out, dangit)
What we want to do: All four Disney Parks and SeaWorld, and one day at the beach. Eric also wants to do Universal, but I'm wanting to skip it this trip.
We will probably do a 9-night trip and stay in All Star Movies. We stayed in Movies 3 years ago, and it was nice enough for us. We spend very little time at the resort anyway and our preferred room was right next to the dining hall and bus stop. I told Eric we could stay in a different resort, but he's a creature of habit and wants to stay at Movies.
I applied for the Southwest 50,000 points cc, and plan to use it to pay for my resort and tickets. If the fall discounts are not announced before I have to spend my $2000 on the SW card to get the points, then I'll buy Disney gift cards to use when fall discounts are announced. I've never used points for airfare so hope I can figure it out. But still it should make the airfare free + $99 annual fee + like $20 in fees. Hope it works out that way.
I'm not experienced at saving money on trips, I'm more of a spend-to-the-end kind of girl, but need to keep this trip within our means. We are quick service diners, always just want to grab something and get back to the fun, so hoping for free dining. I'm also considering doing a character dining for Eric's birthday. I just hope he would get attention from the characters since he's a kid inside but looks 32 on the outside. His biggest deal of all at Disney is to meet the characters. For that reason, I got a Disney Credit Card, because they have a private character meet and greet. However, I don't seem to be able to get any information about that, hmmmmm.
My financial plan is to pay for the entire trip in advance. It's easier to save up for something you really want, than to pay off something that's already over. We are already doing great on saving!!! Go us!!!
About the beach, last trip we rented a convertible and headed out to Clearwater Beach. We froze our butts off, but we kept that convertible top down!!!! The beach was lovely but too cold to swim. So I was thinking of driving further south this time. I'm not sure if that would be enough for warmer weather or not. Plus I don't really like driving that much, and Eric doesn't drive, of course, so not sure I want to head out on a 4 or 5 hour drive. However I guess we could do it at the end of the trip and fly home from Miami or something.
As for our plan in the parks, I tried doing touring plans last time, but we are both too distractible and couldn't stick to the plan. Eric just wants to stand in every line that has a character at the front, and I just want to eat Dole Whip, and we are both big shoppers. I'm hoping to present him with gift cards and say 'when it's gone, it's gone', but we'll see how well I stick to that.
We don't do park hoppers as one park a day is plenty for us. We can't take advantage of the late magic hours, because we go to bed early but do the park that has early magic hours. We usually have breakfast, qs, at the resort, then head for the park of the day. We stay till after lunch, then head to the room for a rest, and head back to the park, grab a quick meal in the park, and leave at around 7, then to the room to relax and go to bed early.
Last time, I did laundry at the resort and want to avoid that if I can this time. Also, we always buys lots of t-shirts, so I'm only going to pack like 4 and we will wear our new ones as we buy them. (I hate to wear them before they are washed but it won't kill us) It's a long trip to not do laundry but with Southwest doing two free checked bags (I hope that's each) we will just take more, bring back a lot. Last time I packed an empty duffle bag, which was our dirty clothes bag, so went with two bags, came home with three.
I plan to buy the memory maker ahead to save $$, we didn't know about it last time and lost a day of pics, won't happen this year. I thought of making a book on shutterfly with all the Eric and character pics from 2011, for him to use as an autograph book, but don't know since that would be pics from 2011 trip and autographs from 2014. Or I could just scan in the autographs and add to his book after the trip. I made him a very cool hardback book with lots of photos and gave it to him for Christmas and it was a big hit. Will definitely do that again.
I don't want to carry anything in the parks as last time I felt like we were pack-mules! A fanny pack on each of us should be enough for essentials, like our phones, aspirin, tums, rain ponchos, $$ and tickets. What else do we need really?
About Sea World, We won't ride the Manta again, and that's my only definite plan there. Yikes!!!!!!!
Sorry these are the ramblings of a mind in the very early planning stages. Is this the jump-all-over-the-place way everyone's mind works or is there something wrong with me??????
When: Fall 2014, probably being there on his birthday, November 3rd.
Who we are: Sandy (that's me) 56 y/o Mom of
Eric, 32 y/o mentally handicapped son, functioning age 10-11.
We are from Oklahoma.
(I tried to add a pic of us but couldn't figure it out, dangit)
What we want to do: All four Disney Parks and SeaWorld, and one day at the beach. Eric also wants to do Universal, but I'm wanting to skip it this trip.
We will probably do a 9-night trip and stay in All Star Movies. We stayed in Movies 3 years ago, and it was nice enough for us. We spend very little time at the resort anyway and our preferred room was right next to the dining hall and bus stop. I told Eric we could stay in a different resort, but he's a creature of habit and wants to stay at Movies.
I applied for the Southwest 50,000 points cc, and plan to use it to pay for my resort and tickets. If the fall discounts are not announced before I have to spend my $2000 on the SW card to get the points, then I'll buy Disney gift cards to use when fall discounts are announced. I've never used points for airfare so hope I can figure it out. But still it should make the airfare free + $99 annual fee + like $20 in fees. Hope it works out that way.
I'm not experienced at saving money on trips, I'm more of a spend-to-the-end kind of girl, but need to keep this trip within our means. We are quick service diners, always just want to grab something and get back to the fun, so hoping for free dining. I'm also considering doing a character dining for Eric's birthday. I just hope he would get attention from the characters since he's a kid inside but looks 32 on the outside. His biggest deal of all at Disney is to meet the characters. For that reason, I got a Disney Credit Card, because they have a private character meet and greet. However, I don't seem to be able to get any information about that, hmmmmm.
My financial plan is to pay for the entire trip in advance. It's easier to save up for something you really want, than to pay off something that's already over. We are already doing great on saving!!! Go us!!!
About the beach, last trip we rented a convertible and headed out to Clearwater Beach. We froze our butts off, but we kept that convertible top down!!!! The beach was lovely but too cold to swim. So I was thinking of driving further south this time. I'm not sure if that would be enough for warmer weather or not. Plus I don't really like driving that much, and Eric doesn't drive, of course, so not sure I want to head out on a 4 or 5 hour drive. However I guess we could do it at the end of the trip and fly home from Miami or something.
As for our plan in the parks, I tried doing touring plans last time, but we are both too distractible and couldn't stick to the plan. Eric just wants to stand in every line that has a character at the front, and I just want to eat Dole Whip, and we are both big shoppers. I'm hoping to present him with gift cards and say 'when it's gone, it's gone', but we'll see how well I stick to that.
We don't do park hoppers as one park a day is plenty for us. We can't take advantage of the late magic hours, because we go to bed early but do the park that has early magic hours. We usually have breakfast, qs, at the resort, then head for the park of the day. We stay till after lunch, then head to the room for a rest, and head back to the park, grab a quick meal in the park, and leave at around 7, then to the room to relax and go to bed early.
Last time, I did laundry at the resort and want to avoid that if I can this time. Also, we always buys lots of t-shirts, so I'm only going to pack like 4 and we will wear our new ones as we buy them. (I hate to wear them before they are washed but it won't kill us) It's a long trip to not do laundry but with Southwest doing two free checked bags (I hope that's each) we will just take more, bring back a lot. Last time I packed an empty duffle bag, which was our dirty clothes bag, so went with two bags, came home with three.
I plan to buy the memory maker ahead to save $$, we didn't know about it last time and lost a day of pics, won't happen this year. I thought of making a book on shutterfly with all the Eric and character pics from 2011, for him to use as an autograph book, but don't know since that would be pics from 2011 trip and autographs from 2014. Or I could just scan in the autographs and add to his book after the trip. I made him a very cool hardback book with lots of photos and gave it to him for Christmas and it was a big hit. Will definitely do that again.
I don't want to carry anything in the parks as last time I felt like we were pack-mules! A fanny pack on each of us should be enough for essentials, like our phones, aspirin, tums, rain ponchos, $$ and tickets. What else do we need really?
About Sea World, We won't ride the Manta again, and that's my only definite plan there. Yikes!!!!!!!
Sorry these are the ramblings of a mind in the very early planning stages. Is this the jump-all-over-the-place way everyone's mind works or is there something wrong with me??????
