Set to fail??

[StarWarsMomofGirls!]

I'm kind of thinking that it might just be a good idea for them to move for one night, that way they can quickly return to the Poly to catch their ride back. But moving for one night sounds like such a pain.
The other option is to switch Thursday to MK all day, then AK on Friday.

Switching rooms will be kind of a pain for one night but it would be easier to catch magical express from MK for sure.

 

[becauseimnew]

We are 57 days from our trip. I'm so excited, but you know what the worst part of a surprise trip? Not being able to share the excitement with anyone else. DH is excited, but he's not into trip planning like I am.

Our plans are almost finalized. Most of our dinning reservations are made. I have set my alarm and reminder for 4:55AM tomorrow to get us Tusker House breakfast reservations.

I made mostly lunch reservations inside the parks. For our first day we have Jungle Cruise Skipper's Canteen, I'm mostly excited about sitting down and enjoying their Sangria after riding our favorite ride:


For our second day we have lunch reservations at 50s Prime Time Café - not really excited about this, was hoping to get Sci-Fi but being day 2 of the trip that wasn't possible. I'm also waiting for Disney to extend their hours so I can get us a late night reservation to Oga's Cantina. We went to Oga's when we were in Disneyland last year and they girls really enjoyed the drinks there. I wasn't a fan of mine so I'm hoping to try something new.


I was having a difficult time trying to plan our AK day, I'm still unsure about it, but I ended up making Yak & Yeti reservations for us. I'm not sure if we'll actually keep them or just hit Nomad lounge at 10:30AM for some snacks and drinks then have a late lunch at Satu'li. For dinner I have 6:30PM reservations for Via Napoli, I would like to stay at AK until close then hop over to Epcot for dinner, hoping to be able to change that reservation to 7:30PM, again waiting for hours to be extended.

For our rest day I was able to book a cabana at Stormalong Bay - I know we'll be ready to sleep in and relax all day. Maybe we'll run into some fun characters again, like we did on our last trip. I did make us reservations at The Boathouse in Disney Springs, I think this will be the only day we'll be able to go to DS.


Wednesday is our second HS day, I was able to get us Sci-Fi reservations for this day. I don't have dinner plans as I think we'll probably head to Epcot again this evening.
It's so fun to look back through pictures and see how much our girls and the parks have changed. This is from our first day on our first trip.


On Thursday we move over to the Poly - I think this is what I'm most excited about. I have AK for our park day, I had decided not to make lunch reservations on this day and just go with the flow, but then they finally announced the opening of Tusker house. I plan to make a late (like 11:15) breakfast reservation. I think our group will enjoy the breakfast food more than the lunch menu. Fingers crossed things go as planned.

We don't have any reservations for our last park day, as our friends will be leaving mid-morning. I'm still holding hope of Ohana to open.

These are 2014, 2016, 2018, 2019

For our last meal at WDW, I plan to have a late breakfast at Chef Mickey's.


And that is all that I have. I can't wait to make more memories.

 

[becauseimnew]

I woke up at 4:55 this morning to get Tusker House Breakfast reservations. I was able to get us 10:15AM reservations, I'm a little bummed about the time, I was hoping I could get a 10:45 reservation but turns out breakfast only goes until 10:30AM and there were no 10:30AM reservations.

I'll wait for some reports, but at this point I think we may not keep the TH reservations.

 

[becauseimnew]

Hi friends,

We are less than 72 hours from our flights to Orlando for our Universal trip. I have so much to do to get ready.
The girls just returned from their grandparents. DH was up at super early this morning for his flight to Denver. He had an uneventful flight there, hung out for a couple of hours until the girls' flight arrived. He met them at their gate then walked over to their departure gate and flew home, they were home by 2PM. Glad DH was willing to spend his morning flying to meet them at their connecting airport, next summer we will just let them fly alone.

I think I'm done with the over-planning for Universal. All that is left is to pack. I went ahead and made dinner reservations for every evening, lots of reports of super long waits or just being turned away. I tried to make in-park lunch reservations but there aren't many in-park restaurants open.

I also bought snacks for our flight, we normally take the girls to buy snacks before our trip but since we probably won't tell them until we get home from work on Friday afternoon, we won't have a chance to take them to the store.

Tomorrow DD2 will go to her BFF's going away sleepover party. Speaking of going away parties, last night DH and I went to our friends' (the Ts) going away party, it was nice to hang out with them one last time before they move to the west coast. I think the hardest part of their move is breaking up our girls, they have been BFFs since PreK. They spend so much time together, the most common question we get: "how is J (DD2) handling the move?" The most common question the Ts get asked: "Is J moving with you guys?" It just breaks my heart knowing that they won't see each other everyday.

Thursday I'll make sure everyone's laundry is done and folded. I think I'll be able to get DD2 and I packed on Thursday. I don't think they'll even bother unpacking their suitcases, it usually takes then a solid week to unpack.

Friday, I'll work until 11:30AM (I'll take our older dog to my cousin's house) DH will be home by 1:30PM. When DH gets home we'll tell the girls, I'll take our young lab to be boarded (he's still a PITA playful puppy and no one wants to dog sit him). My plan is to be out the door by 2:45PM, swing by Chick-Fil-a and head to the airport for our 4:45PM flight.

And in case you missed it, Disney announced that Ohana would open in July and reservations would be open June 10th! I've already set my Thursday alarm for 4:30AM. I am going to eat so much bread pudding and vanilla ice cream.

 

[Marrila]

Your plans sound amazing!

 

[StarWarsMomofGirls!]

All of your dinning resrevations sound great.

 

[becauseimnew]

It's been a while since my last post. No real updates on the Disney trip.

We've been back from our Universal trip for over a week. I wish I could be more excited but honestly it wasn't as fun as our previous trip. I think the big reason is that SW cancelled our return flight 4 hours before our departure, we ended up having to stay an additional 2 nights which wasn't in our budget (just means we have to be extra careful with our money the rest of our summer). The parks were super crowded, the food/snack/drink lines were super long, the express line took longer and there were storms delays every day.

After our original 4 nights at Royal Pacific, we moved to Cabana Bay and honestly I wish we would have just stayed there the entire time. I didn't really enjoy RPR, I really can't put my finger on a specific reason why I didn't enjoy it.

We did get to ride Velocicoaster twice, it was awesome! We only road Hagrid's once, which was a disappointment considering we rode it 6/7 times during our November trip.

We leave for Glacier later this week and I'm really nervous about flight delays/cancellations. I really don't want to be stuck in Montana.
I'll be back with a real trip report for our Glacier trip.

 

[mlayman7]

It's been a while since my last post. No real updates on the Disney trip.

We've been back from our Universal trip for over a week. I wish I could be more excited but honestly it wasn't as fun as our previous trip. I think the big reason is that SW cancelled our return flight 4 hours before our departure, we ended up having to stay an additional 2 nights which wasn't in our budget (just means we have to be extra careful with our money the rest of our summer). The parks were super crowded, the food/snack/drink lines were super long, the express line took longer and there were storms delays every day.

After our original 4 nights at Royal Pacific, we moved to Cabana Bay and honestly I wish we would have just stayed there the entire time. I didn't really enjoy RPR, I really can't put my finger on a specific reason why I didn't enjoy it.

We did get to ride Velocicoaster twice, it was awesome! We only road Hagrid's once, which was a disappointment considering we rode it 6/7 times during our November trip.

We leave for Glacier later this week and I'm really nervous about flight delays/cancellations. I really don't want to be stuck in Montana.
I'll be back with a real trip report for our Glacier trip.

I just read through your trip report so far. We are in a similar situation. I am planning a big trip for December/January and we just got back from Universal because of Volcano Bay. After going there for the first time, we realized how great that water park is. We enjoy Typhoon Lagoon and Blizzard Beach as well but if we had a choice, Volcano Bay would be our first choice without a question. Thankfully our Southwest flights departed on the days they were supposed to but both ends of the trip were delayed by no pilots and just bad flight schedules? They never really told us why our return trip was delayed by 45 minutes. Initially they said due to incoming hurricane but uh, the flight was coming from Illinois and the hurricane is still in the Caribbean today so did not buy that excuse then we were stuck on MCO tarmac for 60 minutes because our originally scheduled time of departure was 45 minutes prior so we were at the back end of other planes departing on their scheduled time. I am really looking at trying Spirit airlines out in January. I have loved Southwest but after this trip, I am willing to try something else and Spirit will be cheaper, even after paying extra for assigned seats and bags. Still nervous to switch so haven't decided on it yet. Just can't imagine Southwest coming close to that price with the increases they've done so far for fall/early winter travel.

 

[becauseimnew]

I just read through your trip report so far. We are in a similar situation. I am planning a big trip for December/January and we just got back from Universal because of Volcano Bay. After going there for the first time, we realized how great that water park is. We enjoy Typhoon Lagoon and Blizzard Beach as well but if we had a choice, Volcano Bay would be our first choice without a question. Thankfully our Southwest flights departed on the days they were supposed to but both ends of the trip were delayed by no pilots and just bad flight schedules? They never really told us why our return trip was delayed by 45 minutes. Initially they said due to incoming hurricane but uh, the flight was coming from Illinois and the hurricane is still in the Caribbean today so did not buy that excuse then we were stuck on MCO tarmac for 60 minutes because our originally scheduled time of departure was 45 minutes prior so we were at the back end of other planes departing on their scheduled time. I am really looking at trying Spirit airlines out in January. I have loved Southwest but after this trip, I am willing to try something else and Spirit will be cheaper, even after paying extra for assigned seats and bags. Still nervous to switch so haven't decided on it yet. Just can't imagine Southwest coming close to that price with the increases they've done so far for fall/early winter travel.

I think our delays had to do with a "glitch" they had earlier in the week causing hundred of delays, which in turn caused cancelled fights.
Our Montana flights went smooth, we had some delays but nothings too bad. There has been such crazy weather all over the country that it really does affect a lot of flights. Hopefully the fall won't have crazy weather.

Southwest did provide 3 $250 vouchers, which was nice, I wish they would have covered our additional 2 days but oh well.

 

[becauseimnew]

Hello Friends!
We are back from our looong holiday weekend trip to Montana.
Every year my goal is to visit a new state, a new national park & Disney. At the end of the month we'll hit the 3rd goal.
We had a wonderful time and checked 3 new things from our bucket list: new state for all of us, another national park & we saw a bear in the wild.

A little about our trip to Montana. We flew out at 8PM on Friday night, arrived in Bozeman at 11:30PM. Getting an Uber took 45 minutes because we needed an Uber XL, we had 2 carry ons, a large suitcase and our cooler.

The flowing day we drove from Bozeman to the east side of the park. When we arrived at Glacier we hiked to Apikuni Falls, it was a beautiful hike. It is a short 2 mile round trip hike, it looks bare at the falls but the wild flowers were in full bloom making it the perfect first impression of the park.

We were lucky enough to score a room in the park at Swiftcurrent Motor Inn, which is the starting point to Grinnell Glacier. We didn't make it to Grinnell Glacier, the trail still had snow on it and we ran into the ranger who didn't recommend we hike on the snow packs as they were quickly melting. But we did make to the lower lake, which is beautiful. This was a tough 8 mile hike.

That night we moved to Rising Sun Motor Inn, another motel inside the park. The parks are having a hard time staffing up the hotels and restaurants, the staff at the motel suggested we head into town for dinner. On our way back from dinner we saw this guy crossing the road. We were so excited, DD2 actually cried tears of joy.

The girls had milkshakes with dinner and were so hyped up that we decided we needed to get another hike under our belt before bedtime. This was another short evening hike to another waterfall. St. Mary's Waterfall, a short 2 mile, relatively flat trail (the starting/endpoint had elevation change).

We had planned on taking it easy on our 3rd day, which meant a 6 mile hike to Avalanche Lake and whitewater rafting.



That night we stayed in Whitefish, not only was it a holiday weekend but it was also a Monday which means that half of the restaurants in Whitefish are closed. We were not prepared for that dinner situation, we walked into 3 restaurants all quoting 2 hour waits. We were able to finally get food without having to wait 2 hours. We had cauliflower crust pizza at Montana Tap House, cauliflower crust was the only option, but it was fine and we only waited 30 minutes for our food.
On our last day at Glacier we decided to hike the Highline trail, which had just opened 2 days earlier. The Highline Trail is a point to point 12 mile hike, but with limited shuttle system most people hike to Grinnell Glacier overlook and back, which makes it a 14 mile round-trip hike. We knew that our girls didn't have 14 miles left in them, we decided that we would hike 10 miles.

The views were amazing, but it was a hot day without any shade. So glad we decided to only hike 10 miles, no way the girls could have done anything more than that.
We flew home the following day, Wednesday.
It was the perfect amount of time, I didn't feel like we miss out on anything.

We are 19 days from our trip to Disney. I've got some thoughts on that but I'll share those on another post.

 

[StarWarsMomofGirls!]

What a trip! It looks beautiful!

 

[becauseimnew]

We are less than 3 weeks away from our trip. I'm hoping Disney updates their August hours soon, 9PM closing during summer hours is lame. They did extend Hollywood Studios hours until 9PM, so that's great. But as of right now they don't have firework times posted, so I'm assuming they will adjust hours soon.

I'm really worried we won't have a good time. Disney has increased capacity at the resort and parks but I don't think the staffing levels are back up to the same level as guest capacity.

When we booked this trip COVID was in full swing and I was prepared for the reduced attractions/amenities but because that meant reduced guest capacity. As we all know that isn't the case anymore. I'm upset that they haven't brought back housekeeping but resorts are fully booked. I wish I could postpone this trip until next year but it's too late. Disney should have waited until they were fully staff to fully reopen.

I was trying to keep up on the Here Now & Just Back thread trying to be as prepared as possible, but things are changing so fast that's it's hard to keep up weekly changes that will be different by the time we go. Also, a lot of talk about the terrible wait times.

I hope Disney continues to increase staffing levels, fingers crossed that things improve in the next three weeks.

The only big change since my last pre-trip report update is that I cancelled our Ohana reservation, the reports haven't been good, not terrible just not $55/person good. I ended up booking us a table at Trails Ends for $30/person.

We also haven't told the girls about the trip, we will have tell DD1 soon as she is going to miss cheer practice that week. We won't tell DD2 until the night before, and will cut communication with her BFF until the following day when we see them at the airport.

 

[StarWarsMomofGirls!]

We are less than 3 weeks away from our trip. I'm hoping Disney updates their August hours soon, 9PM closing during summer hours is lame. They did extend Hollywood Studios hours until 9PM, so that's great. But as of right now they don't have firework times posted, so I'm assuming they will adjust hours soon.

It seems like Disney is figuring things out as they go, right now.

I'm really worried we won't have a good time. Disney has increased capacity at the resort and parks but I don't think the staffing levels are back up to the same level as guest capacity.

I hope you guys manage to have a good time, regardless.

We also haven't told the girls about the trip, we will have tell DD1 soon as she is going to miss cheer practice that week. We won't tell DD2 until the night before, and will cut communication with her BFF until the following day when we see them at the airport.

EXCITING!!!!!!

 

[becauseimnew]

Hi friends, it is Disney week!
We told DD1 about the trip last week, DD2 was in Washington visiting her BFF, she still doesn’t know. DD1 is sooo excited, but sad she’s missing out on several cheer events. This is her first year doing cheer, we had no idea how much she would miss out by going on vacation the first week in August. I counted and next summer we only have a 7 week window for trips because of cheer practice.

I don’t think I’m prepared for this trip. I haven’t done any packing; I need to order disposable masks and Friday will be here before we know it.

I’ve also decided to buy a subscription to Touring Plans. I was getting really nervous about the long waits but was also reading about the inflated posted wait times. I feel a little better about our plans.

I did change up our park days for the 2nd half of our trips.
These are our plans:
Saturday we'll be at Magic Kingdom, my plan is to be at DME by 7AM - I know that's going to be tough for our friends that are on west coast time so I’ve created two plans for that day. One that has us there by 9AM and a second one that has us there at 10:30AM.
We have lunch reservations at Skipper’s Canteen. We’ll take a break from 2PM to 5PM, come back to finish off the evening with Happily Ever After.

Sunday we’ll walk over to Hollywood Studios with lunch reservations at Sci-Fi for some milkshakes. After our afternoon break we’ll be back for some rides and the return of Wonder World of Animation, before we grab a night cap at Oga’s Cantina.

Monday we have lunch plans at Yak & Yeti, I’m just there for the Ahi Tuna nachos. We’ll be here until about 3PM. We have dinner reservations a Via Napoli, I’m bummed that Epcot closes at 9PM that day as Tuesday is our rest day, and I was hoping to stay out late. We still have dinner reservations at the Boathouse on Tuesday, hoping to head over to Disney Springs around 4PM.

Wednesday is our second Hollywood Studios day, we have lunch reservations at Beaches & Cream, we’ll take this afternoon to pack for our move over to the Polynesian Resort. We don’t have evening plans, I’ll leave it up to the group to decide.

Thursday morning is going to be rough, we’ll have to be up early to take our luggage to the bell desk for our transfer all before the 8AM Magic Kingdom opening. Because we changed park days last week, we don’t have any ADRs for this day. I had a Trails End reservations but cancelled because of the bad reviews.

And our final park day we head over to Animal Kingdom for one last Flight of Passage. Our friends fly home at 2PM, I’m guessing they’ll have to leave AK at 10:30AM. We might change this to a Magic Kingdom day, I’ll leave it up to our friends. Either way we’ll eventually make it over to AK for one last FOP before ending the night at MK.

Our flight isn’t until 6PM on Saturday, we don’t have Disney park tickets for that day but we do have passes at Universal so we might head over to Volcano Bay for the day.

 

[StarWarsMomofGirls!]

Have a great trip!!!

 

[Meglen]

Following! Have a great trip!

 

[becauseimnew]

Have a great trip!!!

Thank you!

Following! Have a great trip!

Thank you!

 

[becauseimnew]

Two more sleeps until travel day! And THREE until our first park day.
Disposable masks have arrived and are pretty comfortable. Our director(at work) suggested we start wearing mask again, even if we are vaccinated so I've been wearing a masks at work all week. I'm going to take care of laundry and packing tonight, then focus on chores on Thursday.

 

[becauseimnew]

Our trip starts is in less than 48 hours and we made some hotel changes. A garden view room at the YC finally opened up for the last days of our friends' trip, I was able to extend their first reservation by one night and cancel their Poly reservation, now they don't have to move! There is still availability at the YC for our last 2 nights, we could just stay there the entire trip, but I talked it over with DH and he doesn't mind moving over and is excited about trying out a new resort.

Disney has also changed their masks policy and I feel a lot better about our trip now, I was going to make DD2 wear a masks indoors as she isn't old enough to be vaccinated, she wasn't happy about it but now everyone has to wear a masks. I was really happy when Disney dropped the masks policy because I didn't want all our ride pictures to be masked pictures, but the health & wellness of my baby is more important than pictures.

 

[StarWarsMomofGirls!]

Disney has also changed their masks policy and I feel a lot better about our trip now, I was going to make DD2 wear a masks indoors as she isn't old enough to be vaccinated, she wasn't happy about it but now everyone has to wear a masks. I was really happy when Disney dropped the masks policy because I didn't want all our ride pictures to be masked pictures, but the health & wellness of my baby is more important than pictures.

Good news about the hotel room find. that will be good for your friends, moving for one night is rough.

I am glad they are back to masks indoors. I know it ruins ride photos but like you said health is more important. And I think it helps in Disney for kids who can't vaccinated yet. I mean it's Disney.

Have a great trip!