She's Going To Show Him The World, a September 2016 PTR

[GrandCalifornian]

Introduction and Background:
This is a Pre-Trip Report for our upcoming trip, which will be September 10-19, 2016. As we have in our other trip reports, Paul will write his portions in Blue and Melissa in Orange.

Hi everyone! We are so excited to start planning for our next Disneyworld trip!

After visiting WDW three Septembers in a row, we are back for another PTR. This time we'll be going in September 2016.

It was really sad leaving last year and not knowing when we'd be back.

But we knew we'd be back, eventually. We also knew that there could be some changes for our next WDW trip...

BIG Changes...

Actually a little tiny one.

Our last trip to Disneyworld was officially our last trip as a family of three.

Yep, Melissa is pregnant and Marshall is due to arrive in December.
But we are getting ahead of ourselves. First, the introductions for those of us who are already here.

Who:
I'm Paul, a 35 year old Daddy, Mechanical Engineer, and car guy.


My first WDW trip was when I was five, but I didn't get to go back until our honeymoon in 2007. My favorite WDW park is Epcot, and favorite ride is Test Track. My favorite movie ever is Cars, and my favorite character is Tow Mater.

I'm Melissa, I'm 31 and Allie's mommy.


My family owns an elevator company here in Southern California. I do a little bit of everything here in the office mostly focusing on database administration and process automation, oh and most importantly getting lunch. I have a degree in Agriculture Science and I love animals and agriculture. My favorite WDW park is Epcot followed closely by Animal Kingdom. My favorite Disney characters are Stitch and Perry the Platypus.

This is Allie, she's going to be six in 9 days!


She's super excited about that. She is a huge Disney fan like her parents and her first trip to Disneyland was at 7 weeks old. As she gets older she has more influence in our planning and decision making for the trip which is a lot of fun. She's in Kindergarten this year three days a week and she's with me in the office the other two. She is also in ballet, tap, jazz, and swimming. She is a big fan of Girl Meets World on Disney Channel and really enjoyed the new Descendants movie (where did Disney Jr. go??). She has lots of favorite characters and this year she wants to be Jasmine for Halloween.

This little guy is Marshall.


We get to meet him in early December and we can't wait! His favorite pastimes are currently pretending to be a ninja and not cooperating for ultrasounds. He'll be right at 9 months old for our trip next year and flying with an infant is going to be a new experience but we are so excited to get to introduce another little one to all the Disney magic.

He will be young for this trip, but we'll just have to be sure to take lots of pictures to show him how much fun he had. We'll also have to start thinking about a trip before he turns three, since that was a great time for Allie's first trip, but we'll just focus on one trip at a time for now.

Who Else:
The rest of the who for this trip is still to be determined, as my parents are planning on joining us again, Melissa's parents are considering it, and we have some friends who are super in to Disney and would like to join in on one of our WDW adventures, so look for more details on that to come.

When:
We really enjoy going in September, and have decided to plan our trip for September 10-19 2016, which starts one year from today. That means we'll have a whole year of PTR planing to share.

We are huge planners and think that looking forward to a trip is half the fun. We have a lot of details to figure out for this trip as well and it's nice to have alot of time to get everything figured out.

Where:
Speaking of details, another big one is Where, and this time we are currently hoping for a return to the Wilderness Lodge.


This is our favorite WDW resort, and while we truly enjoyed POR last trip (and it still isn't out of the question for this one) we think the location of WL with its proximity to MK and boat transportation options will be great with an infant.

Plus we LOVE the lodge. I also think Allie will really enjoy the new kids splash area and with an infant we might be spending more time at the resort.

A potential issue for the trip is the construction at Wilderness Lodge. Our trip will be right in the middle of a multi-year project to add additional capacity to the resort by adding cabins along Bay Lake and replacing the Villas pool. This has scared some people away from the resort, but after visiting it during the construction of the main pool last year, we still felt staying there would have been fine, and we have faith that Disney will keep it enjoyable.

We are actually hoping that the construction keeps some of the crowds down. The biggest thing that would affect our trip would be a potential closure of Roaring Fork while we're there but I'm sure we could even work around that.

Yes, and that is speculating way far in the future at this point (so calm down everybody, we have no top secret Roaring Fork refurbishment information, we just figure it will eventually be part of the resort upgrades.)

So here goes the big PTR kick off!

Let the planing, ananlysis, and contemplation begin!

 

[GrandCalifornian]

Table of Contents and Links to Prior Reports:

Introduction
Legoland Birthday Trip
AP Price Increase
A Saturday at Disneyland
Marshall is Here
Marshall's first Disney Evening
Airfare is Booked and We're Excited
Free Dining Day - Not So Much
Free Dining for All
Double Digit Day
Paid In Full Day
Magic Bands are Here
First Day of School
Recycling Dresses

Prior Reports:
She's free before she's three, touring the world with a toddler: September 2012 Trip Report
She turned 3, but the DDP's Free, a WL Bounceback PTR: September 2013
She's a Princess, a Superhero, and a Rockstar -a September 2013 Trip Report
She's Turning Five at Disney World - a September 2014 PTR
She's Five at Riverside - September 2014 Trip Report

 

[Wood Nymph]

I'm very excited about following along as you plan your return to WDW. We liked our short stay at POR and plan to return for free dining in June with our son and two grandsons - preferred room this time. But WL is really a beautiful resort and I think it will be a lot easier to stay there with a baby.

 

[WDWKOOK]

Welcome back! It's great that now we'll be able to see (before and after haha) photos of Marshall and Allie's birthday and her Halloween costume, too. It's hard leaving any favorite vacation destinations not knowing when or if you'll return so it's great you're booked. Will you try and apply a discount later? One year from now will be your first full vacation day!

 

[GrandCalifornian]

I'm very excited about following along as you plan your return to WDW. We liked our short stay at POR and plan to return for free dining in June with our son and two grandsons - preferred room this time. But WL is really a beautiful resort and I think it will be a lot easier to stay there with a baby.

Welcome! Thanks for joining in. We are glad you enjoyed your Port Orleans trip, where was your room? We did really like having the preferred location. While we enjoyed our POR trip WL is our favorite, it will be so nice to be "home" for this trip.

Welcome back! It's great that now we'll be able to see (before and after haha) photos of Marshall and Allie's birthday and her Halloween costume, too. It's hard leaving any favorite vacation destinations not knowing when or if you'll return so it's great you're booked. Will you try and apply a discount later? One year from now will be your first full vacation day!

We are so excited to be back, although we never really stopped following the WL thread. We will be sure to share pictures of both birthdays this year. Allie has decided she wants to go to Legoland so we are venturing out of the Disney bubble for her birthday. We'll let you know how that goes.

Our booking plan is to rebook when discounts come out in the spring. Ideally a room only with Premier passes. This would mean our first trip not on the dining plan which will be a new experience. We'll post more about that here.

 

[Wood Nymph]

We are glad you enjoyed your Port Orleans trip, where was your room? We did really like having the preferred location. While we enjoyed our POR trip WL is our favorite, it will be so nice to be "home" for this trip.

We were in building 25 - room 2504 - king bed, corner room, first floor, about as close to the quiet pool as you can get without being in the water. It was very close to the west side bus stop, which was nice. When it was pouring rain the night I watched Bob Jackson I took the DTD bus from the South depot to the west depot for the short walk back to the room. I loved the pool area. And the room was very quiet. But DH had the drapes tightly drawn so no one could see in, which it took away the benefit of the corner view. I would have left the drapes open in the daytime because the Venetian blinds would have kept prying eyes out. That is when I really missed not having a balcony.

I booked the free dining BB for myself, our son and two grandsons. I've never seen free dining in June before and this works perfectly with the school schedules since everyone is out of school by then, including my sister who is a teacher. DH will be booking a room only bounce back when we are at Disney in October. He'll book a preferred room, too, and hopefully he'll get a king bed which connects to our son's room. I noticed from the floor plan that there are a lot of king bed rooms that connect to regular rooms at POR.

My two sisters and their friend will be joining us which will be a lot of fun.

Our booking plan is to rebook when discounts come out in the spring. Ideally a room only with Premier passes. This would mean our first trip not on the dining plan which will be a new experience. We'll post more about that here.

This will only be our second time with the dining plan and we only got it because of the kids. It will save a lot of money for them. But we prefer to go without it. DH won't have it but we will share credits and that should work well.

 

[GrandCalifornian]

We were in building 25 - room 2504 - king bed, corner room, first floor, about as close to the quiet pool as you can get without being in the water. It was very close to the west side bus stop, which was nice. When it was pouring rain the night I watched Bob Jackson I took the DTD bus from the South depot to the west depot for the short walk back to the room. I loved the pool area. And the room was very quiet. But DH had the drapes tightly drawn so no one could see in, which it took away the benefit of the corner view. I would have left the drapes open in the daytime because the Venetian blinds would have kept prying eyes out. That is when I really missed not having a balcony.

I booked the free dining BB for myself, our son and two grandsons. I've never seen free dining in June before and this works perfectly with the school schedules since everyone is out of school by then, including my sister who is a teacher. DH will be booking a room only bounce back when we are at Disney in October. He'll book a preferred room, too, and hopefully he'll get a king bed which connects to our son's room. I noticed from the floor plan that there are a lot of king bed rooms that connect to regular rooms at POR.

It sounds like you did pretty well, but the Preferred room would be a nice upgrade. We enjoyed the corner room, and did open the drapes some, but we agree it isn't as good as having a balcony, especially when someone wants privacy in the room.
Taking the bus in the rain was a great idea, and you might have stayed dryer than with a preferred room.

My two sisters and their friend will be joining us which will be a lot of fun.

Sounds like fun. This will be the biggest group we have planned for, but we are pretty good at coming up with a plan and sharing it, so people can decide which things they want to do.

This will only be our second time with the dining plan and we only got it because of the kids. It will save a lot of money for them. But we prefer to go without it. DH won't have it but we will share credits and that should work well.

We have crunched the numbers lots of times, and we do pretty well with the plan. I also really enjoy not having to think about individual meal costs. Mentally it helps to know it is taken care of ahead of time. Free dining is often a great deal, and we may do it this time, but it doesn't co-exist well with the possibility of getting annual passes. Last year we had the passes already so we purchased the minimum number of park days for free dining on the bounceback, but that won't work as well this time, so we may try something different.

 

[Wood Nymph]

We have crunched the numbers lots of times, and we do pretty well with the plan. I also really enjoy not having to think about individual meal costs. Mentally it helps to know it is taken care of ahead of time. Free dining is often a great deal, and we may do it this time, but it doesn't co-exist well with the possibility of getting annual passes. Last year we had the passes already so we purchased the minimum number of park days for free dining on the bounceback, but that won't work as well this time, so we may try something different.

We have annual passes, too, but I'm going to have to buy a ticket to get the free dining for my son and grandsons. Staying in a moderate resort makes it worth the trouble, though. These two grandsons will be 12 and 10 so they will get the adult dining plan. The oldest one really eats so I think they will make good use of the snack credits.

 

[WDWKOOK]

We have crunched the numbers lots of times, and we do pretty well with the plan. I also really enjoy not having to think about individual meal costs. Mentally it helps to know it is taken care of ahead of time. Free dining is often a great deal, and we may do it this time, but it doesn't co-exist well with the possibility of getting annual passes. Last year we had the passes already so we purchased the minimum number of park days for free dining on the bounceback, but that won't work as well this time, so we may try something different.

You know I'm not a DDP fan, but love TiW. With TiW, we get only the exact food we want, nothing more, nothing less and I don't feel obligated to stick o a specific dining formula. For us, it pays for itself after 4 meals (for 3 people). I don't feel any obligation to eat a dessert or worry that my appetizer isn't included. I can get the app or an adult beverage and get 20% off.

With the DDP, we ended up ordering some food that we wouldn't have ordered OOP and not getting some we would have liked. I understand its appeal to you, and especially those with larger parties, but for us, TiW is best. It's also better for us in conjunction with CL. The last time I ran the numbers for the DDP, I think our "savings" over the same items OOP would have been the equivalent to one snack a day per person. When I've compared exactly what we purchased OOP over several days with what we would order with the DDP, for us, TiW works better along with a percentage off room discount.

 

[CuteAsMinnie]

Looking forward to traveling along with yet another of your fabulous PTR!

Congrats on embarking on a wonderful time for your family!

Happy planning!

 

[GrandCalifornian]

We have annual passes, too, but I'm going to have to buy a ticket to get the free dining for my son and grandsons. Staying in a moderate resort makes it worth the trouble, though. These two grandsons will be 12 and 10 so they will get the adult dining plan. The oldest one really eats so I think they will make good use of the snack credits.

Oh yes. We love our snacks. They make up a good portion (about 10%) of the value of the dining plan. Also you can hit some buffets and other all you can eat places to fill those boys up.

You know I'm not a DDP fan, but love TiW. With TiW, we get only the exact food we want, nothing more, nothing less and I don't feel obligated to stick o a specific dining formula. For us, it pays for itself after 4 meals (for 3 people). I don't feel any obligation to eat a dessert or worry that my appetizer isn't included. I can get the app or an adult beverage and get 20% off.

With the DDP, we ended up ordering some food that we wouldn't have ordered OOP and not getting some we would have liked. I understand its appeal to you, and especially those with larger parties, but for us, TiW is best. It's also better for us in conjunction with CL. The last time I ran the numbers for the DDP, I think our "savings" over the same items OOP would have been the equivalent to one snack a day per person. When I've compared exactly what we purchased OOP over several days with what we would order with the DDP, for us, TiW works better along with a percentage off room discount.

We will do TiW if we wind up going the AP and room only route. We set up a spreadsheet with average meal costs of the restaurants we are considering and the potential discount options (I'll probably do a post about it sometime later as we use it to decide which way to go), and using TiW would save us money. Our initial numbers show that the out of pocket food cost would be $1391. With AP discounts that drops to $1368, and TiW drops the total cost to $1349, even including the cost of TiW. It doesn't save us as much as it does others because neither of us drinks adult beverages, otherwise the savings would be more significant. The question will be whether we can save enough with a room only discount and AP merchandise discounts to offset the extra $1349 we'd spend on food compared to if free dining were to be offered. There is also $144 in tips which aren't in the OOP total since we'll have to pay them either way. We generally do follow their dining formula, but can see how not having to think about it would be nice, as would getting appetizers sometimes instead of desserts. It is also interesting that our total covered food cost is less than $100 more than the $1302 Disney charges for the DDP, so the plan itself doesn't save us much, but getting it free might. Figuring it out will be a fun math puzzle.

Looking forward to traveling along with yet another of your fabulous PTR!

Congrats on embarking on a wonderful time for your family!

Happy planning!

Welcome and thank you! We are glad to have you following along. We'll post updates here to share the preparation with everybody, especially as we get to meet our newest family member.

 

[KT0191]

Following along! My son (who will be 3) and I will be going during the same dates. Except 9/10-9/17. We just got back from CBR on Sunday and booked the BB for CBR again.
Can't wait to see all of your planning!

 

[GrandCalifornian]

Following along! My son (who will be 3) and I will be going during the same dates. Except 9/10-9/17. We just got back from CBR on Sunday and booked the BB for CBR again.
Can't wait to see all of your planning!

That's great, welcome and congratulations on booking your return trip! As you can see in our prior reports, we are big fans of going when they are two and then bouncing back the following year (or two..) With our daughter it was fun to see how much she remembered from year to year, but also how much more input she came to have on what she liked to do. Do you have any plans from this year that you want to repeat next time? How about things you didn't get to that will be first on the list for next year? That was one of our favorite things about the bounceback, we felt like it gave us a chance to hit the things we missed the first time.

Now we are at the point where we want to do more planning, but have to wait until more details come out. That's ok, it is part of the fun of planning trips for a year. Soon we'll post an update about ADR planning as we make some of the most important choices, where we want to eat!

 

[njkastle]

Hello! I am Gramma Nancy. Grampa Jim and I get to go on this adventure next year with Paul, Melissa, Allie and Marshall. We are SO excited to get to do this again. We live in Arizona and don't get to see the kids as much as we used to, but when we do it is always a good time. Paul is a planner. He got that from me. He has planned two trips for us to Disney World already and we know #3 will be awesome too. It is so nice to have the details taken care of before we even get there. Melissa takes the best pictures. We are lucky to have her along for that and the patience she shows with any hassles that come up during traveling from one coast to another. We just loved Wilderness Lodge and Port Orleans on trips #1 and #2, but it will be special to get to go to Wilderness Lodge again. It reminds us of the Grand Californian where the kids got married.

We have resort reservations and set up a Disney Trip savings account. Can't wait for what comes next. Hoping for free dining. Gotta put in one more jumping icon because it is how I feel about this trip.

 

[GrandCalifornian]

Hello! I am Gramma Nancy. Grampa Jim and I get to go on this adventure next year with Paul, Melissa, Allie and Marshall. We are SO excited to get to do this again. We live in Arizona and don't get to see the kids as much as we used to, but when we do it is always a good time. Paul is a planner. He got that from me. He has planned two trips for us to Disney World already and we know #3 will be awesome too. It is so nice to have the details taken care of before we even get there. Melissa takes the best pictures. We are lucky to have her along for that and the patience she shows with any hassles that come up during traveling from one coast to another. We just loved Wilderness Lodge and Port Orleans on trips #1 and #2, but it will be special to get to go to Wilderness Lodge again. It reminds us of the Grand Californian where the kids got married.

We have resort reservations and set up a Disney Trip savings account. Can't wait for what comes next. Hoping for free dining. Gotta put in one more jumping icon because it is how I feel about this trip.

Hi Mom! We're glad you got to the trip report, and it is so cool that you guys have the trip booked too. We are going to have a great time again. Is it time yet? We'll share lots of planning stuff here as we wait out the next 359 days. Here's my bouncing figment, just for fun!

 

[njkastle]

Good choice. Figment was a big part of our trip when you were 5!

 

[Wood Nymph]

Hello! I am Gramma Nancy. Grampa Jim and I get to go on this adventure next year with Paul, Melissa, Allie and Marshall. We are SO excited to get to do this again. We live in Arizona and don't get to see the kids as much as we used to, but when we do it is always a good time.

Hi Nancy. Our two daughters live in other states from us, too, and we've had some great trips to the WL with them. Allie and our grandson were born on the same day, which has been a fun coincidence. In fact, we are getting ready to visit them for his birthday this weekend.

 

[GrandCalifornian]

Allie celebrated her 6th birthday last weekend, and we ventured to Legoland.


While this was different than her fifth birthday in Disney World, she still had a great time and we decided to share the day in a mini trip report on the CA section of the DIS boards, which you can check out here.

Hop on over and check out us Disney veterans become newbs in a new park.

There hasn't been much other WDW planning going on, but we are looking forward to it and spending spare time talking about ADRs. We'll post some of those plans soon.

We have been busy preparing for little Marshall and keeping up with Allie's activities. She's moving up a level in her swim class and all three of her dance classes this month. This Saturday though we are headed to Disneyland so we'll post some about our day next week sometime.

 

[GrandCalifornian]

Hi everybody. It has been a little bit since we posted here, but we are still excitedly planning our WDW trip. The plans got a bit of a curve ball yesterday when Disney announced the annual pass price increases. We're not complaining about it (or debating why they did it) but it does look like the AP option doesn't make sense for our WDW trip anymore. For those who want to see the over analyzed details, this post is for you.

Paul generally has me cross eyed with all the numbers but that's why I keep him around

Our baseline for comparison is a package at WL with 8 day park hopper and waterpark tickets which prices out at $4415. We are hoping to get free dining with the package (so the plan cost is not included in that total), but we calculated out the anticipated dining cost so we could see if there was a better option out there.

Calculating the dining cost was a bit of an exercise, but using the values for average meals at each of the restaurants we are considering from an online calculator here I filled out my own spreadsheet with the anticipated full price of the meal, price with AP discount, and the price with Tables in Wonderland. Then I set up the spreadsheet so we could pick our choices from the larger list and have it calculate the total meal cost for each option.


Initially, it worked out that the total with Tables in Wonderland was $1389, compared to $1441 without discounts. Unfortunately, adding an extra $50 to this negates our savings, making the total $1439. Interestingly, we could do better with just the regular AP discounts, which would come in at $1413.

For our lodging, if we go room only we expect to be able to get a room only discount of as much as 30%. I added a field in the spreadsheet for this, and compare the total cost of the discounted room, the minimum out of pocket cost food option, and the cost to upgrade Disneyland annual passes to Premier passes to the package price.


Initially these values were within $30 of each other (which we could likely cover with AP merchandise discounts) but with the increase the AP Room Only option would now cost $5279, which is $863 more than the package price. We also priced out doing what we did last year, where we purchase the minimum package to get free dining, but use APs for our park tickets. This works out to $5527, but we would have three days of base tickets to use at some future date.

It sucks cause I wanted a golden ticket!

We also priced out one other room only option, in which we could take advantage of our leftover 2 day magic your way base tickets from last year. This works out to be the cheapest option, and even paying full price for our meals the total cost comes to $4306. It means we only get about $110 total out of our leftover passes from last year though, and we would have to deal with paying out of pocket for food. Depending on discount availability, it is still definitely an option though. We'll have to see when discounts are announced.

Some other interesting information from the spreadsheet was that most QS meals are very close in price, and the average cost only varied by a few dollars. Our total for QS dining was $413.85 Also we did include the cost of snacks we would get if we were on the dining plan, because we love our snacks. They totaled $106. We even accounted for the resort mugs, which would cost us $53.97 if we don't get the package. With the way we dine, we are a great fit for the dining plan since we use up all of our credits and visit a few high cost character meals. We plan on one additional TS meal out of pocket, but this can be our last morning breakfast at Whispering Canyon which will be less than $50, even without any discount. When we compare our meal cost to the cost of the dining plan, we do save a little money, but not a whole lot since the plan would cost $1302. For me, the big benefit of "free" dining is not having to feel the pain of each highly priced meal during the vacation. I'd rather have it taken care of ahead of time.

Though the price hike on AP's here are depressing they make the trip to Disneyworld look like all that much better a value.

Yes they do, now I can go back to my spreadsheets comparing cell phone plans...

 

[njkastle]

Oh my goodness!!! This is why I just say "OK" when my son tells me what I should do. I credit undamaged brain cells from his healthy living and his passion for Disney. This is the guy to go to Disney World with!