Single mom going with 4 kids. I must be crazy!!! July/August PTR

[Corrine 1973]

Hey everyone. It has been a couple of days since I have been on here so let me update you all. I went to the Doctor on Thursday (it was on way home from my son's HS so I decided to stop by after I picked him up) and they got me in then. I had to wait about 45 minutes but no big deal. I got the release from the doctor to return to work and will be starting back tomorrow. I then stopped by Walmart the next day and gave them all the paperwork and had them send the paperwork to Sedgewick for the short term disability. Still have no vehicle (though I am barrowing my boyfriends truck) but I am working on it.

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I am still stressing about the money I owe for my Disney trip. I did find out from my TA what the cost would be of our trip if I changed the Dinning plan to the QS plan. It would bring my remaining total to $124 which is a much more manageable amount than the $700 I still owe. I am still hoping to work it out though.

I did have a great day yesterday. Last fall I meet a man at Six Flags Great America at a show the park was hosting for Fright Fest. He was the head of a Paranormal team in my area and I was very excited to meet him. We have become fast friends. At the end of the year he announced that he was searching for new members to add to the team and to send in Bio's to him if you were interested. I have been interested in the paranormal for as long as I can remember and immediately sent in a Bio. Now things got a little crazy at this time. When he opened up the slots he said he said he was looking for 2 new members and they would be announced at the end of the year. Then shortly after he announced a new a member...and than another just a few days later. I was upset and sad because I though that was it. I had no chance but he announced that he decided to add one more so I perked up...a little.

Months go by and nothing. Oh well, It was a nice dream but no big deal. That is when he announced on facebook that he was adding 3 new members to the team and would be revealing their identities soon. What??? Who were these 3 people and could I possibly be one. I was talking to my son about this with my eldest son at Red Robbin when I received a message from him about an interview for a place on the team.

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Well fast forward a couple months and yesterday I helped with a event with the team called Spirit in the Spring in which we has speakers talk to us through out the day and some magic. I even meet a couple of writers including Ursula Bielski and Sylvia Shults (who I received a signed book from) and learned about a supposedly haunted movie called Return to Babylon. It was a great day and I can't wait to continue my adventure with this group.

This memory is also from out last trip. We were having dinner at Boma and I encouraged Aidan to try the butternut squash soup. As you can see in the picture he was hesitant to try by he ended up liking it.

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[lvcourtneyy]

Glad you were able to get into your doctor easily and can get back to work!

 

[ashw100]

Hi, joining in! I’ll be there at the same time, I’ve never been in the summer before. Your plans look good so far. I really like your shirt idea, can’t wait to see how they turn out. I’m sorry about your car accident. I really hope you can keep the regular dining plan if that is your wish. It’s never fun to downgrade the trip you’ve been dreaming of.

 

[Corrine 1973]

Glad you were able to get into your doctor easily and can get back to work!

Thank you!!!

Hi, joining in! I’ll be there at the same time, I’ve never been in the summer before. Your plans look good so far. I really like your shirt idea, can’t wait to see how they turn out. I’m sorry about your car accident. I really hope you can keep the regular dining plan if that is your wish. It’s never fun to downgrade the trip you’ve been dreaming of.

I have been there at end of May/ beginning of June a couple of times. This will be my second time during August. We did mid August a two years ago. It was hot but we drank a lot of water and took breaks in the afternoon. I ended up downgrading but I will talk about that a little more with the update.

 

[Corrine 1973]

I just realized that it has been forever since I have been on here and need to check back in and do an update. This have been crazy around here with the end of the school year coming and me starting back to work. So lets start this update.

So lets start on the Disney front. As of yesterday I am officially paid off!!!! Unfortunately I did have to downgrade my dining plan from regular dining to the quick service dining. I still have a little over a month to pay off the trip but it was stressing me out and since I have been struggling with money since missing a month from work I figured it was one last thing to worry about. So once I was paid some of the money I was owed I decided to just pay the $124 I owed with QS. I am not cancelling the dining reservations yet but part of me thinks this might be the best since I am with 5 people and QS might just be easier. I am still keeping the option open though. But I must admit that the almost $600 I am saving for dining and the other $200 I am saving for tips is swaying me to the Dark side.

So as of today there is only 78 days until our FP selection day. Which means I have about 18 days until I can make FP selections. I have lightly talked to the kids about what they want and have a game plan of what to go for. I tend not to look for certain time for everything but I try to start FP's about an hour after opening. So here is an idea of what we are going for.

July 30 - Pool time and Disney Springs
July 31- Epcot
1- Test Track
2- Mission Space
3- Spaceship Earth
August 1- Magic Kingdom
1- 7 dwarves Mine Train
2- Splash Mountain
3- Space Mountain
August 2- Disney's Animal Kingdom
1- Flight of Passage
2- Kilimanjaro Safari
3- Kali River Rapids or Dinosaur
August 3- Disney's Hollywood Studio's
1- Slinky Dog Dash
2- Tower of Terror
3- Frozen ever After
August 4- Magic Kingdom
1- 7 dwarves Mine Train
2- Big Thunder Mountain Railroad
3- Jungle Cruise or Peter Pan
August 5- Typhoon Lagoon

The last bit of information about the trip has to do with the flights. At the end of April I was reading FB and someone had mentioned that got an email from Southwest that their flights had been cancelled and they were trying to figure out what to do. It was followed by several comments of how similar situations happened to them. So I pulled up my emails and sure enough both of my flights had been cancelled and I was put on different flights. The flight to Orlando was landing about an hour and a half later and the flight back to Chicago was leaving about 3 hours earlier. Now I was not to concerned about getting to Florida a little later since it is already a early morning flight but I scheduled a late flight on the 5 on purpose so we could spend a full day at the water park and now we would have to leave the water park at about 4. Not horrible but I started looking to see what options I had. I basically had no options for Chicago because I originally booked the earlies flight on day one and latest flight on day 7 and they were both cancelled. My new flights were the best I could do. But since I live in between Chicago and Milwaukee I checked out their flights. They have flights pretty close to our original times but would not let me change them on line so I make a phone call. I tell them what happened and ask if I can change airports since they have similar times. (I was fully aware that the new flights were over $50 more expensive both ways and they may say no). She tells me that they don't normally do this but since it is their fault I am inconvenienced that they would change it for me at no cost. So here are my new flights out of Milwaukee instead of Chicago.

July 30
Departing Milwaukee 6:05 am
Arrives in Orlando at 9:45 am

August 5
Departing Orlando at 10:45 pm
Arrives in Milwaukee at 12:25 am

 

[Ohhlookitsnic]

Hope you're having a magical time on your vacation !

 

[Ohhlookitsnic]

113 DAYS LEFT TO PLAN!!!!!
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So right now I am kind of at a stand still of planning. I have written everything down in excel, since I need my lists, but aside from watching daily YouTube videos what is left to do. Usually I would be getting our outfits together for our trip but since this trip is the most expensive trip we have been on (and I still owe money) we are not going to go as crazy as I have in years past. I have bought my youngest son a few outfits at Walmart and a pair of Mickey swim shorts. I also bought my daughter a cute dress for $10 at the Disney Outlet. But either than that we will sadly just go with cloths we already own though we will be pulling out every Disney shirt we have. And I have a lot of them. I am also going to make us each a shirt for either our first day or for our first MK day. The plan is to have each shirt a saying and a small castle. Mine will say "Here for the Magic", Liam's will say "Here for the food", Ameliya's will say "Here for the snacks", Aidan's will say "Here for the rides", and Rylan's will say "Here for the first time". Now that I am thinking about it I should start working on them soon.

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Now let me tell you a little bit about the second slider in my signature. A Disneyland trip!!!! A couple of weeks ago my son came home from school and told me some exciting news. The arts department at his school was planning on taking a trip to Disneyland next year for Spring break. Of course that got my brain's gears spinning in excitement since I have been wanting to go for years but have always decided to go to WDW instead. What better excuse to go to DL than to be a chaperone for my son's fieldtrip. Unfortunately when I learned the cost I knew that was not going to be in the cards. The cost of my son's trip was almost $1900 (might go down if a lot of people go and when actual things are booked) and mine would be a couple hundred more (learned it was because they put 4 kids in a room but only 2 in the chaperone rooms). Sigh. Oh well that was a nice thought. But then something magical happened. I posted on a Facebook about my son's spring break trip and a friend contacted me. She wanted more information because she wanted to see Liam preform at DL. I told her that I did not have all the info yet but I would give it to her once I got more information. Since I had already mentioned on the page that I wanted to Chaperone but it didn't look good because of the cost, she knew my situation. This is where to Magic comes in. She offered to help me out and get me in the parks for free (she is a CM at the local Disney Outlet). Wow, just wow. I thanked her very much for her offer and let her know I would think about it.
Fast forward a couple weeks. A few thing had happened during that time. I had the already mentioned car accident and I hurt my back in the accident and have missed some work because of it. Liam and I had already sat down and had a talk. He knows that we are not rich and we have to save hard to go on the trips we go on so I stressed to him the need of him to take advantage of the fundraisers. He told me that since he has a job this summer (will be a Host for shows at Six Flags Great America) that he would save for his trip. He's a good kid. So last Tuesday I went to the meeting at the school to get more information about the trip. Now since nothing is booked and they need to make sure there is enough interest the plans are not cemented.

March 21-26, 2020
Day one: Flight, spend time at the beach, dinner
Day two: Getty Art Museum, Tour of Hollywood, Dinner, Free time at LA Live, and a Musical
Day three: Disneyland and a Preforming arts workshop through Disney
Day four: Disneyland and Performance
Day five: Universal Studios and Griffith Observatory
Day six: Return home​

Sounds like a lot of fun and I was still hoping to figure something out to at least be in the LA area even though I would not be chaperoning. I sent my friend a text in the parking lot to let her know when the dates were being planned. She was very apologetic since she felt that she was forcing herself in the trip and would not be mad if I didn't want her to tag along but would be willing to split costs with me if that would help. I basically told her that splitting costs at this moment would be the only way I could go and I would love to go with her.

So it looks like I will be going to Disneyland next March!!!!







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Poor Liam- Insane that last year that trip would have been the talk of the kids... Then Corona closed it all down =( Hope you were able to get some $$ back and the everyone is keeping safe !