Spending my first Mother's Day in Disney Baby's First Trip! May 2013 PTR Updated 5/18

[dtr_angel]

Day 3 (Part 1)
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[dtr_angel]

(images from google images)​

 

[dtr_angel]

**all images found on google images**​

 

[khertz]

Plans are coming together nicely. You guys will sure be keeping busy! How fun to spend your first Mother's Day in WDW. What a great way to celebrate your very first one as a mommy!

 

[lsenquiz]

joining in. We are also going in May/june timeframe. We are staying at the Beach Club Resort. This will be our first time as we usually stay at Boardwalk. My DS is actually kind of disappointed that we are not staying at the hotel with the clown pool. He loves that pool

You will love the Boardwalk area if you get a chance to head over there. It is so much fun especially in the evenings.

 

[Alysa]

Your trip sounds wonderful - glad it's back together for you! I was in Disney for my first mother's day too and it was magical. Enjoy!

 

[dtr_angel]

Plans are coming together nicely. You guys will sure be keeping busy! How fun to spend your first Mother's Day in WDW. What a great way to celebrate your very first one as a mommy!

I can't think of a better place to do it. Actually I cannot think of a better place to do anything, even if it's just sleep

joining in. We are also going in May/june timeframe. We are staying at the Beach Club Resort. This will be our first time as we usually stay at Boardwalk. My DS is actually kind of disappointed that we are not staying at the hotel with the clown pool. He loves that pool

You will love the Boardwalk area if you get a chance to head over there. It is so much fun especially in the evenings.

Oh I would love to stay at the Beach Club! Since we have an odd group, we would've needed 2 rooms at the BC and it was not in the budget unfortunately. We definitely want to stay there soon though! I would LOVE walking to Epcot and being on the boardwalk. I'm glad your son is not afraid of clowns, lol. Thanks for joining in!

Your trip sounds wonderful - glad it's back together for you! I was in Disney for my first mother's day too and it was magical. Enjoy!

Thanks! I can't wait to have these memories with my son

 

[dtr_angel]

Today might end up being a "choose your own adventure" kind of day. (Does anyone remember reading those books as a kid?! I always had to read it both ways haha)

This is our only day I have scheduled for Animal Kingdom. Say WHAT?! It's no secret that this is my least favorite park. There is flexibility in the schedule though if we need to go back. In fact (spoiler alert!) part of our last day is reserved for going to do whatever we need to revisit. Anyway, we will be going to the park at rope drop to take advantage of the morning there.

My plan is to head straight to Expedition Everest. Despite me not being a fan of roller coasters, I like this ride. Daniel and I in the past have done this first, rode with no wait a few times and then moved on to another area of the park. My only gripe (okay one of many hah!) is that the park seems so spread out. We could pull some FP to ride later, but I think we'd be better off saving the FP for another ride.


Let's breakdown the rest of attractions, as I don't have much of a strategy beyond that right ow

MUST DO:

-DINOSAUR ride. I don't know why but I love this ride.

-It's Tough to Be a Bug show. I love this for the up close views of the tree of life. Plus you get super cool bug glasses. It's a cute show too.

- Kali River Rapids - I think this is worth pulling a Fast Pass for the afternoon. It will be super hot. I think this will be the perfect last attraction before we leave the park. Since we will have to do rider swap - who is going to volunteer to get soaked twice? Hubby or brother...

You WILL get soaked!

-Kilamanjaro Safaris. ABSOLUTELY.MUST.DO. In fact, maybe we'll head here after riding EE.

Where else can you get that close to those animals?

-Exploration Trails - Hubby wants to see the tigers so we will do this. We will NOT see bats or birds, I promise. Okay *I* can promise that *I* will not see those things.

I am hoping to squeeze in two shows that we have never seen - Festival of the Lion King and Finding Nemo the Musical

TAKE IT OR LEAVE IT:

-Anything in Dinoland USA. We've walked through here, but it seems like a bunch of kiddie rides. I'm sure soon we will be spending time here, but on this trip we can skip it. Unless brother wants to ride anything.

-anything else I didn't bother listing

So that leads us to lunch. This is where things might get tricky. Here is the choose your own adventure part of the day. So the basic plans was to spend the day at Animal Kingdom, rest and whatnot in the middle of the day at the hotel, then spend the evening at Downtown Disney. I made an ADR for TREX for dinner. The problem is the only dinner time I could get was 9pm. That will NOT work! Ever since I made the reservation, I have been stalking pretty much daily looking for anything but so far the only other thing available is later than that. No thanks! I went ahead and booked a second reservation for TREX for 3pm. That also does not work for us but... my husband had an idea! My cousin is in the process of relocating to Florida. I can't remember exactly where, but close-ish to Disney. When my mom told him we would be in Disney he said to let him know and he'd meet us. So I think we're going to tell him that Monday night we're free if they wanted to come to Downtown Disney and hang out. It will be a Monday night though, and 3 has 3 kids, and I think the youngest is about 3? (I have the worst memory!) so I don't know if it will work out for them since school will still be going on or not, but we're throwing that out there. But considering I cannot get a dinner reservation for 3 for dinner, I don't think 8 is going to happen. So we have a lot of options! We could hit up Animal Kingdom, have a light lunch, and eat a "linner" at 3pm, have the rest of the night free to do whatever - especially if we are going to meet up with family. OR have a hearty breakfast, a later lunch, snack, and have our late 9pm dinner at TREX. I will continue to stalk for a dinner time ADR time. Even if I don't have one BEFORE we leave, I will be calling while we are there! 9pm is not ideal, even if you take the infant out of the situation. I will be hungry! I guess this would be an ideal time for some ice cream at Ghiradelli in Downtown Disney, or maybe switch the kitchen sink attempt to this night around dinner time? Too many options. Will be awaiting the opinion of my brother! Now I could also give up on the TREX reservation, but I really want to eat there! I say that every trip and my husband has never understood why I want to eat there. Then there was a Disney Food Blog review of the place and he was all "why have we never eaten here before?" SEE, SEE!!!!

Disney Food Blog TREX Review

Ohh the menu. I have seen some pictures. I have NO idea what I would eat, so much to choose from that sounds amazing. I know I will be having the meteor bites for dessert, since the "one of each" probably isn't an option

TREX menu

So going out of order, it seems no matter what we will be having lunch at Animal Kingdom. I had thought about maybe having our lunch at the Animal Kingdom Lodge The Mara to get some zebra domes, but I think that might waste too much time - but I'm definitely down for it. I'm sure brother would love to see the AKL!

So options for Animal Kingdom Lunch...

The Mara (food court) at Animal Kingdom Lodge (if time is not an issue)
Flame Tree BBQ (ribs, chicken, pulled pork, etc)
Yak & Yeti Counter Service ("chinese" type food. the honey chicken here was amazing!)


In a long, drawn out, out of order nutshell - there's my lack of plans for day 4
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[MelMel11]

Count me in!!

 

[khertz]

Have you tried calling T-Rex directly? I think they only release a few times to the WDW website, but if you call you might be able to get a better time. Because you're right, infant or no infant, 9 pm is late for dinner!!

 

[dtr_angel]

Count me in!!

Thanks for stopping by!

Have you tried calling T-Rex directly? I think they only release a few times to the WDW website, but if you call you might be able to get a better time. Because you're right, infant or no infant, 9 pm is late for dinner!!

Until I read this comment from you, I had not even thought about that! DH and I have been discussing it and it makes perfect sense. T-Rex is in DD so not everyone that is eating there is on a Disney vacation or booking ADRs through the Disney system so it would make sense that Disney doesn't get all the ADR times. Thank you so much for pointing this out! I need to get their number written down and do that. Here's to hoping we can get an actual dinner time and not "linner" or a midnight snack

 

[dtr_angel]

It will be time to rest up for our last full day in Disney!

 

[dtr_angel]

I only have one more day to type up... hoping for soon!

 

[dtr_angel]

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Disney updates soon... next will be the last day Magic Kingdom loose plans. ​

 

[Alysa]

Loving the baby updates! Our little one has stopped napping during the day as well (just tiny 30 minute ones) but he sleeps so well at night, I'll just count my blessings!
Looking forward to seeing pictures of the tie-dye!

 

[natebenma]

I am still having trouble getting over to pre-trip-report-land, so I'm sorry I
haven't been around.

You must be getting super excited about your trip!

It's gonna be a whole 'nother world for you, with the new baby and showing your brother around for his first trip. Probably the most important thing to remember is to go with the flow. With Gavin, everything may not go exactly as planned. Be ready to zig and zag and it will all be good!

Your plans sound great!

Did you get you get the reservation for the Wishes Dessert Party?

How about T-Rex? I need to call myself- there were no reservations available when I called Disney, but I have had good luck calling there direct.

Thanks also for the update about Gavin. Sounds like he is doing great! Sorry to hear about the shortened naps, though.

I'll be back- hopefully sooner rather than later!

 

[dtr_angel]

2 more teeth today... I really will get around to this update soon I hope

 

[dtr_angel]

My 8 month old has 10 teeth. There has not been time to update in the last few weeks, oh my goodness. Hopefully this week? We've been doing a lot of work on the Disney vacation. I started packing. By packing I mean I grabbed an empty suitcase and when things that I ordered for the trip come in the mail I throw them in haha. I've ordered a bunch of stuff... I can't even remember what right now but the box is full. We just got our stroller and put it together today. It's nice, light weight, reclines almost all the way, has a huge sun shade, and will take up much less room in our cargo area.

I just pre-ordered the Photopass CD. I need to book our flights. They are pricey, but maybe that's because we are flying the Friday before Mother's Day? We're going to end up paying for 4 tickets what I paid for 5 tickets for January. Oh well. I will wait until tomorrow and if the price is the same I'm just booking it. I don't want to chance it. Plus we're using Magical Express. On one of our trips, it wasn't the last one but I forgot to call and give them our flight info in a timely manner and we did not get luggage tags before we left and we had to claim our bags before going to DME and that was NOT fun. Oh it was the time we stayed at the Wilderness Lodge. Anyway, we will not be doing that with a baby in tow. We're checking as much as possible so we don't have to deal with bags at the airport. I'm hoping to only have 2 bags with us. One bag with stuff for the baby (basically a diaper bag) and another bag that has our camera, kindle if we're taking it (thought it might be a good dis tractor for baby if there were videos or something on it) stuff for the pool/park until our room is ready... but I'm sure those 2 bags will easily turn into like 8 "have to have" carry on bags. HAH!

Thanks to khertz we were able to secure a dinner time reservation for T-Rex the night we wanted it! They said they had all times so DH picked 530. Now I have to cancel our 3 and 9pm reservations.

I called an made the final payment yesterday. I just did online check in. AHH This is getting real, so much to do. My plan is to be packed as much as possible by the end of April so we're not rushing around at the last minute. ​

 

[dtr_angel]

I have tried everything, I cannot get a new avatar to work, UGH!

 

[khertz]

Bringing the Kindle is a great idea! I'm so happy we have the iPad now for Paxton when we travel, it has been a life saver. He can watch movies, play learning games, etc. and keep him busy for the flights. Since we started bringing that on our flights, he has been a dream traveler! We are taking a long road trip next month, so we actually found a tablet mount that clips onto the headrest of the front seat to use in our vehicles, so we can put the iPad in there and he can watch movies when we drive back and forth to New Orleans. It has made those 2 hour trips SO much easier!

Again, so glad I was able to help with your T-Rex reservation! 5:30 is a perfect dinner time!!