Ssshhhh This Time It's A Secret! Dec 2015 pre-trip report

[LanaBear-ox]

How exciting for you to be going at Christmas! I just read your '13 TR. I laughed out loud quite a few times! How do you think Hope will be going on the rides now? Do you think she will be scared?! I can't wait to read it! It makes me excited for my future trips.. (2017 )

 

[vleeth]

How exciting for you to be going at Christmas! I just read your '13 TR. I laughed out loud quite a few times! How do you think Hope will be going on the rides now? Do you think she will be scared?! I can't wait to read it! It makes me excited for my future trips.. (2017 )

Thanks for reading along! I'm super excited about going at Christmas! It's so hard to keep the secret. But she wants to be surprised, so that helps.

She says she wants to ride Everest this time...we'll see. She says as long as it doesn't go upside down, she won't feel like she's falling out.

 

[LanaBear-ox]

Aww how are you doing the surprise?! I'm so excited to hear more about it!

 

[vleeth]

Aww how are you doing the surprise?! I'm so excited to hear more about it!

I don't have the details just yet. First of all, we haven't decided when we are leaving. Check-in time at our condo is 4:00PM. Leaving at 4:00AM is a possibility. If we do that, we will probably have to tell her the night before. Although I don't want to have to deal with her not being able to sleep that night. I'm just not sure how to hide the rental or how well things would go if we wait to tell her in the AM. If we can get an early check-in at the condo...say noon, then we will leave around 10:00PM and drive through the night. In that case we could do the surprise after dinner.

Either way it goes a treasure hunt will be involved. She loves treasure hunts. I've done them for our Disney Cruise, our Beach Trip last month, one last September on the way to the beach which involved schoolwork to get to the clues (she's homeschooled) and various small ones just for fun. For her 9th birthday she had a treasure hunt that involved different codes and walking so many paces West...that sort of thing.

This one will be epic! I'm not sure what I'm going to do, but it will be the longest hunt ever. (As far as she is concerned, the longer the better.)

 

[vleeth]

We left for a short beach trip the day I made my ADR so I didn't get around to posting here.

The first step in the plan was to have Hope sleep at my Mom's the night before. I did't want too many questions. Plus it helped to pull off the surprise for the beach trip.

I was up at 4:30 to drive to my brother's house. (I babysit his baby, so I had to go there anyways.) He has a newer, fast PC with two screens. I opened one browser on each screen and got tabs up for the places I wanted.

I booked TRex for just my family. CRT, Ohana & Via Napoli for my cousins family and Whispering Canyon for all of us. Then I booked a lunch BOG for just me on the day that Dave and Hope go to Disney Quest. I'm hoping to get breakfast BOG for the 3 of us when that becomes available.

Now it's a 4 month wait until we can book fastpasses.

In the meantime I'm hard at work on swagbucks to pay for our food while we are on vacation. Dave has started an account as well for "beer money." I love being able to cash in those gift cards.

 

[Chicago Mo]

Great job on the ADR's!!! and yes i cannot wait to see how you unveil the surprise!!!

 

[vleeth]

Great job on the ADR's!!! and yes i cannot wait to see how you unveil the surprise!!!

Thanks! I'm working on a few ideas.

 

[vleeth]

I've been doing quite a lot of thinking and planning for the day we leave and the day we arrive in Orlando.

Yesterday we watched some treasure hunts on youtube. Then, I quizzed Hope on what makes for a really good treasure hunt. Her answer was lots of clues. So as of now, I'm thinking 20 clues. I plan to use red and green paper. I may add some Star Wars stuff to the clues, since the new movie is coming out in December.

I will reuse the 'treasure' box that I used for the cruise reveal to contain the treasure for this hunt. I thought about doing balloons because she loves them. But since she won't have time to enjoy them, I'll skip that.

I've also decided that I can't wait to leave in the morning. My current plan is to have Hope sleep at my moms the night before we leave. I will have Enterprise pick me up, pack the rental car, hide it on the side of the house and nap during the day (I may need to take some melatonin.) Then in the afternoon I will pick Hope up in my car. Once Dave gets home from work and we have supper, the hunt will be on. I'm not sure how long it will take her to find all the clues. Dave will then nap for a couple of hours while Hope and I watch one last Disney movie before the trip. By 9:00 we should be on the road.

I will probably drive first. Once I get tired Dave will take over..

 

[Chicago Mo]

your not leaving until 9pm?
I would be going OUT OF MY MIND waiting that long!!! LOL I am really excited to see how the treasure hunt goes!!!
I am going to start the drive this time too.. I was WAY too excited last time to sleep while Tom drove. Mistake 1...

 

[vleeth]

your not leaving until 9pm?
I would be going OUT OF MY MIND waiting that long!!! LOL I am really excited to see how the treasure hunt goes!!!
I am going to start the drive this time too.. I was WAY too excited last time to sleep while Tom drove. Mistake 1...

Well, it's still June so that 9:00 plan may creep up to be a bit earlier. The original plan was 4:00AM. So I'm already 7 hours ahead of the game.

I'm hoping driving for a few hours will work enough excitement out of me that I can actually sleep when Dave drives.

 

[vleeth]

At the end of the treasure hunt I'm thinking that in the treasure chest I will have broken pieces of a small flowerpot that has hieroglyphics on it. She will have to piece the pot together and then decipher the hieroglyphics to get the message that we are going to Disney.

 

[Kirby]

What a cool idea! I used to make up treasure hunts for my niece and nephew at Christmas to find their presents.

 

[Sisa]

I love your trip reveal idea, I cannot wait to see it all come together!

 

[vleeth]

What a cool idea! I used to make up treasure hunts for my niece and nephew at Christmas to find their presents.

Thanks! It's always so much fun. I plan to do at least one before the trip. I don't want her to think that every time I do one we are going on a trip.

I love your trip reveal idea, I cannot wait to see it all come together!

Thanks! There is a fine line between making this fun and making it too hard. For her 9th birthday the treasure hunt took her to the sandbox. She had to find a key to open the chest at the start of the hunt. It took the 3 of us and quite some time and effort to find that key.

I thought about burying the pot pieces, but had sandbox flashbacks and decided against it.

 

[vleeth]

Current Plans: CAUTION: Subject to change...

Our first park day

Animal Kingdom

and then hopping to

Epcot

We will cook breakfast and be at AK for rope drop. We plan to have lunch at Flame Tree BBQ. When we are done with Animal Kingdom we will head to Epcot.

Epcot is a bit more complicated. I don't have the list of celebrities for CP yet. Once that comes out I can make some decisions about which night I want to do CP. Because of this, I'm still not sure where we will eat. If I had to guess it will be either Yorkshire (old favorite) or the bakery in France (never been there.)

Day 2 will be the earliest day of our trip (by far) so I'm thinking we may not stay for Illuminations. We just might head in a bit early so we can get some sleep.

 

[Chicago Mo]

So I'm already 7 hours ahead of the game.

Ohhh!!! HA! your going earlier!!! that's better..

I'm hoping driving for a few hours will work enough excitement

ugh Driving.. it's so BORING! LOL

At the end of the treasure hunt I'm thinking that in the treasure chest I will have broken pieces of a small flowerpot that has hieroglyphics on it. She will have to piece the pot together and then decipher the hieroglyphics to get the message that we are going to Disney.

This is the coolest idea EVER!!!


I like your day one plans!

 

[vleeth]

Ohhh!!! HA! your going earlier!!! that's better..

ugh Driving.. it's so BORING! LOL

This is the coolest idea EVER!!!

I like your day one plans!

Yes, I don't think I would ever plan on leaving later! I may even move it up a slight bit.

We drive 15 hours to see family. Disney is 11ish for us, so it isn't bad at all. We actually enjoy road trips. I plan on making a folder with a few select songs to put on my mp3 player to play while I am driving. I really need to work on that list. It's a bit hard to decide in July how much Christmas music I will want to listen to in December.

Thanks! I'm still working out how the plans will work.

 

[Kirby]

Only 11 hours to WDW. Sigh! Wish we were closer.

 

[Chicago Mo]

our drive is about 16. and i made a HUGE driving list. I didn't even think to add christmas! Now i have to re-do it! add MORE! YAY!
Like you i do enjoy the road trip.. But i am thinking out 2016 trip i am going to fly...

 

[vleeth]

Only 11 hours to WDW. Sigh! Wish we were closer.

I guess we all wished we lived closer!

our drive is about 16. and i made a HUGE driving list. I didn't even think to add christmas! Now i have to re-do it! add MORE! YAY!
Like you i do enjoy the road trip.. But i am thinking out 2016 trip i am going to fly...

I think I'll so some research to see what songs they play during the Osborne lights and add some of those to my list. Our next trip will be 2018 and we are looking at flying for that trip also. We only want to fly if we are staying at Disney the whole time so we don't have to rent a car. This trip we are staying off site and last trip we went to Universal.