Surprise trip The good, the Bad and the “NO, You didn’t do that, did you?

[myhouseofmouse]

I wanted to share some of the highlights and thoughts from our resent trip.

Our Family: DS 6, DD 13, DW(of 16 wonderful years) and myself.
(We also have a bearded dragon, but he didn't make the trip down to Disney)

The Surprise
My DW and I started planning this trip back in April. No we have been to Disney 10 times, once every year, besides last year. In the past year I have started a new job (for a little less money) and my DD got her very expensive month accessories. (Braces!) Because of these two events we were unable to do a trip last year and spend the last 9 months telling the kids we would not be able to go this year as well. I will admit to being a very bad father and on more than one occasion letting my DD know that we probably would not be able to go back to the world until we paid off her braces.

The Plan
For 2 main reasons we decided that this year we are not going to do our usually flight from the Philadelphia airport, but instead do our first family drive to the world. (A 16 hour drive from our home in PA) Reason #1 for this would be the $1000.00 we would save instead of flying and renting a car. Reason #2, is a little more personal, unfortunately this past year my father lost a battle to cancer. For nostalgia sake, I wanted to recreate a drive my father and I once did to world when I was a kid. A tip of the hat to the man that spent every penny he had raising me and made me the father I am today.
Now we usually spend the week after Thanksgiving for our annual trip. (My wife loves the world all decorated for the holidays and since our 1 and only summer trip was while she was 7 months pregnant with our Son, we probably never go back to Disney in the heat) Since we were planning on driving we decided to extend thr trip and leave on Thanksgiving Day, drive straight thru and be at the World on black Friday. We planned on staying 8 days, leaving the following Friday night. Because we are one of those “Commando” families we usually stay at a value resort. But I wanted to check out the new AOA resort; however I could not get a room for our entire trip. (Reminder, I was booking 8 months out) So we ended up doing a 1 night stay at AOA and then the remaining 6 night across the pond at POP. (Our favorite Value resort)

Next; Setting the trap (surprise) for the kids and the many, many changes to the plans that come with planning 8 months out.

 

[myhouseofmouse]

Setting up the surprise:

My idea was to let the kids in on the surprise while we were driving down to Disney. In order to do that, I had to put some things in motion. First, I had to figure out how to tell them while in the car. I decided to make up a video, this way I could just play the video in the car. I ended up making a fun little video of different things about our family and capped it off with a video clip of a Disney/super bowl commercial where they ask Eli manning (we are a NY giants fan family) "now that he has won the super Bowl, what is he going to do next???" and then Eli would say the "I'm going to Disney" line. By this point the kids would know we were going to Disney.

I would also need to figure out how to get them in a fully packed car and get a teenager to pack a suitcase, without them figuring out I was up to something. So to get around this part I came up with a cover story. In September for my DD 13th birthday, one of her presents was an envelope that has a fake ressie for a 2 night stay at a local indoor waterpark. For added insurance I also made arrangements with my mother to take the kids over night on the night before our trip, this way I could pack extra clothes and all of the car trip items that would be needed without prying eyes around.

Now the key elements to pull off the surprise were in place.

Up next; last minute changes to plans

 

[myhouseofmouse]

Changing Plans:

As I stated in my first post, we booked our trip doing a 1 night room only ressie at AOA ( a room only ressie to make sure that we would take it easy the first day after our long drive.) Then we booked a 6 night stay at POP with park tickets. Now we would have stayed at AOA a few days more and maybe split the days with POP, but we were hoping and counting on Disney offering FREE dining during our stay like they have done for the past 5+ years during. But as I told my wife in May when I booked all of our ADR's at the 180 day mark.
I said to her For the first time that I can remember I was able to book ALL of my ADR's for the days and times that I wanted (even BOG), So knowing how my luck usually goes, I am pretty sure Disney will not be offering the Free dining." So of course when they announced free dining, our week was not included in the dates. Now being Disney Vets, I feel that we know how to take full advantage of the dining plan to really get our money's worth out of FREE dining. However paying $1100 for the dining plan would not be the best decision. So we had to make some changes and cut out some of our dinners and cut our dining price down a few hundred dollars. We still managed to do a few favorites and tried out a dinner show for the first time.

Our big dinners that we kept were:
#1 1900 park fair: This is a big favorite of our family for a few different reasons. For me: The Strawberry soup, this is one of my top 5 favorite foods of all of Disney world. No one else in my family will touch the stuff, but I will down at least 3 bowls of this every meal here. My DW and DD love the characters here, the Step mom and sister are some of the best face characters out there to interact with. Don't believe me, just get them to practice singing!!!
#2 Be our Guest Restaurant for dining: Now with all the buzz out there about this restaurant, we just had to check it out. Now thanks to the Dis, we also managed to snag a FP for lunch at BOG. This way we would be able to check out both menu's and offerings there. ***I will give full comments on this Restaurant later.
#3 The Spirit of Aloha Dinner Show: We like to try at least one new restaurant every time we go down and I really wanted to try out one of the shows and this one looked like it had something for everyone in the family.
#4 Chef Mickey's: On every trip for the last 10 years, we have ended our trip with a dinner at chef mickey's, it has become a tradition for our family. I know the food is not great and it is over priced, (However they did recently add sushi and crab legs to their selections) but it is a great fun atmosphere and you can't beat being able to see the FAB 5 one last time before heading back into the real world.

Now the rest of the meals would either be at the food courts back at the resorts or at counter service in the parks. Again, I will go over the food courts and counter service areas later.

Next; more changes...

 

[jrj]

Following along... can't wait to read more

 

[myhouseofmouse]

Ok sorry, before the other big change that occurred, some more back story which will come in handy...

I'll start by informing that even though I have been to Disney a bunch of times, I still use a TA. I always go thru AAA, even though I end up getting a better deal then the one that they offer thru AAA (if you book thru AAA you get package discounted rates) Now the reason I actually go thru AAA will probably surprise people. The main reason I go thru AAA is to take advantage of the Diamond Parking pass. This pass always to basically park next to the handicap parking at the park. We have never used Magical Express or (until this trip) even used the Bus transportation at the world. Again remember we are the "commando" style family, we have always looked at the bus transportation as something that takes time and therefor takes time out of the parks. So being able to park near the front gates and not having to worry about the tram cars is a big benefit to us.
Now AAA always has some other benefits like a special Character meet n' greet which is always a good non rushed time. AAA also has a preferred Fireworks area at MK which is nice. They also have a 10% discount card for Merchandise. Plus they have a bunch of discount merchandise and Disney experience coupons which can be a great added value if taken advantage of.

As an example, For each AAA pachage you book with AAA you get 2 free Disney Quest Vouchers to be used for a free 1 day pass (each a $40 value) Well since we booked 2 AAA packages (1 for each resort) we were able to get 4 Vouchers and were able to do Disney quest for the family at NO cost.

For info sake the other discounts you get when you book a AAA package are:
- 2 free mini golf vouchers for either of Disney's mini golf locations
- 15% guided fishing experience
- 15% off the use of any of the Child care centers
- 15% Marina boat rentals
- $15 food voucher at Planet Hollywood (that will buy you a coke there, j/k)
But it is good for $15 of free food
- 10% off of Sammy Duvall water activities (i.e. water skiing, parasailing
- 15% off select spa service
- 10% off food purchase and 10% of Merchandise at Splitsville
- 100 free game points to be used at any Disney arcade
- 15% off select Park tours (we have used this one for the Family Magic tour at MK a few times

Ayou can see there are some really good perks that can allow you to do some other cool things and save some money in the process.

Disclaimer: I do NOT work at or for AAA, I am not receiving financial gains by talking about the perks.

 

[myhouseofmouse]

Following along... can't wait to read more

Glad to hear, didn't know if I was boring everyone with all the details. I hope to be able to give out some info and some insight on our experience. Hope you enjoy.

 

[jrj]

Not boring at all...can't wait to read more

 

[myhouseofmouse]

Last minute changes...

So after 8 months of planning everything is set up, we have our resorts, dining set up, parks picked out for each day that we are there and one or two other surprised lined up. All set ready to go... just counting down the days and of course keeping up with ever changing world of Disney. Now, more then ever it seemed like things down at the mouse were changing and a lot of it seems to be around the whole Next Gen project...My Disney experience, the whole FP+ and MB and everything that is going to come out of all of it.

I for one have been very positive about the whole thing, I really believe that it is going to allow for greater park experiences down the road. I really can not wait to see where Disney takes the whole thing.

Now we never got invited to any of the MB and FP+ testing, but being on sites like the boards here and other website, I knew what to do to set up everything. So I had ordered the MB and personalized them. We got two sets of bands since we were staying at 2 different resorts. Since we got two sets I ended up personalizing 1 set with our real names and the other set with the family nicknames we have for each other. (i.e. my wife's nickname is "Grumpy") We ended up using the nickname ones for the entire stay. Once you have the band linked there is no reason to have to change to a different one.

I also set up the 3 FP+ per day for our family (now when I did this, it was before they went to the now in testing tiering thing that are starting in a few parks. I know the following will be frowned a pond by some, however even though we had the 2 FP+ set up. We still planned on taking advantage of the still working FP- ( paper FP) system. In year past we always used the FP system to aid with our touring strategies. We would usually end up using the paper FP system at least 6-10 times a day in past trips. I never looked at it as unfair to those who could not pre book the FP+. If anything I would think it unfair to limit me to 3 and allow off sire guests to get as many as they can get a hold of. I have read the arguments that because of all the people "Double Dipping" that all the FP- are going quickly and they are running out of them after minutes of park opening. (Note: I can not speak for other weeks, but the week and half I was there, this was NOT the case, there were more then plenty of FP- to go around and did not see them run out of FP- earlier then normal.)

So the change in plans comes 3 weeks before our scheduled trip. Disney announces (actually a CM on the boards here) that POP will no longer be giving out Key to the world cards to guests. So in essence they will no longer be able to use the old Paper FP system and will only be able to get 3 FP will every other guest can get as many as they can. Which meant that "WE" would only be able to use the # FB+ that we set up. To be honest I was disappointed, but was on the fence on whether I should do anything about it. However, my wife had stronger feelings about it. (And still does!!!) She knows how we tour and said that if we could we should switch to a different resort to make sure we could still do the FP- system.

Up next...The solution...

 

[myhouseofmouse]

The solution...

I first decided to go to my AAA store and talk to my travel agent and get some insight and options. Of course since this information had just came out, (about POP not being able to use KTTW cards for FP-) my AAA agent had never heard of it. She then spend 2 hours talking to 3 different CM's (including 1 CM from the MB/FP help center and another CM claiming to be at POP) and non of them had the correct information. I ended up asking to check for Availability at both All Star Movies (our Favorite of the All Stars) and POR (we stayed here back in 2010 and loved it) Now I figured ASM would have availability and would probably be a little cheaper then what we were paying at POP. But I wasn't crazy about switching here for 2 reasons; #1 All Star Sports did not have a working food court, which meant all of their guests were using Music and Movies for the food courts. #2 because I figured if Disney was going to include more resorts in the No KTTW card, then the All Star resorts would follow next and us changing resorts would be a waste of time. Disney has to know that taking away the KTTW is not going to make people happy, so stick it to the guests that are paying the least first. (Turns out I was right on this one, as on Dec. 2nd the All Star resorts followed with the testing)
Now I figured POR would probably cost us an additional $400.00 to switch to that resort for the week. No I fell in Love with POR the last time we were there, we stayed at the Magnolia Bend section and really enjoyed the entire resort. (Some great perks include: The marina; you can catch a quick boat to Downtown Disney or rent a boat your self and ride the river. Being a runner, they have a wonderful running trail. The food court is nice, with a make your own Pasta and salad stations. The Ol' Man Island Pool is a great time that has a water slide for the kids and a Nice bar and hot tub for the adults. There are plenty of hammocks located around the property to take a moment and relax. Plus my personal favorite at POR...Yee-Haw bob. This is a must do for every Disney trip we do, weather we stay at POR or not. But staying at POR allows for more time and visits to see Bob.)
SO I gave the options to my wife and she agreed with my thinking about the All Stars and she said "As long as if we switch to POR and be able to use the KTTW cards, then it would be worth the extra money" So 10 days before our trip, I had the TA switch over to POR and crossed m fingers that POR would not be included in the test before we arrived.

Up next, some of our trip details and Preparing for the Long DRIVE...

 

[jrj]

I'm reading along we're staying at POR in a few months... can't wait to read all about your experience

 

[myhouseofmouse]

Trip planning and details...

Ok so now that all of the changes have been made here are some of the details of the trip.

Day 1-Leave Pa At 6pm on Thanksgiving for our 16 hour drive to the world (After we have filled our belly with turkey)
Day 2-Arrive at AOA on Black Friday, for a 1 night stay at the LM section (plan is to relax, maybe pool hop and/or try out Disney Quest for the first time.
-Check into POR on Saturday 11/30 for a 6 night stay.
Day 3-Do Animal Kingdom on Saturday (9am to 4pm) then head to the Poly for the Spirit of Aloha Dinner Show
Day 4-Go to Hollywood Studios on Sunday 12/1: 9am to 10pm (They have extra magic hours from 8pm to 10pm) No Dinners or Ressie planned besides FP+ Planning on doing Fantasmic and Osbourne Lights.
Day 5-Magic Kingdom on Monday 12/2: 9am to 11pm (Again extra magic hours 9-11pm) Dinner ADR at BOG and a surprise Wishes dessert Party for the family
Day 6-Epcot on Tuesday 12/3: 7am to 9:30 (Mornign Extra Magic hour from 7am to 8am) No ADR's planned this day, plan on eating around the world a little and hitting Illuminations at the end
Day 7-Magic Kingdom on Wednesday 12/4 9am to 5pm We have a Lunch FP+ ADR planned at 11am for BOG and 1900 Park Fair Planned for 6pm at GF. Also have the night open for a trip for shopping at Downtown Disney
Day 8-Hollywood Studios On Thursday 12/5 9am to 8pm Again No ADR's plan on hitting Osbourne lights and hit attractions we did not our first day there.
Day 9-Magic Kingdom Friday 12/6: 9am to 4pm An easy day of hitting our favorites one last time. We have a Chef Mickey's ADR at 5pm at CR. We plan on hitting the road for our drive back. Original plan is to drive for about 6 hours then stop somewhere and finish the drive home on Saturday 12/7 and be home by 9pm.

Now a few notes:In case you are wondering:
Not a lot of ADR's??We did have other ADR's planned, but due to no dining plan we did cut them out. We kept one that each of us wanted.
3 days at MK???We usually do 2 full days plus 1 night doing the Xmas party, we decided to cut the party out and do the Aloha dinner show instead. We were also goign to go to Universal to check out Harry potter, but due to the hieght requirments of the rides at Universal we decided to not spend an additional $400.00 on a day of parks that had a bunch of rides our son could not go on.
2 days at HS??? I know that there are soem people who will not even do 1 day at this park, but for our family this is right up there with MK as being our favorite park. AK is our half day park and my wife does not really care for Epcot. We really love the rides at HS and all of the shows there. It is almost impossible to do ALL of the shows at HS in a single day. We find it is must easier to split the shows up between 2 days and relax more and it also gives up more time to do the thrill rides more. I'll explain more when I get to the specifics for each day.

I think that covers the basic trip plans. If you have any questions on the plans, please feel free to ask.

Up next the Road trip detail plans...

 

[jrj]

 

[Disneychix]

Our families sound a lot alike in terms of park plans. We usually skip or spend 1/2 day at AK and 1 day at EPCOT. The rest of the time we jump from MK to DHS. Can't get enough of those parks

We were there at the same time as you. Can't wait to hear how your vacation was!

 

[myhouseofmouse]

Road Trip Plan...

Or should I say overly planned, road trip plan. As soon as I started to book the trip, I also started to plan for the "Road Trip" part of the trip. Knowing that this was going to be our families first major road trip, I wanted to make sure that it was a Success. So I planned it like I do the actually Disney Planning part. (Plan every detail and minute!!!) Here are the things I did to get ready for the 16 hour road trip:

#1: Being a AAA member, another benefit is that you can order a "Trip Tik". Which is a detailed print out book that give you directions and information on your trip and route. They actually give you 2 books, one for the way down and another for the way back. Tip: you really want to try and have these printed up as close to your trip as possible in case there are any construction or traffic changes that they will include in the books. also, we ended up taking the 95 route down to Florida and I found that the "Trip Tik" had the best route to get thru the D.C. area. (Which is really the only challenging part of the drive.)
I also did get free books and road map from AA to help plan the route. Again, the route we ended up choosing was taking 95 from Philadelphia to route I$ in Florida the whole trip was told to be 1045 miles for an estimated time of 16 1/2 hours.
#2: Now our car had a dvd player but I was worried that the kids would fight over what movies to watch so I also went on Ebay and picked up 2 cheap used DVD players so that they could each watch their own movies plus I would be able to have them hook up earphones to them so I would not have to hear their movies. * This actually worked out great, they only ended up using the main DVD player once and were able to watch what they wanted.
#3 I got a roof carrier for the car, I could put the suitcases in the roof carrier to give more room in the car. I figured with packing pillows/blankets, coolers with food and drink, plus we packed snack foods and Breakfast items for the week. Since we like to make it to the parks at rope drop, I have found it better to just to breakfast at the hotel. I will pack donuts, fruit and individual cereals for breakfast. This too worked out great, besides the annoying fact that it made a lot of noise. (once you got over 60, the wind made it hummm)
#4 I made the kids and my wife personalized movies to watch. I thought at the time that this was one of my more cleaver ideas. I sent hours putting together a total of 15 dvd's that I created for everyone to watch during the road trip. The dvd's were all personally put together using clips I found on the internet. (mainly Youtube) I have had themes like; People who sing Disney songs and People who do Disney Impressions", Disney Trivia, Hidden Mickey's, New things since we were here last and Top ten funniest Disney movie scenes. Like I said I spent many hours putting these together and I am sure one day the time I spend will get paid off, because they only ended up watching 3 of the total 15 disks.
#5 Audible.com membership, I signed up for a trail membership to them so that I could download a few audiobooks to my Ipod. I figured this would be a great way to kill a lot of time during the trip. Again, this turned out to be a great Idea. I was about to get 3 audiobooks each for $7.95. I listened to one entire book on the way down and halfway thru another one on the way back.
(I also got on ebay an "Itrip" it is a devise that hooks up to your Ipod and allows you to listen to it thru your car radio, in case you do not have a audio plug port in your car)
#6 Other car gadgets, include a outlet adapter to give me more adapter plugs to plug in Ipods, dvd players, cell phone. A portable devise mounting unit. (to hold Cell phone/Ipod in place while I was driving) Extra battery chargers (never ended up needing these since I had the outlet adapter)
#7 Trip bags for each person. I made up a bag with items for each person for them to enjoy for the trip. It had personal electronics, dvd's, snacks, books, road trip games to play. (i.e. license plate game, a scavenger hunt, Paper battleship, 20 question games) These were all great as well, with two kids it was nice that they each had their OWN bag. (Note:Never ended up playing even 1 of the many car games I packed!)
#8 Again I packed 2 coolers of snacks and food, plus a smaller cooler for east access of drinks. I also packed in my trip bag some 5 hour energy drinks and those Starbuck Via packs, in case I couldn't find a good cup of coffee on the road. Note: my favorite road trip snack was a 5lb bag of Swedish Fish. They were great because they were light and small snack to nibble on. I also packed in my bag an old collect of "Back in the day" cd's I had in old box. (these were great to bring back some old memories. Favorite Old CD that got some good play: Metallica S&M live, it is the one they did with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra. Great 2 disk album!!!! I know showing my head banger roots!!!
#9 Emergency Supplies: I also did make sure that I get the car in the shop for a good check up and oil change before the trip, had the tires rotated and made sure everything was good for the long trip. I also packed some Emergency Supplies. I picked up one of those all in one kits you can buy at Walmart. (it has road flares, jumper cables and other road emergency items. I also packed items like flashlights, screwdrivers, pliers, extra fuses (thinking with all of the electronics being used that this is something that might come in handy) and of course, no man can go anywhere without a roll of duck tape.

Ok, I think that covers most of the "Road Trip" items and plans to get everyone thru the trip. Again, I really tried to cover everything that would be needed for a successful trip.
I think that also gets us to "Day 1" of the trip which I will go thru in my next post.

 

[myhouseofmouse]

Our families sound a lot alike in terms of park plans. We usually skip or spend 1/2 day at AK and 1 day at EPCOT. The rest of the time we jump from MK to DHS. Can't get enough of those parks

We were there at the same time as you. Can't wait to hear how your vacation was!

Great to hear. I will be curious if you find my thoughts and opinions the same. I'm sure we can both agree on the weather though...Outstanding!!! Probably the best weather we had in all of our trips there. No rain (besides a few drops) and 70 to 80 everyday!!!

 

[Belle5]

You might be the ultimate planner. Very impressive! Looking forward to the rest of the story...

 

[Belle5]

Oh, one more thing. Before booking your next WDW with AAA because of the perks, you may want to reconsider. I have heard something is changing (not for the better) with that relationship...

 

[myhouseofmouse]

Oh, one more thing. Before booking your next WDW with AAA because of the perks, you may want to reconsider. I have heard something is changing (not for the better) with that relationship...

Good heads up there.
Yeah, this past year they already changed a few perks to be attached with the Dining plan. In order to get the special character meet n' greet and the firework viewing area you had to book a package that included the dining plan. They have over the years made changes to the benifits, so I always made sure to visit my local AAA to get info first. As with Disney things are always changing , so its very important to never assume things with be the same. ( as you can already see by the changes to Free dining and the ever changing FP+ system)
Note: In our area AAA, also does monthly Workshops to help plan for upcoming Disney trips. I find these to be a helpful way to gather info on benifit changes. (and there is always free coffee there!)

 

[myhouseofmouse]

Day 1

It's Thanksgiving day and I start my day off at 9am in the morning after a good 9 hours of sleep. (Another change I forgot to mention, originally I was suppose to get up early and take part of an annual football game that I have played in on Thanksgiving morning for the last 20 years. I was all set to get up and play the game, then drive to Disney. The week before I finally decided that was probably not a good idea!!!)

As a reminder the kids are over my mothers house, so I am able to finish up packing and take my time getting the car all ready for the trip. We pick up the kids at my Mothers at 1pm and go over to my Brother-in-laws for a nice Thanksgiving Dinner before our drive. The outside temp is a high of 19 and I end up spending an 1 hour and half outside helping him cook a deep fried turkey in 19 degree weather. (The whole time, I kept telling myself "In 24 hours you will be in 70degree weather by the pool!!!) Dinner was great, I was smart and didn't eat too much, I even took dessert to go, so I could enjoy it in the car. It was about 6pm by the time we left and stopped for gas. As we drove down the road I popped the DVD player in and set up a camera on the dashboard to tape the reactions.

Good news, no great news, they were both very surprised. I knew I had my 13 year old for certain, when after 3 hours of driving she was still saying "I still can not believe we are driving to Disney World!!!"

Now my great plan of leaving Thanksgiving night, was with the thinking that traffic would be light and there would be NO construction anywhere because of the holiday. Again, good news my plan worked perfectly. He hit very light traffic thru Richmond VA, then no traffic at all after that until Jacksonville which we hit during Black Friday rush hour and traffic was light there as well. We also hit NO construction what so ever during the entire drive down. The only real issue or excitement we had during the whole trip down was in Richmond, VA when I got pulled over by a state trooper.

Up next..."This is not how I want to start my Vacation off!"

 

[Disneychix]

Uh oh! Maybe you shared your dessert with the tropper? Happy Thanksgiving!


Weather! oh how great was that weather??!! We swam everyday and only felt maybe 2 raindrops-if they were in fact raindrops