The Dubs do Disney: April/May 2012 PTR

[vdub322]

Hi everyone! I am fairly new to DIS, but I have enjoyed many, many hours of lurking and taking in every trip report and piece of advice available here, so I thought I would pass the time until our next trip by joining in the fun and meeting some fellow WDW fanatics!

First, meet my crew... (I'm relearning photobucket, so hopefully I can get the hang of resizing photos. I chose tiny and some of them are still huge! So if anyone has a better photo hosting site, let me know!)

First, there's me...Vanessa. Full time mom and full time student at Penn State University studying Energy and Sustainability Policy. I'm about to turn 30 in March and this trip is the BEST 30th birthday gift I could imagine. I am the Disney fanatic of the family. My first trip was when I was seven or eight, right around the time the Little Mermaid was hitting theaters. I made two other week long trips in 1995 and 2003 before spending several years living in Central Florida and hitting up WDW whenever my little heart desired.


Next, there's DH Eric. He's a 31 year old IT manager at Penn State and Air Force Veteran. He spent a week in Disney at the Poly (lucky!) when he was in high school, and then made a day trip back around 2006. I have mentioned going to WDW, oh maybe 500 times, and he was never particularly interested until now. I think the idea of seeing it through Akira's eyes was just too much for him to turn down. Once he gave the go-ahead and the planning began, he has been very involved in the process...browsing resorts, setting ADRs, and stalking DISboards!

Then there's my daughter (and Eric's stepdaughter), Julia. She is 12 and in seventh grade. I took her to the Magic Kingdom on a day trip (while visiting relatives) when she was two years old. Then she was my WDW buddy while she and I lived in Florida. The longest she has stayed at WDW has been for a weekend, so this will be her first big Disney vacation blow out! She took up pin trading back in 2005 and is very excited to dust off her lanyard and find some cool pins!

And finally we have Akira. She will be three at the end of March and this will be her first time to WDW! She only gave in to potty training in the past few weeks since we told her that she could meet Mickey if she started peeing in the potty! Worked like a charm! She loves all things Disney, but her favorites are Mickey and Minnie, Lilo and Stitch, Princess Tiana, the Lion King, and Jessie from Toy Story. She has been telling everyone who will listen about this trip, but she doesn't get that we aren't leaving RIGHT NOW, so I need to find a creative countdown method for her.

So that's us!

Here's our plans:

Next up: The original plans and the many changes that took place in the first week after we booked!

 

[vdub322]

When I started planning, I assumed that I would need to keep the price as low as possible (which is so hard at WDW!) to get my DH on board, but he was very interested in examining all the options and making it a vacation that we would all enjoy.

I was shocked when he mentioned staying at the Wilderness Lodge! I have stayed at values (POP) and moderates (CBR, CSR and POFQ) but that was it. I had dinner at Whispering Canyon once, so I knew how beautiful that WL is inside. We figured a bunk room at WL would fit our needs better so the girls wouldn't have to share a bed. So we reserved a bunk room-woods view at WL for 6/6/12-6/13/12, which had us leaving the day DD started summer vacation at school (barring unforeseen snow days, but snow has been very elusive here this winter) and checking out the day before the 30% off deal ended.

Then, a week after we booked, we started to think about the crowds and weather in June. I know from experience that southern schools get out earlier and it was likely we would be facing more crowds in June. The weekend we were booked happened to be Star Wars Weekends (and DH is a HUGE Star Wars fan) but we decided to examine our options...

We decided to move our trip up and take Julia out of school. DH's sister is getting married 4/21 (and DH and I are both in the wedding), then I have finals 4/23-4/26, so we decided it would be perfect to leave on 4/26! (and not stressful at all

I talked to Julia's school and all her work would be sent with her and she would not be counted as absent for the six days she misses. Yay!

So a few days go by and I mess with our ADR's a bunch (more on this later) and then I start to worry about the size of our room. DH is not a fan of crowds (part of why I'm so surprised he agreed to this!) and being in a small room with three females after doing the parks all day might be too much for him. I decide to price the other "on sale" options this week...

And I find it's not much more for a one bedroom villa at either Old Key West or Saratoga Springs!

Well I pitch this idea to the hubby and he is all in. We both love the theming at WL, but we know we would be so much happier with more space. (And I am surprised how excited I am to have the option to do laundry during our stay!) We call and change our reservation to OKW. 340 sq ft to 940 sq ft...I can deal with that! (As an aside, I think SSR looks very nice too, and I was so torn, but the space at OKW was hard to beat. And so many awesome DISers reassured me that we would be very happy at OKW)

So that's how we went from one week to another and one resort to another all within a week. The same pattern repeats itself when it comes to our ADRs...more on that next!