The Little Flowers finally go back to WDW: an overexcited pretrippie

[Little Flower]

6 years ago there was a woman from rural oxfordshire that had never been to Walt Disney World and it had never occurred to her to go. She always thought that was a place other people went to, somewhere she would only ever see on television. The summer of 2006 changed everything. 2 weeks in Kissimmee, staying offsite in a motel that looked just like she had seen in the movies and she was hooked..................

Fastforward to 2012 and we are on trip number 4!.

We have refined our tastes in WDW holidays since our first motel based trip. Unfortunately for DH's wallet, we have developped expensive tastes and have progressed from motels off site to Animal Kingdom Lodge!! The place of dreams, whenever i feel sad or stressed i just transport myself to that wonderful place and all is right with the world.

This trip has been a long time coming for us. We seemed to have alot of things conspiring against us (not necessarily bad, just annoyingly inconvenient) that has meant we have not been able to return to WDW since christmas 2008. I have been planning this trip for so long it almost seems unreal that we are a mere 3 months away from 14 days in dream land!

I guess i should tell you a little about us;

This is us at a christmas party a couple of years ago - i just love this picture of us

I am Little Flower, although my husband calls me Merryweather. I'm 33 and Disney mad. I'm currently not working as i took time out in 2009 to go back to school. I'm now in my second year of training to be a registered nurse. I have about 18 months until i qualify, and i can't wait. Retraining was the best decision i ever made and i absolutely love nursing. I'm hoping to be an Oncology or Intensive care nurse once i finally get my degree.

My favourites:

Resort: Animal Kingdom Lodge
Park: Magic Kingdom
Ride: Expedition Everest/Splash Mountain/Soarin
Attraction: Mickeys Philharmagic/Star Tours
Character: Mickey and Minnie (i just love them)

My DH will hearin be known as Mickey. He's 32 and is in the military. He indulges my disney madness (i blame him for starting it ) and loves our trips to WDW. He, like me, could not imagine staying anywhere other than AKL and i have a wonderful memory of his face when we walked into the lobby for the first time (my DH does not really get excited about things that often) and his jaw was on the floor - priceless.

DH's favourites:

Resort: AKL
Park: Hollywood Studios
Ride: Star Tours/Soarin/Haunted Mansion
Hates: Its a small world (i use the music to torment him when he is being annoying )
Loves: The atmosphere offsite as well as on and insists on having a rental car so that we can explore

I guess i should also introduce the other member of our family:

This is Holly. She's my 6 year old German Shepherd who we have had in our family since she was 7 weeks old. She won't be coming to America with us, she will be going on her own holiday to the kennels (which i still have to find )

Our trip is all booked and we are leaving on Aug 31st for 14 nights at Animal Kingdom Lodge

I am so very excited that i thought i would put all my excitement and planning into this pretrippie, that way i can share it with you all and stop myself from bursting with excitement

 

[Little Flower]

The fact that i have been waiting 4 years for this trip means i have kinda planned out the whole thing excessively. Whenever i am feeling low or life is getting a bit hard to take, I imagine walking into AKL for the first time, i picture myself and DH on the ferryboat to Magic Kingdom early in the morning, i picture that first sit down meal in Boma or Beaches and Cream.

That being said, as it's trip number four for us, we're going to try going with only a rough idea of our plans and we're going to see where the mood takes us. We've got very rough plans based around extra magic hours but nothing too concrete.

Our first day however is planned out almost to the minute (i'm sad i know!) Boma for Breakfast, after waking up at 5am from Jetlag, drive to transportation and ticket centre (we are rental car people rather than bus people), ferryboat over to MK. Spend the day, ride all the rides, see the new parade, back to the room for a rest, Joes Crab Shack for dinner and then back to MK for ELP and Wishes - see i told you it was specific.

Our other plans are as follows:

Hit all four disney park - probably not the water parks, we're not so great with that kind of sun exposure
Lots of Downtown Disney (We just love the atmosphere)
Universal - plus spend time at CityWalk
WWOHP - we're not so bothered about the rest of IOA - but we will try it out
Seaworld - hopefully with one of the dolphin tours
Shopping Shopping Shopping
We are also big Old Town Kissimee fans (there are a few of us out there)

We also have spent quite a while planning ADR's - i'll post them, let me know what you think

 

[Little Flower]

We finally managed to figure out our ADR list just the other day and have now got them all booked. I was really surprised at just how easy it was to do online! What do you think?

Boma - both breakfast and dinner
Jiko - We've meant to go the last 2 trips but cancelled. Now we have DDP so we should be able to keep this one
Ohana - I've heard both good and bad reviews for this one
Cape May Cafe - Clam bake, this one is for DH, he loves him some seafood
Fultons - Mainly because its on a paddle steamer, which looks awesome, but the food looks good too
California Grill - I don't think there could be a better way to end our holiday with wishes on the viewing platform