The *Official* February 2011 Thread - Happy Dance Time...The Park Hours Are Out!

I am praying for Jan 2012- so I shouldnt be complaining but I swear- all problems disappear when in Disney. Now its back to the real world :( Sigh
 


My family and I have been traveling to Orlando during February for years now and 2011 was definately the best weather we have ever seen. We usually get a few 80 degree days but we were just there and for 10 days straight we saw eighties during the day, low sixties at night, and not a drop of rain. It was amazing! We slept with the patio door open every night breathing the nice fresh air and listening to the birds in the morning. It was heaven and something we haven't enjoyed in months here in CT. Thanks Orlando for delivering another great vacation. Now, on to planning for Feb 2012. :)
 
they cut our hours back again, two weeks in a row.

DH and I were talking and I think we are going to cancel October. :sad1:

He really would prefer to go back next Feb., if we have a chance. He became friends with the bartender in our resort, and they have plans to go fishing next Feb.

Guess I need to remove my ticker.

On the bright side, as there is always one, I am starting the training modules to become a TA. I figure if my current job keeps going the way it is, I will need something else to pay bills, ect.
 


they cut our hours back again, two weeks in a row.

DH and I were talking and I think we are going to cancel October. :sad1:

He really would prefer to go back next Feb., if we have a chance. He became friends with the bartender in our resort, and they have plans to go fishing next Feb.

Guess I need to remove my ticker.

On the bright side, as there is always one, I am starting the training modules to become a TA. I figure if my current job keeps going the way it is, I will need something else to pay bills, ect.

Sorry :( - but I hear you...same boat here..for dh not me...where are you doing your TA training??? I've always thought about it....
 
Just checking in here to see if anyone was at the MK on Thurs., 2/24 and happened to catch the 3:00 parade. My new husband and I were chosen as Grand Marshals. We are looking for any extra pics and videos to add to our collection!
 
Sorry :( - but I hear you...same boat here..for dh not me...where are you doing your TA training??? I've always thought about it....

I will PM you the info..

I am starting to get people I know coming to me for WDW, so I kind figured why not maybe get paid for it. It does not cost them anymore than what they would have paid without a TA.
 
Allison, are you all booked for January, 2012?

Gina, what about you? Do you go back every year?

Anyone else have any bookings or plans on going back next year, if possible?

What kind of deals are people hoping for? I think the 4/3 deal would be sweet! I highly doubt that one will happen again though. I'll take FD though!

Beth
 
I will PM you the info..

I am starting to get people I know coming to me for WDW, so I kind figured why not maybe get paid for it. It does not cost them anymore than what they would have paid without a TA.

Thanks :)

Yea, I've seriously planned at least 50 other people's disney trips..down to the exact itinerary...& most of the time they bring me back something from disney....but what the heck...it's worth at least looking into.
 
Allison, are you all booked for January, 2012?

Gina, what about you? Do you go back every year?

Anyone else have any bookings or plans on going back next year, if possible?

What kind of deals are people hoping for? I think the 4/3 deal would be sweet! I highly doubt that one will happen again though. I'll take FD though!

Beth

Hoping for FD in maybe sept...although it's really too stinking hot for me in sept.

thinking maybe a 3 night cruise with my oldest dd...as a 17th day present...

i dunno, i just know I"m not happy unless I have a trip PLANNED
 
Sat down and looked at our budget last night.

I am going to give up a few things, as is DH, and we have a ton of stuff we have been meaning to put on Ebay.

So the trip is still on for October!!

DH did make me upgraded to POFQ for the trip, said he does not want to stay anywhere else. :confused3 Not even a delux (not that it was in the budget)
 
Got home last night! Our first trip is over. :sad1: It was SOOOOOOOOO much hotter than I ever anticipated. Here I was running around trying to find long sleeve shirts & sweatshirts and jackets for all of us before our trip and we didn't end up wearing a *single* one. :confused3 It was mid-80s for most of the trip, high-70s the last couple days. I guess I shouldn't complain although that is like SUPER warm for me. I was dripping with sweat every day by noon. We had ONE rain occurrence which was Tuesday morning when we went to MK. It DOWNPOURED 'til about 10:00 a.m. but we had our rain ponchos on and there was NOBODY else in the park. We walked onto every single ride. :thumbsup2 The sun was out and it was warm by noon time.

Crowds - It seemed pretty crowded our first couple days (end of President's Day week) but we never really waited very long for any rides. AK on Sat. and MK on Sunday seemed SUPER SUPER crowded - people walking around everywhere - but the lines still weren't very long. :confused3 We waited maybe 20 minutes for a couple or things (tower of terror, splash mountain, big thunder RR), but that's about it. Everything else we pretty much walked right on. We went back to MK on Tuesday (the rainy day) and did everything again with no lines at all.

Went to Epcot on Monday and I had no idea but the Flower Festival was starting a couple days later so they had really awesome flower/bush sculptures of the characters everywhere. They were so awesome and I'm glad we got to see them. I'm certainly not a big flower/plant lover but they were cool to see.

Did lots of character meals -- Crystal Palace @ MK, Tusker House @ AK, CRT, Akershus, Play & Dine @ HS. I shouldn't have planned both CRT & Akershus as they were the same princesses except 1 and we did CRT Sunday night and Akershus Monday morning so it was like Princess Overload (oops). I'd probably just do CRT again since the food was much better but to be fair we had dinner there and only breakfast at Akershus so really shouldn't compare rib eye to scrambled eggs, lol.

The kids had fun getting everyone's autographs. I almost didn't get DD(3) an autograph book b/c I didn't think she'd really be into it/get it, but she was really into it. I think we got almost every character there is except the Toy Story people b/c those had very long lines and we don't do long lines for *anything*, lol.

All Star Music - we really, really liked it and had no complaints (well, 1 semi-complaint). I am normally not one to stay in anything less than 3-4 stars but I had no problem with it. I didn't feel like we were in a "motel" at all, which is what I was expected. It totally had a "resort" feel and DH and I both agree we'd go back there. We had a suite so had breakfast in the room on the mornings we didn't have a character breakfast booked. The only issue we had was the food -- not the quality (it was all pretty good) but the selection. By day 3 I did not want to see that food court again - and we had 5 more days to go!!! BUT -- that is mainly due to our circumstances and would not be a problem for everyone. DD(3) is a napper and so by 3:00-4:00 each day she was out of control overtired, so that's when we would head back to the hotel, putting us there at right around 5:00 -- supper time. And since we didn't have a rental car, we had no choice but to eat supper there just about every night. If DD was older we would have just stayed at the parks through supper time and ate there, or went from a park to Downtown Disney and ate there. OR if we had a car we could have driven to a restaurant. But anyhow, that's how it worked out and everything I had was really good (burgers, salad, quesadillas) (exception: pizza was gross) but like I said, after the 3rd day of eating there, I really could have gone with not seeing it again, lol. They had lots of fun games/activities/movies going on at the pool every afternoon/night and it was always hopping. One night we walked over to Movies and you could hear the crickets over there, lol. Anyways, I would recommend ASMU to anyone, especially the suites. We cant do regular "hotel rooms" so it was either ASMU or pay double for a suite/villa at one of the more expensive resorts and that was definitely not in our budget. We don't do much more than sleep in our rooms anyways as we are up early and out of the room by 7:00 a.m. each morning and then we'd come back around 5ish, go swim and/or eat in the food court, and we all were in bed asleep by 8:30 p.m.

We went to Universal the last 2 days and it seemed dead there, esp. Universal Studios. Not sure if it's always like that or just a particularly slow week.

I think that about covers it. Oh -- Photopass. We ended up with about 70ish photos. I have no idea how people come back with 200-300 photos as I feel like we hit up every photog that we saw! That's ok as I have about 400 of my own photos, lol. :scared1:
 
Lamb - we came home with about 160 pictures and then after some creative editing, we ended up with about 250. We had several photopass people spend about 45 minutes with us to get a ton of pictures. :lovestruc

I thought it was well worth the money and will do it again for our next trip.

How was Harry Potter? We have scheduled in two extra days for our next trip to see IOA. Is it worth it?
 
Lamb - we came home with about 160 pictures and then after some creative editing, we ended up with about 250. We had several photopass people spend about 45 minutes with us to get a ton of pictures. :lovestruc

I thought it was well worth the money and will do it again for our next trip.

How was Harry Potter? We have scheduled in two extra days for our next trip to see IOA. Is it worth it?

oh, I didn't realize you could hang around with the photogs for a while. We always just had them snap 1 pic and then kept walking. Well, with the characters they usually snapped 2 or 3. I was in a PP share so I don't mind the $25 I dished out for it.

Believe it or not - we didn't do HP. I mean, we walked through it and everything looked really cool......but none of us know anything about HP so we didn't really know what we were looking at, lol. IOA is still cool but US is pretty lame now. There was a couple of cool 3D rides (Shrek, Simpsons) but other than that, lame. I won't go back there again. If you only do IoA I don't know that you'd need 2 days for it.....we did pretty much everything and were done by 3ish. But we didn't do HP so you probably need a couple hours for that.
 
Beth- We are all set! We got our reservation number today from the DVC member and I am THRILLED. If you are interested let me know and I can see if he is willing to rent out more points!

Lamb- Sounds like you had a great trip. I don't know why but our photopass people took a million pictures each. Seriously, we came back with like 450 if not more..... Probably because I always told them we preordered the CD so they did fun shots lol

I miss all of you February 2011 people :)
 
B

Lamb- Sounds like you had a great trip. I don't know why but our photopass people took a million pictures each. Seriously, we came back with like 450 if not more..... Probably because I always told them we preordered the CD so they did fun shots lol
le :)

that's another thing -- only ONE photog mentioned the special effects and it was at the very end of our 2nd to last day....... I had totally forgotten about them and def. would have had had them do some. I had always thought there were certain "special effect" photogs and that they would always be like "hey, want to do a Tinkerbell shot?" but when nobody ever mentioned it, it slipped my mind. Then when the photog at Epcot brought it up, she said that *all* PP photogs had the ability to do all the different effects. :confused3
 
Beth- We are all set! We got our reservation number today from the DVC member and I am THRILLED. If you are interested let me know and I can see if he is willing to rent out more points!

Lamb- Sounds like you had a great trip. I don't know why but our photopass people took a million pictures each. Seriously, we came back with like 450 if not more..... Probably because I always told them we preordered the CD so they did fun shots lol

I miss all of you February 2011 people :)

Just want to say that I miss everyone too. I suppose someplace on here there is a February 2012 thread, but I don't dare go there because I'm not sure if we'll be going next year and I don't want to get my hopes up. DD will be a senior next year and yes, we are those rotten parents who pull our daughter out of school for vacations. We've gone the past three Februarys and several other times prior to that. She already hinted that she wants to go back next February "for the last time", but it's too soon for me to start planning. Too many things up in the air like job security and rising gas prices! Plus, I think her senior year is going to nickle and dime me to pieces. Well, you didn't want to here my life story, but wanted to throw in my two cents about being sad that the February 2011 thread came and went way too quickly for my liking.
 
Lamb- I know, wish they would just automatically take the special shots- or at least offer them.

Eeyore- I started a January 2012 thread- we too have to take our son out of school (kindergarten only)! We decided to move the trip up to January, instead of February because 1) its sooner lol, 2) crowds will be even smaller 3) its even cheaper than Feb. We rented points from a DVC member so we are paying well- an unbelievable price to stay at AKL- Though, I will miss my February friends. I say EVERYONE come with us Jan 21-Jan 28. LOL We will have a we're freezing in WDW and we don't care meet up!
 
out of curiousity - how much are you paying per night for AKL? And it's a villa right? How many bedrooms?
 













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