**The Official January 2012 WDW Thread**

[lledman]

Anyone who's back start a trip report yet?????

This time next week we should be leaving

 

[okw19]

This time next week we should be over halfway there!

 

[sparks19]

This time next week we will be on our way We will probably be a couple hours from stopping for the night

I can't believe it. in 9 days we will be in Disney world

 

[ArmyWife7]

Safe travels to everyone beginning their journey. My goal is to be on the road by 6:00 AM central time and be in Disney by 4:00 PM eastern time. I hope the girls travel well and take a nap in the car.

 

[momto3boys1girl]

Anyone who's back start a trip report yet?????

This time next week we should be leaving

This time next week we will be on our flight! we spend 2 nights north of Disney for my brother's wedding and then head to Disney!!

 

[Marshay]

Three promotions!

1) The January 2013 thread is now up for anyone who may be going in January again! Already has 43 views and two travellers so there is interest, even this far out!

http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?t=2860438

Ok, update to this.

Someone else already started an OFFICIAL JANUARY 2013 thread under the resorts section, so I am ending my thread and joining in on theirs.

Here is the link if anyone is interested...

http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?t=2858123

 

[PamelaASmith]

We're home! We were in Disney from Jan 3-10. I posted a couple updates those first few days. I think the last I wrote was the night before the half marathon. I did try and update more often (wifi in the resorts is fabulous!) but the site kept shutting down on me in the middle of writing posts. I don't know if it was the wifi, Safari, or what.

DH did great in the half- finished in the top 5%! I asked him if he stopped for many pictures with characters along the way. He said it was dark until mile 10 so he couldn't even really see them very well. He did stop for Barbosa and Sparrow. Cool pic! He said he saw a duck in a top hat. I said "Scrooge? You passed up Scrooge?!?!?" and he said "Hey, it was dark, I didn't know it was him!" They really need to get some lights on these characters for the faster runners, lol.

My cold pretty much kept me kind of down for the first 3-4 days. It wasn't enough to really bother me- wasn't a big head cold- but just enough to make me feel icky and make my stomach completely off. Not good for all those yummy meals we had planned, but I ate anyway. The first two days were COLD but the rest of the time was really, really nice. Upper 70's and pleasant evenings. We never saw a drop of rain. Guess I didn't need to rush those last minute Christmas presents of L.L. Bean raincoats for the family after all. Crowds got much better after Saturday. Touring Plans was often upping their crowd forecasts at the last minute, which was pretty much what we expected. Crowds felt like an 8 when we arrived, felt like a 5-6 heading into marathon weekend, and felt like a 2-3 on Mon and Tue of this past week.

DD lost her tooth while we were there. DH stopped by the concierge and let them know. They said there would be a note for her the next day. We were expecting maybe a note from Tinkerbell or something that would reference the tooth, but instead it was the generic "Congratulations" Mickey card with no name on it, and three balloons. It even had the order slip the cast member had filled out stapled to it, which was kind of odd. We all walked in the room and there was no hiding it, so we told DD the truth- that we had tried to arrange something neat for her lost tooth and this must be what they had done. DD thought it was strange but liked it anyway.

If you ever go during marathon weekend, DON'T stay at OKW! Oh my gosh, the music, countdown, and fireworks to launch every wave of runners was amazingly loud. We were staying in building 28, which I thought was going to be far enough away from the start line (they originally had us in 18), but it was so loud that I could hear every word, hear Mickey countdown "3, 2, 1!" and everything. Every 5 minutes starting at 5:30 AM, both Sat and Sun. Amazingly, the kids slept straight through it. I don't know how that is even humanly possible! I about jumped out of bed and hit the ceiling the first time!

It was really neat being there during race weekend though. Seeing everyone walk around in their medals was something else. Everyone was congratulating everyone else, and feeling sorry for each other when they would see each other limping in the parks afterwards, lol. We met a lot of people. The girls loved asking people to see their medals, and the people always enjoyed stopping to show them and talk a bit about their race. DH really liked wearing his and is now very motivated to go for that Goofy medal next time! I strongly suspect we will be back next Jan for another race. Maybe even this time I'll try for the Donald medal! That would be an amazing feat, but I've got a whole year to work towards it, right?!

Even though our vacation started off a little rough, with the sickness, crowds, cold, and massive tourist groups, the second half was filled with lots of pixie dust. Our youngest DD loves to look for Hidden Mickeys. She was in charge of the Hidden Mickey book and took this responsibility very seriously. We were looking for the Tinkerbell in the rocks outside of BTMR when a cast member came up to show us where she was. He then handed us fast passes to BTMR, AND a special white fast pass good for the whole family for any ride in the MK!!! How cool is that?! We tried to use it that evening during EMH, but they shut down all the fast pass lines that evening. We never got back to MK, so I gave the fast passes to a family behind us in line at Star Tours on our last day. It made me feel good to pass along some pixie dust. We also had a family give us their Soarin' fast passes our first day at Epcot, which was extremely cool because we were just debating whether to get TT or Soarin' fast passes at the time. On our very last ride of the vacation, we were at Rock and Rollercoaster. The cast member moved us all to the very front of the coaster. He did it on purpose, because he passed us over when filling the coaster in front of us, then turned to us, winked, and said "I'm saving the driver's seat for you guys!" We told him this was the last ride of our vacation and he just beamed and said he was glad he could make it a good one!

I hope you all have a wonderful time! I have never been part of a "month trip" board before- just happened to stumble upon this one and I am so glad that I did! I'm looking forward to hearing all about your trips! Will people be posting them here, or in a trip report thread? Do I need to move my post?

Goodnight, all!!

 

[sparks19]

Pam... sounds like you guys had a great trip (other than the sickies and the 5:30 am wake up call LOL). I can't wait for our turn Where do they start the race that you could hear it? Does it actually start inside OKW? where do they run? As you can see I know nothing about this lol

another weather day revealed for our trip... Monday the 23rd (for now) will bring us 77 and scattered showers. I can handle that I don't mind spots of rain here and there, I just hope we don't get any ALL DAY rains lol. that always bums me out

Did online check in yesterday (a day later than I could have but I actually forgot lol)

This time next week we will be half way there

 

[PamelaASmith]

Where do they start the race that you could hear it? Does it actually start inside OKW? where do they run? As you can see I know nothing about this lol

They start on Bonnet Creek Parkway, immediately to the left of OKW. Here's a map of where they run: http://adisneyworldsports.disney.go.com/media/dwws_v0222/en_US/pdf/09HALFMARATHONMAP.pdf

 

[MOM POPPINS]

You can see a 15 day forecast at this link

http://www.accuweather.com/en/us/orlando-fl/32801/january-weather/328169

 

[Marshay]

Pam -- Thanks so much for posting your mini TR!! I loved reading about your trip and it actually made me even MORE excited for my own!!

Love all the sharing of FP!! Glad you got the balloons for the tooth, even if it wasn't the neatest thing at least they tried to do something special for her.

It sounds neat about seeing everyone with the medals and all.

 

[sparks19]

You can see a 15 day forecast at this link

http://www.accuweather.com/en/us/orlando-fl/32801/january-weather/328169

ooooh thank you it's lookin pretty good for our trip. there will be some sweater days but not much rain so I'm happy

 

[brobrosmom]

ooooh thank you it's lookin pretty good for our trip. there will be some sweater days but not much rain so I'm happy

Thanks so much for posting! I can only see our first night there but at least I have something to look at until we leave!

 

[ash-n-brensmom]

We got home Thursday night...pretty late after a few delays due to weather. We got lucky though because we were only delayed by about an hour total. We had a great trip....not gonna give too much away because I am going to start a TR next week. I am back to work tonight.... Not looking forward to getting back to a schedule that doesn't include rope drops, ADR's and Fastpasses.
So excited for everyone leaving soon...hope everyone has safe travels and vacations full of pixie dust!

 

[OchreHand]

I'm back also!

Hope everyone is having a great time that's there now. Bummed to be back to "reality." Will post some thoughts a little later.

 

[BiltmoreConcierge]

TWO MORE WEEKS!!! YAAAHOOOO!!!!

 

[HHMcG]

I'm a newbie to this thread.

11 days for us!!!!!

Holidays are over, DD's birthday is over (party ended hours ago). Now I can focus on our trip.

 

[krd315]

Single Digits...9 more days

 

[sparks19]

ONE WEEK and we will be at MK

has anyone stayed at Wyndham Lake Buena Vista before? we are planning to arrive saturday night but we don't check in to OKW until Sunday so we were thinking of trying to get a room at Wyndham since it's right down the street from downtown disney. the 2 double bed rooms are on for $95 right now so we are considering staying there just for the night but I've never stayed there before and neither has hubby so we were just wondering if anyone else had and had any input

 

[GGOOFY1]

SIX DAYS!!!!!!! Yay!!!!