The planning has commenced!

[dakjoskaimiksmom]

A disclaimer: I am writing this for several reasons:

1) Dh is getting sick of listening to me talk about WDW 24/7. I need an outlet!

2) My MIL has been trying to get me scrapbooking with her for 3 years! If nothing else, I can print out this whole jobber, decorate the pages, add some pictures, and call it a day. Then I can honestly tell her I gave it the old college try.

3) I love reading total strangers' TR's. I'm sure I'll like reading mine even more, since I'll at least know a few of the people it involves.

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We are, at this moment, at T-minus 4 months, 22 days and counting.

Somehow I seem to have tapped into my inner-Type A personality, as far as trip-organizing goes. Now if only it would spill over into my housekeeping, I'd be set. *Sigh*

Anyway, on paper, our entire trip is worked out. I haven't quite given in to my urge to make a WDW binder, but I do have a notebook. It rocks.

Here is my current "to do" list--things that MUST be done before we can actually leave the premises to go on our vacay:

1) Make ADR's. Can't do this till Nov 21st, according to WDW-DINE. This totally sucks, because so much hinges on where we're eating.

2) Buy Disney Dollars for the kids. Have to do that next time we go to WI to visit my parents. There isn't a Disney Store within a hundred miles of here. It's like living on the moon or something. Anyway, I plan to dole these out for Christmas, Hannukah, birthdays, and as Tooth Fairy prizes.

3) Collect window decorations. We're staying on-property, so we might as well go crazy, right?

4) Print out directions from Mapquest, although I may not. I think dh might be getting a Doug Doug (Tom Tom) for Christmas.

5) Create a little Disney magic of my own. Big surprise for the kids, who need it. Dh and I are very grounded, serious people. They won't even see it coming!

6) Print out all our gratuity & mousekeeping envelopes. As I said, we are going for the full Disney effect here.


Have I mentioned yet that I'm a compulsive list maker?


Now I've even out-listed myself. In my hurry to make a list, I forgot to make my other list.


Trip to Walt Disney World March 1st - March 5th
Trip to the Atlantic Ocean March 5th-7th


Cast of characters:

Me 34: <---No, I'm not a hippy. But this DOES look a little like me, if I was yeller. I am the planner extrordinaire. I am also fairly sarcastic, funny, nerdy, and conservative. I am woman, hear me roar. Call me mom.

Dh 33: <-- Will never look like this, because he is colorblind. I'm wondering how he'll do the 3-D shows? Anyway, dh is my buff construction worker, Brad Paisley-with-glasses lookin' man. We'll call him Daddy cuz he likes it (plus he's a red-neck, so I call him Daddy half the time anyway. We're so trailer! LOL).

Ds 6: Joshy <--- He wants to meet Captain Jack Sparrow. Then he plans to knock him out and steal his identity. J/K

Dd 5: Kai (pronounced "KIE") <---- This picture doesn't even BEGIN to explain her princess-ness

Ds 2: Mike, also known as Bubba <---- He's my piglet, my sweet Baboo.

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As of today, my basic daily job is recording various Disney movies onto DVD from the DVR. I WILL have 12 hours' worth of Disney movies for our car ride on March 1st, and 12 hours' worth for the trip home on the 7th. Plus the kids need to bone up on their Disney characters. I do not want to be the one parent at WDW who chases down a character for pics with the kids, only to have kids with confused looks on their faces, like uh, who the heck are you supposed to be??

Allow me to explain: We homeschool, amidst much controversy with my family. Therefore, my kids only watch educational shows. This is good and bad. Good because they're smart, bad because they miss a lot of magic that other kids live with every day. Hence the vacation, overplanned and crammed with magic.

Anyway, 24 hours worth of Disney movies SEEMS like a lot, but I've already got a ton.


So.....I'm going to cut out for now. Must get some sleep.


Tune in tomorrow. Same mouse time, same mouse channel.

Tomorrow's feature will include: the resort, the restaurants, and the age-old question "How many times can Daddy's eyes roll at Mom before they fall right out of his head?"

 

[Hsminnie]

Oh my gosh we're twins!! I'm going to love this!!!

 

[Diamondintheruff]

I'm in!

 

[Hsminnie]

2) My MIL has been trying to get me scrapbooking with her for 3 years! If nothing else, I can print out this whole jobber, decorate the pages, add some pictures, and call it a day. Then I can honestly tell her I gave it the old college try.

BTW, thanks for the tip. My BF drives me nuts because I am hopeless and cannot seem to scrapbook a page. Printing my TR's will be a great compromise!!!!

 

[Brave teacher]

I'm in. I'll be there a week before you are.

 

[dakjoskaimiksmom]

BTW, thanks for the tip. My BF drives me nuts because I am hopeless and cannot seem to scrapbook a page. Printing my TR's will be a great compromise!!!!

I'm actually surprised that I'm NOT a scrapbooker. It seems like something I'd be into, but I prefer taking enough consecutive pictures to tell a story with a mere photo album, rather than picking a few separate pictures and decorating the paper around them. I'm just weird like that. LOL

I'm in. I'll be there a week before you are.

I'm in!

Oh my gosh we're twins!! I'm going to love this!!!

Thanks for reading, you guys! I'll try to keep it somewhat entertaining. LOL

 

[dakjoskaimiksmom]

I suspect dh is becoming annoyed with my incessant vacation talk. The other night he said, "When you start talking about Disney World, my eyes glaze over." He's also said that on prior occasions, like my rants on religion, politics, home decor, and stupid people. He is a simple man.

He's also never been to WDW, so I guess I can understand his lack of enthusiasm (sort of). He's not opposed to going, he just thinks it's an awfully expensive way to entertain the kids. Which isn't exactly true. I'm more intending for it to be a bonding experience, and for memory value.

Plus we've never been on a REAL family vacation yet, or a honeymoon for that matter. Our idea of a vacation is a trip to Milwaukee, Wisconsin to see my parents, or a trip to Clarksville, Tennessee to see his -- not exactly Travel Channel-worthy stuff. When we arrive at said parents' houses, we usually stay in. No Graceland or Dollywood visits. No Miller Brewery tours or Brewers' games. Nada! So I think we've earned a little fun time.

He also thinks we can't afford it. I'm the family accountant, and I say we can. They DO allow you to book, then make payments up till 45 days before your arrival, so we're good. We have till Jan 15th to make our final payment, so I've been paying it off, slowly but surely.

Personally, behind all his excuses, I think his problem is that he'd rather stay home and couch for a week than hike through theme parks. I say, tough toenails. He couches too much as it is. LOL

He's really not as bad as all that. He just doesn't get all the planning, God love him. I think he truly believes that everything in our lives just happens, from trips to bills getting paid, to dinner, by sheer luck. He doesn't seem to realize that things go smoothly because his little woman scurries around all week planning and making lists, making phone calls and driving to utility companies and grocery stores. Must be nice to live in a plastic bubble.

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Anyway, on to the logistics of the trip:

We're staying at Pop Century, which surprise even ME. I always swore I'd never stay on Disney property. It costs more, and we don't plan on spending much time at the hotel anyway. My mama didn't raise no fool.

But when I actually sat down and figured out how much we'd be spending on food for all of us, plus the hotel, plus admissions, plus all the extra crap I had planned, we had a total of $2900, just for the WDW part. Then I looked the WDW site and discovered we could do all that for $1835. That's a BIG difference. Between the dining plan, and the fact that we have a 2 yr old, we're knocking a lot of money off.

I think the dining plan is going to be my favorite part of this whole thing. As a psychotic planner, I like having everything arranged before arrival. The first thing I did was sit down and pick which parks we'd go to on each day, with some help from The Unoffical Guide to WDW with Kids. Then I picked restaurants and which meals we'd eat at them. Without the benefit of ADR's, right now we have:

Mar 1st--Planet Hollywood at DTD for dinner. I've heard good and bad things about it, so I'm taking a risk here. We get a $15 coupon with our room, though, so we might as well use it. This will be out-of-pocket.

Mar 2nd--Akershus for breakfast, supper at Garden Grill. Dh and I will probably be eating our way through Epcot all day, so "free" dinner on the dining plan will be a good thing. Then again, dh can really put it away, so we'd probably get our money's worth even if we were paying ourselves. If I cut off the kids' ice cream supply 2 hours before dinner, they should be hungry by then too.

Mar 3rd-- Light breakfast at Pop (oop), Lunch at Cosmic Ray's, and dinner at Crystal Palace

Mar 4th-- Brunch at Pop, dinner at Tony's Town Square

Mar 5th-- Toy Story Pizza Planet for lunch, Studio Catering for dinner <---This one I'm not sure of. I've got 2 other ideas for our last meal: eating at Backlot Express, or eating that last counter service meal on a different day, and eating at an off-property seafood buffet on our way to our other hotel (by the beach). I think the seafood buffet might win. All-you-can-eat lobster sounds pretty good right now. LOL

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So our schedule looks like this:

Feb 28th-- load up the car and head for dh's parents' house to spend the night

Mar 1st--arrive at Pop, head to DTD

Mar 2nd-- Epcot

Mar 3rd-- Magic Kingdom

Mar 4th-- Magic Kingdom

Mar 5th-- check out of Pop, Hollywood Studios, head to 2nd hotel on the beach

Mar 6th-- Beach day! Beach in the morning, shopping in the afternoon, pool at night

Mar 7th-- Say good-bye to the beach and start heading home. We'll be staying with dh's parents tonight, so we'll have plenty of time to stop along the way and see some of the sights.

Mar 8th-- leave dh's parents' house and head home.


And right now, I have to go locate an ADR calculator. I know I saw one somewhere around here...

 

[Hsminnie]

I can review a few things for you:

The Pop is a great hotel. It IS budget, and they are double beds, but we liked it just fine.

Akershus was lovely. Some of the dinner food was off the radar for us but I imagine the Norwegians eat the same eggs we do. Well, they might pickle some, but wait and see. The ambience was great and the character interaction was as well. Definitely a B+ from our group.

Crystal Palace is a must do for our family, no matter who is going. My 16 year old insisted on it for her birthday trip. The characters are outstanding and the whole place is set up for fun. The food is secondary for us. We have only been for breakfast which is good. Some things are not to my taste, but the basics are there and are good. Regardless, we would not miss it. This is one place we would wait an hour to be seated.

Hope those help a bit!!!

 

[dakjoskaimiksmom]

I can review a few things for you:

The Pop is a great hotel. It IS budget, and they are double beds, but we liked it just fine.

Akershus was lovely. Some of the dinner food was off the radar for us but I imagine the Norwegians eat the same eggs we do. Well, they might pickle some, but wait and see. The ambience was great and the character interaction was as well. Definitely a B+ from our group.

Crystal Palace is a must do for our family, no matter who is going. My 16 year old insisted on it for her birthday trip. The characters are outstanding and the whole place is set up for fun. The food is secondary for us. We have only been for breakfast which is good. Some things are not to my taste, but the basics are there and are good. Regardless, we would not miss it. This is one place we would wait an hour to be seated.

Hope those help a bit!!!

Thanks! I saw the menu for Akershus, and it WAS pretty, well, foreign. LOL That's why I decided to do it for breakfast. Although I gotta say, I'm a sucker for smoked salmon.

We're doing Crystal Palace more for the characters than the food, too. Dh has an iron stomach and the kids aren't picky, so it should be ok. I've heard good and bad reviews about the food, but I'm willing to risk it for the character interaction.

 

[Tikifan67]

I'm glad to see I'm not the only one who drives my husband insane with Disney planning.

I have heard Akershus breakfast is good. We've only been there for dinner and we thought it was horrible.

 

[Brave teacher]

Do we all drive our DH insane?

We love Crystal Palace. It quickly became a must do for us every trip.

 

[Tikifan67]

Do we all drive our DH insane?

I think it would be safe to say YES!

 

[Hsminnie]

I'm glad to see I'm not the only one who drives my husband insane with Disney planning.

Do we all drive our DH insane?

For those of you who have a problem, ahem, I believe there are Disney Planning 12 Step meetings. I, of course, do NOT have a problem. Now, where IS that Passporter?

 

[Tikifan67]

For those of you who have a problem, ahem, I believe there are Disney Planning 12 Step meetings. I, of course, do NOT have a problem. Now, where IS that Passporter?

 

[dakjoskaimiksmom]

Well I'm glad to know I'm not alone in that respect. LOL

 

[dakjoskaimiksmom]

More coming up!

 

[dakjoskaimiksmom]

4 months, 16 days left!

Dh appears to be getting the tiniest bit excited about this trip. I asked if he had a problem with eating at Planet Hollywood, and he said, "Hon, as long as I get to eat, I'm happy."

Ok, so he's not doing cartwheels. At least the eyerolling has ceased. That was really starting to get on my nerves.

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After he went to bed tonight (he works at the crack of dawn), I went online to check out fishing at Cocoa Beach. We're both fishing junkies, but he's never fished on the ocean before (I have, in Ireland). I bounced the idea off him the other day, and he liked it. I figured we could just take the kids shore-fishing, but I saw a few sites mentioned how crowded the beach was with swimmers, surfers, etc. Hmmm. Then I started looking at charters. Most of them are kinda steep, pricewise, but I found a few that looked promising. Now I've narrowed it down to one, pending a return email. I'd LIKE for us to be able to go shark fishing at night --catch, tag, and release --but I don't know if they're doing it in March. That would be SO cool though! If nothing else, we could go plain-old deep-sea fishing. Works for me. Although I'd so much rather go for sharks! I know dh would too.

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Then I went to mapquest and got all our driving directions. Maybe I'm weird but I find their directions kind of redundant and confusing, so I condensed them and wrote them all out longhand. Yes, I'm nuts. But I SO hate looking at directions and seeing all the extra words. Just get me to the point!

I got:

1) to Pop from dh's parents' house

2) from MGM -- I mean Hollywood Studios-- to the Gator Motel

3) from Gator to Obsession Charters at Cape Canaveral

4) from Gator to dh's parents' house


One more chore checked off my to-do list!

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The last few days I've been washing and packing up the kids shorts--don't want to have to hunt for them in February! Well, not really PACKING. Just putting them in our "WDW" bin. It's getting pretty full already!

So far I have:

--kids' shorts, my shorts, dh's shorts

--our personalized WDW maps

--our "Southeastern States" map, courtesy of Rand McNally

--our directions folder

--our payment invoice folder

--Kai's Cinderella make-up kit ($3 at Family Dollar)

--Joshy and Kai's Disney mini photo albums (1 Goofy, 1 Princess, $3 each at Walgreen's. Still have to buy the matching disposable cameras)

--our park itinerary (a mini photo album with blank index cards instead of pictures)





Am I going overboard here, with 4 months left?

 

[Hsminnie]

Am I going overboard here, with 4 months left?

You're hysterical is what you are!!!!

And no, you're not. Think how glad you'll be when all this stuff is taken care of and you can relax in the days before the trip. I have to say, you're doing great!!

 

[dakjoskaimiksmom]

4 Months 13 days!

We've hit a small snag. My mother called today and said she'd like to go with us, if she can talk my dad into it. I may have told her the TINIEST of white lies, by omission. I said we were going in May of 2010, which is absolutely true. I neglected to inform her of our March '09 trip. I'm a horrible person, aren't I? I have my reasons, though.

When I took my oldest son in 2001 (then 6 yrs old), my dad went with us for the whole trip. I love my dad to death, and we had a great time at Epcot, AK, and (then) MGM. It was the best time ever. In the middle of the night before our 4th day, MK day, my mom arrived in all her luggaged glory.

My mother, for reasons I will NEVER understand, insists on bringing every bill, every tax return, every minute piece of paper that means anything to her, EVERYWHERE SHE GOES! On the trip I'm referring to, she brought with her:

1) A SUITCASE full of papers, etc, in case she "had time to go through" them.

2) A suitcase full of pool toys, beach balls, and water wings (she heard there was a pool at the hotel)

3) An "adult disposable diaper" box -- 4ft x 3ft-- full of water noodles and 4 various sized life vests....for 1 kid! (That box was particularly FUN to lug through the hotel. I couldn't explain to the starers that my mom works in a nursing home, and is a bag lady. )

4) A suitcase full of clothes, including extra clothes for my dad, and 3 swimsuits for her. I might add that she didn't actually swim while she was there.

5) Her purse. It is a large, black affair. We call it "the mothership" because she sometimes carries smaller satellite purses as well. Her purse has been known to hold everything from oranges to a doorstop (I kid you not!), and weighs about 60 lbs.

Her purse is the main reason I'd rather she didn't come with us. I'll tell you why.

Picture this:

We get up at 7:30 am to get to MK, since none of us has been there before. The park doesn't open till 9, so we decide to eat breakfast at Waffle House.

We get done eating and head for the car--all except my mom, who suddenly feels the need to go use the payphone to check in at work (she was and is security supervisor at a nursing home). After rummaging for 10 minutes through the mothership, she comes up with enough change to call Cuba. She makes her phone call, and proceeds to stay on the phone for 45 minutes!! The rest of us are broiling in the car, and muttering dark words at her by the time she gets done.

We arrive at the park at 9:50. Grr. Then we spend another 45 minutes at bag check, because the mothership contains scissors, nail clippers, a pocketknife, and God knows what else. All I know is it took forever, and she complained the rest of the day about her crap getting confiscated. (Honestly, they just made her put the stuff in a locker behind the counter. It's not like she didn't get it back, or anything. )

Then, because she walks like a turtle, we all have to walk slowly through the park so she can keep up. We were on bad terms that day, my mom and I.

At one point I took her purse for a minute, so she could go to the loo without it. Aside from the fact that my arm almost fell off, I was amazed at her sudden burst of speed as she headed to the restroom. Then I put 2 and 2 together--the purse was weighing her down. And us!

It took us SO long to get through the park, that at closing time we still hadn't seen Pirates or anything else in that area of the park. I was MAD! To make matters worse, it rained for an hour in the middle of the day, and mom insisted on sitting in Liberty Tree the whole time. We had just eaten, so what was the point?

All in all, it was a bad day. The next 2 days she spent with my aunt, who'd recently moved to Orlando. My dad, ds and I spent the 2 days at Universal and SeaWorld and saw EVERYTHING.

7 years later, I still hold a grudge. So no, my mother is NOT invited .

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Anyway, the GOOD news is that I went to Home Depot and got about a million mickey heads for our Pop window! From some of the other posts, I had gathered that they were all lime green. I was so glad to see different colors! I got lavendar, an eggplant-y type shade of purple, and a really pretty shade of teal/ green. Then I felt like a thief, so I bought a flower pot and some plastic gloves I didn't really need.
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More later!

 

[Diamondintheruff]

Thanks! I saw the menu for Akershus, and it WAS pretty, well, foreign. LOL That's why I decided to do it for breakfast. Although I gotta say, I'm a sucker for smoked salmon.

We're doing Crystal Palace more for the characters than the food, too. Dh has an iron stomach and the kids aren't picky, so it should be ok. I've heard good and bad reviews about the food, but I'm willing to risk it for the character interaction.

I looked at the Menus and decided the exact same thing. Breakfast. We treated like a brunch as we had 10:30 or 10:45 ADR's.

We love the CP. It's so pretty. The food IMO is better than some other buffets and of course we are a family of suckers for Eeoyre and Piglet.

We've hit a small snag. My mother called today and said she'd like to go with us, if she can talk my dad into it. I may have told her the TINIEST of white lies, by omission. I said we were going in May of 2010, which is absolutely true. I neglected to inform her of our March '09 trip. I'm a horrible person, aren't I? I have my reasons, though.

I SOOO hear you. My Mom (god bless her) only joined us for part of both our last Disney trips. I was not heartbroken when reasons beyond her control dictated that my Mom had to leave early this year and arrive later last year.

My Dad stuck it through the entire time of both trips and was a godsend. And unlike DH (who belongs to the eyerolling club) my Dad was excited and happy to follow any of my Disney plans.