The These People Are Insane Taking A Baby And A Penguin To Disney World PTR

[MomToARedhead]

Hi


I know I look new here, but I'm not. I've been a member since 2006, but decided I wanted a new screen name. So I signed up with a new one and here I am!

I've never written a trip report, let alone a pre trip report, so I hope if I get any readers that I don't bore them too badly. In the meantime, I'll consider this my own personal little blog about preparing for our upcoming trip.

So, we're crazy. Or so I'm told. You see, we'll be taking along our 9-month old baby when we go to WDW in a couple of months. OK, 70 days. Who's counting?

I can't begin to tell you how many people have told my DH and I "You know she'll be too young to 'get' Disney, right?"

No way!!!!!!!!!!! We TOTALLY booked this trip JUST for her! You mean, she won't care about Mickey and Minnie and Donald?? Darn. Well, I guess we'll cancel.

Or not! Do people really think that we booked this trip thinking our 9-month old daughter will get the most out of it?? Excuse me while I ROTFL.



I feel better now.

All my DD is going to care about is "Where is my food?" "It's naptime" and "I made a poopy!" I'm sure she will enjoy all of the new smells and sounds and lights, but let's face it, this will be a vacation like no other we've ever experienced when it was just the two of us. It's going to be a little harder and I won't be able to overplan and overcram everything like I normally do (the control freak in me is FREAKING OUT!). But it's doable. How many others have done this before! We will be fine.

But we're still bringing Grammie along!

Between myself, DH and Grammie, we can handle a 9-month old. I'm actually looking forward to heading back to the room mid-day for a mid-day recharge during naptime. Maybe this trip, I will stop long enough to smell the roses and take in everything around me instead of running, running, running, like all of our vacations we took when it was just the two of us.

So, let me now back up a bit and give a more formal introduction.

The cast of characters:

DH and I:

DD:

Grammie:
This is my mother, but I'm not sure she'd appreciate a picture being posted on a website she knows nothing about!

Paul the Penguin (see below )

Paul the Penguin is our traveling mascot. He's been everywhere we've been since we got him in 2005. He's been to WDW, Las Vegas, the Smoky Mountains, Florida, and all over the Caribbean on cruises. The shirt in his picture up there is a shirt we got him when we stopped at DTD for a day while waiting for our flight home from a cruise

We weren't even thinking of a trip to anywhere, but then I caught wind of the 7 nights for the price of 4 promotion, we did a little calculating and decided we could swing it. So I made our reservation for a week in early February at Pop Century and here I am.

Stay tuned. I'll be back for more. Lots more!

 

[heaven2dc]

Aww....your baby is adorable!! I think it's great you are taking her - my DD will be joining me in 3 weeks with her baby (he just turned 1 yr old) and I'm so anxious to see the wonder in his eyes.

Keep us updated - 70 days and counting Believe me it will be here before you know it!

 

[MomToARedhead]

Hi! Thank you for the compliment! It seems people are split down the middle on taking an infant to WDW. We love to travel to all kinds of places and there's no way I would even consider leaving her behind. Where we go, she goes, plain and simple. I bet you will have so much fun watching your grandson take everything in!


More about our trip. I am a SAHM and a master budgeter. I knew leaving behind my career to take care of the baby would mean making sacrifices, which for me translated to less vacations! Then I found another compromise...we can still take vacations, I just have to take my master budgeter approach to them all. I've also changed the way I vacation. Instead of going all out and dining at fine restaurants and getting the extended balconies on the cruise ships, I'm fine with eating at TGIFridays and no balcony - I do have to have a window though, that is not negotiable!

So when I came across the deal for this trip, I had to figure out how to squeeze it into our budget without using credit cards. Our credit card debt has been gone for years and using them for a vacation is the last thing I want to do! I crunched some numbers and came up with the following formula. After all, being able to go to WDW on a mega budget is 1000 times better than not going at all! Plus, this is Grammie's first time going in all of her 50-some years and I am soooooo excited for that! Back to the formula:

We'd stay at a value resort. This is our first time even staying on the property, so I'm just excited to be there, even if it'll be close quarters with a baby and my mom for the week in a bed that is probably too small for my very tall husband. We'll survive. We've slept in weirder places and we made it (In our car in the right lane of I-24 as traffic stopped following a brutal ice storm).

No dining plan. I still haven't had the experience of doing the DDP, but maybe I'll catch them again when it's free. We'll be bringing our breakfast for the week with us from home when we drive down (Poptarts and fruit - I get them cheap at the commissary), we'll be doing a CS meal at the parks with our free $200 gift card every day for lunch and we have other off-site plans for dinner for the nights when the parks close early, which is nearly every night we're there. Giordano's, how I love you and cannot wait to reunite!

Base tickets only. We were thisclose to buying a park hopper, but we went back and forth about it and decided that we really won't be park hopping more than 1 or 2 days. Not worth the $53 x 3.

So, I'm doing my best to make this trip work while on a serious budget. It definitely won't be like when we went last time and were free to spend money frivolously, but we're going to make it work. One thing is for sure - budget does not equal boredom!

 

[kitkatsmom]

Good formula.

I booked a trip in May 2009. With the 4/3 deal I upgraded us to the poly rather than the POR. I have 5 people so I can't do the economy resorts and the family suite is pricey.

we had planned on going and budgeted for a week at the POR then the 4/3 deal came along so I did the math and we were able to do the poly for about the same price.

Back to the formula, I also skipped having a dining plan this time around. We don't normally eat that much so why not just bring breakfast like you said. Poptarts, cereal bars, fruit cups, etc.. We also get cases of water and juice to have in the room. Then for lunch we can just grab something small. and we will only have to worry about dinners.

I also skipped adding the park hopper feature to our tickets. We usually stay in one park for the day and we will be there enough days to visit each one twice so we don't need to hop. That was a good savings since its 5 tickets.

I also calculated the amount of money we needed and divided by the amount of weeks left till our trip. Now I know exactly how much I have to put away each week. So when we leave we will not owe anything on credit cards.

Hope to read more about how you made out at disney with the baby.

 

[MomToARedhead]

Kitkat, it sounds like you have a good low-budget plan in place as well! We went to WDW last time on a budget, but a fairly liberal one...this time, it's a strict one! Disney on a budget is better than no Disney at all!

 

[MomToARedhead]

Traveling with a baby on such a major vacation is going to be a brand new experience for us. We're not new to traveling with her. We've taken more laid back vacations since she's been born. We went to Myrtle Beach for a week when she was almost 3 months old. Minus the car ride, she did great the whole week. We went to Pigeon Forge/Gatlinburg, TN for about 6 days right when she turned 5 months old. She did much better in the car that time with her new, comfy Britax car seat!

We will be traveling by car this time again. I'm simply not ready to take her on a plane ride. I'm a new parent and I have first-time parent syndrome. I take everything but the kitchen sink with us when we travel, except I really do use it all. I don't trust the airlines to not lose the suitcase full of her things. With 3 adults flying, it's much more cost effective to drive anyway. Gas prices can keep on keepin on down till our trip and hopefully beyond!

Our trip will not be straight through as we'll stop at my in-laws house in Georgia to overnight for one night on both the trip down and the trip back.

So, with the baby in mind, I'm going to attempt to put together a to do list because I'm a planner like that. The baby will be waking soon so I doubt I get through all of this, but I'll do what I can and come back another time to finish. We'll be doing so much more than what is on these lists, but these are the highest of priority things that we'll put before doing other stuff.

Magic Kingdom

• Flag lowering ceremony. My DH is active duty and would like to participate if there are openings.
• Get DD's hair cut for the first time. She has a TON of hair and needs it cut now, but I've been putting it in a ponytail on the top of her head with a bow because we want to get her very first haircut in the MK barbershop.
• Watch the parade. We missed it last time because it was just too crowded.
• Watch the fireworks, but I'm not optimistic this will happen as I know the baby is more than cranky at the end of the day and we'll probably be back in our room already.
• Get there early enough for the opening ceremony, as I know Grammie will just love it!
• Must-do Rides - We'll be riding more than this, but all of the rides not mentioned here are fine if we do them, fine if we don't do them.
  
  • Big Thunder Mountain Railroad
  • Splash Mountain - I won't ride though...not big on water rides without my swimsuit on
  • Dumbo - baby's first ride!
  • Haunted Mansion
  • Buzz Lightyear

Animal Kingdom

• Festival of the Lion King
• It's Tough To Be a Bug
• Expedition Everest - I will ride this 5 times bare minimum. This is my favorite roller coaster of any theme park I've ever been to. I don't ride coasters that go upside down or that drop more than 100 feet straight down, so EE is just my speed. I think I almost have DH convinced to ride with me just once
• The Safari
• Kali River Rapids - again, I'll sit this one out but DH definitely wants to ride and Grammie will likely ride

Hollywood Studios
It's so strange for me to call it that, I STILL call it MGM without meaning to.

• Star Tours - I might sit this one out with the baby, but this is at the top of DH's list and I'm sure Grammie will love to try it.
• Beauty and the Beast live show
• Lights Motor Action stunt show
• Toy Story Mania
• Muppet Vision 3-D

Notice the 2 big draws at DHS are NOT on my list!! Those 2 thrill rides are a little too "thrilling" for us!

EPCOT
EPCOT is guaranteed to be visited twice by us. It's DH and I's favorite park, but we're science nerds, so it's no surprise.

• Soarin
• Mission Space - GREEN ONLY!
• Test Track
• Living With the Land
• Maelstrom - we didn't make it here last time, but we're curious about it as we've heard many good things. Hope I don't get too wet.
• Spaceship Earth
• Illuminations, if the baby will allow!

 

[heaven2dc]

You've got a great line-up of attractions (yours are similar to mine). Can't wait to see pics of your daughter's haircut - my daughter is planning on having her son's first haircut at the Barber Shop in MK so can't wait to see how that goes

 

[MomToARedhead]

my daughter is planning on having her son's first haircut at the Barber Shop in MK so can't wait to see how that goes

Oooh let me know how it goes!



Hope everyone had a great thanksgiving. I have a lot to be thankful for this year.

Let's see, I was working on my to-do list when I last left off. I have a few more to-do list items that I thought of since I last posted.

• Fantasmic
• Pizza delivery from Giordano's to the resort. Seriously - world's best pizza in my eyes. We got it in Chicago one year and were hooked and were very pleased to see it in Orlando. Despite living within a 4-5 hour drive of Chicago, we actually end up in Orlando more often!
• I'm hemming and hawing about doing a character meal. Only because this will probably be Grammie's one and only trip to Disney World. Obviously the baby won't be old enough to get the characters and, brace yourself, DH and I really aren't all that into the characters.
• Downtown Disney - I don't care what other stores I get to, get me and Grammie to the Ghirardelli (sp?) store PRONTO!

I think that sums up the rest of my to-do list. I've got mommy duty to tend to, so I'll keep this one short and sweet

 

[faerieprincess]

i love the penguin....and your DD is very cute as well

i'm along for the ride - and will be there just about the same time as you.

 

[MomToARedhead]

Hi Faerie and welcome! We're there the first week, so maybe we'll see you around the parks

I'm a little bit in worry mode. I had my gall bladder removed mid-November and now when I eat, my body does some wacky things. I know I'm only 2.5 weeks post-op, but the surgeon said I should be back to normal by now. If this keeps up, I won't get to eat some of Disney's wonderfully fattening CS food that we had planned for lunch every day! I use the term "plan" loosely, as we just know we'll be eating CS for lunch, but I don't have planned out where yet. I still have some research to do and I'm trying to remember where we ate last time, but I am drawing big blanks!

We ordered the Disney World 2009 book (can't remember the exact name of it, it's the red white and blue book that comes out every year) from the library and that should be coming in relatively soon. The last one I read was 2006 and there were a lot of things that were new at Disney that year that weren't in the book yet. Hopefully since we're going early in the year, there won't be too many things that aren't in the book. I don't read too much into the author's ratings of rides and attractions, but I do like to read about them.

I haven't had much time to update lately because my laptop has been out of commission and I had to send it to Sony for a repair. When I do have a chance to update, my thoughts are all over the place. So forgive me, but until my laptop gets back, I'll be slightly MIA and slightly disorganized. I do have lots of thoughts for the trip to organize into more productive lists that I can use to plan, pack and go on this trip! Things I need to go over:

• packing for a baby (what did I get myself into?) and diaper bag logistics (sounds so fun, right? )
• how to entertain a baby in the car for 2 days
• places to get pictures of Paul on the Disney property - may have to start a separate thread for that to get ideas from others
• how to pass the time in January, which feels like the longest month of the year because it's so bitterly cold, snowy and dreary here
• back-up plan in case of a snowstorm on our date of departure

Stay tuned! I promise I'll be more organized and interesting once I have my OWN computer back!

 

[MomToARedhead]

I think today I'm going to take a break from trip planning and tell you more about how I came to be a fan of WDW.

I am 27 years old. I'd never taken a vacation in my life until I was 22 years old and bought myself a week on a cruise ship to celebrate graduating college. My parents were blue collar working class and there was simply no money in the budget for taking trips.

Well, I went on my cruise, leaving a few hours after graduation and drove through the night to get to New Orleans to embark the ship. I was hooked from the start - not just hooked on cruising, but hooked on traveling in general.

Less than a year later, I met the man who would later become my husband and I got him hooked on cruising and traveling as well. After we got married, we worked very hard for a few months to pay off our bills so that we'd have money to travel and go to places that I, for one, never thought I would ever be able to go to. We wanted to get the travel bug out of our system before starting our family. We took a couple of cruises and we went to Las Vegas. I was ready to plan our next cruise, when DH started talking about Disney World and all of these Disney shows suddenly appeared on our DVR.

I was a Disney skeptic. I'd never watched Disney movies growing up unless I saw them at a friend's house. I was an only child and my mom never really had animated movies or TV shows on in the house. So I simply didn't know much about WDW and I seriously thought it was just a place for little kids!

Don't hate me. I didn't know!

DH kept carrying on about Disney World so I decided that for Christmas, I'd book a surprise trip there for us. I was so unenthusiastic about this trip, let me tell you.

Well, the secret didn't last long and it's a good thing I ended up telling him because if I didn't one of my friends would have! She didn't know I'd told him and asked me a question about our trip right there in front of him! She immediately realized her mistake and got red in the face, but I told her that I'd already told him instead of letting her stand there feeling badly about spoiling the surprise!

I *can* keep a secret, but DH simply can't leave me alone when he knows I have a secret! There will never be a surprise trip to anywhere in this family!

Anyway, we were going the week before Christmas, coming back home on Christmas Eve. DH was so excited to be going at Christmas time. His enthusiasm was nearly contagious, but I just could not get excited about the trip. I wasn't NOT looking forward to the trip, I just wasn't excited about it. I'd have rather been cruising instead of hanging out with Mickey and friends.

Again...don't hate me! I didn't know!

So we got into Orlando late at night, picked up our rental car and headed to our hotel, which was really gross, so I thought it was an omen the whole trip was going to be awful and I was ready to turn around and get on the next plane home! The next day, we went to EPCOT and we headed to Test Track - WEE! I had done minimal research before the trip (I'm normally researching trips for months beforehand!) and wasn't really sure what to expect from the rides - I didn't realize the rides are as cool as they are. We went and got a FP for Soarin' because I'd heard about it, but didn't have a clue what it was. When our FP time came up, we went and they were letting people into the ride but when we got up to the CM, she stopped us and said we'd have to wait for the next one. I knew it would only be a couple of minutes, so it was no biggie, but I wanted to go NOW! It turned out to be for the better - we got a front row view with no legs dangling! I sat down, buckled myself in and then the ride started. We were....going up....and up....and up....All I could think was "OK WE CAN STOP GOING UP NOW!" I had no idea the ride took me that high in the air because I am squeamish with heights. This is why I need to do my research before I go on any trip! However, it worked out for the better. Had I known it went that high, I'd have never ridden it - but Soarin' is now my favorite non-roller coaster ride of any theme park I've ever been to. It was at that time, riding Soarin' that I realized I SHOULD have been excited about this trip. No, I'd never watched the Disney movies other than a couple here and there, but I realized at that moment that it didn't matter. You can go to WDW never having watched a single Disney movie ever and it doesn't matter if you're 5, 15, 25, 45 or 85 - no matter your age or background, you can have fun at Disney.

We did each park once that week and also went to Sea World through the Hero Salute program and we ended the week with going out to the Kennedy Space Center and spending the night in Cocoa Beach. We were married on the beach in Cocoa Beach in 2005 (yesterday in 2005 actually! 12/3/05!) so we went back out there to the place we had said our vows just a little over a year prior.

I look back on that trip and it's a tie for my favorite trip ever - it ties with the last trip that we took as just the 2 of us, a cruise while I was 10 weeks pregnant. So I guess technically, it was still the 3 of us I fell in love with Disney World and I knew that it would be a place I would want to come back to over and over, especially when my kids were old enough to get it. I am probably more excited than I should be to be able to get her first haircut done in MK. This will not be a trip that she'll remember in the slightest, but it's a trip that I'll remember and memories that I'll cherish for the rest of my life.

I'll leave you with a few pictures of the infamous trip that turned this Disney skeptic into a Disney believer. And yes, Paul went with us of course