The Year of Disney ends - Christmas at the Lodge - Sleigh Rides and Snowflakes!

[amzking]

Hello and welcome to my PTR, with only a week to go until our trip! I guess I am a bit of a procrastinator.... Anyway, we leave one week from today to return to our beloved WL for four nights, 12/24 to 12/28. It will most likely be our one and only trip to WDW for Christmas day, so we are making the most of it.

Here is our family:

DH and I are both 39 and will be married 15 years next year. He puts up with my hours on the Dis as long as I get him the ADRs he wants, most importantly, Le Cellier. He has gone from a WDW-hater (due to one unplanned MK day when he was 19) to an active promotor of the Year of Disney, which thrills me to no end. DH likes deluxe resorts and is picky about his mods, so unfortunately no values for us when DH is involved, boo hoo!

DS "Spidey" just turned 12. He is autistic and uses sign language to convey what he wants. His favorite sign to use at Disney is "ride" (we use the sign for "train".) DS is a very happy child, but can get quite obsessive when he wants something and will whine and harrass you to death. This is his biggest and most stubborn behavioral problem, issomething we have dealt with since he was diagnosed at age 2, and is the reason we use a GAC with no guilty feelings (well, DH has no guilty feelings, I do get them.) He also has quite a suprising sense of humor for an autistic child, sometimes doing goofy things just to get a reaction out of us. We were at WL for our first multi-day trip to the World in May 2008, and he just loves it there. We took our in-laws for a tour of the resorts a couple of months ago, and when we got to WL he kept signing "sleep" and pulling us over to the elevators! So he will be thrilled to be at his beloved WL again!

Here is a picture of Spidey with his sister, DD8, lets call her Red:

Red takes good care of her big brother. She tends to over-mother him at times, but loves her brother very much and seems to understand that she will have more responsibility with him as she gets older. Red has a personality to match her hair, she can be quite stubborn and a prima donna, at the same time getting very excitable and hyper. She is quite fun and a bit zany. Red has decided that WL is her favorite resort for the winter while BC and its beloved Stormalong Bay is her favorite summertime resort. Poor Red has not seen her beloved Everest since June. Somehow we keep missing AK. She is suffering from withdrawl, and I hope to tide her over this trip by not only getting her on Everest, but getting to ride at night, a feat that can only rarely be accomplished at WDW...

Up next, what is this "Year of Disney" and how did it happen?

 

[OhMari]

I have 2 red heads, and your description is right on.

Thank goodness you are a huge planner, so you know what Christmas week is going to be like. Have fun and I'd give anything to be a WDW over Christmas.

 

[amzking]

I had no intention of having a Year of Disney this year. We had last been to the world in August of 2008, having done a one-day whirlwind of all the parks on the last day of our seasonal pass. But, 2009 started, and I was starting to get antsy.

Our first multi-day trip to the World in early June 2008 was wonderful - but there was so many things we didn't do right. ADRs for instance. You would think after 13 years of marriage I would know that DH wants a sit-down meal every day on vacation. But, we had never really done any vacations other than cruises and traveling to visit with family, so how would I know? We waited for more meals that trip! It was amazing we got to eat at all, what with EVERY OTHER ORGANIZED DISSER on the dining plan. Then there were character meals. How could I have missed all those?

I had discovered allears (not the Dis, not yet) and was transfixed at all I didn't know about Disney - and I had been going there since I was a child!

There was also the matter of time. We had only 4 nights at the WL in 2008, our longest trip. I wanted to be one of those fortunate people who spent a WEEK at Disney. So I knew, we needed to return, it was a matter of getting DH to agree.

Enter my cute little, nonverbal, autistic child:

Now look at that boy smile, enjoying his gluten-free S'More at Chip and Dale's campfire in June of 08! Is he not having a great time? Does he not love Disney? How can we not at least consider doing it again?

Look at him, signing for "boat":

That child wants a boat ride, and at Disney, thank you!

Don't forget about little Red:

That, fellow Dissers, is an actual photograph of Red's reaction the first time going on It's a Small World, just before she leaned over and whispered to me "Mommy, this is SO cool!"

My kids want to go to Disney, not Gatlinburg.

I had been slowly introducing the idea. Gas is awfully expensive, then there's the cabin and the food, and we haven't even considered entertainment yet. Look at these specials Disney is running, buy 4 get 3. Wow, we can upgrade passes to APs once we get there.

And then it happened.

Little Spidey had gotten ahold of the pictures from WL in June again. He loved spreading them out on the table, going through and looking at images like this one:

He looked at me and sweetly signed for "sleep", pointing to a picture of the hotel.

He pointed to another picture and signed for "ride", letting me know that anytime, we could just go ahead and go back.

Then, as he was sorting through those vacation pictures, he started humming.

He does this sometimes. You hear him humming and all of a sudden realize that you know that song.

I indeed knew the song he was humming that fateful winter morning.

It's a Small World.

That was it. DH and I simply can't resist that level of cuteness from our sweet boy. Red was right there, praising him for his cleverness in choosing THAT song to hum. I was on the computer immediately, and on the phone with Disney within the hour. Buy 4 get 3, POFQ May 16-23, with plans to upgrade to Florida Resident Seasonal Passes once we arrived.

WOO HOO!

We're going to Disney, for a week!!



Up next, how a week turned into a year...

 

[aarenaaron]

hope so you people enjoyed a lot.really its give me a very nice pleasure to me when i read whole details about your trip

 

[amzking]

So, we had our first long trip to WDW planned. May 16-23, 2009, at POFQ. I got all the ADRs I wanted, including Chef Mickies, CRT, Ohana, and Coral Reef. At the time I didn't know about Le Cellier! We arrived on Saturday the 16th, planning to attend our neice's HS graduation Sat night and hit the parks on Sunday.

We had a great time Sunday.

Then the rain started Monday, just in time for our CRT reservation.

Then, early in the AM Tuesday DH got ill from the pork chop at CRT.

On Tuesday morning the rain continued. Ponchos are fine for a one-hour thunderstorm, but if it's going to rain all day they get old fast. We braved AK without DH that day, then attempted to go offsite to get raincoats that evening.

No raincoats, not at WalMart, not at Target. No umbrellas, even.

So Wednesday we went to Sports Authority to find raincoats. Which we did.

The only raincoats in the store. Very expensive raincoats.

Here they are Wednesday afternoon:

Look at how wet the front of our shorts are. This was a long, cold rain. It turns out that there was actually a tropical system forming directly OVER Orlando. This rarely happens. We ended up using those #$&! raincoats all week long. Torrential rain every day. Historic, unheard-of rain. I am a Floridian. It does not rain this way in Florida. Apparrantly, except during our vacation. With our gold-plated raincoats we stayed warm and dry, but it was NOT the vacation I was wanting. I needed some pool time!

We had intended to upgrade the 7 day passes that came with our package to seasonal Florida Resident passes. But, by the end of our trip we were realizing that the blackout dates would start almost immediately, and after almost a year with no Disney, followed by a rain-filled trip, we would have over two months of blackout dates. So DH said, lets just go ahead and get full AP's! No problem, honey!

So, withing a week or two of returning, I informed my DH that I needed some of that aforementioned pool time, and we booked 2 nights at CSR in June. Some friends decided to go with us.

Well, it didn't rain. Instead we had almost 100 degree temps with high humidity. That pool felt like a bathtub!

By this time DH knew about BC/YC and Stormalong Bay. I had attempted early in our May vacation to get some sort of pass to this pool (I had no idea if one was available, but I figured there was no harm in asking.) The nice concierge at POFQ told me that all pools were open to all resort guests (flame away, that's what he told me) EXCEPT Stormalong Bay. For our weekend in June we had made reservations at Cape May Cafe in BC and saw SAB. DH was intrigued, and informed me that he wanted to book a weekend at BC for his birthday in September, so we could play in SAB.

Well, okay, DH! No problem!

We LOVED SAB. The lazy river with pool noodles is the way to go. We almost ditched our Le Cellier reservations to stay in that pool!! By this time we had convinced our friends (the ones that went with us in June) to do an adults-only weekend in October for the food and wine festival. They had previously only done values and mods and were quite interested in what the deluxes had to offer. We left it up to them, and they said wanted to go ahead and try YC, for two nights. Well, okay, if that's what you want, twist our arm! We had a great weekend, and will definately do F&W again, whether we stay for the weekend or not.

We now have a running debate about which resort is our favorite. I love WL for it's size and theming, DH loves BC/YC for the pool and location. Red and I have decided that we will just have to do BC/YC in summer and WL in winter!

Sometime during all this DH informed me that since we had full APs with no blackout dates, instead of seasonal passes with blackout dates during summer, Christmas, and Easter, that we would just have to spend Christmas in Disney! Once again, okay DH, no problem!

After looking at the rates for Christmas week scared1 we really had a decision to make. I have never spent that kind of money on a hotel. But, we knew that we would only be doing this once. We debated between a mod and a deluxe, and finally decided on WL, since we heard consistantly that WL during Christmas was incredible. So, in the beginning of August we were book for four nights at WL!

Turns out we got an unexpected savings, which I will tell you about next post...

So, there is the year of Disney. I am not counting the one-night surprise trip to the POP with me and the kids, or the last minute one-night CBR trip for F&W with SIL and BIL. Or the quick birthday day trips, just to get our birthday fun cards. Or the day trips, including Thanksgiving day. Needless to say, we have no need to go theme park commando during our Christmas trip. I am planning on just soaking up the Christmassy atmospere and doing things we haven't done before.

Those passes paid for themselves easily. The AP resort discounts were incredible this year. However, we won't be renewing our passes. We spent all our extra money on Disney this year, and next year we need new tile floors! This was a one-in-a-lifetime year. The kids were the perfect age, the recession has not affected our jobs, I was making extra bonus money, and we were in the mood for Disney! We have made some great memories for ourselves and our children. Maybe we will get seasonal passes again, in 2011, but I don't see us ever doing anything like this again. We are very grateful to have had this magical year, and I am happy that even though we will not be planning any more resort trips anytime soon, we still have our passes till May 21, 2010, and I can do a lot of day trips before that day comes!

And I will tell you all we have planned for Christmas, tomorrow night, before we get going Thursday morning!

 

[amzking]

Well, about a month before the trip I started hearing about a PIN code for Christmas week. Of course I didn't get one, but my husband did! So we saved 30% over 3 nights.

Unfortunately that meant that we needed to have two reservations, one for the 24th under our passholder rate, and one for the 25th through 28th under the PIN code rate. I am hoping we can stay in the same room. It also means that we cannot add the dining plan for the PIN code nights unless we bought a 1 day ticket, which we aren't going to do. So, we are doing deluxe dining for the first night only, which will also pay for dinner the second night, and paying cash for our meals the next two nights.

Here is our itinerary:
12/24 Arrival and Epcot day. Dinner at 4 at the Biergarten for our Candlelight Dinner package (2 TS credits)
645 Candlelight Processional
930 Illuminations.

12/25 Christmas Day!
Get to the MK by about 10 and get locked in. It will be our only night to watch Holiday Wishes, and all I hear is that it will reach a level 4 closure, so we will be stuck there once we get in. I plan on having a lot of sit-down time, can you say Hall of Presidents, TTA, CofP?
Dinner at 3 at Liberty Tree Tavern (1 TS credit)
Holiday Wishes at 10.

12/26 Sleep in, do whatever we feel like doing for the morning.
Late morning/all afternoon at Animal Kingdom. Ride Everest after dark.
Dinner at Kouzzina at 730 (cash)
Osbourne Lights

12/27 Sleep in. Meet with family around 10 am and do a tour of the resorts checking out the Christmas decorations.
Le Cellier at 6 pm (cash)
Sleighride at FW at 9 pm through the loops to see the decorations.

12/28 Say goodbye. We usually end up leaving by about 12 or 1 on our final day, but maybe since we do not have to work on the 29th we may end up staying later. I hope DH will agree to stay!

Since we have been so much over the past six months we don't feel a great need to go commando and do absolutely everything. BUT, all the major things we want to do are at night! We know that if we can get through the first two days without collapsing we can slow things down from there and relax so we can finish up the nighttime things we want to do.

Well, that's our plan. We leave tomorrow. I am hoping to get a good nights sleep tonight. I will update everyone when I return, and I'll have lots of pictures!

 

[amzking]

I really restrained myself on the morning of the 24th! I did not set an alarm for 6 AM and did not force everyone on the road by 7:30! I figured we could take it easy since we had a busy day the day before. We had finished packing, had dinner with my parents followed by their gift exchange, and all stayed up rather late. I knew that the 24th and 25th would be the longest, toughest days, so I let it be a more relaxing morning and we were on the road by 9:30. Here are the kids using their "Disney" signs:

And finally a short 1.5 hours later we were arriving at our favorite place on earth:

Where we had this beautiul site to greet us!

Unfortunately, our room was not ready at check in. This has only happenned to us once, and even then we got our phone call within 20 minutes. Not this time. We did not want to leave for Epcot yet because we knew once we got there we would not be coming back until after 10. We wanted to unpack and get the room decorations up. So we waited, wandering around the resort. Here is Spidey telling us where he wants to go:

He wants in his room! Remember how much he raised a fuss a couple months ago, when we were showing our relatives the room. Well, we were waiting several hours! It got old fast, so we decided to take the boat over to Fort Wilderness and find some quick-serve place there. Here is DH and Red on the boat:

Well, we found out that there are no good quick-serve places at FW! There was one place that I think had fried chicken, self serve, but with both kids on a gluten-free diet that was not an option for us. So we settled for ice cream from the general store and the kids played on the swings:

I was able to figure out where to go for our sleighride, scheduled for later in the week, and I got a good picture of the kids in front of the FW tree, so it was not a wasted trip.

Fortunately shortly after we arrived back at the Lodge we got that wonderful phone call. Our room was ready!

Pictures of the room and decorations in the next installment...

 

[amzking]

We finally got the call that our room was ready around 2:30. We had 4:15 reservations for Biergarten, so I was in a HURRY! Here are pics of the room:

Lil Spidey was so happy to be in the room there was no getting him out of the way for pictures :

We were in room 3022 which was DIRECTLY over the otter pond. Here is our view:

And here are some creatures of the wilderness:

We were able to see (and hear) the higher fireworks quite easily. I really wanted a higher room but at that point I really didn't care where we were. Though I did care later, as you will fine out!

I quickly called Bell Services to have them bring our stuff. They arrived about 2:45. So, we had about 15 minutes to unpack and decorate before we had to leave to make our ADR! Fortunately, DH sprang into action WITHOUT BEING ASKED lovestruc) and took care of all the unpacking. He even got all the clothes in the drawers, when he usually just lives out of the suitcase (I HATE that!) So I quickly grabbed the box of decorations and got to work. The little patio table was perfect for the tree:

I even managed to find some inexpensive mini Disney ornaments at Wal Mart to supplement the standard ones.

Note the very few presents. The kids knew that this trip was our Christmas this year. Going during Christmas week does not leave much extra for presents. They were quite fine with that! Someone even asked Red what she wanted for Christmas a couple of weeks before the trip and she just said "Disney" with a big smile. So they got a couple of things to open and a few treats in their stockings, that was all.

And here are our stockings. I had to paste snowflakes over them to hide DH's and my names:

DH and my stockings date back to BC (before children) and of course the Spiderman stocking is Lil' Spidey's. You can't see them very well but I also found Disney Christmas window clings, and a very large door hanging. I forgot to get a picture but we had a room that connected with the next, so it was the perfect place for the door hanging.

That connecting door is also a story to be covered in a future post...

So at 3:15 we were finally ready to try to make our 4:15 ADR! Will we make it in time? Will we drive ourselves or take a chance and try the busses? Will the kid's arms be pulled out of their sockets from being pulled through Epcot?

All will be answered, next post...