This is either madness... or brilliance; declansdad, pooksma and declan...update10/16

[MeMom]

Six is a great age. Twelve is okay. Fifteen is the pits. They do keep going, though, and eighteen and older gets much better! At least it did for mine. From fourteen to sixteen, though, just plan on finding out what an incredibly stupid human being you truly are.

Having seen how much hair our Brooklynn has, you wouldn't think anyone in their right mind would pay $14 to cut one or two of her hairs off, would ya? Well, apparently my daughter is not in her right mind, because she is bound and determined to get Brooklynn's first haircut in the Magic Kingdom! Oughta be a real easy job for whoever gets her! Find the longest two hairs and snip them every bit of a quarter of an inch and they're done. Of course, the whole thing is just for a magic Disney memory, but I kinda think the stylists are going to laugh when they see her coming! We'll get some good pictures out of our money, I guess.

Your little guy is very cute with his colorful hair!

 

[declansdad]

Ok now where did we leave off???

Oh yah, Delta.

On our three trips to the World, we have always flown Delta. They are one of our two options from home and on our first trip we had to fly from here. They are also much cheaper than our other option, Air Canada. On the second trip we decided to check out Bangor, Maine. It was much cheaper so it was a no brainer.

This trip, we decided on the same plan, well almost. Bangor to Boston to Orlando on the way out and Orlando to Cincinatti to Bangor on the way back. This return trip is different. It allows us to see more of the world. We even managed to find away to get to Orlando by Noon so we would be able to get to MK on our arrival day. Book it Danno, we're go to go. Or so we thought.

Change number one: Delta changes the Boston to Orlando flight to get us in at 10:30. WOOHOO! The problem, only 20 minutes to make the connection in Boston. I call Delta and they say that's not legal, we'll have to change. Ok, what else have you got? Next flight out of Boston will get you to Orlando by 4:30 pm. Umm, sorry that won't do, give me another option. You can fly through Cincy or Atlanta. We decide with Atlanta, remember our see more of the world plan. We still get to Orlando by 1:00 pm, all good.

Change number two: Pretty minor, flight now arrives at 1:30. We're still ok with that. While on the phone comfirming this change, we notice that that have added an earlier flight out of Bangor, 5:45 am. Could we change to that and go through Boston again? Sure they say, let us change that back for you. Change number three.

Change number four: Very minor, the flight to Cincy now arrives 5 minutes later. No problem, we have a 3 hour layover.

We're keeping our fingers crossed, they haven't made a change in a month or so.

 

[declansdad]

Sunday night part 2.

Like many of you, we keep a Disney box so we can collect stuff to take with us; t-shirts, shorts,Tink gifts, and other stuff. Some of it is pretty boring but some of it is cool. We started putting stuff in the box back in December. We thought we would show you all a bit of it here.


Declan's new Disney Crocs.

Some of his new t-shirts

a couple for pooksma

Our pirate tiki tees and a cars tee for ds.

DS decided that he and I should have the same one.

Our gifts that Tink we leave in our room over the course of our stay.

Our new park bag. I am very to happy to say it is much smaller than on previous trips.

And finally, I got this yesterday but I don't think I can put it in the box.

That's it for now. I'm supposed to be marking.

 

[pooksma]

Just wanted to add in here: the clothing is a major part of organization for me. I have to lay it al out and count, count again. Weirdo I know. I've started my list of necessities (those boring things DH wouldn't dream of takings pics of.

If I'm not planning or doing SOMETHING I feel like its too far away! Am I the only one like this??? Judging by these boards, I think not. I also think I am in very good company

 

[mystikgarden]

Hi guys,

I love all of the shirts you have picked up!! Dh has the tiki Jack one too!

declansdad!! Is that a REAL tattoo?!? AAAhhh a pirates life for you!!

Keep it coming guys!

-Amber

 

[declansdad]

Hi guys,

I love all of the shirts you have picked up!! Dh has the tiki Jack one too!

declansdad!! Is that a REAL tattoo?!? AAAhhh a pirates life for you!!

Keep it coming guys!

-Amber

Yup, it's real!

 

[SwansLoveDisney]

Declansdad, can you please have a Dis intervention with my husband? He does not get my Disney love at all!

 

[declansdad]

Declansdad, can you please have a Dis intervention with my husband? He does not get my Disney love at all!

I think he just needs to spend some time on the Dis.

 

[pooksma]

Something got to me last night as I was reading Tim and Lesley's fantastic TR...OMG! I haven't done my packing list! I think my brain must have been in neutral with school ending. (SWEET VACATION TIME)

I immediately began searching through threads to find a packing list and boy did I find one! Most things I had thought of but there were a few surprises.
I never thought of prepackng our park bag. I think its because we usually are later arriving and can put all of our stuff in the room. This trip we will be earlier and the room will probably be ready but why chance it??

So off to the Dollar Store it is!

 

[mystikgarden]

I pre-packed our park bag (we must have got the same packing list lol) It sure did save time. I just grabbed it on our first day and went. What a time saver!!

Good luck at the Dollar store!! I just LOVE dollar stores!

 

[pooksma]

Picture it....January 2007, an unsuspecting young (hah!) woman goes to her snow covered mailbox and opens it expecting the usual-bills.

Suprise! Instead she finds the motherlode!!! A Disney Pincode! Luckily (which is abnormal for me) its good for our upcoming vacation! A quick e-mail to Liz at Dream Come True and....DS's surprise #1 is better than before! In fact, it's 40% better! Code was good for our AKL stay since its a room only ressie! SAAAWWWWEEEETTT!

Fast forward to ...June 2007, today in fact. As a faithful board watcher, I knew that a code for our POP package was possible. Never did I expect us to be lucky a second time. The Mouse fooled me again! (Sneaky guy that Mickey )Saw the code on the board and called Liz immediately. She e-mailed back within the hour saying the rate was applied and we'd saved another $117!!

Thanks to the "Code Fairy" and meaning no disrespect whatsoever to the TAG Fairy, we've saved almost $400 off our original bookings.

Ahhhh I Disney.

This also means I can go shopping tomorrow for MORE stuff!

 

[ILMICKEY]

I am totally LOVING this tag team pretrippie!!

Can't wait to read more!!

 

[pooksma]

I am totally LOVING this tag team pretrippie!!

Can't wait to read more!!

Why thank you. We're having some fun with it too.

Shopping update Took a day trip to Bangor,Maine yesterday with a few girlfriends. It was all about the sales this trip. We went to LL Bean and all got new tankinis- $7.00 . Then we hit Kohl's and bought shorts, tanks and other stuff. Next it was Target and more shorts and tanks. Also found the sample of liquid Tide that I can't seem to get in Canada.(or at least around here)

We had lots of fun and shopped all day. While this may not seem exciting to some of you, it was a blast for us. We went to stores that we don't have here. As we entered the US, the customs agent who scanned our passports pegged it as a shopping trip immediately and said spend as much as you can. Sure he did, he didn't have to pay the duty!

That's the true bummer in a pile of great deals-paying again when you come back.

Now back to our regularly scheduled pre-trippie...

 

[MeMom]

Shopping is such a fun thing to do. I don't get why guys don't like it. So much to see, so much to BUY!!!

By the way, if you've read the last few passages of my TR, you will realize that you really went to Bangor, "aine" yesterday!!

 

[declansdad]

Just have to vent a bit.

We're both sitting here on a lovely Saturday afternoon getting a bit pi@@ed.

We are getting worried about our AKL nights. DW was on earlier and came across a post about Disney closing down AKL because of the construction. AKl is our big surprise for ds and our dream resort. We have been so looking forward to this part of the trip, I don't know what we'll do if we have to move to another resort.

We're crossing our fingers we don't get the call.

 

[pooksma]

Remember the I was feeling a few posts ago??? Well its being withheld right now. As you can tell I am OCD when it comes to my trips and this "possibility" of being asked to move drives me insane. (Short trip)

We did come up with a backup plan just in case, cause I couldn't survive without a backup.

Classes start tomorrow and I have ton of reading to do before so catch ya later!

 

[declansdad]

Afternoon everyone. Here I am sitting at work, trying not to work too much so I thought I should add a bit more to the thread.

I think we have covered most of the major planning sessions ( at least the sessions that I was part of). We had covered the resorts, the ADRs, the plane tickets, and the town car reservation so there wasn't many major areas left to plan for. Maybe that's why pooksma said to me, "Why don't you create a planning sheet so we can write all of our plans in one place." I don't think she was expecting what I came up with.

Before starting I said to myself, "What would I put in a planning sheet and how would I set it up. Hmmm." I was in a pickle so off to the Dis I went. I found examples of some planning sheets other Disers had created and decided my plan of action. The course that I was teaching at the time was a project-based course and that gave me lots of free class time. I'm not sure if that was a good or a bad thing. I went to work in Excel and created my masterpiece. The WDW Planning Sheet, as I call it, is a Microsoft Excel workbook that contains 10 seperate worksheets. Most of those sheets, when printed, are on legal size paper and some are double-sided. The workbook contains information about our transportation, hotels and resorts, attractions in each park, park hours, ADRs, and a list of characters that are seen or sometimes seen in the parks. You can say what you want about me but you can't say I'm not thorough.

When I gave it to pooksma she just shook her head.

After completing the sheet I thought that I need to give back to the Dis for all the help we have received in planning our trips. I went on the Planning Board and offered it up to anyone who wanted it. I also answered another posters cry for help and sent it to them as well. In the last 3 weeks, I figure I have sent it out to at least 300 people all over the world. Your humble planner has been touched by the demand for his little old sheet.

Well back to work.

 

[declansdad]

It's getting closer!!! WOOHOOOOOOOO!!!!


Quick update because, well, there is nothing much new. We are still watching the resort thread, trying to stay on top of the AKL situation. I think we will be ok but we still have our fingers crossed.

We did discuss options, just in case. I said we should say we want CR with a MK view. DW says WL. Guess what we decided.
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The Poly, but only if they force us to move.

Have a good weekend everyone!

 

[pooksma]

Ive shaken my head many times during this trip planning session. Think its my OCD...

I am currently enrolled in 2 MEd courses that have me reading, writing and reading some more!

One of our topics of discussion is Disney and taking a critical look at the company, the parks etc. Not fun! I keep telling my prof that this really isnt helping me to stay focused on my studies!

Only 5 weeks to go...

 

[mvazul]

Hi!

I just found your pre-trip report. It sounds like you have a great vacation planned. I will keep my fingers crossed with you that you don't have to move resorts.

Good luck! I look forward to reading more.

Michelle