To Pop Century...And BEYOND! An August 2012 PTR

[projectGemini]

Hello all!
I’m a relatively new member to this board, and have found it to be extremely helpful, not only in planning my upcoming trip, but also in getting myself pumped up from reading others TR’s and PTR’s! I figured that I’d throw out my plans for my trip, and take you all along for the ride.

So, without further ado:

The Players:

Project Gemini: Me, Joe! I’m a diehard Disney fan, which has been to WDW over 10 times. I teach Social Studies at a small Catholic school in Buffalo, NY, as well as a part time professional theatre actor and comedian. I absolutely LOVE hockey (Go Sabres!), movies, and all around nerdery.

ProjectGirlfriend: My Girlfriend, Laura. We’ll have been together for over a year at the time of our trip. She’s studying to become an elementary school teacher, and is our resident photographer, and classic movie geek. We’re absolute soul mates, and love Disney, movies, and anything else geeky that you could possibly think of.

The Lodgings:
We’ll be staying at Pop Century. I stayed there in 2008 on a trip with my family, and absolutely fell in love with the theme (Besides teaching history, I am an absolute pop culture junkie), and the fact that they have their own bus line. Laura and I are both children of the 80’s/90’s so we’re hoping to stay in one of those 2 buildings (We actually put in a request for them when we booked the trip, but I’m not sure how much good that will do).

The Rest of the Story:
We both went to L.A. last summer and visited Disneyland, and we immediately decided to attempt a trip down to WDW this summer. Both being teachers, obviously money is on the thin side, so we’re attempting to make this trip as cost effective as possible.

One way we are trying to do that is to weigh the pros and cons of driving from Buffalo to WDW. I’ve used the AAA gas calculator (http://fuelcostcalculator.aaa.com/) to come up with a “Magic Number” of $403.62. If we can find a set of 2 round trip flights for under that (or what ever the magic number becomes as gas prices fluctuate), We’ll fly. I personally, right now, am leaning towards driving over flying, if only to add to the Adventure of the trip.

We are also attempting to take advantage of Free Dining, which has historically been offered around the times we are going. We are waiting for any announcement, and have set our dates so that we can change them to fit if need be. This is also one of the reasons we’re looking at driving over flying, because of the extra flexibility it will give us.

That’s the plan so far! Our next big planning milestone is this upcoming Friday, when we can book our first ADR! Right now, the plan is to book Hoop-de-do for our first night, but I’ll let you know how that goes!

 

[OrangeJuice]

Hello!
I'm joining in! We'll be in the world around the same time. I can start booking my ADRs tomorrow . Looking forward to hear more about your trip.

 

[projectGemini]

Hello!
I'm joining in! We'll be in the world around the same time. I can start booking my ADRs tomorrow . Looking forward to hear more about your trip.

That's awesome! Out of curiosity, Where are you booking ADR's? I'm looking for some ideas.

 

[projectGemini]

Part II: The Great Dining Adventure

Recently, Laura and I have been discussing our plans for food when we get to the world. Our 180 window opens on 2/17, so I know we only have limited time to figure out where/when we want to eat, and book the ADR’s.

As I said in the previous entry to this PTR, We are hoping that we will get Free Dining for our trip (Yes, I know that at Pop we will only get free Quick Service Dining, but I’m planning to use my tax rebate this year to pay the cost to upgrade.) If we miss out on those days, I may surprise her by buying it and paying for it separately, but I’m not completely sure yet.

Right now our plan goes like this:

8/15: Hoop Dee Doo Revue, 9:30pm.
8/16: Sci-Fi Dine In about 6:30pm
8/17: ‘Ohana about 7:00pm
8/18: Sanaa about 7:00pm
8/19: Crystal Palace about 8:30am
8/20: Restaurant Marrakesh about 8:00pm

I only planned through the 20th, because HDDR is a 2 credit meal on the DDP, so we won’t have a table credit for the last day. This will work better for us, as not having a sit down meal will help us to maximize our park time on our last day. Plus, we are getting a Planet Hollywood coupon from our AAA booking, so if we desperately need a sit down meal on the 21st, we can just use that.

Welp, here’s our dining plan (for now!) let me know what you think and I’ll keep you posted as we make ADR’s!

 

[projectGemini]

Fun Development! Since we booked our package through AAA, we are eligible to book the AAA Preffered Fireworks veiwing area! Like I said before, ProjectGirlfriend is an avid photographer, so having our own private space to shoot is almost a dream come true for us! Has anyone else ever watched Wishes from here? If so, how did you like it?

 

[OrangeJuice]

That's awesome! Out of curiosity, Where are you booking ADR's? I'm looking for some ideas.

We have booked 1900 Park Fair, Akershus, Le Cellier, 50's prime time, Kona Café, Grand Floridian Café, Yak and Yeti, Hollywood and Vine, Cape May Café and Chef Mickey's. You can check out my PTR if your interested in seeing pictures I took of food on our last trip and the reasoning behind every ADR.
http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?p=43984021#post43984021

Fun Development! Since we booked our package through AAA, we are eligible to book the AAA Preffered Fireworks veiwing area! Like I said before, ProjectGirlfriend is an avid photographer, so having our own private space to shoot is almost a dream come true for us! Has anyone else ever watched Wishes from here? If so, how did you like it?

Wow that sounds great! I have not watched Wishes from there. From what I understand it is in front of the Plaza Restaurant. Last year, we went to the tomorrowland terrace dessert party which is right next to it and had a great view so hopefully yours is as good or better .

 

[projectGemini]

Part III: Wherein our heroes find they have misjudged, and are faced with a crucial decision.

Have you ever had one of those moments where you plan something out, and it seems incredibly easy, and straight forward, and then you have someone else take a look at it, and it gets all thrown out of whack because you made one tiny mistake?

That’s what happened to our dining planning last night.
To explain: Last night, we sent over the list of dining ADRs we wanted our travel agent to make on our behalf, as today was our 180 day mark (Side note: WHOOOOO HOOOOO!!! ). Now, our TA is actually an old coworker of mine from when I was in college, so I know her pretty well, and she knows that ProjectGirlfriend and I are planning to add the DDP when Free Dining is announced. When she received our list, she told me that we would be over by 1 table service credit. I was completely rocked by this because I had mistakenly thought that we received a credit on the day we left, and counted us as having 7 credits, instead of 6. With the fact that we were planning on booking HDDR (which is a 2 table service credit booking), this did put us 1 credit over. After discussing it, ProjectGirlfriend and I decided that we would just pay for 1 meal with my Disney Visa points, and go from there.

There was the end of our Snafus for this trip….is what I would be saying up until this morning.

When I sat down at my computer this morning, I was greeted by an e-mail from our TA saying that all of our ADR’s were booked (YAY!) except for HDDR (BOO!) because, If you put down a deposit for HDDR on a credit card, it apparently cannot be refunded if you switch to the DDP (The Reservation would have to be cancelled and rebooked based on availability, which means we would basically be S.O.L.).

The first thing I did when I received this news was rush to the WDW online dining reservation site to see if there was any 9:30pm availability left for HDDR on 8/15…and alas, there was none! DARN! So, I quickly made a backup ADR at Whispering Canyon at 8:00, figuring I could just cancel it if we got lucky and found seating before our trip.

That being said, we decided that we would play it safe and add the DDP to our booking. Will it pay out for us in the end? Will we be able to secure seats at HDDR for the 15th? Who knows...but I'm having a lot of fun figuring this stuff out!

 

[projectGemini]

Before I start this official Part IV of this TR, I wanted to express how bummed ProjectGirlfriend and I are that we were unable to make it to WDW to partake in the One More Disney Day promotion on leap day. From all of the reports that I’ve read about that day (specifically the ones from Theme Park Review and Inside the Magic), It seemed like a really, really cool event. If they offer it again in 4 years, I know we’ll be sure to take advantage of it.

Part IV: Math, why did it have to be Math?

Friday, I was extremely excited to receive an e-mail from Disney Visa telling me that Free Dining was coming, and that I could book it early! “YES! Finally! I’ve been waiting for this for like 3 months!”, I exclaimed loudly to a room of confused students of which I had given detention. Then, just like when you were a child, and that box shaped like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ Party Van Toy turned out to be a set of Children’s Encyclopedias, my dreams were quickly dashed when I opened the e-mail to find that the free dining date would not, by any stretch of the imagination, line up with our planned trip.

See, our trip cannot go any later than 8/21, as that is when ProjectGirlfriend has to be back in Buffalo for her State mandated student teaching seminar, and I would probably have to be back for my pre school year meetings, and the letter informed me that free dining this year would go from 8/25-9/27.
What this means is that now I need to do some math (see the title of this installment for my feelings on that) to figure out if paying for the DDP is worthwhile for us this trip, or if it would be more cost effective paying out of pocket. That being said, if we are paying out of pocket, odds are that I would pre buy a few Disney Gift cards before our trip, so that we wouldn’t have to worry about paying out of our spending money when we get on the trip.

Now the plan is to go through each menu for all of our dining choices (which I’ve listed in a previous update)and figure out if it’s cost, plus the basic cost of a Counter Service meal would be cheaper or more expensive than the daily charge of the DDP. It will be a little more work, but at the very least, I can take solace in knowing that my sweet Star Wars Moleskine that I purchased as a PTR/TR journal will have even more pages filled out!

Stay tuned for our next update, where our heroes boldly use math to figure out what the best way to pay for food is!

 

[projectGemini]

I'm trying to see if it will be cost effective to add the DDP to our reservation (We are outside the dates for free dining, so unfortunately, I have to do this extra step). I added up all of our potential TS costs, and now am looking to figure in CS and Snack credit costs.

Does anyone have a figure/price they use to sub in for CS and snack costs? I'm stuck at where to get this number from, as it really depends on where we are in a particular park on that particular day. Thanks for any help you can give!