Tubthumper's Reward is Universal!!

[AJA]

Loving your pre trip report!

Oh and I think your plan of taking 2 kids each time alone is the way to go, you'll have to come up with some excuse to leave the other adults behind on the second trip, tell them the wrong flight/plane/airport whatever it takes, then get yourself "lost" in Orlando for a few days, you can always tell them you left the info regarding changing plans in your moms purse, not your fault she couldn't find it.

 

[Kimberlyfamilyfv]

Why I don't take my husband on vacation.

I don't take my husband on vacation because he makes it almost impossible to plan a vacation, because for some reason he waits till the last minute to ask for time off. I plan my vacations a year in advance and give my husband plenty of time to get his vacations in order if he truely wanted to go. So I ask myself does he truely want to go. When he does go my children are not exactly all that excited my husband wants to go full speed a head while we are on vacation and a slow pace is not an option. The kids love the parks but by mid aftertoon the kids are ready to head back to the Royal Pacific and patrol the hotel. They love going to the pool and the game room, meeting other teens, checking their laptops and frankly just slowing down.


Mommy and Me Vacations
I have done several what I call, "Mommy and Me" trips with my children. I take my children one at a time on vacation. These trips started with my daughter at 8 years of age, and continued when my boys turned eight as well. My children enjoyed being an only child even if only for a week a year. I don't regret for a minute leaving my spouse behind, I don't regret not taking everyone all at once. I got to spend time with my children one on one and drama free and there wasn't any bickering or compromising. I was able to address each child's needs and wants and give them the vacation of their dreams. As most of my children have reached the age of maturity, I don't think that I caused any pyschological damage for doing this.

Vacation Piggy Backers
As for taking people with me on vacation, I have had to learn the hard way. No good can come from letting people piggyback your trip that you pay good money for regardless if they pay there own way or not. My daughter talked me into inviting a friend of hers, lets just say it did not go well. It made me miserable and it made my daughter miserable. Mostly because the other person expectations were not equal to ours.



Kimberly

 

[dakjoskaimiksmom]

I'll have to be a little wittier and timlier with the updates.

SO...I got our ADR for T-Rex. That's about it. Online reservations make me a little giddy. I was tempted to make a million reservations, just so I could say, "I have ADR's for EVERYWHERE." But I refrained. Living in Wisconsin, it's not like I could just hop on over to Boma for dinner or anything. But I digress.

I have our Disney itinerary done, but the Universal one is still hanging on our number of people. So we remain at an impasse.

On a different note:

I'm currently being bribed for a trip to Japan by my 15 yr old. That's lot of fun. He was joking about faking his own kidnapping, so he could use the ransom money to go with a friend. Apparently it didn't occur to him that his family HAS no ransom money, so he'd be hiding for an awfully long time. Then he conned me into a deal: if he gets his grades up to all B's, I'll take him. He will lose that bet.

More Later.

 

[damo]

Keep it coming. You have a great writing style!

 

[Asm]

I started feeling guilty about going on vacations with my daughter and grandkids all the time. Then I realized I plan all those trips for us. So it's dh, me adult ds (single), adult dd (single again), dgd8 & dgs6. I leave for WDW/Uni ( StarWars & Harry Potter) Fri with ds and for a cruise in Dec with dd, and 2 weeks next summer with everyone. I think they like traveling with me. On the other hand I'm not taking MY Mom!!!

 

[mjohnson96]

Now we usually always bring my mom with us on trips but she gets her own room and usually will pick up most food tabs For us this year it was great because she took the 7 month old a couple times so we could head over to the parks by ourselves while my sister took our older DD who is 7.

Now I did make the mistake of the first Disney trip years ago deciding to invite everyone. They had a pretty good FL Res rate on rooms so we had booked a 2 room condo at BW and said well for the same price we can get rooms for eveyone in my family with tickets....so needless to say we bought 5 rooms and tickets for 9A and 3C and it was a very very bad experience. Will never do that again, no one was very appreciative that they got a free Disney trip

 

[dakjoskaimiksmom]

Keep it coming. You have a great writing style!

Thank you!!!

 

[dakjoskaimiksmom]

I'm glad to know I'm not the only one who has to make concessions for an oddball family. Misery loves company.

And now for The Budget....which my husband will never see. If he had an inkling of how much I was spending (anything over $50), he'd try talking me into an enormous flatscreen tv instead. I don't think so.

Trip 1- Kai , Mike , and Me :

Plane tickets, to and fro: $800 (already bought those)
ASMU Package (includes dining): $1100

Trip 2: Kota , Joshy , Hubs , and Me :

Plane tickets, to and fro: $1000 (STILL waiting to hear about my dad before buying these. Tick tock, tick tock.)
Suite with Kitchen at Celebration: $205 (already reserved and paid for)
Car Rental: $150
Gas: $100 (Estimating high, there)
Tickets for Universal and Gatorland: $595
Eating out: $200 (Estimating high again. We're bringing groceries, since we'll have a full kitchen)

As for spending money, the plan is to give the kids a set amount per day according to age or whatever. Whether I can stick to that is anyone's guess. I am notorious for saying "yes" once they start begging, probably because I flashback to my childhood; my parents were notorious for saying "no" to everything. We all want to be better than our parents, don't we?


And I know already that any spending money I designate for myself will be pinched and hoarded, until I spot something I would have loved as a kid. Then I'll buy it with reckless abandon, bestow it on one of them, and spend the next 5 years asking why they don't play with my dream-toy-that-I-never-had-as-a-child. Maybe I should skip all that and just admit that, yes, I really do buy the stuff for myself: Who needs a Christmas Ornament or a sweatshirt? I'll just have that deluxe Cinderella castle there, young man. No, don't gift wrap it. I want to play with it while we're eating lunch. Thank you.

I will embrace my inner child on this trip!

 

[mjohnson96]

And I know already that any spending money I designate for myself will be pinched and hoarded, until I spot something I would have loved as a kid. Then I'll buy it with reckless abandon, bestow it on one of them, and spend the next 5 years asking why they don't play with my dream-toy-that-I-never-had-as-a-child. Maybe I should skip all that and just admit that, yes, I really do buy the stuff for myself: Who needs a Christmas Ornament or a sweatshirt? I'll just have that deluxe Cinderella castle there, young man. No, don't gift wrap it. I want to play with it while we're eating lunch. Thank you.

I have lots of toys like that, I don't understand why DD (7) doesn't want to wear the cool Mickey Pirate hat, or why she doesn't understand that some dolls you just don't open

 

[dakjoskaimiksmom]

I have lots of toys like that, I don't understand why DD (7) doesn't want to wear the cool Mickey Pirate hat, or why she doesn't understand that some dolls you just don't open

Exactly! It's better just to admit I'm a big kid and move on. One day my kids will be tattling on me to some therapist.

 

[dakjoskaimiksmom]

The good news is: Trip #1 is set in stone. It is a paid for, done deal. The not-so-good news is that trip #2 has been pushed back a month or 2, courtesy of bad grades. I don't mind pulling the kids out of school for family time, but I refuse to sabotage all their teachers' efforts at keeping them caught up. Yes, I'm talking about Kota and Joshy .

I've been having nothing but problems with homework, arguments about even GOING to school in the morning, and other such nonsense from both of them, so now we will all suffer through the default vacation madness that is Spring Break.

They're very lucky to be going at all.

Having moved our travel dates, I had to do some rearranging between #1 and #2 with a quickness or risk losing money. So now instead of ASMU for trip #1, we're staying at Celebration Suites, renting a car, and living dangerously with no dining plan. It'll work.

I also ordered and received our WDW tickets (well, cards), and since I decided to NOT overdo the parks with my shorter people, I went with the basic 2-day passes. So our schedule turns out like this:

Trip#1:
Day 1-- Animal Kingdom
Day 2-- Magic Kingdom
Day 3-- Gatorland
Day 4-- Downtown Disney and Shell World

Simple and sweet, and plenty of down-time. I have the Disney maps for their gift bags, so they'll have plenty of post-surprise time to pick their must-see's, since we won't be doing everything.

As for trip #2, all systems are go for Universal, except the dates. I'm still waiting on Kota's school calendar to see if there's the slightest chance of a 4-day weekend BEFORE Spring Break. I'll settle for a teacher's inservice or whatever.

The only sucky thing about this is that poor Joshy will have to wait longer to get his trip. With him, I can at least understand the school problems. He has tutoring every single day of his life, during and after school. He struggles to succeed at it, and I feel horrible for him. I just don't think I'd be doing him any favors if he missed 2 days and had to come back to a bunch of make-up work Maybe I'll think of something fun for him to do with my parents while I'm gone with the younger kids. Any suggestions?

 

[dakjoskaimiksmom]

I'm back to the board!

Nothing like the boredom of winter break to force a resurrection of a neglected pre-TR, so here we are.

As previously noted, trip #1 is WDW, so I've conveniently started a thread in the correct forum-- and then promptly abandoned it due to a flurry of homework.

I'll be resurrecting that in in mo', and posting a link. That will keep the trips separate and semi-organized.

We are Go! for Universal, March 10th through the 13th. Same cast of characters, of course.

Due to the timing of this trip, I find myself able to splurge a little, so I get to completely start the planning anew. (Nothing like beating a dead horse repeatedly!)

Anyway, I'm off to figure out video posting and link issues, and raising the other thread from the grave. I SWEAR it won't take me 3 months to post again!

 

[macraven]

i missed you.......

glad you returned home to us...

 

[dakjoskaimiksmom]

This post is a near-duplicate of the one in my other thread. This trip is Universal and the other is WDW, but both had the same reveal date for the kids. I taped the scavenger hunt and ensuing chaos, which will come later in the post, but some of the video needed explaining. It's easier just to post it in both threads, so I am. (It's in the wee hours of the morning now, after all).

-------------------------------------------------------------------

I wrote 4 clues (in poem, no less), and printed them out on pirate-y looking paper. Then I sat for over an hour cutting each page out, so they'd look genuine. More or less.

One clue per child, which were then hidden around grandma's house between the kids' Christmas Eve Service at church, and our traditional Chinese restaurant dinner.

The scavenger hunt was a hit, but they had a little trouble grasping the "surprise" part--probably because I forgot to add something to their gift bags. The older boys, going to Universal, got bags of Harry Potter-related stuff. The younger 2 kids got Disney-related things. I also made them each a trip planner-type notebook, so they would know where they were going when they saw them (which are what I forgot!). Not having those vital clues made it a little tough for them to figure out the point of the scavenger hunt.

What can I say? I was stressed.

Ignore all the clutter. My mother single-handedly fixed the economy this Christmas, and her entire house was full of presents and the results of her hoarding problem.

Without further ado, the video:



Disclaimer: The last clue refers to underwear and poo. The underwear are Kota's; when he stays over at my parents, my father swears he finds underwear under the dining room table for days after. We don't know why.

The poo comes from Kota's Chihuahua, Kelsey, who prefers to poo under the dining room table when she's at grandma's house, rather than the backyard. Gross, yes. My father cleaned the carpet before any gift bags were placed there, but he maintains that he's not Noah, so Kelsey is no longer welcome in their house.

 

[macraven]

i watched all 9 minutes plus many seconds of the video.


kewl......

 

[dakjoskaimiksmom]

i watched all 9 minutes plus many seconds of the video.


kewl......

Thanks!

The clutter was bad, but at least there was a path. lol

 

[dakjoskaimiksmom]

I have changed this plan so many times, it's probably best that I start from scratch.


March 10th-- dh works till 4:30. He gets home at precisely 5:10 pm, so I'll have to work our flight around that. Should be interesting.

March 11th-- Universal and the Wizarding World of Harry Potter

March 12th-- Islands of Adventure, Downtown Disney, ADR at T-Rex

March 13th-- Islands of Adventure, then our flight home sometime in the evening.

Yes, it's a short trip. Dh doesn't have vacation time at his company yet, and the kids can't afford to miss school, so it is what it is.

I, however, get a grand total of 8 days between both trips, so I'm not complaining.

Right now I'm trying to decide where to stay. I'd just as soon stick with what we know, which is Celebration Suites, but Nick Hotel is an option too.

More later!

 

[macraven]

Thanks!

The clutter was bad, but at least there was a path. lol

what clutter??


my dump has clutter and more.
your ma's place looked like kids and christmas having fun..

 

[dakjoskaimiksmom]

what clutter??


my dump has clutter and more.

Well so does mine, technically, but I would never post video of my clutter online.

I just wanted to head off any snarky comments by the June Cleavers out there. I haven't seen any tr pics taken in normal, messy houses. But maybe I just haven't been looking at the right tr's. lol

 

[dakjoskaimiksmom]

I'm not sure what secret event is going on the weekend of March 12th, but there are NO T-Rex tables available for dinner all weekend. How bizarre.

I was able to book for lunch, but the more I'm thinking about it, the less I want to drag our cookies from Universal to DTD at midday and back again. Especially when we're going to DisneyQuest at night. That's just silly.

Dh had great news today though: starting in February, he'll have vacation time. Since the kids have a 4 day weekend, he can take off that Monday too. That gives us a whole extra day, for...something. Not sure what yet.

AND there is some wicked Harry Potter deal going on that includes breakfast at the Three Broomsticks and 3 nights at a Uni hotel. I bet I can book an equal vacay for cheaper than their deal. That's one of my talents.

Anywho, here is our tentative, 3 day schedule-with-option-to-add-another-day:

March 10th- fly in late
11th- ioa till 8, dtd till 11:30
12th- uni till 8, disneyquest till 11:00
13th- ioa till 7 (or flight)
(14th maybe)- something else