Update 05/05 - Can We Survive Eating Only at Food & Wine? A F&W and MNSSHP PTR

[Tink-erin-belle]

Guess who just scored a before park opening ADR at Be Our Guest? Me!!! Yes!!!


Oh, wait, you all might not know who I am or anything else about my upcoming trip! I am Erin, a single mom of two awesome kids: Coy and True:





True is on your left and she will be 12 at the time of our trip. Coy is on your right and he will be 16. I am in the middle…and I am getting to the point that I do not like to tell people my age! Let’s just say that I told my coworkers that I was turning 24 on my last birthday – I may or may not have transposed those numbers!


The kids and I are going to be in Disney World for Mother’s Day, Star Wars Weekends, and the Flower and Garden Festival! We will be there from May 9 to May 17. I haven’t booked a room yet, but I have booked flights and all of my ADRs! I wasn’t going to do a PTR because I am still working on the TR for our October trip! The picture above was from that trip, and if you would like to see our adventures from then, please join along here: [url=http://www.disboards.com/threads/1-mom-2-kids-3-resorts-and-6-parks-an-october-2014-tr-four-part-update-03-10.3349080/]1 Mom, 2 Kids, 3 Resorts and 6 Parks! An October 2014 TR


Anyway, I wasn’t going to do a PTR because I figured the planning would be the same as any other trip, but I recently discovered how little I knew about SWW! I also have been doing a lot of research on the food booths at F&G on disneyfoodblog.com and I realized I needed to create a plan of attack so that the kids and I could try EVERYTHING!!! I haven’t gotten to Food & Wine in my TR yet, but we tried a lot of different things in October and my kids and I loved the experience. I just wished that I had planned better so that we could have tried everything that we wanted. The food was so good! I’ll give you guys a special treat – I haven’t even shared these on my TR yet – this was the Canadian Cheddar Cheese Soup and the “Le Cellier” Wild Mushroom Beef Filet Mignon with Truffle Butter Sauce:





[url=https://flic.kr/p/ro8Vg3]


Yum!


Yes, my kids and I are definitely foodies, and we love trying different things when we travel or go out to eat! So the Outdoor Kitchens at F&G will be right up our alley! We also love Star Wars. I am a fan of the original trilogy and Coy likes the last three films and the cartoon. True hates them all! I haven’t been able to sit through the cartoon and I barely made it through the prequel movies, but I am going to make an effort since I want to know who is who during SWW!


I’ll give you a quick glimpse into what our plans are so far. I started making ADRs back when they announced the SWW packages (I think back in December?), so I was able to get a couple of Star Wars meals. I also knew that we would most likely be flying into Orlando the Friday before Mother’s Day, so I made a before park opening ADR for Crystal Palace. It is our tradition to go there on the first day, so I was happy I was able to book that! We love the castle shots in the empty park!


[url=https://flic.kr/p/rxURye]


Well, I booked our flights a week or so ago, and I had to book for Saturday morning rather than Friday night! That meant no Crystal Palace ADR for us I was more disappointed about not getting the castle shots than not being able to keep the ADR, so imagine my excitement when I saw a post on Facebook today saying that Be Our Guest was going to start taking breakfast ADRs TODAY! I checked each one of our dates, but nothing was available for Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday! I was starting to get discouraged, until I finally saw that there was availability on Thursday at 8:25am! But wait! I already had a Star Wars breakfast booked at Sci-Fi! I couldn’t give that up! I nervously changed the date to Friday…and there was availability! AND it was before park opening! Sweet! Here are our plans so far:


Sunday, May 10 – Lunch at Coral Reef for Mother’s Day!

Monday, May 11 – Lunch at 50’s Prime Time Café

Tuesday, May 12 – Lunch at Whispering Canyon Café

Wednesday, May 13 – Dinner at San Angel Inn

Thursday, May 14 – Breakfast at Sci-Fi for the Star Wars Dine In Galactic Breakfast

Friday, May 15 – Breakfast at Be Our Guest AND dinner at Hollywood & Vine for Jedi Mickey’s Star Wars Dine

Saturday, May 16 – Breakfast at Crystal Palace (Oops! I forgot that I changed my ADR from our first park day to our last park day! THIS is why I need to write this PTR! I have to get all of this stuff out of my head so that I can plan better!)


You’ll notice that we only have two dinner ADRs. This was because when the kids and I ate a late lunch or an early dinner in October, we almost never had room to try food at F&W! I want to make sure we have as many opportunities to visit the booths at F&G in May as possible! I’m only making an exception for San Angel Inn because the kids really wanted to eat there when we went to the Gran Fiesta Tour in Mexico in October. We’ve never eaten there before! So, please follow along as I try to make heads or tails of our vacation plans!


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[Tink-erin-belle]

Reserved for Table of Contents

 

[Victoriasmom98]

YES!!!!! I MAY HAVE CHEATED TO GET HERE, BUT I'm first!!!!!

 

[Tink-erin-belle]

Yay, Ann!

 

[Victoriasmom98]

Ok, why the heck is Dis underlining Erin's quote?? Ugh!!! So there, Dis.....I'm not gonna quote her then! Did I mention I hate this new Dis??? Well, you are like me, Erin, you watched the original Star Wars trilogy and just can't get into these other prequels!! Who ever came up with prequels anyways? I'm sure you will get to know the characters well enough. You'll be in Disney on my birthday!! Whaaaaaaa!!!! I want to go!!! I promise not to take up much room?? So, where are we staying??Awesome ADR's! I read over the BOG breakfast menu and I just didn't think Victoria would like any of the choices. Maybe. I dunno. We have a preopening CP, (thanks to ole Bossy one!) so I'm good with that!

I'm so excited for you!! Let the planning begin!


Hey Karen.......what's taking you so long to get here........oh wait.....you have a life!!! I don't!

 

[Tink-erin-belle]

I hate the new DIS too! I can't get my colors and fonts to post right - especially around my pictures! Maybe I'll take some time and look over the info on the new boards. The perfectionist in me is going nuts because my colors are all off! If I learn how to fix it, don't be surprised if I edit everything!

I'll be there on your birthday? And Karen was there on mine! One of these days, I'm taking a birthday trip!

 

[Gracefulskinny]

Hi there! Joining in! We will be there at the same time!

Sunday, May 10 – Lunch at Coral Reef for Mother’s Day!

We will be spending our morning in Epcot as well.

Wednesday, May 13 – Dinner at San Angel Inn

We also have a dinner planned this day at Epcot!

Great Minds think alike!

 

[Twoboysnmygirl]

Yay Erin!!! I'm so excited you get to go back and scored BOG breakfast! I seriously don't know how to go to MK without going early before rope drop now! Sorry it took me a while to sub, I just haven't been in the DISing mood since I'm not sure when my next trip will be!

 

[chunkymonkey]

Hi Erin, I'm Su-Lynn. We'll be in the parks from May 15 -22, so we'll overlap by a few days. I'm really excited for SWW and F&G, both of which are firsts for us. I just make our FP+ reservations. We also scored a BOG breakfast ressie, but after the park opens (I'm really not a morning person LOL) - but then again that is the day MK opens at 6am for 24 hours. Happy to read along with your plans!

 

[Tink-erin-belle]

I booked our room! We are booked for Port Orleans Riverside in a Royal Room with a River View! Party:

The kids and I have stayed in all of the moderate resorts but this one! We actually stayed at POFQ back in February when we went to Playlist Live. I will be writing a mini-TR about that trip at the end of my current TR, so I don’t want to give too much away, such as how the kids felt about that resort! I will say that we scored a sweet corner room at POFQ:













We also got to try beignets!





I’m looking forward to having those again! Speaking of food, I finished my spreadsheet for our table service meals:




For each meal (other than the buffets) I entered in the amount of the highest priced appetizer, entrée, dessert, and drink (excluding alcoholic drinks). I know that it is unlikely that each of us will order the most expensive thing on the menu, and I know we won’t always order apps or desserts, but I would rather over-budget than under-budget! So that adds up to be about $1300 for all of our table service meals. I didn’t get a Tables in Wonderland card when we visited back in October because it didn’t seem like it would save me a significant amount of money. But I altered my table above to take the 20% discount on all of the restaurants (except for BOG) and added in the automatic 18% gratuity:





So that brought my total down to a little over $1000. That is, if we max out every dining experience – which I know we won’t do! So my question to you guys is this: Is it worth it to drop $100 on a TiW card for the 20% discount? If you have TiW, have you seen savings?


Back to POR, I am super duper excited to be staying there! I even ordered out Magic Bands today:










OK, that was probably boring for you guys, but it was fun for me! I just have a hard time finding pictures to put into PTRs! Well, I’m going to have a project that I am going to share with you guys in a few days, and I am determined to make t-shirts for this trip, too! Hopefully it’ll make the next 51 days pass quickly while the kids and I wait for this trip!

 

[Tink-erin-belle]

Hi there! Joining in! We will be there at the same time!


We will be spending our morning in Epcot as well.



We also have a dinner planned this day at Epcot!

Great Minds think alike!

Gracefulskinny! I am going to read your PTR! Yes, great minds think alike!

Yay Erin!!! I'm so excited you get to go back and scored BOG breakfast! I seriously don't know how to go to MK without going early before rope drop now! Sorry it took me a while to sub, I just haven't been in the DISing mood since I'm not sure when my next trip will be!

Karen! I kno wyou’ll get back soon!

Hi Erin, I'm Su-Lynn. We'll be in the parks from May 15 -22, so we'll overlap by a few days. I'm really excited for SWW and F&G, both of which are firsts for us. I just make our FP+ reservations. We also scored a BOG breakfast ressie, but after the park opens (I'm really not a morning person LOL) - but then again that is the day MK opens at 6am for 24 hours. Happy to read along with your plans!

Su-Lynn! I’m glad you got BOG too! We aren’t really morning people either, but I am going to do my best to get us out of the door! Are you going to try to stay in MK for the 24 hour day?

 

[Victoriasmom98]

Hiya Erin!!! I am so excited about your Royal Room! That should be so cool to stay in! Yay!!! You did the same thing I did with trying to figure out whether the TIW card is worth it. I'm thinking it really will save us money, even though it doesn't count the counter service meals. Ugh, I'm not help as I'm still waffling back and forth on it myself. Sorry buddy. Either way I'm going to be buying meals with my Disney Visa by either buying the dining plan with it, or paying OOP with the TiW card. Decisions.....decisions.....

 

[-Hope-]

I'm here! I'll have to come catch up later... Soooooo far behind with my dis friends...

 

[-Hope-]

Okay, all caught up! Love the Royal Room and that you get to do SWW!! Jace doesn't really have much interest in WDW (or really anywhere- he got his dad's homebody gene and Kya got my wanderlust gene, lol) but he says he might go for SWW someday or if they expand the SWs presence at DHS like the rumors say. I have clients going that same weekend because it's what worked out for them but they have me completely planning around and avoiding all things SWs related which is just crazy to me! I can't wait to read about the rest of your plans!

 

[ursalita]

Joining in!

I'm excited to read all about your plans. You are going during a perfect time - F&G and SWW. I wish we could have gone then but school schedules didn't work out. But I'm very excited about Flower & Garden. I'm looking forward to experiencing SWW vicariously through you.

I will also try and make it over to your TR and catch up.

 

[Tink-erin-belle]

Hi, Guys! I have been home for the past couple of days, so I have been able to do a little bit more planning for this trip I had my outpatient surgery on Thursday and I have been taking it easy ever since. Since I haven’t left the house in days I haven’t been able to get the supplies that I needed for the project that I am doing with the kids! So to fill my time, I went to disneyfoodblog.com and wrote down all of the food and drinks that will be served during the festival. I put them in Evernote (do you guys use that?) as a checklist and added the cost of each item:

















I know they have the booklets or passports or whatever at the festival, but I had a hard time keeping track of them at Food & Wine in October, so I decided to just make my own so that I could keep it in my phone. I also wanted to get a loose idea of how much I wanted to budget for this food, so I created a spreadsheet:





This isn’t a strict budget, but just an idea so that I know how much I will be spending if we get everything at every booth. I multiplied each food item by three, but I only counted alcoholic beverages once since the kids obviously aren’t drinking! Oh, and I didn’t count the beer flight at one of the booths because I don’t like beer! I am looking forward to the liquor, the wine, and the FOOD!!! After seeing this list all written out, I think I did the right thing by making the ADRs the way I did. I think we’ll have to go to EPCOT at least four times to be able to eat all of this! If we can’t cross off the whole list, that’s OK, but we sure are going to try!

 

[Tink-erin-belle]

Hiya Erin!!! I am so excited about your Royal Room! That should be so cool to stay in! Yay!!! You did the same thing I did with trying to figure out whether the TIW card is worth it. I'm thinking it really will save us money, even though it doesn't count the counter service meals. Ugh, I'm not help as I'm still waffling back and forth on it myself. Sorry buddy. Either way I'm going to be buying meals with my Disney Visa by either buying the dining plan with it, or paying OOP with the TiW card. Decisions.....decisions.....

I still can't decide! Ugh! But I can't wait for the Royal Room!!!

I'm here! I'll have to come catch up later... Soooooo far behind with my dis friends...

Okay, all caught up! Love the Royal Room and that you get to do SWW!! Jace doesn't really have much interest in WDW (or really anywhere- he got his dad's homebody gene and Kya got my wanderlust gene, lol) but he says he might go for SWW someday or if they expand the SWs presence at DHS like the rumors say. I have clients going that same weekend because it's what worked out for them but they have me completely planning around and avoiding all things SWs related which is just crazy to me! I can't wait to read about the rest of your plans!

Hi, Hope! That's too bad your clients don't want to do the SWW stuff! It seems like a lot of fun! There's so much info on here about everything there is to do, and the kids and I are getting really excited about going!

Joining in!

I'm excited to read all about your plans. You are going during a perfect time - F&G and SWW. I wish we could have gone then but school schedules didn't work out. But I'm very excited about Flower & Garden. I'm looking forward to experiencing SWW vicariously through you.

I will also try and make it over to your TR and catch up.

Hi, Urslita and I am far from having a green thumb, so I am really looking forward to seeing someone else's gardens when we go to the festival I think SWW is going to be so much fun, so I'll try to take as many pictures as I can for my TR! I am going to pop over to your PTR, too!

 

[-Hope-]

I love this newest guide you've created for yourself! I may have to steal this idea for F&W!

 

[Victoriasmom98]

It's been since March 31st that there's been an update.......Totally unacceptable Miss Erin!! I'm gonna have to ask True or Coy to continue writing this!!!

 

[Tink-erin-belle]

Hi, Guys! I am sorry I haven’t been around for the past couple of weeks. I had my outpatient knee surgery five weeks ago on March 26 and recovery has been going smoothly. I just thought I would have been fully recovered by now! Maybe it was wishful thinking, or maybe it was the nurse practitioner who told me that I should be back to my normal activity level within a few weeks, but I thought by now I would be walking around with no problem. The swelling in my knee has gone down quite a bit – so I’m not limping as much as I was – but I am still walking slower than I usually do. My pain level has been going down this past week, as well, so I have been really hopeful that I was going to be up to taking this trip to Disney in May. I told myself that I would make a decision about this trip two weekends ago, but that weekend I still was feeling discouraged by my lack of progress. If I had to decide then, I would have cancelled the trip. I wasn’t ready to do that! So I waited another week because I really didn’t want to cancel. I am still seeing steady progress, but the trip is just under two weeks away and I have to admit that I am not strong enough to go. I doubt that I will make some miraculous recovery within two weeks! If I do, I will be SO MAD that I postponed this trip! But I can’t take a chance with my knee. I need to take my time to recover, and pushing it by walking all of those Disney miles every day will not help! I have to accept the fact that this recovery is taking a while, but I need to get back to 100% before I can do something as strenuous as Disney. Plus, I still have the goal of running a 5K this year! I can’t do that if I set myself back by trying to do too much too soon.


But, never fear! I would not cancel this trip without planning another! I won’t even call this “cancelling”. It is postponing! At first, I got all excited about the prospect of taking a two week vacation in November! We were going to arrive on November 1, go to MNSSHP, go to the Disney parks and Universal, then go to MVMCP! Halloween and Christmas all rolled up into one! Sounds great, right? I actually had a trip like this planned many moons ago, but I had to cancel due to financial reasons, so finally being able to do a Halloween/Christmas trip was like a dream come true! But I didn’t let myself get too carried away because I knew that I had to consider who would cover me at work. I work for a non-profit and I am a one person department. My coworker is my backup when I am out, so I emailed him to check on his availability. One week on vacation shouldn’t be an issue, but two weeks might be pushing it. Just as I had feared, he already had vacation planned for dates in the middle of my trip. I was so glad I asked before I started making serious plans! So I started looking at the surrounding dates. True was adamant that she didn’t want to spend Halloween day in Disney World because she wanted to be at home, so pushing the vacation up a week wouldn’t work. Pushing the trip back two weeks wouldn’t work, either, because we would be getting into Thanksgiving week, and there was no way I wanted to deal with those crowds! So I settled on going for a week and a half (I know – First World Problems! ) in the middle of October. So… drumroll, please! We are still going to be in a Royal Room at POR, but the dates are now October 17 to October 28! We will take a flight into Orlando the night before, and we won’t get in until late, so I booked just one night at the Holiday Inn where allears.net always has promo codes. $79 for one night isn’t bad at all! BUT… when I booked it, the rate was $138, so it was $170 when you added in all of the taxes and fees! That is not a good value! I’m thinking about just adding that arrival night to the stay at POR. I’m sure that POR will have a competitive rate once the Annual Pass discounts are released. Even if it is a bit more, it might be worth it, just to avoid the hassle of switching resorts after one night.


I made a few ADRs, but since I was slightly past the 180 day mark, I couldn’t get a before-park-opening ADR for Crystal Palace for our first day. I did get it for later in the trip! I also got Be Our Guest for 10:30 am one day, although they are calling that “lunch” instead of breakfast. I guess the breakfast trial period will be over by then, but I am totally OK with that! We also got a before park opening ADR for Cinderella’s Royal Table! I was so happy about that, that I didn’t even care that I was paying in full for a meal I wouldn’t even eat for another 6 months! :rofl: I’ll post my ADRs once I have them all set up for the rest of the trip.


I’ve got to post at least one picture for this update, right? Here goes:






I got our Magic Bands in the mail and I was so depressed! I am OK about it now, but they were just a reminder of how close we were to this trip! I wonder if I can use the same Magic Bands for this trip in October? It seems like such a waste to send more! Anyway, I am just glad that my kids have been so great about postponing this trip. They are no strangers to postponing trips but they were actually the ones being realistic and saying that we shouldn’t go in May. They are the best They are excited about going back for the Halloween season! Oh, and I almost forgot to mention that we will spend a couple of days at Universal, as well! We’re not going to stay on property (so no resort hopping for us like last October!) but we are going to go for at least two days. Maybe three if I can get those three for the price of two tickets that they have on sale now! I am still working on True to get her to go to Halloween Horror Nights, but she still says that she is too scared. Coy and I showed her a few videos on YouTube, but I think that made it worse! Ugh! Coy and I just really want to go, but we’ll skip it if she really is still too scared by October. Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party will have to do!