Week After Turkey Day Shenanigans

[Candycane83]

I'm at work early and ready too! I slept just fine, but now again I'm wondering if anything I'm reserving makes any sense.

I'm here at McDonald's all set up with 10 minutes to spare! Couldn't sleep at all last night. Seriously, I think I might have a problem.

Good luck!!!!

 

[Meeko5]

Hope it's all going smoothly guys!

 

[JamieOak]

I feel like I have no idea what just happened, but I do indeed have 3 FPs for each day.

 

[Meeko5]

I feel like I have no idea what just happened, but I do indeed have 3 FPs for each day.

Haha! Yay!!!

 

[twoolle]

I'm done! The earliest I could get FEA for our party of 5 on 12/1 was 2:50pm. But there was plenty open after that! I got everything else I wanted but at first it was weird...times weren't loaded for 7DMT, ETwB, and some other things and I Kept thinking there is no way they are gone yet! So I went through the rest of my list and came back and was able to get 7DMT and the rest at the times I wanted too! I even booked 7DMT on my first park day 11/28. So it seems there is still plenty left!

 

[JamieOak]

I feel like there is some trick to getting it to show the time you actually want. I'm going back and modifying times where I didn't get exactly the one I want and now I'm mostly getting the exact times I wanted. But sometimes I'll see different times on the summary page then they aren't there when I click "show all times". But I go back to the summary and it's there again and I just picked it from there.

 

[pfeifer14]

It took me all about 20 minutes and I got just about everything I wanted. Good luck everyone!

 

[Meeko5]

Yay! So glad everyone was successful!

 

[Melwhit16]

There are a lot of ADR open for 11/30 this morning. Not even sure why I am still looking. I have a weird variety of ADRs to drop on the 30th coral reef whispering and Akershus (can you tell I had no idea what we would do this day) I just found a Tusker for 10 on the 30th and almost snagged it. What is wrong with me, stick to what I have!!!

 

[Meeko5]

There are a lot of ADR open for 11/30 this morning. Not even sure why I am still looking. I have a weird variety of ADRs to drop on the 30th coral reef whispering and Akershus (can you tell I had no idea what we would do this day) I just found a Tusker for 10 on the 30th and almost snagged it. What is wrong with me, stick to what I have!!!

We all go thru the crazy ADR booking phase, at least I did LOL

 

[TiggerManiac]

Oh, my goodness! That went much better than I expected. I got everything I wanted within about 5-10 minutes of the time I had planned, with the exception of FEA. I wanted 4:30 but ended up with 6:50, right after our dinner at Akershus. We can listen to the Norway Storytellers at 6:30, do FEA, then have plenty of time to line up at 7:45 for the 8:15 Candlelight Processional.

I'm so glad to hear everybody else got what they wanted too, pretty much at least.

Here are my plans:

Nov 28 at Epcot: 8:00 Garden Grill
8:45 PPO Soarin'
10:00 Pixar Short Films
11:15 Mission Space (yuck, for my husband, he can use my band and ride twice)
1:30 QS Lunch at Tangierine Cafe
5:20 Dinner at Akershus6:50 Frozen Ever After

Nov 29 at Universal for Harry Potter

Nov 30 at HS: 11:25 TSMM
12:00 QS lunch at Starring Rolls (SUSHI!!!)
1:35 Star Tours
5:30 Frozen Sing Along
??? QS dinner somewhere
6:45???? SW Galactic Spectacular (hopefully)
7:00 head over to MK for EMH
10:00 Wishes

Dec 1 at MK: 8:00 Keys to the Kingdom Tour (includes lunch)
2:25 SDMT
3:25 Splash Mtn
4:25 Space Mtn
5:30 Dinner at 1900 Park Fare
7:00 MVMCP??????

Dec 2 at AK: Rope drop Kilimanjaro Safari
9:50 Expedition Everest
4:05 Dinosaur
5:05 Kilimanjaro Safari (dusk; time when people are saying lions are very active)
6:00 Yak and Yeti
????? ROL (hopefully)

Dec 3 at Universal (Mannheim Steamroller concert at night)

Dec 4 at MK: 8:00 BOG
9:00 7DMT and Peter Pan (PPO or as soon as they open)
10:55 Haunted Mansion
12:30 QS at Pecos Bill's
12:45 Pirates
3:00 Festival of Fantasy Parade
3:45 Muppets Present
4:05 Buzz Lightyear
5:00 Dinner at BOG

Dec 5 at Epcot: 9:55 Soarin'
10:55 Mission Space (again, for dh)
QS lunch somewhere
6:00 Spaceship Earth
7:35 Dinner at Boma


I've also scheduled time to see all the Christmas storytellers at Epcot and some of the various entertainment offerings, including Voices of Liberty.

 

[Meeko5]

So DH and I decided to pay off the balance of our trip with GC's at Sam's Club - for the quarter starting 10/1 we get 5% cash back at wholesale clubs on my chase freedom card. With the extra 5% cash back that will be like paying $135.83 for $150 in Disney GCs. I'll end up doing a lot of combining balances before I make the final payment (My sam's only carries the 3 pack of $50 cards), but will ultimately save enough money to make it worth the little bit of effort, I think. It's essentially getting 9% off doing GC's vs paying directly from the bank account...

However I'm not doing anything until the week the final balance is due juuuuust in case something happens haha. I certainly don't want to be stuck with $1500 in disney GCs!

 

[Candycane83]

Yay to everyone who got their FPs today!

 

[Astryd]

@JamieOak we will be doing the Monorail bar crawl at the same time



Glad everyone seems to be getting there Fastpasses.

 

[JamieOak]

So DH and I decided to pay off the balance of our trip with GC's at Sam's Club - for the quarter starting 10/1 we get 5% cash back at wholesale clubs on my chase freedom card. With the extra 5% cash back that will be like paying $135.83 for $150 in Disney GCs. I'll end up doing a lot of combining balances before I make the final payment (My sam's only carries the 3 pack of $50 cards), but will ultimately save enough money to make it worth the little bit of effort, I think. It's essentially getting 9% off doing GC's vs paying directly from the bank account...

However I'm not doing anything until the week the final balance is due juuuuust in case something happens haha. I certainly don't want to be stuck with $1500 in disney GCs!

That's a great plan! I currently have over $3250 in Disney gift cards. I'm definitely not concerned about being stuck with them since they don't expire. I could call and pay off my RO reservation with that, and I think I will soon. Even if I did cancel for some reason, they will refund it (just keep the GCs used to make the payment in case). I'm still buying GCs too, to cover all our dining and souveniors. I just plan to charge things to the room via MB and then use the GC at the front desk to pay it off.

 

[Meeko5]

Hey - did anyone ever get their dream reward dollars for the Disney visa referrals? The $200 GC for DH's account came within a few weeks and I still don't have any rewards in my account...wondering if it's just me??

 

[JamieOak]

@JamieOak we will be doing the Monorail bar crawl at the same time



Glad everyone seems to be getting there Fastpasses.

Awesome! We need to discuss this more. I have not yet done much "planning" for that like picking which place to visit at each resort. I think that's going to be a harder decision than FPs!

 

[Meeko5]

That's a great plan! I currently have over $3250 in Disney gift cards. I'm definitely not concerned about being stuck with them since they don't expire. I could call and pay off my RO reservation with that, and I think I will soon. Even if I did cancel for some reason, they will refund it (just keep the GCs used to make the payment in case). I'm still buying GCs too, to cover all our dining and souveniors. I just plan to charge things to the room via MB and then use the GC at the front desk to pay it off.

I wish I had realized this was an option with our last trip, a 9% savings for very little "work" is awesome! By buying the GC's the savings will basically cover all our TS tips plus some

 

[Meeko5]

I just plan to charge things to the room via MB and then use the GC at the front desk to pay it off.

We did that last year, we had like $250 in gift cards between visa rewards and a gift from our TA. Worked great!!

 

[JamieOak]

I wish I had realized this was an option with our last trip, a 9% savings for very little "work" is awesome! By buying the GC's the savings will basically cover all our TS tips plus some

My very elaborate GC spreadsheet says I've saved 17% so far on a total of $4150 in Disney GCs bought. That's $625 saved right there! I've already used some to pay for MM, EMM, Wild Africa Trek, MVMCP. I could look at it as MVMCP & Wild Africa Trek were basically free for us so far.