We're Off To Visit Mickey Mouse - A September 2016 PTR

[LaBelleVie]

Pre-Trip Plans
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1.) Who We Are
2.) How This Trip Came About
3.) When We're Going
4.) Where We're Staying

 

[LaBelleVie]

Who We Are

Tom and I on our November 2015 trip -- the boys are way cuter than us, but we can't share pics of them yet.
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Me: I'm Alex. I'm 28, and I teach preschool. My hobbies include genealogy, reading, baking, cross stitch, gaming, and bingewatching Netflix. Belle is my favorite princess, but I like Tangled more. I copied a good portion of this from our last trip report.

Tom: My husband, who is 29. He works at a chiropractor's office. He enjoys watching wrestling, playing pinball, and eating steak. He's obsessed with the Muppets.

Jamie: Our almost 5-year-old son. His favorite Disney movies/shows include Elena of Avalor, The Lion Guard, the Toy Story films, and Cars.

Nolie: Our almost 3-year-old son. He's obsessed with Dove Cameron, or, as he calls her any time he sees her (including in her Mal costume from Descendants, "[his] Maddie"; he is also a huge Mickey Mouse Clubhouse fan.

My Disney obsession started at a very young age. Back in 1996, my dad promised he would take us soon. He bought a guide book, and I read that book so many times that by the time I was 14, the spine had broken into three separate pieces (I have updated my guide book twice so far as an adult!). I always joked that I knew more about Disney than anyone else who had never been. We had wanted to go to Disney for our honeymoon in 2011, but due to financial reasons, we weren't able to take a honeymoon at all. We thought it would probably still be several years before we got to go on any vacation at all, let alone Disney, but when my beloved grandmother died, I decided life was too short to keep putting off things I wanted to do, and we went in May 2015, as a kind of delayed honeymoon/4th anniversary/27th birthday trip (our anniversary is May 7, and my birthday is May 21; we were there in between). We ended up returning in November 2015 to see the Osborne lights.

Tom was never really into Disney (though he likes the Toy Story films), but he knew how much I had always wanted to go to Disney and wanted to make sure it happened at some point. I was really worried he wouldn't enjoy it as much as I hoped he would, but he absolutely fell in love with it and decided that we should come back every year. So far, we're making good on that!

This is the first trip for the boys (and their first vacation ever). They came to live with us in February, and we are so excited to make their adoption official before Thanksgiving! Tom and I had been planning on coming around Halloween this year anyway, but when we got the boys, we knew we HAD to do MNSSHP! We didn't expect the adoption process to move along as quickly as it has, so this trip kind of gets to serve as a pre-adoption celebration.

 

[LaBelleVie]

How This Trip Came About
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As mentioned above, Tom and I decided during our Christmastime trip that we wanted to see Disney World around Halloween, so we started planning for fall 2016. We originally wanted to book free dining, but when we checked (the day free dining dates were available to book), the only rooms that popped up were suites, and suites are both unnecessary for us, and out of our budget. We ended up taking advantage of the back to school room discount rates instead.

The boys kind of know, but they kind of don't. They don't fully understand the concept of Disney World, but they know that we're going to go visit Mickey. We've shown them some Youtube clips of the resort we'll be staying at, various attractions, etc. to kind of prepare them. Some of it seems to stick, but I'm not sure how much. I know they're going to be thrilled when we get there though!

 

[LaBelleVie]

When We're Going
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We definitely wanted to do MNSSHP, so we knew we'd have to book in September or October. I figured that the parties probably become more crowded the closer you get to Halloween, so we figured September would be a great time to go. We ultimately chose the last week of September. We're driving this trip (this will be a first!), so we'll be leaving September 24th from Indiana to make it in time for check-in on Sunday the 25th. We'll be heading back home Friday the 30th. Thankfully, I have an assistant teacher in my classroom this year, so I can take a week off work without worrying about it disrupting my students!

 

[LaBelleVie]

Where We're Staying
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We went into this trip knowing that we were going to have a smaller budget to work with than on previous trips. As such, we knew that a Value would be the appropriate choice. I figured the boys would enjoy Art of Animation or All-Star Movies the most. I was leaning toward AoA (it's newer, the pool is supposed to be awesome, I've heard good things about the food court, and they would love seeing the different represented sections), but the day I booked, there weren't any non-suite rooms available, so I went ahead and looked into All-Star Movies. We've booked a preferred room, and requested a ground floor room in the Toy Story section (the boys would enjoy that the most). I'm not as excited about the hotel choice as I have been in the past, but on our past trips, it's just been Tom and I, and we were choosing resorts with romance in mind. But this trip isn't about us, it's about the boys, and the boys are going to love All-Star Movies. Plus we haven't been to any of the Values before, so it'll be interesting to check some of them out. We haven't even SEEN the All-Star resorts, so it'll be a new experience for all of us.