Cruella's Hubby
Mouseketeer
- Joined
- Jun 30, 2007
- Messages
- 123
Okay, so this is my very first trip (or rather Pre-trip) report, ever! First some background info on me. Hi, my name is Roger, 
Im 41 years young. Ive been married for 21 years to my wonderful wife Pam 
. We have two kids, a daughter, Courtney 
who just turned 21 in June, and a son, Ryan 
who is now 18 and about to leave home for college.
We went to WDW last July and almost immediately started planning for this years trip ..wait, hold on, lets go back to the very beginning of my WDW experience and then we can work our way to this years trip.
I first went to WDW back in the mid 1970s
. I believe I was either eight or nine. I know I was in 3rd grade at the time. Back then there were only two Disney parks in the entire world, Walt Disney Land in California, and Walt Disney World in Florida which is of course what we now call the Magic Kingdom. Unfortunately I remember almost nothing about that trip. I know we stayed in Largo, Florida with my grandmother and drove to WDW for the day. I remember more about the car trip from Avon, Mass to Florida in a station wagon 
with my father, step mother, and 7 kids 
(yes, thats right I said 7)! 
The kids were I, my three sisters, two step brothers and one step sister. Anyways, like I said, I cant really remember too much about that trip.
We went back to the sunshine state in April of 1981 when I was a freshman at Winnacunnet High School in Hampton, N.H. This time, however my dad had an RV so we drove down in relative comfort. We had even more room because one of my sisterss stayed behind as did my step sister. We again went to Largo to visit relatives. When we went to WDW we got a two day pass which we wore on a rope around our necks which allowed us to go on every ride without purchasing additional tickets. At least thats how I remember it. Maybe the day passes were all that was sold at the time,
Im not positive but I do clearly remember we got the two day pass.
Anyway, we spent a whole day at Disney, and then we came back the following evening and spent several hours there. We had a great time.
One of my stepbrothers got separated from the group and we spent a considerable amount of time tracking him down. LOL 
The thing that was troublesome was that a few days prior to going to Disney, I had gotten what is still the worst sun burn of my entire life! Ouch it hurts just thinking about it! I even had to take vinegar sponge baths on advice of the locals to try to deal with it. Well wouldnt you know, as Im walking around the magic kingdom, my face starts peeling. First it started to look like I was an old man with wrinkles around my eyes, and then the skin just started to peel away. 
Gross, huh?
Also at this time Disney now had three parks in the world, Disneyland, Disneyworld, and Tokyo Disney. But as we are driving around the WDW area there are all these signs advertising a new park called E.P.C.O.T. Hmm, I wondered, what the heck is that?
So Twenty years later, (yes 20 YEARS) I finally got a chance to go back to WDW! More on that next time!
Im 41 years young. Ive been married for 21 years to my wonderful wife Pam . We have two kids, a daughter, Courtney who just turned 21 in June, and a son, Ryan who is now 18 and about to leave home for college.
We went to WDW last July and almost immediately started planning for this years trip ..wait, hold on, lets go back to the very beginning of my WDW experience and then we can work our way to this years trip.
I first went to WDW back in the mid 1970s
. I believe I was either eight or nine. I know I was in 3rd grade at the time. Back then there were only two Disney parks in the entire world, Walt Disney Land in California, and Walt Disney World in Florida which is of course what we now call the Magic Kingdom. Unfortunately I remember almost nothing about that trip. I know we stayed in Largo, Florida with my grandmother and drove to WDW for the day. I remember more about the car trip from Avon, Mass to Florida in a station wagon with my father, step mother, and 7 kids (yes, thats right I said 7)! The kids were I, my three sisters, two step brothers and one step sister. Anyways, like I said, I cant really remember too much about that trip.We went back to the sunshine state in April of 1981 when I was a freshman at Winnacunnet High School in Hampton, N.H. This time, however my dad had an RV so we drove down in relative comfort. We had even more room because one of my sisterss stayed behind as did my step sister. We again went to Largo to visit relatives. When we went to WDW we got a two day pass which we wore on a rope around our necks which allowed us to go on every ride without purchasing additional tickets. At least thats how I remember it. Maybe the day passes were all that was sold at the time,
Im not positive but I do clearly remember we got the two day pass.Anyway, we spent a whole day at Disney, and then we came back the following evening and spent several hours there. We had a great time.
One of my stepbrothers got separated from the group and we spent a considerable amount of time tracking him down. LOL The thing that was troublesome was that a few days prior to going to Disney, I had gotten what is still the worst sun burn of my entire life!
Ouch it hurts just thinking about it! I even had to take vinegar sponge baths on advice of the locals to try to deal with it. Well wouldnt you know, as Im walking around the magic kingdom, my face starts peeling. First it started to look like I was an old man with wrinkles around my eyes, and then the skin just started to peel away. Gross, huh?Also at this time Disney now had three parks in the world, Disneyland, Disneyworld, and Tokyo Disney. But as we are driving around the WDW area there are all these signs advertising a new park called E.P.C.O.T. Hmm, I wondered, what the heck is that?
So Twenty years later, (yes 20 YEARS) I finally got a chance to go back to WDW! More on that next time!
How cool! Can't wait to read more! 
. It’s our 15th anniversary! 
My sister and her family were taking a trip to WDW and talked us into going down. 
Now we couldn’t afford to spend a week down in Florida, so me and DW went down for a couple of days, by ourselves, no kids ( and by the way, they weren’t happy about us leaving them home, and I can’t blame them, but it was our anniversary and we wanted some alone time). We stayed at a Days Inn, not exactly deluxe accommodations, but we were trying to do this on the cheap. Our first day there we went to EPCOT, that mysterious park that they were still building the last time I went to WDW. It was great, the weather was absolutely gorgeous. We loved Honey I shrunk the audience, Ellen’s Energy adventure (although, don’t you think that the animatronics Ellen is the worst looking one on all of WDW property? If I was Ellen I’d be pretty upset that it looks so bad) and all the countries around the world showcase were awesome. (TT was closed, being rehabbed in the off season) We had gone to the park with my sister and BIL; they had actually picked us up at the hotel and drove us to the park
. For what ever reason, BIL was in a lousy mood, especially towards the end of the day. We figured we may be the reason, so we kept trying to make excuses to go our own way and meet up with them later, but my sister wouldn’t let us go anywhere with out them, UGH!
Anyway, we ate at the restaurant in Italy, Alfredo’s. It was great; we had a really great meal there. Unfortunately BIL didn’t want to stay to watch Illuminations, so we had to miss it. Before we left we told my sister and BIL that we’d meet them at the Magic Kingdom the next morning that we’d take the shuttle bus from the hotel. BIL seemed to really like that idea! 
It was awesome! I love Splash Mountain! 
We spent the rest of the day at MK and had a great time. The last day of our trip we went to Universal studios, just DW and I and had a great time.
I will be in the "parents paying for college" club in just one short year! And I will also have a 9year old and another one headed for college in 2011! So I feel your pain. But I vow to still take my trips to disney, somehow, someway! Lookingforward to your trip report!
We have to find a way to cheer on our kids
Good luck with your kids, and have fun on all those trips to Disney
Now, I know that as web sites go, its pretty crappy. It isnt exactly designed to be user friendly, and trying to find information that you want is very time consuming. That said the thing that sold me on the web site was the payment options. With $200 down, I was able to make a reservation and then pay over time over the internet. Suddenly, a trip to Disney, staying on site seemed doable, as long as I didnt have to cough up the cash all at once. The second thing was we bought the book, The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World. This book had so much information about WDW! Thru the book, we learned about the differences in the hotels, the different park tickets, the meal plan, which I didnt know existed, as well as Magical Express, and on, and on. The book also has a list of all the most popular web sites to get information from. As you can guess, one of those sites listed was the DIS! (Page 26 in the 2006 version of the book). 
This site, along with Deb Wills site put our trip planning on a whole different level. Very soon, planning the trip became an obsession! One that Im still not over! So for our 2006 trip, the cast of characters was going to be a little different. It was still me, DW, DD, and DS but this time we were taking my mother in law (DMIL---and D means Dear, not the other D word one might use when describing their mother in law) as well as one of DWs 30 something cousin. 
