Will the changes ever stop, Our 10 yr anniversary trip.

[m2zjj]

As the title says this is a PTR for our 10th anniversary trip.

I'm Melissa, Lissa, Liss depending on who you're talking to, DH is Keith.

This is a recent picture from my work Christmas party



And here is one from our last trip to the World in Aug 2012



These are the munchkins from the same trip although they wont be going along this time they are too cute not to post a picture of them.



The 2 in the stroller are the twins Julia on the left and Jessica on the right, the little guy is Zach and then there is Kaylee who isn't my DD she's my niece who came along for our last trip. I got to be the cool aunt and take her on her 1st ever trip to WDW.

Now for a little background. DH and I got married in 2004. When we were planning our wedding he says you've never been to WDW so why don't we go there for our honeymoon. He had been to Epcot for one day back when he was a teenager but that was it so he didn't really have any more of a clue what we were getting into than I did.
We went to a travel agent and got some prices but we were already spending a lot of money on our wedding so we decided to try to book things ourselves to save a little money, BIG MISTAKE!
We ended up staying at a very nice hotel offsite but didn't consider how much drive time was going to factor in and ended up driving almost 45 minutes just to get to the parks. We had park hopper tickets bought from the Disney store and ate offsite to save money so we ended up spending more time out of the parks than we did in them.
Don't get me wrong we had a great time but weren't in any hurry to go back so we decided that we would go back for our 10th anniversary, stay closer to the parks and eat onsite to give us more time in the parks.
Four years later my DS who wasn't even 2 yet won a trip to Florida from a giveaway at a local toy store and we thought what the heck. We picked the closest hotel to Disney that they offered (5 minutes from the main gate) used some of the spending money to buy park tickets and the rest to rent a car. We had breakfast at the hotel, ate counter service for lunch, and then had dinner on the way back to the hotel at night. Better than our honeymoon but still not the same as staying onsite.
Four years later we had gone from 1 kid to 3 and decided we wanted to go back with the girls. This time it was a vacation home instead of a hotel but the rest was basically the same as the previous trip. When we got back all I could think about was our next trip and despite the fact that it was over 2 years away I started thinking about where we were going to stay and eat for our anniversary trip.

Ok I better go ahead and post this since my computer keeps freezing up on me. Back later!

 

[MatoMany]

Congratulations on your upcoming anniversary!

My hubby and I are talking about taking everyone to Disneyland for our 10th (its in 1 1/2 years) since my older two want to see where we got married and where we stayed for our Honeymoon. We got married in San Diego and honeymooned at Disneyland so it should be interesting to take them around to see it all.

 

[m2zjj]

Our anniversary is Sept. 11th and this year it falls on a Thursday so we decided that we would make our trip a long weekend. Fly down on the 11th early in the AM and fly back on the 14th late in the PM. That way we could go for our anniversary and our son would only miss 2 days of school unless we could find someone that would take him to school those 2 days.

That plan lasted for all of about 2 weeks until we realized that there were a few issues with the timing. First issue was that we really didn't want DS to miss any school that close to the beginning of the year, second issue was that we really weren't loving the short time frame that would give us, third and the biggest issue was my sister who would be watching my kids while we were gone is a nurse and because of her schedule she really needed her teenage daughter to help with the kids during her work hours, not an option if we're gone on days that she has school.

So we started looking at the calender and decided we could move the trip up a little. It would mean that we wouldn't be taking our trip on our actual anniversary but that wasn't a huge deal to us and it worked out better with everyone's schedules. We decided on the last week in August and set our dates for the 25th - 30th.

Now that we had our dates set we had to decide where to stay. Our hearts were set on staying onsite and we were looking at either ASMO or POP and had pretty much decided on POP we were just waiting for our tax refund to make the reservation. While we were waiting to book I was checking out the Disney site everyday and dreaming of staying at a deluxe. I knew I'd never get my DH to agree to the price though so I was thinking maybe I could convince him to stay at a one of the Mod's. After looking at the website for days I had a few hotels that I would have liked to stay at some Mod's some Deluxe so I showed him the choices. AKL, WL, POFQ, POR, CB, and CR were on my list. He flat out said no! We were staying at a value. Ok not a huge deal. I could understand that he didn't want to spend that much money when we're trying to save up to buy a house.

So we had dates 8-25 thru 8-30, a hotel picked out POP, and had decided on QS dining plan. The trip was coming together. Maybe not my dream trip but I was going to Disney and staying onsite so I sure as heck wasn't complaining.


Of course having our choices made didn't stop me from dreaming...

Back later.

 

[m2zjj]

I was still dreaming about some of the changes I would like to make to our trip but I knew better than to bring them up to DH, I know by now the more I bug him the less likely I am to get what I want so I kept everything to myself. Now these plans that we had settled on were made back in December of last year and anytime we had a thought about changing the dates we had to call my sister to make sure that she could still watch the kids for the new dates. The whole thing was getting kind of old so I was determined not to make anymore changes to the timing of the trip.

Fast forward to the first weekend in February. My DH was in St. Louis for a managers conference and lets just say that things never go smoothly at home when he's gone to these things. Last year the pipes under my kitchen sink burst I we were flat broke so I had to fix it myself and then take care of the 3 inches of water that covered my entire kitchen and dining room floor. This year it was a little more complicated because I work 3rd shift which usually work out perfectly. I get out of work at 6:30 and DH has to be at work at 7:00 so the neighbor come over to sit with the kids for the short time between when DH leaves and when I return. With DH being out of town I now need childcare for all the hours that I'm at work and after a lot of phone calls and shuffling we manage to work things out. I really should know better than to relax by now because something will go wrong
The day that DH was flying out the neighbor who was covering 2 of the days of babysitting calls and tells me that she has to go across the state because her FIL is dying Now I understand that she had to go but at the same time it made all my carefully made plans fall apart. DH is in his own kind of he!! with delayed flights and almost missing connections and I'm leaving text messages and voice mails over and over telling him to get home now. My job is still new and I was still on my probation period at the time so missing a day could have cost me my job. I finally managed to work things out and my poor kids were shuffled to a total of 5 different houses over the course of 4 1/2 days and by the time DH got home 1 1/2 days later that expected I was fed up.

DH was trying anything to get me out of the funk I was in and suggested maybe we should spend the weekend looking at some other Disney Resorts and just maybe we could afford to stay in a mod after all. I didn't know at the time that he had an ace up his sleeve so to speak.

The weekend finally arrives and we sit down after the kids are in bed to look at Mods. After a little debate we both agree that we like the look of POFQ and DH tells me that he talked to my sister and she will keep the kids a little longer so we can stay from the 24th - 30th. Like the dummy I am I start to question if we can afford it, a more expensive room and more days? This is when he explains that the company stock is doing really well and since he was given the option to purchase a certain amount of shares for each of the first 4 years that he's a manager at the price that the stock was at on his hire date we'll have more than enough to pay for the trip when we sell those shares and no we wont have to sell all of them not even 1/4 of what we have. Now I'm getting excited!

We decide that we might as well check out the prices for airfare since last time we looked it was over 500 ppout of our nearest airport GRR and over 350 pp out of Detroit which is a 3 hr drive away. We wanted to keep an eye on the prices and if they dropped we would book our flights. With our new dates the price was 340 pp out of GRR but if we flew out a day before then they dropped to 282.00 pp. DH was quick to agree that if my sister would take the kids a day earlier then we'd leave on the 23rd and just stay off site on the first night.
My sister agreed and just like that we booked the flights, now our dates are set in stone since the tickets are nonrefundable.

 

[m2zjj]

So our dates are set Aug 23-30, we have agreed on a resort POFQ, and we're getting the QSDP.

The dates can't be changed since the flights are already booked and we have agreed on the rest of the plans so that should be it right, no more changes.

We booked the flights on a Saturday night and the next day we wanted to get our package booked and at least put the deposit down. Sundays are kind of a weird day for me now that I'm back to work. I work 3rd shift and Sunday night is my Monday so I only have about half of the day to do anything because by 1:00 or 2:00 pm I have to be laying down to get some sleep before work. I'm running around the house getting my weekend stuff done, You know laundry, dishes, that kind of stuff and DH is sitting at the computer doing who knows what. When I finally sit down he flips the screen my way and says "did you see this?" He had the Disney site up and had noticed the promotion that gets you the Memory Maker free with certain packages. So we go ahead and go through all the steps and it turns out that there must be some kind of room discount with that package because the cost is less than what I had been pricing out. DH is looking at the price, I can almost smell the smoke from the gears spinning in his head, and he looks at me and says just for fun why don't we see what the price would be for a deluxe with this package. Uh oh, turns out that the bug that causes people to change and rearrange their Disney trips is contagious and DH has caught it.

SO now we're looking at deluxe resorts and I know exactly where I want to stay if we go deluxe, CR. I've wanted to stay there since I rode the monorail through there on our honeymoon. Sure enough DH is clicking on the CR page. 30 minutes and 200.00 later we are booked. CR Garden wing-garden view from aug 24-30, 6 day PH, and the QSDP. The plan is to stay off site the first night and check in the next day.

That night I'm on my break at work and DH calls. The first words out of his mouth "so I've been thinking" All I could do was laugh.

 

[wiigirl]

Following along!

 

[m2zjj]

Congratulations on your upcoming anniversary!

My hubby and I are talking about taking everyone to Disneyland for our 10th (its in 1 1/2 years) since my older two want to see where we got married and where we stayed for our Honeymoon. We got married in San Diego and honeymooned at Disneyland so it should be interesting to take them around to see it all.

I don't know how I missed that you posted. Thanks.
That sounds like fun to take the kids to see where you got married and where you stayed for your honeymoon.

Following along!

Welcome! Glad to have you along for the ride.

 

[m2zjj]

He says "So I've been thinking" The last time those words came out of his mouth we ended up with twins so I was a little afraid to ask what he'd been thinking about. Turns out he really had been thinking and about way too many different things to cover on my measly 10min break I let him get as far as maybe the regular dining plan would be better for us and stopped him dead in his tracks. I wanted time to really discuss things and there simply wasn't enough time right then.

That night after he got home from work we went back to our plans and I asked him what exactly he was thinking of changing.

The first thing was that he wanted to stay onsite for the entire trip which just meant adding our first night onto our reservation. His argument was that for just a little extra money we could save ourselves a ton of hassle and get an early start the next morning.

The second thing was he wanted to change our dining plan to DDP from QSDP. We've been to WDW 3 times together and have only ate at 1 TS, Crystal Palace on our last trip. Anyway he wanted to try some of the other TS and since we were planning a more relaxed trip this time it seemed to make sense to have some sit down meals.

The last change he wanted to make was to change from a Garden wing room to a tower room. He didn't need to give me a reason for that one since that was what I wanted all along.

It was looking like a call to Disney reservations was on my schedule for the next day.