[Disneydiana]

Cast of Characters: Me (27, Disney fan) and my DH Lou/ Louie (29)
Our Journey: Land and Sea Vacation, 4 Days DW / 3 Days Sea (June 17th- 24th)
Our Lodging/Stateroom: Grand Floridian w/ balcony / Cat. 6 Stateroom w/ veranda
Our Special Plans: Honeymoon! Poly Luau Dinner, Fantasmic Dinner Package, Stingray excursion on cruise


Ok, just as soon as I started planning my wedding I knew that I should start to plan my honeymoon. He thinks that taking vacations are –gasp- a waste of money. He would rather spend it on guitars or anything else tangible. I had to teach him that trips/ vacations are not a waste of money but are the building blocks of memories and experiences… priceless!!

The last big trip we took together was 3 years ago to England and I had to force him into that one. He had a good time but complained that I woke him up to early to sightsee. I love British history, the Beatles and (being a librarian) British literature, so for me this was like a pilgrimage. Him on the other hand… he saw it as just being a travel companion.

So I knew I had my work cut out for me if I was going to get him to spend big bucks for our DW / DCL honeymoon. You see he was like so many people who say, “What! DW is for kids! It just has Mickey Mouse and a couple of rides. Why would you want to go there…without kids?”


Planning the Trip…let the fun begin.

Lou didn’t have any idea on where to go for our honeymoon, so he said that we could go wherever I wanted. Well…I hadn’t been to DW since 1994 (on a family trip) so I knew this was my chance to go back.

Being the dork that I am, planning the trip was a way for me to relax during the wedding planning!

I picked up the Passporter DW book and the DCL book and went to work brushing up on my info. I then found out about these boards and started reading and posting like crazy!


My trip report will be separated into Land and Sea part. The first past in land and then I’ll continue the sea part under the cruise trip reports. .

The Hotel
First mission, where to say…I knew that we wanted to do the “Land and Sea cruise” so staying someplace on property that was “tropical” seemed a good start. We booked a Category 6 stateroom with a veranda and by doing that we were able to choose from a list of hotels to say at for the land part of our trip.

Well, when it came down to choosing a hotel, I had my heart on the Polynesian. I read so much about it that I knew it would be really romantic for our honeymoon. As I started to research every other aspect of the trip, I envisioned us at the Polynesian…that was of course until we actually booked our trip and I found out that all of the rooms were taken for our date. Well I just couldn’t help it, tears started to flow and I got so upset that we waited so long to book it (FYI- 9 months b-4 the trip). Why didn’t make the reservation sooner! I was so upset at myself….”there goes our honeymoon”, I thought. Lou called the DCL and asked them if there was anything we could do? She said that she could place us on the waiting list in case anything opens up but there was no guarantee. Then she suggested the AK Lodge….well going from a “tropical paradise” to a “wilderness lodge” didn’t sound like fun. Then she said that we could upgrade out hotel to the Grand Floridian. Ok, so then I stopped crying realizing that that was totally an upgrade. Seeing that it was our honeymoon and our last extravagant trip for a while, we decided to go for it. We booked the Grand Floridian.


Getting him into Disney
There were several things I did to get him into the Disney mood. I had to try to space it out, I didn’t want to go into Disney overload to scare him. Here are some of the thing I did:

• I taped the DW food shows on the Food Network and made him watch them. No one can resist the giant turkey leg. Lou loves to eat, so the best way to his heart was through his stomach.
• We watched the DCL and DW vacation DVDs so that I got an idea of what his likes and dislikes were for trip planning
• I sent him emails with pictures and descriptions of 2 attractions/ rides he might like along with the menus for 2 restaurants so that he could see the food options.
• We watched a couple of Disney movies so that he could see that Disney makes great movies that appeal to adults too (and so he would know who some of the characters were) We watched: Monster’s Inc., Lilo & Stitch, The 3 Caballeros, Cars and Peter Pan.

ADR’s

Lou: “How could you plan what we are going to eat 6 months before the trip?” I had to explain to him that if want to eat at some of the DW restaurants ADRs were essential. We were spending 4 days on land and of those days only 2 needed ADR’s. Here are the meal plans and ADR’s I made (based on what Lou said sounded interesting- and after reading the menus posted online) :

The Restaurants that needed ADRs are in BOLD

Day 1 MK
Lunch: Peco’s Bills – Lou loves burgers and mushrooms, and seeing that they had a fixings bar I knew he would love it
Dinner: open

Day 2 EPCOT
Breakfast: None- Our plan, eat our way around world showcase!!!
Dinner- Open, we’d probably be stuffed by then!

Day 3 MGM:
Breakfast: none/ open
Lunch: Sci Fi Dine In- I remember going to this on my first trip. The theme was so much fun and very memorable.
Dinner:Hollywood and Vine- For dinner I booked the Fantasmic package, it includes dinner at a restaurant from a list and then reserved seating at a Fantasmic performance. I chose H&V because of the buffet aspect- all you can eat and variety of foods.

Day 4 AK
Breakfast: none
Lunch: Flame Tree BBQ- read great reviews on it, and saw it on the Food Network’s special
Dinner: Spirit of Aloha Polynesian Luau – Talk about romantic, a dinner and luau!


Final Plans
Land: Grand Floridian
Sea: Category 6 Stateroom with Veranda
Problem no.1: Lou wants to sleep in at DW! WHAT!?!? How am I going to deal with this?

Coming up next…. Part 2 Our Honeymoon Begins