Nineteen nights of MouseFest, Disney and Christmas - THREAD 1 - UPDATED 1/11 About This Page:

[disneydani]

Wow, Cheryl, this is gonna be one ~major~ TR! How very awesome to be spending 19 nights and celebrating so many fabulous occassions!

danielle

[chezp]

Originally Posted by poohmaine

WOW! Nineteen days!

If you don't mind my asking . . .

What do you and Mark do for employment? It's near impossible to get 3 weeks off in a row in here the United States . . . unless you're self-employed.

I don't mind you asking at all. I work in local government and Mark's an electrician. Over here, the minimum amount of holiday we usually get a year is 20 days, but we do get less national holidays than you guys, so it balances out a bit. We're taking two weeks off leading up to Christmas, which is again usual over here, and then we've both got Christmas shutdowns. I'm back into work on New Year's Eve (off New Year's Day) and I think Mark goes back on 2 or 3 January. That's how we've been able to do this.

[chezp]

Pre-trip report – part two: what do you mean, you like Donald?!

I will be honest here. I do not like waiting. I am not a patient woman, especially when it comes to waiting for a Disney vacation to roll round. I’m sorry, I love the planning stage, but hey, when you can’t do anymore planning, because you can’t book anything else until six months out, it does get frustrating.

So what’s a compulsive planner like me to do with all the time she’s got? Well, look at booking something else of course! We all know that ADR’s are made at 180 days out and that’s about how far out you can book La Nouba as well. OK, so those are out – can’t book those yet. What else? Well, we’re not going to have any park hours until June, for Disney anyway! Fortunately at least the other parks – Universal Orlando, Busch Gardens Tampa and SeaWorld all have their hours out about a year ahead. So I started planning which days we could go to each of those parks. And while I did, we had discussions with the family about what they wanted to do during their stay in Orlando.

During those discussions, Discovery Cove came up in conversation and it seemed that everyone was keen to head there for a day – well, you weren’t going to get any argument from us. We haven’t been since 2002, not long after it opened and although we didn’t have the greatest time there, we thought a lot of that was down to teething problems, so it would be interesting to go back and see what it’s like now, plus they’ve also added a lot of things in there. Once I finally got agreement from everyone that we’d go, I went ahead and booked our day there for Sunday 16 December, a couple of days after Mark’s family flies in. There’d be six of us swimming with dolphins, while Mark’s mum waited with Oliver, who’d only be three and not old enough to do the swim, as you have to be at least five years old.

When you book a day at Discovery Cove, you automatically get admission to SeaWorld or Busch Gardens Tampa with the ticket, but as I went through the booking process, I discovered that you could also add in the other park for only about another $30. Well, that’s significantly lower than the price of a one day pass, so a quick call round and we decided that we’d go for both parks. Days were duly set aside for those and lo and behold I was able to start planning way before the 180 day mark.

The other thing you could do was “pre-plan” your ADR’s. By that I mean work out where you want to book your ADR’s for and when, so that’s the other thing I moved on to. The priority for the first couple of days was spending as much time with Sue (rescuesk) and Steve and Bill (LizardCop) and Jan as possible, as Sue and Steve would be heading home early on the Tuesday morning. Heck, it was a lot better than the original plans, when they were talking about going back on the Sunday night, which would’ve meant only 24 hours with them.

Having bought Premium Annual Passes, I knew Mark wanted to make the best possible use of them (heck, so did I! ) and that meant lots of visits to the Adventurers’ Club, so we agreed early on that Sue and I would host an Adventurers’ Club MouseFest meet on the Sunday night, with dinner at the House of Blues beforehand – a restaurant we’d never tried before. For the next night, I threw some ideas out to people and I wasn’t surprised when Bill and Jan eagerly opted for the idea of Boma, as I knew they’d enjoyed their meal there last year.

I was also busy making plans with Claudine (WDWJAMBA), who’d be there with her family for a week over Christmas. First, we decided to have dinner together at the new Italian restaurant, Il Mulino and when I discovered that she hadn’t been to Teppanyaki and was planning on trying new restaurants on this trip, lunch there was another definite. Finally, we added in the 50’s Prime Time Café for dinner, which sounded like it would work well, as neither of us really wanted to be picked on, although we figured our DH’s would be up for a bit of fun – so hey, we could let them get on with that!

And Joy (Grumpygal) would be down at the end of our vacation with her friend, crossing over with us for a couple of days, so again more dining plans were made – a first trip for all of us to the Hoop Dee Doo and one of our old favourites, Beaches and Cream.

Then, one weekend in May, I looked at my e-mails and saw one from Wendy (wendyismyname) called “Important – WDW here we come!” I opened it, realising she’d obviously booked a trip, but not really thinking anymore about it, until I read that she and her DH Ben would be coming down for one night to spend the weekend with us! How cool was that? More plans could then be made!

By now, we had hit about what we hoped would be a cunning plan to convert Mark’s family into Disneyaholics. After playing around with figures one day, it became apparent that to pay for them to go to two character meals (one for each of the kids) would cost about the same as we usually spend on them for Christmas each year, so why not do that? We invited them round in early May and explained the plan, which met with lots of approval and an agreement not to tell the kids, as then they could be surprised whenever Anne and Sean decided to tell them.

Now, it was obvious that Chef Mickey’s was one choice, as Oliver is a huge Mickey fan. Every time he comes round to our house, he points out Mickey and gets a huge smile on his face. We were pretty sure that a princess meal would be the other perfect choice for Hannah, as we knew she loved Cinderella – or did she? My goodness, how wrong can you be? Children certainly know how to destroy your plans. We thought we’d ask her who her favourite Disney character was, just to be sure and what’s her answer? Cinderella? : Sleeping Beauty? Apparently not. Maybe another princess? Err… no… The name she comes out with stuns everyone. Her favourite character is Donald Duck. OK, a new one on all of us and that certainly meant a change of plan – over to Donald’s Breakfasaurus. Not long after deciding that, Disney then decided to move Donald over to Tusker House. Thank goodness, they kept him as the main character at a meal, otherwise we’d have been in trouble!

We opted for Chef Mickey’s earlier on in the holiday and Donald for Christmas Day morning, with a plan to spend the day at Animal Kingdom. Anne liked the look of Boma, so the plan became that we would eat there for Christmas dinner – sounds good to us!

Next: we are going to be moving around a lot!

[mattnkatsmum]

Wow! Christmas dinner at Boma. What a treat

Sounds like you're meeting up with some great Passsporters there, Cheryl. I bet you can't wait!

[JaimeandChad]

Sounds like fun. I agree with Hannah, I the Donald Duck.

[Colexis Mom]

Great plans Cheryl So many meets

[DrDolphin]

Sounds like wonderful plans Cheryl!!

[WHMom]

Your plans sound fantastic so far! I'm with Hannah...I like Donald better than the princesses, too!

Can't wait to read more. You must be so excited that it's finally almost time!

[WDWfan]

Cheryl - Sounds like your plans were beginning to come together! I can't wait to see your full ADR list.

[jpod523]

wow! you're meeting so many passporters on your trip! it makes me want to fly down just to join in the fun! and christmas dinner at boma! that sounds amazing!!!

[Brettchief]

Sounds great so far! I can't wait to hear more!

[Grammy Grumpy]

Great plans! We'll be seeing you soon!

[bonphil]

Wonderful plans! Looking forward to more!

[x2qwk2cx]

Can I just say 19 nights?! Awesome!!! Can't wait to hear all about your plans (oh, and there'll be so many!!!). Could this turn into the longest Trip Report ever???? Waiting for more..........

[DyanKJ130]

Your plans look great!! All of those meets sound like an awful lot of fun!! Can't wait to hear more