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

[chezp]

As we're now into single digits as we head towards our trip I think it's about time I started this...

Nineteen nights of MouseFest, Disney and Christmas

Dates: Saturday 8 December – Thursday 27 December
Adventurers: Me, Cheryl (34, turning 35 in Disney!) and DH Mark (41), joined by Mark’s family – dad Dave, mum Barb, youngest sister Anne, her husband Sean, daughter Hannah (6) and Oliver (3) from Thursday 13 December onwards
Resort: BoardWalk Villas for three nights, then Animal Kingdom Lodge Villas for two nights, then Beach Club Villas for fourteen nights
Meets: Lots and lots with lots of different PassPorters!
Celebration: My 35th birthday, our fourth Christmas at Disney and our first with some of Mark’s family there

Pre-trip report – part one: waiting… and waiting… and waiting!

It’s not often that you turn 35. In fact, if I’m counting it right, then it happens once in your life and let’s be honest, it’s a milestone. You’re halfway between 30 and the dreaded big four-oh. Having celebrated my 30th birthday at Disney and had a ball doing so, there was only one place to spend my 35th birthday…

Having gone through that thought process some years ago – probably at around the time of my 30th birthday actually – it came as a quite a shock to realise that the milestone would be fast approaching and would be arriving in December 2007. Oh well, we hadn’t actually spent a Christmas, or a birthday for that matter, at Disney since 2004 – it’s definitely time to put that right!

So that’s how I was thinking even as we embarked on our Halloween trip to Disney in October 2006 and of course I happened to mention our possible, maybe, perhaps plans to a few friends who joined us on that trip and planted the seed in their minds that possibly, maybe, perhaps we could all get together 14 months later.

In the meantime, we got home to be told on the day we landed that some of Mark’s family had booked their holiday for Christmas 2007! Had I not been sitting down at the time, I think I would’ve fallen down with shock. A bit of background here. I think it’s fair to say that Mark’s parents have talked about going away for Christmas every year for the last few years. They’ve never done it. In fact, no-one in his family has, except for us of course. We’ve tried to encourage them to come with us, but nothing doing – until now that is! I immediately told them that hopefully we’d see them out there and be able to spend a bit of time with them, although they’d be staying off property at a villa. Our mission should they choose to accept it is to try out some Disney restaurants and see some of the Disney resorts and generally be converted into Disneyaholics just like us. We’ll have to see how that goes….

Come January and it was time to go into full planning mode. At the eleven month mark, flights were released and I waited – almost with baited breath, but I think that might have killed me – for them to show up for our dates. Each day I checked back to see what the prices were like and they didn’t seem to be going up too much. I already knew how much British Airways were charging, as they released their flight details early. Then it was just a case of waiting for Virgin Atlantic. Finally they were out and – oh they’re £300 more than BA. Not what I wanted, as we didn’t rate BA that much when we flew with them in October. Now what? When faced with a situation like this, there is only one thing to do…..



…. You wait….


…. And you wait a bit more….


And if you’re very lucky your patience will be rewarded. After about three or four days of waiting, I checked the prices one Saturday morning – only £100 more than BA. Now that’s an improvement. For some odd reason, I decided to go back and check them about three hours later and what did I find? They’re now something like £40 cheaper than BA! I just knew that the prices wouldn’t go down that much. As long as Virgin are beating BA on price, then they’ll get the trade, so they won’t undercut them by anything more than they have to. That was it – time to purchase, so off I went, getting two Premium Economy seats, as we’d decided to treat ourselves to a bit more legroom and a bit more pampering this time!

The next thing to do was book our accommodation. I got straight on to DVC Member Services on the first day I could possibly book and immediately reserved a studio at our home resort Saratoga Springs for eight nights and then eleven glorious nights at our “real” home resort the Beach Club Villas. The hope was that we’d see if we could change the Saratoga part of our stay at the seven month window, possibly for a few nights at the Boardwalk Villas, maybe even Animal Kingdom Lodge Villas or our beloved Beach Club Villas, but as some of that fell during MouseFest and that’s a popular time for DVC Members to visit the world, I wasn’t holding out much hope. I guess we could only wait and see what would happen in early May!

Suddenly it was all go and within the next couple of weeks, our Premium Annual Passes were purchased (got to love that $125 DVC discount on each pass! ) and then the car rental was booked with Avis, who were coming out something like £100 cheaper than anybody else. We were all set! Now all we had to do was…..



…. Wait ….


And wait….


And wait a bit more…..


Are you seeing a pattern here?

Next: what do you mean, you like Donald?!

[ilovedisney0_0]

OK, just the TITLE of this thread had me feeling faint with envy!

Your trip looks so amazing, Cheryl!! Congratulations on your great airfare deal! Have a magical time! I am planning my 40th birthday in 2010 at AKL, so I know what you mean about the 'milestone' birthdays. I can't wait to read all about your plans!

[jpod523]

19 nights!?! that's soooo awesome!! can't wait to hear all about the 20 days of disney!!!

[mestitch]

Holy.......flippin'.......cow! Nineteen nights.... I love it!! And I guess when you have to make a trek across an ocean to get there, you should stay that long I'm glad you started and can't wait to read more!!!!

[Lemap760]

I can only dream of going to Disney for that long. Have a great time.

[JaimeandChad]

19 days? I am so excited for you! One day I hope to stay that long. Have a wonderful magical time and I hope Mark feels better quickly!!

[Jillybean]

Somehow I knew that your name would be under that trip report title!

Jill

[kmurburg]

19 nights at Disney! What a way to spend the Holidays! Can't wait to hear all about your trip and I hope we get to meet you and Mark during the Mousefest part of your trip!

[Colexis Mom]

Great start Cheryl! Can't wait to hear all of the details

[DawnDenise]

I'm always so envious you get to stay in the World for long stretches...one day..one day!! Looking forward to hearing the plans and will most likely see at AC!

[iamgrumpy]

I'm SOOOO Jealous and I can't wait to hear all about your trip Cheryl!

[pparm]

Nineteen days!!!!!!!!! I'm on bended knee bowing to you now!!
It's so exciting that you'll finally be traveling with some family members. I can't wait to see if they get properly "disneyfied"!!!


Paula

[PrincessSharon]

Wow! 19 nights! What a lovely trip. I'm glad you've started your TR and can't wait to hear how you're going to fill those 19 glorious nights. Aaaaaand, I'm looking forward to meeting you, too!

[disneyknut]

great start.. looking forward to reading more.. add me to the list of green with envy!!

[DrDolphin]

As soon as I saw the title - I knew it was you!!! Oh boy - I can't wait to read this one!!!