Our Pink Christmas Trip Updated 4/23 About This Page:

[chezp]

Wow, you guys have been through some major changes this year! I'm not sure I like the sound of the next installment...

[katieb]

I love the reason why your trip is titled pink! Can't wait to hear more

[Colexis Mom]

Another great update! Congrats for coming up with the money!

[kingfamily1129]

Great start!! I can't wait to read more!

[truenancy]

Congrats on all that hard work - you've certainly earned a vacation with a year like that!

[MayraLR]

It's so good when hard work pays off!

[brandy_mel]

Before I get to the big changes, I feel the need to tell you about our airline reservations. I mean, you are dying to know how we’re getting there, right? No!? Well, humor me and pretend.


We have always flown to Florida with the exception of my very 1st trip when I was two. I really don’t even consider driving. However, when you’re looking at buying airline tickets for a family of four, driving doesn’t sound too bad. And we’re not as limited with time off from work as some people are. But our car is dying a slow death and I don’t want to hurry it along putting that much strain on it with that long of a drive. We’re saving for a van right now. And as soon as we have that, you better believe we’ll have one long road trip in our future. We may change our minds after only one road trip and we experience being in the car with our kids for 20 some hours. We’ll see.

But for this trip it was flying. And I was checking all my options for a good deal. My first choice was Southwest, mainly because they don’t charge for bags. I’m not a light packer, especially not with two kids. The closest airports that Southwest flies out of are St. Louis and Midway, about three hours either way. The three hour drive wasn’t great, but we figured it we had a direct flight it would be about the same amount of travel time as flying locally and having to catch a connecting flight at a bigger airport.

My mom did not want to drive very far at all, and she absolutely hates to drive in Chicago. I kept telling her that Midway wasn’t that bad, but it was a no go. So I found my parents tickets out of Bloomington, IL about an hour away from us for a decent price. They are coming back three days before us, so it wasn’t a huge deal that we wouldn’t be flying down together since we wouldn’t be flying back together regardless. What it boiled down to was that my mom didn’t mind paying for convenience, but I did.

But I wasn’t really satisfied with any of the prices, so I kept holding out. You can only imagine my reaction when I checked the prices of the flight my parents were on and discovered they lowered the price to $125 roundtrip!! I screamed, then double checked, then triple checked. Shane heard the commotion from the other word and only said, “Book ‘em.” He didn’t even need to ask what I so excited about. I booked them as quickly as I could because I was convinced the price would jump back up at any moment. They did stay that way for about 24 hours though. And it turned out this all happened on our anniversary, August 2nd, so it was a great anniversary present. I just couldn’t get over it and kept talking on and on at our dinner date that night. It’s a good thing my hubby loves me. I can only imagine the thoughts going on in his head over my overly excited babbling.

We ended up on the same flight to Atlanta as my parents, but our connecting flight leaves an hour earlier than theirs because when we bought their tickets we were trying to plan around the Southwest schedule. So we’ll talk to the gate attendants when we get to Atlanta and see if maybe they can take the earlier flight. No big deal if they can’t. They’re familiar with the whole DME process.

The Big, Big Changes
Disney offers lots of extra perks and discounts for CMs during the Christmas season. One of these perks is a discount on the dining plan. I told my cousin, the CM to let me know as she got the information for this year, which is usually sometime in October. We have never had the DP before because until recently, it hasn’t been an option when staying under the CM room discount. So I’ve really never taken the opportunity to get to know it’s ins and outs. Now I probably know more than the “average” person. If you’re on this message board, then you probably know more than the “average” person about anything Disney related.

This trip I had booked a lot of TS meals because I wanted to take advantage of the fact that William eats free at the buffets and he and Bethany don’t eat enough that they are fine sharing meals. It seemed like if we wanted to experience some character meals, this trip be the best time. Last time, I didn’t know how Bethany would react to the characters so we didn’t do any character meals. Now we know just how much she enjoys the whole character interaction, so character meals would be a big highlight for her. Even if William hates the characters, I’ll still feel like it was worth it for Bethany’s sake.

A discount on the DP would save us a lot of money. It’s more food than we would normally eat, but there is nothing that says you have to clean your plate. (Except maybe at the 50’s PrimeTime Café.)
Once the information was released she let me know. $30 per adult per day for the regular DP and $12 a day per child. Guess how long I had to think about it? Considering most of character meals are around $30 per person, some more. It was a no brainer.

But here’s the down side. We had to switch resorts, completely. It was only available at the All Star Sports in the value category. This is the only value I have stayed at and really didn’t want to stay there again. It was back when I was a freshman in high school and really didn’t like sports, so that may have influenced my reason. Now that I think about it, I didn’t really have any faults about the accommodations or anything. I just wanted to stay at ASMovies or ASMusic since that was more up my alley. So I’m sure it will be fine.

And we had to give up Port Orleans: French Quarter. That really did give me pause. I ran it by my DH, who really loves that resort. But you really couldn’t deny the practicality of it. We would only be switching to Port Orleans: Riverside, so it wasn’t a huge change. Plus, not only do we get a discount on the DP, but our room savings went from 40% off to 50% off!! So that made it easier to take. What a great time of year to visit! Plus, if you remember, my dad was already booked there, so it really all worked out. Last trip I remember seeing a glimpse of the Mansion side of POR and thinking it looked so pretty that I really wouldn’t mind staying there one day.

I was a little sad about the kids not getting to experience the fountain in the lobby of POFQ since Bethany loved it so much last time. But when I told her we had to switch hotels, all she asked me was, “Does the new one have a pool too?” When I told her it not only had one pool, but four. She was perfectly fine with it. So I decided I would be too. I think it’s a great reason to try something new and if we don’t like, there’s always next time.

This all happened just about a month before our trip. To me that seemed so last minute, remember I’m a planner. I don’t really like changes to my schedule I’ve spent so much time thinking about, and rethinking, and rethinking. But it’s really going to be for the better. Everything is falling into place. I didn’t request a preference for Magnolia Bend or Alligator Bayou. I think I would like Magnolia Bend better, but I’m just going to leave it as a whatever is meant to be will happen kind of thing. Have any of you stayed there before and have some experiences to share. I would love to hear what you all think about POR. I’m glad we still get to do the boat ride to DTD. That’s such a nice relaxing way to travel.



Also, with adding the DP I had to add another TS meal so we would reach our credits. It was very fun to look at the list of possible restaurants without having to give any thought to price. And I will be sure to save room at every meal for at least a couple of bites of dessert. It’s my favorite part of the meal.


Since this update didn’t really have any pictures, I thought I would throw in a couple. This is the countdown chain Bethany and I made with 100 links on it. One for every day. We are now down to 15. It seems so unreal. On the inside of the links I put facts about WDW, questions about what we’re looking forward to, and some other fun surprises.




Up Next: The schedule

[Colexis Mom]

Congrats on the airfare and getting the dining plan! Seems like switching resorts is worth it!

[Cam22]

Awesome bargains on the flights and the DP!

[chezp]

Congrats on the great airfare and the Dining Plan! I love the countdown chain!

[MayraLR]

Congrats on the airfare and the great discounts! Love the countdown chain!

[mom2twingirlies]

Love the countdown chain!
That DP discount is awesome!

[KMB733]

Congrats on the great deal on airfare and the dining plan!!! the countdown chain!!

[truenancy]

Congrats on the savings! I'm sure you'll find ways of spending that "extra" money. And you can always run over and see the fountain - maybe take a picture of her with each trip?

[brandy_mel]

Thank you for all your kind comments. I don’t usually comment on other people TR’s unless I have a question or something like that, but it does mean a lot to know people are reading along. I’ll have to start commenting more.


Instead of posting our schedule in big chunk, I decided to do it day by day. I thought I would do it the week before like one week from today we’ll be . . . But we’re going for more than a week so that won’t work. It’s the longest trip we’ve ever been able to take to date. I just hope we don’t get Disney burn out. So I’m going to do two weeks from today.

Two weeks from today . . . will be our departure day. Our flight leaves bright and early at 6:00 am. That means to make it to airport on time we need to leave our house no later than 3:45. I can tell you on very good authority, it takes a full hour to get to the airport, not 45 minutes. I learned that one the hard way this summer, and let’s just say I ended up with an extra four hours to “relax” before my flight.


We’re going to put the kids to bed in very comfy clothes and just pull them straight from bed and into the car. I hope they’ll go back to sleep on the drive. They’re not normally car sleepers, but at that hour, I think anyone is. I hope anyway.


I’m very curious to see what William thinks of the airplanes. We live pretty close to the local airport and often hear them flying overhead. He runs to the window and looks for them and then waves and says, “Bye-bye plane.” It will be interesting to see if can make the connection that the big thing on the ground is that same tiny plane we see in the sky.

We have about a three hour layover in Atlanta so we’ll have plenty of time to grab something to eat. And I’m sure William will spend a lot of time exploring the airport. We will be bringing two strollers so we won’t have to worry about losing him as we’re walking from gate to gate. But I know once we get settled, he will not just want to sit and wait.

We get into Orlando at 1:25 and we’ll head to DME, where we’ll board a bus to head to All Star Sports. Once we check in and get settled in the room, we’re just going to explore the resort. Maybe swimming if it’s warm enough. If my parents don't make it on our flight, we'll come meet them when they get there. And we’ll grab some supper at the resort. I’m sure it will be an early bedtime after our very early morning.

I wanted to keep our arrival day pretty low key because last time we threw our stuff in our room and took off for DtD the first night. I just never felt like we had time to settle in and Bethany was pretty much done after being there for an hour. Shane took her back the room while I stayed with the rest of our family. He had to unpack and find her bedtime stuff that I had packed. So I just want our first day this time to be relaxing. I hope the kids get the memo.