A New Year, A New Life PTR
About This Page: This is a discussion on A New Year, A New Life PTR within the Sharing the Adventure: Disney World Trip Reports, part of the PassPorter Community - Boards & Forums on Walt Disney World, Disneyland, Disney Cruise Line, and General Travel; Love the pictures!...
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So I thought I would give a brief update on some information. We have decided to drive down for this trip. This will be a first for us, so I am very hesitant. We looked into flying, but we don’t want to pay $1600 for us to fly. We also looked into taking the Auto Train, but the trip down was almost as much as flying round trip, so that was out. In the end, to save money for the important things, we have chosen to drive.
Since we are going down after Christmas we can leave for Florida at any time and take a few days going down. We would like to arrive in Orlando around dinner time on the 30th and check into a budget friendly hotel for the night and arrive at Disney bright and early the next morning. This way we will all be well rested and not have any of that first day drag that we experience when flying. So any suggestions on driving 15 hours with a 8, 7 and 1 yr old would be greatly appreciated!
Since we are driving we will have a car with us for the whole time. This may prove invaluable since our youngest will only be 19 months. I am trying to talk DH into one day at WWoHP, but I am not having much luck in that area.
We are getting close to the 180 day mark for dinning reservations. I think I have them narrowed down, but I do not have when yet. It is hard since they have not released park hours as of today. I will leave you with a few more pictures!
They were holding hands in the stroller!
The last four were pictures taken by Disney at GF. We had purchased a photo package for one of our trips.
The last 2 trips of mine, we've driven down to WDW from the Chicagoland area. It's roughly a 20 hour or so trip one way. We stay overnight at a motel on the first day of driving. To keep my daughter entertained, she took along some coloring pencils, coloring books, word find book, her iPod, our portable DVD player and some DVD's, some playing cards and of course CD's including Disney Music to keep all of us entertained. For fun, my daughter and I created a Road Trip Scavenger Hunt game searching for easy various things while traveling along the highway. We had prizes for who could find the most items on the scavenger hunt list. I remember my daughter loved going into the visitor's welcome center to search for some of the items on the list. It was a lot of fun
The last 2 trips of mine, we've driven down to WDW from the Chicagoland area. It's roughly a 20 hour or so trip one way. We stay overnight at a motel on the first day of driving. To keep my daughter entertained, she took along some coloring pencils, coloring books, word find book, her iPod, our portable DVD player and some DVD's, some playing cards and of course CD's including Disney Music to keep all of us entertained. For fun, my daughter and I created a Road Trip Scavenger Hunt game searching for easy various things while traveling along the highway. We had prizes for who could find the most items on the scavenger hunt list. I remember my daughter loved going into the visitor's welcome center to search for some of the items on the list. It was a lot of fun
Thank you for the suggestions. I really like the scavenger hunt idea. We are planning on leaving around 4 am the first day and stopping about half way down. My two oldest will have their ipods and plenty of books. Not sure how to keep an 18 month old occupied though.
Our 180 day mark has gone and we have made our reservations with a few tweaks of the plan. Originally we wanted to stay Club Level at the Polynesian. However, there are no rooms left on CL so we have decided to do the deluxe dinning again instead. I know one of the lessons we learned in the past was that two reservations take a lot of time from the parks, but this time we have several days where we only have one reservations and plan to eat CS if/when hungry. We have also only scheduled pre-park opening breakfasts so they will not take any time from our touring. Plus the added benefit of having early breakfast is that we are in the parks before they open.
Cost wise, the deluxe still makes sense for our family as we still have two that are considered kids. The upgrade was less than what it would have cost to pay OOP for the additional places we wanted to eat when on the regular plan. We went through several scenarios, such as paying OOP, getting a TIW card, or just paying OOP for extras, and we chose the deluxe route.
Another change we made was we are not going to Disney until January 2. We have friends that live in Tampa and we were invited to stay with them for a few days prior to the trip. Since we are driving we decided to take them up on their offer and save some money in the meantime. Now we plan to arrive bright and early on the 2nd and leave after dinner on the 9th. This is another reason why we chose deluxe. We only get 7 days of meals, but we will be there for 9 days, so the deluxe will cover some of the gaps. So here are our dinning reservations as of now. I am constantly changing things around, so this is subject to change. Any advice you have would be greatly appreciated!
Weds, Jan 2- Dinner at California Grill Thurs, Jan 3- Lunch Sci-Fi Dinner at 50’s Prime Time Fri, Jan 4- Breakfast at Akershus Dinner at Teppan Edo Sat, Jan 5- Dinner at 1900 Park Fare Sun, Jan 6- Breakfast at Tusker House Dinner at Ohana Mon, Jan 7- Dinner at Le Cellier Tues, Jan 8- Breakfast at Kona Dinner at Hoop Dee Doo Wed, Jan 9- Lunch at Crystal Palace
About This Page: This is a discussion on A New Year, A New Life PTR within the Sharing the Adventure: Disney World Trip Reports, part of the PassPorter Community - Boards & Forums on Walt Disney World, Disneyland, Disney Cruise Line, and General Travel; Love the pictures!...
This should make things easier!
<--- Dutch at Chef Mickey's 2010!
Super pictures of your kids! 
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