Will the second time be as MAGICAL as the first? Updated on Nov 11 added May 23rd About This Page:

[mom2my4dwarfs]

Who's going:

Me – Rhonda – 4th trip to Disney
Dh – Larry – 2nd trip
DD – Laura age 8 – 2nd trip
DD – Ashley age 6 – 2nd trip
DS – Ryne age 4 – 2nd trip
DS – Tyler age 4 – 2nd trip

When:

May 15th - May 23rd

Resort:

CBR

We had a wonderful trip to Disney in April / May 2003. There were some low points, but mostly high points during the trip. We were hoping to go again in 2005 but somewhere along the way we decided to go this year instead.



Picking the time frame:

The first major hurtle was deciding when to go this year. My original thoughts were not to pull the kids out of school and go over summer time. We were looking at mid July, which would have put us in the World during Ashley’s 7th b-day. The more I thought about it the more I just didn’t want to go at that time because of the heat and crowds. So we made the decision to pull them out of school. We decided to go a little bit later this time around because I knew Laura had some standardized testing at the end of April or beginning of May. We also knew she would be missing a few games for softball. Our original date of arrival was going to be May 16th.



Deciding where to stay:

Now that we had our time frame, we needed to decide where to stay. So out came the old Passporter to help make the decision. Because we are a bigger family are choices are pretty limited. We really loved the Poly and wanted to stay there again, but getting 2 rooms is not in the cards at all. Last year we lucked out because we went down 2 weeks before the twins turned 3 so we could legally stay in one room. We looked at FtW cabins, but they just didn’t appeal to us. We finally decided on the CBR because of the Caribbean theming. The girls also loved the pictures of the pool and that is where they wanted to stay. I contacted YMJ to make our ressies since they were so wonderful when we used them last year.



Transportation:

The next question was, how do we get to Disney this time around? Last year we drove. The driving went pretty well, but it also meant that Larry had to use his only 2 weeks of vacation for the one trip. He really didn’t want to do that again. We looked into flying out of a different airport that his mom used to go to Vegas. The only problem with the airline is that we would have to go down on May 15th instead of the 16th because they only fly down a few days a week. This was an easy choice to make; we will just go down a day early. I made the plane ressies on line and thought paying just a little under $1000 for all 6 of us was not bad. I have recently checked the fares on our flights and it would be just under $1500, so we saved almost $400.



We are also going to rent a van when we are there. We like the freedom of having our own vehicle to be able to go where we want when we want and not having to wait for a bus. I originally made our ressie with Dollar. A code came out later so I cancelled the first one and saved us $20. Now I have switched to Alamo and saved us another $20. That is now $40 dollars saved. Yippee, more Mickey Bars.



Where to stay the first night?

Now that we are flying down a day early but not getting into almost 5pm and flying into Sanford we didn’t want to pay a lot for the first night. We decided why not check out the Holiday Inn Family Suites. Who knows when we will go again, but if getting a nice room at a good rate will be able to get us down to Disney again sooner, why not check it out. I made this ressie on January 31.



At this point I got more involved with the Passporter boards to pass the time. My goal was to get 300 posts under my belt before we left for our trip. As of now I am over 600. I think I have become a Passporter Board addict.



In February we bought passes for everyone except for DH. We were waiting to see if an AP rate would come out and was holding off on one adult ticket. We had 1 day left on 2 park hoppers from last year so we purchased 2 – 5 day child park hoppers, 2 – 4 day child park hoppers and 1 – 5 day adult park hopper. Now we just had to play the waiting game and see if the AP rates come out.



AP rates came out for our time frame and thanks to YMJ we saved over $1000 for our trip.



As we all know we tend to change plans as we wait and have time to think about things. It hit me one day, why don’t we all get AP’s and then go back again next year before they expire. DH jumped on this idea right away. So now before we have even finished planning this trip another one is in the works. Now we just need to trade in our Park Hopper for AP’s when we go to activate Larry’s AP voucher. This also means we don’t have to limit our days at the parks to just 5 now. Which is making this trip even more exciting.



90 Days out:

It is time to get excited again. I start making our PS arrangements. We are doing Chef Mickey’s (D), Princess Breakfast at Epcot, Crystal Palace (L), ‘Ohana (D), 1900 Park Fare (D), Fantasmic Dinner Package at H&V, Cape May Café (B). I have been toying with the idea of going to Sci-Fi for some milkshakes one afternoon, but am not sure yet. The only snag I hit after making our PS’s was seeing that the day I originally wanted the Fantasmic Dinner Package that MGM was closing at 6pm on that day. I decided to just go ahead and change to a different night. Now Disney is showing the park to be open later on that day.



Less then a week left to we leave:

We are leaving in 5 days and there is so much to do. I have 2 more nights to work. The house needs to be cleaned and lets not forget about packing. I have all the suitcases laid out and need to pack to figure out if we need to buy one more. We bought the girls their very own rolling carry on suitcases with the princesses on them. They are so cute. There is the last minute stuff to pick up, the list to make of stuff to buy once we get down there, paying the bills and getting caught up on my Twins Club treasurer duties before we leave.



I took Friday night off of work to be able to finish everything but now that is booked. I have to take Ryne to the DR at 11am, because he ended up with another ear infection and we are having the recheck before we leave. Ashley’s class is doing a play so I have to be there at 1:30. Then their school is doing the art fair and book fair that day. So I have to squeeze that in between making dinner and Laura’s first softball game of the season at 6pm. By the way we so lucked out on that. We are not going to miss one game. She has a game Friday night then there is not a game until the Monday we are back. But we do miss pictures again.



Our goal of this trip:

Last trip we were not sure when we would be going to the World again. So we kind of rushed a lot. This trip we are going to slow down and smell the roses and take in the details. We are going to do the rides that we didn’t do the first time around and just enjoy ourselves. Other then our PS’s I haven’t planned out our days. We will just take them as they come now.



Sorry guys that I got so long winded. I really have no clue where all this babbling came from.

[Annabel]

A great start, I hope you have a good trip down and look forward to hearing all about your holiday. Hope you have a great time.

Annabel

[Colexis Mom]

Great start Rhonda I hope that we do get to bump into each other Can't wait to hear all about your experiences

[Mel & Richard]

I'm really enjoying all of these Pre Trip reports everyone is doing lately! Thanks for sharing with us.

Have an absolutely wonderful time!

Mel

[Anne's Family]

Great pre trip! $1000 for a family of six to fly is fabulous! It costs that much for the four of us to fly from Dallas. This will be our first trip with APs also. It will be so nice to slow down. We leave June 5, wish your trip report was done by then but two weeks isn't long to do that!

[MegglesMom]

Sounds like you've got a lot planned! Be sure to have a Mickey bar for me while you're down there...

[DrDolphin]

Great start!!! I can't wait to read all about your trip when you get home!

[wdwlovers]

Looks like a fun trip is in the works! Hope to see you down there!

[luvnwdwgal]

What a busy Mom you are!! Have a wonderful time!! Looking forward to reading all about it when you get back!!

[goofy4goofy]

Great start to your trip report!!! Have a wonderful trip!

Kelly

[buckysmom]

I'm betting your second time will be even better!
Enjoy and hurry back safely with a TR

[Grammy Grumpy]

Wonderful Pre-trip report. Makes me anxious for June to come so we can be on our way to the world.

[Wondcat]

Can't wait for the report to officially start!!

[mom2my4dwarfs]

Saturday May 15th -Departure Day



Finally, departure day arrives. Larry and I woke up early to do last minute packing and cleaning. We got the kids up and feed them breakfast. Uh Oh, Tyler has a cough. I hope he isn’t getting sick. Larry then took the girls and ran to the store and bank. He brought back some Krispy Crème doughnuts and a diet coke for me. What a combo!



We finally left for the airport a little before 11am. It was sunny and cool about 50 degrees when we left. We are trying a new airport this time. Instead of going to O’Hare we are going to Rockford and flying TransMeridian. Our flight was scheduled to leave at 1:35 cst. My mil, fil & bil were meeting us at the airport. Even though the airport offered free parking my mil was going to take the van back to her house. She didn’t want it sitting there all week.



This is the first time the kids were ever going to fly, so they were excited. We got to the airport right around noon. Check in went smoothly. We had 4 pieces of luggage to check and then we had 4 carry-ons, 2 backpacks and the camcorder bag. Laura and Ashley had their own Princess ones. We hung around downstairs for a while with Larry's family and headed upstairs at about 12:20pm. I already talked to the older 2 about going through security so that there would be no surprises. We all made it through the screening without a problem. Now we just had to wait for the flight. Pre-boarding started around 1pm and we got on the plane. Larry sat in row 8 with Laura & Tyler. I sat in row 9 with Ashley & Ryne. Our plane left the gate right on time. The flight was pretty uneventful. Larry did get in trouble for getting up to take Tyler to the potty before the fasten seatbelt sign was off. We kept the boys busy with Crayola wonder finger-paints, mini etch a sketch. The girls had their game boys and a mini etch a sketch, hello kitty magic marker pad and some little ponies. They all did very well on the flight. We were offered pretzels and drinks on the flight. Larry also had a Mai Tai. We landed right on time in Sanford at 5:05pm. It was cloudy and looked liked it just finished raining.



We got off the plane and went to collect our luggage. Larry went to see where the rental car area was and was disappointed because I changed our ressie from Dollar to Alamo and there was no line at Dollar. He came back and I had all the luggage off the belt. He said there was a long line at the Alamo counter so he didn’t get the rental van yet. We all went over there and Laura went inside with Larry to get in line at about 5:30pm. He was in line for only 15-20 minutes. We headed out to our van a White Chevy Venture. It was very nice and had power sliding door on the passenger side. The only downside with it is that it sat eight and we had to flip the seats up for the girls to get into the third row of seats.



We were then off to the Holiday Inn Family Suites. We wanted to take I-4 down and we ended up on 417. We figured out our mistake and cut over to the I-4 via another interstate. We are finally on the right road and made it to the hotel before 7pm. We registered and headed to our room on the 6th floor. We went in the room, it looked nice but a little smaller then we thought it would be. The girls were excited about their own room.



We were all starving now. We headed to the Club Car Restaurant for dinner. We were seated at a table that was not in the actual restaurant, but across from it. We felt like we were put in a hallway. It was a steak buffet so we all had the buffet. The kids ate for free. It was very noisy during dinner because there was so much activity going on. Every time we would get up to go to the buffet we had to squeeze between the people waiting to be seated to get through the door. At one point I started to go through the exit door. There was face painting and a clown making balloon animals out there. The girls wanted their face painted. After standing in line for 10 minutes we decided to forget it because it didn’t even move. The buffet was okay; I didn’t really care for it. The steak even medium rare was dry. Our bill for the six of us was $47.62 including tip.



After dinner we did the kids check in and they received a little packet and 2 tokens for the game room. We went to the game room and they played a couple of games. We then checked out the pool.



After that we decided to head to Downtown Disney and get our AP’s. The kids and I were upgrading our park hoppers and Larry needed to activate his voucher.



I don’t remember what time we got downtown. We had no problem finding guest services. Larry’s pass activation was done in 2 minutes. The cast member had problems with doing the rest of ours though. She had to run them through 5 or 6 times. She printed the first one and it had and expiration date of February 2004 on it. I mentioned it to her and she said she needed to do all the AP’s then she would go back in and fix the dates and reprint them. When she got to Ryne’s she spelled his name wrong, she spelt it Ryan. So that is another problem to fix. We were finally done about 20 or 30 minutes later. She gave us a bunch of stickers for the kids. Overall we were pleased with our experience in converting the park hoppers, the cm was very pleasant even when things were not going right.



With AP’s in hand we headed out to shop. We browsed through Once Upon a Toy Store and then went to World Of Disney. We spent $73.36 after our 10% pass holder discount. We bought 2 autograph pens, 2 autograph books, Castle antenna topper, Ashley got a Cinderella toy, Laura a Belle toy, Tyler got a stuffed Mickey Mouse and a Light Chaser, and Ryne got the Buzz Light Year Light Chaser. Tyler got the stuffed Mickey, because his Mickey at home was way to big to bring down with us and we told him we would buy him one when we got to Disney. It was 10:20pm when we finally decided to leave DtD. We headed back to the hotel and got the kids tucked in at 11pm. As we are getting the kids ready for bed we were trying to find Larry’s contact cases and solution. Finally found it in the camcorder bag.



Tyler was still coughing so Larry ran out to get some cough medicine for him. Laura was also complaining about her ear hurting. She had problems on the plane with her ears. I gave her some pain medicine for that. Larry came back and I gave Tyler the medicine. It was a long day and hopefully everyone will sleep good tonight.



Next: How did you sleep? and CBR here we come.

[luvnwdwgal]

Yay! You're there!!! Looking forward to the next installment!!