Wishing For Spring!

Photo from Spring Break 2012

I don’t know about you, but I am ready for Spring.  Where we live, another snowfall covered the ground last night and we have been teased with spring-like temperatures just wetting our appetites.  It’s not just the snow melting or warmer temperatures that lure me into wistful dreaming of Spring, but the idea of green grass, being outside, and longer, sunnier days.

For many, Spring and/or Spring Break also means travel.  And, for some of those traveling, it can also mean Disney travel.  I am aware of at least four families readying themselves for Disney vacations in the next few weeks.  Good for them!

And, while we won’t be traveling during Spring Break this year, we are definitely looking forward to the “break.”  Just the other morning the boy asked me how long before Spring Break.  His goal—stay up later!

Come on, sweet Spring, come on!  A new season also means we are that much closer to our next Disney vacation!

No Spring Break Travel This Year

Here we are on the eve of Spring Break and the suitcases are not packed and ready to go.  Alas, we are not traveling. . . to Disney or any other destination.  And, that is okay for a variety of reasons.

One reason is that Spring Break, for us, and Easter share the same week this year.  That makes travel more expensive and Disney travel more expensive and crowded. I had a phone call from a family that will arrive on Disney property on Sunday.  Magic Kingdom hours were already posted as 8:00 am until 1:00 am without Extra Magic Hours and that means Disney is expecting large crowds.  The last time we traveled during a Spring Break/Easter week was 2008 when we went to Universal and SeaWorld, avoiding Disney altogether.  Our bus driver was taking guests to and from both Universal and Disney Parks.  She told us horrific stories of the crowd levels at Disney.  Great for Disney, just not for us.

Another reason is that we have already paid in full our July trip, a full 4 months ahead, and the travel coffers are empty.  Our travel agency was offering a cash back incentive for paying off our trip by mid-March and we have already received a sizable check.

And, we have quite a bit of experience traveling to Disney during Spring Break with trips in March of 2009, 2010, and 2012.  Each trip the husband got to celebrate his Birthday at Disney and we enjoyed EPCOT’s Flower and Garden Festival.  He even got a Disney Cruise, our first one, during Spring Break in 2007.  He will be celebrating at home this year.

For those traveling during Spring Break, we wish you great weather, safe travels, and fantastic family memories.  No vacation is complete without a story!

Planning and Preparation--Walt Disney World Trip # 9!

Preparations for Walt Disney World trip number 9 are in high gear!

Suitcases out—check.

Packing list made—check.

Packing of clothes complete—check.

Okay, I’ll even admit that the clothes we are wearing the day we are flying are hung on hangers ready to go in the car.  Since we are driving to the airport the day before our flight and staying in a hotel, I pack a suitcase just for that overnight stay so that we don’t have to bring in all the luggage from the car.  Since the clothes are already on hangers, I just hang them in the car then bring them in with the suitcase.  The next morning, our dirty clothes go in that suitcase which stays in the car—no lugging dirty clothes with us when we leave for our trip!

Disney paperwork arrived and in a folder—check.

Registered for Disney Storytime, a AAA Member benefit—check.

Disney Storytime will be a new experience for us.  While it has been a AAA Member benefit for sometime, this will be our first time taking advantage.  Held on certain days at certain times in EPCOT’s Innoventions West, it required a reservation.  We will let you know how it goes.

Itinerary made and ready to send to friends and family—check.

Daily itinerary cards made for me and the husband—check.

The daily itinerary cards are something new I am trying.  Typically, I am the keeper of the information—which park on which day, when do we eat and where, flight numbers, times for flights, etc.  The husband and sometimes the boy, then pepper me with lots of questions.  The last trip, I printed out an itinerary, similar to the one given to family and friends, to give to the husband.  This helped minimize the number of questions.  This time, I created a Power Point—not to use for a presentation, but to put information for each day on a “slide.”  I was able to include park hours, confirmation numbers, important things to remember such as on the day we are at Magic Kingdom and then head to EPCOT for dinner, that the monorails at Magic Kingdom will not be running until after 6:00 pm so we will need to take the ferry to the TTC and then take the EPCOT monorail line.  I then printed the slides on card stock, and by selecting the “handout” option with 3 slides per page, they are just the right size to go in the plastic pocket of his lanyard or in his wallet.  This way, he and I will both have all the information we need at our fingertips, so he won’t need to ask me questions while I am trying to get prepared and ready in the morning.  I’ll let you know how it goes!

Receive the 50 Disney trading pins ordered from eBay—check.

Pack the clear backpack ordered from eBay—check.

Yes, the husband now has more Disney pins to trade.  I was able to order a “lot” of 50 pins on eBay for less than $27.00 including shipping.  The price was right!  The husband and the boy sifted through the pins, with the boy trying to negotiate some for himself.  The husband was generous and offered him the Stitch pins that came in the bundle.

The clear backpack is something new for this trip.  We typically bring a backpack into the parks, along with a cross body bag which I carry.  The backpack holds our rain gear, snacks, glow necklaces, pocket seats, etc.  We are going to see how it works at the bag security station.  Someone mentioned about having people “see your stuff.”  Well, there’s nothing secret going into the bag and maybe seeing our stuff will help someone else plan for their Disney trip.

There are still things to do, such as register our PhotoPass card that was in included in our Disney paperwork, pre-purchase the PhotoPass CD, and pack the toiletry items.  Ah, the preparation and planning continue!  

Ready For Walt Disney World Trip # 9!

We are a hop, skip, and jump away from our next trip to Walt Disney World—our 9^th visit!  EPCOT’s Flower and Garden Festival will be in full swing, which is a lovely time to visit.  We’ve been at the festival two other times and enjoyed it immensely. 

Since we are getting close, I decided to brush off our plans and take another look.  It’s been about 5 months since we finalized our plans:  which park on which day, dining reservations, which resort, flights, etc.  Now that the trip is paid in full, it was time to take another look.

There are no plans for our arrival day.  We have a park ticket for the day if we want to use it.  We should arrive in Orlando about 1:00 pm and be at our resort by 3:00 pm, giving us time to decide.  Since we are staying at a new to us resort—Coronado Springs, it might be fun to explore the resort and/or take a swim.  We’ll be sure to put swimsuits in our carryon bags and it may take a while for our luggage to magically appear in our rooms via Magical Express!

Day 2 brings us to Hollywood Studios with dinner at Mama Melrose with the Fantasmic! Dining Package.  The package gives us “back door” access to Fantasmic! with reserved seating.  Well worth it if you ask me!  Click here to read more about the benefits of the Fantasmic! Dining Package.

Animal Kingdom is on our agenda for the next day with dinner at ‘Ohana’s at the Polynesian Resort.  We typically take the bus from Animal Kingdom to the Poly without making a stop back at our resort.  After dinner, we can go to the Magic Kingdom for nighttime festivities, ride the monorail to EPCOT for Illuminations, or head back to our resort.  That’s one thing we love about Disney—all the options!

Our 4^th day will be dedicated to touring the Magic Kingdom.  Some of the new Fantasyland expansion will be open so we will want to take a look along with enjoying favorites!  Big Thunder Mountain Railroad will be experiencing a refurbishment while we are there so Splash Mountain here we come!  Hopefully, twice!  We’ll take the monorail to EPCOT for dinner at the Garden Grill.  We haven’t been to the Garden Grill since our very first trip to Walt Disney World six years ago, so it will be good to go back!

This brings us to the middle of our vacation when we like to take what the boy calls a “break day.”  We have a park ticket for the day and plan on using it later.  A late breakfast at Cape May Café is on our agenda.  Then, we will head to Downtown Disney via bus to check out the Lego store, shop at World of Disney, and have a late lunch at T-Rex Café.  We’ve eaten at the T-Rex Café in Kansas City several times, but his will be our first time eating at the T-Rex Café in Downtown Disney.  The rest of the afternoon is ours—stay at Downtown Disney, head back to the resort for a swim, or go to EPCOT?  Hmmm. . . decisions!  We will eventually be at EPCOT for dinner at Rose & Crown and a viewing of Illuminations from our table!

The 5^th day is devoted to EPCOT with lunch at Les Chefs de France and dinner at Biergarten.  You’ll notice a theme of us dining at EPCOT as they have incredible dining opportunities.  Our touring plan has us spending the evening at EPCOT on most days!

Our last full day will start off at Hollywood Studios.  We have a dinner reserved at Cape May Café so will plan to take a Friendship boat from Studios to the Beach Club.  After dinner, the night is ours!  Resort, EPCOT, or back to Studios?  My vote would be EPCOT for one more go through Spaceship Earth.  That seems to be our tradition to end our trip with that attraction and we don’t typically leave EPCOT without riding it.  A Studios/EPCOT day is a great way to end a Disney vacation!

We go home the next day, hopefully with many memories in our hearts.  We will most likely have sore feet, a full SD card on our camera, and stories to tell!

There are new things we are looking forward to for this trip. 

• Trying out a new airport for our flights.
• New refillable mugs!  They are included with our dining plan.
• A new to us resort—Coronado Springs.
• Cape May Café—we have yet to dine here, and are trying both breakfast and dinner.  We will let you know how it goes.
• Fantasyland expansion completions. 

More things we are looking forward to that aren’t necessary new:

• Being pampered Disney style—driving, luggage handling, and service!
• Catching Remy at Les Chefs de France.  We missed him the last time we were there.
• The sights and smells of EPCOT’s Flower and Garden Festival.
• Photopass Photos!!
• Some warm spring weather in Florida!

Interestingly, while this Disney trip, # 9, is in full swing and plans completed, my mind has started to focus on our next trip including phoning our travel agent for prices and setting flight alerts.  I am much happier with a Disney trip in my future—either to dream about or to plan!

We're Packing These Shirts!

 These shirts went to Utah with us.

We wore them hiking in Arches National Park

on our Adventures By Disney tour--Southwest Splendors.

July 2009 

Thanks to readers’ votes, we are packing these shirts and wearing them on our upcoming visit to Walt Disney World.

 September 2008

Walt Disney World

For our 9^th trip, I thought we would let you help us pack by voting on shirts each week.  Then, we will pack and wear the shirts with the most votes.

 March 2009

Walt Disney World

We have several matching shirt sets to choose from! Click here to read more about our matching shirts.

March 2010

Walt Disney World

Starting to Get Excited!

We’re about 140 days away from Spring Break and we’ve got a Walt Disney World trip in the works.  Our plans started as a 4 night cruise on the Dream, then we realized that for the same amount of money we could spend a week at the World, so we changed our plans. 

At the 180 day out mark, we made our reservation along with dining ADR’s for our week.  The only thing we didn’t have secure yet was our transportation to and from Orlando.

For anyone who knows me, not having this nailed down 6 months before our trip, was a bit anxiety producing.  This detail is typically handled first and I was having a difficult time getting excited about a trip that wasn’t fully planned yet.

Then, we were able to purchase reasonably priced direct fights—click here to read more.  Okay, feeling better.

It hit me last night. . . we’re going back to Walt Disney World!  Our dining ADR’s were made prior to Disney recently changing its policy about securing a credit card and charging guests a $10 per person no show fee when not arriving for Advance Dining Reservations.

We have a Fantasmic Dining package reserved at Mama Melrose, giving us an incredible meal along with reserved seating for Fantasmic! at Hollywood Studios.  We are trying out Cape May Café for the first time with ADR’s for both breakfast and dinner.  We’re going back to Garden Grill at EPCOT, as we haven’t been there since our very first trip when we ate there on Thanksgiving Day.  We’re trying Les Chefs de France again and hoping to catch Remy this time.  Of course, ‘Ohana’s is on our itinerary.  We are heading back to Biergarten in Germany and Rose & Crown in United Kingdom—this time hoping for a lagoon side table to view Illuminations at EPCOT.  T-Rex Café at Downtown Disney has a lunch reserved for us, too.  We had Nine Dragons booked for our last day, but our flight schedule needs us to return back on Saturday instead of Sunday, so we canceled our Nine Dragons ADR.  Next time!

With all that fantastic dining ahead of us, the only disappointing thing for the boy was no Teppan Edo.  You would think he would be disappointed about not dining at Chef Mickey’s or Crystal Palace, but no, it was Teppan Edo he was going to miss!  I guess that is what 8, soon to be 9 trips to the World will do to you as a discerning diner!

The only way we can accomplish our dining plans is with the Park Hopper option added to our tickets, as we have many ADR’s at EPCOT, but don’t plan spending each day at EPCOT.  For example, the evening we dine at Garden Grill, which is in the Land Pavilion at EPCOT, we will be at Magic Kingdom during the day.  I sure wish Garden Grill would go back to serving lunch, as by dinner time on the days we tour EPCOT, we are well into World Showcase, and I don’t want to double back to Future World for dinner.  That’s why it works great to eat at Coral Reef for lunch on our EPCOT days, but we are not dining there this trip.

We add the Basic Dining Plan to our tickets which allows for a table service credit per person per night of our stay.  We can use the table service credits in any increments and sometimes use 2 per person in one day depending on our dining schedule.  We are staying 7 nights, but made 9 ADR’s for table service meals.  This means we will be paying out of pocket for 2 table service meals.  One will be breakfast at Cape May Café, as breakfast is typically the least expensive table service meal of the day.  The second will be our meal at T-Rex Café, as T-Rex does not accept the Disney Dining Plan even though guests can reserve T-Rex using the Disney Dining Reservation System—a subtle yet important distinction. 

With each trip, planning gets a little easier.  When are we going?  Where do we stay?  Which days will we be at each park?  Dining determined based on where we are each day and whether or not we add Park Hopper to our ticket and reserved at the 180 mark.  Yes, we decide where and when we want to eat six months ahead of our trip.

We also plan in a break day (if we are staying a week) and day to go back and revisit favorites or catch something we missed at a park.  This “catch up” day historically has been Hollywood Studios during the day and EPCOT for the late afternoon and evening—coming in the International Gateway after taking the boat launch between the parks. 

Okay, I’m starting to get excited.  Especially since our plans are more secure and the number of days keeps getting lower!

We're Going Back To The World!

The photo above was the last Photopass photo taken from our July trip to Walt Disney World.  We look happy; satisfied.  It was an incredible Disney vacation that included a 5 night cruise aboard the beautiful Disney Dream and week at Walt Disney World.  It was our 4^th Disney cruise and our 8^th trip to Walt Disney World.  Our summer vacation was full of memories and fulfilled dreams. 

And, while those summer vacation memories still linger, it was time to look to the future for even more Disney magic.

Mid-September marked the 180 day window for Spring Break in March.  We booked our vacation package for a week at Port Orleans French Quarter at the World.  We even reserved our dining—some new restaurants, such as Cape May Café, are on our agenda, and some old favorites—like ‘Ohana’s.  Whew!  Check that off our list.  Our Spring Break trip still wasn’t real.  We had no idea how we were going to get to Orlando.

The dilemma.  Flights, specifically prices and times.  As seasoned fliers, we know a reasonable price for a flight when we see one.  Our favorite airline, AirTran will stop service to a nearby airport, which featured non-stop flights, in January.  Other nearby airports offered high priced flights with multiple stops.  There was one direct flight offered for an exorbitant price.

I set price alerts on line with both Kayak.com and Airfarewatchdog.com to notify me daily about flight fares for the dates and routes I selected.  I watched diligently, hoping for some relief in the prices.  I did notice a pattern on Tuesdays and Wednesdays of airfares taking a bit of a dip on those days.

Then, I did something unusual.  I planned backwards.  Knowing AirTran is our favorite airline and typically has good prices, I went to their site and checked out the “route map.”  I asked it to search for non-stop flights FROM Orlando.  This gave me a map of what cities/locations might have a direct flight.  Bingo!  Bloomington/Normal, Illinois came up on the map.  Now to search for flights.  Bingo, again!  A reasonably priced direct flight on the dates/times we needed. 

I called my travel agent and she held the flights.  I waited 48 hours, still checking the other prices, then pulled the trigger.  Flights were booked and paid for making our spring break trip even more real!  The times of the direct flight were even better than some of the other times of flights that were available.  Who wants to arrive in Orlando at 11:00 pm on a Saturday night at the beginning of their vacation?

Interesting, when I tell people where we are flying out of, I get a confused look.  Isn’t that far away, etc.?  Actually, no.  It is no further for our family than driving to some of our nearby major metropolitan airports.  And, the airport, has free airport parking for the length of our stay.

Will we need to drive the day before?  Yes.  We will need to reserve a hotel room for the night before our flight and have found two for less than $50.  Add that to free airport parking, a reasonably priced flight, and we are talking about significant savings.

And, what makes me feel even better about making the decision about the flights?  They went up in price today.  Kayak.com is still sending me price alerts (I had canceled the alerts yesterday, but it may take some time for that to register on their system—I’m not a glutton for punishment!)  and the price had gone up by $70 per ticket for the same flight!  Whew! 

Resort booked—check.

Dining ADR’s made—check.

Flights booked—check.

Increased happiness due to a Disney vacation in our future—check.

Countdown started for trip #9—check.

Have We Ever Not Done Disney?

Yes, we have vacationed and not done Disney. Whoa, it hurt to write that sentence as we are huge Disney fans. But we have only become huge Disney fans because we have tried "other" vacation destinations for the experience and as a source of comparison.

So, in March of 2008 (Spring Break) we made our way to Orlando for a non-Disney vacation. There were a couple of reasons for our decision to venture away from Disney. One, Spring Break coincided with Easter this particular year, so traveling to Disney during Easter was incredibly expensive and incredibly crowded. The second reason was we wanted to be sure our longing for all things Disney was because we were true fans, rather than us lacking the experience of other destinations. With all of that in mind, we booked a hotel stay in a reasonably priced all suite hotel just of International Drive that had free transportation to Universal and Sea World, a free breakfast, and a free manager's reception in the evening with beverages and snacks. We booked a town car to take us to/from the airport and the ride included a 30 minute grocery store stop on the way to the hotel--again, just what we needed.

We enjoyed 3 days at Universal--one day at Islands of Adventure, one day at Universal Studios, and one day doing both. We also spent a day at Sea World, a day at Aquatica, and a day exploring International Drive--Trainland International, a helicopter ride over Orlando, Pirate Adventure Golf, and riding the I-Ride Trolley.

We got to meet many characters. . . the Simpsons as seen in the photo above, Captain America, Barney, Shrek, and others.

Barney had his own show and "backyard" at Universal Studios.

Here we are with Shrek!

Did we like our non-Disney adventure? Yes and No.

Yes--it was great to have the experiences as a family and try new things, but we do that at Disney, too. The husband was jonsing for the Hulk coaster and he got to ride it twice. We appreciated the convenience of not renting a car and relying on others forms of transportation, and again, we do that at Disney. We took in a Blue Man Group performance. It was very convenient to walk between the two parks--Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure. They are just a stroll along a sidewalk apart.

No--the theming and magic are just not the same. At Universal, their version of Fastpass called Universal Express costs extra unless you are staying on site at their resorts. Other than one table service restaurant that we were aware of at the parks, the meals were all counter service. Level of entertainment is below the Disney standard, but entertaining none the less. Only one character meal is available at the parks.

Our bus driver drove the route between the hotels, Disney parks, and Universal. So, she would pick us up and drop us off at Universal and then go back and pick up another group and take them to Disney and then reverse in the evening. She reported to us that since it was Easter, Disney was incredibly crowded and that some guests were not being let in the Magic Kingdom unless they were on-site resort guests. At that moment, we were appreciative of our non-Disney vacation.

Would we do it again? Quite possibly. Since our Spring Break is now going to coincide with Easter until further notice, it may be that we stay away from the Disney crowds and visit Universal. And, Harry Potter's Island is ready for us to visit at Islands of Adventure. Who knows what April 2011 will bring?!?