Nov 21-24, 3 Nights, 3 Resorts, 40th Birthday

OK, feeling a little guilty about starting a whole new Pre-Trip Report about a Trip that I've already detailed a trip report for. BUT, in the past 48 hours everything has changed. If you need some historical reference about this trip plan visit here:
http://forums.wdwmagic.com/threads/unsurprise-40th-birthday-pre-trip-report.844288/

If you don't feel like reading what to me now seems like very old news, I'm going to start from scratch. I also just added a Photobucket account, so this will be a more colorful start than what came before!

So, here's me...

And my co-stars...

A couple years ago we made a trip to celebrate my wife's birthday and it was a difficult one to say the least. Everybody got sick for at least a day and while we made the best of it, definitely not one of our best visits. You can visit that report via my signature - it's 11/10. SO, at some point this summer, I came upon the idea of trying again for DW's birthday - which this year conveniently coincides with Thanksgiving.

I began to plan in secret and booked room-only at Pop Century. I had hoped to score a DVC visit (we are members, home is OKW), but nothing in our range was available and we're saving points for a trip to Aulani next summer. Did quite a bit of stealth planning before DW happened upon some evidence. Knowing that we have a lot of fun planning together, I decided to let them in on things and start planning together.

We booked a few meals - Akershus breakfast and Thanksgiving Dinner at Captain's Grille. And then we started calendar watching for a Be Our Guest dinner. Somehow, on opening day for reservations, our three phone approach worked and we got dinner on Nov. 21. More on that in the plans.

We had been debating back and forth for a couple weeks about switching to a package so we could book the DDP. You may be thinking that looking to TRY to pay for DDP is crazy, but with three meals already booked that will cost over $300, the value of the plan is definitely there for us. BUT, we have some old tickets with days left and really wanted to save that money. A difficult decision had to be made.
(gratuitous photo of DD mocking a statue, these are standard in this family)

Then, this past Friday, while I was surfing the DVC Member website, I found that we could book our dates with DVC. Nov 21 at Boardwalk, Nov 22 at Beach Club, Nov 23 at Old Key West. TIME FOR A NEW PLAN. (cue commercial break before next post)

 

[brifraz]

So, with the exception of the dining reservations (no way we were losing Be Our Guest!!), we started the plan from scratch yesterday afternoon.

The only essential ingredients in this visit were seeing the FLE, and birthday visits for DW to Cava de Tequila and Rose and Crown. As a pair of teachers, we know how to enjoy a drink or two and as DW is Mexican and I am Scottish, those two are required.

By the way, that is MY guinness, with a frozen lemonade conveniently hidden behind (didn't realize it until the shot came out)

Last visit was this past Easter for my 40th and as you can see, we will play up DW's birthday to the max.

Here's a general outline of the plan...
Nov. 20 will be our drive day.
Nov. 21 will be spent at Epcot in the morning and Magic Kingdom in the evening (sleep at Boardwalk)
Nov. 22 will be Magic Kingdom in the morning and Studios in the evening (sleep at Beach Club)
Nov. 23 will be Animal Kingdom in the morning, DTD for late lunch, and Epcot in the evening (sleep at OKW)
Nov. 24 will be Studios in the morning and a possible return to MK in the afternoon before driving home.

It's going to be pretty busy schedule and I'll get to the details soon. Hopefully we can find some time for one of my favorite things to do....take quasi artistic pictures:

Or take macro shots of flowers:

Or just have a darn good time:

 

[brifraz]

Day 0 - November 20
I don't know about you, but I always find the travel part of the Disney trips interesting, so here is ours. I know full well that it matches at least a thousand of you out there, but misery loves company...

We live in Manchester, Maryland - about 40 minutes north/northwest of Baltimore. According to Google Maps it is just a bit over 900 miles. Almost all of the trips in recent memory have involved driving overnight. With the education world as our master, unless it is a summer trip, we are usually leaving our house around 3pm or so. Generally, the drive itself is 14-16 hours of actual road time. Why a 2 hour variation in drive time, you ask?? The 90 miles heading south from the DC Beltway. Sometimes you cruise through in an hour and a quarter, other times three hours. While I am among the masses in my hatred for I4 in Florida, it is nothing compared to that I95 stretch.

Assuming we survive those first couple hours, we should be in line for our usual middle of the night rest area respite at a rest stop somewhere in South Carolina or Georgia. It is usually just an hour or so before I'm back awake and too excited. Once we figure in breaks and such, we expect to pull into the Boardwalk parking lot right around 8am on November 21. If that is the case, we will look be a happy 'evil' step sister:

In the event that 95 is painful and I4 is worse, we may look like a truly evil step sister:

 

[Britt]

YAY How exciting!!!! LOVE the pics, you have an adorable family

 

[brifraz]

Day 1 - November 21
So, we start the day exhausted from the overnight drive and pulling in to the Boardwalk parking lot hopefully some time around 8am. Time to rest? Nope. Not our style. Time to repeat this picture:

That's my girls as the VERY first people on Soarin' one morning.

OK, so maybe that isn't realistic (as we will be entering via International Gateway), but we will head to Soarin' right at park opening on Wednesday, Nov 21. After Soarin' we will likely make a visit to Nemo and do a little exploring in The Seas (sad that they aren't living any more). The next thing on the agenda is the late, late, late breakfast seating at Akershus (10:50), so I expect we will have some good time to check out some other attractions. Possibly Imagination (yes, we DO ride it just about every visit) or Mission:Space - on the green side for certain. I would also put a chance of doing Sum of All Thrills in there as well, but I don't think it is the most likely.

After Akershus, it will likely be around noon and that seems like a great time to take DW to Cava for her birthday margarita. Then we will do some laid back World Showcase touring and possibly an Agent P adventure. This is a subject of great consternation for DD. She LOVED Kim Possible. She's too young to have watched it on TV, but was introduced in Epcot and loved the adventures. She became so hooked that we have now bought seasons 1 and 2 on DVD. Here she is last visit, knowing that it was about to change over.

And while that is some dramatic crying, the actual sobbing did happen just a bit later.

She loves Phineas and Ferb and wants to like the Agent P adventures, but is still so distraught over losing Kim that we're not sure what will happen.

Night 1 is next up...

 

[wiigirl]

Love your pics!

 

[brifraz]

Wait just one minute!! November Hours expanded. Time to re-think some ideas here....

Please take this opportunity to discuss rumors of Carsland coming to DHS or argue over Next Gen Fastpass. We will return to your regularly scheduled Pre-Trip Report when we are ready to move on!

 

[brifraz]

So, the change in hours hasn't altered plans too much around here. Day 1 is roughly the same. The only change is the early morning possibility of visiting Animal Kingdom. EMH that morning start at 7am. We've done 7am at AK before during holiday times and it is most excellent - no crowd, no liness. If we do that, it will be a quick trip in for a couple rides, then back out and over to Epcot and back to the plan listed above for Day 1.

 

[brifraz]

Night One
Our EPCOT touring should wrap up around 3pm or so and we are hoping that we can get into our room by then. Hopefully that means a short respite before we drive over to Magic Kingdom for one of the highlights of the trip...

4:45pm ADRs for Be Our Guest. I can't begin to tell you how excited we are about this. Back in April, this was the BatB area:

After dinner, we are sticking with a very loose plan of tooling around the New Fantasyland and the old Fantasyland. Possibly some of Liberty Square and Frontierland if the crowds aren't too bad. If we can get to Frontierland it will be nice to see that this has changed as well.

We did enjoy quite a bit of construction in April!

The change in hours has impacted us negatively here. The plan is to stay for Wishes - when it was scheduled for 9pm (remember, we'll be running on very little sleep). Now it is going to be at 10pm. I hope we make it that late! Regardless, by 11pm we will be in our beds at Boardwalk and lost to the universe for a few hours.

The next morning will (of course) be an early return to Magic Kingdom, so we will try to sleep fast!

 

[DisneyDebNJ]

Love the pics and your planning techniques!!!! Sounds like a well planned vacation! Gorgeous family!

 

[brifraz]

Sorry for the delay, real life took a hold this weekend, but at long last...

Day Two - November 22 - Thanksgiving
Early morning wake-up calls are the norm for us at Disney, so we will be up around 6am to get over to Magic Kingdom for 8am EMH. Since we are moving out of Boardwalk, we'll throw our bags in the car when we head out in the morning - but then take the bus to MK. We could get bell services to deliver them, but we are hoping to get into the room at Beach Club a bit early, so we'll want our stuff!

At MK entry, I expect we will be heading to Tomorrowland. It depends a bit on how much of Fantasyland we manage the evening prior. Either way, we will certainly be enjoying as many attractions as possible in that early hour before the Thanksgiving lines. At 9am, we'll go to the Fairytale Garden to get in line for Merida - we did the first meeting with Rapunzel in April and were in line about 30 minutes before the M&G started and JUST made it in.

While we are in line, DW or I will head to the Bakery to pick up some breakfast - cinnamon roll and a blueberry muffin will be good for us! Afterwards, if we have a Fastpass for something we will use it, but otherwise we will head to...

A full monorail trip to Epcot. With a stop along the way to check out the latest incarnation of the gingerbread house at the Grand Floridian. When we get to Epcot, we'll be wandering through with a possible stop here or there as we head to our Thanksgiving Dinner at 1pm at Captain's Grille.

After our dinner (a buffet could last us a while) we will be hoping to get into our Beach Club room (I'll head back to Boardwalk to move the car over to Beach Club) and maybe have a nap or some time at the best pool on site. Around 5pm we will hop on the boat over to Studios - which really means another 30 minutes of rest time.

The main reason for visiting Studios in the evening for us is this:

We love the Osbourne lights. This will be our third visit to see them and one of the main reasons we brave the holiday crowds. Of course, we will also likely do Muppet Vision 3D - one of my personal all time favorite attractions anywhere. I am a Muppet fanatic and that show makes me laugh out loud every single time. Heck, the pre-show makes me laugh out loud. In fact, the signs in the line weave make me laugh out loud (the sequence of Here to There posters has gotten me to jump the railings before.

During Fantasmic! we will likely try to hit some of the headliners if the lines are short enough - Tower, Rockin', Star Tours. We know that Toy Story will still be a long wait, so we won't even walk down Pixar Place. Oh, and somewhere in there we will grab dinner at one of the DHS counter services. Not really sure where, yet. I have a feeling this day will end a bit early and we'll catch the boat back to Beach Club before 9pm.

 

[brifraz]

Day 3 - November 23

Again, we will be up and at 'em early as Animal Kingdom has EMH starting at 8am and we will assuredly be among the first in line. It will only be a relatively short AK visit on this trip - a 4 day trip doesn't quite allow for complete touring - but we will try to make a little time for moments like this.

The plan is to hit the headliners first - Everest and then the Safari (assuming it has opened, we have found that many times at EMH the safari doesn't really open up until halfway through that hour). Then, we will walk through the Pangani Forest and then the Maharajah Jungle. If we still have a little time, we'll do Primeval Whirl (as you saw above, this one is well loved by DD). The most important thing for us, though, is to make sure we get to the 11am Finding Nemo show. We are big fans of the show - all lyrics well memorized, but we promise not to be the annoying family singing along at full volume!

By lunch, we will head over to Old Key West to get checked in (and start our second DDP, more on that later) and then take the boat to Downtown Disney. Lunch will be at Wolfgang Puck Express and then another 'must do' for this trip is the Phineas and Ferb and You attraction. This P+F attraction is far more welcome to our DD than the Kim Possible replacement in Epcot!!

We will boat back to OKW and get settled in our room and snack on the leftovers from Wolfgang's (always leftovers from there). Then we'll drive over to Epcot for a little touring, a choice beverage at Rose and Crown and Illuminations. There are late night EMH at Epcot and if we are up for it, we will take in a few attractions before going back to the room to get some sleep.

 

[brifraz]

Day 4 - November 24, last day

Hard to believe the whirlwind trip will be ending this quickly. It'll be our fourth straight early morning as we hit Studios for 8am EMH. Basically it'll be a 2 hour tour to hit anything we missed on Thanksgiving night - most likely Toy Story and Tower of Terror or RnRC, since all 3 of those are on DD's top 10 list. Hopefully we won't have any accidents like on our last visit.

By 10am, we will be heading back to OKW for a little rest time. Usually our last day is spent trying to do everything we can as quickly as we can. This year, we're planning to take it a little easier. Since we don't have to be out of the room at 6:30am, we're going to head back to it for a break. After the break, we are going to drive to Magic Kingdom for lunch and possibly to watch the Xmas parade. Lunch will be our second visit to Be Our Guest - this time for the Quick Service version. Other than that, the afternoon will be laid back touring of MK and maybe an attraction or two if the lines aren't too long.

Around 4pm it'll be back on the road and 900 miles to the north.

 

[brifraz]

Happy Halloween to anyone tuning in to our Pre-Trip report!

 

[brifraz]

Dining Plan(ning)

So, there was quite a bit of debate around here about how to deal with eating on this trip. In it's original form as a room only Pop reservation, we would be eating on the cheap with limited options - we had old tickets, so no DDP for us. BUT, then we scored the DVC rooms and thus could add the DDP if we wanted without having to buy tickets. The big question, though...would it be worth it??

Well, here are our dining choices (in order)
Day 1 - Restaurant Akershus Princess Breakfast (late seating) and Be Our Guest Dinner (early seating)
Day 2 - light breakfast, Captain's Grill Thanksgiving Dinner (1pm), Counter service dinner in Studios
Day 3 - light breakfast, Wolfgang Puck Express late lunch, ?? dinner (likely leftovers from BOG and WPE)
Day 4 - Starring Rolls breakfast, Be Our Guest lunch

Of course, I am crazy (perhaps neurotic) about number crunching. So, we scoured the menus and came up with average costs per meal and came up with a total of about $465 (not including tips) for us to eat. DDP is $117 per night for us, so 3 nights DDP would be $351. Saving over $100 - good deal, huh? But wait... we have 3 different reservations, so we can't do all three table services in the first two days. Uh oh! DW to the rescue with an even better plan and more savings: Deluxe DDP for night one (3 meals and 2 snacks each), cash for dinner on Day 2, Quick Service DDP for night 3 - total cost is $277 for the meal plans plus about $30 for the dinner on Day 2 - another $40 saved AND with the deluxe on day 1, we'll be getting appetizers at Be Our Guest! Woo Hoo!!

That means we are saving almost $200 on the food we were planning to eat anyway. What to do with that savings, well - it will covers all three table meals tips and our visits to Cava de Tequila and Rose and Crown. Did I already mention Woo Hoo?

 

[brifraz]

One week out from the drive down. Of course, we are very excited.

DD is currently going through the Birnbaum guide for kids and completing the 10 day countdown. For those not familiar with the Birnbaum for Kids, there is a countdown list for the last 10 days before your trip. So far, she has planned a Disney themed dinner (that we are supposed to eat on Day 2 before we leave), made a Magic Kingdom ride list, and made a list of addresses of people to send postcards (or emails) to while we are there.

We also are almost done the paper chain that was made starting at day 50 - one ring for each day in the countdown, with special rings for each week. The last day (drive day) she'll take the last ring and wear it to school before the drive.

Meanwhile, DW and I continue to enjoy looking over the plans and figuring out new ideas or adjusting the old ideas - with a significant focus on our dining plans and lots of menu perusing!

 

[brifraz]

Well, this is it. Just under 45 hours until the big drive, and just over 61 hours until arrival at the World.

That means that this Pre-Trip Report is almost wrapped up. The past few days have been spent with more plan revision, DW sewing, and DD completing her countdown. One of the tasks on the countdown was to have a Disney meal 2 nights out, so tonight we did. Mickey pancakes had to sub for Mickey waffles and the creatively shaped orange rolls were the brainchild of DW.

The sewing part has been a relatively last minute plan to get DD a new princess costume. My wife has now made her 8 different princess costumes! Here is this trip's addition - specially formulated for Be Our Guest and the new Fantasyland addition!

Once I've started the actual Trip Report, I'll make sure to put a link down here for those that want to follow our exploits somewhat live. I try to post each day of our visit, but with just 4 days, I make no promises on having enough down time to post!

 

[TheMouseFan]

Oh, I am so jealous! We still have 21 days until our trip. Have a wonderful trip! I look forward to reading your TR when you return.

 

[Tiggerish]

Wow, what a fabulous pre-trip report. It sounds like quite the adventure!! I kinda love the idea of spending each night in a different DVC resort--I could never get my hubby to go along with that. Your wife is obviously a very good seamstress, those are great costumes.

Here's wishing you light traffic thru DC tomorrow!

 

[brifraz]

Wow, what a fabulous pre-trip report. It sounds like quite the adventure!! I kinda love the idea of spending each night in a different DVC resort--I could never get my hubby to go along with that. Your wife is obviously a very good seamstress, those are great costumes.

Here's wishing you light traffic thru DC tomorrow!

We're really hoping to push the rush hour by having the girls pick me up at school at 2:30pm right after the kids are dismissed. Hopefully that will get us through DC (and the worst, Northern Virginia) before 4pm when the traffic really gets crazy.

DW really appreciates the compliment, too! We can't wait for this adventure to begin.