Romantic Surprise 13th Anniversary Pre-Trip Report

[mweier]

OK, so I'm not even done with my last trip report and I'm already planning another trip down? So it goes

I've gotten the kids all lined up for a whole week at the grandparents this August, for the week around my wife & I's 13th anniversary. I figure it's a pretty insignificant number of years normally, so the perfect time to totally SURPRISE my wife with a short trip for just the two of us to WDW.

I've gotten 3 nights planned for POR, flying out from Minneapolis the day after the kids are dumped on the grandparents. I've already gotten our magic bands set with custom names commemorating the anniversary (easier said than done, given how few characters they let you print!!).

ADR-wise, I've gotten the following set up for now:

Thursday (we arrive) - no parks, but a leisurely dinner at Boatwrights, with a visit to Yee Haa Bob's afterwards. Wanted to keep this day chill and not try to fit too much in as I suspect there will be tons to see just at the resort. I'm still on the fence as to whether to book a carriage ride - this could be a cool surprise ending to the night.

Friday - this will be our MK day based on TP crowd calendar. I wanted something romantic yet accessible to MK for this. My first impulse was Narcoossee's, but based on the pricing, I figured I could find something a bit less "deluxe". We had a date night last trip at California Grill, which was Amazing, but I wanted to try something we've never been to. Based on some DisDad's advice, I've instead booked a table for two at Artist's Point in WL. We've never been to WL before, so should be interesting. We love mission-style architecture and lighting, so I'm expecting the dining area of Artists' Point to jive with our sensibilities of what's awesome.

Saturday - This is our EPCOT day. With all the options right in EPCOT that we've never tried, I had to pick something in-park. Given that we're going without our kids this time (for the first time ever!), I figured we'd spend tons more time in World Showcase than we normally get to. I also knew that we could coordinate a dining experience with Illuminations to round out an awesome weekend the last night of our stay. In the end, I chose Tokyo Dining as an off-the-path approach to a romantic sushi dinner with views of Illuminations either from our table or from the balcony.

 

[Betsyboo]

That's great! We ate at BOG on our last visit. My oldest daughter was especially thrilled since Belle is her absolute favourite princess. We were not disappointed with our meal, atmosphere, or service. I tried to see if I could book the fast pass lunch for our upcoming trip, but I have no idea what the reservation ID is. Could you help me with that? Thanks

Does your reservation have letters and numbers or just numbers? If it's letters and numbers I've been told you can find the one you need on your ME luggage tags if you are using ME.

 

[mweier]

Reservation IDs need to be 12-digit numbers (aka NOT the letter/number resort reservation ID i see on My Disney Experience since in my case this is a package of resort+tix).

I tried calling the help line with no avail as I believe this number is supposed to come from a limited invite and not something people should be looking for themselves.

That said, i was able to pull my number from the URL of the browser when I was doing my advanced resort check-in so keep an eye on your browser URL bar when you do advanced check-in.

 

[Mom@disney]

Does your reservation have letters and numbers or just numbers? If it's letters and numbers I've been told you can find the one you need on your ME luggage tags if you are using ME.

Thank you, I haven't received my ME package either luggage tags yet, so I'll wait patiently for these.

 

[Mom@disney]

Reservation IDs need to be 12-digit numbers (aka NOT the letter/number resort reservation ID i see on My Disney Experience since in my case this is a package of resort+tix).

I tried calling the help line with no avail as I believe this number is supposed to come from a limited invite and not something people should be looking for themselves.

That said, i was able to pull my number from the URL of the browser when I was doing my advanced resort check-in so keep an eye on your browser URL bar when you do advanced check-in.

Thank you for responding. I didn't know it was only by invite. I have a dinner reservation already, but my oldest loves this place so much that it would be great to receive an invite for lunch as well.

 

[mweier]

I've heard conflicting reports of whether it is invite only. I didn't get an invite but others have. There were (I thought) reports of non invited guests' fp disappearing but also plenty of them which worked fine. A travel agent I know assured me it's fine to use. Who knows!?

I figure we'll give it a shot and see if it works but not get too fired up if it doesn't.

 

[mweier]

OK - 7 days from now we'll be on the DME headed for POR!

I've got a room request I'm going to try to FAX to POR, in hopes they give us a room with a sweet view. Won't hold my breath or stress if it doesn't work out but hopefully we'll at least not be looking at a parking lot. It's very confusing what our view will include since there's a clear distinction pool vs. garden vs. standard vs. preferred etc. But then King rooms don't have that distinction which makes me assume King could potentially be any of them. At any rate, some cool room view requests for creek or pool have been entered (apparently there's no King rooms with river views per Touringplans resort room photos?)

Also went out and ordered a few supplies: water bottles with built-in mist sprayers as well as some Frogg Toggs chilli pads just so we aren't miserable in the humid 90ºF heat. I also got some Starbucks Via's since the resort room coffee was so horrible last time when we were at Contemporary. I've got in-park coffee breaks scheduled (my wife is a coffee fiend) as well but one to get us going will be helpful since we won't have Contemporary Grounds just downstairs this trip.

There's a pretty good chance it will rain while we're there so will have to make sure we've got ponchos or quick-dry clothes & rain jackets or the like along. Most afternoons we'll be out of the parks at the resort but I don't want rain to hold us back from enjoying ourselves.

Only thing left to do is pack! We're going camping this weekend so that will be next week. I'm picturing sneaking home to do it all while the wife is driving the boys to Wisconsin for their trip to the grandparents.

6 more days until i share the surprise with my wife!

Any other last-minute trip preparations you normally recommend? Any ideas I've overlooked?
Garden Grocer breakfast order, perhaps?

 

[PrincessNelly_NJ]

We had a king room with river view and it was a corner view! I think it was room 8063 in Acadian House.

It was perfect! We used www.portorleans.org to find out king room locations. They have quite a few on the interactive map.
We faxed over our request 10 days before we arrived and they got us every request!
I cant wait to hear all about your trip! I wish my DFi would surprise me with a trip to Disney.

 

[mweier]

8063 looks like 1st floor pool view king but maybe there's a better view of the river than i'm seeing here
http://touringplans.com/hotel_maps/disneys-port-orleans-resort-riverside

Who knows what we'll end up with! - i'm sure it will be fine - just hoping for something better than noisy parking lot view.

As for rain and heat, I think it's going to be a given Hopefully my plans to take most afternoons off will pan out to make us not wilt in the weather.

 

[mweier]

Wish I'd noticed the room maps on portorleans.org prior to making the request - looks like there's 3rd floor river view kings which would have been perfect. Yet touringplans.com maps don't have any data/photos for them. Must have been occupied when they were making their room photo sweep of the resort?

 

[PrincessNelly_NJ]

8063 looks like 1st floor pool view king but maybe there's a better view of the river than i'm seeing here
http://touringplans.com/hotel_maps/disneys-port-orleans-resort-riverside

Who knows what we'll end up with! - i'm sure it will be fine - just hoping for something better than noisy parking lot view.

As for rain and heat, I think it's going to be a given Hopefully my plans to take most afternoons off will pan out to make us not wilt in the weather.

Yes! Our door faced the pool but we had two windows, one facing the pool and one facing the river.
Either way I'm sure it will be a lovely room and a lovely trip,

 

[PrincessNelly_NJ]

Wish I'd noticed the room maps on portorleans.org prior to making the request - looks like there's 3rd floor river view kings which would have been perfect. Yet touringplans.com maps don't have any data/photos for them. Must have been occupied when they were making their room photo sweep of the resort?

Ahh if you select Acadian House, then 3rd floor. It will show them. Pretty nice views too!

 

[mweier]

Argh. Just found out my fax never went through (I tried twice last Friday and it gave no errors (or confirmation) at the time. Funny I can use a computer but not a fax

I'd already mentioned anniversary and requested a quiet upper story by phone when talking to a CM months ago about something unrelated. I wonder if it even makes sense to try for a river view if we're checking in on Thursday (2 days out). This is the fax# I was trying from Allears but it didn't work. weird. 407-934-5777

 

[PrincessNelly_NJ]

That is the correct number. I would fax it over again and if they can accommodate I'm sure they will. If not I'm sure it will still be a beautiful room. We've changed rooms at check in, If they give us a location we didn't like, we always ask if we can move to somewhere else and they always pull through.

 

[mweier]

Now that I realize that some weren't showing up in the search for Kings with River view, i found a few alt requests for some of the example rooms (e.g. 8742 and 3853 look nice and are potentially even royal kings). I'll try to fax again.
...
weird - didn't go through again though I did see that last week I was prefixing the dial with "9" for outside line but it didn't need that. I just called her and requested a king river view and we'll see how it goes!