Unsurprise 40th Birthday Pre-Trip Report

A little backstory...

13 years ago, I found myself with an AP discount, an incredible passholder rate for a week at Disney Institute and a relatively new girlfriend (we'd been friends for a couple years prior) who had never been to Disneyworld. She was quickly sold and two years later we were married.

Fast forward 11 years and 10 Disney trips from that first one, and we planned a trip for her 38th birthday - the weekend before Thanksgiving, 2010. Since we are both teachers and our 6 year old (at that time) is a school-aholic, we made a quick 3 night trip - DW and DD would only miss 1 day of school (full week Thanksgiving break) and I'd only miss a couple 'sick' day (heck, I've got over 100 saved up sick days). Big, fancy dinner at Chefs de France and lots of good plans. Then we got sick. All three of us, but not at the same time. Late day 1 through all of day 2, the girls were sick. Middle of day 3 through most of day 4 I was sick. Fancy dinner was the night of day 2, so it was about the only thing that we all were well for. Definitely not a success.

Fast forward another year and half. OK, that's this Spring. We went during Spring Break and had a great visit. The next planned trip isn't until January 2014. 21 months between visits would be the longest time off since DD turned two and a half. The running joke in the house was that the only way we could go before 2014 would be to win the lottery...

 

[brifraz]

Nope, didn't win the lottery. But, almost. We were planning to sell some stock shares that I had inherited quite a few years ago. Had periodically tracked the value and always been surprised that I never got information or dividends or anything about it. Turns out, they had my old address...and, turns out that at one point in the last 10 years, the stock had split and I had twice as much as we thought. Kind of like winning the lottery.

So, with DW's 40th birthday coming this November (thanksgiving week this year), I started planning a trip. We are DVC, so my first thought was to try to get a DVC studio, but at only 4 months out there was absolutely nothing available. It wasn't a huge stock windfall, so I went ahead and booked a room only reservation at Pop Century - never stayed there, but we have friends who like it and say it is the best of the value resorts. Booked the Captain's Grille for Thanksgiving Dinner and began to make plans.

I did all of this on the sly. DD and DW had no idea; however, when I booked I tried to set up a new account on Disneyworld.com not realizing that they use IP address to recognize who you are. So, I was actually changing our old account, not making a new one. For a couple of weeks this remained unknown to the girls. Then, this past Saturday, DW tried to log in. She became quite concerned that her username and password no longer worked. I decided to spill the beans rather than try either concoct some huge story about the DW website and have her eventually contact them to adjust her account (and find out the truth).

Now everyone is in on the plan and helping with figuring some things out. It is certainly going to help on Monday morning when we get three phones dialing 407-WDW-DINE to try to score Be Our Guest reservations!

 

[minnielaw]

Enjoying the PTR so far and love it that you surprised your wife with a WDW trip for her birthday!! I keep dreaming that's gonna happen someday for me!

Good luck with scoring the coveted Be Our Guest reservations! Call early and call often

 

[brifraz]

Enjoying the PTR so far and love it that you surprised your wife with a WDW trip for her birthday!! I keep dreaming that's gonna happen someday for me!

Good luck with scoring the coveted Be Our Guest reservations! Call early and call often

Thanks! Prepping the dialing fingers with some piano time today, I think.

 

[brifraz]

So, now to the plans...

We currently have a room-only booked at Pop Century. DW and I both have some old 'no expiration' tickets with over 4 days left on them, but we will need to buy DD a ticket. There is still a possibility that we will switch to a package deal. Why, you might ask? Maestro, a little math if you please...

Right now - Room only is $452, DDs ticket is $295 (kids 4-day with hopper), 3 table meals (Akershus, Capt. Grille, and hopefully Be Our Guest) will run over $300, additional food for 4 days around $250. So, expected total is about $1300.

If we switch to a package - Room plus tix plus DDP is $1800 and DW and I still have those tickets for a future visit.

So, we are currently debating those possibilities. If we don't get Be Our Guest reservations tomorrow morning, we will likely go with the current plan. But, if we do get it, the choice to switch to a package becomes more of a possibility. Since we are staying at Pop, we don't have food facilities and our 16 hour drive is not conducive to bringing a whole lot of stuff along. Thus, almost all of our eating will be in the parks. DDP would definitely be a good value for us ($354.30 total for the three of us) as the total of our three Table Service (if we get BoG) will be close to that already.

Anyway, regardless of those things... the general plan is:

Nov 20
Drive like crazy starting at 3pm about 30min north of Baltimore.
Nov 21
Arrive around 8am, check in to hotel and go to Epcot
10:50am at Akershus
Evening at Magic Kingdom for fireworks (and maybe dinner at Be Our Guest??)
Nov 22
Magic Kingdom EMH at 8am
Captain's Grille at Y+B Club for Thanksgiving Meal at 1pm
Evening at Studios
Nov 23
Animal Kingdom at 9am
Evening at Epcot - night EMH until???
Nov 24
Studios at 8am
Back to room for check out
?? for the rest of the day

Usually, we are excessively overplanned and know what we are doing every minute of each day, but this time we are waiting to see if hours get adjusted and if we can get a dinner at Be Our Guest.

 

[PolynesianPrincess]

Good luck with getting the coveted BOG ressie!! I'll keep my fingers crossed for you!!!

 

[wiigirl]

Enjoying the PTR so far and love it that you surprised your wife with a WDW trip for her birthday!! I keep dreaming that's gonna happen someday for me!

Good luck with scoring the coveted Be Our Guest reservations! Call early and call often

Good luck! And Happy Birthday!

 

[brifraz]

So, we DID score Be Our Guest (you might recognize me from the Monday at 7am thread) this morning. I am fairly certain we were likely one of the first reservations that was actually made - done on the phone at 7:10am. And, yes, I am one of the people who booked with the automated system. DW called back around noon to add the credit card. Very glad we keep updated with WDWMagic and knew about the CC issue (Thanks, Steve!!!).

This does make the possibility of switching to a MYW Package a lot more likely. Did some more checking on pricing...

Akershus breakfast - $101 (for the three of us)
Captain's Grille Thanksgiving Buffet - $93 (last year, so I expect $97+ this year)
Be Our Guest estimated dinner - $102 (est. $42 each adult, $18 kid) - we are definitely getting desserts!!

That brings our table service total already up to $296! We usually have just 2 counter meals between the 3 of us for a meal at about $23 (normally wouldn't get dessert). 4 meals like that is $92. Already at $384. Add in the snacks, which we would definitely be using to cover for those other meals ($36 value) and we hit $420. Of course, with the DDP we would also get desserts at those counter meals (another $7 per or $28 total) and we would eat one between the three of us and take the other for a later snack. So, our estimated value of the DDP for us is $448, cost is $354 - almost $100 saved. BUT, we'll be spending almost $600 more on tickets...BUT, we'll be saving our No Expiration tickets for another visit....ACK! This is getting confusing.

Thoughts?

 

[brifraz]

So, we've been keeping up a bit with Chris Walsh's drink pictures on the "Friends of the Rose and Crown" group on Facebook and it has me thinking about our adult beverage plans for the trip...

Day 1 - I think that after late breakfast at Akershus, a nice beer in Germany will be in order. And since this is DW's 40th, perhaps a quick stop at Cava de Tequila will have to happen (she has a definite tequila affinity and having just learned about the coffee margarita, I think that might have to happen).

Day 2 - currently looks like a dry day, most likely a good idea!

Day 3 - If we are staying for Illuminations (which we are), then there will have to a beer or two (or three) at the Rose and Crown - really hoping that Carl is working!

Day 4 - It is beginning to look like we will be visiting Downtown Disney (DD will really want to do the new Phineas and Ferb experience at West Side), so I think an afternoon drink might be in order...hopefully the Adventurer's Hut (or whatever it is being called these days) will be open and we can get a Kungaloosh!

 

[brifraz]

So, still no decision on the Package vs. Room Only. I'm also still deciding whether to tell the girls the more detailed plans that I have been putting together. Can't post them or DW will read them here! Maybe I just need to tell her so I can share??