Here is my first pre-trip report....for a trip I have been eyeing for years and years! My last trip was in 2019 and was just a long weekend. My wife and I went and loosely figured out a time frame to take our daughter. We decided age 6 would be the best time. I am also a DVC member and saw that September is the best bang for your buck. Over the last few months I was able to get everything booked. My biggest concern was flights. We are out of Grand Rapids and Southwest is the only option....mainly because of points. I have checked in as new time frames opened up and saw that they typically have 1 direct flight a day; back and forth. Sounds pretty good, but the times have been later in the day and I was not feeling it. Finally last week Southwest opened up times and now we have everything booked, minus dining. Here is what the trip looks like
End of September for 8 days. We are staying in a 2 bedroom villa, with a savanna view, at Animal Kingdom Lodge. I also got us 6 day park hoppers and did just generic park pass reservations. Park days will really be driven by dining. The flights turned out to be pretty great. We have direct flights! It gets us there around 3pm, and leaves the following week at 3pm. We are going to do grocery delivery to get breakfast food, snacks, water, beer, and who knows what else. Last time breakfast, resort wide, was pretty awful. I also have Sunshine Flyers booked.
This will be our daughters first time down there, first really big vacation, first time on an airplane. So I am expecting her to be completely overwhelmed. We want to take this at her speed, so I am still undecided about Genie+ and Lighting Lanes. Chances are I will pay for the Lightning Lanes to just get on those rides. Others we can decide on when we walk past them. We are also really excited about Food and Wine Fest. We are all for trying small plates of good food. We are planning pool days and some downtime to relax. We also want to see some of the other resorts, ride the skyliner, and do a few other things outside of the parks. It just feels almost surreal that I have a lot of it booked.
I started my countdown around 1400/1500 days out. Everyone laughed at me....including myself. But now we are sitting at a cool 220 days until this trip. We are telling our daughter 2 weeks before.....it will be a big birthday surprise for her. She likes to watch some of the Youtube bloggers as well as some of the videos on pins. We almost never talk about the parks in front of her anymore. Its more "if we decide to take you to Disney.....". I am expecting her to go nuts when she finds out!
End of September for 8 days. We are staying in a 2 bedroom villa, with a savanna view, at Animal Kingdom Lodge. I also got us 6 day park hoppers and did just generic park pass reservations. Park days will really be driven by dining. The flights turned out to be pretty great. We have direct flights! It gets us there around 3pm, and leaves the following week at 3pm. We are going to do grocery delivery to get breakfast food, snacks, water, beer, and who knows what else. Last time breakfast, resort wide, was pretty awful. I also have Sunshine Flyers booked.
This will be our daughters first time down there, first really big vacation, first time on an airplane. So I am expecting her to be completely overwhelmed. We want to take this at her speed, so I am still undecided about Genie+ and Lighting Lanes. Chances are I will pay for the Lightning Lanes to just get on those rides. Others we can decide on when we walk past them. We are also really excited about Food and Wine Fest. We are all for trying small plates of good food. We are planning pool days and some downtime to relax. We also want to see some of the other resorts, ride the skyliner, and do a few other things outside of the parks. It just feels almost surreal that I have a lot of it booked.
I started my countdown around 1400/1500 days out. Everyone laughed at me....including myself. But now we are sitting at a cool 220 days until this trip. We are telling our daughter 2 weeks before.....it will be a big birthday surprise for her. She likes to watch some of the Youtube bloggers as well as some of the videos on pins. We almost never talk about the parks in front of her anymore. Its more "if we decide to take you to Disney.....". I am expecting her to go nuts when she finds out!
