My wife Patty and I took our honeymoon to WDW in May of 1998. We were both 21 and still in college and just starting to get into the working world. Super young. It's very strange to think about planning that trip now - I used the Unofficial Guide for research and booked it by phone since this was before the internet was useful for things like this. We flew down from Nashville and stayed at Caribbean Beach Resort. We hit all the parks hard, including the new Animal Kingdom not long after its opening, back when Dinosaur was Countdown to Extinction and had a real thrill/terror aspect to it...and Alien Encounter was a good thrill too.
We had our son in 2000 and our daughter in 2003. We took our first family trip to WDW in October of 2007 and it started a love of all things Disney World for our kids despite my best efforts
. We flew down for this trip and stayed at Coronado Springs. We had a great time although our barely 4 year old daughter was scared of a few things - like horses, and the Beach Boys doing an Eat to the Beat show.
Our next trip came in October of 2010. We originally had a trip planned to Tampa in June, but my mother-in-law Nancy who had been fighting stage 4 breast/bone cancer got very ill and passed in July. We changed things up and scheduled a somewhat short notice trip in October and brought my father-in-law, Mike, along. It was a good experience to lighten things up a bit and his first time to WDW in many years. We originally planned to drive down but we ended up flying again and we stayed at CBR again. He lives on our street now and we have a great relationship with him.
Our next trip came in October of 2012 and this time we went big, bringing Mike and also my bro-in-law Danny and his family, which at the time was his wife and 2 sons. I was already a good WDW planner (if I may say so myself) but being responsible for a large groups takes things to the next level. I'm an Enneagram 5 (observer/investigator) and I did all I could to make it a trip that worked for everyone. It was the first big vacation Danny's family had gone on and they said it was the most fun they've had as a family. All of us drove except his wife and the younger son to give them a shorter travel time. We stayed at Port Orleans French Quarter and really enjoyed the smaller resort with short distances to the pools, food court, and bus stops. Patty and Mike both got into running after Nancy passed and they ran the Tower of Terror 10-Miler on our first day of the trip. It was the first year of that race and they said it wasn't very well executed. They waited in the parking lot for hours for it to start and most of it was run on roads between parks that were on a pretty steep angle. I LOVE Epcot (largely for nostalgia) and was stoked to have been there on its 30th anniversary. *Whoa, as I type this I realize I'm wearing the same shirt in the pic below. Old band shirt for O'Brother, sludgy, riffy, stoner rock band from Atlanta. They rule.
We waited FIVE LONG years to hit WDW again but we made it back last October (2017). We did the big group again plus another young nephew who was 4 at the time of this trip. This time we all drove and we stayed at CBR while it was under construction. The construction didn't bother us at all and the $75/night gift cards were a great perk that we used for paying for tips for our dining plan meals. BTW since all of our trips have been in Sept/October we've taken advantage of free dining promos and the Food & Wine fest. I LOVE planning WDW trips - making spreadsheets, finding times that will work for everything we want to do, etc...but this one was hard. Our kids are older now. We want to all have fun as a group but also want to make sure we can all do things we enjoy. This was probably the most challenging trip to plan but it still ended up creating tons of great memories. We didn't necessarily plan it this way, but since we were at WDW for Epcot's 35th birthday I made sure to get anyone who wanted to go over there for part of the day. The special Illuminations ending is something I'll never forget and something you can't really capture with a camera. The most face-melting fireworks I've ever experienced.
So, let's get down to it. I dreamed of doing an anniversary trip for years and didn't think it was going to happen. I posted about it before our 15th and it didn't happen. Our 20th anniversary was on May 16th, the week of our son's high school graduation and 2 weeks before our daughter's dance recital. Our daughter got a surprise invitation from a friend to go on a Spring Break trip to WDW in March, and despite my severe jealousy we let her go. She got the invitation the DAY BEFORE the trip. Planner Alan had a bit of an internal fit making sure everything would go well...but she was going with Disney veterans who also go hard, so she was in good hands. I had given up hope for a trip for us with all that we had going on - graduation, dance recital, dance competition week in Charleston in June, then our son going up the road to start college at Vanderbilt in August. In early June my wife brought up trying to make our trip happen out of the blue. I blew it off at first but then she found some dates that might work and all I needed was that One Little Spark to get my planning engine revving. Since then I've made 2 sets of master plans trying to fit everything together, but also trying to allow for plenty of time to just wander and take our time since we don't have a big group to be responsible for. It was planned as an anniversary trip but she sweetly mentioned it can be a make-up birthday trip for my 40th back in 2016. My dad got sick and passed very quickly from cirrhosis (even though he never drank) right around my birthday in August and we didn't really do anything for it that year...not that I need a big party, but the sentiment of it is sweet and kind of hit me in the feels
.
So here's the plan!!!
August 25th - 30th at Pop Century with 6-day PH and the Dining Plan. We've never stayed at a Value resort. We're not snobs, it's just always made sense to go Moderate with the dining offers, etc. I've heard a ton of great things about Pop and am excited to see it, especially considering it's right behind AoA so we can wander around there and use their buses if they come first.
Sat Aug 25: Flight arrives around 10am. Take ME to Pop, check-in, then head to AK to have lunch with FPs set for Flight of Passage, Everest, and a late day Safari. We have dinner at 7:25pm at Paradiso 37 at Disney Springs and will either shop some after dinner, or make our way to DHS for a late 2nd Fantasmic at 10pm.
Sun Aug 26: We'll rope drop MK and stay until late afternoon, having lunch at BoG at 1pm. Then we'll head over to Disney Springs to shop and have dinner at Polite Pig - man, that place rules...and we have good BBQ here in middle TN so I think I'm qualified to judge BBQ. We have FPs for Space, Splash, and SDMT.
Mon Aug 27: We'll be at AK until mid to late-afternoon, then switch over to Epcot. We have FPs for Dino, Everest, and FoP and will probably have lunch at Satuli Canteen, Yak n Yeti or Flametree BBQ, then have dinner at Biergarten at 6:35pm.
Tues 8/28: We'll RD at DHS and see about hitting TS land quickly in the morning even though we have a Slinky pass for later in the afternoon, along with ToT and RnR. Later we'll head back over to Epcot for dinner at La Hacienda de San Angel at 7:30pm, then will take advantage of late EMH at Epcot until 11pm.
Wed 8/29: We'll RD Epcot and hit Soarin real quick before breakfast at 9:50am at Garden Grill, the only repeat meal from our honeymoon. We'll stay at Epcot until we need to leave for a 5pm dinner at 'Ohana. On each of our last 3 trips we've done 'Ohana for breakfast. I've always heard how good dinner is but this will be my first time and I'm super excited for it. After dinner we'll to to MK for late night EMH and to catch Happily Ever After, which we missed on last year's trip.
Thurs 8/30: This is the first day of Food & Wine Fest, so we'll go to Epcot with no real agenda but to bounce around at booths, and leave in time to catch ME to the airport for our 9:20pm flight.
Now I'm in that phase between everything being done and planned and the trip, and it's not my favorite thing. I'd prefer to have something to do, so after reading tons of trip reports here I figured I'd write one myself. I love reading your stories and the community here. I just hope I can actually post a trip-report afterwards.
We had our son in 2000 and our daughter in 2003. We took our first family trip to WDW in October of 2007 and it started a love of all things Disney World for our kids despite my best efforts
. We flew down for this trip and stayed at Coronado Springs. We had a great time although our barely 4 year old daughter was scared of a few things - like horses, and the Beach Boys doing an Eat to the Beat show. Our next trip came in October of 2010. We originally had a trip planned to Tampa in June, but my mother-in-law Nancy who had been fighting stage 4 breast/bone cancer got very ill and passed in July. We changed things up and scheduled a somewhat short notice trip in October and brought my father-in-law, Mike, along. It was a good experience to lighten things up a bit and his first time to WDW in many years. We originally planned to drive down but we ended up flying again and we stayed at CBR again. He lives on our street now and we have a great relationship with him.
Our next trip came in October of 2012 and this time we went big, bringing Mike and also my bro-in-law Danny and his family, which at the time was his wife and 2 sons. I was already a good WDW planner (if I may say so myself) but being responsible for a large groups takes things to the next level. I'm an Enneagram 5 (observer/investigator) and I did all I could to make it a trip that worked for everyone. It was the first big vacation Danny's family had gone on and they said it was the most fun they've had as a family. All of us drove except his wife and the younger son to give them a shorter travel time. We stayed at Port Orleans French Quarter and really enjoyed the smaller resort with short distances to the pools, food court, and bus stops. Patty and Mike both got into running after Nancy passed and they ran the Tower of Terror 10-Miler on our first day of the trip. It was the first year of that race and they said it wasn't very well executed. They waited in the parking lot for hours for it to start and most of it was run on roads between parks that were on a pretty steep angle. I LOVE Epcot (largely for nostalgia) and was stoked to have been there on its 30th anniversary. *Whoa, as I type this I realize I'm wearing the same shirt in the pic below. Old band shirt for O'Brother, sludgy, riffy, stoner rock band from Atlanta. They rule.
We waited FIVE LONG years to hit WDW again but we made it back last October (2017). We did the big group again plus another young nephew who was 4 at the time of this trip. This time we all drove and we stayed at CBR while it was under construction. The construction didn't bother us at all and the $75/night gift cards were a great perk that we used for paying for tips for our dining plan meals. BTW since all of our trips have been in Sept/October we've taken advantage of free dining promos and the Food & Wine fest. I LOVE planning WDW trips - making spreadsheets, finding times that will work for everything we want to do, etc...but this one was hard. Our kids are older now. We want to all have fun as a group but also want to make sure we can all do things we enjoy. This was probably the most challenging trip to plan but it still ended up creating tons of great memories. We didn't necessarily plan it this way, but since we were at WDW for Epcot's 35th birthday I made sure to get anyone who wanted to go over there for part of the day. The special Illuminations ending is something I'll never forget and something you can't really capture with a camera. The most face-melting fireworks I've ever experienced.
So, let's get down to it. I dreamed of doing an anniversary trip for years and didn't think it was going to happen. I posted about it before our 15th and it didn't happen. Our 20th anniversary was on May 16th, the week of our son's high school graduation and 2 weeks before our daughter's dance recital. Our daughter got a surprise invitation from a friend to go on a Spring Break trip to WDW in March, and despite my severe jealousy we let her go. She got the invitation the DAY BEFORE the trip. Planner Alan had a bit of an internal fit making sure everything would go well...but she was going with Disney veterans who also go hard, so she was in good hands. I had given up hope for a trip for us with all that we had going on - graduation, dance recital, dance competition week in Charleston in June, then our son going up the road to start college at Vanderbilt in August. In early June my wife brought up trying to make our trip happen out of the blue. I blew it off at first but then she found some dates that might work and all I needed was that One Little Spark to get my planning engine revving. Since then I've made 2 sets of master plans trying to fit everything together, but also trying to allow for plenty of time to just wander and take our time since we don't have a big group to be responsible for. It was planned as an anniversary trip but she sweetly mentioned it can be a make-up birthday trip for my 40th back in 2016. My dad got sick and passed very quickly from cirrhosis (even though he never drank) right around my birthday in August and we didn't really do anything for it that year...not that I need a big party, but the sentiment of it is sweet and kind of hit me in the feels
. So here's the plan!!!
August 25th - 30th at Pop Century with 6-day PH and the Dining Plan. We've never stayed at a Value resort. We're not snobs, it's just always made sense to go Moderate with the dining offers, etc. I've heard a ton of great things about Pop and am excited to see it, especially considering it's right behind AoA so we can wander around there and use their buses if they come first.
Sat Aug 25: Flight arrives around 10am. Take ME to Pop, check-in, then head to AK to have lunch with FPs set for Flight of Passage, Everest, and a late day Safari. We have dinner at 7:25pm at Paradiso 37 at Disney Springs and will either shop some after dinner, or make our way to DHS for a late 2nd Fantasmic at 10pm.
Sun Aug 26: We'll rope drop MK and stay until late afternoon, having lunch at BoG at 1pm. Then we'll head over to Disney Springs to shop and have dinner at Polite Pig - man, that place rules...and we have good BBQ here in middle TN so I think I'm qualified to judge BBQ. We have FPs for Space, Splash, and SDMT.
Mon Aug 27: We'll be at AK until mid to late-afternoon, then switch over to Epcot. We have FPs for Dino, Everest, and FoP and will probably have lunch at Satuli Canteen, Yak n Yeti or Flametree BBQ, then have dinner at Biergarten at 6:35pm.
Tues 8/28: We'll RD at DHS and see about hitting TS land quickly in the morning even though we have a Slinky pass for later in the afternoon, along with ToT and RnR. Later we'll head back over to Epcot for dinner at La Hacienda de San Angel at 7:30pm, then will take advantage of late EMH at Epcot until 11pm.
Wed 8/29: We'll RD Epcot and hit Soarin real quick before breakfast at 9:50am at Garden Grill, the only repeat meal from our honeymoon. We'll stay at Epcot until we need to leave for a 5pm dinner at 'Ohana. On each of our last 3 trips we've done 'Ohana for breakfast. I've always heard how good dinner is but this will be my first time and I'm super excited for it. After dinner we'll to to MK for late night EMH and to catch Happily Ever After, which we missed on last year's trip.
Thurs 8/30: This is the first day of Food & Wine Fest, so we'll go to Epcot with no real agenda but to bounce around at booths, and leave in time to catch ME to the airport for our 9:20pm flight.
Now I'm in that phase between everything being done and planned and the trip, and it's not my favorite thing. I'd prefer to have something to do, so after reading tons of trip reports here I figured I'd write one myself. I love reading your stories and the community here. I just hope I can actually post a trip-report afterwards.
