Pre-Trip We have to go to Disney, it's what we do

The title of my thread says it all...I asked my son why we need to go on vacation after getting to take a few trips already this year...his response was classic and didn't skip a beat as we looked up from playing with his super heroes..."Because we have to go to Disney, daddy, it's what we do."

So, I'm a long time reader and I really enjoy taking in other members' Trip reports, I figured I'd give it a go myself for our upcoming trip (Still a ways out...). After a bunch of back and forth on where we were going to stay, we finally decided to book old faithful. Port Orleans- Riverside.

My wife has been trying for weeks to go through a few DVC rental places to try and get something new and much nicer for our trip this year. This would have been our first experience going this route, so we were pretty new to the game. We learned a few lessons in this process and will know this going forward. Long story short, we missed out on a few of our first choices and decided to just book the old fashion way. Through the phone directly with Disney. That's what led us to our favorite resort...POR. Since it seems that the time we are going, things were filling up pretty quickly, we went with it. It's been two years since we stayed here. Last October we stayed at the cabins at Fort Wilderness since we went with my inlaws as well.

When: Dec 8th-16th
Where: Port Orleans Riverside
Who: Myself, my wife, my Son (3 years old) Daughter (1 year old)
Plans: still all tentative and in the works. We will def do the Mickey's very merry Christmas party one night.

My wife and I did Disney every year, sometimes twice a year pre kids....got engaged there, honeymoon'd there, anniversary trips there, etc.

This will my my son's 4th trip and my daughters 2nd.

I'll see if I can upload some pics of our last few trips. I'm just glad to have something on the books and look forward to sharing more as we move this process along.
 

Logan

Member
Original Poster
Kind of random, but somewhat pertaining to this trip. Last night I got a Unique offer code in the mail and it specifically fell during the dates of this upcoming trip. So I decided to call them and see if that code could be applied to my trip to see what kind of savings we might be able to get. It was one of the up to 30% off (then read all the fine print). So I called and was told that even though I literally received this code in the mail yesterday it has been available since June 5th and that no more rooms were available at any resort level that fit this discount. We even considered switching to a deluxe if a room was found available. Anybody find it odd they would even send this code out and knowing that I called at the earliest I could, nothing was available. We typically have never used these codes we've gotten in the past, mainly because they haven't lined up with the dates we typically go....but I saw this in the mailbox and thought jackpot...guess it was too good to be true...
 

Logan

Member
Original Poster
@Zipitidoda I really enjoy reading all the reports, so I thought, why not just bite the bullet and make our own.

And yes...POR is like our old faithful. It's the resort we've visited the most and always find ourselves going back there...we love it.
 

Zipadeelady

Well-Known Member
That sucks about the pin code. Way to bring you up then tear you down. Maybe if you keep checking someone will cancel and you can get a room discount that way.

Looking forward to more!
 

Logan

Member
Original Poster
With all the craziness going on in our life....sold a house, bought a house, job promotion, etc, it's been a whirlwind...this trip CANNOT come soon enough.

My wife laid the foundation so here we go so far...pretty lax at the moment, but she did a good job on securing our fast passes for the days we wanted. One minor change...we are actually flying in Thursday Dec 7th night and got one night at All Star Music. This will allow us to enjoy all day Friday the 8th and be slightly more rested for that day. Plus flights saved us about 320 between them and I got a room for 100 bucks..so a win. You might note, our trip doesn't seem too Magic Kingdom heavy...mind you we end up going there almost EVERYDAY at some point.

Friday Dec 8th:

Check in POR- relax in the AM, grab some breakfast since we're moving over from ASM.
Magic Kingdom at lunchtime.
FP for Peter Pan, PotC, Winnie the Pooh
Dinner: we got Tusker House for the Kids to get a Character Meet in to start the trip off.

Saturday Dec 9th:

DHS Day, Fast passes for TSM, Disney Junior Live and ToT. Since we have two smaller kids, the wife and I will just do single rider for RRC.
very relaxed afternoon plan...hit up the boardwalk and grab ice cream and "wing it" for dinner.

Sunday Dec 10th:

Epcot Day, Fast passes for Disney/Pixas film festival (actually never done), Nemo and Frozen ever after. Explore the countries and really take them in. Dinner at Rose and Crown (a solid go to for us)

Monday Dec 11th:

DAK day, Fast passes for Safari, Dinosaur, FoP. We'll single rider Everest since our littles are slightly too small. No dinner plans at the moment

Tuesday Dec 12th:

Back to DHS, Fast Passes for Star tours, TSM, Frozen sing along. These are all done before noon. Plan is to go back and rest up because we have tickets for MVMCP this night.

Wednesday Dec 13th:

Back to Epcot for the AM, fast passes for Test track, Mission SPACE, Epcot character spot

Thursday Dec 14th:

Back to DAK, all morning Fast passes for EE, FoP, Nemo the musical

Friday Dec 15th:

All morning at Magic Kingdom, Fast passes for Mine Train, BTMR, Jungle Cruise. This is our last full day, so the majority, if not all, will be spent at MK.

Saturday Dec 16th:

We'll wake up and begin the dreaded check out process...we fly early evening, so we take advantage of this day in Downtown Disney to do our shopping and shipping back home...and grab lunch before the Tragical Express scoops us up!

I'll come back to update some of our food reservations. We have a few restaurants we are definitely going to this trip, but we kinda decided to just plan our meals on a whim...we always seem to get lucky here. With two littles, we've noticed the hardest thing to stick to are food reservations. We also do garden grocer and my wife is great about snagging last minute food reservations throughout the day.


We are less than 40 days away now and counting....
 

Logan

Member
Original Poster
Man...we are officially at 21 Days to go...THREE WEEKS!

We have so much going on between now and when we leave it seems like these will drag on forever.
Chicago for work this week, Virginia for Thanksgiving next week...back to work, then it's here.

We typically like to start our "slow packing for Disney" process a few weeks out. We have some things we know we'll only take and wear for the first time there, so we'll star the process. That's hard to do when you have two other trips wedged in between. I'm glad we bumped up the flight in a day so we can get in and relax. All of our Dec 8th plans are after lunch, so it'll be nice to just do whatever we literally want for our first official morning there....
 

sheriffwoody

Well-Known Member
Looking forward to reading about your trip! Sounds like you have some great plans. I hate that about the discount code :(

We use DVC rentals often, but we always book right at the 11 month window because the availability is CRAZY limited these days. I guess DVC is just booming right now.
 

Logan

Member
Original Poster
Well...NOW that the holidays have finally subsided and that we've been back now a little over a month...I FINALLY have time to sit down and start my trip report. Be on the lookout for pics and details being uploaded tonight. For now i'll start with the players...

Me, the wife and the two kiddos! Son- 3 almost 4 Daughter- 1 almost 2

This is one from the trip
Disney2.jpeg
 

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