Pre-Trip Fractal's Aug '11 Pre-trip report & '07,09 trip flashbacks

The excitement is building!

We are closing in on 100 days until our August 8th trip back to the World! I decided it was time to start my first trip report. Actually it's a pre-trip report combined with "flashback" reports from our 2007 and 2009 trips.

Introducing the Cast...


I'm Chris and my beautiful wife of 18 years is Val. I work in the investment business and over the last 20 years have had more up and downs than the craziest roller coaster. With some sacrifices we've been lucky enough to have Val stay home with the kids. She is a homemaker and does a great job of running the house and making sure we are all on schedule and at where we need to be when we need to be. The pic is from our vacation to Wildwood Crest last year. One of us loves Disney, the other one - eh. More on that later.

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and now kids... Alexandra is our oldest @ 17, Sterg is 14 and Antonia (Toni) is 9. Alex is in the middle of her high school lacrosse season, Sterg plays water-polo and Toni is our dancer. All three LOVE Disney.


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Coming up next - our 2011 trip itinerary.
 
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fractal

fractal

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
OK - I'm really "jonesing" for some Disney magic.

We've had a pretty busy summer so far. Last month the crew less Toni caught a Phillies game.

Here we are before the game waiting to get into Harry the K's for dinner.

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The girls at the table.

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The spot was nice - gives you an old time feel and a nice view of the field.
I liked this painting on the wall.

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The view from our seats.

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Me and the kids.

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Phils won a tense pitching duel 2-1 on a walk off hit in the bottom of the ninth. We had a great time. The weather was perfect and I love the new park. You can literally spend the game walking around the park with all the activities and you still have a great view of the field.
 
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fractal

fractal

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
We also took a trip to Stone Harbor. This was "Val's" trip as part of our Great Compromise to get to WDW. I actually enjoyed myself much more than I thought I would.

The weather was mostly perfect, the water was great - I spent a considerable amount of time in the ocean body-surfing with Sterg. I consider myself the best body-surfer around - even at my advancing age and added pounds. I can literally ride a wave into less than a foot of water until I hit bottom or run out of air. I'm slowly teaching Sterg my secrets - and I sincerely apologize to all the little kids and mothers out there that I plowed over in the surf. :lookaroun

Sterg also "skimmed boarded" but I have grown wise enough over the years to avoid anything that involves me balancing on a moving board.

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We also missed jellyfish season by about a month or so. Hmmm, where will I be when the jellyfish invade the South Jersey shore? Oh, that's right - I'll be swimming in a jellyfish free Storm-along-Bay. Sand bottom and all. :)

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Here we are in front of the dunes.

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and Val and I chilling at "Coconut Cove" in North Wildwood.

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Alex ready to fight.

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And with any vacation, it must end.

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So I remain sitting here counting the days until Disney.

That's a wrap folks. Thanks for allowing me the chance to rehash some old Disney memories, to help plan for some new ones, to pass the time in between and build up the excitement for our trip next month! :wave:
 
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fractal

fractal

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
CH,CH,CH, CHANGES...


Sorry to ressurect this PTR but major changes are taking place with my Disney trip.


First off - Val, Sterg and Alex are heading out to California tomorrow. Sterg is in a national water-polo tournament in Santa Anna ( which happens to be pretty close to some place called Disneyland). They will be visiting Disneyland on Thursday.

I cannot get away from work to make the trip with them. :shrug:

Toni and I will be staying home and as a consolation, we will be going to Hersheypark on Monday. Toni is ok with this because going to Cali may mean going to DL but it also means sitting through a bunch of waterpolo games.

As far as our trip to WDW, it is still on with the following changes -

Instead of going from Monday August 8th thru Sunday August 14th - we are going Saturday August 6th through Saturday August 13th!! The way thinks broke for us on that weekend allowed us to be able to leave earlier plus coming home on a Saturday was better for us.

Our Travel Agent worked with Disney and they accomodated this new change. Originally, they offered to put us in Ft Wilderness Cabins for the first two days, but then they found a room at Beach Club for those days and we would switch to the Villas on Monday! The added cost was pretty minimal so we went for it.

Bottomline - We extended our stay to WDW by one day and I will have some Disneyland pictures to share. I'm really bummed I can't go see Walt's original - this "work thing" can be so inconvenient at times! In reality, I'm thrilled and thankful that we can fit in all this Disney magic over the next few weeks.

Now I must go make a few new reservations! :wave:
 
K

Kristan35

New Member
I'm sorry that I'm bumping this up but I just wanted to say that I really enjoyed reading this! I'm looking forward to your trip report (if you're writing one) !
 
nc_disneyfreak

nc_disneyfreak

Well-Known Member
best PTR ever!

I loved your report, it was very detailed, and you write very good too (which helps lol) you seem to have a great family and thanks for allowing all of us to "be a part of your trips"...Great phillies pics to....im a yankees fan (sorry) and the world series game 1 is about to start....my family has about 190 days left till our second trip. Myself, wife, 5 yr old boy and my daughter who will be 1 1/2 yrs old...I feel we have things in common, as im a disney freak who was born in southern cal. and spent dozens of times at disneyland, and my wife likes it to....albeit on a much lower scale...this will be our 2nd WDW trip in april of 2012, and im just now starting to get my emails about things not to miss! thanks again and hope you and your family is doing well
 
fractal

fractal

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
nc_disneyfreak said:
I loved your report, it was very detailed, and you write very good too (which helps lol) you seem to have a great family and thanks for allowing all of us to "be a part of your trips"...Great phillies pics to....im a yankees fan (sorry) and the world series game 1 is about to start....my family has about 190 days left till our second trip. Myself, wife, 5 yr old boy and my daughter who will be 1 1/2 yrs old...I feel we have things in common, as im a disney freak who was born in southern cal. and spent dozens of times at disneyland, and my wife likes it to....albeit on a much lower scale...this will be our 2nd WDW trip in april of 2012, and im just now starting to get my emails about things not to miss! thanks again and hope you and your family is doing well
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Too bad it wasn't Phillies vs. Yankees last night! I think the 5 game series format is really unfair for the top seeded teams.

Thanks for reading the report and your comments. I wish I had a trip planned to look forward to. :) My son was 5 the first time he went and he had a blast. Wishing you the best!
 
fractal

fractal

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Yes, I have issues and one of them is WDW withdraw.

I found this Pre-Trip/Trip Report I did in 2011. Only thing is, all the photos linked to photobucket were deleted. So I painstakingly replaced all the photos and sent the link of the report to my children. They are enjoying going through it as have I.

So take a trip back in time if you'd like to our trips in 2007 and 2007 and a pre-trip report for our 2011 visit! Interesting to see how much has changed (and stayed the same)!
 
TheMouseFan

TheMouseFan

Well-Known Member
Thanks for resurrecting this! I really enjoyed reading through it and seeing your pics! I'm so jealous that you got to ride EE with a working Yeti in 2007. I was 5 months pregnant when we took our older 2 that year, so I didn't get to ride it! I can't believe how much the kids have grown since then (yours and mine!)!! I hope we will be getting a new TR in the near future!!
 
ajrwdwgirl

ajrwdwgirl

Premium Member
I must say I'm a little disappointed. I only saw your name and didn't read the title, so I was excited and thought you were starting a pre-trip report for Disney soon. But your pictures are always awesome and your family looks fun, so no disappointment there. :)
 
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riverside

riverside

Well-Known Member
This was SO cool!! It was really neat to take a look back in time!! Thanks for taking the time to put all the photos back in.
I really enjoyed this!!
 
krause

krause

Well-Known Member
I love it! I thought I had read all your old reports but I don’t know if I ever made it this far back :hilarious::oops:

My favourite part
fractal said:
6-I need to do a better job of taking pictures. We also needed to do a better job of exploring more of Epcot and planning before the trip.
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Developing your own passions while working and raising 3 kids with all their own interests and hobbies, you’re killing it 👍🏻
 

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