Pre-Trip How much fun will we have? Alllll the fun!!! - August 20-29 PTR

Pre-trip report

Hi again whoever happens to be reading this (or, if this is the first time you’re reading something from me, just “hi”). So we’re about 7 weeks away from our next Disney trip (our 10th as a family), which means…PTR time.

The title is a nod to a stupid joke that the kids and I do (it's more stupid than funny. For example, I'll tell Steph to grab a granola bar for breakfast before going to school. A few minutes later I'll ask if she grabbed one, and she'll reply with "I grabbed alllll the granola bars"). We've basically found a way to add the word Allll to anything we're asked now.

OK, here goes

So who’s coming this time
No one different from the other 9 times.

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I'm not sure who Kait is, but Rob must really like her...

There’s my DW Tammy, our brown-belt daughter Steph, our red belt son Liam, and me (Graham). If you’ve read some of my recent trip reports you may remember that Liam was the only one in karate (he’s going for his black belt in the fall). I don’t know if Steph got tired of being his practice dummy or what, but she decided to join about a year ago, and is now only 1 belt behind him. I could be in a lot of trouble in a few years if they turn on me…

Here's the kids at a tournament a few months ago.
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I think as long as I keep them happy I'll have a security detail until they move out


Details
When:
August 20th-August 29th
Where: Animal Kingdom Lodge – Kidani village (we had stayed at Jambo back in December (trip report here: http://forums.wdwmagic.com/threads/completed-surprise-christmas-road-trip.908924/) and loved it, but the kids missed having the community hall, so we decided to switch back to Kidani this time)

Anything new this time?

Let’s see…
1) It will be our 18th anniversary on August 22nd.
2) We booked a tour this year – The kids are still too young for the bigger tours (Keys to the Kingdom, Behind the Magic, etc), but there was one tour that looked interesting and they were over the minimum age. After talking about it a bit, we decided to book the Marceline to the Magic Kingdom tour on the 25th of August. It’s aprox. 4 hours long and was only $32 (with the DVC discount) each. It will be interesting to try something new

ADRs
We’ve booked a few restaurants, although we have left a few days unbooked to just kind of do things on the fly. Here’s what we’ve got so far:
• Liberty tree for lunch (we’ve done dinner a few times, but have never tried lunch)
• ‘Ohana – probably our favourite. We’re going here on our anniversary
• T-Rex – Steph’s choice
• Rose and Crown - Liam’s choice (he was going between this and Tepan Edo, but the surf and turf item on the menu won out)
• Yak and Yeti - our last night – we want to close it out at the Animal Kingdom

It wouldn’t surprise me if we book at least one more restaurant before we go, but we’ll see.

I really can’t think of anything else right now, so I guess that’s it. See you all in a few weeks…
 
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lostpro9het

Well-Known Member
Where: Animal Kingdom Lodge – Kidani village (we had stayed at Jambo back in December (trip report here: http://forums.wdwmagic.com/threads/completed-surprise-christmas-road-trip.908924/) and loved it, but the kids missed having the community hall, so we decided to switch back to Kidani this time).

Great timing, the community hall is now equipped with one of the 25th anniversary photo booths! We had a fun time with them last month. The kids will probably like it too.

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wdw2016180497680398_7728956121_dsnyRes-base_dsnyLoc-reg.jpeg


Let’s see…
1) It will be our 18th anniversary on August 22nd.
Awesome! The DW and I will be celebrating our 18th this year too on the Dream.
 

gwhb75

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Great timing, the community hall is now equipped with one of the 25th anniversary photo booths! We had a fun time with them last month. The kids will probably like it too.

wdw2016181498251707_7729773578_dsnyRes-base_dsnyLoc-reg.jpeg

wdw2016180497680398_7728956121_dsnyRes-base_dsnyLoc-reg.jpeg



Awesome! The DW and I will be celebrating our 18th this year too on the Dream.

Congrats on your upcoming anniversary. It's funny, but we actually went to Disney for our 10th anniversary (I wanted to do a cruise, but Tammy talked me into Disney) and have gone every year since. Tammy still laughs at the fact that she was the one who had to talk ME into Disney.

Do those DVC booth pictures link to memory maker? If so, I have a very bad feeling that I'll be looking through hundreds of pictures of the kids by the end of the trip;)
 
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gwhb75

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Great to hear you are going back! I'm assuming this time you will be flying?

Oh yeah, forgot to mention that.

We're flying this time (as opposed to the road trip we did in December). Southwest out of Buffalo on the 20th, and back on the 29th. We snagged some fairly early direct flights on the 20th for around $100 each (before that horrible FX rate that us Canadians are paying right now (and it was a lot worse when we booked the flights than it is now - Don't get me started on the $.65 dollar we had in January when our DVC dues were paid)). Even with the not-so-great exchange, it is still way cheaper than flying out of Toronto.
 

gwhb75

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Following along! We had a hard time with the dollar too. Flying out of Edmonton our flights were 650 Canadian.

Ouch. One of the benefits of living so close to the border is that Buffalo airport is only about an hour away. Return flights for the four of us worked out to around $1,100 CDN. We looked at Toronto (and Hamilton) a few years ago and the flights were around $650/return each.
 

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