For my last trip, I had decided to go the lazy-person's route for my post-trip report, and just post a photo collage and called it a day.
This trip though is going to have a few little interesting tidbits that lead me to believe that there might be something worth building a full-on trip report, even starting with a little pre-trip action (due to some of the interactions and conversations I've had trying to set up my MagicBands as well as some of the other fun planning tidbits).
So, here we go. First post, a little background information on the trip. Who we are, who is going, how it came about, etc. Then I'll delve into a little of the details of getting the trip set up, planning, tech support, etc. Hopefully some of it might be interesting to some people, who knows, maybe a little informative.
After our last trip, we had decided that 2013 was going to be one of the very few years that we were going to skip our trip to WDW. Not because we had a bad experience on our last trip, not at all. For strictly financial reasons, we were going to take a year off. Of course, April wasn't even fully finished when all that changed. My wife got a message on Facebook from one of her cousins that altered our whole year. My wife's mother and father are originally from Paraguay. They moved up to the US in the mid 70s, right before they had kids, so my wife is officially 2nd generation US, but other than her immediate family (mother, father, brother), the rest of her family all still lives in Paraguay. As a child, she used to travel down there quite often, yearly, but as an adult, financially it became quite cost-prohibitive to make the trip. Her last trip down there would have been around 12 years ago. She has one cousin (her closest cousin) who has made several trips to the US (she's trying to eventually immigrate here, has been working on trying to make that legally happen for many years), and her uncle comes up once every few years to attend a conference. One other cousin came up with her husband once a couple years ago for a quick weekend trip to NYC that we joined them in. Other than that, the rest of her family she has not seen in well over a decade. She has cousins who have grown up, gotten married, even had kids in that time, yet barring Facebook and Skype, has not really seen them in a LONG time.
In April we find out that one of her cousins is planning on coming up and doing a week in Orlando, bringing her kids. We started talking to see if we could make the trip immediately. Then, the next thing we know, that entire branch of the family has decided they are coming! Her aunt and uncle, their 4 daughters (along with husband/children). At this point, I told my wife that there is no way in the world that we are NOT going to be there. We'll find a way. I'm not letting her family be here in the US, in our favorite place, and not have her there with them. We will drive, cut as many corners as we can, etc. The drive from Chicago to Orlando is possible to do in one day, if we're crazy, we can do it.
Thus, the gears for the great-'13-clusterfudge trip start turning. They have one week in November in mind, and we start planning that way. A few weeks later, they shift it and decide that they are coming the week of Thanksgiving (which I thankfully put the kibosh on as soon as I could). Finally they decide on the week of Nov 10-17th and we get them to book their plane tickets to lock in the dates. They have a timeshare in the Orlando area, we can jump in with them in the timeshare, so we have a cheap place to stay (the Westgate Vacation Villas). We'll grab one villa to share with some of her cousins and their kids, they'll have a 2nd villa for the rest of the family.
So, by late May 2013, this is where we stand. My wife, myself, my 2 children (5 and 2 year old daughters), and the Paraguayan contingent, aunt, uncle, 4 cousins, 1 husband, 1 boy and a fairly newborn girl. We decided we were NOT going to tell our kids, we're going to surprise them with the trip.
That's the beginning of the fun. Stay tuned. Breaking this apart into separate posts.
This trip though is going to have a few little interesting tidbits that lead me to believe that there might be something worth building a full-on trip report, even starting with a little pre-trip action (due to some of the interactions and conversations I've had trying to set up my MagicBands as well as some of the other fun planning tidbits).
So, here we go. First post, a little background information on the trip. Who we are, who is going, how it came about, etc. Then I'll delve into a little of the details of getting the trip set up, planning, tech support, etc. Hopefully some of it might be interesting to some people, who knows, maybe a little informative.
After our last trip, we had decided that 2013 was going to be one of the very few years that we were going to skip our trip to WDW. Not because we had a bad experience on our last trip, not at all. For strictly financial reasons, we were going to take a year off. Of course, April wasn't even fully finished when all that changed. My wife got a message on Facebook from one of her cousins that altered our whole year. My wife's mother and father are originally from Paraguay. They moved up to the US in the mid 70s, right before they had kids, so my wife is officially 2nd generation US, but other than her immediate family (mother, father, brother), the rest of her family all still lives in Paraguay. As a child, she used to travel down there quite often, yearly, but as an adult, financially it became quite cost-prohibitive to make the trip. Her last trip down there would have been around 12 years ago. She has one cousin (her closest cousin) who has made several trips to the US (she's trying to eventually immigrate here, has been working on trying to make that legally happen for many years), and her uncle comes up once every few years to attend a conference. One other cousin came up with her husband once a couple years ago for a quick weekend trip to NYC that we joined them in. Other than that, the rest of her family she has not seen in well over a decade. She has cousins who have grown up, gotten married, even had kids in that time, yet barring Facebook and Skype, has not really seen them in a LONG time.
In April we find out that one of her cousins is planning on coming up and doing a week in Orlando, bringing her kids. We started talking to see if we could make the trip immediately. Then, the next thing we know, that entire branch of the family has decided they are coming! Her aunt and uncle, their 4 daughters (along with husband/children). At this point, I told my wife that there is no way in the world that we are NOT going to be there. We'll find a way. I'm not letting her family be here in the US, in our favorite place, and not have her there with them. We will drive, cut as many corners as we can, etc. The drive from Chicago to Orlando is possible to do in one day, if we're crazy, we can do it.
Thus, the gears for the great-'13-clusterfudge trip start turning. They have one week in November in mind, and we start planning that way. A few weeks later, they shift it and decide that they are coming the week of Thanksgiving (which I thankfully put the kibosh on as soon as I could). Finally they decide on the week of Nov 10-17th and we get them to book their plane tickets to lock in the dates. They have a timeshare in the Orlando area, we can jump in with them in the timeshare, so we have a cheap place to stay (the Westgate Vacation Villas). We'll grab one villa to share with some of her cousins and their kids, they'll have a 2nd villa for the rest of the family.
So, by late May 2013, this is where we stand. My wife, myself, my 2 children (5 and 2 year old daughters), and the Paraguayan contingent, aunt, uncle, 4 cousins, 1 husband, 1 boy and a fairly newborn girl. We decided we were NOT going to tell our kids, we're going to surprise them with the trip.
That's the beginning of the fun. Stay tuned. Breaking this apart into separate posts.
