Pre-Trip Our December 2016 BLT/ Dream 4-night Trip (& first time renting points)

Hi all!!! Welcome to the pre-trip thread of our next trip! We are myhappyplace (Amber, age 38 at time of trip), and my husband Mrhappyplace (David, age 46 at time of trip).

If you read our last trip report where we went on our first DCL cruise, you will recall that we booked our next trip while on board-we loved it that much! We have decided to add days on prior to the cruise, and possibly one on the end. We've never been during Christmastime, and I am so anxious to see the parks and resorts decorated for the season.

This is also our first trip renting points. We are using DVC Rental Store, our agent is Stephanie. So far the experience has been painless, and easy. I have never had a desire to stay at the Contemporary. I think I even remarked on that in my last report. But we simply could not pass up the proximity to MK and MK resorts, which will be where we spend the majority of our time looking at decorations. Now, I am actually looking forward to getting to stay at the BLT.

We hope to do a MVMCP on our arrival day if it is offered-December 1. If i am looking at past party dates correctly, it "should" be. We will be splitting one day between DHS and DAK., though we will probably do the majority of the day at AK because of Rivers of Light. Another day will be at Epcot. Then a full day for MK, plus the party. If we do indeed add the day at the end of our cruise, we will not go into a park, and just tour the resorts. As of now, we just have the stay prior to the cruise booked.

We won't be doing a dining plan, and just doing the majority of our meals at quick service. One exception is the morning of our full day in MK, we want to get an early breakfast at BOG. We really enjoyed it last year, and loved how early they let us in, which would be valuable decoration picture-taking time!!

OK, so tentative plans are as follows:

-Leave home late evening November 30th.
-December 1- arrival day at BLT, (hopefully) MVMCP
-December 2- Epcot
-December 3- DAK/DHS
-December 4- MK (with BOG breakfast)
-December 5 through 9- Disney Dream cruise
-December 9- possibly explore resorts, possibly AKL on rental points for one night. If not, head home.

Will update as we go along if and as things change!
 
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Mrhappyplace

Well-Known Member
I've come to the conclusion that we will have to make a stop at Ample Hills Creamery not sure if it will be arrival day after we lunch at Yacht Club or if we will hit it during our Epcot day as a break during our walk around the world showcase. But I'm sure we can fit a stop in on one of those days.

I'm so glad I read this!!! Your trip looks wonderful and is very similar to mine.. But this will be our first time on DCL!! So excited!! We're doing AKL 11/24-11/36, no parks. 11/26-12/3 DCL Fantasy 12/3-12/7 Contemporary.

Cheers to Very Merrytime Cruises and MVMCP!!!

Regarding Universal- you should do it! I wish we could fit it in somehow. Grinchmas and the Macy's parade would be awesome.

Just realized our trips overlap a bit at Contemporary, who knows we may bump into one another!
 

21stamps

Well-Known Member
I've come to the conclusion that we will have to make a stop at Ample Hills Creamery not sure if it will be arrival day after we lunch at Yacht Club or if we will hit it during our Epcot day as a break during our walk around the world showcase. But I'm sure we can fit a stop in on one of those days.



Just realized our trips overlap a bit at Contemporary, who knows we may bump into one another!

If you see a woman in pants that are too tight, and hair tie keeping them up because they can no longer be buttoned due to obnoxious amounts of food in a short period of time.. That's probably me. ;)
 

myhappyplace

Crazy Cat Lady
Original Poster
We are now 60 days out!!! :joyfull:

So I got up at 7 am to make our FP+, and no Frozen Ever After available?? Are they gone, or just haven't been released for December?

Anywho, the rest of our FP+ are:

Friday, December 2nd- 11:10 Living with the Land. Our plans were to rope drop Soarin, and have a FP for Frozen...hopefully they will come available. For now I just did the one here.

Saturday, December 3rd- 9:50 Jingle Cruise, 12:05 Peter Pan, and 1:25 7DMT. We hope to rope drop the Mine Train as well.

Sunday, December 4th- 3:25 Dinosaur, and 4:40 Safari...left a slot open, waiting for that pesky RoL. We will be spending the morning at DHS, and hope to rope drop Toy Story.


In other "news", I have the majority of my outfits all in a stack, and some of DHs. Just waiting impatiently until it is acceptable to put them in a suitcase!!
 

21stamps

Well-Known Member
We are now 60 days out!!! :joyfull:

So I got up at 7 am to make our FP+, and no Frozen Ever After available?? Are they gone, or just haven't been released for December?

Anywho, the rest of our FP+ are:

Friday, December 2nd- 11:10 Living with the Land. Our plans were to rope drop Soarin, and have a FP for Frozen...hopefully they will come available. For now I just did the one here.

Saturday, December 3rd- 9:50 Jingle Cruise, 12:05 Peter Pan, and 1:25 7DMT. We hope to rope drop the Mine Train as well.

Sunday, December 4th- 3:25 Dinosaur, and 4:40 Safari...left a slot open, waiting for that pesky RoL. We will be spending the morning at DHS, and hope to rope drop Toy Story.


In other "news", I have the majority of my outfits all in a stack, and some of DHs. Just waiting impatiently until it is acceptable to put them in a suitcase!!
I was not able to get mine train or frozen. There is an early morning magic scheduled on our first MK day, so I've just decided to do that. Hopefully we'll get our fill of Mine Train for the trip during that hour.lol..maybe once again during MVMCP.

You are wayyyy ahead of me!! I haven't even started shopping yet!
 

Mrhappyplace

Well-Known Member
While I'm sure I'll enjoy this WDW trip I'm really looking forward to the Cruise portion of the trip. We booked the Atlantis waterpark package and had considered Palo/Remy but I think we will save that for a future cruise.

Also got say we were getting a bit frustrated with the lack of news regarding Rivers of Light but we received a pin code good for the first half of next year so we are booking a trip for next Apr/May so worst comes to worst we should be able to see it then. Even if ROL starts before December we would now have to choose between and Jingle Bell/Jingle Bam as our time in WDW is limited and we are doing both parks on the same day/night.
 

myhappyplace

Crazy Cat Lady
Original Poster
^^^ As DH said, the addition of Jingle Bell, Jingle BAM! at DHS has changed our plans somewhat.

We were originally going to open the day of 12/4 at DHS during their EMH. Now, we are going to start the day at DAK, eat lunch at Sanaa, then head to DHS for the rest of the day/ night. Which means changing FP+. So now, 12/4 looks like this:

Park open @DAK (probably an early morning safari). Head to AKL to look at decorations, and eat at Sanaa. Then head to DHS, where we have a FP+ for Frozen, Toy Story, and ToT. Then we will locate a spot for the new nighttime show.

We've decided since we are >spoiler alert < now going in May (!!!) for a week, we will forego nighttime DAK for now, and wait until we are sure (?) that RoL will be open.
 

myhappyplace

Crazy Cat Lady
Original Poster
2 bits of exciting news to add, as we are now only 39 days out!!


After checking and checking, losing a little bit of heart, but being reminded by @Mrhappyplace to check again today...I scored us our BoG breakfast for our Magic Kingdom day, December 3rd at 8:20 :D

And....

We've decided that since we are going on this trip, and now in May (see my other PTR)...we are going to upgrade to the Annual Pass :) That means more little weekend jaunts to my happy place (to make sure we get our money's worth, of course :p)
 

Mrhappyplace

Well-Known Member
Well the WDW portion of our trip is in the final hours and we will be heading towards the Dream shortly. We had a few incidents that seemed to take away from our time in the parks and a minor disappointment or two but we still had a great time and are looking forward to the second potion of our vacation!
 

lostpro9het

Well-Known Member
Well the WDW portion of our trip is in the final hours and we will be heading towards the Dream shortly. We had a few incidents that seemed to take away from our time in the parks and a minor disappointment or two but we still had a great time and are looking forward to the second potion of our vacation!

Happy sailings! Book a place holder...just in cases ;)
 

Mrhappyplace

Well-Known Member
Happy sailings! Book a place holder...just in cases ;)

That was our original plan and probably what we will do but I've really been thinking that maybe I should do a cruise on another cruise line first as we think our next cruise will be a 7-10 day cruise. But at least the place holder will keep all DCL options open for 2 years. If our next cruise is a DCL I'd really like it to be on a different ship and/or a different itinerary.
 

Mrhappyplace

Well-Known Member
Got back a few hours ago been busy getting the house back in order and giving all our cats some much needed attention. I'm sure we will be starting our trip report in the next few days but for now I will say we had a really great time touring WDW at Christmas time and spending 4 days on The Dream with a couple of hours at Aquaventure @ Atlantis.
 

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