The warmup is over - a September Pre-trip report
Some preamble stuff
If you’ve read my last two mini trip reports, you know that we’ve been dipping our feet back into all things WDW (links to the past two mini-trip reports are here if you’re interested:
forums.wdwmagic.com
https://forums.wdwmagic.com/threads/surprise-we-went-to-disney-again.984195/)
I guess those were kind of like the pitcher warming up in the bullpen for me…Now it’s time to get into a full trip report….
OK, to be honest, I was kind of the fence about doing a full trip report. I found the last two to be really time consuming, and they were only covering a couple of days each time. However, a few things kind of pushed me to do this one:
Trip details
As I mentioned in my mini-reports, we were working on a big family trip with Steph and her husband Calvin, and Liam (our son) with his girlfriend. However…life happens. Unfortunately, Liam’s schedule didn’t allow for him to make this trip with us. We’ll plan something with him in the future, but we’re going to miss doing a full trip with one of our normal crew missing.
So who is going:
There’ s Tammy and I (Graham)
And our daughter Stephanie and her husband Calvin.
When
September 20-28th
Where are we staying:
We have a 1 bedroom villa at Animal Kingdom Lodge – Kidani Village (We’re DVC owners). Tammy and I love AKL. Steph likes it, but thinks it's too far away from everything, and the bus system is kind of slow. However, we do have a rental car, so transportation won’t be an issue. Calvin knows nothing about any of this as it’s only his second trip and has only experienced Saratoga Springs (we own there, and booked Steph and Calvin there for their honeymoon last year).
Travel information
We’re doing something new this year. If you read my last mini trip report, you know that we started our trip in Tampa as I was on a course for the first half of the week of that trip. Tampa plays into this trip. No, I don’t have a sudden affinity to the Tampa area. However, when I was booking flights, I started by looking at flights into Orlando, but the price was more than I anticipated. Then I remembered that Tampa isn’t that much more of a drive to Disney than from Orlando airport (Orlando airport is around 25-30 minutes to Disney property, and Tampa is about 55-60 minutes), so I checked out flights there instead. It turns out, the flights to Tampa were quite a bit cheaper than flights to Orlando (I’d say about $300 ish cheaper for the four of us), and the car rental was about $150 cheaper at Tampa than at Orlando. So, for an extra 30ish minute drive, I was able to save around $450.
To summarize, we’re flying on Southwest out of Buffalo to Tampa, and then picking up our rental car and driving to Disney (with a stop at a grocery store or Sam’s Club on the way to pick up some coffee, snacks and breakfast stuff for the room).
Any concrete plans yet?
Glad you asked. A few things:
Other things being discussed
The big thing we’re still talking about is whether we do a Mickey’s Not So Scary Hallowe’en Party. My thought is that we could do one on the first Sunday there, which would supply our room with candy and chocolate for the week. Tammy and I did do one last year, but we focused on rides and candy. If we go this time we could slow down and enjoy the fireworks and parade rather than trying to cram in as many rides as possible.
The other thing we may do is an after hours thing, but none of those have been announced yet (we’d either do the MNSSHP or an after-hours thing)
We’ll need to decide that one soon.
Final thoughts.
So I’ve noticed a lot of comments on the boards about low crowd levels right now, so I’m hoping thing will be quiet when we’re there. The one thing I did notice is how much dining availability was still available even today. Back when we first started going to Disney, you had to book your dining 180 days in advance, and you pretty much had to be up the second the reservations opened or you could forget about getting some of the more popular restaurants. I’ll use ‘Ohana as an example. If you didn’t get on at the 180 day mark, you could forget getting ‘Ohana. I was just on the app today (Aug 5 – about 45 days from our trip), and there are still ‘Ohana slots available.
We are really looking forward to this trip. Calvin may be in for a bit of a shock as I don’t think he’s ever rope-dropped before, and I’m a rope-drop guy. It should be a fun time. Thanks for following along
Some preamble stuff
If you’ve read my last two mini trip reports, you know that we’ve been dipping our feet back into all things WDW (links to the past two mini-trip reports are here if you’re interested:
Trip Report - *COMPLETED* How Much Magic Can We Cram Into 2 Days???....Allllll the Magic (if you know you know)
As the quote goes “Just when I thought I was out they pull me back in”. Welcome to my first trip report in 6 years. I honestly didn’t think I’d ever write a trip report again, but here we are. Maybe I’ll do more of these in the future. If you’re interested in the pre-trip report, here’s the...
https://forums.wdwmagic.com/threads/surprise-we-went-to-disney-again.984195/)
I guess those were kind of like the pitcher warming up in the bullpen for me…Now it’s time to get into a full trip report….
OK, to be honest, I was kind of the fence about doing a full trip report. I found the last two to be really time consuming, and they were only covering a couple of days each time. However, a few things kind of pushed me to do this one:
- I really did enjoy doing the last couple. I had been off trip reports for a few years (see @Tuvalu , that’s how you do a retirement LOL), and doing the last couple kind of got the trip report juices flowing again
- It’s been great interacting with everyone on these boards again. Some have been around from when I first started doing these back in 2010, and some are new to me, but it’s been fun interacting with all of you
- I had mentioned to Stephanie (@S&CVDZ - our daughter (more on her in a minute)) that I wasn’t sure I wanted to do another trip report, and she was like “Dad, just do it”.
Trip details
As I mentioned in my mini-reports, we were working on a big family trip with Steph and her husband Calvin, and Liam (our son) with his girlfriend. However…life happens. Unfortunately, Liam’s schedule didn’t allow for him to make this trip with us. We’ll plan something with him in the future, but we’re going to miss doing a full trip with one of our normal crew missing.
So who is going:
There’ s Tammy and I (Graham)
And our daughter Stephanie and her husband Calvin.
When
September 20-28th
Where are we staying:
We have a 1 bedroom villa at Animal Kingdom Lodge – Kidani Village (We’re DVC owners). Tammy and I love AKL. Steph likes it, but thinks it's too far away from everything, and the bus system is kind of slow. However, we do have a rental car, so transportation won’t be an issue. Calvin knows nothing about any of this as it’s only his second trip and has only experienced Saratoga Springs (we own there, and booked Steph and Calvin there for their honeymoon last year).
Travel information
We’re doing something new this year. If you read my last mini trip report, you know that we started our trip in Tampa as I was on a course for the first half of the week of that trip. Tampa plays into this trip. No, I don’t have a sudden affinity to the Tampa area. However, when I was booking flights, I started by looking at flights into Orlando, but the price was more than I anticipated. Then I remembered that Tampa isn’t that much more of a drive to Disney than from Orlando airport (Orlando airport is around 25-30 minutes to Disney property, and Tampa is about 55-60 minutes), so I checked out flights there instead. It turns out, the flights to Tampa were quite a bit cheaper than flights to Orlando (I’d say about $300 ish cheaper for the four of us), and the car rental was about $150 cheaper at Tampa than at Orlando. So, for an extra 30ish minute drive, I was able to save around $450.
To summarize, we’re flying on Southwest out of Buffalo to Tampa, and then picking up our rental car and driving to Disney (with a stop at a grocery store or Sam’s Club on the way to pick up some coffee, snacks and breakfast stuff for the room).
Any concrete plans yet?
Glad you asked. A few things:
- Due to the not-so-favorable exchange rate between Canada and the US, Disney was offering a Canadian ticket discount as long as you booked at least a 4 day base ticket. The discount was quite substantial (25%), so we jumped on that and booked a 5 day with park hopper and waterparks/sports options.
- What about food. Well don’t worry “’Cause there’s a ton of it” (throwback to Stacy – does anyone else miss the old Must-Do Disney?). So we had to factor in that Calvin is quite a big eater (he’s also a big guy at 6’5), so we had to try and pick places that had lots of food (so you’ll see a lot of buffets on this list). Here’s what we’ve booked so far:
- Biergarten – Calvin is really excited about this one. We've been here once before. It was "meh" for us, but we figured we'd give it another shot.
- Chef Mickey – It was either this or ‘Ohana. Steph and Calvin did ‘Ohaha on their honeymoon, and Calvin has never experienced character dining before, so we booked this. We will try to go up to the Top of the World Lounge after eating here to watch the fireworks
- Liberty Tree – We all love this one
- Beaches and Cream – We want Calvin to experience the Kitchen Sink
- Date night – Steph and Calvin are going to go to Planet Hollywood (they went there on the first night of their honeymoon so they want to go back for nostalgia reasons). I’m not sure where Tammy and I will go. We talked about Chef Art Smith’s , but we’re also not really picky so we’ve even talked about Earl of Sandwich or Blaze Pizza. We’ll figure it out.
- Whispering Canyon – we’ll close out the trip here. We’ll make sure to ask for ketchup.
- We’ll probably venture off property for a meal or two as well
Other things being discussed
The big thing we’re still talking about is whether we do a Mickey’s Not So Scary Hallowe’en Party. My thought is that we could do one on the first Sunday there, which would supply our room with candy and chocolate for the week. Tammy and I did do one last year, but we focused on rides and candy. If we go this time we could slow down and enjoy the fireworks and parade rather than trying to cram in as many rides as possible.
The other thing we may do is an after hours thing, but none of those have been announced yet (we’d either do the MNSSHP or an after-hours thing)
We’ll need to decide that one soon.
Final thoughts.
So I’ve noticed a lot of comments on the boards about low crowd levels right now, so I’m hoping thing will be quiet when we’re there. The one thing I did notice is how much dining availability was still available even today. Back when we first started going to Disney, you had to book your dining 180 days in advance, and you pretty much had to be up the second the reservations opened or you could forget about getting some of the more popular restaurants. I’ll use ‘Ohana as an example. If you didn’t get on at the 180 day mark, you could forget getting ‘Ohana. I was just on the app today (Aug 5 – about 45 days from our trip), and there are still ‘Ohana slots available.
We are really looking forward to this trip. Calvin may be in for a bit of a shock as I don’t think he’s ever rope-dropped before, and I’m a rope-drop guy. It should be a fun time. Thanks for following along
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