Well, it's been a little over three years since my DH (Rob) and I (Cat) had a blast on our "adults only" trip to Disney World. I'm so glad that we took that vacation, alone - but the entire time we talked about how we couldn't wait until we could bring our son. As we watched those tired stressed out parents drag their screaming kids to bus stops and onto attractions we took notes and tucked them in the back of our heads for when we took our son to the amazing world of Disney. We said at that time that we would wait till he was 8yrs old... by the time our vacation was up - we had lowered it to 7yrs old and then by the time our plane landed at home, it was at 6yrs old. haaa
In case you don't know us we are Rob and Cat:
We have been married for 15yrs and are from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. And then there's....
Jonah, our 6yr old son who loves life, people, is creative. Jonah also goes with the flow... which is one of the main reasons we felt he was ready for Disney. He is going to LOVE everything about Disney World. Except maybe all the walking - but other than that, he'll be all about it!
Since Rob and I went on our adult trip (2011) we have talked about Disney, shared pictures with our son, watched countless YouTube videos with him, spent Saturday mornings watching WDW documentaries, and talking about what we will do when he goes there.
This trip almost didn't happen. Earlier this year we had it planned for October and we were going to go for 9 nights. We were also going to be going with my sister (who has a trip to WDW on her bucket list). But, when her daughter became engaged and the wedding was planned for the beginning of Oct - her trip with us was put on hold. Then, this winter/spring we really didn't think I was going to have a full time job by summer. With so much uncertainty, we decided to scrap the trip. THEN - free dining came out. Between that and the fact that we already had a huge chunk of it saved up for...we decided to just GO FOR IT!!!! So, we booked the trip and then in late summer we found a good deal on plane tickets so we became locked and loaded. Just then - when my employer said my job was secure... I was told my job would be cut back to part time. Luckily, I had been looking for a new job for about two years and two weeks after I started being part time - I was offered a full time job at a local university! This trip had seen a lot of changes but what we ended up with was the following...
On Monday, Nov 10th, after work - the three of us will be heading to a town about 1.5hrs south of us. Now... a side note - although Jonah knows we are going, he doesn't exactly know the DAY we are going. He has said for over a year now that he would want to be surprised when we go. So - we are honoring his wishes. We told him that we have to pick up our plane tickets at the airport that we are flying out of. We told him we have a meeting with the airport really early in the morning. Because "our meeting" is so early in the morning we are going to spend the night in a hotel the night before. haa haa The truth is - our plane leaves at like 5:30am. So, we'll have to leave our hotel about 3:30am. We figure, when we pull up at the airport, we will drop the surprise on him. He won't be expecting anything!!!!
We will be spending 6 nights down in Orlando. (A bit of a change from 9 nights to 6 nights - but it will still be good and we'll have plenty of time to see the sights.) Our reservations are at Pop Century and we were fortunate enough to have been able to the Free Dining. So, we will be doing the quick service meal plan which comes with our value hotel reservation. However, we have planned a couple sit down meals. We did upgrade our room to be closer to the mail hall - I think that will be a God send when it's late. Another addiction is we are renting a stroller. Now all you haters, calm down. We didn't want to slow down too much and with a stroller, if he gets tired, he can take a nap. So yeah, he's six...but we won't be carrying him at the end of the night! We also have a few added bonuses planned into our trip. I think it's going to be great and Jonah is going to have a blast! Here's our itenary:
Tuesday - arrive 12:30pm. We plan on being to our first park - Magic Kingdom by about 3pm. We have fast passes that day for Pirates, Big Thunder Mountain Railroad and SDMT. Casey's Corner has our name written all over it... we love their corn dog nuggets!!!! We'll head back to the hotel at about 7pm so that we have time to hit up the pool and get to bed after having a VERY long day.
Wednesday - Extra Morning Value Hours at Animal Kingdom. We have fast passes for: Festival of the Lion King, Finding Nemo and Expedition Everest. We plan on hitting up Flame Tree BBQ for lunch and we should be done about 4:30pm-ish. Then we're hoping to head on over to MK where we can catch the electrical parade and Wishes. Then it will be nighty night!!!!
Thursday - We will have our first full day at the MK!!! YAY! Bonus that day is that there is morning magic hours! Jonah has a reservation for the Pirates League at 9:30am and that following that we have a fp for Pirates fo the Carribean, SDMT and Echanted Tales with Belle. We also have a fp for lunch at BOG. BOG is one of those fp's that if we got it - then great! If not it wasn't going to be the end of the world.... that being said - we're really excited that we will be going! That night is the MVMCP, which we do NOT have tickets for, so we'll head back to the hotel for some swimming or perhaps Downtown Disney. But, something tells me some the beds will be calling our name!
Friday - We will be taking a taxi from POP and taking it over to the Poly where we will be spending breakfast with Stitch and his friends at O'hana! When we asked Jonah what ONE person he wanted to see... Stitch was the man! So, O'hana it is! I think it's going to be a great time and I hear the food is wonderful! After breakfast we will be jumping on the monorail and heading for Epcot which will be opening at 9am. We were able to get: Mission Space Orange, Soarin, and the Character Spot fastpasses. Then at about 2/2:30pm we will have to get back on the monorail for the Magic Kingdom and take a ferry over to Fort Wilderness where we have 4pm reservations for Hoop Dee Revue. Ok - so I know this is going to sound strange...but I sing at a lot of funerals and weddings. So, when I sing i get paid, and paid very well! So, this summer when I did one of the weddings - I took the money I was paid and treated us all to reservations at Hoop Dee Do! Actually, my funeral and wedding money is paying for a huge chuck of this trip. haa haa
Saturday - Hollywood Studios!!!! We will be able to take advantage of morning extra magic hours! So, we hope to score Jonah a place at the Jedi Academy!!!! We did have the opportunity to get fastpasses for Toy Story, Frozen sing-a-long and Star Tours! Not sure exactly where we will eat. The last time we did the Backlot Express and it was really good. So, maybe we'll hit that up again - OR we will do Staring Rolls... I'm dying to have one of their cupcakes! We hope to see Fantasia and then go back to the hotel.
Sunday - Second day at the MJ!!!! Talk about lucky.....we were able to get 3 days worth of fastpasses for the Mine Train!!!! Yay! So, we will have SDMT, Haunted Mansion and the parade. We hope to take our time and take it all in! Columbia Harbor Haus is calling our name with the lobster rolls.....I can't wait to have it! We will be there until early evening when it closes again for the Christmas party. So, I guess we will go back to the resort to pack and relax. That way we can get up the next morning and have more fun!!!!
Monday - Departure Day! I'm not sure what park we will tour this day - but we will just wait to see what we still want to see. No matter what we do, we'll have to be back to the resort for 2:30pm-ish. We will try our best not to cry and to leave with dignity. Something tells me we will be exhausted and will sleep the whole way home. The next day - Jonah will have school and Rob and I will do our best to recover!!!!
So - there ya go!!!! We have our Touring Plans all worked on, our spare bedroom is filling up with things to pack and I'm already having a hard time sleeping due to the excitement! It's going to be a long week at work!!!! Just 8 more days!!!!!
In case you don't know us we are Rob and Cat:
We have been married for 15yrs and are from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. And then there's....
Jonah, our 6yr old son who loves life, people, is creative. Jonah also goes with the flow... which is one of the main reasons we felt he was ready for Disney. He is going to LOVE everything about Disney World. Except maybe all the walking - but other than that, he'll be all about it!
Since Rob and I went on our adult trip (2011) we have talked about Disney, shared pictures with our son, watched countless YouTube videos with him, spent Saturday mornings watching WDW documentaries, and talking about what we will do when he goes there.
This trip almost didn't happen. Earlier this year we had it planned for October and we were going to go for 9 nights. We were also going to be going with my sister (who has a trip to WDW on her bucket list). But, when her daughter became engaged and the wedding was planned for the beginning of Oct - her trip with us was put on hold. Then, this winter/spring we really didn't think I was going to have a full time job by summer. With so much uncertainty, we decided to scrap the trip. THEN - free dining came out. Between that and the fact that we already had a huge chunk of it saved up for...we decided to just GO FOR IT!!!! So, we booked the trip and then in late summer we found a good deal on plane tickets so we became locked and loaded. Just then - when my employer said my job was secure... I was told my job would be cut back to part time. Luckily, I had been looking for a new job for about two years and two weeks after I started being part time - I was offered a full time job at a local university! This trip had seen a lot of changes but what we ended up with was the following...
On Monday, Nov 10th, after work - the three of us will be heading to a town about 1.5hrs south of us. Now... a side note - although Jonah knows we are going, he doesn't exactly know the DAY we are going. He has said for over a year now that he would want to be surprised when we go. So - we are honoring his wishes. We told him that we have to pick up our plane tickets at the airport that we are flying out of. We told him we have a meeting with the airport really early in the morning. Because "our meeting" is so early in the morning we are going to spend the night in a hotel the night before. haa haa The truth is - our plane leaves at like 5:30am. So, we'll have to leave our hotel about 3:30am. We figure, when we pull up at the airport, we will drop the surprise on him. He won't be expecting anything!!!!
We will be spending 6 nights down in Orlando. (A bit of a change from 9 nights to 6 nights - but it will still be good and we'll have plenty of time to see the sights.) Our reservations are at Pop Century and we were fortunate enough to have been able to the Free Dining. So, we will be doing the quick service meal plan which comes with our value hotel reservation. However, we have planned a couple sit down meals. We did upgrade our room to be closer to the mail hall - I think that will be a God send when it's late. Another addiction is we are renting a stroller. Now all you haters, calm down. We didn't want to slow down too much and with a stroller, if he gets tired, he can take a nap. So yeah, he's six...but we won't be carrying him at the end of the night! We also have a few added bonuses planned into our trip. I think it's going to be great and Jonah is going to have a blast! Here's our itenary:
Tuesday - arrive 12:30pm. We plan on being to our first park - Magic Kingdom by about 3pm. We have fast passes that day for Pirates, Big Thunder Mountain Railroad and SDMT. Casey's Corner has our name written all over it... we love their corn dog nuggets!!!! We'll head back to the hotel at about 7pm so that we have time to hit up the pool and get to bed after having a VERY long day.
Wednesday - Extra Morning Value Hours at Animal Kingdom. We have fast passes for: Festival of the Lion King, Finding Nemo and Expedition Everest. We plan on hitting up Flame Tree BBQ for lunch and we should be done about 4:30pm-ish. Then we're hoping to head on over to MK where we can catch the electrical parade and Wishes. Then it will be nighty night!!!!
Thursday - We will have our first full day at the MK!!! YAY! Bonus that day is that there is morning magic hours! Jonah has a reservation for the Pirates League at 9:30am and that following that we have a fp for Pirates fo the Carribean, SDMT and Echanted Tales with Belle. We also have a fp for lunch at BOG. BOG is one of those fp's that if we got it - then great! If not it wasn't going to be the end of the world.... that being said - we're really excited that we will be going! That night is the MVMCP, which we do NOT have tickets for, so we'll head back to the hotel for some swimming or perhaps Downtown Disney. But, something tells me some the beds will be calling our name!
Friday - We will be taking a taxi from POP and taking it over to the Poly where we will be spending breakfast with Stitch and his friends at O'hana! When we asked Jonah what ONE person he wanted to see... Stitch was the man! So, O'hana it is! I think it's going to be a great time and I hear the food is wonderful! After breakfast we will be jumping on the monorail and heading for Epcot which will be opening at 9am. We were able to get: Mission Space Orange, Soarin, and the Character Spot fastpasses. Then at about 2/2:30pm we will have to get back on the monorail for the Magic Kingdom and take a ferry over to Fort Wilderness where we have 4pm reservations for Hoop Dee Revue. Ok - so I know this is going to sound strange...but I sing at a lot of funerals and weddings. So, when I sing i get paid, and paid very well! So, this summer when I did one of the weddings - I took the money I was paid and treated us all to reservations at Hoop Dee Do! Actually, my funeral and wedding money is paying for a huge chuck of this trip. haa haa
Saturday - Hollywood Studios!!!! We will be able to take advantage of morning extra magic hours! So, we hope to score Jonah a place at the Jedi Academy!!!! We did have the opportunity to get fastpasses for Toy Story, Frozen sing-a-long and Star Tours! Not sure exactly where we will eat. The last time we did the Backlot Express and it was really good. So, maybe we'll hit that up again - OR we will do Staring Rolls... I'm dying to have one of their cupcakes! We hope to see Fantasia and then go back to the hotel.
Sunday - Second day at the MJ!!!! Talk about lucky.....we were able to get 3 days worth of fastpasses for the Mine Train!!!! Yay! So, we will have SDMT, Haunted Mansion and the parade. We hope to take our time and take it all in! Columbia Harbor Haus is calling our name with the lobster rolls.....I can't wait to have it! We will be there until early evening when it closes again for the Christmas party. So, I guess we will go back to the resort to pack and relax. That way we can get up the next morning and have more fun!!!!
Monday - Departure Day! I'm not sure what park we will tour this day - but we will just wait to see what we still want to see. No matter what we do, we'll have to be back to the resort for 2:30pm-ish. We will try our best not to cry and to leave with dignity. Something tells me we will be exhausted and will sleep the whole way home. The next day - Jonah will have school and Rob and I will do our best to recover!!!!
So - there ya go!!!! We have our Touring Plans all worked on, our spare bedroom is filling up with things to pack and I'm already having a hard time sleeping due to the excitement! It's going to be a long week at work!!!! Just 8 more days!!!!!
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