Hello and welcome to another Brifraz trip report. If you traveled with us before you know how it usually works - a brief pre-trip outline of plans, lots of live trip reporting, then after the trip some poorly completed scattered posts to try to wrap things up. Well, I'm doing a legit pre-trip this time. Why? Because there are some issues right now. Maybe you didn't realize that?
Which means I'm going to lead off this thread by opening it up to the debate. It's my thraed and I'm okay with that. A little debate will keep things lively - now I'm not talking about something like the thousand plus pages of debate on the mask/precautions/COVID threads, but a little discussion is totally fine and all opinions are welcome. Now, let me be clear I'm not asking I 'what you would do?' But, after reading things below, I welcome opinions on 'what do you think we would or should do.'
Obviously, you can't get into those kinds of discussions without knowing who we are and what we are all about. Here goes. Feel free to steal our identities if you need to.
Our crew is a trio. Two nearly-50 year old adults and a 16 year old rising senior in High School. The two adults are high school teachers and have been since the 1990s. Obviously that means our only potential vacation times are summer and Christmas. Two teacher salaries have by no means made us rich, but we prioritize travel. We feel it 'broadens the mind' even if it is somewhere we've been before - always trying new experiences and interacting with new people (heck, we've driven across the USA 3 times and Canada once). You can see in my signature, we head to WDW often and try very hard to make each trip unique in different ways. We had trips in December (with extended family) and January (as leader of over 100 high school kids plus families) and were planning a summer totally away from the World. We had a vague plan to travel to Europe for a few weeks driving through multiple countries. It was going to be the last big family trip before our daughter goes to college. But we just couldn't afford it - there was just no way to make it work. Since we are DVC and have some family-owned timeshare, we can stay at WDW (or that area) for pretty much nothing more than our expected annual fees and we drive from Maryland, so transportation is pretty cheap. Airfare and hotels around Europe was cost prohibitive. Our daughter already has a senior Disney trip planned with friends for next summer and we were possibly doing a couple trip as well, so buying an AP for late this summer through early next summer is also an expense that we expected (although we didn't expect it until next year). Thus, some time in late January, we decided that we would do some smaller trips (including college visits) around the country and then spend a week at WDW.
Sadly, the smaller trips are pretty much all gone due to the current health crisis. But our WDW trip is not until mid-July, so it might still be happening. Health-wise we are all in pretty good shape. Sure, we've got the usual little things that tend to happen as you get close to 50, but nothing that makes our immune systems compromised and certainly nothing that puts us in a higher risk group. As a pair of high school teachers, we get exposed to pretty much every bug that shows up in our communities and in general we weather things pretty successfully. Our daughter currently works at the local grocery store which similarly puts her 'in harm's way' on a regular basis. While the concern over the coronavirus is certainly in our minds, we also are used to taking precautions and have very little innate fear of getting sick. We also have no problem wearing masks or taking other preventative measures if we are traveling.
Why would we even consider still heading to WDW? Well, just like everyone, the past couple months have been tough for us (obviously, far less difficult than for many). We have been relearning how to do our jobs, we've had to cancel 11 major shows/performances (we both teach performing arts), and we're facing the prospect of our jobs/roles changing dramatically in a few months. Our daughter has (again, obviously) missed out on a number of usual things for HS Juniors and is quite concerned about the prospect of her Senior year being very altered. The stress and uncertainty of these things makes the idea of ANY kind of escapism very appealing - even if it is limited and changed from our usual expectations.
There's a little background on us and some elements of where we are coming from with this (possible) trip. For the sake of discussion, let's assume that WDW will be relatively fully open by mid-July, but with significant precautionary measures in place. I'll be back soon with some of our thoughts on the trip and what we might or might not be planning and doing if it happens.
Which means I'm going to lead off this thread by opening it up to the debate. It's my thraed and I'm okay with that. A little debate will keep things lively - now I'm not talking about something like the thousand plus pages of debate on the mask/precautions/COVID threads, but a little discussion is totally fine and all opinions are welcome. Now, let me be clear I'm not asking I 'what you would do?' But, after reading things below, I welcome opinions on 'what do you think we would or should do.'
Obviously, you can't get into those kinds of discussions without knowing who we are and what we are all about. Here goes. Feel free to steal our identities if you need to.
Our crew is a trio. Two nearly-50 year old adults and a 16 year old rising senior in High School. The two adults are high school teachers and have been since the 1990s. Obviously that means our only potential vacation times are summer and Christmas. Two teacher salaries have by no means made us rich, but we prioritize travel. We feel it 'broadens the mind' even if it is somewhere we've been before - always trying new experiences and interacting with new people (heck, we've driven across the USA 3 times and Canada once). You can see in my signature, we head to WDW often and try very hard to make each trip unique in different ways. We had trips in December (with extended family) and January (as leader of over 100 high school kids plus families) and were planning a summer totally away from the World. We had a vague plan to travel to Europe for a few weeks driving through multiple countries. It was going to be the last big family trip before our daughter goes to college. But we just couldn't afford it - there was just no way to make it work. Since we are DVC and have some family-owned timeshare, we can stay at WDW (or that area) for pretty much nothing more than our expected annual fees and we drive from Maryland, so transportation is pretty cheap. Airfare and hotels around Europe was cost prohibitive. Our daughter already has a senior Disney trip planned with friends for next summer and we were possibly doing a couple trip as well, so buying an AP for late this summer through early next summer is also an expense that we expected (although we didn't expect it until next year). Thus, some time in late January, we decided that we would do some smaller trips (including college visits) around the country and then spend a week at WDW.
Sadly, the smaller trips are pretty much all gone due to the current health crisis. But our WDW trip is not until mid-July, so it might still be happening. Health-wise we are all in pretty good shape. Sure, we've got the usual little things that tend to happen as you get close to 50, but nothing that makes our immune systems compromised and certainly nothing that puts us in a higher risk group. As a pair of high school teachers, we get exposed to pretty much every bug that shows up in our communities and in general we weather things pretty successfully. Our daughter currently works at the local grocery store which similarly puts her 'in harm's way' on a regular basis. While the concern over the coronavirus is certainly in our minds, we also are used to taking precautions and have very little innate fear of getting sick. We also have no problem wearing masks or taking other preventative measures if we are traveling.
Why would we even consider still heading to WDW? Well, just like everyone, the past couple months have been tough for us (obviously, far less difficult than for many). We have been relearning how to do our jobs, we've had to cancel 11 major shows/performances (we both teach performing arts), and we're facing the prospect of our jobs/roles changing dramatically in a few months. Our daughter has (again, obviously) missed out on a number of usual things for HS Juniors and is quite concerned about the prospect of her Senior year being very altered. The stress and uncertainty of these things makes the idea of ANY kind of escapism very appealing - even if it is limited and changed from our usual expectations.
There's a little background on us and some elements of where we are coming from with this (possible) trip. For the sake of discussion, let's assume that WDW will be relatively fully open by mid-July, but with significant precautionary measures in place. I'll be back soon with some of our thoughts on the trip and what we might or might not be planning and doing if it happens.
Only a few options were available for food at the time and we weren't really in the mood for waffles from Sleepy Hollow, so we just grabbed a snack at the Liberty Market.
