Last Minute Disneymoon ~ May 2020

katesters

Earning My Ears
Joined
Jun 8, 2019
Hello everyone! I have a been a longtime lurker of the boards, and this is my first post ever! What better way to jump in than with a pre-trip planning report? :goodvibes

I'm Katie, and my husband is Steven. We got married in May 2019, but I was still in graduate school so we weren't able to go on a honeymoon. We knew all along that whenever we were able, we would be going on a disneymoon! We both grew up in Southern California, and grew up frequently going to Disneyland. Then while dating in college, we had annual passes and tons of Disneyland dates! We even got engaged on the Peter Pan ride over the twinkling lights of London and Neverland :lovestruc So it only made sense to plan a honeymoon in Disneyworld. The only time I've been to Disneyworld was when I was 15, which was almost 13 years ago! And my husband was 11 or 12 when he went, so about 15-16 years ago. Needless to say, we are very excited!

How this came to be
I graduated in August and finally started working in January, so earlier this month we started throwing around the idea of a Disneyworld trip in November 2020. Then, my husband asked why we don't just go in May to celebrate our first anniversary. At first I was worried about dining reservations being only 3 months out, but turns out there was plenty of availability so we went ahead and booked the trip! We are going May 9-17 and can't wait!

Follow along to see how our planning goes, I might do a trip report as well :)
 
So much to plan, so little time

As soon as DH said he wanted to go this May, I immediately went into planning mode. Luckily, I had already done a lot of research thanks to these boards :disrocks:

First up, hotel!
We actually did a Disney Cruise in March 2017, and stayed at POR for 2 nights prior to the cruise and Pop century for 1 night post cruise. POP wasn't our favorite, but we really liked the theming and location of POR. On that trip, while taking the boat to DS, we saw POFQ and were intrigued. Since then, we both have felt that we would want to stay at POFQ on our honeymoon. The deluxe resorts are out of our price range, we like the boat option to DS, and the smaller size of the resort appealed to us.
When we started looking up availability for this trip, we found that a room only discount was being offered for April-September. POFQ didn't show availability with the offer, so we started to book POR. I did more digging and found out how to search the website for availability not under the room only discount. I found that POFQ was available for our dates, and was cheaper then POR under the room only "discount"! :cool1: so we booked POFQ river view 🥳 We also decided to get 7-day, one park per day tickets. DH is against paying extra for park hoppers, and I figure we can upgrade while there if needed.
 
Next up, park planning!

Now that we had dates and a hotel package, I needed to book dining. But first, I realized I needed to plan what parks to visit on which days! I then spent the next hour or two researching and looking up crowd calendars. I came up with the following plan:

Sun 5/10 - MK
Mon 5/11 - EPCOT
Tues 5/12 - DHS
Wed 5/13 - AK
Thurs 5/14 - DHS
Fri 5/15 - AK
Sat 5/16 - MK

I am a little worried about only going to the MK on weekend days, but it is the most similar to Disneyland so I am thinking it will be fine if we have to miss things. I'm also unsure about only one EPCOT day, but I'm hoping we can accomplish rides in the morning and world showcase and flower and garden in the afternoon. DH and I are both big star wars fans so I know we are going to want two chances at boarding passes for ROTR. I think we will get two days worth out of AK because of Pandora, repeat rides on expedition everest, and the animal trails.
 


Finally, dining reservations!

Now that I knew our general park plans, I could finally plan our dining reservations. Since the park hours are 9-9 most days we are there, we decided to do sit down lunches to rest and recharge rather than go back to the hotel for a mid-day break. The rest of our meals will be QS. We also decided against the dining plan because we don't generally eat dessert, we usually share beverages, and we often share the larger QS meals when at Disneyland so we figure the same will happen in Disneyworld. I'm not sure if May is a lower crowd time or we just wanted restaurants that aren't in high demand, but somehow I was able to find all the dining reservations we wanted! :banana:

These are our plans so far:
5/9 – We probably won’t get to the hotel until 8:30-9ish PM, so we are planning on eating dinner at POFQ
5/10 - Liberty Tree Tavern lunch, QS dinner, Trader Sam's as a night cap if we are up to it
5/11 - We are planning the F&G booths for lunch and QS for dinner (I was debating Via Napoli or Chefs de France for dinner, but that might be too much food with the F&G booths)
5/12 - Sci-Fi Dine-In lunch and QS dinner. I'll add that we went to Oga's Cantina in DL in December and found the drinks to be watered down and over priced, so while the atmosphere was really cool we won't be going there this trip. I was curious and found that Oga's still has plenty of availability though!
5/13 - Sanaa lunch (Bread service!), QS dinner
5/14 - QS lunch and late dinner at Flying Fish. If we are up to it I'm hoping to make it to Jellyrolls after dinner
5/15 - I think we might try Nomad's lounge for lunch and QS dinner in the park or DS
5/16 - Be Our Guest lunch, QS dinner, and we will try trader sam's and fireworks from the Poly beach if we don't go to Trader Sam's on 5/10 (or maybe we'll go twice :poop:)
5/17 – Magical Express probably won’t pick us up until around 3ish, so we are planning on spending the day at DS and eating QS lunch there
 
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Flights

The next thing I needed to do was book our flights. We’re flying from the West coast so I knew they would be pricey. Being only 3 months out, prices are at the max end of the range I had expected (but luckily still around the price I was planning for). The first place I checked was Southwest, but the prices were high and the layovers were all around 3 ½ hours. I then checked google flights and found Alaska had nonstop flights for about the same price as the southwest flights. Delta also had flights for about the same price as Alaska and Southwest, and the layovers were only about 90 minutes. We usually fly Southwest, but our best options this time seemed to be Alaska and Delta. We decided to go with the Alaska flights because they are nonstop, which is really nice!

Now that our flights are booked it is starting to set in that we are actually going to WDW in only 3 months! I can’t believe we started thinking of this trip only 1 week ago, and now 7 days later it is finalized that we are going! Between planning and my new job, time is going to go fast :yay:
 
Fastpass planning

Our fastpass day opens on March 10th, so I have started to discuss with DH what rides are top priority. Since we still visit Disneyland almost every time we are back in CA to visit family, we want to focus on rides that we don’t have at DL. We decided to still try for FP for some of our favorites like POC and HM because we love them and want to see the differences between the two. I also love thunder mountain, but it is down for refurbishment while we will be in WDW. We also haven’t been to DCA since 2014, so it’s been years since we’ve been on cars, toy story mania, and TOT….and we’ve never been on soarin over the world or guardians of the galaxy mission breakout (still sad about that change).

So far I want to try for the following FP:
5/10 MK – SDMT, POC, HM
5/11 EPCOT – FEA or test track as our tier 1, spaceship earth, living with the land. I’m not sure which tier 2 rides are the best to get FP for, if anyone has better suggestions please let me know! We are planning on rope dropping soarin’ and FEA/test track (whichever one we don’t get a FP for).
5/12 DHS – I’m really hoping we are able to get SDD this day, even if it is in the afternoon. For our tier 2 rides I’m going to try for Rock N Roller Coaster and TOT. We will rope drop to try for ROTR boarding groups and then ride Mickey and Minnie’s runaway railway. We just rode MFSR twice on our DL day in Dec 2019, so DH and I aren’t as worried about riding it this trip.
5/13 AK – Again, I’m hoping for FOP really any time of the day. Then EE and Kilimanjaro safaris for our tier 2 FP. I was surprised when DH told me he has never done a safari type ride even though we grew up so close to San Diego Zoo and San Diego Wild Animal Park. I’m hoping to rope drop Navi River Journey.
5/14 DHS – SDD, rock n roller coaster, TSMM. Again, we will try for ROTR boarding passes and rope dropping Mickey and Minnie’s runaway railway.
5/15 AK – FOP, EE, Dinosaur
5/16 MK – SDMT, space mountain, peter pan

Well, this is all the planning I have done so far! I have taken a look at the magicbands and am waiting until the upgraded bands have options we both like at the same time. Other than that, I am not sure what else needs to be done before our fastpass day!
 


Welp, we had to cancel and decided to reschedule for sept 19-27 with the covid-19 free dining package! Now I'm crossing my fingers hoping there are no hurricanes and that the parks are open come September 🤞
 
I feel your pain. My son and I were supposed to be there in May as well. May 5-12. We re*booked for October 8 -15. Had been booked at Beach Club; water view, had to change (due to availability) to garden view, Yacht Club, for more money. :crazy2: Should be interesting to see how things pan out.
 

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