Star Tours and Sleeping Beauties

[dakuhn]

Hello All....Have decided to start a pre-trip report to try to get myself out of my funk after many losses this year and to help relieve some of the crazy stress I have at work.
Let's start with the cast of characters:
Me - Angie - 32 years old and loves Disney. Have visited the world twice - 3 days on my honeymoon almost 9 years ago and 5 days last year with my family to celebrate our 8th anniversary.
DH - David - 29 years old and shares my love of Disney (yep I robbed the cradle, even gave DH permission to drink champagne at our reception since he was underage at the time).
DS - Xander - 5 years old and totally precocious - loves Buzz Lightyear, Star Wars, legos, and Mickey Mouse. Asks lots of "big questions." Has suggested not going out to eat in order to save money to return to Disney sooner.
DD - Aurora (Rora) - 3 years old and a total princess - loves princesses, truly believes she is Princess Aurora (didn't realize when we chose her name that we were giving her Sleeping Beauty's name, but it totally suits her). Last year when were at Disney and she threw a penny into a fountain I asked her what she wished for and her response was "To never have to clean again."

Anyway, we are headed to POP from December 10th - 18th. Our anniversary is the 16th. Xander had suggested that we go enough days to go to each park twice and that's what we've done, plus one day. Had a pin code for free dining (1 TS, 1 CS, and 1 snack a day) that we just couldn't pass up.
The kiddos don't know we're going yet, but will be so excited. Rora is now suggesting selling all of her baby items to fund a trip back to Disney! Have my kids got the bug or what?
We booked flights out of Indianapolis on AirTran for $388 total using rewards codes I found on here. Thank you DIS! This is a two hour drive for us, but is worth it to save on the flights and not have to drive from Ohio.
I have sent the following ADR choices to Marsha at TMFL. Fingers crossed that they will all be set tomorrow!
Thursday, Dec 10 - Garden Grill - 5 pm
Friday, Dec 11 - Whispering Canyon - 5 pm
Sat, Dec 12 - Crystal Palace Breakfast - as early as possible
Sat, Dec 12 - O'Hana - 7 pm
Sun, Dec 13 - Tusker House Buffet for Nemo seating - 1:15
Mon, Dec 14 - Mama Melrose Fantasmic Package - 3:30 or anytime
Tue, Dec 15 - Chef Mickey's - 7:45 am
Wed, Dec 16 - Le Cellier - 6 pm
We have rescheduled the dates twice, God bless Marsha for not complaining even once. We will definitely be staying with these because these dates were our first choice, but we had changed to get free dining in September. After getting the code to go in December with free dining, we moved back to our original dates and lengthened the trip 3 more days.
We've never stayed at POP, but have requested rooms with a view of Spaceship Earth and Illuminations. We stayed at Coronado last time, but realized that the room itself mattered little to us because we really just crashed there at night.
DS and DD both still use strollers because no one has ever suggested that this is babyish. They actually ask to take the stroller with us when they know that we'll be doing something for an entire day if lots of walking will be involved. Next up....I'll try to figure out how to add pics of the family and will update on last year's trip. Also, do we get all of our ADR's, especially Le Cellier on our anniversary?

 

[dakuhn]

So when I left off I was telling you about our Disney crazy family. We just watched a show on FLN about Disney and my kids are now all excited about autograph books, which we didn't do last time. They also loved the idea of character meals and last time they started out really scared of the characters, but warmed up to them by the second day. So, good thing some of my ADR's are for character meals!
Anyway, they both LOVED pin trading last time and I've been on ebay today buying up some at low rates for trading. I pick one or two sellers and then bid on all of the low priced listings they have for that day. So far I have at least 10 pins for around $2 each and will continue to bid for that same seller for a few days until I have a set to take with me. If we're trading it doesn't matter which pins we get and last time we ended up at an outlet and bought them out. We ended up coming home with over 50 pins and had only taken about 10 with us. We only bought the ones that we found at the outlet and traded for the ones the kids wanted, with some guidance from DH and me.
One of the places featured on the show this afternoon was POP and they were both sitting here yelling that they wanted to go there, so I think that I've booked well.

 

[dakuhn]

I am looking for something special to do for my DH for our anniversary this year. I would love suggestions. We don't have a ton of extra cash, so it can't be something very expensive. So far I am planning to get him some special pins on ebay and to pick up a few new disney shirts. I've heard about cakes and other things...ideas?

 

[dakuhn]

So, one of my next to do's is to make a list of everything we'll need to take with us. We've decided that as we put items away for the fall, we'll go ahead and start throwing items into the suitcase for Disney.
Since we were there last year we have a better idea of what we NEED vs. what we can live without and since we're having to pay for checked bags OOP you can bet we'll be streamlining. We've been talking about how many carry ons DH and I think we can manage with two booster seats, a stroller, and two kiddos in tow at the airport.
Currently we are on the watch for clearance sunscreen. Haven't found them yet, but coupons are clipped and just itching to be used to pick up new sunscreen for December.
I also need to sort pins...those that will be kept and those that are traders. I'll let the kiddos sort them first and then encourage them to get rid of some, but it's their collection and I want them to keep the ones they want and if they're getting rid of some I want, then I'll trade with them. I'm thinking of using the locking backs. Has anyone had luck with those? I'm worried about packing the pins into luggage since DS traded with the very first person he saw last year. The person directing people in line for check in at 8 in the morning at CSR. She was easy to trade with, thank goodness and my super trader was born.

 

[3princesses+aprince]

Hi, joining in on your pre trip planning. It's oh so much FUN!!!! I had a blast planning our first trip this past May and am now waiting for this trip to get a little closer so I can get to it.

I surprised my dh and kids with renting a boat in DTD, it was only about $50 and dh got to drive it. We all enjoyed it so much. Not sure if that kind of thing would excite your dh but it did mine. The CM told him it drives like a cadillac, just get in and take off. My dh was nervous at first, but said that it did drive just like a caddy!!! They gave us a little map with our route and we were off. And the views were just gorgeous!!!

So...just a suggestion.....Not sure if you are interested, but Here are some pictures!!!

 

[dakuhn]

Hi, joining in on your pre trip planning. It's oh so much FUN!!!! I had a blast planning our first trip this past May and am now waiting for this trip to get a little closer so I can get to it.

I surprised my dh and kids with renting a boat in DTD, it was only about $50 and dh got to drive it. We all enjoyed it so much. Not sure if that kind of thing would excite your dh but it did mine. The CM told him it drives like a cadillac, just get in and take off. My dh was nervous at first, but said that it did drive just like a caddy!!! They gave us a little map with our route and we were off. And the views were just gorgeous!!!

So...just a suggestion.....Not sure if you are interested, but Here are some pictures!!!


Thanks for the first suggestion! I will definitely keep it in mind. We'll have so much extra time there that may be just the thing to do. I'll check into that and see if there are any other special things at Downtown Disney

 

[dakuhn]

So, we had to change the night of one of our ressies, but we got every ADR. We are going to Le Celier on our anniversary and booked a Fantasmic package. The woman booking my ressies actually said she was shocked that we were able to book Le Cellier at all and then said it was unbelievable that we got the Fantasmic package at Mama Melrose's too. All ressies were within 30 minutes of our times except the Garden Grill, but we'll just eat a bit earlier on the day of our arrival. No biggie. Thank goodness. One major stress down. FYI...I had booked all ressies except for Fantasmic package online this morning and when I was on the phone thought to check. NONE of them were there and the agent then rebooked all of our ressies. It was a few minutes of panic, but we were able to secure all of them. She apologized for the online program and said they are still working out bugs. She said that she had tried using the online system herself and couldn't get it to work for herself either. THANK GOD we checked our reservations or we'd have gone with no bookings and that would have been a total pain.