faline
05-21-2010, 07:34 PM
Who: Gene & Me
When: Tuesday, May 11 – Wednesday, May 19
By time I get a chance to edit and post this, we’ll be back from our latest Disney adventure. But, as I sit and write this, we are less than one week before arriving at Disney World! Let the excitement begin!
Actually, Gene’s been pretty excited about this trip all along! He keeps reminding me how long we have before we leave. Usually, I’m the one providing the little updates about how many weeks, days, or hours we have left! The phrase “I need a vacation” is now being repeated almost daily in our household!
Gene has said he want to eat more snacks on this trip – particularly ice cream. He’s also looking forward to devouring a few chocolate trip cookies.
After so many trips, it feels there really can’t be anything left that we haven’t done. But, let’s review our plans…Hmm, what’s new for us this trip? While we’ve dined in the Castle many times (long before characters were a regular features of meals here), we’ve never done the Fairytale Lunch so that will be new for us. We also have a reservation for Garden View Tea – something that I’ve always been hesitant to book as I wasn’t sure if Gene would enjoy it. Well, we’ll give it a try this trip and hope for the best! The other new thing we’ll do will be Mickey’s Magical Milestones tour in the Magic Kingdom. Actually, I had tried to book the Steam Train tour which I know Gene would have liked but, for some reason, it wasn’t available during our trip so I booked this one instead.
We’re staying at Port Orleans French Quarter. This will be our second visit here. I’m hoping we will find it as charming as we did the first time we resided here, last summer. We enjoyed this resort far more than I might have expected and hope that holds true for this trip as well.
This time, we’re renting a car. I didn’t want to do Magical Express and was going to book a town car service. Gene pointed out that, by time we tip the driver and pay for the transport, it’s about the same cost as a rental. Okay, I guess he’s right. Rental prices, however, have remained consistently higher than I would have hoped from when I first booked. I could have booked a smaller car – a little puddle jumper, I suppose, but have booked a full size car through National. Gene is looking forward to using the Emerald Isle so I didn’t downgrade though that might have saved us some money. In the end, I think the rental will cost us more than the town car might have and certainly more than Magical Express but I’ll stick with it even if we don’t plan to use it a whole lot.
Our flights are on Southwest and we did spring for Early Bird check-in. This is the second time we’ve used the Early Bird system and hope it works as well as it did the last time around. Our flight is an early morning flight – leaving at 7:45 in the morning. It’s not so early that I wanted to spend an extra night at the airport the night before so that’s a bit of a savings. We’ll still arrive on Disney property by lunch time though, from experience, I know we’ll be too tired to make it a really long day. On the way home, we’ve booked an early evening flight so will have most of the last day to continue to play!
Park passes? Our last set of annual passes expired in August of last year. We took a trip in December but were able to piece together park passes from some we had left from a non-expiring 10-day hopper along with a couple of one-day tickets we had from a couple of free-dining trips. For this trip, I had enough Disney dollars to pay for one annual pass in total so I have pre-ordered that. We’ll purchase a second annual pass after we arrive. For that, we will use a combination of Disney gift cards (the result of a Disney offer last year wherein others who bought annual passes at a discount on a card provided by the Visa holder would bring back $25 gift cards per annual pass purchased); [Aside - Thanks, Mel!!] additional Disney Visa dollars; and a bit paid out of pocket. We’ll also purchase the Tables in Wonderland card.
For us, dining is always an important part of our overall experience. We have reservations at a number of venues that we enjoy – some we haven’t visited for quite some time. Included on the list of those we haven’t been to in quite some time are: House of Blues; Boatwrights; and Fulton’s. We also plan to revisit some places we’ve been to more recently such a Narcoosee’s; Rainforest Café; Kona Café; and Le Cellier. Flying Fish is on the list as a repeat visit but we’ve only been once before and it was so long ago that it almost qualifies as a new experience. We may, or may not, stop in at the following quick service locations: Casey’s; Boardwalk Bakery; The Fountain at the Dolphin; Earl of Sandwich; and Electric Umbrella. Dining plans are always subject to modification based to how things really go on a day to day basis.
Oddly, I haven’t mentioned the parks. Of course, we will plan to visit each of parks at least once. I always greatly enjoy the Flower & Garden Festival. Unfortunately, it ends just a few days after our arrival and before our trip ends so we’ll likely only get one day there while this event is going on. I’m really sorry they changed the date range for this event as it used to go into early June. Still, we’ll do as much as we can related to the Festival. There will be some closures during our visit and some re-openings. I believe Rock n Roller Coaster will shut down shortly after we arrive and that the Muppets will re-open during our trip. I hope we’ll be able to take in both of these as well as many of our other favorites. Come to think of it, we haven’t been on Space Mountain since the refurb even though our last trip was after it reopened. If we miss something, it’ll be okay. We want to relax and not rush. After all, having fun and relaxing is the whole purpose of being on vacation.
Additional reports on how it all plays out will be forthcoming!
When: Tuesday, May 11 – Wednesday, May 19
By time I get a chance to edit and post this, we’ll be back from our latest Disney adventure. But, as I sit and write this, we are less than one week before arriving at Disney World! Let the excitement begin!
Actually, Gene’s been pretty excited about this trip all along! He keeps reminding me how long we have before we leave. Usually, I’m the one providing the little updates about how many weeks, days, or hours we have left! The phrase “I need a vacation” is now being repeated almost daily in our household!
Gene has said he want to eat more snacks on this trip – particularly ice cream. He’s also looking forward to devouring a few chocolate trip cookies.
After so many trips, it feels there really can’t be anything left that we haven’t done. But, let’s review our plans…Hmm, what’s new for us this trip? While we’ve dined in the Castle many times (long before characters were a regular features of meals here), we’ve never done the Fairytale Lunch so that will be new for us. We also have a reservation for Garden View Tea – something that I’ve always been hesitant to book as I wasn’t sure if Gene would enjoy it. Well, we’ll give it a try this trip and hope for the best! The other new thing we’ll do will be Mickey’s Magical Milestones tour in the Magic Kingdom. Actually, I had tried to book the Steam Train tour which I know Gene would have liked but, for some reason, it wasn’t available during our trip so I booked this one instead.
We’re staying at Port Orleans French Quarter. This will be our second visit here. I’m hoping we will find it as charming as we did the first time we resided here, last summer. We enjoyed this resort far more than I might have expected and hope that holds true for this trip as well.
This time, we’re renting a car. I didn’t want to do Magical Express and was going to book a town car service. Gene pointed out that, by time we tip the driver and pay for the transport, it’s about the same cost as a rental. Okay, I guess he’s right. Rental prices, however, have remained consistently higher than I would have hoped from when I first booked. I could have booked a smaller car – a little puddle jumper, I suppose, but have booked a full size car through National. Gene is looking forward to using the Emerald Isle so I didn’t downgrade though that might have saved us some money. In the end, I think the rental will cost us more than the town car might have and certainly more than Magical Express but I’ll stick with it even if we don’t plan to use it a whole lot.
Our flights are on Southwest and we did spring for Early Bird check-in. This is the second time we’ve used the Early Bird system and hope it works as well as it did the last time around. Our flight is an early morning flight – leaving at 7:45 in the morning. It’s not so early that I wanted to spend an extra night at the airport the night before so that’s a bit of a savings. We’ll still arrive on Disney property by lunch time though, from experience, I know we’ll be too tired to make it a really long day. On the way home, we’ve booked an early evening flight so will have most of the last day to continue to play!
Park passes? Our last set of annual passes expired in August of last year. We took a trip in December but were able to piece together park passes from some we had left from a non-expiring 10-day hopper along with a couple of one-day tickets we had from a couple of free-dining trips. For this trip, I had enough Disney dollars to pay for one annual pass in total so I have pre-ordered that. We’ll purchase a second annual pass after we arrive. For that, we will use a combination of Disney gift cards (the result of a Disney offer last year wherein others who bought annual passes at a discount on a card provided by the Visa holder would bring back $25 gift cards per annual pass purchased); [Aside - Thanks, Mel!!] additional Disney Visa dollars; and a bit paid out of pocket. We’ll also purchase the Tables in Wonderland card.
For us, dining is always an important part of our overall experience. We have reservations at a number of venues that we enjoy – some we haven’t visited for quite some time. Included on the list of those we haven’t been to in quite some time are: House of Blues; Boatwrights; and Fulton’s. We also plan to revisit some places we’ve been to more recently such a Narcoosee’s; Rainforest Café; Kona Café; and Le Cellier. Flying Fish is on the list as a repeat visit but we’ve only been once before and it was so long ago that it almost qualifies as a new experience. We may, or may not, stop in at the following quick service locations: Casey’s; Boardwalk Bakery; The Fountain at the Dolphin; Earl of Sandwich; and Electric Umbrella. Dining plans are always subject to modification based to how things really go on a day to day basis.
Oddly, I haven’t mentioned the parks. Of course, we will plan to visit each of parks at least once. I always greatly enjoy the Flower & Garden Festival. Unfortunately, it ends just a few days after our arrival and before our trip ends so we’ll likely only get one day there while this event is going on. I’m really sorry they changed the date range for this event as it used to go into early June. Still, we’ll do as much as we can related to the Festival. There will be some closures during our visit and some re-openings. I believe Rock n Roller Coaster will shut down shortly after we arrive and that the Muppets will re-open during our trip. I hope we’ll be able to take in both of these as well as many of our other favorites. Come to think of it, we haven’t been on Space Mountain since the refurb even though our last trip was after it reopened. If we miss something, it’ll be okay. We want to relax and not rush. After all, having fun and relaxing is the whole purpose of being on vacation.
Additional reports on how it all plays out will be forthcoming!