Plans, plans and more plans - that's half the fun! October 23 and July 24 PTR

[JenB2014]

Hello!

Long time lurker - so pleased to see @MarieLightning back with a trip - but I realise that makes me sound rather stalkery as she has no idea who I am but I've loved reading her trip reports in the past.

I have tried and failed to do a trip report before but I'm really going to try and do better this time .

We are a family of four from the UK. We bought into DVC in 2019 but so far have only managed two trips since then. We plan to make up for it this year and next though! Let me start with some basics!

Who?
Me
Jen. Lover of classic Disney - Minnie will always have my heart.
Favourite park - probably Epcot but I love Magic Kingdom and Animal Kingdom too. I'm just not a big fan of Hollywood Studios.

Other half
I'll call him JD. Neither of us went to Disney as kids but we've been hooked on DisneyWorld since we spent a few days there pre-kids on a road trip about 10 years ago.
Favourite park - also Epcot! Sometime we're too similar for our good but does lead to less conflict when planning trips.

Eldest D
9 years old and wonderful. I'll call her D9. So much fun to be around. Has been to DisneyWorld 5 times I think. Each trip is about two weeks as we travel so far so she's quite the expert.
Favourite park - Epcot...sensing a theme? Guardians is her absolute favourite.

Youngest D
6 years old and brilliant. I'll call her D6. She's growing up fast! She's been four times but her memories are not quite as sharp as D9. She mixes up Disneyland Paris and DisneyWorld a fair amount when talking about trips and what she wants to do.
I think her favourite park is Hollywood Studios because of Slinky but I'm not 100% sure on that.

When?
Well don't tell the kids but October 2023 for 10 days during their school holiday.
They think we are going July 2024. And we are. But we have a sneaky trip in first.
I'll mostly be talking about plans for October but our 11 months DVC booking window is opening up soon so I'll probably talk about the July trip a bit as that takes shape.

Where?
Polynesian. This is one of our home resorts and our kids favourite.
We did two trips last year - one split stay with Beach Club / Copper Creek / Poly and one stay just as the Poly. We all fell in love with it. The girls adore the pools and the dance parties on the lawn.

This trip we will be doing MNSSHP for the first time. And Tron! Also really hoping for Akershaus breakfast as we used to love that.

But first the small matter of a week on the Disney Dream in a few weeks. We are going up to Norway and we can't wait for that. We feel so lucky to have the trips planned that we do and excited to share the plans on here.

 

[Minniedoc]

Sounds wonderful - looking forward to hearing about it. I always have trips planned too. I would not be able to leave if I did not know I was coming back!

 

[JenB2014]

For this trip, we are flying into Orlando but home from Miami. Flights were cheaper this way but it's a bit of a pain! We've rented a car on our last day to drive to the airport.

Haven't given any thought to how we'll get from MCO to the hotel when we arrive. Maybe just an uber. We do now have Global Entry for the US which hopefully will mean far shorter queues at immigration. That is never fun after a 9 hour flight with kids who think it's midnight.

We normally start each trip at Magic Kingdom but it's not a party day and my plan is to do Magic Kingdom on party days normally as we are early birds and rarely stay all day for fireworks and hopefully the parks will be quieter. So this trip we might start with Epcot! It does feel a bit radical thought to be honest so we may yet change that.

We haven't actually bought tickets yet. Must get on that! We've debated annual passes as it's about the same price for our two trips but I'm a bit stressed by the idea of not being able to book all of our park days in advance. We already get DVC discount so it doesn't seem like an annual pass is definitely worth it. We won't be able to squeeze in a third trip which would make it definitely worth it.

More updates to come as we make more plans!

 

[JenB2014]

So, change of plan. With a few more calculations and realising we were entirely wrong about annual passes restricting us to only five days of reservations if we were staying in a Disney resort, we've gone ahead and booked Sorcerer's Annual Passes!

Now of course the challenge is on to squeeze in a third trip in the year .

It does also mean we've finally made park passes for our October trip. These will definitely change along the way but so far planning:

Arrival day - no park as we won't get to MCO until about 6.30pm and we need to deal with the time difference so definitely straight to bed.

Day 1 - EPCOT! Crazy I know! It should always be MK but that's a non party day in amongst party days and I just think will be ridiculously busy. So EPCOT it is an I'm hoping for Akershaus breakfast, guardians (possibly twice with an ILL) and test track. It will be an early start (jeg lag!) and a relaxed late afternoon /evening whilst we are still adjusting.

Day 2 - Magic Kingdom. Ah, all will now be right with the world when we see that castle.
I'm debating Be Our Guest lunch as I love the interior but it's not really worth it for the food. I miss the old quick service breakfast and lunch options here so much! We also want to do Crystal Palace breakfast this trip as it's been a long while since we have done that but not sure which day yet. Hopefully we can get on Tron this day too..

Day 3 - Hollywood Studios. Our least favourite but still has some highlights like Slinky. May do a toppolinos late breakfast this day as we quite enjoy the sky liner hop to the Riviera after a few hours in the park.

Day 4 - Animal Kingdom. I love this place. We all love Everest. Rather than follow the crowd to FOP, we will probably go there first and ride multiple times (hopefully) and get an an ILL for FOP later in the day.
Maybe a Yak and Yeti lunch (normally just use Landry's to do a walk up). We do like Tusker House breakfasts but we want to scale back on character meals a bit so is not quite so pricey to eat this trip!

Day 5 - Magic Kingdom.

Day 6 - EPCOT

Day 7 - pool day and MNSSHP. Wow this was expensive but looking forward to it! Just need to try and make sure the girls can handle the late night.

Day 8 - Hollywood Studios

Day 9 - Animal Kingdom

Day 10 Magic Kingdom

Day 11 - travel day

As you can tell, plans for the second half of the trip are much more vague.

It doesn't feel like we have quite enough EPCOT time planned although we are regular hoppers and it also seems to always be possible to change to an EPCOT park reservation later so we've gone with this for now.

We also need to fit in some water park - which I think may be Blizzard Beach at that time of year? My girls love them and even if it's slightly chillier, I doubt that will be a problem for us Brits!

We also want to visit the boardwalk area at night and spend plenty of time at the Poly resort, making use of the pool, lawn games, dance parties, movies and fireworks on the beach. I love the nachos at Captain Cooks too

The other thing we are debating is whether we should try and do BBB for the girls. We currently have it booked on our upcoming cruise but we may cancel it and do it at Disneyworld instead. Decisions, decisions.

Our 60 days out falls when we're in the middle of the North Sea on our cruise so not sure how we'll get on being able to make reservations as early as normal yet.

Also coming up to our 11 month window to book accommodation for our July trip next year. That's the same day as my daughter's birthday party.

Oh, and alerts all set to try and get airmiles flights for our return leg for July as soon as they are released in the next week or so.