A Culinary Caberet - November 2014 F&W PTR - Updated 8/27

[lizcastle]

Hello All!

I've been reading along with a few PTRs and TRs while planning our trip, but I finally decided to start my own PTR to gather my thoughts!

I'll start with a little about us. Myself (Liz - 23yrs) and my DBF (24yrs) live in Washington DC and work for a financial services firm. We've been together for about 3 years, but always seem to go on trips with our families. This is only our second big trip alone - the first was last November to California (with a day in Disneyland of course!). Here's us at the Lego store in DTD there!



I've been to WDW twice before, when i was 10, and again for college graduation when I was 21. I've always been with family friends who planned for us, so this is my first experience really trying to learn about the best way to tour WDW and how to choose ADRs and maximize our DDP as well as enjoy our choices. As you will learn, DBF is a bit of a picky eater, so this has been an adventure on its own!

We are going to be at WDW from November 1-7 staying at CSR. We moved to CSR from POR to get the free DDP (upgraded to a Preferred King room along the way - yay for good location!), so we are excited to have the options the DDP affords without as much worry about the budget! I will use this PTR to outline our current plans for each day, and then any changes and excitement as we get closer! So pumped that we are just a little over 2 months out!

 

[lizcastle]

So January first DBF (from here on out known as MB) and I were sitting around talking about the coming year and what we wanted our big trip of the year to be. I jokingly suggested Disney World, thinking I just brought him to Disneyland two months ago, what 20-something guy wants to spend two years in a row at a Disney park?! To my surprise, he said he thought that was a great idea! I got on the AAA website and sent a message to my AAA travel agent about going in early November, and waited anxiously for a reply. I know the first week of November isn't the best, but my job works in cycles and the only time we can take off is really the first and second week of any month. We wanted to catch the end of the Food and Wine Festival, which MB's mom will join us for on our last day! We will also be extending this trip until the 10th and staying with MB's parents at their vacation home in West Palm Beach after we finish our week at WDW, so I needed the extra time on that end.

We started out looking at value resorts, trying to save money, but as soon as we looked into more of the details we decided that a Moderate Resort would make the vacation much more special, and would still be in our comfort zone money wise. We decided to spring for it, knowing we probably will not be back to Disney World until we have kids some day (too much else in the world to see while we aren't too tied down!). We started off booking a trip from November 2-7 at Port Orleans Riverside. We were drawn to the beautiful theming and a pretty good looking location, with the boat to DTD. We put down our deposit, started looking into all the restaurants and general stuff we wanted to do, and waited hopefully for news of a discount.

Over the summer the Fall Free Dining discount came out, and we called our Travel Agent ahead of time to let her know our wishes. First of all, the week we had booked was not part of the discount unless we extended, so we added an extra day to our vacation so that we would arrive on November first, the last eligible day of the week that we are there. We were disappointed that our first choice of Moderate resort was not part of the discount, but knowing how much we would save not paying for most of our food, we prioritized the moderate resorts that were left. We preferred Coronado Springs over Caribbean Beach, and were willing to pay up for a King room or whatever other options, we would take whatever was open. We don't have a Disney Visa so we had to wait for the "normal" people to be allowed to book. Our TA called me that afternoon to let me know she had gotten us a Preferred King room at Coronado. I was actually more excited about that because its something we didn't feel we could justify without the discount, but that was something that would really enhance our vacation.

At that point we were pretty close to our 180 days out to make our ADRs. I will go more into that as I explain our plan for each day, but I was happy to get an ADR at every restaurant at just about every time that we wanted! MB was annoyed and every time I asked his opinion he kept answering "How in the world should I know what I want to eat 6 months before I'm supposed to eat it!?" However as this process has gone on he has gotten more and more excited and more and more involved, and we have even changed around one ADR so that he could pick one place himself (spoiler alert - apparently he has never been to a Rainforest Cafe and decided that was where he wanted to eat in DTD - I know, I know, it's all over, but he's determined! )

We are now less than a week out from picking our FastPass+, so I am starting to look even harder at our plans and figured it was a good time to write this all out to get my thoughts together and any advice.