A Goblin and a Vampire Take the World! A Festival of the Arts Jan 2020 Pre-trip Report!

DuskKodesh

Marvel Hero in Training
Joined
Aug 11, 2019
Hello hello! This is Dawn here, also known as Dusk, Goblin, or 'Dear god, what is that thing?' 🤪

I'm a goth vaguely humanoid shape from Ohio travelling with my vampire husband. Careful, he bites!
Behold two dorks!
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See? Barely humanoid but very happy!

We now interrupt your regularly scheduled pre-trip report for a brief history!
So when we married, the vampire had not been to WDW since he was tiny and terrified of this guy! We think mid 80's.
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Glad they got rid of him as a walking character!

For me I went when when animal kingdom opened, travelling with extended family who offered to let me sleep in their camper. I was a poor kid so the family scraped up ticket money and food and I was essentially alone in the parks for a week living on lemonade and mickey pretzels. IT WAS FANTASTIC!!!

So adulthood comes up, somewhere in there we meet, get married. Ugh, mushy stuff. Let's skip over that part! 2016 we take a trip to Daytona beach to meet relatives. It was nice. Good people, nice weather. I stared at maps hard enough to light them aflame, we were so close! SO VERY CLOSE! I lobbied hard for a day, a single day to visit the parks. It was a firm 'No'.

2017 comes around and a Beauty and the Beast remake comes out. I go, I sing the songs, I torment the vampire (goblins are WONDERFUL singers!), I see all the neat stuff WDW was doing for the movie. I sigh... Hubs, well he sees this and one day, mumbling on the sofa says "Maybe... we can budget a small trip..."
Ecstatic! I'm ecstatic! I pour myself into research, book ADRs, learn strategy. He books a room Feb 2018 using his mom's vacay club. We nail it. Four park days, one off day. Single park tickets, frugal budget, rented car. I had a BLAST, and weirdly enough he did too, even after learning the crazy goblin enjoys character meets because THOSE CHARACTERS ARE REAL, VAMPIRE! I DON'T CARE ABOUT YOUR CLAIMS THEY AREN'T! FAKE NEWS!

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See above picture of me and the REAL Stitch as evidence! Alien caught on tape! No area 51 raid needed!

So after we go, and he's actually REALLY pleasantly surprised by how much fun he has we rest. And rest. And rest. I switch jobs, we adopt a bunch of rug-rats (Literal rats, fave pets! Much cutes) and we start looking at summer 2019 activities. It goes like this:

Goblin: "I want to go to a theme park."
Vamp: "King's Island?"
Goblin: "That's an amusement park, but I'm willing to settle since you already shot down Evermore, and Silver Dollar City road trips. There's also Dollywood..."
Vamp: "No."
Goblin: "Fair enough. I'll look up King's Island prices for a day... holy crap on a crap cracker. It's like 70$."
Vamp: "Yeah, plus food. Parking is 20$ We can't afford that."
Goblin: 🥺
Vamp: "We'll just have to go to Disney World instead."
Goblin: 😍

The initial PLAN!

Jan 28-Feb 4th All seven park days! I take the time off work (I unload TRUCKS and stock shelves!) Hubs takes a week and a half. We fly Tuesday to Tuesday because those are the cheapest fly days! We hit all parks including Hollywood Studios which we missed last time. We're specifically targeting characters I didn't get to meet last time, and the boring educational stuff in Epcot that he likes... (*Cue goblin groaning*) We stay as cheap as we can, limit souvenirs, budget our meals. This is the plan that shall go down in flames as I set to work!

First thing we do is email some travel agents to see what they can estimate. Everything comes back at 3000$ because packages just dropped at this time. We both wince... BUT we have plenty of time to pay this down, we can do this. I decide against a TA and do it myself. I feel like I can handle it and my obsessive brain cells are twitching ready for a workout. We book All Star Movies. Not my pick but Art of Animation is less budget friendly than I'd hoped. Our ADR window opens. I snag a LIST of stuff I want and he talks me into a few non chara meals. What's the fun in that?! We run it through the calculator and decide the dining plan will save us cash so we add it. See how that plan is working out?

My ADR list:
Storybook dining at Artist Point
Festival of Fantasy Parade viewing package at Tony's Town Square
Bon Voyage Breakfast at Trattoria Al Forno
1900 Park Fare Had to be scrapped and changed to Fantasmic Viewing package at Hollywood and Vine
Savi's Workshop for us both (Hey, it's kind of an ADR... and a HUGE splurge, but he wanted to do it, and after watching the vids I changed my droid ADR to this to do it with him.)
Oga's Cantina x2
Be Our Guest Breakfast
Be our Guest Lunch
Teppan Edo (Vampire's choice and we're paying for this one OOP)
Ohana Dinner
Tusker House Changed to a Boma Dinner. (Okay Vampire, I get it about the characters! I thinks he knows he cannot compete with my first love: Goofy.)
Restaurant Marrakesh (Also a vampire pick)
One Happily Ever After Dessert Part with plaza garden viewing! A splurge paid for by a 200$ check I got from a group settlement with my former employer.

Snack credits will be blown at the wonderful Festival of the Arts since we really enjoyed that last time! Deconstructed dish was my favorite booth!!! It is a new PLAN! A good plan! Heck, I even make a chart! Vampire wants it known that HE made the chart and I am piggybacking on his success...
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I love Google Sheets!

So all was good in the goblin cave except two things. One, I was watching like a hawk for discounts, and two... we have a 🐶 two 🐱 and five 🐭 that need a sitter. You think getting someone to watch kids is hard? Try having rats! One place wanted 150$ a day to board them with no human interaction, in an unfamiliar cage, and no fresh veggies or food, just kibble. For clarification, think of rats as small really smart dogs. They eat a variety of things, need exercise, and contact. You don't just throw them in a room with a litter pan and throw a bowl of kibble in every day. That's torture.

So we persevere. During my watch the Gift of Magic discount came out and after a call and some shuffling I was able to apply it... to a stay at Pop Century! UPGRADE! The new preferred room is the same as the ASM room and we get skyliner access plus a giftcard! So expect Skyliner pics!

We're talking to a cousin of a friend about watching rattos for us for cash and the run of the house. I'm hoping it goes okay! If so it's the last problem solved!
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These boy's are so much trouble but I love them!

So the next big hurdle is fastpass date! Which is... drum roll please! .....November 29th! Woooo! That'll be fine. I'll just try to get that day off my retail job since it... OH GOOD GODS THAT'S BLACK FRIDAY
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Sounds like a fabulous trip. I will be following along.
I love the chart, something I also love to do when trip planning!
Are all your ADRs new restaurants for you both?
 
Sounds like a fabulous trip. I will be following along.
I love the chart, something I also love to do when trip planning!
Are all your ADRs new restaurants for you both?

All except BOG and the dessert party. The first time we went our only ADRs were Via Napoli, BOG lunch, and The Plaza but we did do a dessert party. I canceled nearly everything else out of sticker shock and a bit of guilt (Vamp wouldn't let me cancel the dessert party no matter what!) so I really kept the more affordable stuff. A lot of our plans for this trip are things I found out about during and really wanted to do!
 
Tell me more about the Festival of the Arts. We're there during that, and we booked a Garden Grille ADR for it?
 


Tell me more about the Festival of the Arts. We're there during that, and we booked a Garden Grille ADR for it?

Ooh the festival was lovely! All around the world showcase they have Disney artists selling artwork. Some is 2D matted stuff, some sculptures, textiles. I saw some lovely scarves and things! Then there's also food booths with themes, our fave was the Deconstructed dish which was deconstructed food and it was delicious! They haven't put out menus for this year yet I don't think but hopefully soon! Then there were also classes you could sign up for. Things like animation cell painting or watercolors.

They also had a ton of atmosphere stuff going on. Mural painting, living statues, and broadway music! Here's the festival page for you, it's a good starting point to learn about. I'm a bit of a doodler so I was having a grand time when we went in 2018!
 
Also slight update! I have my schedule and next week the gave me black friday off! I have no idea why but this means I can plan our fastpasses! I'm going to try to get the hubs a Slinky Dog Dash for one day, we just have to do at least one Flight of Passage, and I'm taking a huge gamble at attempting to get us a seven dwarves mine train. I normally can't do coasters so I'm praying I can handle it.
 
UPDATE! Fastpasses accomplished -1
We managed to snag a late arrival day evening fastpass for Seven Dwarves and I am DARN grateful for it because all my other magic kingdom slots it was booked up! We got my Flights of passage easy, but no Slinky Dog. I couldn't ride it anyways and hubs honestly was going to ride it to see if he can even handle coasters anymore so when I offered to move days around he was all "No! You worked hard on that." So no Slinky, we took a Toy Story Mania instead. We'll probably have more fun there since we can ride together. <3

I snagged a princess meet, Tink, and Mickey too. I like the characters, I like playing pretend. I know I'm an adult but I pride myself on being weird.
weird.gif
 


Update! Vacation is paid off! Budgeting served us well! Also holiday hours and pay!
I was also able to shift around some reservations and fastpasses in preparation to try to tackle Rise of the Resistance which I am hyped about! I was also able to get a slinky dog even though I'm too chicken to ride it <_< I'll make a judgement call in person. I know hubs can ride it though.
 
One week countdown! Started packing and finishing the house cleaning now. Little furbabies are gonna be well cared for. Our dog had his vet checkup this past week and the rattos have frozen veggie and fruit trays I made up so every day they get rat snacks while we're gone. Friend's cousin is watching things for 300$ while we're gone and I shifted around our ADR's just a tad again. Eliminated the BOG lunch in case of flight delay, and killed off Hollywood and vine, so now we have exactly the amount of creds as table service, assuming we don't split an entree.

Online check in: done.
Lyft, instacart, Delta, and Disney apps on my phone: done.
Printed schedule and flight info!
Decided what color lightsaber I want? The internal debate rages on!
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Our flight is at 7:14am Tuesday and I'll be AFK for the week. When I return I'm doing a full trip report with dining reviews then I'll move this off the pre-trip section.
 

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