Additional Update on August- Adding A Day
Well, we lost our minds (again). Here's the backstory:
Hubby was looking into airline credit cards to see if his points from work plus the new cardholder spending bonus would be enough to get us back from Orlando for free, too. He landed on the American card, with a late in the day flight on the 28th. We opened the card and just needed to do our initial spend before booking the return tickets for free, too.
Then, Disney announced the summer room offer with gift cards. I looked, and we were able to save about $100 off the top, plus we'd get $60 in gift cards, by switching to a Yacht Club standard view. It wasn't quite as convenient as Beach Club in terms of being in the same room where our friends were staying, but it was pretty darn close. We would still be able to easily meet up at the pool, watch each others' kids for date nights, etc. As a bonus, YC has nearly all full balconies, rather than the 50/50 shot at BC, which was very important to Hubby. He's always up later than the girls and really appreciated the balcony on our stay earlier this year. So, we opted to switch over to the YC room.
Then, Disney announced their Extra, Extra Magic Hours, starting the day after we left. I started thinking about how awesome it would be to head to MK for a 7am EMH on the day that SW:GE and Food & Wine are opening. Maybe I'm delusional, but my guess is that the first few hours that day will be some of the quietest MK sees this summer. I started poking around, looking to add a couple nights to our reservation, when I saw a Contemporary garden wing room available for the 28th included in the summer discount with the gift card. We could wake up, check out of our room, and just walk into MK at 7am. Since we'd be catching ME from there, too, we would be able to stay in the park as close to our pick up time as possible without worrying about bus timing to get back to our resort. I grabbed the room, as I wasn't sure how long it'd be available, and discussed with Hubby that night.
The points that we were accumulating would work for a late flight on the 29th, too. Rather than booking a single day park ticket for $500 plus for our family, we could book a two day convention ticket for under a grand that would get us two park days and a water park day. Between the room and the tickets, we were looking at $1300ish to get three more touring days, including being able to walk to MK for the 7am EMH. With the savings on airfare and the room switch, this wasn't all that far off from our original budget. Hubby was all for it, which I was shocked by. We had agreed that we were doing this as a quick trip for MNSSHP and Stormalong Bay and that was already a pretty crazy thing to do. He said he never expected that we'd actually keep it to just MNSSHP, he figured it was just a matter of time before we caved and bought park tickets.
So, we did it. We bought discounted gift cards to cover the cost, which doubled as a way to hit the spend requirement on our AA card. Now, the trip looks as follows:
8/25- MCO at 2pm. ME to Yacht Club. Take friends' kids, hang at pool, get dinner, etc. Maybe a gondola to AoA if they're operating, just to check it out.
8/26- HS RD with friends. We'll be using the umbrella policy to book FPS, and this is their +8 day, so we should be good to get SDD early. We'll RD TSL, do SDD, and then hit the shows we missed (BatB, the new Cars show, Indiana Jones). We'll head back to swim when it gets too hot. We'll spread out our tier 2s so that Hubby and I have RnR and ToT booked for the evening. We'll go back into the park for our date night and leave the kids with friends. They have a Raglan Road reservation for everyone else.
8/27- Pool morning, 2:05pm Chef Mickey ADR, MNSSHP
8/28- Whenever the girls wake up, check out of YC and head to Blizzard Beach. When we're done our water park day, we'll check into the Contemporary and take a monorail over to Poly for a combination QS/lounge dinner. I want pulled pork nachos, 'Ohana bread pudding, maybe see if we can get into Trader Sam's. Hubby wants the lemon lime dole whip from Pineapple Lanai.
8/29-Early wake up, drop our bags at Bell Services, and head to the 7am EMH at MK. We'll tour with our friends until their 1pm CRT reservation, once again using their FP +11 to get the exact FPs we want, then split off on our own. Flight isn't until 7:45pm, so ME shoudl be around 4:30ish. That let's us have most of the day at MK before we have to fly home.
The airline points came through today, all of our flights are booked, the tickets are purchased, and my friend and I have our divide-and-conquer plan for FP morning. This is really happening!
And how exciting for the girls to get to trick or treat at disney! Any thoughts on costumes yet? Off the top of my head - Huey, Dewey & Louie? Or the Brave triplets! Are there any Disney girl triplets? 
