Better Late Than Never ~ 13 Oct Surprise, Birthday, Free Dining, Pop TR UPDATE 2/16

[vleeth]

Introductions
Me ~ Valerie
I am the planner of our trips and the writer of our trip reports. I enjoy visiting WDW as much as enjoy planning for WDW trips. I should warn you that I’m a bit long winded, I’ll be posting way to many pictures of my child and the same food pictures you’ve seen on everybody else’s trip reports.


Dave (His comments will be in green)
I asked Dave what he wanted me to say about him in the intro and this is what he said.
I get so excited about the planning and the actual whole Disney experience. My favorite ride is the car ride.
Now let me mention that this is complete and total sarcasm. He plans almost nothing and doesn’t get the least bit excited until we are there. And then the only way you can tell he’s excited is if you have been married to him for more than a decade. I’m sure many of you out there can relate.
I think Epcot is my favorite park. Wow, a straight answer!



This is Hope (Her comments will be in pink.)
She wasn’t any more help than her dad with writing an intro. She loves going to Disney and planning trips, just not as much as her mom. She likes swimming and archery. When she was younger It’s A Small World was her favorite ride. She collects pressed pennies and stuffed animals. Hope is quite tall for her age and will probably be as tall as me by the time I finishing posting on the TR.


Backstory

We decided at the end of Hope’s 2nd grade year that we would pull her out of school and start homeschooling for 3rd grade. This meant that we could travel at the least crowded time of the year. The main thing Hope wanted to do on this trip was to go to Blizzard Beach.

(borrowed photo)
The main thing she wanted to do at Blizzard Beach was

(borrowed photo)

And

(borrowed photo)
None of us have ever been to any of the Disney waterparks. I would rather go at Christmas time because I want to do/see all of the Christmas stuff, but being the good mom that I am I decided September would be best. After making some initial plans Dave tells me that the SGIA show (a sign thing…we owned a sign shop at the time) was going to be in Orlando in October. The man never asks for anything when it comes to vacations. He’ll go wherever we want to go and do whatever we want to do, so we rescheduled.
This brings us to THE PLAN…

 

[vleeth]

The Plan

The Plan in Motion (The Drive)

Checking out and Checking in (well, almost)

Checking in for real this time.

Dogs, buses, food, shopping & fireworks???

Adventures in Winter SummerLand

If we're going to DQ, I want it to be Dairy Queen!

Happy Birthday Dave ~ Part 1!

Happy Birthday Dave ~ Part 2!

Happy Birthday Dave ~ Part 3!

Universal Studios

EMH at Epcot Part 1

A little more Epcot & a lot of Cars

Studios Part 1

Studios Part 2

Trick or Treating at Pop

 

[MonsterWDWmom]

Here I am can't wait to read about it.

P.S. If you figure out how to do chapter links let me know I am still trying to figure that one out!

 

[Gracefulskinny]

Joining in!

Adding Chapter links is easy. You should see a button at the bottom of your post that says edit. Click that and you can edit the bulk of the post. To edit a title of a post or thread you'll need to hit the Go Advanced button. That will bring you to a screen very much like the normal screen used to post a new post. (Please say that makes sense. I'm exhausted and DD has been melting in to tantrums all evening so my brain is a little on the mushy side.)

 

[vleeth]

Here I am can't wait to read about it.

P.S. If you figure out how to do chapter links let me know I am still trying to figure that one out!

My very first poster!

Joining in!

Adding Chapter links is easy. You should see a button at the bottom of your post that says edit. Click that and you can edit the bulk of the post. To edit a title of a post or thread you'll need to hit the Go Advanced button. That will bring you to a screen very much like the normal screen used to post a new post. (Please say that makes sense. I'm exhausted and DD has been melting in to tantrums all evening so my brain is a little on the mushy side.)

and thanks for the help. If I can't figure it out, I know who to ask!

 

[vleeth]

The Plan
Drive to Orlando on Wednesday. Sleep at the Ramada on I-Drive for one night (as part of the package to get into the WWOHP 1 hour early,) spend one day at the SGIA show. Then drive to a second off site hotel or condo and hit the outlet mall. And if we get out of the SGIA show early enough, go to DTD.
Saturday we would go to Mass & Sunday would be Dave’s birthday at Magic Kingdom. We were going to MK, Studios, Epcot, Universal Studios, IOA and Blizzard Beach. But things got changed so much, so many times, I don’t remember what the original plan was. The main thing Hope wanted to do on this trip was WWOHP, getting picked for Ollivander’s, Blizzard Beach and riding roller coasters. My main things were BTMR (in the daylight and the dark if I could pull it off) and WWOHP…oh and pulling off my surprise.

At some point a few months before the trip the Free Dining offer came out. I resisted. We were staying off-site. Then the Dis lit up about testing for the Magic Bands. I soooooooo wanted to do this. When they rolled it out to Pop, I started pricing things. We had enough Disney Rewards Dollars to pay for all but $300 of the stay at Pop. So I decided to do it.

(borrowed photo)

I was sooooooo excited. At the end of August I booked Pop with Free Dining. My husband loves him some Free Dining. What a great birthday gift.
At one point I only had us at Pop for 4 nights, but when I did the “Disney Math” it just made logical sense to add a day to the end, maybe some days to the beginning and before you know it we were booked for 8 nights.
Then I decided not to tell my family. Actually I decided not to tell Hope and to wait to tell Dave when he asked what hotel/condo I decided on. If he didn’t ask, it would be a birthday surprise. Spoiler Alert….he didn’t ask!

See it’s good that I don’t ask a lot of questions.

 

[luckylady]

Late is okay that way you get to relive your fun as you write.

 

[Sisa]

Subbing! Looking forward to reading about your experience with POP as that is where we are staying next year.

 

[vleeth]

Late is okay that way you get to relive your fun as you write.

This is true! I'm remembering so much that I hadn't thought about since it happened.

Subbing! Looking forward to reading about your experience with POP as that is where we are staying next year.

Spoiler Alert! We loved Pop!

 

[ElenaJane]

Hey! Following along! I love your DH's sarcasm. In an ideal world you both would share the same enthusiasm, but then your Savings account would probably run dry quickly (I know mine would if DH didn't remind me we can't fly to Disney every weekend).

 

[vleeth]

Hey! Following along! I love your DH's sarcasm.

Shhhh! Don't encourage him, he already thinks he's funny!

 

[Gracefulskinny]

How fun. Great start!

 

[SimplyGoofy]

I'm in!

You're certainly not as late as me (proof: see my trip report!) and writing about your adventures is such fun. I'm glad you decided to write a report.

I look forward to seeing how the surprise worked!

 

[vleeth]

How fun. Great start!

and thank you!

I'm in!

You're certainly not as late as me (proof: see my trip report!) and writing about your adventures is such fun. I'm glad you decided to write a report.

I look forward to seeing how the surprise worked!

I'm heading over to check it out!

 

[vleeth]

10/23 We picked up the rental and packed it up on Wednesday.

10/24 Thursday ~ The Drive
Dave and I both had trouble sleeping that night. One of the times that I was awake to look at the clock, I thought about packing my drink holder. We made it for our Disney cruise and didn’t really use it. I think we set the alarm for 4:00 but we were up before it, packed the ice chest, my drink holder and few last minute things and we were on our way.

I may or may not have been with my family this day because there are no pictures of me.

This picture was taken at 3:38 our time.



At 7 am we stopped in Alabama for gas, McDonald's breakfast and a bathroom break. We were at Exit 13 and the gps said we had 7 hours to go.

Hope playing DS (I only pull this out for long trips so it keeps her attention for a long time.)



Looks like Dave was driving. He may have driven the whole time.



We stopped at a rest area in Florida at 10:30.

Hope with the rental.



Back to gaming.



Yep, Dave’s still driving.



We checked into the Ramada at 4:30 and went to our room to get settled. When I say settled I mean that I unpacked, Hope played DS



And Dave rested (he must have been tired from all that driving.)



I guess I didn’t let him rest too long because we were at the outlet mall for 6:00.
We bought 2 scrapbook kits at $3.99 each and a really nice magnet using Disney Rewards.

We’re still working on the cheesy smile!



Hey, I think that’s a good smile!

 

[Gracefulskinny]

A nice start to a trip.

 

[TheMaxRebo]

joining! Sounds like a fun trip and I love surprises like that ... and of course "Disney Math"

BTW, if you haven't figured out how to do links yet, here are the steps as I see it:

1. open up the post you want to link to in a separate tab so you can get the direct URL for it in your brower address bar
2. In your contents post, you basically just need to type the title of the post, then highlight it, click the little icon above the text area that looks like a globe with two "links" of a chain. Then in the window that pops up, paste in the url of the post you are linking to that you copied from the address bar in step one.

In the end, you should see a line of text that looks like this (for linking to your "plan" post) ... just without the space before the ']' (added a space so it showed up as text vs. a link):

The Plan[/URL ]

When you save the edit, it will appear as this and be a link to the desired post (i.e., without the space):

[URL="http://www.disboards.com/showpost.php?p=52412097&postcount=6"]The Plan

 

[vleeth]

A nice start to a trip.

Thanks!

joining! Sounds like a fun trip and I love surprises like that ... and of course "Disney Math"

BTW, if you haven't figured out how to do links yet, here are the steps as I see it:

1. open up the post you want to link to in a separate tab so you can get the direct URL for it in your brower address bar
2. In your contents post, you basically just need to type the title of the post, then highlight it, click the little icon above the text area that looks like a globe with two "links" of a chain. Then in the window that pops up, paste in the url of the post you are linking to that you copied from the address bar in step one.

In the end, you should see a line of text that looks like this (for linking to your "plan" post) ... just without the space before the ']' (added a space so it showed up as text vs. a link):

The Plan[/URL ]

When you save the edit, it will appear as this and be a link to the desired post (i.e., without the space):

[URL="http://www.disboards.com/showpost.php?p=52412097&postcount=6"]The Plan

I haven't tried to add them yet, but I'll use these instructions when I do. Thanks!

 

[ZehnJahren]

I saw you on my TR, and I see that you're just now writing the TR, so I'm in! Love the "dead asleep" picture. She's going to get you back for that one day!

 

[vleeth]

I saw you on my TR, and I see that you're just now writing the TR, so I'm in! Love the "dead asleep" picture. She's going to get you back for that one day!

She read the preview post before I posted that picture, so that counts as having her permission. (At least that is what I will tell her later!)