Henry the Destroyer vs. Disney World, a Jan/Feb 2018 PTR

debdebdebby13

Mouseketeer
Joined
Jan 28, 2009
We are going back to Disney World! After a (much too) long break we are finally going back to the happiest place on earth. During our last trip we were a family of 3 and our daughter was 6. Now we are family of 4! Our daughter is 11 and our son just turned 4. Little boys are a whole different ball of wax! He's crazy! Hence the title of this PTR.

This is my husband, Cory. He'll be turning 35 a couple of weeks before our trip. He enjoys Disney, but is content to let me plan my little heart out and just come along for the ride. He's hilarious, but very mild mannered, like Clark Kent. He enjoys all things Star Wars, but isn't obsessed. He is really looking forward to riding the "new" Test Track (not so new anymore, but new since the last time we went to WDW) and eating himself silly.


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I am Debby, I am already 35. It's quite rude of him to turn 35 after me *eye roll*. I love being in the Disney bubble and spending time with my little family. Epcot is my favorite park and I'm having a hard time deciding where to eat while we are there. It was really hard finding a picture of me. I do not like being in pictures.

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Next is Molly. We took her to Disney at not quite 3, her 5th birthday and a few months after she turned 6. Nowadays she likes Star Wars, but she still has a soft spot for Belle, because she sees a lot of herself in Belle. She is a book worm. She is really excited about our upcoming trip even though she has "outgrown" her obsession with princesses.

This is her first visit to Disney in March 2009.

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This is at our second visit in May/June 2011. She changed so much between these first two visits!

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This is our third visit, though somehow I have no pictures accessible of her at Disney, just at the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. She started reading at age 3 so by age 6 she was reading Harry Potter and was already thoroughly obsessed. She is still a Huge Potter nerd and felt a little bit of sadness that we wouldn't be making it to Universal again this trip. She got over it though.


This was her 6 year old reaction to Butterbeer, she wasn't a fan.
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And now onto the star of this trip report, who you have already seen in our pictures. Henry! He is a 4 year old hot mess. He is either overjoyed and enthusiastic or ticked off. This trip is going to be quite the adventure with him. Molly at 4 was a treat, didn't need to nap and was generally laid back. He is Mr. Intensity! I know we are going to have a ton of laughs and excitement and probably more than our fair share of tantrums. We have been watching videos of Disney to get him ready and he's really excited about the "big ball." He loves Monsters Inc (and University), Toy Story, Zootopia, Nightmare Before Christmas and he's starting to like Finding Nemo and Dory. He doesn't care much about anything on Disney Jr. though. He prefers Nick Jr.

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I've now maxed out the number of pictures I can upload in one post so I guess I'll move on to another post with the plans we have for now!
 

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So we currently have room only booked at Pop for January 28-February 2. I would absolutely love to stay longer and I'm hoping I can extend our stay another day, but it may not work out. I am patiently waiting for the Stay Play and Dine offer to drop before I book tickets and dining plan. I really weighed this year if we would save money if we paid full price for the dining plan, going so far as planning out exactly what we would eat at each table service restaurant and quick service we would visit and adding it all up. My math added up to $10 full dollars less than the price of the dining plan and I put very few desserts on my list of meals. If we get money off for dining via SPD then it will totally be worth it. My DH told me he loved not having to worry about what he chose on the menu so even if it didn't work out to be cheaper he wanted to do the plan anyway. His nature is to penny pinch so when we pay for the plan he doesn't feel guilty for ordering something more expensive over a burger at every meal.

I've reserved 5 table service meals already. Though I'm feeling a little iffy about a couple of them.

Sunday, January 28th- Raglan Road dinner after arriving around noon
Monday, January 29th- no table service, but Be Our Guest for lunch
Tuesday, January 30th- nothing
Wednesday, January 31st- Breakfast at Chef Mickey's (unsure on this one)
Lunch at 50s Prime Time
Thursday, February 1st- Garden Grill (unsure if I want to keep this one)
Friday, February 2nd- T-Rex, then heading home

Molly is mostly beyond character meals and Henry likes Mickey, but he's not really into Mickey if that makes sense. I think he's the only preschooler who doesn't care a thing about Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. The characters he loves don't have a meal so I have the two Mickey character meals, but I feel pretty meh about both restaurants. We haven't been to either Chef Mickey's or Garden Grill before, but most folks don't have these on their must do list.

I'm also trying desperately to get an early-ish dinner at O'hana. This is DH's favorite Disney restaurant. I am using Touring Plans reservation finder so hopefully sometime in the next 4 months a good time will open up.
 
I have an alarm set for 4:35 because it looks like the SPD discount may drop overnight. Oh please, oh please, oh please!

I really want to extend our trip one more day, so it would be Sunday through Saturday instead of Sunday through Friday. I spent all afternoon working through numbers to see how much more it would cost. It looks like all told (room, dining, tickets) it will be about $400 more.

I feel like 4 full days just isn't enough. I wish we could stay 9 or 10 days but with a school age kiddo it's just not feasible, well that and it's just too dang expensive for us!
 
Well that was just crap-tastic!

I got little sleep waiting for the deals to drop only to find that our stay at Pop cannot be discounted in ANY way! It says it can, but in reality there are "no rooms available" which is just stupid. I spent hours today fiddling this way and that way and nothing worked! I am so very frustrated. Now we are talking about dumping the dining plan all together, because we can most likely save money even if we eat at the same places we planned on eating.

My last trips were nowhere near this hard to make work with a discount!
 


Following along. The discounts being so limited stinks. We have done the dining plan twice but I'm skipping it this trip. Prime Now will deliver to resorts so we are having some snacks and quick breakfast items that way. I just feel like the new cost (especially with kids 10 and up being charged as an adult) makes it smarter to forgo.
 
Following along. The discounts being so limited stinks. We have done the dining plan twice but I'm skipping it this trip. Prime Now will deliver to resorts so we are having some snacks and quick breakfast items that way. I just feel like the new cost (especially with kids 10 and up being charged as an adult) makes it smarter to forgo.

Yes, 10 and up as adults is kind of awful. My daughter is 11 and some days she can out eat her dad, but on a day to day basis she doesn't eat anywhere near as much as the adult dining plan offers. She is a good eater though and would get sick of all kids meals because she likes more grown up food. I figure she would be pretty 50/50 on adult meals vs kids meals. If they have a kids meal with salmon and veggies she would take that any day over a hot dog and fries.

May be Disney should have some sort of intermediate price point for kids 10-13 where you can choose which plan they get. Picky and light eaters can have the children's plan while parents who know their kid eats like a horse can opt for the adult plan.

My 4 year old on the other hand...he is pretty picky and doesn't even like most kid staples like mac and cheese. I'm feeling like getting the Amazon box with lots of PB and jelly and bread and feeding him sandwiches all day. Throw in some mandarin oranges, grapes, goldfish and pretzels and he's good to go for a week! :rotfl2:
 
I'm wondering if this Arts Festival that I think is going one while we are there is like a mini food and wine festival. I'm reading someone's dining report and there are all kinds of delicious snack foods during the Arts Festival.
 


After many attempts to find SOMETHING with the SPD discount I snagged our dates at Coronado Springs with the SPD discounted dining plan. I saved $250 over what we had booked at Pop with regular dining and no discount and we got to upgrade to a moderate, woohoo! My husband is pleased. My daughter is slightly disappointed we aren't staying at Pop, she loves it there. I think the slide at the pool, if it's warm enough to swim, will make her feel better. I'm jazzed over the location, it seems close to all the parks and less time on the bus is fabulous!

I also booked our flights today, non refundable, so it's official, we've got no choice but to go to Disney, haha. I booked on Spirit, which I sort of hate. We live in Oklahoma City but my in laws live in Houston so we are driving down to Houston on Saturday, spending the night with the in laws and having them take us to the airport Sunday morning at the crack of dawn, the flight leaves at 8am. Then our flight back to Houston is at 7pm on Saturday, the 3rd so we still get a lot of time to do Disney that day. Then we'll drive back home Sunday after spending the night with the in laws again Saturday night.

So, I've got the package booked, flights booked, dining reservations made (those may be ever changing though!)

aaaaaaaaaannnnnnnnnnnddddddd now we have to wait almost 4 months, sadness.
 
Ha, I realized I never got any recent pictures of Molly in my intro post!
She does not look 6 any more. She is a goof ball but coming into that tween attitude that I could do without. She plays softball competitively so it was hard to find many pics of her where she isn't doing that!

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I don't know if anyone is actually reading but I'm going to keep posting, for posterity's sake. Also gives me a place to look back in a few years :-)

So we've got a decent package booked, woohoo!

We've got some updated ADRs:

Homecomin' (new to us, looking forward to some fried chicken, I hope it's as good as everyone says!)
Be Our Guest (lunch)
'Ohana
Sanaa (also new to us, anyone have any rave reviews?)
Beaches and Cream (new as well)
Rose and Crown Dining Room (another new one, can you tell I'm going for new places to try??)
T-Rex

Now I'm eagerly awaiting November 29th, so I can attempt to get our FPs. I've never used this new system, and to be honest so far I don't like it. I'd prefer the mad dash at rope drop to get what we want. I say that now, having not actually used this system yet. Does anyone else prefer the old way?

This is the longest wait we've ever had for a trip. We have had 2 months or less for every other trip we've made. I guess we are last minute planners. I feel like we are all going to explode with excitement long before Jan 28th gets here. Henry knows we are going but in 4 year old land 4 months away might as well be 10 years. He can't hold that time frame in his head. My 11 year old just wants to swim. She's convinced that since the pool is heated she will be fine to swim no matter the weather! Kid loves to swim!


Next weekend is my daughter's fall break and her grandma is driving here (to OKC) from Houston, staying a night, driving on to Denver to pick up motorcycles, coming back Wednesday, then driving back down to Houston with Molly and the motorcycles on Thursday. I'm not sure how she's going to make it doing all that driving, but she says she'll be fine. Then she's bringing Molly back home on Monday. So we'll be blissfully down to one little hellion for the weekend. Grandma and Cory and I are looking forward to a time where Henry will be able to go as well. I'm a stay at home mom so he's really used to being home with me ALL the time. He's a Mama's Boy through and through. I figure in a year or so he'll be okay to leave with grandma for a few days and DH and I will dance and party, LOL. Not really though, we'll hang out and wonder what to do with ourselves.

I'm hoping sometime in the next few years we can manage an adults only trip to Disney. I want to eat at the signature restaurants without my children!
 
No news, except I added Ale and Compass to our ADRs. It's right up DH and DD's alley, with their love of seafood. I think the t-bone looks pretty good as well.
 
*tap tap tap* is this thing on???

Anyway. No disney news, I check up and watch vlogs on youtube and read here almost every day but there just isn't much to do until we get closer to our FP date at the end of November.


In real life Molly just got home from a "solo" trip to Grandma and Papa's house. I needed a break. I haven't mentioned it before but Molly has type 1 diabetes (autoimmune disease NOT metabolic disease, not from eating sugar or being overweight, her own body attacked her insulin producing cells and destroyed them). She is insulin dependent for life, like all type 1s, and on an insulin pump. She has this lovely device called a Dexcom. This little gadget checks her blood sugar every 5 minutes via a tiny wire that is inserted under her skin and is changed every couple of weeks. It's great and amazing because you can set high and low blood sugar thresholds and then when she passes those threshholds it alarms. It is awful because it happens 24 hours a day, meaning if she gets high or low overnight it alarms and wakes me up to take care of business. I have to give her fast acting sugar to bring her blood sugar up and then I can't fall back asleep until I see she's going up or if her blood sugar is high I give her insulin to lower it. Every now and then, ie: maybe 2x a month an entire overnight will go by without an alarm, but I'd say on average I get alarms 2x per night and some nights are insane and I'm woken up 5 or 6 times. Those nights are terrible. It's like have a newborn baby all the time, 365 days a year!

So needless to say, I'm EXHAUSTED a whole lot of the time, because I rarely sleep. It's worth it because good care will prevent her from dealing with all kinds of health issues when she's older, but it's hard, HARD work! She is 11 and she is getting hormonal which adds a new layer of crappiness to type 1. Puberty makes blood sugar management hellish. They need so much more insulin and their blood sugars get even more erratic with hormone surges. We were coming off a few crappy weeks with me never sleeping and her being a normal tween with attitude. I thought fall break would be an awesome time for her to go visit her grandparents without us.

It didn't disappoint! It was so nice to turn my phone off and not have to pay attention to her blood sugar. It was also magical to sleep through the nights for 4 whole nights in a row! Now I'm remembering it fondly, lol, because I am back in the trenches!

My husband and I have an agreement, lest you think he is a bum for always making me get up. He deals with diabetes once he gets home from work until he goes to bed. Once bed time hits it's my turn because he works out of the home and I am a stay at home mom. I can more easily lay around or find a time to nap for a few minutes during the day than he can.

Molly had a ton of fun with her grandparents and they enjoyed the one on one time with her. When Henry is around he is a ball of energy and demands a lot of their attention, as most 4 year olds do. She didn't have to share the spot light during her trip and she loved every minute of it!

This is an example of what 24 hours of blood sugars look like, and we have great control most of the time, her a1cs are almost always below 6.5. This was a particularly bad day though, yeesh!

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