afwdwfan
DIS Dad #460
- Joined
- Apr 23, 2010
Greetings, and welcome to my latest Trip Report!
For those of you who saw the PTR, you already know the backstory, but to fill the new readers in, this trip came about in a different fashion than our family’s trips typically do. Normally we’re circling the calendar a year or 2 out, picking our dates and excitedly planning our trip.
But we were kind of not “feeling” the magic after our last trip in 2017 the way we normally do.
And the fact that Disney just keeps raising prices, we almost felt like we were at the point of making the decision, “is it really worth it?”
And the fact that Disney just keeps raising prices, we almost felt like we were at the point of making the decision, “is it really worth it?”
For a couple of years, the answer was no.
We knew we’d go back to Disney World at some point. We still love all things Disney, but there are tons of things being built, so we were kind of looking at maybe the year after the 50th to be our next trip.
We knew we’d go back to Disney World at some point. We still love all things Disney, but there are tons of things being built, so we were kind of looking at maybe the year after the 50th to be our next trip.
Let’s fast forward to late last fall...
We decided we’d take a small trip this summer, with just our family of 5. That way it would be easy, no planning for a large group and we could just do what we wanted with the kids. Part of what put a damper on the magic on our past trip was that I felt like I was constantly on the app grabbing FP, moving FP and just keeping a group of 11 on schedule.
It became work.
We felt like this smaller trip with just our family would be more relaxed and easier. And with Galaxy’s Edge set to open after this summer, we thought that there might be a chance that crowds may be down a bit with people waiting on it to open.
The week before Christmas we booked a trip. 7 Days, 6 Nights at Caribbean Beach Resort.
We told the kids on Christmas day, when each one got a Disney Gift Card and a note saying that they could choose 1 restaurant on our trip and that giftcard would pay for that meal.
Our plan up to that point had been that we’d 3 character meals for the kids with their giftcards, but pretty much everything else was going to be quick service... until we heard from our Travel Agent that there was free dining, we qualified and she grabbed it. Some quick math told us that upgrading the free QSDP to the regular Dining Plan made sense with the character meals we wanted so that’s what we did.
And from here it all fell into place.
From left to right, there’s me, Andy. The Dis nerd of the family.
In my arm is our miracle baby, who will be referred to as R. Unfortunately for my wallet, he turned 3 a month before our trip. Had we not gotten free dining, we'd have done fewer ADRs and shared QS meals.
Front and center is the Princess, B. She was on an Ariel kick this time around.
DW is to my left.
L is the “too cool for Princesses” older brother. He wasn't really into the princesses and would whine about meeting them, but he was a good sport about it all.
As I mentioned, this trip was to be our family of 5. We had the FPs. We had the ADRs. We were ready.
The week before our trip was our county fair. L was in his first year of 4-H this year so we spent a lot of time at the fairgrounds in the livestock barns. One evening, while sitting at the livestock arena, my Mom mentioned something about seeing if she could get next week off and find some availability at CBR to join us.
She said that she didn’t want to impose on our trip and she didn’t want us to have to change plans for them, but she wanted to offer to help with R. She also wanted to be able to see B do the mermaid school, which she’d bought for B’s birthday this year.
A couple of days of back and forth conversations between mom and dad and myself questioning if she was serious or not, she finally booked it. We’d be on our own for the first 3 days and then they’d be joining us.
We drive down and I typically try to knock out the first big chunk of the drive at night while the kids sleep. We planned to leave around 11 PM Fri – 1 AM Sat. The plan was that I'd leave work at noon to go to sleep, and whenever I woke up and we got the car loaded we were rolling out. DW was going to keep the kids awake until we left so that they'd fall asleep in the car and we could hopefully get south of Nashville before we have to stop.
We just found out Mom and Dad were going for sure Friday morning so I ended up spending more of my downtime re-arranging ADRs than planned. Mom said we didn’t have to change our plans for them (and we didn’t), but I did want to add them to ADRs, if possible. We had pretty good luck getting 3 out of 4 changed without having to really change anything.
There’s the quick and dirty rundown of the trip and how it came to be.
I always try to pick out some interesting things during the course of our trip. Quotes. Incidents. Something that seems random that will make for a good story and a grand reveal for the TR title when we get to that part of the TR.
This time it is different. I’m going to share the TR title story right here and now, just because it was a bit of a recurring thing through our trip. It wasn't one big story or incident. Something that just kind of repeated itself and there is literally nothing else that I could name this TR and do it justice.
We were afraid R would not want to keep his MB on. We actually had old MBs from our last trip that I kept in the park bag just in case he lost it.
The first morning when we put it on he kind of looked at it questioningly and DW told him it was his Mickey Power.
The kid likes Superheroes (he ran around the county fair with his Captain America shield) and TV shows like PJ Mask, so the concept of having an item that gives you a power is familiar to him and he caught on to that in a hurry.
We’d put his band on in the mornings and he’d get all excited and yell Mickey Power.
It became a “thing” this trip.
He’d reach out his arm and we’d have to tap our Mickeys together.
It became a thing later in the week where he'd try to take our bands off without us noticing, because I guess if 1 Mickey Power is good, 2 Mickey Powers are better?
And I really don’t know what happened when we did this, but it became extremely urgent a few times that we had to stop whatever we were doing and push the button on our Magic Bands (the Mickey Head).
So there it is. Thank you for taking the time to read through this garbage... I present to you, Mickey Power!!!!
That's great!
