The Yearly Trip to Princess Ashlyn's Florida Castle! March 2010 PTR

B

BabyEeyore

DIS Veteran
Joined
Mar 3, 2009
Hello everyone! I have loved reading some of the Pre-Trip Reports on here and really wanted to start my own. It's the first time I'm attempting something like this, so please bear with me! :) I'll update this first post with the Table of Contents as I go along. If you have any questions or suggestions as I go along, I would be more than happy to hear them!


Table of Contents

Cast of Characters
Dates Figured Out
A Little Bit of Pixie Dust

A Slight Change In Plans
Planning Some of the Extras
Exciting New Changes

Frustrated, But Hotel Is Booked!
Our "Schedule"
First Clothing Post

Sweet Dreams
More Clothes and Some Randomness
Finished Reservations

A "Hairy" Situation
2 Weeks!
Top 10 List

A Swimmingly Good Time
1 Week!
Now Relying on Faith, Trust, and Pixie Dust!

Some Good News To Relieve the Blues
My, Oh My, What A Wonderful Day!
 
My husband and I are planning our next Walt Disney World trip! YAY! :banana: I had to start writing about our preparations because if I don't share it with someone, I might just explode into little, bitty, Mickey-shaped confetti pieces. And I know hubby doesn't want to have to vacuum that up. So you fine people get to deal with my obsession. I know that you guys will understand. :)

Anyway, first of all, who all is going? It's going to be me, Christina :surfweb: (a 27-year-old stay at home mom to a beautiful little girl and a wife to a wonderful, loving sailor)...

22Oct17.jpg


Aaron pirate: (my handsome husband who I am slowly but surely turning into a Disney addict like myself)...

22Oct.jpg


and, of course, Ashlyn princess: (our precious almost-16-month-old little girl)!

CIMG1838.jpg


Oh wait, that was from our first trip when she was 2 months old (November 2008). Hold on a sec....

22OctDiningatCinderellasRoyalTablei.jpg


Oops! That was from this last trip when she was 13 months old (October 2009). Let's try this again...

14JanMorepigtails2.jpg


Okay, there's a good recent pic of our little princess. Anyway, that's our cast of characters! I will add more soon!
 
Aw, what a sweet baby! Can't wait to hear more details - thanks for taking the Pre-TR plunge! :goodvibes We are a good group for non-exploditis! :lmao:
 
cmp1111 said:
Aw, what a sweet baby! Can't wait to hear more details - thanks for taking the Pre-TR plunge! :goodvibes We are a good group for non-exploditis! :lmao:
Click to expand...

Well thank goodness! :rotfl: I did feel better once I wrote all that out. Aaron knows I love planning for Disney trips so he has fun helping me plan a little, but he's been SO busy at work that his mind isn't really focused on it at the moment.
 


Last night I took our calendar and looked forward to October, which is when we are planning on going. Here's a little background on how we have to plan. Aaron is in the Navy and we are currently stationed in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

24DecPhillipsDiveChristmasEveCuba5.jpg


There are a LOT of pros and cons to living here. One con is that the main airline only comes through every Saturday and every other Tuesday so you can't just randomly fly off island on a Monday or anything. Plus, we have to fly to Florida to see a pediatric orthopedic doctor to get a check-up on Ashlyn's hips. She was a breech baby (had a c-section) and she was born with (very) mild hip displasia. They have orthopedic doctors here, but not specifically pediatric. So to save flight money, we tend to combine both doctor and WDW trips. We'll only have one full day in the parks, but that's okay. We make the most of it. :) After this trip, we'll have less than a year left in GTMO so the following trip we'll be living in the states so we can go for a few days. (Whether it will be WDW or Disneyland will depend on what end of the country we're living in!)

Anyway, long story short, after we did a little figuring, we chose which days we'll actually be in WDW. So it looks like we'll be there on the 21st and 22nd.

Now that we have the dates, we are (well, I am... Aaron knows I know what I'm doing when it comes to Disney so I pick a few things, tell him the pros and cons to each option, and he picks from there) looking at different hotels to stay at. We stayed at Pop Century this last time (off-site the first time) and really enjoyed it, but it doesn't hurt to do some research! We're looking for a great place to stay with a toddler (Ashlyn will be just over 2 when we go).
 


You know, honestly I really wanted to keep the updates to only once a day for now. It's so hard, though, because I have so much on my mind! I've been writing a little bit in a Word document (well, technically, an Open Office document) so I don't forget anything and I can just copy and paste. I know I need to drag it out to keep you all coming back ;) and eventually there will be little breaks in updates after I catch myself up! BUT, nevertheless, I'm back with some more today. Oh well!

Right now I think I'll talk about the little bit of pixie dust we got during our last trip. Actually, we got quite a lot. :goodvibes But I'll focus on one instance in particular. Before we went this last October, we were trying really hard to get reservations to Cinderella's Royal Table. But a lot was going on to where we weren't sure until a few months out exactly what dates we would be going to WDW. So of course by that time it was all booked up. We tried up to the day before and nothing had opened. When we went into the Magic Kingdom that first morning, we went straight to Fantasyland and went through the castle to get there. As we were going through the castle, Aaron said "Just a second" and veered off towards the restaurant. He decided to take the long shot and ask if there were any last minute reservations. "We already know the answer, but do you have any openings for today?" he asked. The guy at the counter said, "Breakfast or lunch?" Aaron: "Whatever is available we'll take." Guy at counter: "No, really, breakfast or lunch? We have one for each. How's that for a little Disney magic?" :eek: What? Really? I wanted to hug the guy! Well, I hugged and kissed Aaron because I had pretty much given up on going there this trip. I'm tearing up just thinking about it.

22OctDiningatCinderellasRoyalTab-1.jpg


We are incredibly glad we went. The atmosphere was incredible, the food was yummy, and Ashlyn had such a great time! She was smiling and laughing and just loved it. :cloud9: It really was an incredible experience. After we were done Aaron was the first one to say "Well, we're doing that again next year!" I love that man! :love:

So we know as soon as our 180 day mark comes up we'll be making reservations for CRT!
 
Hello! :wave2:

I am new to your PTR and just wanted to say your DD is adorable!! I have only stayed at POFQ and we are staying at POR for our next trip so I am not much help on the resort front.

Love :lovestruc the Disney magic when it happens!! Go DH for thinking to ask if there were openings!! You just never know.
 
Hi Charlefours and :welcome: to my PTR! :) You're right, you never know when it comes to Disney. There is pixie dust everywhere! pixiedust: I'm off to read your PTR. :)
 
A few days ago I was just looking around on the Theme Parks forum and saw some info about 2010 Military offers. Cool! Then I realized that the tickets offered were only good through the end of September. Plus since we are only going to be in an actual park for one day (we'll go to DTD for a little while the night we get there) it would just be cheaper to buy regular one-day park tickets since Aaron's wouldn't be free like last year. And I didn't see anything about deals on hotels, so whatever. Just didn't look like it would help us this year.

Then I was looking at a different site for deals on hotels and saw that there was a 40% off select Disney hotels deal going on for military! But it was also through the end of September so I kinda just didn't give it a second thought. When Aaron got home that night I told him that I had looked into military discounts (because man, it helped out a LOT last year!) and told him what I found out. When I told him about the hotel he thought for a second and said “So it would break your heart to go a month early, huh?” Completely joking and knowing I would jump at the chance to go earlier! :woohoo:

So I did some research and found out that the crowds would probably be okay and the only thing we would have to worry about is the heat, humidity, and lovebugs! Also, it would be a great deal to stay at Pop Century again! We had played around with the idea of staying at a moderate or deluxe hotel, but we really had no complaints at all about Pop and we can use that money elsewhere. :) We really want to go to F&W one day, but not this year. We're going to do that when we can have a longer trip. I'm thinking next year when we are back in the states.

So as of right now it looks like we'll be going to Disney late September! I haven't made the hotel reservations yet, but I'm just waiting for a definite on which month Aaron wants to go, and I'll be making the call! :cool1:
 
That's awesome. I definitely don't think you'll have crowd issues at that time!
 
Subscribing :) We're going in June but that might change to August or September!! We shall see.
 
Last year I had asked Millipie over at the DISigns board to create something for Ashlyn to wear for her birthday trip. She generously made something SO cute and we just loved it.

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It says “The only place for a Princess to turn 1!” I want to do something cool for this trip, too, but I'm not sure if I want to do shirts. Ashlyn will be in her Cinderella dress (at least part of the time) so hmmmm.... think, think, think! I'm thinking special pillowcases, even for us adults, to put in the room (shhhhh... I'm not going to tell Aaron about it if that's what I decide to do!). Millipie does awesome word fill designs that I've been dying to get my hands on! Does anyone have any other ideas besides pillowcases and t-shirts?
 
Squeeeee!!!!!! :banana::banana::banana: OMG, I am so excited I can't even begin to tell you!! It looks like we are going to be going to WDW in March in addition to going in September. And that's not even the exciting part! The exciting part has to do with my dad. See, the last time I saw my dad was here:

FresnoZooAugust20083.jpg


Yep, I was about 7 months pregnant and we had flown to Cali after my mom had passed away (she was only 57 - cancer sucks). That means he has never met my 16-month-old daughter! The thing is, we live in GTMO and he lives in California and that is, like, really far away. Plus with the economy and different schedules and all that crap neither party was able to make the big trip. BUT we are making sure it is happening now!!!!

My wonderful mother passed away in 2008 before Ashlyn was born. It breaks my heart every day that they weren't able to meet each other, but I know my mom is her guardian angel. :littleangel: After that I just started to get the mentality that you can't wait to do something you truly want to do. I don't know why it's taken me so long to act on it, but I am ready to now. I don't want to put off things that are important to me and my family because you just never know what is going to happen. My dad is a HUGE Disney fanatic (wonder where I get it from? :confused3) and has gone to Disneyland more times than he can count. I believe he was 3 when Disneyland opened and they went I think the first week it was open. And of course he had to take his daughter (that would be me ;)) there when she was 6 months old and many, many, many times after that. :goodvibes But he has never been to Florida and thus never been to WDW! Our very first plan was that he was going to fly to Cuba to see where we live but with the military, schedules change in the blink of an eye, plus things are super busy around here with helping out the people in Haiti. So we decided we would all meet in Florida. There is a chance Aaron will not be able to make it with us in March, but we are sure hoping it will work out to where he can.

I can not wait for my dad to meet his one and only granddaughter! I have two half-brothers and one of them has three sons and the other doesn't have any children right now. I'm the first to have a girl. Wow, I realize this turned into a really long update with more than a little rambling, but I am just SO excited I can hardly stand it! :cool1::wizard::goodvibes:cheer2: lol Anyway, enough of that for now. I will post more details about this newest trip soon. Thanks for letting me celebrate!
 
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