We're Doing Disney Again Someday...Plus One! ~ Come Read my Trip Report!!!

[Disney9.9.10]

I think that Dug baby is going to do great at WDW! She really seemed to enjoy the Santaland, it must be so fun for you to watch her get so excited.

Congrats on having everything paid off, and have a wonderful trip!

 

[Imagineer5]

Just want to pop in and say hope you're having a WONDERFUL TRIP!!!

 

[amazingact21]

I missed your sendoff, so I just wanted to come on here now and say that I hope you are having a wonderful trip!
I'm keeping my fingers crossed that Dug Baby has been sleeping like a champ in her PnP, that the weather's great for all of you, and that the holiday season is decorated just like you wanted it to be!

 

[reelmom]

I hope you are having a MAGICAL time!!!!

 

[TMGosizk]

Just wanted to stop by and say that I hope you are all having a wonderful trip and that Dug Baby is enjoying her very first Disney adventure!!

 

[Dugette]

Well, I just lost my post when I took a picture, but I'll try again quick. Thank you all for stopping in with well wishes. Sorry I didn't have time to post before leaving. I'm in line solo for Big Thunder while Dug has sleeping Dug Baby, so I actually have time to post.

Good trip so far. Some thoughts:

Plans=hahahahahaha!!!!

Characters are a big hit with Dug Baby!

Best baby things: snack container and paci clip.

Great weather.

All of the friendly strangers come out when you bring a baby! Lots of random conversations.

2 rides and a show per half day is pretty good.

Dug Baby loves ice cream.

Well, that's probably good for now. Sure makes the Big Thunder queue go faster!

 

[AprilRenee]

Well, I just lost my post when I took a picture, but I'll try again quick. Thank you all for stopping in with well wishes. Sorry I didn't have time to post before leaving. I'm in line solo for Big Thunder while Dug has sleeping Dug Baby, so I actually have time to post. Good trip so far. Some thoughts: Plans=hahahahahaha!!!! Characters are a big hit with Dug Baby! Best baby things: snack container and paci clip. Great weather. All of the friendly strangers come out when you bring a baby! Lots of random conversations. 2 rides and a show per half day is pretty good. Dug Baby loves ice cream. Well, that's probably good for now. Sure makes the Big Thunder queue go faster!

Lol I like the "plans = Hahahahahahaha!" part.
But I'm glad your having a good time. I can't WAIT to hear ALLL about it!!

 

[Imagineer5]

Well, I just lost my post when I took a picture, but I'll try again quick. Thank you all for stopping in with well wishes. Sorry I didn't have time to post before leaving. I'm in line solo for Big Thunder while Dug has sleeping Dug Baby, so I actually have time to post. Good trip so far. Some thoughts: Plans=hahahahahaha!!!! Characters are a big hit with Dug Baby! Best baby things: snack container and paci clip. Great weather. All of the friendly strangers come out when you bring a baby! Lots of random conversations. 2 rides and a show per half day is pretty good. Dug Baby loves ice cream. Well, that's probably good for now. Sure makes the Big Thunder queue go faster!

LoL love your thoughts. Ice cream is a fun treat! 2 rides sounds about right lol! Too funny. so glad characters are going well for her!! That's awesome I can't wait to hear more! We are neighbors now, just got to the Vwl a couple hours ago, went to the pool and now aria is resting up for tonight!

 

[reelmom]

So glad you are having a great time. Thanks for checking in. I cannot wait for this trip report.

 

[jc040404]

Plans=hahahahahaha!!!!!

Can't wait to hear about this trip!

No chance of running into each other. The boys now have non-Disney plans this weekend. Hope you're having fun!!

 

[Dugette]

Thanks, all! Waiting for Dug to finish ToT while Dug Baby naps in stroller. Child swap has been working great with FP+.

Imagineer, hi from across the lagoon! Also, Small World opened last night at the party (we didn't go to the party, but asked a CM beforehand, since it was lit up).

JC, bummer you won't be around! Have fun with your non-Disney plans.

Also, my additional thought on the trip:

Rides=good. Shows=boring. Says Dug Baby.

 

[Dugette]

Hi, all! We got back Saturday night and spent yesterday recovering and went back to work/daycare today.

We're working on sorting through our 4300+ pictures. Plus another 200 or so Photopass and our photo shoot at the Poly and our videos.

We had a great trip! It was certainly very different than our past trips, but that was to be expected. There were challenges, but there were also many great memories made. And spending all that time with Dug Baby was really amazing. We both felt like we saw her growing up a lot throughout the trip. Pretty incredible. That time together is so valuable. And she seemed to really enjoy Disney and the time with us. I really felt like this was a great age to take her.

The last couple days before our trip, she was really into her Mickey and Minnie Mouse plushes. She must have known where we were going. When we got back, she was just obsessed with them (and still is). It's pretty cute.

The trip ended up messing with her sleep schedule a lot, but she handled it pretty well during the trip. Yesterday, our first day home, she caught up on sleep, just as we had hoped. She essentially slept until noon (though I heard her chatting with Minnie for a bit mid-morning). Then she got up and ate and played and went down for a nap around 4:30. Then got up for dinner and bath and back to bed again. Tired girl! She had a pretty normal day at daycare today, though, so that's great!

We've still got to finish unpacking and getting back to normal here. Once we've got our pictures together and all, I'll try to get the trip report started. I actually want to try to finish my previous one first (October 2011!). It's really bugging me to have that sitting there at the last day.

Anyway, just wanted to say hi to everyone. From the cold, snowy Twin Cities. Blah. It's not even officially Winter yet. Wish I was still at WDW.

 

[Backstage_Gal]

Welcome back from one of your lurkers. Can't wait to read all about this trip.

 

[AprilRenee]

I. Can't. Wait!!!

 

[reelmom]

How on Earth are you back already? Disney goes by way too quick!

 

[Imagineer5]

Can't WAIT to read all about it!! Nice to have sunday to recooperate, we are back at work today BLAH! So glad you felt it was a great age to take her!

 

[Dugette]

Welcome back from one of your lurkers. Can't wait to read all about this trip.

I. Can't. Wait!!!

How on Earth are you back already? Disney goes by way too quick!

Can't WAIT to read all about it!! Nice to have sunday to recooperate, we are back at work today BLAH! So glad you felt it was a great age to take her!

Thanks, all!

 

[Dugette]

Hi, everyone! Still working on going through our massive quantity of photos and jotting down some additional notes to help me remember little moments of the trip. However, I’ve been reviewing the trip in my head and thinking about “what would I do differently?” Don’t get me wrong – I think most things we did worked quite well for us. But there are a few things that I’d change if I could go back and do it again. I could (and may) include those thoughts in the Trip Report, but who knows if I’ll remember by then. And they’re really more relevant to planning anyway, so I thought I’d post them here, in case anyone else can benefit from them in their planning:

As hard as it would be for us, I wish I had left our first morning free. That’s right – no running off to a park right away. Missing that prime morning time. Do I regret going to the Magic Kingdom that morning? No. But it made it really rough to settle in and start our trip right. The problem was that, with a baby in the room (that we were hoping would sleep), we couldn’t get unpacked or organized the night before without being too distracting to her fragile semi-sleep state (she didn’t want to go to sleep that first night). Well, plus Dug was at the Magic Kingdom late hours, so it was just me. And we couldn’t really unpack before dinner, since our Magical Express luggage had not yet arrived in our room. And she went to bed right after dinner. If we’d arrived earlier in the day, that might have worked, but I think we would have had a hard time being ready for an earlier flight. When we were traveling as just a couple, it wasn’t really a big deal to unpack and organize right away. In fact, that’s how we resort-hopped on other trips – just didn’t unpack until we settled in. But, with a baby, there is way too much stuff that you need. And it has to be ready and organized and packed for the park right off the bat. Basically, this all caused our first morning to go off the rails right away, since we could not get everything together to get out the door in a timely manner. It was just chaos.

Even though I thought I did a good job of not leaving all the packing and prep for the last minute, it wasn’t good enough. If I could go back, I’d make sure I was as packed as possible an entire week before the trip. Because I did not get sufficient sleep the entire week before leaving. 4-5 hours each night and 3-4 hours the night prior just doesn’t cut it. Again, if it was just us, I don’t think it would have been as big a deal…I packed my own bag pretty fast. It was all the baby stuff. And normal work week stuff. And a poorly-timed Target shopping spree, but that’s a story for the Trip Report. I was very sleep-deprived going into the trip and – as you all know – it’s hard to make up sleep on a WDW trip.

Related to the above item, I wish I hadn’t forgotten to bring certain things. We forgot a few baby items, but managed okay. In the first day chaos, we forgot to put on or bring sunscreen to the parks, but got by okay. It would have been nice to not have forgotten things, though. It caused extra stress early in the trip and who wants that?

I wish I hadn’t brought so much stuff on the plane in her diaper bag. The only thing we used from it, and only during one flight, was her blanket. Because it’s all I could reach. Well, we did also use her milk and sippy cup on the way out. But none of the toys. I literally could not get to them with her in the Ergo and us all crammed into a three-person row with the people in front of us reclined. Luckily, we really didn’t need anything, as she slept the majority of the time. I wish I had just packed a small bag with a few toys and snacks that was easy to pull out from under the seat. And the little diaper changing kit I love (that – spoiler alert – was one of the things we forgot).

Speaking of the Ergo, I wish I had used it more. We literally used it on the plane and in airports and that’s it. We had it with us (in the stroller pocket) all the time, but I never felt that I needed to pull it out. I always thought, “Oh, I’ll just be holding her a short time, why bother?” But, you know plans…I was having major arm pain by about halfway through our trip. I really should have taken advantage of having it.

For anyone considering doing a Trip Report, I thought of one helpful thing after I got home. There were a lot of little moments of conversation and such that we have no pictures to document. Makes it really hard to remember things I’d like to share. And I didn’t have the ability to jot down a note with a baby in my arm and running from one thing to the next. However, what I COULD have done is press video on my iPhone and record me explaining what happened. I’d just need the audio, so it wouldn’t matter what the phone was pointed at. Wish I would have done that, rather than testing my memory this way. Oh, well.

If you have a stroller napper/sleeper, take advantage. We really didn’t know if we did, so had we known, maybe we would have planned differently. I think she only ended up taking one nap in the pack ‘n’ play and passed out in the stroller before we headed back for breaks the other planned days. And also spent the first part of some nights in her stroller (prior to her normal middle-of-the-night wake-up). We started to take advantage of this throughout the trip, but if we’d planned for it, we could have managed our time better. The problem, of course, is that we didn’t get much napping of our own in, though. We also learned the important lesson of “never transfer a sleeping baby out of a stroller”. Not if you still would like a sleeping baby, at least. And going back to the resort for naps was kind-of silly when she’d fall asleep on the way there, defeating the whole purpose. Also, on a tangent: no matter how good their track record, if someone in your party is making transportation decisions while tired, critically think through where they are sending you and don’t just blindly get on monorails as directed.

On a related note, I wish we had figured out some way to get more sleep ourselves. We had thought we’d be napping when she did, but that was only like 1 hour of our entire trip. We went to bed fairly early, since we were exhausted, but we also were up early each day. With the Fast Pass +, I could see a possibility of sleeping in and still doing the things you really want to do without much of a wait. That would be nice. Not that she would let us sleep in, necessarily, but she might have. She was pretty sleep-deprived too. Of course, the whole getting more sleep thing is complicated by the next one…

Keep expectations low on what will actually get accomplished. Over a morning or an afternoon, it was common to only get 2 rides and 1 show done. I don’t exactly know why everything was taking us so long, but it was. Even without long waits. There were times we did more, but we were overall at a much slower touring pace than in the past. I think part of it was due to meals/snacks taking longer with Dug Baby and part of it was due to unplanned things (i.e. – her wandering around). I don’t know. But our fairly reasonable plans were hard to keep up with. We were late to things left and right.

Due to the above, I wish we had done more PhotoPass pictures. We passed by a lot of them because we just didn’t have the time to stop, since we were always so far behind on our plans. We don’t have a single one in front of the Tree of Life at AK, for instance. We still got a fair amount, but we missed a lot of opportunities. And we missed other more spontaneous types of experiences too. Related to these past couple points, I would recommend staying longer than a week (if possible) with a baby/toddler. Just less pressure to get your list done that way. Granted, we really couldn’t have done this, but it would have been really nice to have at least a few extra days. Also, on another related note, leave plenty of time open before your Magical Express departure. Don’t try to cram things in up until the last minute. Or even remotely close. You’d think we would have learned this by now, after having past incidents. Not so much.

Touring-wise, we should have skipped most shows. Yes, she got enjoyment out of parts of them, but rides were much more interesting to her. And shows burn up a lot of time. And wear me out, trying to keep her from squirming away and escaping. On rides, she was much more content to sit and look around. I would do more dark rides in place of the shows, if I could re-do the trip.

If you are using Disney Gift Cards to pay off your room-charge balance, do it at night, as late as possible. No lines and faster computers. And you’re not burning up valuable park-touring time. We did this once, earlier in the trip, and it was great. However, the night before our departure, we were both too tired to do it and ended up doing it that morning. Took forever. Lost Magic Kingdom time. But, at least we didn’t do it right before the Magical Express, I guess. Considering we found that they’d charged our credit card and had to reverse it, I’m glad we had some time to deal with things.

Try to take time for each parent to have some solo off-duty time. We didn’t do as much of this as we should have. But it is so important. If we hadn’t been so darn tired at night, there would have been more. As much as I loved spending time with Dug Baby on this trip, some of the nicest moments were wandering off on my own for short times while she was with Dug. Wish there had been more of that.

Some of this will probably come up throughout the Trip Report, but I thought it worthy of its own post. And don’t take this to mean we had a bad trip…most planning/things we brought/etc. worked out great! We were really happy with a lot of the decisions we made and experiences we had. And I really felt like she was a perfect age too…small enough to still be fairly portable and agreeable, but also very interested in what we were seeing and doing, as well as able to interact with her environment (walking around, playing, talking, etc.) We had some really fun times and great moments and memories. Can’t wait to share them! Hoping I didn’t spoil anything here, but just gave you a bit of a preview.

And, since you made it this far, here’s a random sneak preview picture. She was mad because we wouldn’t let her have ALL.THE.MINNIES (she was cleaning out the Minnie plush bin at Club Cool). Here, once we dragged her away, I think she’s saying, “Nobody better touch my Bullseye Mickey!”

 

[Imagineer5]

You have a lot of things you wish you had done differently!! Makes me nervous for your trip LOL though you keep saying it was wonderful!! The biggest thing i took away was more sleep - this is definitely a must-do for us as well and it's why most nights we are in bed by 8-9 right after Aria goes to bed LOL. Sorry you forgot a lot of stuff, ugh that stinks!!

Can't wait to read about the trip itself!

 

[Dugette]

You have a lot of things you wish you had done differently!! Makes me nervous for your trip LOL though you keep saying it was wonderful!! The biggest thing i took away was more sleep - this is definitely a must-do for us as well and it's why most nights we are in bed by 8-9 right after Aria goes to bed LOL. Sorry you forgot a lot of stuff, ugh that stinks!!

Can't wait to read about the trip itself!

Ha, don't let that scare you. I brainstormed the regrets and only came up with one post. If I did the same for the good things, I could (and in fact, will) go on for pages and pages and pages!

You are right on that many things come back to sleep. We had intentions of spending evenings enjoying our patio, but that didn't happen. We were collapsing into bed from exhaustion instead. Part of that is getting back to the room later than planned, though.

Luckily, we didn't forget THAT much and we got by okay without a couple things.