What are ADRs? How do FPs work? A bunch of firsts and lasts for a week of magic! Sept 2018 PTR

[Riss]

Hello everyone! This is my very first PTR that I have ever done and with the countdown kind of "officially" on in my family, I figured that I should write one of these as we get our last minute shopping done, begin packing, and finally get ready to go to Disney World again!

This first post here will act as my Table of Contents that I will update as I update this thread here. So, let's get a move on, I guess. On to the introductions!

Table of Contents
Introductions (8/13/18)
How did this trip come about? (8/13/18)
Determining the necessities (8/13/18)
Discovering the ways of ADRs (8/14/18)
Figuring some details out (8/15/18)
What do you mean by Free Dining? (8/18/18)
Trying to form a schedule with Fast Passes part 1 (8/21/18)
Trying to form a schedule with Fast Passes part 2 (8/21/18)
To MNSSHP or to not MNSSHP (8/31/18)
So close yet so far (9/13/18)​

 

[Riss]

Introductions

To be completely honest, I'm not entirely sure how to introduce my family. And also, that picture isn't probably the greatest of us, but hey, it's an actual picture of all of us who are going in a shot together. Most of the time it's us 4 kids and the baby, my parents are typically the ones who take the pic, obviously.

But anyway, I guess I'll start with myself for this long round of introductions!

I'm in the middle of that picture, the one that graduated (albeit 2 years late because of various transferring, but graduated nonetheless!). I'm the main planner of this, although we do have a travel agent, but I'm mostly the one who is making all of the ADRs and FPs with input from my family members. In a way, I see myself as our travel agent haha. Out of the four children I am the oldest. And using that, I'll move onto number 2!

The one all the way on the right in this picture wearing a black romper, I believe that's what she wore that day, is the second child in our family. She graduated last year from UPenn and is the listmaker of the family. She's actually already started making lists for this year's trip as to what we should take, toiletries and clothes wise, as well as already thinking about the luggage situation since we're going for double the time that we have gone in the past.

Side note and maybe irrelevant, but there might be people who are curious as to why my sister and I are Asian or maybe I'm just so used to people wondering that that I automatically assumed so, so I apologize for making assumptions. But my sister and I are actually adopted from China! I was adopted at 6 months old and my sister at 4 months old. Additionally, the two of us are not biologically related, we were born to different families and adopted from different regions. Anyway, after adopting us my parents actually had 2 children of their own. Which brings me to the next family member!

The male wearing the blue dress shirt, to the left of me if you're looking at the picture, is the only son in our family. He just entered his senior year at Villanova and while he's someone who likes plans, will never actually make them unless he's forced. He actually told me once that I should write out an actual itinerary for our trip since our family is very easy-going and it ends up with us standing around asking each other what we want to do for 10 minutes.

The final child of the 4, the youngest, is wearing the white and light blue dress. She graduated from high school 1 year ago, 2017, and is working as a cosmetologist at a salon. In our family she is typically referred to as the "big planner" but since she's so busy working, she actually hasn't had much time to even think about planning this trip.

I think my mom and dad are obvious in the picture, haha. They're caring parents to us 4 children who are so close in age that we often quarrel with one another, in a loving way. It was actually my mom who suggested this trip, but that's something I'll talk a little bit about in the next post. My mom primarily stays at home to take care of the house affairs while my dad works for the USPS.

Finally, there's the last person in the picture, the reason why this trip is happening, and that's the little boy in front of my sisters. He is a 2-year-old that my family has been babysitting since he was 6 months old. He's actually the entire reason that we decided to go on this trip in the first place. He's someone that my family cherishes very much and we very much spoil him. My family spends so much time with him, actually, that most people wonder why we don't just make him a part of our family!

But that's really it for the introductions of everyone that's going. I don't really think there's much to us, but I figured it'd probably be best to at least identify those of us that are going.

In the next post, I'll talk a little bit about how this trip came about.

 

[Riss]

How did this trip come about?

So like I previously mentioned, this trip is all because of the one little boy.

I believe it was around the end of last year or the beginning of this year that my mom started talking about the possibility of going to Disney again. Ever since I was in 9th grade, which was like 10 years ago now, my family has been going to Disney every other year because the high school marching band goes every other year to do that marching thing before a parade in MK. I'm not sure the exact term that they use for it, but if you've ever been there and experienced a time when there were 2 high school marching bands before the parade started, well it's that.

Like this kind of thing. (This isn't a picture of my school, just one I found by googling it)

So since there's 4 of us, and since we all participated in the band, my family has been going to Disney every other year for 8 years, not including this trip, I'm pretty sure. Our high school trips amount to 5 times we've been to Disney. Of course that doesn't include the times that we have gone individually, like I went with my grandparents when I was younger, my parents went for their honeymoon, and my youngest sister went with her friend and friend's family one summer. Needless to say, going every other year kind of feels like a tradition for us in a way? However, this year will actually be the first year that we're going without the restraints of the band, like where to stay (my parents liked staying at the same resort and would even get us room keys or charging privileges to their room), what days to go, and even what parks to be in, as obviously we're going to go to MK the day of the parade.

It was actually my mom that suggested going on the trip. She wanted to take the 2-year-old boy we babysit, who I frequently call the baby, to Disney World and of course we all jumped on board! This would be the first time that we're going with someone this young because the first time we went as a family, my youngest sister was already in 5th grade. Then, as we were talking about it, one of my parents, probably my mom again, brought up the idea of going on a Disney cruise. I had been on one when I was younger, around 4 years old, whereas the rest of my siblings had never. Obviously there was no objection to that either!

Also, there was also the slow realization that us 4 children are growing up. We're all finishing up school and finding real jobs or applying to internships that it's becoming acknowledged that we aren't going to be living here at home forever. Therefore, in a way, and my mom has mentioned this a couple of times, this trip is sort of standing as a last family vacation since she doesn't know when we'll be able to have another one. With my desire to go abroad, my youngest sister's already busy schedule, my other sister's corporate job, and my brother potentially getting a corporate programming job in the future, the possibility to go on a family vacation like this ever again is looking pretty slim.

But that's how the trip had begun to come about! But that was only in words. There was going to be a lot of planning and deciding on dates in the future, which I'll cover in my next post. The actual initial planning stages for this trip.

 

[Riss]

Determining the necessities

It was one thing to talk about going on the trip but another thing to actually book it and figure out those initial details.

Since the baby's birthday is at the end of October, my mom suggested in going on vacation then. For one thing, she knew that he was free for the parks if he was under 3 and secondly, it's his birthday month, so why not go then? But as we began to look things up, we realized that it was a bit cheaper to go the month before, in September, so we decided to go with that route instead. My mom also wanted to go in October because we had never seen the fall decorations before and that was something she always wanted to do. My mom is also a big fan of pumpkins, she loves them and has a whole ton of ceramic pumpkins all over the house in the fall. We had only ever gone in the Spring once and the remainder was during November/December so Christmastime in Disney.

We also brought the idea up with his mother at that time who talked it over with his father and gave the okay. Of course this was only a verbal agreement at the time as there would be things that we would need to get ready, like a passport and a notarized letter giving us authority to even take him. But for now, we got the okay for the trip so we were in the green to start actually booking it.

One thing that probably hindered us the most in choosing a date was coordinating everyone's work schedules. The one with probably the hardest schedule to do is my youngest sister since she works in a salon and people could book things way ahead of time. So it was important for us to determine the days that we were going so she could submit those ASAP so there'd be no problem. The second most difficult person would probably be my dad, since they just hand a schedule around at work through the hierarchy and only like two people can be on vacation during a week at a time or something like that, I think he mentioned. My other sister, the second oldest, was also undetermined since she was switching jobs around that point. As for the rest of us three, my brother was alright with skipping classes and didn't care when we went, my mom, like I previously mentioned, is a stay-at-home mom for the most part, and I work a retail job until I hear back from these internships I'm applying to. So the rest of us were fairly easy.

And I know it's a subject that causes various opinions, but my family is one that doesn't mind about skipping school for things like this. Even when we were in high school, my family always went on the Disney trips the high school band took and so did my siblings. We all got out of school, and even when we were in college, there as well. There was only one instance where one of us wasn't able to make it and that was myself. I was in my freshman year of college and had finals the same week they were going to Disney, the second week of December. So, when it was my mom's birthday and I called her from my dorm room early in the morning, since I had a chemistry final that day, my family was in Disney on vacation without me. Other than that, we all talk with our professors at the beginning of the school year, since we know we're going, and discuss how to rearrange deadlines, tests, or quizzes that we may miss during that period. So far, they've all been very flexible with us.

But anyway, with it already agreed upon that we were going to do a Disney Cruise, our first business was to decide whether it would be a 3 or 4 night and whether our trip to Disney World should be before or after. While I don't remember how exactly we came to the decision, my parents thought it'd be better to experience Disney World after the cruise, so we started looking for dates for the cruise that were kind of mid-September. Too early would run into Labor Day and my brother's birthday and too late would fall into my grandfather's birthday. And after looking at the options for the cruise, we went with a 4-night Disney Dream cruise since it would be short but still allow us to experience what was on the ship with the sea day that we had. A date that seemed perfect for us was the cruise that left on September 17.

A surprise of this cruise, that none of us realized, was that it would be a Halloween on the High Seas cruise. No one in my family is a very "Halloween" person. We like it but it's one of those holidays we can go without. So we weren't really sure what to expect when were booking one, but thankfully, it didn't seem like it was going to be intense in the Halloween genre but rather have some activities that we, and the baby, would be able to enjoy. So like that, we decided on 2 connecting Deluxe Family Oceanview Staterooms that are on Deck 2.

Next, we had to determine where we were staying. All throughout our trips with the high school bands we stayed at the All-Star Music. Like I previously mentioned, my parents enjoyed staying at the same resort. That way, if we needed something, we could easily go to their room to get it and they would also ask the front desks for another room key, back when they still had room keys which was during the first couple of trips we took, in order to let us charge things to their room. Actually, on the very last high school band trip we went on, they had magic bands and my parents still worked it out with the front desk so my youngest sister, who was in the band, would be able to get a room key to charge things to my parents' room.

Either way, we all knew that we wanted to try out something differently this time but weren't sure what. My brother brought up the option of staying at AKL and I brought up WL, but my mom wasn't really a fan of the theme at either of those and she had some requirements about what the room should hold. For one thing, we were looking for a room that could accommodate 6 adults and a 2-year-old. Also, if it came that we had to have separate rooms, my mom wanted them to connect. The second was the theme. My mom wanted something that was family friendly, the in-your-face type of stuff that the baby would enjoy. The third thing was that we had to have more than 1 bathroom. When we stayed in the ASM, the family suites have 2 bathrooms and since we have 2 bathrooms upstairs in our house, it only made sense to try to keep that going. My mom was actually surprised when we were looking at WL, one of the suites that's club level but can accommodate 6 or more people, that there was only 1 bathroom there and deemed it not a good fit for our family.

The way we came to decide upon our resort, though, is by a transfer that we once had. Back on our last trip we wanted to go to another park, but had to stop at a resort first to get there. After asking some people, they said that Art of Animation was closer to where we were going, which was probably either HS or Epcot from MK, so we took a bus to get there before heading there. Despite not going inside, we were all amazed with how the outside of the resort looked and thought that it'd be cool to stay there if ever given the opportunity. Well, now was the opportunity.

After I began scouring the internet for information, provided by the boards here and some blogs, I told my family that we should do the Finding Nemo family suites since they were closest to the main building. I remember previously that my mom commented on how far everything seemed as the ASM and didn't want her to think that about this trip. We are now with a general family suite, with the theme to be determined when we check in, because of Free Dining, but I'll get into that later.

Like with the cruise, we only had to determine how many nights we wanted to go and this was something we decided on the spot as we were booking the trip.

Initially, the thought was 3 nights since we were already going on the cruise for 4 nights. However, that would only really give us 2 park days, since we don't typically do a park the day we arrive or leave, no matter what time the flights are. I think they did that the first time they went to Disney, when I was a freshman in high school, and hated it. I was going on the plane with the band and had to be at the school at around 4:30am I believe for an 8am flight and my parents flight was before 7am, I think, so they got there earlier. I remember I was miserable that day since we went straight to Universal from the airport and didn't go to the Disney resort until around 10-11pm. Also, the last time we went we only spent 2 days in the parks, we flew down for a literal weekend, flying out on Friday and coming back Monday, that it was just too rushed. So we decided on a 4-night stay at the Art of Animation with 3-day park hopper tickets, which we would then modify for the same reason we modified what room we were staying in.

So on the very last day of January our trip was booked and flights were paid for. The final trip would go from Monday, September 17 - Tuesday, September, 25. Our cruise would be September 17 - 22 with our stay in AoA following that.

Little did we realize, though, that that was only the beginning because at that time I didn't know how much I didn't know like:

What are ADRs? I know about FP but I don't know about FP... What do I even do?

This trip was going to be a lot of firsts for us, well taking a baby and all. My easy-going family was actually going to try to schedule things and have a skeleton outline of what we should do? We never did that at all during our last 5 trips... Something told me then that this definitely wasn't going to be easy.

 

[Riss]

Discovering the ways of ADRs

Never on a trip before had my family made an ADR! To be honest, I didn't even know what that meant until I started researching about this trip. Since we were always on the run, we never really thought about ever doing a sit down dinner in WDW. The only time we actually did it was probably in 2014, we went to the place that was in a boat. I don't even remember the name or where it was, but it was more like a walk-up type of thing anyway. That year, actually, my dad made the mistake of buying the Deluxe Dining Package and we ended up wasting most of it because we didn't have time and didn't want to sit down to eat. He learned from then and we got the Quick Service Plan the next time we went since we mentioned that the school gave us something similar so they had to have something smaller than that.

But since we were taking a 2-year-old, we knew that we wanted to experience some different things. My dad did go to a character meal by himself, that year we had the large dining plan, and he went to the Crystal Palace. So, I started from there.

I started thinking about the characters that the baby knew, which at that time, wasn't a lot. He basically only knew about Mickey, Goofy, and Donald. From that point on, I began thinking about characters that my family loves. I knew that my sister likes Eeyore and my dad likes Tigger, therefore I figured Crystal Palace had to be a go.

But I didn't know of ant other place besides that! I didn't even actually know the name of the Crystal Palace, I had to Google it.

I never heard of Cinderella's Royal Table or Chef Mickey's or basically any other place that was considered a table service. I don't even think I really paid attention to any of them in the parks either. My family was never interested in that type of stuff. So I had to do a lot of research and discovered that they could be made 180 days ahead of time, so that date was marked down in my phone and set as a reminder. Also, since we live on the East Coast, I was thankful that I didn't have to wake up at an insane time to do these things.

Still, I had to figure out what would match all of our tastes. Even though we are a fairly easy-going family, we still have our opinions about things. Some are picky about food and others are picky about the type of atmosphere, so trying to find places that would fit the bill for our family and which places would also fulfill the 4 TS credits that we were getting from deciding to go with the Standard Dining Plan.

As I was looking at things, I also began to think about some things. For one, one of our close family friends went to WDW recently with her family and I remembered seeing a picture of them at what appeared to be a luau. Further researched showed me that it was probably the Spirit of Aloha show that they went to.

I brought the idea up to my mom and she seemed to want to go to that. So 2 credits were going to be used up with the show and 1 was already determined to be used by the Crystal Palace. There was only a matter to figure out what we wanted to do for the 4th and final credit that we had.

I had narrowed it down to 2 parks. Since we were already doing one in MK, and basically hitting 1 or 2 parks per day, it was either going to have to be in AK or HS. For Epcot, I figured we were just going to do F&W like we had done previously. The problem was which restaurant and when. That's when I found out about the Fantasmic package at HS.

My family saw Fantasmic for the first time in 2016, the last time we went. Crazy, isn't it? We had always expressed interest in seeing it before but never really made time or we ended up forgetting about it by the end of the day. However, we actually made an effort to see it and loved it. So when I brought up the idea about seeing it again, everyone was in for it.

That brought me to 1 park, HS, but still having to choose one that qualified for the package. Out of those, Hollywood & Vine was chosen. I read some reviews about it online that said it wasn't the best and that there were obvious better places, but my family would be fine with that. They all understand that we're basically going for the atmosphere, not so much the food.

It would also end up being Minnie's Season Dine with Halloween as the theme at our time of going.

With our destinations set, the only thing left was to wait until the 180 mark. When that day finally came I was up in the morning and logged on to make ADRs for the first time.

I did wonder if I would have any trouble making such things or if I would have problems with the times that I chose. But I was aiming for dinner and I wasn't really aiming for things that were very popular, or at least I didn't think they seemed to be that popular based on things that I read from the internet. I did do a ton of research on making ADRs, though, and looking up things that I would need to know about each location like the type of food and such. Some of it was for my own enjoyment, some of it was to know for when the time came.

So in the end I was able to get everything with relative ease. I didn't experience any difficulties with the website. In the end, we had 3 different ADRs on 3 different days that would satisfy our needs and they ended up looking like this:

Fri, Sept 21 - Spirit of Aloha, 1st show, Category 2, 5:15pm
Sat, Sept 22 - Crystal Palace, 5:15pm
Mon, Sept 24 - Hollywood & Vine Fantasmic Package, 5:00pm

I quickly learned in my research, though, that that wasn't all, but FP day was quite a ways away and before then, I'd have to start working on getting items needed for the trip, more like getting clothing items I wanted for the trip.

 

[Newsies]

Hi, Riss! I'm here!

It looks like you guys have an amazing trip planned out! Can't wait to read more!

 

[Riss]

Hi, Riss! I'm here!

It looks like you guys have an amazing trip planned out! Can't wait to read more!

Hello!

 

[Riss]

Figuring some details out

If there was one thing we knew while going into this trip was that things were definitely going to be different. After all, we're bringing a 2-year-old with us. In a way we have to adapt ourselves to try to do more kid friendly things.

It might sound strange, but my family has never done the family-oriented rides at Disney. We've never done the Aladdin carpets, Dumbo, the Merry-Go-Round, etc. We actually haven't done a lot of attractions all over the place as we always go to the same ones we enjoy.

But anyway, this time we had to figure out the different things that we would want to do.

In a way, during all of our previous trips, we experienced something different. Even though we never had a schedule, like making FPs or ADRs, we still found ourselves doing something new that we've never done before.

Our first trip, when I was in 9th grade, was the standard first trip to Disney. We were just so excited to be there and wanted to see everything that there was really no time to rest. I believe the second trip was similar to the first since it was still one of the first times we were there. I didn't go the 3rd trip, but by the 4th, that was when we experimented with the Dining Plan for the very first time. Throughout all those trips we were focused on the rides whereas on the very last trip was when we saw shows for the first time like Fantasmic and The Little Mermaid as well as the Mickey's Philharmagic.

This trip, though, we wanted to do a combination of things. One thing that we wanted to include more of was character meets. We only ever saw two characters throughout all of our years there. One was Mulan, who we just accidentally saw at Epcot and the other was Donald Duck, who had just come out and had a short line.

While researching about the different character meets that there are, I never really realized that there were so many. I knew about the obvious ones, but I had no idea that there was like Baymax or even Goofy and Donald in circus outfits. I also discovered that there was Memory Maker.

Previously my parents would always take pictures, but since we extremely rarely ever did character meet and greets, they would only be the standard picture in front of the castle or Christmas trees in front of the park. But before we even really started talking about the trip in length, my mom expressed her desire to make the baby a photo album and also how she wanted a lot of pictures on this trip, not just so we could remember them by but so we could also show him once he got older. Therefore we figured that getting Memory Maker might be a good option for us. That way at least everyone in the family will be able to get in some good shots.

One of the common themes we'd have to consider, even now before the trip and later, during the trip, is the baby's tastes. At the time that we booked the trip, like I mentioned before, he didn't really know any characters besides the main ones. Back during March or April, around the time that I made our ADRs, we only knew that we would have to introduce him to Winnie the Pooh somehow. The only way was how? Well, thankfully, on Netflix they have the Heffalump movie so I played that for a couple of days in the background. It didn't necessarily matter if he knew the movie by heart, it was just an introduction to the characters that were in the background on TV while he played. However, he wasn't that interested in the movie and in the end, he seriously only paid attention to the last 20 minutes! I don't know if anyone has ever seen it before, so it may be a small spoiler alert, but he only liked the part from when Pooh and the gang try to catch Lumpy on. He would always begin to ask for that part, so I'd have to fast forward throughout the movie until we got to that point.

A little while later, as his interest in music began to grow like all children, we began putting on Moana, a movie that he fell absolutely in love with. We probably watched it for weeks straight at a time and he would watch it before bed. He was also somewhat interested in Frozen due to his mother's friend's daughters, who were probably also interested in it. He developed an interest in Princesses at that time. Another thing was the pillowcase he used here, when he slept over, it had Ariel on it, one of my youngest sister's favorite movies.

One thing we always wanted to get him into, however, was Toy Story. It's one of my family's beloved movies and although we had the first one on for a short while, he didn't seem to show interest in it. Somehow, in some strange turn of events, he became interested in the second one and now we have it on all of the time. We also have a bunch of toys from when we were younger that my mom kept that we pull out that he now enjoys to play with.

He's gradually learning about the characters to other shows and, now that we're almost 30 days before our trip, we're focusing on him learning about the characters and about where he's going. He can recognize Cinderella's Castle and he knows that there are fireworks, even though he's a bit afraid of them. At this point, we're just trying to make him comfortable with the idea of going and with the idea of what he might see.

Still, around a month ago, that wasn't going to help with me planning FPs. In a family that's easy-going, no one had any idea what they wanted to do, as no normal person would know, but still, we had to make a decision by FP day came. So with input from my family or not, something had to get chosen.

 

[Riss]

What do you mean by Free Dining?

Since my family are total newbies when it comes to actually thoroughly planning trips, I was doing extensive research about what we could possibly do during our trip. One thing that I frequently came across here on the boards and other places, as I was researching about going in the fall, was Free Dining.

It was something brand-new to me. I never heard the term and actually didn't even know that something like that existed. Even though we had booked the trip at the end of January, the very last day, it was something we didn't know at the time.

Therefore I started to look things up about it, about past offers and began to wonder if perhaps it would be something feasible for us. Even without it booked, we, at the time, had a 4-night stay at the AoA Finding Nemo Family Suites with 3-day Park Hoppers and were already doing the Standard Dining Plan due to our desire to do some character meals for the first time. The only thing that I really had to wait for was to see whether we would be able to book it for the first time with this trip since everything we had gotten was already in a package with Disney. We also had to wait to see if the dates we were going were included in the offer, but I was fairly confident that they would be based on past reports of the September availability.

One thing that I already knew as I kept looking for potential details about the offer, I knew that I wasn't going to stay up all night trying to book the deal. First off, I couldn't even book it myself since we got the trip through a travel agent, and secondly, I just really didn't want to haha.

To my surprise, and thankfulness, maybe(?) but on the morning of, even though I woke up way after it was first released, we were still able to get it. After being in contact with our travel agent, after first scoping it out for myself, I discovered that we were able to book the deal, it was just that we would have to add a day on to our Park Hoppers, turning them in to 4-day ones. Another thing was that, at that time, there weren't any Finding Nemo Family Suites available, so we just had to settle with the general family suite with the theme to be decided later, upon check-in or whenever.

Staying at Finding Nemo wasn't really that much of a requirement for us initially. I only picked it because it was the theme that was the most interesting to us out of the 3 and because it was close to the lobby. But in actuality, my family would be fine with any of the themes of the suites just because the themes look so great. It's also a plus that the baby knows Cars, too, at least since he has a Lightning McQueen backpack. Now I think he's ever seen the movie, but he at least can recognize him. As for Lion King, he'll only say that it's a lion and doesn't know any of their names.

With booking the Free Dining, we were able to end up saving over $600 for our trip. And then, since we were saving that much, my parents said that it's a possibility that we might go to MNSSHP during out trip with the saved money, since for 6 of us adults to go, the baby is free, it'd be around $500. It just all depends on the weather since we don't want to go to a rained out party.

Even though there's a possibility that we might not end up using the extra day of Park Hoppers, my mom said that it's alright since we ended up saving money with the deal anyway. Although I did end up making FPs for that day, just in case we decided to use them since the first day we're in WDW is the day that we are getting off of the Disney Dream so there's the obvious fact that we'll probably be tired and may not even want to go before our dinner that night going to the Spirit of Aloha.

My dad recently said that we could use the Park Hoppers in our last day, if it came to be, instead of the first, but I totally don't think that that'll be possible since our flight is leaving at around 4:30pm. I don't believe that we'll be able to go to a park with just that short amount of time before we have to be at the airport around 2pm. I did tell him that I had a plan already in place for the first day, since it would probably be better suited to use them that day since we'd probably reach AoA on that Friday by 12pm at the latest, hopefully, so it'd probably be better suited for us to use them that day in the current plan that I have set, which is doing Epcot but saving the World Showcase until our later date since we're going to do F&W.

But we're now officially 29 days away from our trip, which means crunch time is ahead of us. We all can taste it soon enough!

 

[Riss]

Trying to form a schedule with Fast Passes (part 1)

Just like almost everything else we've done, my family has never actually scheduled any FPs beforehand before. We have gotten some same day ones just while we were browsing yet had no idea that you could even book them days in advance. The only other time we had booked one was back when Toy Story Mania first opened and the paper FPs still existed, where you went up to the kiosk and just got the next available time, without choosing when you wanted to come back.

The one thing was that I wasn't entirely sure what to get and for when. The problem was really the when part. How am I supposed to schedule things for times when I wasn't sure what we were going to do or be in the mood to do?

But before all that, I had to first determine what we were going to do. Like I previously mentioned, we wanted to do things that the baby could participate in, things that he could ride on. Since he's a little over 36", that means he could go on basically everything but the thrill rides, which he would probably be afraid of anyway. Also, since we were doing character meets, I know that there are some FPs available for that as well. Taking that all into consideration, I made out to try to make my plan.

As for the breakdown of making the FPs. For the most part, where our ADRs were located on what day did determine, in a way, what park we were going to.

Friday, Sept. 21 - Disembarkation off the Disney Dream; possibly going to Epcot; ADR at 5:15pm for Spirit of Aloha

This day was the day that I wasn't too sure about myself. Since we would have to get off the Disney Dream pretty early, I wasn't sure how long it'd take us to get to AoA to check in with our luggage and then head to a park since we also have a 5pm ADR for Spirit of Aloha.

Still, I figured this would be the best day to use our 4th day that we acquired through free dining since not only could we take a bus to the Poly from Epcot, but we could also take the monorail, with some transfers, which I thought would be a fun experience, especially for the baby. Our original plan for during the day when we got off of the ship, was to go to Disney Springs, but since we got the 4th day, I thought going to a park for a little would be nicer and that way we could do DS that night after dinner, taking the bus from the Poly.

My sister also previously expressed desire to spend more time in Epcot since on most trips it was just a quick walk through for us, always happening at night for a couple of hours. We'd quickly walk through the park and then head to the World Showcase where we'd spend some time there. Out of all of the parks, Epcot is probably the one that we spend the least amount of time in, even though we absolutely adore the countries. I thought that we could use the short time we had that day to do the first part of Epcot, basically everything but the World Showcase, and then do that at a later date since we were going to do F&W.

The only really difficult part was to figure out what we wanted to do FPs for. Now I know that we don't really need to do one, but I figured, since we wouldn't have much time that day anyway, it'd be good to do at least be able to have the possibility to do something.

We've only ever been on a couple of rides in Epcot like Spaceship Earth while my siblings have done Test Track and Mission Space once. My mom also did Mission Space with them and they weren't really that interested to do that.

After looking at the map and determining what would be fun for all of us, I ended up with the following FPs for the day:

11:55am - 12:55pm | Spaceship Earth
1:00pm - 2:00pm | Meet Disney Pals
2:00pm - 3:00pm | The Seas with Nemo and Friends

I figured that we'd probably be able to get lunch some time in the middle but that we might not be super hungry because of eating before we get off the ship and having an early dinner planned that night. Plus there's the obvious possibility that we'll get done things early and have time to go grab something quick if we wanted to.

I was on the fence about getting the character meet and greet, either getting that or Frozen, but thought that Frozen might be scary for the baby since it's entirely in the dark. He knows the characters and can recognize the songs, but I just wasn't sure about how he would react when it came to the actual ride itself.

Saturday, Sept. 22 - Magic Kingdom; ADR at 5:15pm for Crystal Palace

I asked my mom when I was first making ADRs about what day she would want to go to the Magic Kingdom and she responded by saying of course we'd have to go the very first day. With the day set, and thereby approved by my mom haha, I went with looking up attractions and trying to think of a plan.

So I knew that my brother wanted to go on BTMR the last time we were there but since it was under refurbishment he couldn't. Also, since we've never been on it before I knew I definitely wanted to try it this time. Space Mountain was another one I was interested in getting because it's a family favorite of mine, we've gone on it every trip. Finally, I discovered another ride that we had never gone on before. I went when I was younger on the ride, the first time I went to Disney practically 20 years ago, but never really thought about it again. I guess I thought that it didn't exist anymore? Either way, I found out that that ride was Buzz Lightyear. The only way that I remembered it by was by the large Buzz Lightyear that talks. After showing my mom some videos about it, she asked why we never knew about it before, and that pretty much was set.

The next thing was figuring out the times that we should go. I know that park hours could always change, but figured that I would just choose the best times for us, not really mattering when. We're not morning people and we're not really breakfast people either, hence no breakfast ADRs planned, and with 6 adults, it could take a pretty long time before everyone got ready to start the day. Therefore most of our FPs start at around the 10am range, no matter what time the park opens since I didn't want us to try to rush to get to things when we were clearly tired.

There's also the Festival of Fantasy parade that I had to account for in making the FPs, but figured that that wouldn't be that bad to work around as well as the location of the rides and other rides around it that we may want to go on.

In the end, our FPs look like as follows:

9:55am - 10:55am | Space Mountain
11am - 12pm | Buzz Lightyear's Space Ranger Spin
3:15pm - 4:15pm | Big Thunder Mountain Railroad

I figured that since Buzz Lightyear and Space Mountain are close by, it'd make most sense to schedule them close to each other. We could possibly get some lunch somewhere after Buzz Lightyear before making our way to the front for the parade. We'd then head over to ride Big Thunder, or maybe something else if we're still kind of early for the FP time, before heading back for the Crystal Palace. I know that it's probably not the best plan of time, but I wanted to get those rides so we at least know we'd be going on them. During this time we'd also be looking to see if there are any more FPs available for anything else to cut down on some more wait time before the HEA at 8pm.

I actually just changed for the Space Mountain and Buzz Lightyear time and was actually surprised at the availability still available for our trip. I believe practically everything is still available for that day, even 7DMT and Peter Pan.

Recently, Disney did extend the hours for MK on this particular day to 11pm, so I figured after dinner we could see the waits for the rides and go on some small things before watching the fireworks and continuing to ride once they're over. I know it'll be a long day for us and it might not be the best plan, but it's a plan thus far and one that is definitely subject to change.

The next and final 2 days will continue in the next post!

 

[Riss]

Trying to form a schedule with Fast Passes (part 2)

Sunday, Sept. 23 - Animal Kingdom; possibly doing MNSSHP?

Sunday is our only day that we don't have any ADRs scheduled. When we originally thought about what park to do what day, I always figured that this day was going to end up being split between two different parks. Originally, before the possibility about going to MNSSHP was brought up, we were going to do Epcot and AK. However, since my family has been discussing possibly going, we're currently going between AK in the morning and then back to MK in the afternoon.

My brother's only request for this trip was to eat at Flame Tree BBQ. He knew it from when he went with his friends while in the band and we ate there for the first time two years ago. We loved it there last year and totally wouldn't mind going again.

As always, figuring out what to do in regards to the rides was probably one of the biggest challenges. No one in my family has ever seen Avatar so Pandora isn't necessarily a must do, at least none of the rides are. The land is probably cool to look around, and we'd probably do that, but I wasn't worried about getting any of the rides because of our lack of interest. We were interested in doing the Safari and Expedition Everest. My brother and youngest sister tried to go on it the last time we were there but the wait was too long and we had to go back to HS for Fantasmic, so they didn't get to go on. This year, like the same with BTMR, I knew that was going to be a FP that I was going to try to get.

I ended up choosing these:

10:25am - 11:25am | Kilimanjaro Safaris
12:00pm - 1:00pm | Meet Disney Pals
1:55pm - 2:55pm | Expedition Everest

Since Flame Tree is right near the character meet and greet, or rather not too far, I figured we could eat some lunch after that and then head over to Expedition Everest before exploring Dino land and then making our way to MK, but that's if we're doing the party that day.

That part is still up in the air so if we decide not to go, we'll change our plans accordingly and probably end up with some more time in AK and then maybe head to HS or maybe Epcot for some F&W. So our last 2 days aren't really set in stone since it all depends if we are going to the party..

If we do end up going to MNSSHP, it'd definitely be on the Sunday and we'd just head over after doing AK, which is one of the reasons why we're doing AK that day. We don't ever really spend much time actually doing anything in AK and I thought that taking the day easy would be much better option than trying to rush around everywhere. While we would have to run on a little bit of a schedule, in order to make it to MK in a timely manner, I don't think it's really like super intense.

Monday, Sept. 24 - Epcot morning, HS afternoon; ADR at 5pm for Hollywood & Vine Fantasmic Package

This is definitely dependent on whether or not we do MNSSHP, but as it stands, and since it's a definitely possibility we're actually going to do it, Epcot will happen in the morning of our final day. This time, as we do Epcot, we'll only focus on the World Showcase to do F&W. According to Disney's website, it opens at 9am, so we'd just start exploring the countries the moment we get there eating as we feel, since that always happens haha.

Therefore our FPs aren't until the afternoon, when we're in HS. While Slinky Dog and the Swirling Saucers sound cool, we're really only focusing on Toy Story Mania this trip with the baby and maybe the Swirling Saucers depending upon the wait time. We also have the usual Rock 'n' Roller Coaster that we do every time and, like previously, our third one I had in mind was one that my brother and youngest sister wanted to go on but the wait was too long, since we were going to go somewhere else, Tower of Terror.

The FPs I scheduled look like this:

1:30pm - 2:30pm | Rock 'n' Roller Coaster
3:30pm - 4:30pm | Toy Story Mania
6:35pm - 7:35pm | Tower of Terror

The timing was a little bit difficult to do here since it's a half a park day and then we have a 5pm ADR with Fantasmic later the night. I tried to find enough time for us to explore Toy Story Land, since that is one of my family's favorite movies, and the baby now, while still allowing us enough time to do other things. That's why Rock 'n' Roller Coaster is first to do then giving us enough time to get over to Toy Story Mania with potentially enough time to do Alien Swirling Saucers before that. Then, once we're done Toy Story Mania, we'd be able to go over to our ADR at Hollywood & Vine.

I didn't make the Tower of Terror FP until after our ADR but wasn't exactly sure how long we'd take there. I know that we'd want to get to Fantasmic at a relatively good time and since Tower of Terror is already on the way over there, I believe, it made sense to save that one. Originally I was going to try to make Toy Story Land for after our ADR yet before Fantasmic but realized that that wouldn't make sense. I still might change the Toy Story Mania FP to a little bit later, a little after 4, but am concerned about us being able to get on the ride and then making it to our ADR in time. We also don't know about the time we'll get done Rock 'n' Roller Coaster, which could also allow us to make it over to Swirling Saucers in time. I'm not entirely sure about that plan yet, but we'll see what happens. I probably won't change it, keep it the way it is, and hope for the best.

It is a little hard for my family that doesn't plan anything to try to plan our days in a manner that'll make everyone happy. After all, we are 6 adults. There is the chance that not all of us will want to ride on something, such as Tower of Terror, and there is a chance that we might just cancel a FP if we feel like we don't want to ride on it, but for right now, the plan is as stands.

If we don't go to MNSSHP, I'd probably suggest doing F&W that Sunday night instead leaving us some more time in HS the next day. I don't think I'd try to move up our FPs and instead use the time to maybe do some things that we haven't tried before or use it as the opportunity to ride things more than once. I may try to look at the times to see if I could get an earlier one for those things but wouldn't necessarily be heartbroken if it weren't possible because we already have them scheduled for later. The original plan did include possibly sleeping in a little on this last day due to waking up somewhat early the other days. My family likes to sleep haha, we aren't really early risers, but my mom said that since we're all adults and can get our own way around, she won't feel bad about leaving us at the resort if some feel like heading out earlier than others.

I'm willing to say that our plans will probably change. Obviously not the FP times, but the order in which we do the park, especially MK, will probably change. We might decide to do one thing instead of another or go one direction instead of the direction that I had in mind while making it. The good thing, I guess, is that my family is pretty lenient about these things and don't mind a shake-up in plan once in a while.

That's it for the plans as of this moment, though. They'll probably change and we're alright with that. I just have to tell my family each day what the initial plan is and we'll probably change it as we go. But hey, we're that kind of family and that's alright!

 

[Riss]

To MNSSHP or to not MNSSHP

We are officially 16 days away from our trip and the Magic Bands have arrived!

One question that my family has had since the beginning, since we booked this trip practically 7 months ago, was whether we were going to attend Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween Party or not.

For us, it was a cool concept and we always thought it'd be kind of like one of those once-in-a-lifetime experiences. We have been down during the season of the Christmas parties but was always unable to do one because we were always there with the band and had a curfew of midnight, for the most part.

This time, however, without those constraints, it was an actual possibility that we might go to one. I know I mentioned it before, but we were even more favorably considering it since we saved some money by booking Free Dining. I also know that my parents were leaning towards it because they didn't want to disappoint us by not going.

But after the first couple of parties have happened and further researching about the party fully, now that they were actually happening, one thing that crossed my mind was that the parties weren't actually a good match for us.

I know I've mentioned all of these things before, but my family isn't big on character meets. Even just through the initial research about the party I knew that the lines for some meet and greets were long, but as I looked at the list and began thinking about what was in the best interest for my family, none of the characters are really ones that we were crazy about. Sure, we like them, like I personally am a fan of Stitch, but characters are just one of those things that we don't have to go out of our way to see. We don't really mind if we miss them.

Next, the rides. We were already going to be spending an entire day in MK besides the party, our MK day is the day before, Saturday, so riding rides with short wait times also wasn't going to be a priority.

So all in all, it didn't seem like it would be a fit for my family, something that I mentioned to my youngest sister the other day. I had told her that I thought it'd probably be better if we didn't do the party and when she asked why, I told her that without it we'd be able to have some more time in the parks. As it stands, all of our park days are really half days besides for MK. By not doing the party, we're able to really have a lazy kind of schedule the last 2 days of the trip. We wouldn't have to have a certain time to be out of AK by and we could go to Epcot if we wanted to do F&W for dinner, then possibly sleeping in the next morning and heading over to HS earlier, maybe by lunch?

But now, officially knowing that we aren't going to be attending the party, I could possibly try to change our days a little bit. I have continually been changing our FP times, by like 5-10 minutes, just because I'm a bit unsure about when I should do something and am still amazed at the availability. I guess I should start working on that!

 

[Riss]

So close yet so far

We are officially like 4/5 days away from this trip! (I'm writing this at almost midnight haha). It feels like we're so close yet so far since we don't have anything ready yet. We're probably still going to be going out to get the small items on Sunday before we leave on Monday. My family's kind of like that haha, leaving things until the last second.

But so far everything has been pretty much settled. We're still waiting on the baby's mother to get some things notarized just to make sure that we can actually take him on this trip with no problem. We did have a little bit of a passport thing going on with them but that has thankfully been resolved and we're almost on our way!

I have still been moving FPs around and am still semi-looking, not really, for perhaps earlier FPs for our HS day, but I won't be upset if I don't get earlier ones since maybe we could see one of the shows they have there, we've only ever seen Fantasmic at HS.

But the countdown is definitely on in my family. We've pretty much finished shopping for clothes and now only have to figure out what we're doing with luggage and how many clothes we should actually bring along since this trip is longer than any of the ones we took previously. We're also definitely getting the baby ready for this trip and just hope that he enjoys it as much as we're going to!