Trip Planning Archives - Chasing Fairytales

5 weeks until Walt Disney World!!! Let the countdown begin (as if we hadn’t already been counting)! Mark and I have been in planning overload mode. Meticulously planning every day of our trip and even going so far as to plan “relax” time! Yes, we have an excel sheet of our plans; where we will go at different times of each day, dining reservations, which parks have extra magic hours when, projected crowd levels for each park each day. Yep, we’re those people. Not ashamed, just prepared! Here’s a quick rundown of the experience highlights we will have during our trip!

Dinner at Kona Café in the Polynesian Resort on the first night before heading over to Magic Kingdom for the Main street Electric Parade (a fantastic nighttime parade featuring all the favorite Disney characters) and Wishes firework show over Cinderella’s Castle!

First morning we will monorail to the Grand Floridian Resort to have a gourmet breakfast of possibly Lobster Eggs Benedict or Maple Vanilla French Toast at the Grand Floridian Café!

The International Food and Wine Festival in Epcot will be our host many times during this trip as there are 30 countries for which our goal is to sample something from each; impossible to do in one trip!

Who doesn’t love them some dueling pianos?! I do! Mark’s never been to a dueling piano bar but lucky for him there’s one on Disney property! We will have a fun-filled night at Jellyrolls at the Boardwalk! Can’t wait to request “Mmmbop” and “Man or a Muppet!”

Drive-ins are becoming a thing of the past, right? Nope! There’s one right in the middle of Disney’s Hollywood Studios in Sci-Fi Dine-In Theater Restaurant and we’re going there for lunch! We’ll be treated to some 1950’s finest movie trailers while dining in retro “cars!”

We’ll have a “free day” when we’ll be stopping by the Festival of the Masters, which is an annual outdoor art festival in Downtown Disney! We’ll possibly squeeze in a game of mini golf or boat ride too that morning!

Our BIG highlight will be our last night in the parks at Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party! This is a special event for which Magic Kingdom is closed but to those with event tickets! We are SO excited to see “snow” fall in Main Street while nibbling on cookies and sipping hot cocoa and having our first taste of the Christmas season!

Just a sampling, I’m sure we’ll have more surprises than even we know. Once that Disney magic starts, it never stops!

So how many of you just started humming a Black Eyed Peas song from 2003? If you did not, you are one luck person! Unfortunately, that is not the case for me after working at water park in central New Hampshire during that summer which had a musical playlist that only consisted of top 40 music. I’m pretty sure lyrics to every Nsync, Backstreet Boy and Britney Spears song from 1999-2004 have been embedded into my cerebellum. Okay, well thanks for taking this ride in the sidetrack train, now back to the story…

So after the little history lesson you got from the last post you can see why we will be embarking on the magical Florida swamplands for our first vacation together. What’s next you ask? Well since we both have way more knowledge of the Mickeylands then any one person should acquire we have hit planning overload. There are so many questions, so many choices, and so many things we have learned from previous trips that planning one together adds a whole new dynamic of I know more then you know. It’s not that anything we suggest is a bad idea, it’s just we have both had very different vacations over the years, but we will get into that more later.

Our easiest decision was where where we going to go. Not that there are not a lot of options: You could go to the classic and original Disneyland in California, the immense and wonderful Disney World in Florida, any of the parks outside the U.S., or on a Disney Cruise. Since Disney World was pretty much a given for this first trip, now we need to determine when to go. This can be an easy choice for some and a difficult one for others depending on personal circumstances. Those who have kids or are in school are limited to school breaks, whereas those with more flexible schedules are able to choose from any time of year to experience “The World.” Since we are clear and free of shortys and we are not in school, we’re in the latter boat, which means we have a lot of things to consider while picking a departure date.

We are pretty sure we know the answer for our trip but we want to use a lifeline early and ask the audience. So when are your favorite times to go to Disney World?

Tag Archives: Trip Planning

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