When the big planning for our trip to Walt Disney World was finally finished with hotel, airfare, dining, park plans and FastPass reservations secured, I could finally focus on the fun stuff. I couldn’t wait for Miss O to meet some of her favorite Disney characters before the magic of princesses and pirates faded for her. I wasn’t sure exactly how character interactions worked these days, but I knew those lines were no joke.
I was not raised with a love of outdoor activity and the only time I’ll run is if I’m being chased. I certainly wasn’t planning on running through any of the four Disney World parks on our visit, but I’ve also seen the security lines in the Orlando airport, so I wasn’t ruling out having to run through the terminal to make our flight home. It’s bad enough traveling alone as an adult, but once you get a tired kid in tow, all bets are off. I also wasn’t sure just how tired the aforementioned child would be by the end of a 5-day Disney experience. That got me wondering if we were all going to make it through this trip at all.
One of the nicer things about traveling for work is getting a break from whatever is going on at the office for a bit. Fortunately for me, that meant I could focus on my next big deadline for our upcoming Disney World trip: FastPass+ reservations. Unfortunately, that meant praying to the WiFi gods for a strong connection in a hotel right before I needed to leave to actually attend the conference. Priorities really get you sometimes, don’t they?
Over here in the Jackpot, we love Halloween. Like, drive around looking at neighbors’ decorations, dress up for work, family costume wearing, LOVE Halloween. The second I found out about Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party at Disney World, I knew Miss O needed to go. We had just entered the “what time of year should we go?” phase of our trip planning and I laser focused on fall so we could go to the party, too. Then I looked up the ticket price and almost died.
One of the hardest things to get sorted for a Disney Trip is a park plan. Once you’ve figured out when you want to go and where you want to stay, you’ve got to sort out your wish list of things to do. If you’re doing a week-long, multiple park, family trip like us, then comes sorting out what days for what parks, what dining reservations to make, and what rides/shows/character meet and greets for FastPass reservations. If it sounds daunting, it absolutely is.
Ticket prices for Disney are insane. I’m not going to argue that with anyone. The value and ROI for those prices are always debatable and, I will always maintain, are relative to your situation. Many of us take for granted the fact that we can even consider whether we’d like to spend the money on this kind of thing, so I make no presumption everyone agrees with me on this. For our first trip together as a family, I was ready to go all in, but it didn’t make entering my credit card number any less painful.
There’s a vast sea of pins out there featuring Mickey waffles, Mickey ice cream bars and even Mickey Pretzels as the highlight of anyone’s trip to Disney! There are t-shirts devoted to pledging love for churros, Dole Whips and all sorts of treats from Pandora, too. Yet there I was drowning in a great swell of despair. I’ve gotten used to disappointment from being unable to eat gluten, so this wouldn’t be any different for me, I guess. Then I started digging deeper…
Now that I’m out of graduate school, my bandwidth is freaking out looking for anything to do because I must be forgetting to do an assignment about now, right?! Fortunately, our upcoming Disney trip is the perfect outlet. I’m not sure my family agrees with my grad level intensity, but it’s really hard to dial that down when you’ve been steaming along at 1000 mph with six-week intensive courses for two years.
If you have kids, you’ve been in a store with a toy section or a snack area at some point and had your ears bleed while your child demands, in their own special way, to GET ALL THE THINGS. I tell my daughter she can wish for whatever she wants, but all her wishes may not come true. I’m not trying to be a total buzzkill, but let’s face it, she’s not likely to get that 8-foot stuffed bear or a face full of jellybeans every time we go to Toys R Us. I think the same is true of any vacation, especially when planning for a group. Everyone has an opinion and all of them should be mine. I kid. Sort of…
If you’ve ever planned a vacation, you know that there are lots of moving parts. If you’ve ever planned a vacation with your extended family, you have my sympathies. Why would anyone want to juggle that many preferences, wishlists and personalities all while discussing how to have fun together? One word. DISNEY. But let me assure you, this is not your parent’s trip.
Suburban Jackpot 