The Recapturing Our Chidhoods/23rd Birthday Pre-Trip Report - PassPorter - A Community of Walt Disney World, Disneyland, Disney Cruise Line, and General Travel Forums
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The Recapturing Our Chidhoods/23rd Birthday Pre-Trip Report
OK, yeah, I just can’t help myself…my vacation is in 22 days, and I am BEYOND excited, so I’ve decided to write up a pre-trip report to both let people know what we’re doing, and also get some suggestions if there’s anything I don’t have planned! So here it goes, bear with me if this isn’t a great report, it’s my first .
My best way to explain what led to this trip is that I always have horrible birthdays, and I wanted this year to be different. I scheduled a vacation week for the last week of April (my birthday), but that still wasn’t enough. So I talked to my best friend, and we decided on Disney World!
I have to come clean and admit that I’m a “cast member”. I don’t actually work at Disney World, but my company is owned by Disney, so we get a lot of the same benefits. I have free admission for me and 3 guests to the parks and we get great discounts on both resorts and dining, so Disney seemed like a great choice for us. We could have a blast, and not spend TOO much (though I’m sure that’ll just lead to us buying more things when we’re there!). Because of money and time (we all have full time jobs, a miracle in this economy, and we had to get time off), we decided to go for three nights over a weekend (April 30th-May 3rd). We all would have loved to go longer, but that just wasn’t gonna work for us, so three days it is!
The first thing to do was choose where to stay. I knew there were likely to be three of us (other people said they wanted to come, but I had a feeling it wouldn’t pan out – I was right, it’s funny how you can always tell these things). We wanted to stay somewhere nice, but still watch our pockets, so we chose Port Orleans – Riverside (I have to admit, we would have done French Quarter, but I fell in love with the ambience at POR, and just couldn’t help myself). My friends were all for it, so the plans were made!
The cast of characters is as follows:
Me, Lana, 22 going on 23, the birthday girl
Laura, 23, my best friend and partner in crime
John, 22, my other P.I.C. and a fellow “cast member”
The next step was to figure out what we’re going to do when! I’m a planner, and our 180 day was far behind us, so I set to work making ADRs. I wish I could account for every one I made, but I went back and forth so many times I completely lost track! A big thing for us was finding places that gave us a cast discount (we’re cheap ), and that had good options for a vegetarian (Laura’s the vegetarian, but she loves sides and doesn’t eat TOO much). Buffets were great for us and me, being the planner that I am, went off! We LOVE eating breakfast out (probably because we’re typical 20 somethings who are never out of bed early), and characters are a big plus for us too .
These were the ADRs I came up with:
Friday, April 30th – 50s Prime Time Café at 8:00pm (we eat late)
Saturday, May 1st – 1900s Park Fare Breakfast at 8:20am
Saturday, May 1st – Biergarten at 1:00pm
Sunday, May 2nd – Tusker House Breakfast at 9:20am
Sunday, May 2nd – Liberty Tree Tavern at 7:30pm
The next step was to try to make some plan for what we were doing on what day. Since we only have three days, I want to maximize our time, haha. We guided ourselves by the ADRs and decided as follows:
Friday, April 30th: We arrive around 11am, and will take the Magical Express to our hotel! Assuming everything is on time (*fingers crossed*), we’re planning on leaving our things at the hotel and going over to Hollywood Studios. The plan is to leave for Hollywood Studios as soon as possible, but we’re going back and forth about whether to wait for our room to get ready or, if it’s going to take a while, to just take off and come back that night to check everything out (opinions are welcome as far as this goes ).
Saturday, May 1st: The plan for this day is to do Animal Kingdom in the morning and Epcot in the afternoon/evening. We have the Biergarten ADR at 1, so we figure that will guide our exploring a little bit. There aren’t a TON of things we want to do at Animal Kingdom other than the safari (though I really want to see Finding Nemo if we can manage to drag John), so I’m sure we’ll work it out. At Epcot, well, I’m celebrating my 23rd birthday and we’re all of age, so I’m sure there will be a little bit of drinking (nothing too extreme, don’t hide your children ). By the end of this day, I’m sure we’ll be exhausted.
Sunday, May 2nd: MAGIC KINGDOM!!!!! We do start the day out at Tusker House, however, and I really want to see the opening of the park at Animal Kingdom, so hopefully I can get those lazy friends out of bed early enough to do that :P. After breakfast, we’ll do any of the things at Animal Kingdom that we didn’t get to do Saturday. There are extra magic hours at MK until 1am, so I’m sure we’ll be able to get everything done there!
And then back home! As you MAY be able to tell, I’m a bit of a planner . Though I’m sure everything will go out the window as soon as we get there, but that’s part of the fun of it! I COULDN’T be more excited.
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), and that had good options for a vegetarian (Laura’s the vegetarian, but she loves sides and doesn’t eat TOO much). Buffets were great for us and me, being the planner that I am, went off! We LOVE eating breakfast out (probably because we’re typical 20 somethings who are never out of bed early), and characters are a big plus for us too 
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).
). By the end of this day, I’m sure we’ll be exhausted.
. Though I’m sure everything will go out the window as soon as we get there, but that’s part of the fun of it! I COULDN’T be more excited.
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Pixie Dust
PassPorter Guide Author
Welcome to the boards! 
And your plans are looking good, too! 
Disney Magic - Oct 2015
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