Home for the Holidays: A Thanksgiving and Christmas Mashup (A Cam and Luke PTR) Updated 11/4 About This Page:

[Cam22]

I’m starting this pre-trip report a little differently. I thought I would give you all a backstage pass into the planning of a Matthews Disney World trip. Our first family trip was in 1997, so we have had two decades to perfect our planning strategy.

In July of 1997, Luke came home from work one day and announced that we were going to Disney World the week before school started. That was a mere three weeks away. At least, he brought home a Disney World guide book he had borrowed from a co-worker. Initially, I was going to take care of everything because Luke was working, and as a teacher, I was off during the summers. The next morning I called the Disney World resort reservation number to learn what I suspected would be true -- there was no room in the inn, not in any of the inns on Disney property. Later that day when Luke came home, he took over finding a room at a hotel in close proximity to Disney property as possible. We wound up with a room at a Days Inn, very economical but just a basic barebones room. Unfortunately, the bathroom in it sprung a leak one day that was quite inconvenient, but it was a clean place to lay our heads at night. We weren’t even in this room much as it was Disney World’s 25th anniversary celebration, so all three parks (Animal Kingdom would not open until 1998) were open every single day until midnight. Cool! We left our room very early to take a shared resort bus to one of the parks and then rode the last bus back to the Days Inn each night.

In addition to making the hotel reservations, Luke took care of the airfare because as a computer tech he had access to a computer at work all day. But my work also began in earnest. I read that guidebook from cover to cover, mapping out our park days along with selecting our dining choices. Over the next few days, I ironed out which parks we would visit on which days and where we would be eating on those days. With only three weeks to plan, I was still making touring plans as we flew from Nashville to Orlando. Back in 1997, a Disney World trip was a mite bit easier to plan. Thank goodness, I have more time to plan our trips today.

From that first Disney World trip, our division of labor was established. Luke makes the travel plans, including airfare, car parking, Disney Magical Express, and resort/DVC reservations. I design all the day-to-day plans, including making dining/tour/party reservations, packing lists, and touring plans. Since we are both retired now, the jobs have morphed some as we are together while working on the trip details, so we can easily seek each other’s advice and assistance. A couple of examples: Luke pulls up potential flights on the computer, and we discuss which of the options we like best while I get his input on where he’d like to eat, something he didn’t get on that first trip.

Now the impetus for this backstage pass came the other day. We were sitting on the couch working on our laptops. I told Luke that the Rivers of Light dining packages for November had still not opened up. He said he had been checking every day, too. He gets up much earlier than I do, so I told him if he saw that packages were available to book one for Sunday, November 12 for an early supper. He replied that if he noticed that the packages were available, he was just going to get me up. LOL The division of labor for trip planning remains as it ever was.