Clipboard of Fun - The Disney Christmas Wonderland Edition About This Page:

[PrincessSharon]

Clipboard of Fun – The Disney Christmas Wonderland Edition
December 4 - 12, 2010

For some reason, I had some trouble coming up with a clever title for my TR this time. You might say it’s because this is the 8th TR I’m writing this year. Oh, shut up! I thought about it for a while. I wanted something Christmasy, and I wanted something with “Wonder” in the title, since I’ll be sailing on the Disney Wonder. I didn’t want to go with the obvious Wonderful Christmastime (even though that’s one of my favorite Christmas tunes ). I figured I’d stew on it.

Then one day, when I was working on my BAS (that’s big a** spreadsheet for the uninitiated), I realized that I’d planned a lot. More than ever. I mean, I had stuff planned to 15-minute increments. It made me think of that episode of Full House when Danny goes crazy with planning their Hawaiian vacation down to the minute.



Of course, I’m not that bad. I don’t actually have it on a clipboard, fun or otherwise. But I figured that would make a great TR title, so problem solved. And before you ask, I will not be carrying around a clipboard. Just a few printed pages. Color coded. And maybe laminated. What?

So why am I making such detailed plans this time? Well, I’m planning some things that I’ve never done before! And I’m a planner. OK, maybe even an über planner. That’s why I’m here. The PassPorter should actually be titled “PassPorter Guide to WDW for Über Planners.”

I am taking my very first cruise! This is exciting news, but it also makes me a little nervous, too. I mean, doing the research is fun, but what if I get sick? I’ve heard wonderful things about cruising, but I tend to be a “type A,” commando-style tourist. Will I find enough to do on a cruise? Everyone assured me there’s plenty to do and that I’d love it, particularly my parents, veteran cruisers themselves.

So I decided that it was finally time for me to take my first cruise. Of course it was going to be a Disney cruise! And the best thing about Disney cruises is that there are shorter cruises offered. I felt it was best for me to get my feet wet on a shorter cruise, in case I actually hated cruising or spent the entire time in my cabin trying not to throw up. I’ve heard lots of people say that the 3-night cruise is too short to really get a feel for cruising, so then the 4-night cruise was for me. I decided the December 5, 2010 sailing would be a great time to cruise because hurricane season is over and things are really quiet at work. And because I wanted to make myself as comfortable as possible (while fighting imagined nausea ), I booked a category 6 stateroom with a veranda. Since it’ll just be me in the cabin, I expect to be comfortable in my imagined misery. I booked the late dining because I knew that early dining was popular with families. It’s not that I’d mind being seated with a family, but since I didn’t care either way and I knew the early seating filled up first, I went with late dining.

I also knew that I’d want a few days at WDW after my trip. I needed someplace to stay, and for the first time in a long time, there was only one place I considered. It’s my goal to stay at every Disney resort at least once. This includes Fort Wilderness campground. All along, my plan had been to stay at Fort Wilderness during the Christmas season, because I’d heard such wonderful things about the place at that time of year. I do enjoy being outside, but once it gets dark, I prefer sleeping inside on a comfy bed, rather than on the hard ground in the cold with the possibility of a snake crawling in your sleeping bag. Call me picky. So a cabin it was! Well, another cabin, I guess.

Some time went by. Okay, maybe it was like 14 months or something. As an über planner, I need time to make sure things are properly planned. Anyway, my parents kept hinting that they hadn’t done a cruise in a few years and were itching to go on another one. While they’d never invite themselves on a trip with me, they hint like crazy until I invite them! On the other hand, when they plan a trip without me, … wait, they don’t plan trips without me. They invite me along right off the bat so I’ll plan it for them!

What I’m trying to say, if you’ll stop interrupting, is that after subtle hints like DM playing the theme to the Love Boat whenever we rode in her car and DF wearing tuxedos to dinner, I figured I’d invite them along. They are DVC members, and since they didn’t plan to use a lot of their points at WDW, I figured this would be a great use for their points (since I haven’t inherited their talent for subtle hinting and thus have not been able to get them to just give the extra points to me ).

I called and booked it for them, also late dining, with our reservations linked so we’d be at the same table. They had enough points to get a category 6 as well. This will be the first time they’ve ever cruised with a veranda. Out of all their cruises, more than a dozen, they’ve only cruised once with an outside view – a porthole. Normally, they cruise in the Jules Verne cabin. You know, 20,000 leagues under the sea.

So with our cabins booked and my post-stay decided, it was time to start research. This is one thing I love to do. Researching is my favorite part of trip planning. Guidebooks are like crack to me. I even have guidebook apps on my iPod touch! I happened to win a copy of the DCL Passporter in May 2009. What? I told you I like a lot of time to plan. Anyway, even though it could potentially be out-of-date by the time of my trip, I figured there wasn’t much that would change on the 4-night itinerary.

I read every page and took lots of notes. I also did a lot of reading on the boards. I also lurked on the Cruise Critic boards and on the DIS boards. I even bought the official DCL guide, even though the reviews were pretty poor (crack, I tell you). It’s nowhere near as comprehensive as the Passporter, but it does have lots of pretty pictures. Then when the 2010 DCL PassPorter came out, I bought that and read that whole thing too. It was really helpful for me in deciding what excursions I wanted and also gave me a great idea of what to expect including what kind of activities are offered.

I also needed to do some research on Fort Wilderness and the cabins, because it’s a somewhat different experience from a regular WDW resort. My regular PPer came in handy, and I discovered there’s a whole message board devoted to the campgrounds over on the DIS boards, so I did some reading over there as well. There are internal buses, park buses, yellow loops, orange loops, green loops, fruit loops. Maybe not. I sort of tuned out at that part.

All my research allowed me to make plans with confidence that I haven’t forgotten anything and won’t miss out on anything. For example, it was recommended a lot that you should fly down the day before the cruise in case of flight delays. I thought that was a great idea, especially in December when the weather can play a factor. I was going to do it anyway, but now I didn’t have to come up with an excuse.

It was also suggested that a rental car would be quite handy when staying in a Fort Wilderness cabin because the cabins can be far from the bus stops, and the bus system is scary! A car would also allow me freedom to visit any and all resorts that I wanted to.

Another fine piece of advice I learned was that if you wanted to make Palo reservations, and I learned that you do want to make Palo reservations, you need to be online at midnight at exactly 75 days out. And the reservations go fast! It was a good piece of advice, but that was one thing that didn’t work out exactly as I’d planned. But more on that later.

When I had my firm dates, it was time to book my airfare. I was able to book the first day Southwest opened up the flights (see, planning ahead is smart ), and I got pretty good rates - $95 going down, and $79 for the return. I also booked the Early Bird Check-In, since that works well for me.

My parents were going to be going home right after the cruise (), so I booked their flights (same flight as me to Orlando, and then an early afternoon flight on the 9th) at the same fares. They don’t usually use EBCI, but I decided to book it for them on their return, because I didn’t want to have to try to check them in for their flights while we were at sea.

So now that the major stuff was settled, it was time to get to the good stuff. The little details. It was time to start filling up the clipboard of fun! Where would I stay for my pre-stay? Should we take a shuttle, towncar or rental car to the port? What excursions did I want to do? Did I want to do Palo for brunch or dinner? How will I ever choose? Let me check my guidebooks!

Up Next: Decisions, decisions