A Seed was planted PTR About This Page:

[jimmymac]

Great start. Looking forward to the next installment

[Disney Dork]

Glad you're able to have your vacation! A break from stress is always a good thing.

[KMB733]

Great Start Darlene!!!

[ilovedisney247]

Good start! You guys are going to have a great time!

[KMB733]

with your rummage sale!!

[CinderAbby]

with your rummage sale!!

I'm pretty sure you didn't mean to post this here.

[CinderAbby]

HOMEWORK???

Yes, you read that right. I was excited to make reservations, but Abby needs me to play homework gestapo so that’s what had to be done first as it was a school night. Once that was all done, I got on the phone with Disney and made our reservations for AS Sports preferred. We really like the hotel and the location of the rooms so why change? Especially since we really don’t spend a lot of time there. The price was a little higher than I expected because the CM told me we were all getting the QSDP for free but my confirmation only said Kids free, so that explained that. Next I called the train and made those ressies. The roomettes coming home were more expensive than I wanted, but it’s my own fault. I know the closer it gets to a trip, the higher the price goes so there was nothing I could do. Yes, I could have not booked the rooms, but it’s nice that we can really stretch out so this was a case of our comfort was more important than the money. Was I happy about the price difference? No, but I was willing to pay it.

So with Disney and the train booked, I started thinking about dining. For our time frame, my 180 day mark would have been back in February so I knew I needed to get on that right away, so with no real plans in mind other than doing breakfasts this year, I started looking online. By doing the breakfast this year instead of dinner, we were going to end up with an extra credit at the end of the trip so the idea popped into my head "since this is going to be the absolute last trip for quite a while, why don’t I try for the castle for Abby? Give her an experience to hopefully remember." Having the dining plan is the only way I would ever consider this meal - I would never spend that kind of money OOP. So I brought up the Disney website, got to the castle and decided to try for our first full day in the parks and hopefully start the vacation off right. I couldn’t believe it when an 8:15 ressie came up as available! I didn’t book online though - I know you have to pay upfront that way but we have the dining plan. So I got on the phone instead and literally, I spent no time on hold at all. I got right through to the CM, told her I wanted CRT on 8/10 for as early as possible. She had 8:20 and I snapped it up. I still couldn’t believe my luck. People spend hours trying to get those ressies and in a matter of minutes, I had them.

I wanted to tell Abby but since there was a little matter of actually paying for the trip, I kept it to myself. The way I do my bills, I use an envelope system and while I know in my head what I have and where, I can’t always put it together. I was thinking I was going to have to charge the whole trip and carry a huge balance and that was not sitting right with me. But at that time, it was a consequence I was willing to take. The more I thought about it though, the more I was thinking it was not going to work - how would I meet the minimum payments every month? Lenny technically didn’t have a steady income (he hadn’t even gotten his first check) so I couldn’t sit down and say he makes this every week so this is what I can do to pay it. So after Abby went to bed, I sat down with all of my spreadsheet that I keep and even though I couldn’t see it in my head, there on paper was the answer. We actually had about 90% of the money for vacation. The way I had split up the money, I couldn’t see the big picture. I was only seeing the bits and pieces and just couldn’t put them together in my mind. On paper, I could put them together and once I saw that, I was excited. This trip was going to happen.

　

[Colexis Mom]

Glad all the reservations are coming together!

[B.M.]

Glad you were able to get a ressie for the Castle

[chezp]

It's all coming together nicely.

[taylan1]

Get start! Keep it coming! I know the feeling, just when I was thinking- how in the world are we going to pay for our trip- there it was right in front of me! Now we are PIF! Looking forward to more!

[KMB733]

Originally Posted by CinderAbby

I'm pretty sure you didn't mean to post this here.

Sorry Darlene! I was so tired yesterday and trying to catch up on TRs that my brain obviously wasn't thinking straight!

Looks like all your plans are coming together nicely!

[Cam22]

Congrats on the CRT ressie! I also need to have all the figures on paper or I can get very confused. Glad it is all working out!

[CinderAbby]

We’re Going To Disney!!!

It was official. I knew how I was going to pay for the trip so the next order of business was getting to the dining plans. Like I said, because of when I booked, I was something like 2 months behind in making ADR’s and that was a concern. I was really wondering if I could get any good time slots for our meals. Last year, we had one breakfast and the day just turned out really well so I decided to do more breakfasts this year despite my problems. Many of you might remember I was having a lot of problems last year and after all my doctor visits and tests it turns out that I have what’s called gastroparesis. My stomach basically doesn’t work correctly. Where the normal person has less than 50% of food left in their stomachs after 90 minutes. I actually had something like 92% left. That alone is the culprit of a lot of my problems (getting full fast, lots and lots of heartburn and nausea) but on top of that, if I have lots of fats and grease, things get worse. And over the years, the one thing that has been a constant is eating breakfast out of the house has almost always made me sick. It happened in 2008 at Disney when we ate at 1900 PF and it happened last year at Ohana’s (but I had a pill to take last year that helped a lot). Now for this year, despite how stupid it might seem, I’ve switched all those lunch and dinner meals we used to have to all breakfasts this year. Now armed with what my problem is and the experience we had with a breakfast last year (the whole day was just great), I want to repeat that experience (not the nausea from breakfast obviously but the rest of it). So I went online and literally, within something like one hour, I had every single meal booked! All breakfasts and all early times too! It just went so easy I kept saying to myself, this is just too easy. Why am I getting all of this, why are all these slots still open? It was really too good to be true.

And while there really wasn’t a method to my booking the meals - I had no idea when the parks would be open or when EMH’s would be - I did go by the itinerary that we’ve used the last 2 years. And this was the result of my ADR’s.

8/10 - MK day - CRT at 8:20 am
8/11 - AK day - Tusker House at 8:15 am
8/12 - Epcot day - Akershus at 8:30 am
8/13 - DHS day - CMC at 8:00 am
8/14 - ??? - CP at 8:15 am
8/15 - ??? - Ohana at 8:10 am
8/16 - ??? - 1900 PF at 8:00 am
8/17 - Lenny’s b’day - CM at 8:15

So in a matter of less than 12 hours I went from having no Disney vacation in sight to having it completely booked, including the ADR’s. And the sad part - it was all done and instead of being really excited that I had everything done, I had a let down feeling. There was no fun in planning anything over months. It was all done in a matter of hours. I had nothing to look forward to but the trip - and you guys KWIM with that. And I suppose part of that feeling also came from the fact that Abby did not know. We did not tell her anything about it.


ETA: I do have to add into here that I didn’t do it at the time but with A LOT of urging from Lenny and info from you guys here, I did eventually contact Disney about my dietary problems. I had made ressies for all breakfast and when it finally dawned on Lenny what I did (many weeks later), he was actually upset by it. Not because he didn’t want the breakfasts. It was because he had visions of me spending our entire vacation sick. No matter how much I tried to tell him that wouldn’t happen - I’d go hungry first - he still was upset with our ADR’s. He said for the money we’re paying, I wasn’t going to sit there and look at the food, he wanted me to have something and to contact Disney. He also said if I didn’t, he wanted me to cancel all the ADR’s. There was no way I was going to cancel anything - not because of me. I don’t usually eat until around 10:30 or 11 anyway so for me to try and eat breakfast at 8 - I don’t think it’s going to happen anyway but I finally contacted them more to shut Lenny up but I felt good taking that first step. I received the email from them and I then I let it sit on my desk for about 2 or 3 weeks. I had taken the first step but I just couldn’t take that second one and send it back. When you compare me to people who have severe allergies my problems, to me at least, sound silly and I didn’t want to send it back and sound like a fool. Lenny kept asking about it however and I don’t remember know if he threatened to call Disney himself and cancel the ADR’s or what he said, but I finally emailed back the completed form and hoped for the best. As of today (7/6/10) I still don’t know what I’m going to do once I get down there. I still feel silly because I can’t explain why the breakfast of eggs, toast and bacon will make me sick as a dog while the lunch of breaded chicken (most likely fried) and fries won’t affect me at all. I’m not there yet so I guess we’ll see how I feel on the mornings that we have breakfast. If I feel like trying to explain anything, I might but most likely I’ll just make it easy on everyone and take the cop-out excuse that I’m not hungry and I’m just there for the experience for Abby.

[Colexis Mom]

Great ADRs! I hope all goes well with your dietary needs!