The "Should we really be going again" pre-trip report About This Page:

[Cam22]

All the changes sound terrific! Congrats on fitting into those shorts!

[DizReg]

We went to Dorney Park in PA a few weekends ago and it helped gear us up for some Disney planning and prepping the kids for a bigger adventure! We also had some realizations about how we are going to handle some issues we’ve been stewing over, such as that great stroller debate.

After we gassed up the van, we stopped at Dunkin Donuts for some necessary travel items:


Munchkins for the kids to eat and keep busy on the drive



COFFEE!!!! This is a treat as we have cut out coffee at home and have been sticking to the basics for the past few months while really trying to scrimp and save before our trip. DH was very excited about his French Vanilla.

Shortly after we got on the road, we discovered this:



Yes, that’s NJ shore traffic on a Saturday morning. It reminded us that our departure time for Disney is crucial. Luckily the muchkins kept the munchkins from getting bored! We do have a built in DVD player but DS 1 ½ is still turned backwards in his carseat and can’t see the screen. He knows when his older brother is watching a DVD and gets very upset so we were trying not to use it as much as we could.

That didn’t turn into an issue because shortly after the munchkins were handed back to mom, they both fell asleep! So did Mom but we don’t need to talk about that!

I woke up from my snoring to hear Tommy ultra excited and shouting about all of the rides he could see from the window. I shot this picture pretty quickly while trying to unglue my eyelids. Falling asleep wearing contacts is never an easy thing to recover from.



You can see poor backwards little Seanie toes there on the left. We will definitely been turning him around for the long drive to Disney. Don't worry mommies, I've already discussed it with the pediatrician! He fell asleep for the entire trip there and back again but a Disney drive is WAY longer and we will need to keep him occupied with more than sleeping and munchkins.

We’ve arrived!!!!



Continued.....

[Cam22]

Good practice for Disney traveling!

[ilovedisney247]

Almost time to start packing! Where in Northern NJ are you coming from? I grew up in Hillsdale!

[DizReg]

Originally Posted by Cam22

Good practice for Disney traveling!

That is exactly what we were thinking!!! We didn't even think about that too much until something happened and we said, hey we should remember this for Disney.

Originally Posted by ilovedisney247

Almost time to start packing! Where in Northern NJ are you coming from? I grew up in Hillsdale!

I JUST told my husband that he needed to go visit our storage unit to get the suitcases out!!! I actually have some new stuff I'd like to put in. I'm from Harrison, in Hudson county. We are right outside of Newark (where all of us went to Rutgers!) and about 10 miles from Bergen County. What county is Hillsdale?

[disneydreamer33]

Just joining in. Your plans sound great. I think your stroller idea is a good one.

[DizReg]

Originally Posted by disneydreamer33

Just joining in. Your plans sound great. I think your stroller idea is a good one.

Thanks!! As it turns out from our Dorney park experiences, I think we may be able to go without one for a few days in Disney.

[DizReg]

When I started the report, I forgot to mention that this trip was 90% FREE!!! It was DH’s company picnic day and they give us park tickets, parking passes and lunch (more on this later). We just had to pay for any goodies, gas and dinner.

Once we got in the park, we walked very quickly as we passed the stroller rental. We didn’t want Tommy to see them as they look just like the Disney ones and we were trying to go the day without renting one (although we were prepared if we needed to). The first thing Tommy wanted to do was go to the Dinosaur expedition. It’s a new part of the park and there is an extra $5 charge per person (not paid for by the company). So off we went.

Wow, these park maps are difficult to read here. We had a hard time finding the dinosaurs! I think I’m also spoiled by Disney with the layout of parks. This one isn’t laid out very well and you have to go all along a big long path sometimes instead of just a cut through. It’s also quite hilly in some spots. There was a hill that was so steep, the carriage nearly bowled me over going backwards.

Along the way to the Dinosaurs, Tommy spotted the go kart car thingies (think Tomorrowland Speedway) and he CAN’T resist a ride on a car. The interesting thing here is that Sean could also ride. But we also discovered that he didn’t like waiting in line and wanted to run away.

Here is Sean getting angry with Daddy for not letting him run away:




But once he was strapped in and ready to go, he was happier.




My chauffeur:




He is very serious about his driving! The only problem here is that Tommy couldn’t reach the gas pedal so I had to do it with my left foot. I normally don’t mind this as I’m slightly used to it because my father is missing ½ of his right foot and uses a handicapped pedal to drive with his left. I’ve used this a few times when I’ve had to move his car while they were on vacation. In the go kart, it was REALLY uncomfortable. Not only did I have to push it with my left foot, I had to angle my leg at a bizarre angle to get to it. I came out of the car a little crampy and couldn’t wait to move my leg in a normal motion again! I think they should have a pedal on the right side of the car as well.


After we finished with the cars, we FINALLY found the Dinosaurs!






As you’ll see from the pictures, the area is very well shaded and was a nice place to keep relatively cool on a hot day. It consists of about 25 dinosaurs, some audio animatronics and others not so much. They also have interns along the path to explain different things to you, which I thought was a nice touch (insert my college professor hat here).




On some of the dinos, there are those plaques that you see Tommy touching. Each time he presses a button, something happens such as the dinosaur breathes and you can see his lungs move, his mouth opens and closes, he roars or his tail moves. Tommy really liked this part and spent quite a bit working with the buttons. Luckily there were very few people here because he took a pretty good amount of time playing with the buttons. The downside is that the roaring of the dinosaur scared poor little Sean. Once he got some cuddling from mommy and heard the roaring a few more times, he calmed down and was ok with it.

Continued in the next post......

[DizReg]

I reached the limit in attaching pictures. I'll have to somehow remedy that for my TR after Disney! This next piece is continued from the last post.

Then we happened upon these guys:


As Tommy walked up to it, he said: “Awww look, it’s a mommy, a daddy and a baby and the baby is riding on it’s daddy’s back”. HMMM…yeah, that’s it Tommy!!! I didn’t have the heart to tell him that it’s actually a recreation of an attack.

This is one of my favorite pictures telling you to stay on the path and not cross the ropes:


When you made it to the end of the exhibit, there was a dig site where kids could use shovels, pails and brushes to dig in the sand for fossils and bones. They had actually placed a replica of a portion of a skeleton buried partially in the sand, which was a nice touch.

Sean was quite happy to get out of his carriage prison:



The downsides of this area are that it’s not covered with shade and the sand. Oddly, Tommy didn’t complain about any sand in his sneakers but Sean took a few steps into the sand and held up his foot saying “shoe” because he was uncomfortable with the sand. Once we took his shoes off and shook out the sand, he wouldn’t go back into the pit and would only squat on the edge to dig. We also didn’t stay as long as we would have liked them to play because the sun was so brutal.

Here’s a tip for the moms when your kids are playing in sand. Baby powder! I happened to have baby powder in my bag for diaper changes (it’s what works best for Sean) and when their hands are covered in sand, all you do is sprinkle some of the powder on them and rub it all in and the sand comes right off. It’s a little trick I picked up on at the beach last summer when attempting to change Sean’s diaper.

Next up lunch. If this report had sound effects, I would insert the vomit sound here. *think Ferris Bueller's day off!

[Cam22]

What a great work perk! Sounds like you all had lots of fun!

[Colexis Mom]

Great day!

[DizReg]

In a word, lunch was BLECH!!! I didn’t take pictures of the buffet or our plates because I didn’t want DH’s coworkers to think I was crazy. But, there was little to offer and everything else was terrible. We’ve experienced this issue before. For some reason when it comes to picnics, the food isn’t as good quality as the quick service. The food is tasteless or gross looking or just unappealing in general. Tommy was brave and tried a hamburger but he didn’t like it at all and only ate chips. The one saving grace was that it was a hot day and we weren’t all that hungry because of the heat.

After lunch, we went over to the water park side. It’s not a separate admission here and you pay one admission for both sides of the park. It’s actually a pretty good deal. No pictures of course because the camera was safely put away. Sean is really a little daredevil and had a blast going down the water slides in the kiddie pool area while DH was happy to wade in the ankle deep water. Meanwhile, I took Tommy over to one of the tube rides. When I was a kid, my father used to call it “the fat ass tube ride”. It is a water slide/pool combo where you float on a raft, go down a slide into a pool several times. The reason for my father’s naming is that every time he slid into the pool, he flew off of the tube and capsized. I tried to get Tommy to tell his grandfather about it but he was too much of a good boy to say the name, even when we told him it was ok this one time. I was also really impressed with Tommy’s confidence here. It takes Tommy a long time to get accustomed to something and for him to gain confidence. He really wasn’t a big fan of pools until he was almost 4. Luckily, one of my best friends is the swimming teacher at our local pool and he really did a great job with Tommy last year and getting him comfortable in the water. When we finished the ride, his face lit up and he screamed with a smile…AGAIN MOMMY!!!!

After a trip on the lazy river, Tommy and I found DH and an exhausted Sean. We decided to get dressed and find some ice cream and milk for Sean. I was able to find it at one of the quick service places but it was pretty big and half of it didn’t fit in his bottle. Luckily DH on a whim that morning decided to take a bunch of frozen water bottles in a small insulated lunch cooler we have. That lunch cooler was a lifesaver that day and we plan on using it for Disney as well. I was able to stow the rest of the milk in that lunch bag and use it later on. I don’t think it would have lasted a long time though. It was really only a few hours later that we tested it before we gave it to Sean. There is really no way we could keep it in there for anything more than a few hours.

As a wrap up, we have decided that we definitely want the big SUV stroller for Sean. It is much easier to carry things in and for him to rest. It has a ton of room in the bottom and great cup holders on the top. As far as Tommy and a stroller…..HE WALKED THE WHOLE DAY!!!! We were so surprised and happy with this development. I’m still thinking that walking around Disney World for several days in a row in the heat will be too much on him so if he starts to ask for a stroller, we will probably get it for him.

As for a positive of Dorney Park, there is a lot to do here!!! We didn’t even see at least half of the park. I’m sure we could spend at least two days here next time. I’m not sure if it is a normal thing there or not but the lines were very short.

And a negative (besides what I’ve already mentioned). The food is ridiculously expensive!!!!! The quick service place we stopped at didn’t have any kids meals. I didn’t research a lot because we were looking for air conditioning and didn’t find it so we just stopped at the first place we saw which was a huge mistake because they didn’t have kids meals. We ended up sharing 3 orders of chicken fingers and fries between us, which was more than enough for all 4 of us. Tommy also asked for a snoopy souvenir cup that cost $10 but has proven to be worth the money because he is still drinking from it every day! For $1.99 you can refill the snoopy cup anywhere in the park and for the entire season.

Another negative is that unfortunately Sean could go on very little here. There were several kiddie rides that he was too small for but I don’t think he noticed anyway. It just got difficult towards the end of the night when he was really tuckered out and Tommy was still ripe to go on the rides. I think if this is the case in FL, we are going to be splitting up.

[DizReg]

On the itinerary front, I have a lot of the week before settled and the various things we need to do to prepare such as prepare the van for the road trip. We’ve also settled on our travel goals for the drive and what locations on the map we want to stop for our overnights. It took a little while and some internet searches on the route95 info website and hotel websites but we think we’ve settled on making it to Emporia VA on our first night and Jacksonville, FL for our second night. The last travel day will leave only about 3-4 hours, which I think will be easy on the kids. I want to make the reservations to the hotels before we go but DH isn’t totally settled on that idea yet. He would rather wait and see how far we get and then hope to find a hotel with a vacancy. I’m nervous about this idea and I’m trying to convince him that we NEED to get them done beforehand. It just makes more sense to me and eases some fears over getting the children settled and comfortable in a good place to stay, rather than searching around in case our first choice is booked.

Does anyone have any thoughts on this?

[Cam22]

Sounds like you all learned quite a bit with your Dorney Park trip.

[DizReg]

I’ve been working on our itinerary and this year, it’s extra busy with planning beforehand. Our DS 5 (about to be 6) is entering first grade this year and it’s the first time I have to plan a vacation as well as get together school supplies and uniforms. We had planning for Kindergarten last year of course but not at the same time as a Disney vacation! DS 5 also turns into DS 6 at the beginning of the month so we also have a birthday to plan!

So, here is the itinerary for our first day. I’d really like some input if anyone has suggestions:

Friday, August 24

Out of the house by 7:30 AM, gas up the van ( I might move this to the night before), get coffee and MUNCHKINS!!! The kids love them and it keeps them busy for a few hours.

Our next plans are still a little fuzzy:

We have two choices, the first is to head down the parkway and take the Cape May – Lewes Ferry which heads from NJ into Delaware.

Is this a good idea with DS 20mths? I have visions of him jumping off the ferry to go swimming!! He is very active and I don’t feel right taking him out of the van from a 2-3 hour drive and putting him right into the carriage.

Going this way, we will also have to make our way back to I 95. Is this going to add a significant amount of time to that day?

The second choice is to drive straight down the turnpike and onto 95.

Somewhere along the line, we are going to stop for a picnic lunch and a good long rest stop visit for the kids to run and stretch their legs and burn off some energy. I already have a bag packed with some dollar store toys and inflatable beach balls that they can play with while we are stopped.

Our goal for that first day is to get to Emporia, VA. I have a few hotels in mind that I’ve priced. We are looking for a pool and a continental breakfast, as well as restaurants nearby. I don’t want to take the kids out of the van after traveling all day and sit them in a restaurant.