The Aguilar's Christmas Special - Pre-Trip Report (8-11-08) - PassPorter - A Community of Walt Disney World, Disneyland, Disney Cruise Line, and General Travel Forums
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The Aguilar's Christmas Special -We're Back Home!!! UPADTED 12-26-08
PRE-TRIP REPORT:
Andrew’s First Visit to WDW and during the Holidays
First things first, our cast of Holiday Travelers:
Mario (Leah’s Dad), 38, the proud father of two fabulous kids and DisneyWorld fan, planner of all things Disney and keeper of the “Holy Grail”, our Passporter Deluxe. (BTW, I highly recommend the Deluxe. It’s very durable and you look like you mean business when you whip that thing out.)
Liz (Disney Wife) – 37, proud parent like myself and lover of WDW. This will be our 5th trip in 8 years. She keeps us in line and on time for all our ADR’s and events.
Leah (daughter) – 7, loves WDW and is our oldest. She has the itch like her dad when it comes to thrill rides. Last trip, she rode Expedition Everest and she was only 4 years old. She loved it and can’t wait to go on it again.
Andrew (son) – 17 months old, crazier than his sister and it’ll be his first visit to WDW. He will be nearly 21 months when we’re in Florida and I hope he takes to it like his sister or he’ll be having some bad upcoming vacations. LOL
Special Guests Appearances by:
Nef & Becky (Wife’s Grandparents who live in Florida) – We will be spending a couple of non-Disney park days with them during our stay.
When: December 11- 22, 2008
Resorts: POP Century (December 11-18) and Coronado Springs (December 18-22)
Well, I can’t believe it’s finally getting closer to our next visit to the Disneyworld. A lot has happened since we last visited the Mouse. We have added to our family in the form of a son named Andrew Jonathan Aguilar. He’ll be around 21 months when we arrive in December so I’m hoping he’ll get what’s going on. He has been walking now for a couple of months and we are in the process of potty training him and we hope to have that completed by December. (Yeah right!)
Anyway, on to the planning. I’ve been planning this trip to WDW for over a year now and I have started to put into motion lists of what we are going to do. Here’s the current lineup for our visit.
We will be driving from Corpus to San Antonio and catch a flight from S.A. to Houston to MCO. It’s actually cheaper to fly out of S. A. than it is from Corpus. It turns out this works for us because my in-laws live in San Antonio and we will be returning to home near Christmas time and we were going to go to their house Christmas this year anyway.
As far as out commendations, we will be splitting out time at POP Century and Coronado Springs. We’ve never been to the latter but we’ve heard some great things about it and we got a sweet deal to stay there 4 nights.
What about ADR’s this trip? Well, my have confirmed some locations like Boma, 50’s Primetime and Tony’s Town Square. We have only eaten at 50’s once and we enjoyed it. We thought our daughter would get a kick out of it. We want to also eat at Beaches ‘N Cream, though we don’t ADR’s for that.
We also plan on attending MVMCP on Dec. 14 and those tickets have purchased and placed in my faithful Passporter. I still am trying to make plans on trying to fit in a day to go to Tampa and hit Busch Gardens and Jungala for a day.
We’ll those are the plans so far. As we get closer, I’ll update you guys on other activities I hope to include on this trip.
__________________
Leah's Dad
Leah and Andrew - March 2008
Last edited by Leah's Dad; 12-26-2008 at 08:56 PM..
Reason: Double threads
The Aguilar's Christmas Special - Pre-Trip Report (8-11-08)
PRE-TRIP REPORT:
Andrew’s First Visit to WDW and during the Holidays
First things first, our cast of Holiday Travelers:
Mario (Leah’s Dad), 38, the proud father of two fabulous kids and DisneyWorld fan, planner of all things Disney and keeper of the “Holy Grail”, our Passporter Deluxe. (BTW, I highly recommend the Deluxe. It’s very durable and you look like you mean business when you whip that thing out.)
Liz (Disney Wife) – 37, proud parent like myself and lover of WDW. This will be our 5th trip in 8 years. She keeps us in line and on time for all our ADR’s and events.
Leah (daughter) – 7, loves WDW and is our oldest. She has the itch like her dad when it comes to thrill rides. Last trip, she rode Expedition Everest and she was only 4 years old. She loved it and can’t wait to go on it again.
Andrew (son) – 17 months old, crazier than his sister and it’ll be his first visit to WDW. He will be nearly 21 months when we’re in Florida and I hope he takes to it like his sister or he’ll be having some bad upcoming vacations. LOL
Special Guests Appearances by:
Nef & Becky (Wife’s Grandparents who live in Florida) – We will be spending a couple of non-Disney park days with them during our stay.
When: December 11- 22, 2008
Resorts: POP Century (December 11-18) and Coronado Springs (December 18-22)
Well, I can’t believe it’s finally getting closer to our next visit to the Disneyworld. A lot has happened since we last visited the Mouse. We have added to our family in the form of a son named Andrew Jonathan Aguilar. He’ll be around 21 months when we arrive in December so I’m hoping he’ll get what’s going on. He has been walking now for a couple of months and we are in the process of potty training him and we hope to have that completed by December. (Yeah right!)
Anyway, on to the planning. I’ve been planning this trip to WDW for over a year now and I have started to put into motion lists of what we are going to do. Here’s the current lineup for our visit.
We will be driving from Corpus to San Antonio and catch a flight from S.A. to Houston to MCO. It’s actually cheaper to fly out of S. A. than it is from Corpus. It turns out this works for us because my in-laws live in San Antonio and we will be returning to home near Christmas time and we were going to go to their house Christmas this year anyway.
As far as out commendations, we will be splitting out time at POP Century and Coronado Springs. We’ve never been to the latter but we’ve heard some great things about it and we got a sweet deal to stay there 4 nights.
What about ADR’s this trip? Well, my have confirmed some locations like Boma, 50’s Primetime and Tony’s Town Square. We have only eaten at 50’s once and we enjoyed it. We thought our daughter would get a kick out of it. We want to also eat at Beaches ‘N Cream, though we don’t ADR’s for that.
We also plan on attending MVMCP on Dec. 14 and those tickets have purchased and placed in my faithful Passporter. I've also made reservations at Le Cellier for Dec. 20th so that we can guarantee our seats for the first presentation of the Candlelight Procession that evening. Abigail Breslin
is scheduled to narrate. I'm trying to make plans to fit in a day to go to Tampa and hit Busch Gardens and Jungala for a day.
We’ll those are the plans so far. As we get closer, I’ll update you guys on other activities I hope to include on this trip.
PRE-TRIP REPORT:
Andrew’s First Visit to WDW and during the Holidays
First things first, our cast of Holiday Travelers:
Mario (Leah’s Dad), 38, the proud father of two fabulous kids and DisneyWorld fan, planner of all things Disney and keeper of the “Holy Grail”, our Passporter Deluxe. (BTW, I highly recommend the Deluxe. It’s very durable and you look like you mean business when you whip that thing out.)
Liz (Disney Wife) – 37, proud parent like myself and lover of WDW. This will be our 5th trip in 8 years. She keeps us in line and on time for all our ADR’s and events.
Leah (daughter) – 7, loves WDW and is our oldest. She has the itch like her dad when it comes to thrill rides. Last trip, she rode Expedition Everest and she was only 4 years old. She loved it and can’t wait to go on it again.
Andrew (son) – 17 months old, crazier than his sister and it’ll be his first visit to WDW. He will be nearly 21 months when we’re in Florida and I hope he takes to it like his sister or he’ll be having some bad upcoming vacations. LOL
Special Guests Appearances by:
Nef & Becky (Wife’s Grandparents who live in Florida) – We will be spending a couple of non-Disney park days with them during our stay.
When: December 11- 22, 2008
Resorts: POP Century (December 11-18) and Coronado Springs (December 18-22)
Well, I can’t believe it’s finally getting closer to our next visit to the Disneyworld. A lot has happened since we last visited the Mouse. We have added to our family in the form of a son named Andrew Jonathan Aguilar. He’ll be around 21 months when we arrive in December so I’m hoping he’ll get what’s going on. He has been walking now for a couple of months and we are in the process of potty training him and we hope to have that completed by December. (Yeah right!)
Anyway, on to the planning. I’ve been planning this trip to WDW for over a year now and I have started to put into motion lists of what we are going to do. Here’s the current lineup for our visit.
We will be driving from Corpus to San Antonio and catch a flight from S.A. to Houston to MCO. It’s actually cheaper to fly out of S. A. than it is from Corpus. It turns out this works for us because my in-laws live in San Antonio and we will be returning to home near Christmas time and we were going to go to their house Christmas this year anyway.
As far as out commendations, we will be splitting out time at POP Century and Coronado Springs. We’ve never been to the latter but we’ve heard some great things about it and we got a sweet deal to stay there 4 nights.
What about ADR’s this trip? Well, my have confirmed some locations like Boma, 50’s Primetime and Tony’s Town Square. We have only eaten at 50’s once and we enjoyed it. We thought our daughter would get a kick out of it. We want to also eat at Beaches ‘N Cream, though we don’t ADR’s for that.
We also plan on attending MVMCP on Dec. 14 and those tickets have purchased and placed in my faithful Passporter. I still am trying to make plans on trying to fit in a day to go to Tampa and hit Busch Gardens and Jungala for a day.
We’ll those are the plans so far. As we get closer, I’ll update you guys on other activities I hope to include on this trip.
A great start on your trip report (and your children are beautiful). I see you've never stayed at CSR. Please feel free to send me a private message with any questions you may have about the CSR. As you will see from our pre-trip report (Our 25th Wedding Anniversary) we are staying at the CSR for the seventh time in three weeks. It is our favorite Disney resort.
__________________
Headed "Home" for a Mini Trip -- 9/18 - 9/22 at CSR
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Hello from a fellow Texan. Great start on the plans. I hope to one day be able to enjoy a December vacation at WDW. Right now though I will have to live vicariously through you.
__________________
They caught us all smiling and looking at the camera!!!
Just wanted to first thank all of you for such kind words. The encouragement was much needed. I also wanted to update some other plans I have now made:
First, our flight info. We are set to fly out of Houston and we got a great deal. Two adults, one child and a child under two (on our lap for free), round trip to MCO was $644. I have been looking for the best deals for the last two months and I was using Kayak's website. A little something about Kayak, it has helped me tremendously. You can type in your desired location and dates and it'll search most of the airlines, even Southwest (which was way more than Continental for some reason). You can even sign up to receive email alerts everyday to see what the cheapest price is. Great site. Anyway, I used this site to gauge the prices from my hometown, Corpus Christi and from other locations near by, San Antonio and Houston. The cheapest I usually found were from $1293 to $997. On Sat. I found the same flight I bought last night for $808.50. On a whim last night around 11:55 pm, I typed in the my lacation/ date info. and I got this super fare price. I had to jump on it. I know what most of you vertern travelers will say, " It's cheaper on Wednesday's. This is ususally true, however, I have been looking on Wed.'s for the last month and a half and I have never found this price before. I am so glad I waited. It may get a bit cheaper thanthe $198 per person, but not by much and I don't want to risk it. Last time we went flew out of Houston to Orlando, the price was exactly the same and that was in 2004. I thnk we got the best deal around.
Anyway, I have also made reservation for Disney's Magical Express. This is the first time we have used this service, last time we went to WDW, we drove. (Never do that again!!!) We've heard alot of great things about it and we can't wait.
I'll update some more when it gets closer, If you guys have any advice, please post it here for me. Thanks.
__________________
Leah's Dad
Leah and Andrew - March 2008
Last edited by Leah's Dad; 08-18-2008 at 06:49 PM..
Just wanted to fill you in on some updates to our plans at WDW in Dec.
First off, it's looking more and more that we aren't gonna make out to Busch Gardens this time around. It looking like we're gonna just add a town days to our tickets and that'll cost less than going to Tampa for a day. I really wanted to go to check out that park but ... oh well...
Anyway, we DID want to check Downtown Disney's newest restaurant T-REX. It turns out that they won't taking any reservations until 2009 and will be "first come first served" until then.
I did email them to see if there was a way to ensure a table at a certain time (atlernate way to ask if they are taking reservations...LOL)
Looks like we are just gonna have to sign in early.
Other than that, we may have to change our stay to be at POP Century for entire stay due to some problems with a travel company that promised me rooms at Cornodo Springs. If things change, I have a Plan B. I'll be back with any other updates that may happen . Man, this trip is really sneaking up on us!!!
__________________
Leah's Dad
Leah and Andrew - March 2008
Last edited by Leah's Dad; 10-09-2008 at 06:04 PM..
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