Joshua's First Trip COMPLETE *** Conclusion added 1-16-06 *** About This Page:

[christiejay]

Cast:

Me, Christie, 34, stay-at-home mom and the trip organizer.
My husband, Jay, 35, production line worker at Nissan, the funding source of the trip!
Our son, Joshua, 3
Jay's sister, Melanie, 34, casino money counter and sometime cashier

Experience:
Very experienced (me)
Pretty experienced (Jay)
Might-as-well-be newbie, only 1 trip in 1991 (Melanie)
First trip (Joshua)

Dates: July 1-9, 2005

Lodging:
EconoLodge North, Lake City, Florida (1 night)
Pop Century Resort (7 nights)

Transportation: Titan crewcab truck, 12 hours from Clinton, Mississippi



Contents:

• Introduction
• Planning
• Day 0 - June 30
• Day 1 - July 1
• Day 2 - July 2
• Day 3 - July 3
• Day 4 - July 4
• Day 5 - July 5
• Day 6 - July 6
• Day 7 - July 7
• Day 8 - July 8
• Day 9 - July 9
• Conclusion



Introduction

If you plan on reading my trip report, you should be warned that my style is very detailed, which means that if you stick it out, you'll be doing quite a bit of reading! Typically I include our expenses in my trip report, but I think I'll forgo that feature this time. However, I will be giving you a very detailed account of our activities for each day. This type of trip report really helps me plan better, and I hope it helps you out as well.

You probably already know that I am a Disney nut, but in case this is the first of our trip reports you have read, be forewarned. Yes, we took a break every day for Joshua to have his normal naptime, but we were still on full-blown commando mode all the rest of the time!

Here is my usual "sales pitch": I would welcome any and all comments or questions via a Private Message or a reply to this post. I always like to offer my assistance based on what I've picked up over my numerous trips and all the reading I do. And depending on how good (or bad) a job of writing I do, I might need to do some clarification, so just chime in and let me know!

You may notice that I do not give a lot of details about the rides and shows. There are many great sources out there that do a good job of this, and I encourage you to do your own reading if you're not familiar with something I mention, or just write and ask me about it. Besides PassPorter and these message boards (which I love), I also recommend Birnbaum's official guidebook, Birnbaum's kids book and the Unofficial Guide to WDW.

Well, it looks like that was pretty short! Don't worry, this was just the introduction. Starting with my Planning section on my next post, there will be a lot more to read for each entry.

[Colexis Mom]

Great start Christie Hurry back with more

[TinkMulanMickeysMom]

Looking forward to your report!!!

[DawnDenise]

Looking for to the next installment Christie! Great start!

[whoSEZ]

Oooooh, this is going to be good!! Looking forward to it!

[disneymom9092]

Looking forward to more! Hurry back please

[Dee161]

Looking forward to that trip report.

[lauren-roxy]

Great start Chrisite!! I am a detail person too so I am looking forward to your report!!

[Cinderbrella]

I'm looking forward to your report, Christie!

[zacksmom_1993]

The more detailed the better for me, Christie! I can't wait to hear about Joshua's first trip to the World. I've really been enjoying your "What I Learned" tips elsewhere on the boards. Can't wait to read more!

Karen

[TroianRae]

Bring it on, girl!!!

[DrDolphin]

Great start - I can't wait to read this report!

[christiejay]

Thanks you guys, and now ... on with the show!

[christiejay]

Cast:

Me, Christie, 34, stay-at-home mom and the trip organizer.
My husband, Jay, 35, production line worker at Nissan, the funding source of the trip!
Our son, Joshua, 3
Jay's sister, Melanie, 34, casino money counter and sometime cashier

Experience:
Very experienced (me)
Pretty experienced (Jay)
Might-as-well-be newbie, only 1 trip in 1991 (Melanie)
First trip (Joshua)

Dates: July 1-9, 2005

Lodging:
EconoLodge North, Lake City, Florida (1 night)
Pop Century Resort (7 nights)

Transportation: Titan crewcab truck, 12 hours from Clinton, Mississippi




~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

PLANNING


Will This Be The Year?

Quite uncharacteristically, we had visited Walt Disney World three times in just thirteen months - August ‘99, July ‘00 and September ‘00. So for our big trip in 2001 we were ready for something a little bit different. Jay had never been to Gatlinburg, and since that is one of my favorite places, we decided to spend a week in the Smoky Mountains. Then in 2002, Joshua had just been born. Since we had decided I would quit my job to stay at home with him, we had no money to take a trip that year. In 2003 we knew we would be in the process of moving to a new town for Jay to have a better job. This also meant that we would have two house notes for a while, so we still didn't have any money to take a trip.

Finally, in 2004 we were going to be able to go on a vacation again! So we started thinking about where we should go. Of course we considered Disney World since it had been four years since our last visit. But I didn't know how Joshua would do on an extended trip (his first), and I didn't know how I would handle being with him on an extended trip (I don't have nearly enough patience at times). So even though Joshua could have gotten in Disney World free being just 2 at the time, we settled on going back to Gatlinburg. That's a much cheaper trip to take, and we could go at a much slower pace as well. I also felt that Joshua would enjoy Disney a little better if we waited another year.

Getting Our Tickets

Having decided that 2005 would definitely be the year, there were a number of decisions to be made right off the bat. One of those was what kind of tickets we would need. We decided 5-day park hopper tickets would be plenty for us. A water park was not something we wanted to do this trip, since Joshua is kind of funny about water getting splashed on him , so we didn't even need the plus options. My parents had gotten tickets for my sister and her husband as a Christmas gift the year before (2003), so they did the same for us this year (Christmas 2004). One thing was taken care of. My mom went ahead and ordered our tickets by mail.

Deciding When To Go

Next we needed to decide when to go. Jay works on an assembly line, so they all have to turn in their vacation requests before Christmas for the following year. And whoever has the most seniority wins out if more than one person wants the same week off from work. He was pretty high on the seniority list for the night shift so we thought we had a good chance at getting the week we wanted. We were looking at going the week before Memorial Day. It sounded good - Joshua would be out of "school", the weather wouldn't be too hot, and there would be Star Wars Weekends to look forward to (Jay's a big fan) . However, the plant decided to have a mandatory shutdown during the week of July 4, and on top of that, it looked like Jay might finally get transferred to day shift, or at the very least, transferred to a different department. If he did get transferred he would probably go down on the seniority list and run the risk of having to reschedule his vacation week. A Disney vacation is not something that you can really wait too long to schedule, so just to be safe we decided to go during the 4th of July since we knew he would definitely be off work that week and there would be no conflicts based on his seniority.

Who All Is Going On This Trip?

Now we knew that Melanie was wanting to go on the next trip any of us took to Disney World, as she was the only one out of both our families who did not get to go in 2000. But since we were planning to go on a major holiday, we did not think she would be able to get off work . She works at a casino and major holidays are their busiest time of year. Typically nobody is allowed to take off on holidays - that's why she couldn't go last time. But she worked at a different casino back then and she thought she would be able to go with us if she asked off early enough. Sure enough, her supervisor said it would be OK. So since my parents had bought our tickets for us, we decided to pass along the savings and bought Melanie's ticket for her. Based on the high reviews they received on All Ears Net, we ordered her ticket from Maple Leaf Tickets in Kissimmee, and asked them to hold it for us to pick up when we arrived to avoid a shipping charge (we're such cheapskates! ).

Lining Up Our Travel Room

One other matter we took care of fairly early was getting a hotel to stay in on the trip down. We decided not to drive all night this time, so driving most of the first day would bring us to Lake City, Florida. We made a reservation at the EconoLodge North, right off the interstate for easy access. We also made this reservation early because I was afraid rooms might be scarce due to the 4th of July being that following Monday. I didn't want to wait too late before getting a room, and I was also scared that some hotels might have a 2-night minimum stay rule in place since it was a holiday weekend. But we didn't encounter any problems with this.

Deciding On A Resort

Tickets taken care of, we needed to decide where we were going to stay. During last summer's trip to Gatlinburg, we had bought into a vacation club which has two resorts in Orlando. Unfortunately, we didn't have enough points left in our account to stay the full seven nights at either resort. So we started our lodging quest by looking at some other time-share resorts through RCI. At the time we had been led to believe that it was a simple thing to purchase a cheap week (bonus vacation) at any resort in the RCI catalog (How's that for a sales pitch, huh? ). So we picked out quite a few in the Disney area that we liked and started looking on the RCI website to see what was available. We quickly learned that the cheap price we had been quoted was the lowest the week could possibly go for, and the price varied according to location and size of the unit you needed, as well as how far in advance you were booking. Well the Disney area resorts were coming in at about $700 - $1000 per week, which is a pretty good price, but we were still looking at waiting until a larger unit might come available.

To cover our bases, we made a reservation at Howard Johnson Express Inn and Suites in Kissimmee. I immediately regretted my decision as I soon came across some reviews online which said that this place was a dump . But we kept the reservation for the time being, since it was only something to fall back on as a last resort anyway. I would have changed over to the Days Suites at Old Town (where I had stayed on several family trips) but I saw some pretty bad reviews for them as well .

Another option I looked at this far out was renting a house or villa from an individual. I found some nice resorts and neighborhoods that were close to Disney World with a reasonable price. Jay and Melanie liked the looks of them as well, along with the many amenities that were at the villa resort. What made us decide against this in the short term was that most of these people require you to either purchase trip insurance or pay the whole trip within a month of booking, or both. We weren't prepared to handle either of these options, so I just saved some of my favorite places on the internet as an alternative to look at later.

Eventually I looked at our vacation club book again and realized that we did have enough points to stay the last five nights of our vacation at one of our resorts (what was I looking at to begin with?). Unfortunately, it was the one on the far end of International Drive, not very convenient for driving to Disney World. However, Jay agreed that we should do that since it wouldn't cost us anything (vacation clubs are prepaid ), then we could look at staying on Disney property the first two nights. Not ideal, but a good compromise. So we called and made reservations through our vacation club.

Which Disney Resort - Part One

Now we needed to decide which Disney resort we should visit. One day when Melanie was able to spend the night with us, we all (minus Joshua) sat down in the den and I gave Jay and Melanie a brief summary of all the Disney resorts, including what the rooms were like, what the transportation options were and the resort's theming, location and amenities. I also showed them photos from books I had and the All Ears Net website. (Yes, this took quite a while!) The three of us then voted - we each got to vote yes or no for each resort and then I counted up the number of votes that each resort received. At this point we did not consider cost to be an issue since we were only staying for two nights. And since we were splitting the cost, spending a lot of money for just one night is not that big a deal!

Wilderness Lodge and Animal Kingdom Lodge tied for first with three votes apiece. The resorts that received two votes apiece were French Quarter, Boardwalk, Contemporary, Polynesian and Old Key West. Resorts with only one vote were All-Star Movies, Pop Century, Caribbean Beach, Coronado Springs, Riverside, Grand Floridian, Yacht Club, Boardwalk Villas, Villas at Wilderness Lodge and Fort Wilderness Cabins. There were a few that did not receive any votes: All-Star Music, All-Star Sports, Beach Club, Beach Club Villas and Saratoga Springs. I took all the tallied votes and put everything aside for the time being until we were ready to call and make our reservation.

Which Disney Resort - Part Two

Meanwhile, we visited my parents one weekend and explained to them what our plan was for lodging. Of course they were not excited about our plans (they never are), especially the part about having to stay off-property for 5 out of 7 nights and having to drive in and pay for parking. The driving part would be made worse by the fact that we would need to return to our resort every afternoon for Joshua to get a nap. So sometime that next week, my dad called with a proposition: he wanted us to cancel our vacation club resort reservations and have those points put back into our account. He would then reimburse us the dollar value of using our points for their trip to Gatlinburg in June and we could use that money to go toward staying in a Disney resort the whole week of our stay. Well, of course staying on Disney property the whole week would have been our first choice anyway, but we needed to clear it with Melanie first since she was going in halves with us on the lodging costs. She agreed to do that, so I switched our vacation club reservation from Orlando (for us) to Pigeon Forge (for my parents). My dad passed along the money (only $500) and we started over with our lodging decision.

I pulled out my list of resorts that we had voted on and looked at our options. We were assuming that we could get some kind of discount with our Disney Visa card, since my family did last summer. In preparation for a call to Disney Reservations, I made a short list of resorts: assuming we could get a reservation, we decided on a bunk bed room at Wilderness Lodge. But if there was no discount available, we would get one room at French Quarter and take an air mattress for somebody to sleep on the floor so we didn't have to share beds, or either two rooms at Pop Century (one room wouldn't be big enough for an air mattress on the floor, plus we would only have one sink). After discussing it for a while, we decided the air mattress probably wouldn't be that great of an idea, so we would go with two rooms at Pop Century since it wouldn't be that much more money for each of us to come up with.

When I called to make the reservation, the only Disney Visa card discount was for Hilton Head Island Resort , so Wilderness Lodge was out of our price range . I told the cast member to book us at Pop Century. He assured me that if I learned of a discount I could call back and apply it to this reservation.



So now we knew when we were going and even where we were going to be staying, and we had our tickets ordered. Next up, all the details. Or, in other words, Christie goes into super-planner mode!

[Colexis Mom]

Another great update Christie