A lot has transpired since my last blog. Our party size has increased by 3. Our reservations have expanded and the focus of our trip may have changed a bit as well. My son, who lives at home with us, is coming to Disney World, requiring us to increase the number of people for everything we have reserved. My daughter and her husband will be coming for a few days during our stay as well. Unfortunately, my daughter and my son-in-law won’t be at Walt Disney World in time to join us for our 35-anniversary dinner, but it will be great to have them with us for whatever time they can stay. As I have stated in previous blogs, we tend to go to Walt Disney World in packs. This trip will not be an exception. I had started planning this trip about a year ago. I was leaning toward going in early December, thinking that I would go to the parks myself. My wife, though she loves Disney and the Parks has developed a “been there, done that attitude” toward Disney Vacations. I could go every year, I might have even found my way down to Orlando more often than yearly if I could have gotten away with it. However, our recent vacations have that made us both very happy, and we have been lucky enough to do some pretty wonderful things over the past few Non-Disney years. Still, over time, My lovely wife recognized my desire and my need to go to the most magical place on Earth, therefore, what began as a 5-day solo trip in December has become a 10-day escape to the Walt Disney World over the food and wine festival. Frankly, I don’t mind a few more days in the parks.
‘Ohana is one of my favorites
The addition of my son was almost an accident. My son is almost as big a Disney fan as I am. My wife, whose conscience may have been getting the better of her, offered to take him with us to Walt Disney World in October. I knew that he would accept in a heartbeat. My wife didn’t expect him to say yes. He did, of course, want to go. I mean who wouldn’t want to go to Walt Disney World. So our party grew by one. We put our planning on hold while he worked with his employer to get the time off to go. My son works at a game shop that sells Warhammer and D&D stuff. Now that our trip had grown by another member and the romantic escape to the World was now a burgeoning family vacation, I thought it would be great if my daughter and her husband could join us as well. She works as a Chemical Engineer for a Refinery consulting firm. My son in law is a bit of a Star Wars Geek (I say geek in the most loving of terms) and it didn’t take long before my daughter and my son-in-law had accepted our invitation. We will probably make the Reservations for them as well so we can plan our fast passes together. My daughter and her husband would have enjoyed being with us for the whole 10-day trip but the number of days they could stay was limited to Sunday evening through Thursday morning. I have to say that I am very happy about this turn of events. Now we are vacationing together as a family again. My kids will be able to help us celebrate my wife and my 35th wedding anniversary in style. After all, Walt Disney World is for families, for couples and 60-year-old kids like me.
I’ve been “That Guy” twice!
With all these extra people coming with us on our adventure, we had some logistics to consider. I was easily able to increase the number of seats at our California Grill ADR but others have been much more challenging. For example, I increased our ‘Ohana reservation to 3 when my son opted for our vacation but have yet to be able to increase it to 5 for my daughter and her husband. I suspect we might have to change restaurants, but I will keep checking. You never know when something might turn up. My daughter and son-in-law will only be able to eat dinner with us for three nights so I am sure we can figure something out. My son will be with us the whole time posing different challenges. We dropped a few of our Food and Wine Reservations and added him to the ones that we kept. We want to go to the Tusker House for breakfast on Animal Kingdom day so we can get better seating for the Rivers of Light. adding the extra three people has proven difficult. A phone call to Disney might be required to get the rest of my family added. Also, we can’t make fast pass reservations yet either. The rumor is, that there won’t be any fast passes for Black Spire at Galaxy’s Edge. So Fastpasses aren’t a big deal yet. We will take advantage of the 6:00 AM extra, extra magic hours, which has made my daughter growl a little. But one must do what one must do. Where and when we can get fast passes might influence the location of our ADRs for specific days. Maybe we will have to make changes that match more closely the parks where we can get fast passes. Dinner reservations at Jiko’s and an afternoon/evening fast pass for space mountain are the stuff nightmares are made from.
My son wants to do Space Mountain again!
Overall, we have some great stuff to look forward too and new stuff to add. We are planning on enjoying new restaurants that we haven’t tried before and experienced the wonderful offerings of the food and wine festival. New Attractions await and new evening spectaculars that we haven’t seen will fill our nights. Galaxy’s Edge will be open when we get there, however, the Rise of the Resistance attraction will still be under construction. I cannot wait to experience all the new attractions, shows and restaurants this trip will have to offer. Walt Disney World is nothing if not dynamic and we haven’t seen the last of the changes. I, for one, and excited to see what is new and anticipate what is to come.
UPDATE!!!
So Fastpass day has come and our plans have come into sharper focus. We had to drop California grill and ‘Ohana for other options that would fit into our schedules better. Also, my daughter has never been to Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party and MNSSH has now become part of the plan. I can see us focusing a lot more on the Food and Wine Booths relying on them for lunch a couple of times. We have money from our Disney Visa that we can use for the food booths. I’m pretty sure the cash on our Disney Rewards Gift Card won’t be enough to cover all the food we get from the booths, especially with 5 of us draining the funds from the Gift card! My next blog will be all about fast passes and the changes we had to make to accommodate them. Stay tuned for more!
