CeruleanMoon
Mouseketeer
- Joined
- May 3, 2017
This trip was a special one for us, for many reasons. For me, it was the first time I had been back to Epcot and Hollywood Studios since 1991, when I was 18 years old. It was also our first major family vacation just the three of us, and the longest and most extravagant trip we had ever taken!
This is my first trip report! It took me a while to get this report ready, so it’s already been five months since our trip. Oops.
[Skip ahead to the Table of Contents]
Usually we do small day trips or weekend trips, or trips to visit family. In 2013 my mother-in-law gifted us with plane tickets to FL to visit her and and spend two days at Disney, something which we never could have afforded to do ourselves at that time. Quinn was younger then, and so we took it slow, visiting AK one day and MK the other, and we didn’t cram in a ton of attractions. MIL also planned the trip last time, and we were her guests, so this time I was very excited to try my hand at planning a trip myself, and wanted to visit all the parks this time. We had a wonderful time in 2013, but this trip would be entirely our own!
So...Introductions!
I’m Jen, a 45 year old librarian. I love Star Wars and Beauty and the Beast. I’m the biggest Disney fan in the family.
My husband, Matt, who is 51 and computer geek. He works for a hospital in their IT department. No strong opinions on Disney but was very excited about having such a special vacation!
Quinn, our 10 year old son. Loves: reading, writing, drawing, gaming, movies, nature, animals, science, trail hiking, collecting maps, and photobombing other people’s pics. Favorite Disney movies: Jungle Book and the Pirates of the Caribbean series.
We didn’t even notice that hidden Mickey right next to Quinn’s head until a nearby CM pointed it out!
So, one of my favorite family vacation memories as a child was going to Disney World at age 10 in 1983. I pored over the brochures my mom sent away for in the mail, studying every tiny picture until I had them memorized by heart. I was insanely excited in only the way that a kid can be. Epcot looked like some kind of futuristic dream filled with technological marvels I could barely imagine were real. I spent most of my time daydreaming with those tiny brochure pictures - the one with the dinosaurs from Universe of Energy, and the one with the rainbow tunnel from Journey into Imagination (with the color that followed you!) At night, I’d lay in bed pretending that I was aboard the train on our way from Massachusetts to Florida (flying was too expensive.) In the end, Disney (and Epcot) was everything I dreamed it would be.
Me with my mom, living the dream in 1983!
Our son Quinn is 10 years old now, the same age I was for that first trip, and I knew I wanted him to have an experience like I had of planning, dreaming and then experiencing a very special family vacation.
My family in 1983, when my first Disney memories were made! This picture was taken later in our trip, when we visited Sea World.
Other than our short trip in 2013, I hadn’t been back to Disney in 27 years! That means that Epcot and Hollywood Studios were still frozen in my mind the way they were in 1991, when I last saw them back in high school. ( I was very lucky and got to visit Disney both in 1990 and 1991, first time with family and the second time with my high school marching band.) I expected to see big changes from how those parks are now! Quinn of course had never been to either of those parks, and Matt had never been to Epcot (and for HS it had been 12 years.)
Us on our 2013 trip
During past trips to Disney with my family as a child, we usually stayed around 4-5 days total, but this time I knew we’d need more time if we were to see everything we wanted to see. I calculated that we’d need at least 4 days to start - one for each park. Quinn and I both wanted to try out a water park, so we added a day for that. Then Matt and I agreed that if we were going to stay that long, we’d need a rest day, which would also be a nice opportunity to enjoy our resort! So that made 6 days of Disney time, plus two bookend travel days. I figured we’d need 8 days total. I realized that we couldn’t go all the way to FL and not visit MIL, so we made plans to add 3 more days to our trip to spend some time with her. So that’s how we ended up with the longest vacation we’d ever had at 11 days!
Quinn at age 5 in 2013, making a “prickly” face, like a cactus. Unfortunately, he says he remembers very little from that trip now. Time to make some new memories!
When to go? I joined this board a year before and began my extensive research into the subject. (Have I mentioned that I am a librarian? I live for this stuff.) I consulted weather sites, Disney crowd data sites, and stories from people’s experiences on this board. I decided I wanted to avoid winter - those months are too unpredictable where we live and the constant snow can really mess up travel. That eliminated Dec - March. Then I took out the fall. Fall’s a busy time for us, with school starting up and clubs and karate and yes every single year we always get sick. So that eliminated Sept - Nov. One time of year was starting to really stand out for me and that was early May. Then I looked at Quinn’s school calendar and saw that only one week earlier, he would have spring break. From what I could deduce from my searching, the last week of April was not a popular week for spring break, especially so with Easter falling on April 1st. The weather is normally beautiful in Florida during spring, and April is one of the lowest precipitation months of the year for Orlando. Bingo! I had our vacation week! I was also pleased that we would only need to take Quinn out of school for 3 days.
We planned our trip for April 18th - 28th.
Where would we stay? I knew right away that our “pie in the sky” choice would be Animal Kingdom Lodge. I’d looked into this resort 13 years ago for our honeymoon, but a Disney honeymoon was out of our budget at that time, so I put it on the bucket list instead. Then we ended up with a son who LOVED animals, nature, and zoos, so bringing AKL back to the table was no-brainer. I wasn’t sure if it would take up too much of our budget though, so I looked into the moderate resorts. With all the construction going on that severely limited our choices...I kept coming back to AKL. We decided we could splurge a bit on this, so I started hunting for the best rate I could get.
The Days Inn in Kissimmee, where my family stayed for our 1983 trip.
Fast forward to June 2017 and I heard on the Dis that the 2018 rates were due to come out soon. I stalked the website and the day they went live I found a Value Studio at AKL that was a good price and even had a little kitchenette! I was sold. I called that night and booked it. Score!
Next up...our dream vacation begins!
This is my first trip report! It took me a while to get this report ready, so it’s already been five months since our trip. Oops.
[Skip ahead to the Table of Contents]
Usually we do small day trips or weekend trips, or trips to visit family. In 2013 my mother-in-law gifted us with plane tickets to FL to visit her and and spend two days at Disney, something which we never could have afforded to do ourselves at that time. Quinn was younger then, and so we took it slow, visiting AK one day and MK the other, and we didn’t cram in a ton of attractions. MIL also planned the trip last time, and we were her guests, so this time I was very excited to try my hand at planning a trip myself, and wanted to visit all the parks this time. We had a wonderful time in 2013, but this trip would be entirely our own!
So...Introductions!
I’m Jen, a 45 year old librarian. I love Star Wars and Beauty and the Beast. I’m the biggest Disney fan in the family.
My husband, Matt, who is 51 and computer geek. He works for a hospital in their IT department. No strong opinions on Disney but was very excited about having such a special vacation!
Quinn, our 10 year old son. Loves: reading, writing, drawing, gaming, movies, nature, animals, science, trail hiking, collecting maps, and photobombing other people’s pics. Favorite Disney movies: Jungle Book and the Pirates of the Caribbean series.
We didn’t even notice that hidden Mickey right next to Quinn’s head until a nearby CM pointed it out!
So, one of my favorite family vacation memories as a child was going to Disney World at age 10 in 1983. I pored over the brochures my mom sent away for in the mail, studying every tiny picture until I had them memorized by heart. I was insanely excited in only the way that a kid can be. Epcot looked like some kind of futuristic dream filled with technological marvels I could barely imagine were real. I spent most of my time daydreaming with those tiny brochure pictures - the one with the dinosaurs from Universe of Energy, and the one with the rainbow tunnel from Journey into Imagination (with the color that followed you!) At night, I’d lay in bed pretending that I was aboard the train on our way from Massachusetts to Florida (flying was too expensive.) In the end, Disney (and Epcot) was everything I dreamed it would be.
Me with my mom, living the dream in 1983!
Our son Quinn is 10 years old now, the same age I was for that first trip, and I knew I wanted him to have an experience like I had of planning, dreaming and then experiencing a very special family vacation.
My family in 1983, when my first Disney memories were made! This picture was taken later in our trip, when we visited Sea World.
Other than our short trip in 2013, I hadn’t been back to Disney in 27 years! That means that Epcot and Hollywood Studios were still frozen in my mind the way they were in 1991, when I last saw them back in high school. ( I was very lucky and got to visit Disney both in 1990 and 1991, first time with family and the second time with my high school marching band.) I expected to see big changes from how those parks are now! Quinn of course had never been to either of those parks, and Matt had never been to Epcot (and for HS it had been 12 years.)
Us on our 2013 trip
During past trips to Disney with my family as a child, we usually stayed around 4-5 days total, but this time I knew we’d need more time if we were to see everything we wanted to see. I calculated that we’d need at least 4 days to start - one for each park. Quinn and I both wanted to try out a water park, so we added a day for that. Then Matt and I agreed that if we were going to stay that long, we’d need a rest day, which would also be a nice opportunity to enjoy our resort! So that made 6 days of Disney time, plus two bookend travel days. I figured we’d need 8 days total. I realized that we couldn’t go all the way to FL and not visit MIL, so we made plans to add 3 more days to our trip to spend some time with her. So that’s how we ended up with the longest vacation we’d ever had at 11 days!
Quinn at age 5 in 2013, making a “prickly” face, like a cactus. Unfortunately, he says he remembers very little from that trip now. Time to make some new memories!
When to go? I joined this board a year before and began my extensive research into the subject. (Have I mentioned that I am a librarian? I live for this stuff.) I consulted weather sites, Disney crowd data sites, and stories from people’s experiences on this board. I decided I wanted to avoid winter - those months are too unpredictable where we live and the constant snow can really mess up travel. That eliminated Dec - March. Then I took out the fall. Fall’s a busy time for us, with school starting up and clubs and karate and yes every single year we always get sick. So that eliminated Sept - Nov. One time of year was starting to really stand out for me and that was early May. Then I looked at Quinn’s school calendar and saw that only one week earlier, he would have spring break. From what I could deduce from my searching, the last week of April was not a popular week for spring break, especially so with Easter falling on April 1st. The weather is normally beautiful in Florida during spring, and April is one of the lowest precipitation months of the year for Orlando. Bingo! I had our vacation week! I was also pleased that we would only need to take Quinn out of school for 3 days.
We planned our trip for April 18th - 28th.
Where would we stay? I knew right away that our “pie in the sky” choice would be Animal Kingdom Lodge. I’d looked into this resort 13 years ago for our honeymoon, but a Disney honeymoon was out of our budget at that time, so I put it on the bucket list instead. Then we ended up with a son who LOVED animals, nature, and zoos, so bringing AKL back to the table was no-brainer. I wasn’t sure if it would take up too much of our budget though, so I looked into the moderate resorts. With all the construction going on that severely limited our choices...I kept coming back to AKL. We decided we could splurge a bit on this, so I started hunting for the best rate I could get.
The Days Inn in Kissimmee, where my family stayed for our 1983 trip.
Fast forward to June 2017 and I heard on the Dis that the 2018 rates were due to come out soon. I stalked the website and the day they went live I found a Value Studio at AKL that was a good price and even had a little kitchenette! I was sold. I called that night and booked it. Score!
Next up...our dream vacation begins!
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