May 2017 PTR

Going to buy our tickets next month! Getting our Honda Civic fixed this weekend. Was supposed to happen last weekend but other life stuff sort of got in the way.

We got our Honda Civic fixed! Yippee!! DH agreed that we should probably take the Civic for our road trip to DL instead of renting a car, so that's ~$200 in car rental fees that I can take off the trip budget. Woot! Woot! DH seems to think that the Civic needs a new car stereo, but I'd rather keep the stereo it has and put that $$ toward our trip or toward something else.

The kids will be bringing their tablets with them on this trip. They didn't have electronic devices the last time we went. I need to look into downloading a couple of movies onto them.

I've been browsing for shoes online. I need a new pair of flip flops since all of mine have finally kicked the bucket after living long lives and serving my happy feet very well! Plus, I need a good pair of shoes to wear into the parks every day.

My husband has a pair of Olukai shoes similar to these --> https://www.olukai.com/waialua-mesh-womens.html?color=dark-shadow-magenta. Only his are in an off white color. He put in a pair of New Balance inserts in them and swears by these shoes...has worn them all day outside here in Arizona in the summer when it's >100 degrees outside and his feet are happy campers.

I've thought about Tevas or Chacos, but my feet are long and after 2 children, my feet are wider than they used to be! So Tevas and Chacos are out...they carry my size, but not the width I need. Boo!

But I decided that I'm going to give these Olukai mesh slip on shoes a try...it's the women's version of the mesh shoes my husband wears. I'm going to get them in dark gray. White will show the dirt too much. The light gray ones look like old man shoes. I thought of maybe the brown ones, but the elastic on the brown ones is orange. Going to purchase them this next week!

Ack! Was listening to this week's Disneyland edition of the DIS Unplugged podcast and they mentioned a strong rumor that AP ticket prices might increase on Sunday. Oftentimes, when DL increases AP ticket prices, they increase regular ticket prices, too. We're not ready to buy all of our tickets right now. Might have to get just 1 5-day ticket for now.

Although I'm still going back & forth about whether to do a 4-day or 5-day park hopper. Whatever we do, I know that I don't really want to have to spend time waiting in those frustrating lines at the ticket booth! Had to do that on our last DL trip. I'd purchased the tickets through aRes Travel and it required us to pick up the tickets at the ticket booth. Just picking up the tickets took 15-20 min and that's just the time AT the ticket booth with the CM. Add in the time waiting in line at the ticket booth, and it took about an hour just to pick up the tickets that we'd previously purchased online through aRes Travel.

I've also thought about getting the tickets through that Last Minute Travel club, but they appear to have a similar set up to aRes Travel, which means that you have to pick up the tickets from the ticket booth. Forget it!

So this time around, I'm not going for the cheapy method. I'm just going to pay the full amount directly from Disneyland's website.

VandVsmama said:

Because our kids are getting older & bigger, for this trip, we have to graduate from 1 suitcase for both kids to 1 suitcase per child. My babies are growing up! When did this happen?

However, Santa is smart and he thinks ahead, so ODD got a new suitcase for Christmas. YDD got a small rolling suitcase for her birthday this past year.

What do I bring into the parks each day?
On prior trips, I was almost a pack animal. 1 sweatshirt per person. 1 heavy water bottle per person. full changes of clothes for each kid. A ton of first aid supplies. It was kind of ridiculous. This time around, here's what I'll carry with me in the morning:

• wallet
• cell phone, charger, + battery pack - the battery pack has 2 USB ports, so we can charge both my phone & DH's phone at the same time and it'll charge both phones 2x before you have to recharge the battery pack.
• small container of sunscreen - the kind that's meant to go in your pocket or something like that.
• 2 blister band aids + 2 reg band aids
• sunglasses
• 2 purse packs of ibuprofen - for sore muscles or headaches
• park tickets
• pin lanyard (but I usually wear mine)
• a print out of our Ridemax itinerary for the day
• a pen
• 2 disposable plastic water bottles - 1 for DH & I to share and 1 for the kids to share. Why not 1 per person? It's too many to keep track of. Why doesn't each person carry their own? Doesn't make sense for us. And besides, we all share germs with each other anyway. Heck, my kids lick each other on a regular basis to gross each other (and their mother) out.
• a sarong - it's super lightweight. It folds down to a really small size. And I can use it to save our spots for a parade. The girls & I will wear it if 1 of us is cold. Doubles as sort of a towel to dry off after Splash Mtn.
• 1 spare pr of shorts & undies for YDD - only because even at age 8, she sometimes still tends to wait until the last possible minute to go to the bathroom. Mostly because she doesn't want to miss out on anything. This is really lightweight, though, and I can fit it inside a quart-sized ziploc bag.
• If we're going to go on GRR, 1 Dollar Store poncho per person.

Usually when we've gone to DL in late May/early June, we are not cold at all, so IF we need sweatshirts, it's not until the evening, so we bring those with us when we head back to the parks after our afternoon break.

Click to expand...

So....back on pg 1, I posted the above re: what to bring into the park. I've revised the list. And added a list for my kids! Normally, DH or I are the ones who are the pack mules. But the kids will be almost 11 and turning 9 on this trip. Time for them to be responsible for some of their own stuff! Did you hear that? That "woot! woot!" - that was the sound of one joyous parent.

So here's what my kids will be bringing into the parks:
This is what THEY will be responsible for themselves. 1 bag for the 2 of them to share. And the rule will be that they have to trade off who carries it. Right now I'm not sure if I'll have them use a school backpack (kind of large) or get a new bag that's smaller which would fit the bill. Or make them use 1 of my bags.

Anyway, here's their list:

1. ziplock bag w/a few colored pencils
2. 1 Moana sketch book per kid. ODD draws a lot. On the last trip, they filled up their autograph books at meet & greets. I suggested to ODD that she might want to bring her sketch book w/her so she could draw what she sees at DL and it will be a special memory of the trip. YDD then said, "ME, TOO!" So I need to get 1 for her.
3. 1 sharpie pen for autographs
4. 1 cheap pair of sunglasses per kid - I doubt they'll use them, but will buy at Walmart ahead of time so we don't break the bank. And if they get lost, so be it!
5. 1 hair tie/ponytail holder per kid - although I'm hoping that they'll want to have their hair up in ponytails or buns so it's not as hot on their necks.
6. pins to trade
7. 1 container of hand sanitizer
8. 1 travel pack of tissues - YDD usually has 1 in her school bag.
9. 2 Dollar Store ponchos - for going on GRR.
10. their spending money/Disney gift cards - big lesson for them in responsibility on this trip! Being responsible for your own money. You lose it? Mom & Dad aren't replacing it.
11. 1 park map
12. a water bottle

Here's MY revised list of what *I* am bringing into the parks each day:

• wallet
• cell phone, charger cable + battery to charge phone with
• travel sized sunscreen
• 1 purse pack of ibuprofen
• park tickets + map
• Ridemax itinerary print out
• 1 pen
• 1 water bottle
• sarong
• 2 Dollar Store ponchos - but only if it's a DCA day.

WAS on the list but I'm going to wear:

• sunglasses
• pin lanyard + a thingy to keep our tickets & FP's in. Something that won't fall off or open easily. Something like this.
• hat

REMOVED from the list entirely:

• 2 blister band aids + 2 reg band aids. if we need 1, we'll go to First Aid.
• 1 purse pack of ibuprofen
• (wasn't on the list, but mentally I had it on the list) - 1 sweater, jacket, or sweatshirt per person & carry it around all day. FORGET IT! Only in the evening.

The other day (or maybe it was last week), I posted this pic of the walking route from Hojo's to the Esplanade. It shows the walk being a smidge over 0.51 miles:


But then I looked at the Google satellite view a little closer and realized that we can reduce the walk just a bit! Yeah, it's not much, but I'll take what I can get. Every bit helps when we'll probably be walking 7-8 miles per day! Happy feet = happy family

Did you guys know that the DIS sells t-shirts? I was listening to the WDW edition of the DIS Unplugged today while I drove to work and they were talking about t-shirts. So I went and looked and OMG I NEED TO BUY A COUPLE OF THESE!

Like this one--> https://www.teepublic.com/t-shirt/559658-connecting-with-walt?store_id=86961


And I'm thinking of getting this one, too! Because when I'm at DL, I really and truly am just happy to be there. Here's the link to it --> https://www.teepublic.com/t-shirt/631604-im-just-happy-to-be-here?store_id=86961

<--- this is me this afternoon purchasing 1 of our 5-day park hopper tickets today.

I also ordered these today! I'll have plenty of time to break them in. Happy feet = happy Disney vacation!

That's awesome that you even come prepared with clothing. Those shoes look comfy, which is mucho important. Right before our Disney World trip a couple years ago, my feet started hurting. Was freaking out as they hurt in whatever shoes I had. I ended up being introduced to Sketcher Go Walks (which look similar to those) and I have lived in them ever since. Even bought another pair for work.

Hm, so the price of a 5-day park hopper ticket went up by $15.00 today (Sunday). Glad I bought YDD's ticket late last week!

DH had to work out of town this past weekend and used a new piece of luggage...which is pretty great because usually he is not a minimalist sort of packer! He got his work stuff AND 2 days of clothing in a carry-on backpack. IMPRESSIVE! This is the one he used-->

Extended family was in town this past weekend and we had a great time hanging out with them! Discussed our upcoming trip a little bit and we are talking about killing 2 birds with 1 stone on Sunday, 5/28. The new plan for that day is to visit both the LA Natural History Museum and the California Science Center. 1 of our extended family members is a big dinosaur lover and the Natural History Museum has some really great dinosaur skeletons from what I've seen and read about online. And we can still visit the California Science Center next door so we can see the Endeavor space shuttle!

I am kind of kicking myself for not considering this on previous trips! We can basically go to the California Science Center for FREE if we skip the IMAX movie and skip the travelling exhibit (which is "BODY WORLDS: Pulse," starting 5/20). Parking is $12. And admission to the Natural History Museum will only cost us $34 ($12/adult and $5/child ages 3-12)! So for $46 (not including the cost of lunch), we can have an awesome day at 2 awesome museums!

And hit up a ramen noodle shop on the way back to La Mesa for dinner!

Here's a picture that shows how close together the 2 museums are. Just below this picture on the map is the LA Coliseum!

THEN when we're all done tromping around the museums, we'll drive ~ 30-45 min to Buena Park for dinner at Kitakata Ramen Ban Nai in Buena Park. I think that given the holiday weekend, it will probably be more like 45 min on the freeway instead of 30 min. I've seriously considered eating somewhere in downtown LA, but then there's the hassle of finding a place to eat, finding a place to park, and wondering if there's food there that my picky YDD and nephew will like.

So since I **know** that everybody in our extended family crew loves ramen, that's what I think we should go for, especially since Orange County is like a mecca of Asian restaurants. I'd love to go to various Chinese or Vietnamese restaurants, but I know that YDD and nephew will eat ramen and it won't break the bank and everybody will go home with full and happy tummies.

I'd *LOVE* to try the dim sum restaurant at South Coast Plaza, but that's definitely too exotic for my 5 year old nephew.

But anyway, this will break up the drive back to San Diego and will keep the "hangries" away from cranky children (like ODD-10, YDD-8, my niece - age 8, and nephew - age 5). Here's what the drive options look like leaving the CSC about 5pm on Sunday 5/28 on Memorial Day weekend, according to Google Maps:

My shoes arrived today! YAY!!! And they don't make my super long feet look like gun boats! They are pretty cute on, but I won't subject all of you to pictures of my feet. I'll include pictures of the shoes by themselves instead. LOL! They ended up being a tad darker than the pictures were online, but I still like the color a lot because they don't look like old man shoes like the light gray or off-white colors did.

Isn't the pink pretty?!



You can also fold down the back part of it to turn it into a slip-on mule style shoe. I'm going to replace the insoles with ones from New Balance.

I am really excited because it looks like we will be able to tack on 2 nights at either the GCH or DLH! So we'll end up doing a split stay. It would look like this:

Sat 5/27 - drive to San Diego
Sun 5/28 - go to CA Science Center & LA Natural History Museum
Mon 5/29 - maybe see the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie. Overnight on Mon night in Riverside.
Tues 5/30 - Hojo's
Wed 5/31 - Hojo's
Thurs 6/1 - Hojo's
Fri 6/2 - check out of Hojo's by noon. Check in at GCH or DLH.
Sat 6/3 - last day at DL. GCH or DLH.
Sun 6/4 - check out of GCH or DLH and drive home.

** My HOPE is that I can convince DH to keep the kids in the park while I run back to Hojo's and relocate our stuff to the GCH or DLH. Then meet up with all of them after the check in is done. THEN when our room is ready, suggest that we take a snack break at a counter service place at the hotel. And instead of getting food first, going up to the room and surprising the kids.

I don't know if I'll be able to pull that part of it off, though. The surprise walk up to the room, that is. It would be so great, though!

Wow...that's an awesome split stay. Hojo in itself looks great with the water area, and then to end at a Disney hotel. How exciting!

Frozen2014 said:

Wow...that's an awesome split stay. Hojo in itself looks great with the water area, and then to end at a Disney hotel. How exciting!

Click to expand...

I'm pretty excited! I'm not sure how to pull off the surprise, though, so if anybody has ideas, let me know!

I called Disney Travel today to see if they had any more information about when the GCH pool renovations would be completed. Their website only says it's scheduled to complete in Spring 2017. The agent who I spoke with said "late spring," but they haven't been told yet whether that means before Memorial Day or after Memorial Day.

Hm...so decisions, decisions...book a room at DLH where I know for sure we'll have an awesome pool to use (but longer walk in the morning to the parks) or GCH, where the pool is still up in the air.

Saving money for the trip

We've been busy little beavers squirreling money away for our trip! Every little dollar counts. A few things that we've been doing to help with this include:

• DH & I pack our lunches to work instead of buyingSo worst case scenario, if you & your spouse bought your lunch at work each day, that would be a savings of $320-$400/month just for that! WOW!
• kids pack their lunches, too, instead of us buying them hot lunch. At their school, hot lunch can run $4-5 a piece and if each kid only eats hot lunch once or twice a week, it can cost up to $100 a month just for that.
• We took a look at our cell phone bill recently and were able to switch plans and save $100/month on the monthly fees.
• We usually keep our thermostat set a bit lower than other folks in the winter and in the summer, we set it for 83 with the A/C. Saves a lot on energy bills. We have ceiling fans in each of the bedrooms plus the family room and that cools the room off a lot.
• Since we got our little Honda Civic repaired, I'm using that car to drive to work instead of our old minivan. It costs $20-$25 to fill up instead of $35-$40 each week. So that's now an extra $40-$80/month in savings. Woot! Woot!
• Awhile ago, we switched our trash service to another company. The first trash service we had raised their rates to ~$70/month! Our neighborhood HOA allows multiple trash companies to compete, just as long as they do the trash pick up on the same day each week as everybody else. So now we pay $42 every 3 months instead for a different company. YAY!
• We cancelled our cable TV service a couple of years ago. That eliminated about $80-$100/month right there. So now we just have high speed Internet service and a Netflix account. Oh and when we got rid of cable TV, we cancelled DH's Tivo account at the same time since he never had time to watch the 40 hours of TV he recorded each week anyway. Ka-ching!
• I will also purchase a $25 Disney gift card at the grocery store every week or every other week. Then when it gets closer to the trip, I combine all of the $$ value of the gift cards onto 1 or 2 cards using the https://www.disneygiftcard.com/ website. I like doing this because it's another way to put money aside, especially for food or souvenirs, but it keeps it specifically in a Disney-only form of payment.

Our plans continue to evolve! DH and I talked about the trip last night and we've revised things a tad to this:

• Tues - Fri: stay at Hojo's
• Fri - Sat: 1 night at DLH.
• Sat night: 1 night at a hotel in Ontario or Rancho Cucamonga so we can get a little head start on the drive home for Sunday
• Sun: drive home.

When I had pitched the idea to DH last week about maybe spending a night or 2 at the DLH, at first his reaction was, "Hm, sure, maybe. That might be fun." Now he's MUCH more on board! And when I say "on board," I'm talking about my DH is saying things back to me that I have said to him before on other trips! Like "Hey, you know, since we'll be staying at DLH or GCH, we can get into the park an hour early. We should totally use the Extra Magic Hour."

Oh, dear husband of mine, that is music to my ears! <-- this was me inside my head when he said this. Haha!

So the rest of the conversation went like this:
me: Did you know that you can check in really early at the on site hotels and use your EMH on your check in day?
DH: Really? But when is EMH in June?
me: 7-8am
DH: That's pretty early. You can check in that early?
me: Yes. At like 6:30 am. The room won't be ready until much later in the day.
DH: So we could use EMH on Friday AND Saturday?
me: Yes!
DH: Cool! Yeah, we should do that.

Oh happy day......oh happy DAAAYYY! YDD is going to get one epic surprise the morning of her birthday!

Earlier in the conversation yesterday evening, I was pitching my idea to DH of maybe renting a cabana for 1/2 day (4 hr). I never really would have considered it were it not for DIS Boards and reading people's experiences doing that. Our conversation went something like this and it made me smile:
me: You know, we won't have access to a hotel room until late afternoon that Friday if we stay at the DLH, PPH, or GCH.
DH: (starts to look a bit grumpy) Hm, yeah. That kind of sucks.

** side note **
It sucks because DH really is Cinderella at DL. He's got the ball gown on and is totally into the fancy ball for a few hours. But then the magical hour is reached some time between 12:30-2:00 pm and he turns back from ball gown Cinderella to regular Cinderella and doesn't want to be at the ball for awhile. He needs breaks or he get cranky.
** end side note **

me: But I might have found a solution to that
DH: (perks up) Oh?
me: Did you know that you can rent a cabana by the pool at the DLH or GCH for 4 hours?
DH: (perks up a little more) Really? (this is him --> )
me: Yes! And did you know that it has a couch that you could take a nap on? And a fridge stocked with water. And Wifi. AND a TV. And a server who will bring you food and yummy drinks?
DH: (now he's all smiles) There's a TV? (this is him--> )
me: Yes! You could even have your laptop with you and watch TV and take a nap while the kids play all afternoon on the monorail slides.
DH: And there's a TV...?!
me: Yes
DH: How much does it cost?
me: (I tell him approx. price; I called the DLH yesterday to inquire. They gave me an approx price because they don't have their summer pricing out yet for the cabanas so they said don't quote them on that price) It costs about $___, but I assume it will go up a bit before June.
DH: (now he's sold on the idea, given the fact there's a TV in the cabana) That's not a problem. We should do that!
me: You're sure? We don't have to, you know. But we could all probably benefit from the down time and having a quiet space for you and I to relax while the kids play.
DH: Yeah, we should do this.

So if you heard the angels singing last night around 9:00 pm Arizona time, that was because of my DH.