OFFICIAL NOVEMBER 2017 THREAD

[DisneyMom93]

Just found this thread and am loving it!!

We are headed down from November 25-December 1. It's my first trip since I was about 11 or 12 (22 years ago!). It's the first trip for my DH and DD, age 5.

We are hitting the character meals pretty heavily and I was wondering if any of you with more experience think it's too much. Our schedule is as follows:

11/25- fly in early afternoon, dinner at 1900 park fare
11/26-MK- Chef Mickey's for dinner as we do not have tickets for MVMCP.
11/27-EP- Akershus lunch
11/28-AK- Tusker House breakfast ( hoping to turn this into ROL dining package when they are released)
11/29-MK- Be Our Guest Lunch
11/30-HS- Hollywood and Vine breakfast, fantasmic package
12/1- Bon Voyage breakfast, we fly out at 6pm.

Thoughts??

My thoughts about Character Meals:

CONS: They take a long time. Especially valuable park time if you're in the parks that day.
I really don't like being interrupted during meals to take pics. And it's a constant stream of characters. You sit and eat for a few minutes then have to stop to take pics, etc. There's a lot longer interaction with characters than I prefer. While I find taking an hour out of the day to sit down and enjoy a meal, I don't find the character meals relaxing. Although they do make the experiences magical for the kids. It's been a while, but I think you meet the same characters at Chef Mickey and Tusker House. And I'm not crazy about the characters that don't speak. It's all kind of awkward. LOL.

PROS: You can meet a bunch of characters at one time. It's great if you only do the Character Meals, and then don't wait on lines in the parks to meet them. Since the wait can be 45 minutes-1 hour for a meet and greet, meeting them all at once while dining is pretty convenient.

As for your itinerary, I think you have good choices. We love the food at Tusker House, and that's the only character meal we still do. The ham is to die for. I always ask for the outer edge pieces.

P.S. We hated the Akershus lunch (the food itself). I had the ravioli (mushroom) and thought it was the most putrid thing I have ever eaten. Their breakfast was good in comparison. But it could have just been that one dish. I know my husband didn't like his lunch either, but I don't remember what it was. But this could just be our personal tastes.

 

[ENJDisneyFan]

Just found this thread and am loving it!!

We are headed down from November 25-December 1. It's my first trip since I was about 11 or 12 (22 years ago!). It's the first trip for my DH and DD, age 5.

We are hitting the character meals pretty heavily and I was wondering if any of you with more experience think it's too much. Our schedule is as follows:

11/25- fly in early afternoon, dinner at 1900 park fare
11/26-MK- Chef Mickey's for dinner as we do not have tickets for MVMCP.
11/27-EP- Akershus lunch
11/28-AK- Tusker House breakfast ( hoping to turn this into ROL dining package when they are released)
11/29-MK- Be Our Guest Lunch
11/30-HS- Hollywood and Vine breakfast, fantasmic package
12/1- Bon Voyage breakfast, we fly out

This would be too many character meals for my family. I agree with PP who said that the meals take up too much valuuable park time. For us, 2-3 per trip is more than enough. I would narrow it down to one with the main characters (either CM or TH, I prefer TH), one princess meal, and maybe one other. I would definitely keep BoG since its technically not a character meal. I would also drop 1900 PF on arrival day, only because so many travel delays could happen and you could miss the reservation.

 

[SaintsManiac]

Just found this thread and am loving it!!

We are headed down from November 25-December 1. It's my first trip since I was about 11 or 12 (22 years ago!). It's the first trip for my DH and DD, age 5.

We are hitting the character meals pretty heavily and I was wondering if any of you with more experience think it's too much. Our schedule is as follows:

11/25- fly in early afternoon, dinner at 1900 park fare
11/26-MK- Chef Mickey's for dinner as we do not have tickets for MVMCP.
11/27-EP- Akershus lunch
11/28-AK- Tusker House breakfast ( hoping to turn this into ROL dining package when they are released)
11/29-MK- Be Our Guest Lunch
11/30-HS- Hollywood and Vine breakfast, fantasmic package
12/1- Bon Voyage breakfast, we fly out at 6pm.

Thoughts??

As other PPs have said I think it's a couple of character meals too many. We love them, but limit them, because they are pricey and take a while. We never do the dining plan, though.

One Mickey meal is usually enough for us.

 

[chattyKARi]

Just found this thread and am loving it!!

We are headed down from November 25-December 1. It's my first trip since I was about 11 or 12 (22 years ago!). It's the first trip for my DH and DD, age 5.

We are hitting the character meals pretty heavily and I was wondering if any of you with more experience think it's too much. Our schedule is as follows:

11/25- fly in early afternoon, dinner at 1900 park fare
11/26-MK- Chef Mickey's for dinner as we do not have tickets for MVMCP.
11/27-EP- Akershus lunch
11/28-AK- Tusker House breakfast ( hoping to turn this into ROL dining package when they are released)
11/29-MK- Be Our Guest Lunch
11/30-HS- Hollywood and Vine breakfast, fantasmic package
12/1- Bon Voyage breakfast, we fly out at 6pm.

Thoughts??

My thoughts are,?while it might seem a lot to others, all families are different. Our first trip mine were 6, 10, 11; we aren't big on rides; we had the dining plan and weren't honking it was our one and only trip. We did CRT, CM, GG and CP character meals but after standing in line for every character we could possibly see, I'd rather have replaced the at time with a couple character meals instead. We literally saw every show (lion king, nemo, crush, beauty and beast, talked with belle, and lots more); other families have never seen some of these bc they concentrate on rides. Every family is different. Circumstances are different. You haven't been since you were a kid and it's your DD first trip, opinions from families that have been 10 times will have very different views and priorities
I think one a day is fine. I might be inclined to cancel the arrival day one just because of travel issues that might occur.

Enjoy!!!!!!!! After 30 minutes of being in MK on our arrival day my DH said we were coming back as soon as we could get money saved up again!

 

[JessHuis]

Enjoy!!!!!!!! After 30 minutes of being in MK on our arrival day my DH said we were coming back as soon as we could get money saved up again!

I SINCERELY hope this happens for me too! My DH is pretty ho h about the whole trip right now and I'm totally ready to plan another and we haven't even gone on this one yet!

@chattyKARi, @DisneyMom93, @ENJDisneyFan , @SaintsManiac, thanks for your replies! I think I may look into moving 1900 park fare to our first MK day if I can find a reservation and getting rid of Chef Mickey's so we only have one meal with the mouse and don't have to worry about travel hiccups on arrival day. I appreciated your insights!!

 

[DisneyMom93]

I SINCERELY hope this happens for me too! My DH is pretty ho h about the whole trip right now and I'm totally ready to plan another and we haven't even gone on this one yet!

@chattyKARi, @DisneyMom93, @ENJDisneyFan , @SaintsManiac, thanks for your replies! I think I may look into moving 1900 park fare to our first MK day if I can find a reservation and getting rid of Chef Mickey's so we only have one meal with the mouse and don't have to worry about travel hiccups on arrival day. I appreciated your insights!!

Yes, as someone said, every family is different and has different likes and needs.

I think part of the issue with Character Meals is that it takes them so long to get you in there to sit down, too. Some of them try to keep it busy with photo ops as you wait. Tusker House takes forever IMO. They do a photo op with Donald though. And they have a little musical parade with Goofy while you're eating.

One CM per day isn't bad though, especially on days when the parks close later. Some people do breakfast and dinner CMs in one day. I think that's too much. And if you do them before park opening and at park closing they can be pretty good at extending your park experience. We do our Be Our Guest reservation at closing time. One thing that's nice is you can use the monorail when MK closes early to go to Chef Mickey, etc... You just have to take find a way back to your hotel that's not a direct bus.

When AK used to close early at 5pm we would take the bus to Chef Mickey or The Wave (not a Character Meal though). Now AK closes later so we don't do that anymore.

Oh, and Crystal Palace is a nice one if the kids love the Pooh characters. My one daughter loves Tigger so we surprised them with that once, so the LONG wait was worth it.

 

[bigsis1970]

Just found this thread and am loving it!!

We are headed down from November 25-December 1. It's my first trip since I was about 11 or 12 (22 years ago!). It's the first trip for my DH and DD, age 5.

We are hitting the character meals pretty heavily and I was wondering if any of you with more experience think it's too much. Our schedule is as follows:

11/25- fly in early afternoon, dinner at 1900 park fare
11/26-MK- Chef Mickey's for dinner as we do not have tickets for MVMCP.
11/27-EP- Akershus lunch
11/28-AK- Tusker House breakfast ( hoping to turn this into ROL dining package when they are released)
11/29-MK- Be Our Guest Lunch
11/30-HS- Hollywood and Vine breakfast, fantasmic package
12/1- Bon Voyage breakfast, we fly out at 6pm.

Thoughts??

HI We also have Bon Voyage BF on 12/1 (7:45 for us then we are headed to Epcot for the day) maybe we'll see each other!

 

[chattyKARi]

I SINCERELY hope this happens for me too! My DH is pretty ho h about the whole trip right now and I'm totally ready to plan another and we haven't even gone on this one yet!

@chattyKARi, @DisneyMom93, @ENJDisneyFan , @SaintsManiac, thanks for your replies! I think I may look into moving 1900 park fare to our first MK day if I can find a reservation and getting rid of Chef Mickey's so we only have one meal with the mouse and don't have to worry about travel hiccups on arrival day. I appreciated your insights!!

I SINCERELY hope this happens for me too! My DH is pretty ho h about the whole trip right now and I'm totally ready to plan another and we haven't even gone on this one yet!

@chattyKARi, @DisneyMom93, @ENJDisneyFan , @SaintsManiac, thanks for your replies! I think I may look into moving 1900 park fare to our first MK day if I can find a reservation and getting rid of Chef Mickey's so we only have one meal with the mouse and don't have to worry about travel hiccups on arrival day. I appreciated your insights!!

Yes, my DH said he was NOT wearing matching shirts either. But I planned for them anyway. We wore various Mickey shirts the day we flew in and so many people commented and shared their own Disney memories in airports, etc that after only one day he then got excited each day waiting to see which shirt was planned for the next day. And loved that we were able to find, see, keep up with everybody by looking for the same colored shirt. He tells everybody even 2 years later about how much he loved that Disney trip!

Hopefully your DH will get some pixie dust and love Disney too!

 

[dnllmz]

Our first Disney trip was a complete disaster. Honestly we wouldn't have gone at the time but my sister was getting married there. My ds was going through the terrible 2s and he was pretty rough at the time. I was pregnant with my daughter and had morning sickness all day long. It was my first trip ever and I couldn't go on any of the rides that I had heard about for years so that was kind of a bummer. We didn't look into any planning and just winged it. So it basically sucked. My sister's wedding was wonderful though. We had a redo last December and by the end of the trip we were ready too book our next trip. So we booked our November trip right away and just went on a July trip. We're already looking to go in May of 2018.

So I thought I had all my ADRs finalized a couple of weeks ago but now that we are back from our July trip, I may have to change some stuff around. And dh really wants to try Cape May for dinner so I need to figure out where to work that in. He's killing me though. He wants me to find a later Bon Voyage. Ugh. I really would rather keep the one I have but I guess I can try to get a later one. He also thinks we should move one of our HS days but I'm gonna have to put my food down on that one. That will be re-working 2 days of reservations and some of them are really hard to get. He's more than welcome to stalk ADRs himself.

Does anyone need a Beaches and Cream? We went last week so I don't need the November one.

 

[Eriboo3]

Just want to throw it out there... if anyone decides to cancel their CRT reservation for 11/14 or 11/15 could you reach out to me? It's the one thing my daughter requested that I can't get, I have alerts set and been calling every single day. It's defeating sigh....

 

[SaintsManiac]

Our first Disney trip was a complete disaster. Honestly we wouldn't have gone at the time but my sister was getting married there. My ds was going through the terrible 2s and he was pretty rough at the time. I was pregnant with my daughter and had morning sickness all day long. It was my first trip ever and I couldn't go on any of the rides that I had heard about for years so that was kind of a bummer. We didn't look into any planning and just winged it. So it basically sucked. My sister's wedding was wonderful though. We had a redo last December and by the end of the trip we were ready too book our next trip. So we booked our November trip right away and just went on a July trip. We're already looking to go in May of 2018.

So I thought I had all my ADRs finalized a couple of weeks ago but now that we are back from our July trip, I may have to change some stuff around. And dh really wants to try Cape May for dinner so I need to figure out where to work that in. He's killing me though. He wants me to find a later Bon Voyage. Ugh. I really would rather keep the one I have but I guess I can try to get a later one. He also thinks we should move one of our HS days but I'm gonna have to put my food down on that one. That will be re-working 2 days of reservations and some of them are really hard to get. He's more than welcome to stalk ADRs himself.

Does anyone need a Beaches and Cream? We went last week so I don't need the November one.

When is your Beaches and Cream?

 

[JessHuis]

Just want to throw it out there... if anyone decides to cancel their CRT reservation for 11/14 or 11/15 could you reach out to me? It's the one thing my daughter requested that I can't get, I have alerts set and been calling every single day. It's defeating sigh....

Hopefully you'll be able to get one as we get closer and people finalize their plans. I'll keep my fingers crossed for you!

 

[Eriboo3]

Hopefully you'll be able to get one as we get closer and people finalize their plans. I'll keep my fingers crossed for you!

Thank you. I'm trying everything I can

 

[Eriboo3]

Our first Disney trip was a complete disaster. Honestly we wouldn't have gone at the time but my sister was getting married there. My ds was going through the terrible 2s and he was pretty rough at the time. I was pregnant with my daughter and had morning sickness all day long. It was my first trip ever and I couldn't go on any of the rides that I had heard about for years so that was kind of a bummer. We didn't look into any planning and just winged it. So it basically sucked. My sister's wedding was wonderful though. We had a redo last December and by the end of the trip we were ready too book our next trip. So we booked our November trip right away and just went on a July trip. We're already looking to go in May of 2018.

So I thought I had all my ADRs finalized a couple of weeks ago but now that we are back from our July trip, I may have to change some stuff around. And dh really wants to try Cape May for dinner so I need to figure out where to work that in. He's killing me though. He wants me to find a later Bon Voyage. Ugh. I really would rather keep the one I have but I guess I can try to get a later one. He also thinks we should move one of our HS days but I'm gonna have to put my food down on that one. That will be re-working 2 days of reservations and some of them are really hard to get. He's more than welcome to stalk ADRs himself.

Does anyone need a Beaches and Cream? We went last week so I don't need the November one.

What day do you need a later bon voyage? I'm looking for an earlier one than I have..

 

[dnllmz]

When is your Beaches and Cream?

I have 11/26 @ 7:30pm and 12/1 @6:30 pm.

 

[dnllmz]

What day do you need a later bon voyage? I'm looking for an earlier one than I have..

12/2 would be the best day but I could probably make 12/1 work unless I change my days around. Hmmm What day do you have?

 

[Eriboo3]

12/2 would be the best day but I could probably make 12/1 work unless I change my days around. Hmmm What day do you have?

Ahhh ok sorry I'm earlier in the month. Wish I could help, I'm 11/15

 

[dnllmz]

Ahhh ok sorry I'm earlier in the month. Wish I could help, I'm 11/15

Thanks anyway. It's really no big deal if I can't find a later one. It's only an hour difference and we're staying at the Boardwalk. DH really just wants to be able to do more night show stuff but we are early risers so it never seems to work out. He thought a late park start might be the the way to go. I'm thinking a mid-day nap might be the way to go.

 

[Funfire240]

Just found this thread! We are officially going back this November again - only this time trying the week of Thanksgiving so less school/work is missed. Going to be interesting. I am happy that I got DD into BBB and almost all of the dining we wanted with great times. So excited as we thought 2017 would be the year of no Disney (but we knew that wouldn't really happen...)

 

[SaintsManiac]

I have 11/26 @ 7:30pm and 12/1 @6:30 pm.

Darn it's after we leave This is the one reservation TP hasn't found for me. Keeping my fingers crossed