Celebrating a 50th anniversary at WDW!

[jrsharp21]

My immediate family (wife, adult daughter, her fiancé, and adult son) have our now annual trip back to WDW for Marathon Weekend in January. The way the dates fell for Marathon Weekend and New Years Eve being on a Sunday, we decided why not spend NYE at Disney World. So that was a cool change from our normal race weekend plans.

Just recently it dawned on me that it was my parent's 50th anniversary this August. They are big Disneyland fans. They had annual passes for a long time. Their honeymoon was in Disneyland. They have never been to Disney World though. So my thought was what better place to celebrate their 50th anniversary than Disney World. While they live in California and us in Texas, we weren't able to make it out for the 50th celebration. But we did send them a card with a hidden message in it. It was one of the cards where the inside is actually a piece of paper that can be turned over. On the inside cover of the card we had a letter printed out, with the WDW 50th logo on it, and attached to that inside cover. The letter basically said they do so much for us, that it was time to celebrate them, and what better place than somewhere that just celebrated a 50th anniversary themselves. We wanted them to "be our guest" in January at WDW. It was a pretty cool reaction they had.

So now I am in the midst of planning their trip for them. Putting their flights together, their hotel(s), and park tickets with reservations. To be honest, I love doing this for people. So I am having a blast. At the same time I am super excited to experience Disney World with them on their first trip to the resort. They are so used to the convenience of Disneyland, having DCA right across the esplanade, and Downtown Disney, right outside the esplanade. They have no idea how big WDW resort is. They will be experiencing "the bubble" for the first time. Looking forward to that day at the end of December / early January.

 

[jrsharp21]

Flights are booked. Hotel reservations are booked. Tickets are purchased for the parents. Now starting to plan out our park days and non-park days. Looks like we are going to have two non park days.

One of the days will be New Years Day. Figured we will sleep in that day and then make our way over to tour Disney Springs. Knowing my mom, and it being her first time there, that may take up a good portion of the day going in all the shops. LOL.

Now looking for other things to do. Probably that same day, we are going to take the boat ride from DS to the Port Orleans resorts and back. One of the days we will also head over to the Boardwalk and walk around that area. We may do the monorail loop also on one of the days. Anyone have any other suggestions?