"I never got to ride Peter Pan with Gagi!"--a September 2013 TR

Howgreat

Mouseketeer
Joined
Oct 22, 2012
We just returned from the World on September 13 and I thought a trip report would be a good way to fill in the gap until we start planning for our next trip. Actually, I priced next year’s trip the morning we got home. Some people think we’re crazy, but we just love the magic of WDW.

Our last trip to WDW was Christmas week, December 2012. My parents took my little family and my sister as our Christmas gift. Here's our crew:



I was prepared for the worst crowds and mess you can imagine, but it was nowhere near as bad as I had thought. The title of this trip report comes from our December trip. One night, during EMH at Magic Kingdom, we rode Peter Pan’s Flight at least 5 times in a row. We all took turns riding with DS1, K, except that apparently, his Gagi (my mom) never rode with him. On the trip home, he said, out of the blue, “I never got to ride Peter Pan with Gagi,” so we assured him we would go back someday so he could do that. We never dreamed it would be a short 9 months later, but sure enough, the first thing he requested is to ride Peter Pan with Gagi.

So, our December trip was nice, but after last week, we know that September is our month! It was only unbearably hot during the early afternoon, there was free dining, and best of all—low crowds!

My parents flew to Orlando and joined us for 3 days of the trip before they had to return home for work. We stayed for 3 more nights by ourselves, which gave us the best of both worlds—vacation with my family and vacation with just us.
Anyway, let me introduce you to the stars of the trip report:



Me: Mama B, in my late 20s, stay at home mom, piano and guitar teacher. I am the Disney trip planner. This was my 6th trip to WDW and my 3rd in 3 years. As basically a one income family, we definitely do Disney on a budget. Thus, we always stay value. We’ve never had an issue with a room being anything less than clean and comfortable and to us, a Disney trip is always better than no Disney trip.



DH: Daddy B, I’d better not say his age. Insurance agent, youth pastor, husband and daddy extraordinaire. He loves going to Disney World just as much as I do and acts just like one of the kids.



DS1, K. Four year old who is really into Star Wars right now. Every souvenir he bought on this trip was Star Wars related. He also loves Peter Pan and Jake. This was his 3rd trip to the World.



DS2, L. Nineteen month old ham of the family. He’s just along for the ride (and the food). This is his 2nd trip.



And finally, my parents, who we call Gagi and Papa. They are the best parents and grandparents EVER! They used this trip as kind of a de-stress-er before my little sister gets married next weekend. It made them sad to leave after 3 days to go back to work, but we made the most of our time together!

Ok, now that you know a little bit about us, let’s move on to the good stuff! Come along and help us relive the magic!
 


Disney is a 12 hour drive from us, and while that may sound like torture to some families with small children, we enjoy it. Plus, we save a ton of money by not flying. We always drive through the night, so that our boys sleep at least part of the way.

DH and I kept going back and forth about what time to leave on Friday night/Saturday morning. I wanted to leave around midnight, so that we could get a few hours of sleep first. DH wanted to leave at 10 because he is a little kid and wanted to get to Disney as early in the day as possible. Friday night, we still hadn't decided, but we got our boys to bed around 8 (which is unheard of, by the way) and were hanging out on the couch. DH's mom called and said that there was a fire downtown next to DH's office building. (I say downtown, but we live in a teeny tiny town, so just imagine a few buildings strung together down a main street and that's it). DH went down there and then got blocked in, so we didn't get to leave till a couple of minutes after 12. We loaded the rest of our stuff, our sleeping children, and our caterpillar into the car and headed out!

I posted to Facebook as we were leaving: We're running away from home!

DH and I took turns driving about every 2 hours, so that we could get some rest.

Around 2:30, K, our oldest, woke up and stayed up for several hours, just talking and looking out the window. He didn't even ask to watch a movie until much later that morning. L woke up off and on until around 8. They are great little travelers!


K with his lightsaber sucker he had been begging for!


L relaxing with his paci and his minion.

It was a pretty uneventful trip. We stopped several times to use the restroom and then we stopped at the Florida welcome center to get some orange juice!
We went most of the morning talking to my parents who were driving to an airport 4 hours from home to fly to Orlando.

We hit WDW property around 12:30 and after our GPS took us on a wrong turn (which she always does and DH follows her instead of the 1247878437 signs), we pulled into All-Star Music at 1, right after my parents got there on the Magic Express.

Just as a sidenote, it was their first time flying to WDW and they were very impressed with the services of DME.

I had requested to be close to Melody Hall, but they gave us the back side of Rock Inn, which was the farthest away. :confused3 While DH drove the car around, I went down to the food court, grabbed our mugs, and filled them up. When we opened the door to our room on the third floor, we saw this first thing:


Always starts the vacation out right!

We also requested adjoining rooms with my parents, which we got, and the boys immediately started running back and forth. After we got all of our things up to the room and had a minute to sit down, we headed out to Downtown Disney to try out a new quick service restaurant (for us). Wanna take a guess?
 
Joining in!!! 12 hours from Disney....we would go broke!!!!!!!! We would probably be there 2 -3 times a year!:rotfl:
 
Joining in!!! 12 hours from Disney....we would go broke!!!!!!!! We would probably be there 2 -3 times a year!:rotfl:

Welcome! You must live realllly far away, then. I would love to go 2-3 times a year, but right now, the budget only allows for one. DH mentioned APs more than once this trip, though so....maybe in the future!
 


Sounds like a fun trip! I'm following along!

Yay! Thanks for following! I see you went to Disney at Christmas, too. Isn't it gorgeous? That would be my favorite time if it weren't for the crowds.
 
hi! I can't wait to read about your trip! We're taking my son for his first trip in January! He turns 5! I can't wait to read about how your son reacted to BIG rides.
 
hi! I can't wait to read about your trip! We're taking my son for his first trip in January! He turns 5! I can't wait to read about how your son reacted to BIG rides.

He'll have a blast! K rode several big rides we didn't get to do in December and he loved them! Thanks for reading!
 
When we left off, the fam was getting ready to head out to Downtown Disney for dinner. I decided not to get park tickets for our arrival day this time, so that we could relax and get an early bedtime. Anyway, Earl of Sandwich is our usual Downtown Disney quick service choice, but we decided to try somewhere new that I had seen great reviews for......



I have to say--WPE was an awesome value for a quick service meal! We were all very happy with our food!


I had the gourmet mac and cheese...


And the vanilla bean cheesecake for dessert....


DH had the 1/2 rotisserie chicken.....


The boys each had a chicken tender meal....


And a cookie for dessert....

And that's all the food I took pictures of that night. I went into this trip, determined to document all of the food, but kept forgetting. Whoops!

Afterwards, we went to....



where K bought a lightsaber with some of his souvenir money. He is so into Star Wars right now that everything he bought at Disney had to do with Star Wars.

Then, he headed to the Lego store, where K and daddy raced some Lego cars.



We had a tough time dragging him away from there! Poor guy loves looking at the Star Wars Legos, but they are too far out of his age range. A friend gave us one of her son's old sets and we had to put it up because K kept taking it apart and the pieces were way tiny.

L also had fun!



We didn't stick around for too long, because I was determined to get everyone in bed early, but I know that my mom and I went into Basin (Yummy! We did hand scrubs, but didn't buy anything.). Then, we got Pumpkin Spice chocolate samples from Ghirardelli, my dad got 2 milkshakes from there as well (to share with us), and the boys rode the carousel. Oh, and somewhere in there, K had a breakdown where he decided that he didn't like ANYone or ANYthing! Humph! That meant it was definitely time to head back to the hotel and get in bed.

Luckily, everyone settled down quickly and we were asleep by 9!
 
So, 2 weeks ago, we had a small kitchen fire that only actually burned a small part of our kitchen, but the smoke caused smoke/soot damage all through our house. We've been living at my parents (luckily, they decided to upgrade to a larger house when my sister and I left home), but I have been reallllly missing our house and have been a little down. Things are starting to look up, though! We were able to have the kitchen redone and do a couple of things we had always wanted to do, but just never had. Also, the contractor let DH help with the painting to work off our insurance deductible, which is awesome!! :cool1:

Sad, but funny--my first thought after realizing everyone was ok was, "Well, that puts a wrench in saving for Disney for next year!" :rotfl: I'm sure that many Dis addicts can relate, though.

I washed my Disney Parks/Starbucks venti Frappuccino cup out after I drank it at MK, and we've been filling it up with spare change and cash. Always exciting to watch the small savings add up!

Anyway, hopefully, I will get back to trip updates as soon as I can put my 1 year old down for a nap. :thumbsup2
 

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