Our First Trip as a Family of Four - A July 2017 PTR - Updated 6/26

Day 7 Plans

Hope everyone’s week is going great! Things are going great around here as summer is now officially under way! On to Day 8 of our trip…

We will check out of our resort today and transfer to French Quarter, so we’ll have to be up in time for me to run down and check our bags. Today will start early anyway as we have a pre-park opening breakfast for this experience:

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Well...hopefully we won’t re-live the experience where DS5 is spitting out food while trying to meet Sofia, but hopefully we’ll enjoy Hollywood and Vine. It’s not a meal that we would seek out necessarily, but my real motivation for this one is to be in the park before opening. You see I think DS5 is going to really want to do Jedi Training Academy and I just have no desire to walk/jog/run/fight to get into line. I think by being in the park early we can at least be over close to the sign up location before the rope drop crowd. Don’t get me wrong we are going to eat and enjoy the characters, but DS5 and I will be ducking out early if we need to so we can get signed up. I hope this plan works!

We then plan on heading over and getting a quick ride in on Toy Story and Tower of Terror before using our first FP at Rock ‘n Roller Coaster. Here is DW riding it on a past trip...this is one of her favorite rides.

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After the ride we plan on hitting some things like Great Movie Ride and the Muppets show before riding Star Tours with another FP. Then we are heading back for the Jedi Training show as we hope we are early enough to pick a time slot around 12:00 or 12:30. After Jedi Training our plan is to finish up with any child swap passes we have picked up and then use our final FP at the Frozen Sing-A-Long at 2:15. We can’t check in until 3:00 anyway and this is only only park of the day so we are staying a little later than usual. Once we are finished we are heading to home for the second week of our trip.

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We are super excited about this resort, including the newly renovated pool area and splash pad.

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After we get settled we are going to use the convenient water taxi to Disney Springs to get to our dinner ADR at T-Rex. I’m not super excited about the food, but DS5 is really into dinosaurs right now and so I think he will love it. I may end up stopping at one of the food trucks or D-Lux Burger after we finish here!

We plan on being finished and headed back to the resort by 7 or 7:30 so we can get to bed at a good time.

Up Next: Day 8 Plans
 
Thanks for reading along...it is great to have a professional trip reporter comment over here!

Aww shucks, that's nice to say. Although that would be a real dream job to just go to Disney and get paid to write about it. Taking donations here. Anyone? Anyone? :rotfl:

Thanks...we're going to need them. We certainly plan on being there in advance of the 8 AM opening.

Good luck!!!

Well...hopefully we won’t re-live the experience where DS5 is spitting out food while trying to meet Sofia, but hopefully we’ll enjoy Hollywood and Vine. It’s not a meal that we would seek out necessarily, but my real motivation for this one is to be in the park before opening.

I was wondering about H and V for breakfast or lunch. I think my nieces and nephew would like it. What was the food like? We may also duck out of the meal to sign up for Jedi Training. Can just a parent signup for their kids or do all kids have to be present to sign up?
 
Going later this summer so we can get annual passes and do an early summer trip next year on the same passes.
That's our plan for 2019/2020.

Hey, it happens at all ages. I didn't ride roller coasters with loops until our honeymoon, now I love them!
Yes he seems a bit more adventurous this year so I suppose it's a process!

Yeah, it's never been that great to us. Hopefully it's better, we really don't want to walk to the other side of the park just for a meal, but if its bad we may have to in the future.
I might be crazy but I changed my plans so I would be on the other side of the park for Pecos Bill.....lol.
 
We need to head out of the park by about noon as we have a lunch reservation at Sanaa, one of our most favorite restaurants. We ate here for the first time on our last trip and loved it...especially the bread service.
Yay for Sanaa! We are trying it this trip. And I think I'm getting the bread service as my meal!

Last time we had an early dinner, but it was still late enough it was hard to view the animals while eating as many of them were being put away for the night.
Our ADR is 5:35. Might be too late, huh?

We are also going to have lunch at our favorite quick service place in Magic Kingdom, Columbia Harbour House, hopefully from a quiet little table on the second floor!
Love it! Last year we were just on the first floor but this year I think we will head up.

DW will of course want a stop in the bakery in France, to which I’m not even going to try and spell the name.
Yep, we have a stop here planned as well!

We plan to stay in World Showcase and get a spot to watch IllumiNations this evening. We didn’t see it on our last trip and want to get a good viewing in this time
We missed it last year as well so it will be nice to get to see it this year.

At Hollywood Studios we plan on heading straight into the park and using a FP at a show we have never seen before, the Indiana Jones Stunt Show.
This got rained out on us last year so hopefully we will get to see it this year. We have a FP for it as well. I think all my guys will enjoy it!

DW and I both think DS5 is close to being able to ride it, so hopefully that goes well...we shall see!
I *think* AJ will try it. I do worry about motion sickness bc I'm prone to it but I got him some Sea Bands to use for those type of rides. He was fine on Soarin' last year.

We aren’t usually EMH people, but we did a Magic Kingdom one on our last trip and we got a lot done by being able to get in the park at 8 AM.
Same here about not being EMH people, but I've heard the AM MK one is the best!

Yes, I know that picture isn’t currently opening procedure and I’m a little sad about that. I love the memory of DS watching the train come in at park opening.
I never got to see the train station Welcome Show in person. :(

A ride that will be a first for us the the Astrorbiter. DW and I have never had the desire to ride it, but I think DS will like it. He’s really into planes and flying so we are going to hope he will like it.
I almost always skip this but I added it to our late MK night so we can go up and see all the lights.

After some good rides we have a breakfast ADR here:
So fun!

Sorry if that picture of me swimming blinded you!
Haha. I am the same color! I'm a very fair redhead so it can't be helped. I do have a tad bit of pink tone so it makes me look a little less white.

Today will start early anyway as we have a pre-park opening breakfast for this experience:
Our plans are so similar!

Don’t get me wrong we are going to eat and enjoy the characters, but DS5 and I will be ducking out early if we need to so we can get signed up. I hope this plan works!
You can do it before you even check in.

We are super excited about this resort, including the newly renovated pool area and splash pad.
It looks amazing!

After we get settled we are going to use the convenient water taxi to Disney Springs to get to our dinner ADR at T-Rex. I’m not super excited about the food, but DS5 is really into dinosaurs right now and so I think he will love it.
We did this last year. I think the boys really enjoyed it. Afterward we let them go "dig in the dinosaur bones".

We may also duck out of the meal to sign up for Jedi Training. Can just a parent signup for their kids or do all kids have to be present to sign up?
You can do it before you check in to the meal and yes, all kids that are signing up have to be present.
 


You have the loveliest family! Nothing like little boys.... as a mom of three boys I can assure you your life is never going to be dull! Lol! I am envious of 13 days as well. I am a kindergarten teacher but our school year is September to June so I am travelling to Disney in August. Your plans look great so far and I look forward to hearing more about your adventures!
 
I was wondering about H and V for breakfast or lunch. I think my nieces and nephew would like it. What was the food like? We may also duck out of the meal to sign up for Jedi Training. Can just a parent signup for their kids or do all kids have to be present to sign up?

The food was solid for breakfast. Nothing special that I can recall, but good. We have been for dinner as well and the food wasn't that great, but breakfast is a much safer bet and we enjoyed it. The character meets were great too and you have that ability to get to Jedi Training sign up before the throngs of people! I think every kid who is participating must be present for Jedi Training, although I haven't done it yet, DS5 is just now old enough.

You have the loveliest family! Nothing like little boys.... as a mom of three boys I can assure you your life is never going to be dull!

We are seeing that already! There is never any down time for sure.

Lol! I am envious of 13 days as well. I am a kindergarten teacher but our school year is September to June so I am travelling to Disney in August.

I do like our school schedule running August to May so that we have some times of year where we are on a different schedule than other places around the country. It makes it a little easier to vacation, although we are going in July this year and not taking advantage of it. But have to use those annual passes in June of next year.

Your plans look great so far and I look forward to hearing more about your adventures!

Thanks for reading along! We are at the point where the trip is in sight, just 30 days away, but the days are creeping by! I need it to get here!
 
Here is DW riding it on a past trip...this is one of her favorite rides.
One of mine too, along with TOT :thumbsup2

We are super excited about this resort, including the newly renovated pool area and splash pad.
We haven't stayed at POFQ since 2014 and the splash pad wasn't there then, but it looks way cool. A great added feature for the little ones!
 


One of mine too, along with TOT :thumbsup2


We haven't stayed at POFQ since 2014 and the splash pad wasn't there then, but it looks way cool. A great added feature for the little ones!

We are super excited about the splash pad, especially for DS1. He loves playing in the water so this will be so nice that he can play with the water toys, but not having to be held in the actual pool the entire time. With that said DS5 will love the area as well! And maybe even me a little! Ha!
 
Day 8 Plans

I hope everyone is having a great weekend! We are under 30 days away from our trip...finally!

Today I’m looking at Day 8 of our trip where we will be spending the morning here:

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We are planning on riding Soarin’ at rope drop before moving on and using FP’s at the Character Spot, Test Track, and Spaceship Earth. This is just our morning to take care of all of the rides we like in Future World. We love using a FP at the Character Spot as it is usually a long and slow moving line and a good use of one of those tier 2 FP’s.

We’re also going to visit Club Cool of course, a must do stop for us in Epcot!

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Our plan is the leave the park around noon and head back to the resort for an afternoon break and most definitely some swimming time!

After our break we are heading back for the evening here:

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We plan on entering the park at 5:30 and heading for our 6:00 dinner reservation at a new restaurant to us.

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I’m not sure if I’m excited about this meal or not as the buzz around this restaurant has kind of died down since it opened, but we’re going to try it out. After we finished we will want to hit some classic MK attractions like Pirates of the Caribbean and Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. Finally, at about 8:30 we’ll begin looking for a spot to watch the new fireworks, Happily Ever After. After the fireworks are over our plan is to head back into the park as we have a sleep in day the next day. We are looking at heading to Fantasyland to ride things like Winnie the Pooh, Dumbo, and the Barnstormer. The park is open until 10:00 PM and we may try and make it a while, or at least DS5 and me might. It will be a nice sleep in morning the next day, so might as well enjoy the night.

Have a great week everyone!

Up Next: Day 9 Plans
 
What precious little boys! I miss that age; my son is my baby too. My middle DD is definitely dad's girl (she has been hunting with him since she was 9). I Love how expressive Brooks looks already. The pic of your older one spitting food into mom's hand made me:rotfl:! Awesome pics of POP too-will (hopefully) be staying here in October for quick girls trip. It looks sooo fun! Is it an easy walk over to AoA food court? We are getting annual passes this year as well.


We had entirely too much food last time because of the bread service, so this time we plan on ordering the bread service, a few extra pieces of naan, and one meal for DW and I to share. We are also excited about eating lunch here as it should give us a better viewing time for the animals.
OMG the bread service! My kids LOVED watching the animals out the window-we had to box up food to take back to room with us because we got full and kids were more interested in watching the animals-even though my kids are older! BTW-the butter chicken is just as good the next day LOL. I bet your boys will be enthralled! It it isn't too hot (or raining-boo!) go outside to the walkway to see animals. There is a CM out there who will answer questions on the animals.

After we get settled we are going to use the convenient water taxi to Disney Springs to get to our dinner ADR at T-Rex. I’m not super excited about the food, but DS5 is really into dinosaurs right now and so I think he will love it
We did this in 2014-food isn't bad (think TGIfridays or applebee quality), but portions (at least then) were huge-with our family of five we could have easily been stuffed on just a couple apps and entrees to split (my kids all eat like they have hollow legs). It is also quite loud in one of the rooms (can't remember which one). Oh and dinosaurs may be by the wayside after Braxton finds out about banshees :D
I like the longer trips too. 2014 we did a week (5 park days) and that was too short. So 2015 we did 2 weeks (although ours was 1/2 on and 1/2 offsite-no way could we do family of 5 14 days in 1 room and still have our sanity left:scared1:).

Love the PTR-great way to get plans for the days! Have you seen the Allears dining discount chart yet? a few of your restaurants have AP discounts.
 
I had the best meal of my trip last summer at Skipper's Canteen. The food and service was simply excellent!

Great to hear! I'm hoping this is the case for us!

What precious little boys! I miss that age; my son is my baby too. My middle DD is definitely dad's girl (she has been hunting with him since she was 9). I Love how expressive Brooks looks already.

They are pretty sweet most of the time! Brooks is getting more expressive each and every day. He's such a happy little boy!

The pic of your older one spitting food into mom's hand made me:rotfl:!

Great memory for sure. This was the same day he had to show Doc McStuffins a hurt spot he had on his finger with a bandaid.

Awesome pics of POP too-will (hopefully) be staying here in October for quick girls trip. It looks sooo fun! Is it an easy walk over to AoA food court?

We love Pop! Yes, the walk over is pretty easy. We've done it before. Probably will be better in the late fall when it's not as hot as the summer!

We are getting annual passes this year as well.

Score!!! Love doing this because you have an excuse to plan more trips!

OMG the bread service! My kids LOVED watching the animals out the window-we had to box up food to take back to room with us because we got full and kids were more interested in watching the animals-even though my kids are older! BTW-the butter chicken is just as good the next day LOL.

We loved it too! The Bread Service and the Butter Chicken are all you need for sure!

I bet your boys will be enthralled! It it isn't too hot (or raining-boo!) go outside to the walkway to see animals. There is a CM out there who will answer questions on the animals.

We were outside a little, but I'd like to spend more time looking around the entire resort area. There was a cast member out there now that I think about it, but we didn't stop to talk or anything as we were trying to get to dinner.

We did this in 2014-food isn't bad (think TGIfridays or applebee quality), but portions (at least then) were huge-with our family of five we could have easily been stuffed on just a couple apps and entrees to split (my kids all eat like they have hollow legs). It is also quite loud in one of the rooms (can't remember which one).

Yes, as I looked at the menu I thought it might be a meal we want to share meals. Plus, I may want a snack from the food trucks after dinner!

Oh and dinosaurs may be by the wayside after Braxton finds out about banshees :D

Very true! I hear they are selling out of everything in the Pandora gift shop, so hopefully they restock by July.

I like the longer trips too. 2014 we did a week (5 park days) and that was too short. So 2015 we did 2 weeks (although ours was 1/2 on and 1/2 offsite-no way could we do family of 5 14 days in 1 room and still have our sanity left:scared1:).

Yes, long trips are the way to go if you have the ability. I agree though, five people in a room would be tough for that long. I'm probably going to be saying that about 4 people in a few years!

Love the PTR-great way to get plans for the days!

Thanks for reading along and commenting!

Have you seen the Allears dining discount chart yet? a few of your restaurants have AP discounts

I did see this the other day. We got a Tables in Wonderland card last time we did annual passes, so I'm going to have to put numbers down on paper to see if that is a good deal or if it is better to just use this years AP discount. Of course if we are going next summer I may need TiW as these AP discounts are only through this year, right?
 
Hi Jon! Just wanted to comment and say I am following along----your trip sounds amazing, I know you all will have a blast! Can't WAIT until our trip in August, we're counting the days down :)
 
These plans sound great, and what a wonderful way to celebrate with your new family of four! Your boys are just adorable, and I'm sure they will have the most special time!
 
Hi Jon! Just wanted to comment and say I am following along----your trip sounds amazing, I know you all will have a blast! Can't WAIT until our trip in August, we're counting the days down :)

Thanks for reading along! We are super excited about this trip as it will be the first for DS1.

These plans sound great, and what a wonderful way to celebrate with your new family of four! Your boys are just adorable, and I'm sure they will have the most special time!

We have raised them to love Disney, so they better have a good time!! :rotfl2:But in all reality we are very excited about this trip. It is pretty hard right now because we aren't telling DS5 where we are going on vacation, so he doesn't know, but he is going to be super excited when we do!
 
Day 9 Plans

I hope everyone had a great week! I’ve got a lot of things going here early in the summer as I’m trying to get some things done. I’ll be gone to a conference for about 6 days at one point then this big Disney trip so trying to have everything caught up.

The plan for Day 9 of our trip is to have a pretty stress free and relaxing day. We are not going to a park in the morning, nor do we have any plans whatsoever before lunch. So we will probably swim some and take an early nap because we are heading to Epcot around 12:30 or 1:00. We have a FP scheduled here:

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That is a pic from way back! Yes, the ride needs help, but I can’t help but like it and DS5 loves it!

After that we are heading over for an afternoon in the World Showcase. It’s always hard to plan these afternoons for me because you have no idea what the heat is going to allow you to do. We are going to work counter clockwise and stop in some of our favorite places. We will be getting a Napoleon in France for sure:

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And we will be stopping for some food at one of my favorite quick services, Tangerine Cafe, in Morocco.

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We also would like to hear Voices of Liberty and see the American Adventure show as we haven’t done those things in a few years, although we’ll see if DS1 will sit through a show.

As we work our way around we have a FP for the new ride in Epcot:

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And then a FP for Spaceship Earth as we leave the park. I’d like to be out of the park by around 5:30 or so, but we’ll see how long our day goes. The plans for the evening include….NOTHING! We will rest and swim and get to bed early as we will be needing good sleep by this point in the trip. We will have dinner at Sassagoula Floatworks as I’ve heard good things and I can use the Tables in Wonderland card here for a 20% discount, which is always a good thing! Day 10 coming right up.

Up Next: Day 10 Plans
 
Day 10 Plans

Day 10 of our trip will be a rope drop morning at Magic Kingdom! We will be focusing on Adventureland and Frontierland early in the day and trying to ride things like Big Thunder, Splash Mountain, and Pirates without much of a wait. We are not using FP this morning in the park as we are saving it for our evening park. After some times in those two lands we’ll head over to see a kid favorite:

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Then we’ll ride the train around before leaving the park around noon. We need a good afternoon break because we are heading back here around 6:00 for the evening:

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Yes, I’m so excited about visiting Animal Kingdom at night. It’s something we have never done and now with the late hours we are really looking forward to it. We have FP’s set-up here:

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And plan on having dinner at a great place:

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We also have a FP for 7:30 at Kilimanjaro Safari, which I assume will be the night safari. Then our final FP is for Rivers of Light for the 9:00 show time.

We are really looking forward to a great night at Animal Kingdom for many reasons, so hopefully it is worth it! Have a great weekend everyone!

Up Next: Day 11 Plans
 
Hi, Jon, happy to see another report from you! The whole thing sounds amazing - I'd love to have a visit long enough that I could relax and take it fairly easy most days! I've never stayed at POFQ, but we really would like to someday. I didn't realize they had a new pool/splash pad - looks really nice!
 
Hi, Jon, happy to see another report from you! The whole thing sounds amazing - I'd love to have a visit long enough that I could relax and take it fairly easy most days! I've never stayed at POFQ, but we really would like to someday. I didn't realize they had a new pool/splash pad - looks really nice!

Yes, that new splash pad area is going to be a huge hit with our kids! They both love the splash pads here around us and that one even takes it up a little. So, we can't wait!!
 
Yes, I’m so excited about visiting Animal Kingdom at night. It’s something we have never done and now with the late hours we are really looking forward to it
AK is so gorgeous at night :love: I absolutely love the ToL Awakenings and simply walking around at night; and while I know you won't do this with little ones, riding EE at night is like 100x more awesome than riding during the day! We did do the safari at dusk once and saw a lot less animals than we do when we ride first thing in the morning, but that hasn't stopped me from wanting to do a true NIGHT safari for the experience.
 

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