franandaj
I'm so happy, I could BOUNCE!
- Joined
- Nov 15, 2009
The 75% All New Trip!
Welcome to my latest Trip Report!
I'm sure there are some of you out there who are reading the title and scratching your heads wondering "What the...?"
Or maybe it's just psoriasis.
You might want to get that checked out.
Sorry.
Maybe you're just wondering how can a DVC member of over seven years can take a trip and call it 75% new? Or not.
Regardless of whether you’re wondering or not, I'm going to tell you anyways. You see this trip actually caused me a small amount of anxiety.
Not anything tremendous or that would require heavy medication, but just a slight feeling of “OCD planner’s” discomfort in the days preceding the trip.
First we were sailing on a brand new ship. We didn't know where anything was on the ship, plus it was going to be twice as big as any other ship we'd ever sailed on.
Second, for the WDW portion, we hadn't stayed at this resort in over seven years. Granted we did stay in the Treehouses in 2010, but we had a car and barely used the transportation system, and we would be staying in SSR proper. Two people don't need a three bedroom tree house! People are always talking about how big and sprawling SSR is, and how the buses suck.
Third, the ADRs. I had purposely made almost all new ones, partially to get us out of our comfort zone, but also because these were all really places I wanted to try.
All these things considered, I had mixed feelings in the days before the trip. There was great excitement along with a little bit of trepidation.
However, in the end it was all good.
When I was trying to come up with a title for the TR I started to do the math about our stay.
a) Of the 10 nights, five of those we slept in places completely new to us. Of the five nights at SSR we were in a completely different section than last time. There are five sections where your room can be located, and each one has a different feel to it, so that counts as half new in my book, making it 75% new on the accommodations.
b) When I counted all the places where we dined of the 20 locations 15 were new. That kinda sealed it up for me 75% new.
c) Throw in the fact that I've never been to WDW during the Christmas season, this to me adds a whole element of newness.
Now I don’t think there is ever a need to justify *why* one is taking a trip to Walt Disney World, so I won’t do that. However, for every trip, there is always a backstory, so I think it’s benefitting to this trip to give a little bit of that before we begin. Let me introduce the players. Most of you know us, Alison & Fran. We’re basically fun loving, bonafide Disney Freaks.
Many of you may have followed my trip report Sharing the Disney Magic with Naked Jim, and you know that originally we had planned to take a trip in April for a week at Disney World followed by four nights on the Dream.
But that came crashing to an end when Fran fell and broke her leg in two places about a month prior to the trip. Well exactly one month prior to the trip.
So once we had seen the Orthopedic Surgeon and found out that there would be no surgery involved in the healing process we were clear to rebook a WDW trip. Obviously it would take place later in the year once her recovery was complete. Since we are somewhat retired we are free to take our trips at any time of the year we see fit, late June through September are pretty much off limits for us due to the heat and humidity in Florida. October was out of the question since we had a cruise to the Mexican Riviera, so that pretty much left November and December. We tend to schedule vacations around our band performances and we had a concert set for November 1st. Our band also plays out at Disneyland usually sometime in the first 2-3 weeks of November. Thanksgiving this year was with my parents at our house, so that ruled out November. I had never been to WDW during Christmas season so December sounded good to me. When the closing of the Osborne lights was announced, I was happy to get a chance to see them one last time before they went away for good.
Now there was one small problem. I’m sure some of you know that we have had a black cloud hanging over our heads for over a year and a half. We moved into our lovely new house in June of 2014, and our old apartments stood untouched for almost a year. Sure we took some of the things we needed, clothes, kitchen supplies, and other mementos. For the most part, though, we bought almost all new furniture, and we had artwork and home décor that had been sitting in storage for years waiting for our Dream house to come to fruition. This meant a whole bunch of cra….er precious items have been sitting around the old house since we moved out. I got a kick in the butt six months ago when we needed to have the second apartment ready by August 1 for a tenant, but that only helped us get the stuff out of apartment #2 and bring it over to apartment #1. Some of you might also know that we also had a goal to have both apartments cleaned about before said trip last April, and obviously it didn’t happen. So this has caused a sore spot for Fran that will come up later in this trip, but I get ahead of myself.
We had a couple of crazy weeks leading up to this trip, parents visiting over Thanksgiving, DIS friends in town the following week, and as a result we were in a packing craze in the days ahead of our departure date, but I’ll get to that later.
I’ve given our detailed our plans back in my “Sharing” TR, so I’ll just summarize them in a nutshell.
Fly to MCO, stay in Airport Hotel
Board Disney Dream for four nights
Stay at SSR for 5 nights with our primary objective to try new experiences and explore the resorts and their decorations.
The rest? Well you’ll just have to read along to find out how it all turns out!
Welcome to my latest Trip Report!
I'm sure there are some of you out there who are reading the title and scratching your heads wondering "What the...?"
Or maybe it's just psoriasis.
You might want to get that checked out.
Sorry.
Maybe you're just wondering how can a DVC member of over seven years can take a trip and call it 75% new? Or not.
Regardless of whether you’re wondering or not, I'm going to tell you anyways. You see this trip actually caused me a small amount of anxiety.
Not anything tremendous or that would require heavy medication, but just a slight feeling of “OCD planner’s” discomfort in the days preceding the trip.
First we were sailing on a brand new ship. We didn't know where anything was on the ship, plus it was going to be twice as big as any other ship we'd ever sailed on.
Second, for the WDW portion, we hadn't stayed at this resort in over seven years. Granted we did stay in the Treehouses in 2010, but we had a car and barely used the transportation system, and we would be staying in SSR proper. Two people don't need a three bedroom tree house! People are always talking about how big and sprawling SSR is, and how the buses suck.
Third, the ADRs. I had purposely made almost all new ones, partially to get us out of our comfort zone, but also because these were all really places I wanted to try.
All these things considered, I had mixed feelings in the days before the trip. There was great excitement along with a little bit of trepidation.
However, in the end it was all good.
When I was trying to come up with a title for the TR I started to do the math about our stay.
a) Of the 10 nights, five of those we slept in places completely new to us. Of the five nights at SSR we were in a completely different section than last time. There are five sections where your room can be located, and each one has a different feel to it, so that counts as half new in my book, making it 75% new on the accommodations.
b) When I counted all the places where we dined of the 20 locations 15 were new. That kinda sealed it up for me 75% new.
c) Throw in the fact that I've never been to WDW during the Christmas season, this to me adds a whole element of newness.
Now I don’t think there is ever a need to justify *why* one is taking a trip to Walt Disney World, so I won’t do that. However, for every trip, there is always a backstory, so I think it’s benefitting to this trip to give a little bit of that before we begin. Let me introduce the players. Most of you know us, Alison & Fran. We’re basically fun loving, bonafide Disney Freaks.
Many of you may have followed my trip report Sharing the Disney Magic with Naked Jim, and you know that originally we had planned to take a trip in April for a week at Disney World followed by four nights on the Dream.
But that came crashing to an end when Fran fell and broke her leg in two places about a month prior to the trip. Well exactly one month prior to the trip.
So once we had seen the Orthopedic Surgeon and found out that there would be no surgery involved in the healing process we were clear to rebook a WDW trip. Obviously it would take place later in the year once her recovery was complete. Since we are somewhat retired we are free to take our trips at any time of the year we see fit, late June through September are pretty much off limits for us due to the heat and humidity in Florida. October was out of the question since we had a cruise to the Mexican Riviera, so that pretty much left November and December. We tend to schedule vacations around our band performances and we had a concert set for November 1st. Our band also plays out at Disneyland usually sometime in the first 2-3 weeks of November. Thanksgiving this year was with my parents at our house, so that ruled out November. I had never been to WDW during Christmas season so December sounded good to me. When the closing of the Osborne lights was announced, I was happy to get a chance to see them one last time before they went away for good.
Now there was one small problem. I’m sure some of you know that we have had a black cloud hanging over our heads for over a year and a half. We moved into our lovely new house in June of 2014, and our old apartments stood untouched for almost a year. Sure we took some of the things we needed, clothes, kitchen supplies, and other mementos. For the most part, though, we bought almost all new furniture, and we had artwork and home décor that had been sitting in storage for years waiting for our Dream house to come to fruition. This meant a whole bunch of cra….er precious items have been sitting around the old house since we moved out. I got a kick in the butt six months ago when we needed to have the second apartment ready by August 1 for a tenant, but that only helped us get the stuff out of apartment #2 and bring it over to apartment #1. Some of you might also know that we also had a goal to have both apartments cleaned about before said trip last April, and obviously it didn’t happen. So this has caused a sore spot for Fran that will come up later in this trip, but I get ahead of myself.
We had a couple of crazy weeks leading up to this trip, parents visiting over Thanksgiving, DIS friends in town the following week, and as a result we were in a packing craze in the days ahead of our departure date, but I’ll get to that later.
I’ve given our detailed our plans back in my “Sharing” TR, so I’ll just summarize them in a nutshell.
Fly to MCO, stay in Airport Hotel
Board Disney Dream for four nights
Stay at SSR for 5 nights with our primary objective to try new experiences and explore the resorts and their decorations.
The rest? Well you’ll just have to read along to find out how it all turns out!
Last edited:
back to comment in a bit....
Joining in! Can't wait to read all about your trip!
Love your trip reports! You are always so through with your descriptions and always have lots of photos and it looks like you are off to a great start here! I can't wait to see the tree houses!
