Two Dreams, One Year! - June/Sept PTR

sunandsmiles

Earning My Ears
Joined
Jan 10, 2012
Hi all, This is my first PTR ever! I am in the middle of planning our first-ever trip to Disneyland California for Sept 2017! I grew up in Central Florida and was a seasonal cast member at Magic Kingdom for 4 years during my college breaks! I have never been to Cali and Walt's original park and am so excited to hopefully make this a reality this year! It will be a dream come true!

But we have another dream that will come true before Sept...my younger daughter has been receiving treatment for a serious illness for the last two years and has qualified for Make-A-Wish... and her wish is to go to Aulani!!! What??? Aulani and Disneyland in the same year??!! We are still waiting to hear back from her wish grantors to know if her wish can be granted, but they seemed pretty sure when they visited our daughter back in January.

So, trip 1 will most likely be Aulani in June! (Seriously, am I dreaming?) I am not involved in planning any of it for the most part! Our wish grantors actually lived in Oahu for 7 years and are amazing people (husband & wife), so despite being the control freak that I am, I am okay with whatever they plan for us.

Trip 2 will be Disneyland, CA in Sept! We have been saving up Disney Reward Dollars for 3 1/2 years that we will be using for this trip! Plus, we are a military family and will be able to purchase military park tickets and hopefully get a nice military discount at one of the Disney hotels. My kids want to stay at Paradise Pier because it looks so bright and cheerful! Those beach ball pillows sell the whole room in my opinion! Stay tuned! This PTR will mostly be about planning our Disneyland vacation, but I will also post some updates about our Make-A-Wish trip as well! Thanks for reading!
 
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So SORRY to hear about your daughter. Hopefully she is making progress towards a recover. Excited for all of you and can't wait to hear about your plans to DL.
 
So SORRY to hear about your daughter. Hopefully she is making progress towards a recover. Excited for all of you and can't wait to hear about your plans to DL.
Thank you TEAMJACOB! Our daughter is doing well! Only THREE more weeks of treatment to go...!!
 
Update time...we have our dates for both our Aulani trip (June 15-20) and our Disneyland trip (Sep 9-13)! Yay! The Aulani trip is pretty much out of our hands as Make-A-Wish is planning everything and they really don't tell you anything about your itinerary until two weeks before the trip. As the super-planner I am, I admit it is harder than I thought it would be to not be involved in the trip itinerary..but not much I can do really. Well, that's not totally true! I have been putting a ton of thought and time into the LONG-travel days that flying to Hawaii will involve. Inspired by another mom on the Web, I am gathering little "presents" for my girls to open sporadically during our flights (two connecting flights there, both 4.5 hours each, and the same on the way home). The present idea sounded perfect for my girls, and would be good for long road trips to Disneyland as well I think! All of the items I plan to give them are 1) inexpensive, and 2) physically small because we are on an airplane of course. I will wrap each little item in gift wrap so they feel special...everyone loves getting presents to unwrap, right?

Here is a list of what I will be giving them:
Glow stick necklace pendants (2 in a package for $.99 from Party City)
Sugar-free gum ($1.25 each I think)
Pina Colada tic tacs -we are going to Hawaii after all! (I think these were like $1 each at the grocery store check-out area)
Lip balm w/ sunscreen (on clearance at Target for $.92 each...I recently saw these same ones for $1 at the Dollar Tree)
Pez ($2 each on clearance at Party City)
Tsum tsum toy ($2.50 each from Wal-Mart)
Glitter putty ($.60 each from Party City)

And here is a pic:
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Now, for our Disneyland news!! We had planned to go over the Labor Day weekend and stay at Paradise Pier hotel. Well, both got changed. We are now going a week later and we are staying at...The Disneyland Hotel! There were no military discounted rooms available at PPH. DH wasn't our first choice mainly due to budget reasons. But, we will adjust the rest of the budget to make it happen! My kids are actually really excited about the change after I showed them the pics of it. They mainly just want to see the headboards light up! Oh, and they can't wait for the monorail waterslides! Me, I can't wait for ALL of it! It will be my first time in California, first time at Disneyland, and my first time at an official Disney hotel! We have stayed at Shades of Green at WDW several times, but that is not an actual Disney hotel. And since I grew up 25 minutes from WDW, we would just drive there for an all-day park day and drive home exhausted at night! All good memories though!
Well, that wraps it up for this update...thanks for reading if you made it this far!
 



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