Two Weeks at Disney with a 3.5 yo, 1.5 yo and one in the cooker!

[archangelus2]

Introduction

This is a trip report for the first Disney World trip for our young family. I spent about 6 months of reading message boards, books and blogs preparing for this trip. For me, the planning is literally half the fun. I am a computer engineer so this report won’t be quite as fluffy and a little more analytical than most you read. I am a huge theme park nut and have always appreciated Disney’s attention to detail. My first trip to WDW was when I was 12 with a couple trips to Disneyland in my early 20’s. I’m writing this for my own record and to share it with a group who can appreciate it as much as I do. I really look forward to some discussion on it as I’ve pretty much worn out everybody I know in the real world.


The Crew

• Me (Dad) - 29
• Mom - 28, 28 weeks pregnant with kiddo #3 at start of trip.
• Older Son - 3.5 years old, under 40”
• Younger Son - 1.5 years old

Indoctrination: For the 6 months leading up to the trip we had movie night each week where we watched just about every major Disney movie with our son, I also added the big songs from each movie to a playlist we would listen to in the car. This was really a good idea and I think made our oldest son much more appreciative and engrossed in the characters and rides. It was also fun to rewatch some I hadn’t seen in a long time as an adult and see how they rated with my current tastes. Pinocchio could never be released today. Beauty and the Beast is probably my favorite to rewatch as an adult as I can appreciate just the general work of art it is as a whole.


Strategy

Trip Duration: Two Weeks - I am fortunate to have 5 weeks vacation at my current job which enabled us to have the option of a two week trip. I ran the numbers for a two week trip and a one week trip and the 1 week trip was ⅔ the cost of the 2 week trip. This is mostly due to the value of a 10 day ticket. Something I quickly found out is that there really aren’t any good deals at Disney, even things like the dining plan where you would think they would give you a discount often end up costing you more money. The only real value I could find was in the 10 day ticket and it is a hell of a value with the average cost per day being about $30. Two weeks also allowed us to build in rest days which were enormously valuable with such young kids and a pregnant wife. More on this in the park selection section below.


Timing: 4/25/14-5/10/14 - I relied on 3 different sites for crowd predictions: touringplans.com, easywdw & **************.net with emphasis on the latter. I had originally planned our trip to be the first two weeks of December as I was adamant on going during the lowest crowds. That would have been a year from when I started planning, but God blessed us with my wife being pregnant with a little girl and then the December trip wasn’t realistic as we would have a 5 month old and breastfeeding to contend with. So that pushed the trip up as I knew we wouldn’t get another opportunity to go again for a few years with a new baby and that was unacceptable. I was also concerned with my wife’s comfort being pregnant, with the trip ideally landing during the second trimester to avoid morning sickness and the discomfort of the 3rd trimester. We ended up going at the very beginning of the third trimester which went really well, no sickness and no fatigue or discomfort that really affected anything. Weather was another consideration, the morning and evenings were perfect in late April early May, with about half of the days getting hot enough in the afternoons to be sweaty and uncomfortable.


Transportation: Our Minivan w/Yakima (Mazda5) - To allow for our two week trip we had to make some cuts and that included no flying. Flying would have cost us around $1000 more including the rental car for when we got there. We drove from Houston and split the trip up spending the night at a hotel in Mobile with the kids sleeping for that first leg. The next day was long and included our youngest son having a few hours of unhappy (screaming) car riding. Each park day we drove our car and paid to park. The walking distance for parking was one of the more grueling tasks of the trip. It gets old pretty quick since we went back to the hotel for naps. I really wish they would let you park closer later in the day by filling in spots from people who had left. Also moving sidewalks would just be the greatest thing ever, I would pay for it. I was glad to see recently that Universal has this, maybe one day Disney will follow suit. The less time I spend walking the more time I could spend forking my cash over to Mr. Disney.


Park Selection & Schedule - MK 3 Days, EPCOT 2 Days, AK 2 Days, HS 1 Day, 2 Open Days:


Park Day 1 - MK

Pard Day 2 - MK

Rest Day

Park Day 3 - EPCOT

Park Day 4 - EPCOT

Rest Day

Park Day 5 - Animal Kingdom

Park Day 6 - Hollywood Studios

Rest Day

Park Day 7 - Magic Kingdom

Park Day 8 - Animal Kingdom

Rest Day

Park Day 9 - Open Day

Park Day 10 - Open Day


Our overall schedule strategy was to go to parks for 2 days then have a rest day and repeat. This worked out great. Normally I am an all day theme park goer trying to do as much as humanly possible. I had to severely change my mentality for this trip and it was definitely a more relaxing trip and nobody got burnt out. With the wife being pregnant and the kids being so young everybody really enjoyed relaxing on the rest days and recuperating from the busy park days. When I tell most people I went for 2 weeks they cringe, but I’m sure they are thinking of doing 2 weeks straight of standing in long ride lines and not taking any breaks. I think our longest line was 30 minutes with the average probably being 10 minutes. The rest days included sleeping in late, grilling burgers, hanging out in the lazy river, surfing the internet….not things I think most people imagine happening on a Disney trip.

Magic Kingdom was a must for the first park to visit since this was the kids first trip, though I don’t see this changing in the future...it’s just too idyllic. I split up the AK days as I thought it would be nice to have a little more variety during the second week. The open days were basically to be determined during the trip based on everybody’s preferences. We ended up deciding to go back to Magic Kingdom and do all our favorites again as it took the first 3 days at MK to get through everything just once.

You can view my full planning spreadsheet here:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/19pruSLxYDNLPRaDJ7dXKnb3CnVUAX3YmfP_hK_C_JSM/edit?usp=sharing


Rest Days: Our rest days gave us a chance to sleep in and just take it easy. We did a picnic at Downtown Disney when the weather was perfect and really enjoyed it. It’s more relaxing to shop when there aren’t rides to be ridden, the big gift shop and Christmas shop were really fun as was the Lego Store as always. We also did dinner at Ohana one night and for another night we had a kidless evening at EPCOT. The rest days also gave us time to go grocery shopping and hit the resort pool. I also finally ended up going to Church while on vacation which is something I have been telling myself I wanted to do for a long time, we ended up visiting Celebration Community Church and I’m really glad we did. They have a specific mission to be open to guests who are visiting on vacation which was perfect, the sermon was really good too!


Naps: My wife is a schedule Nazi when it comes to our kids naps and since both of them still nap and she is pregnant we went back to the hotel for naps almost every park day. This was a lot of effort with the parking lot walking, stroller packing and kid lugging that was required. On the other hand we ended up leaving the parks around 11AM which is when the parks started to get much more crowded and the heat was becoming noticeable. We would get back to the hotel, do a lunch then nap for a couple hours and try to get back to the park between 3pm and 4pm. We ended up leaving the parks around 7pm to get the boys to bed which was unfortunate as that was just when the parks start getting dark and cooling off. I imagine we may still do naps in the future when the kids are older but stay out much later into the evening and enjoy the parks at night. I really missed the ambiance of the parks at night but you can’t have everything.


Ride Selection: I fully scheduled each day in the park using the touringplans.com personalized plans feature, if you are at all a planning type person I highly recommend it as it ensures minimal wait times. I ended up creating a huge spreadsheet with all the rides broken down by several different factors and attempted to spread out the ride experiences evenly across the park days. This was an effort to not end up with all the big attractions on one day and all the minor attractions on the other day. I’m glad I did this as their was always a big ticket experience to look forward to on each day. Since my wife was pregnant and our oldest son wasn’t 40” yet that cut out a fair amount of big attractions so I made sure to fill in with a lot more minor things like all of the street entertainment and quest type activities. I also spent a considerable amount of time planning fast passes but ended up switching them out for more ideal times as they became available at the last minute. The ONE thing we did not end up seeing was Anna & Elsa as we couldn’t get fast passes and the shortest wait we saw of 30 minutes wasn’t enticing enough for us to break schedule. If we had stayed onsite and been able to book the fast passes at the 60 day mark we likely would have been able to see the Frozen princesses. We’ll have to hit it up next time since we will have a little princess in tow.


Accommodations - Wyndham Bonnet Creek Resort: The other great value of our trip aside from the 10 day park tickets was the Bonnet Creek Resort. Average cost was $95 a night. They did not have a two bedroom available for the entire length of our trip so we did a 1 bedroom for the first 3 nights which was fine. When we finally did get in the 2 bedroom it was HUGE! We fully utilized the kitchen and I really liked watching the firework finales from the balcony each evening. The lazy pool was perfect for rest days and we also utilized the grills a couple times for hotdogs and hamburgers. It was a relatively short drive to all the parks. I also made it out alive without purchasing a timeshare, whew! I overheard a guy on the Monorail call his dad to tell him he got suckered into a $3k timeshare, yikes! Can’t recommend this place enough.

Food: We did cheap quick lunches back at the hotel everyday which helped keep costs down and our digestive tracks in order. We did have a few picnics at the parks, in particular we had one in between France and England at EPCOT that was a perfect spot. We tried a couple nicer restaurants on our rest days and date nights.


Stroller: We decided to go all out and get the Baby Jogger City Select Double stroller. We have always had a cheaper $100 stroller and decided with all the walking and packing/unpacking we were going to have to do it was time to upgrade. Though it was quite pricy at around $500, they do hold their value very well so we will likely recoup a lot of that when we no longer need a stroller. The stroller is very comfortable to push and just glides so smooth, it’s also accommodates our varying heights well (6’2 and 5’3). Some of the reasons we went with this particular model is that it has stadium seating so both kids have good sight lines and it is narrow so it fits through doors without any issue. It is a little long which makes cutting across busy paths kind of a pain as you have to wait longer for a break in people traffic, but having one person on stroller duty and the other person free to navigate and basically do everything else was the way to go for sure. As accommodating as Disney is for kids, one gripe I have is that they don’t have much room for strollers on the trams in the parking lots, at least not for sizable ones like ours. We often just walked as it was just too much hassle to break everything down, load it on the tram if there was a spot and then put everything back together again.


Daily Trip Diary:

Park Day 1 MK:

Magic Kingdom was open at 8AM, 1 hour earlier than the other 6 days of the week. We were up at 5:10 AM CST in order to get to the park in time for the Welcome show they put on before they open the parks. I’ve heard talk of them getting rid of the welcome show which would be just a shame as it was such a great way to kick off our time at Disney. The day was hot, long and tiring but we definitely made some incredible memories! Seeing the parks through the eyes of a 3 year old is such a sweet experience.


Some of the highlights for the day:

• Our entire first hour in the park we basically had it to ourselves and rode 4 or 5 rides including dumbo 2x in a row without getting off!
  
  
• The Monster Inc Laugh Floor show featured our oldest son where they asked him questions in front of the audience and responded with Jokes. The audience all "awwwed' when they asked him how old he was and he held up 3 fingers and said "Fwee".
  
  
• The absolute highlight of the day was oldest son getting picked to play the Beast in the Enchanted Tales with Belle character meet/skit. They have all the little kids play parts in a skit with Belle who is dressed in full ball gown yellow dress. Oldest son had to roar at her and even got some one on one time as the audience watched them and then he got a kiss! He played the part perfectly. Will cherish that video forever!
  
  
• Oldest son’s first roller coaster was the new Seven Dwarves Mine Train
  
  
• Oldest Son's first ride was Buzz Light Year Space Ranger spin where you shoot lasers in moving cars....he was just in awe....had no idea what to expect.
  
  
• Youngest Son totally passed out at noon slouched over in his stroller. He did well on all the rides and shows and seemed to like the Winnie the Pooh ride.

We took a break from the park back at the hotel from 12:30-4pm but nobody napped except me! Role reversal. Everybody went to sleep without a peep for bedtime.

PARK Day 2 MK:

Sunday we spent our second day at Magic Kingdom, there's just so much to do there that it actually took 3 days for us to do it all with our nap schedule and leaving the park in time for a decent bedtime.

• We started the day off with a bang by meeting Mickey first thing which was another wonderful experience ...we had about 3 cast members at the Mickey attraction tell us that we could just leave our oldest son with them he was so cute.
  
  
• Oldest son got to drive a car at the tomorrowland speedway which was a thrill for him.
  
  
• Oldest son wanted to ride Dumbo again so we found some time before heading back to the hotel for nap to ride it. The Dumbo ride is genius because instead of making you stand in a queue they have a big top circus play area where the kids can play until it is your turn to ride. Oldest son quickly found the closest thing they have to a puzzle and figured it out (he loves puzzles).
  
  
• We had lunch at Beast’s Castle (Beauty and the Beast). I would say it was a slight disappointment, after watching videos online I was just blown away by the theming but for some reason it didn’t translate as well in real life. The main ballroom felt kind of cafeteria-ish. If I had to do it again I would try harder to sit in the Gallery as it looked really interesting. It could just be the grass is always greener effect though.

REST Day 1:

Monday was our first rest day and it was good timing as we were all pretty tired. We ended up switching from a 1 bedroom to a 2 bedroom since we couldn't find a 2 bedroom for the extent of our stay. We were left in limbo from 10AM-3pm while we waited for our second room to be ready.

• We toured the resort grounds and the boys had a blast on the playground with youngest son really enjoying the swing.
  
  
• The giant EPCOT ball is very evident from our room’s windows, it is 1.2 miles away, as the Tinkerbell flies.
  
  
• For dinner we ate at Ohana which is the restaurant at the Polynesian resort. It is Churrascaria style and we had wonderful grilled chicken, shrimp. Dessert was bread pudding topped with Ice Cream and Caramel sauce. They gathered all the little kids up and had them race around the room trying to push coconuts with brooms to a finish line, Oldest son went off course several times which was pretty funny.
  
  
• After dinner we walked outside to the resorts sandy beach and watched the fireworks over the castle. They had some audio issues which was unfortunate but eventually got it working

PARK Day 3 EPCOT:

Our first day at EPCOT we did "Future World" with the highlight being "Turtle Talk with Crush". We liked it so much we did it again the next day. We also hit our first serious rain of our trip but thankfully it dissipated by the afternoon.

PARK Day 4 EPCOT:

Second day at EPCOT was walking around world showcase and seeing all the different countries. Not much kids stuff but they had the "Flower and Garden" festival and the park was completely decked out in flowers, incredibly beautiful. We had a picnic across from France that was quite picturesque. This was the only day so far we didn't go back for nap as world showcase doesn't open until 11AM and we needed to get back early for our date night.

Date Night 1:

After EPCOT We dropped the boys off at the hotel with a sitter from sunshine babysitting which we were happy with. They were a fair amount less expensive than the ubiquitous Kids Nite Out service that Disney endorses. The wife and I headed back to EPCOT's world showcase and had dinner at Monsieur Paul’s in France. I'm not sure we're really cut out for French cuisine. We had carrot soup with goat cheese stuffed ravioli which was excellent, duck which was average and oxtail which I did not care for. We decided to do counter service dessert elsewhere and my wife got a beignet from the French bakery and I topped it off with a caramel apple from Germany. We then watched Illuminations to cap off the night.

REST Day 2:

Our second rest day we went to Downtown Disney for a picnic and to browse all the Disney shops, the weather was absolutely perfect. The Christmas shop was a big hit as well as the ginormous Disney shop. I loved the retro ride posters set I got for $20. I made some wood poster hangers and have them up in the living room now, these were definitely a steal. After nap we hit the pool and grilled hot dogs. Overall it was a great break from the parks and as I found out later the crowds are much more manageable in the afternoon than in the evenings.

Park Day 5 Animal Kingdom:

We went to Animal Kingdom which was particularly exciting for me as I had never been. I think Disney did an outstanding job, all of the theming is excellent and has a very different feel than the other parks. The Mount Everest in the park is quite stunning and from several areas of the park is quite believable when you see it in the background.

• We all really enjoyed the Lion King Show.
  
  
• Oldest son was terrified after getting soaked on the river rapids ride but was easily convinced to do it again with Mommy so he could prove to Mommy she was going to get all wet too
  
  
• We made it about half-way through the wilderness explorer booklet. I think Mommy enjoys collecting them the most of all of us.
  
  
• Our oldest son loved the bird atrium, he even started identifying them on his own which was amazing!

Park Day 6 Hollywood Studios:

Next up was Disney Hollywood Studios. Lots and lots of shows which was challenging to keep our youngest entertained for.

• I did manage to get a higher score than Mommy in the Toy Story arcade game while holding our youngest son.
  
  
• We stood in the longest line so far when we veered off schedule and waited to see Buzz & Woody for over 35 minutes. It was tough for our oldest son but he enjoyed it enough it was probably worth our while.
  
  
• Youngest son did pay attention to a lot of the Muppets show, I think because we sat so close to the front.
  
  
• Oldest son swatted at lots of the 3-D effects in the movies we saw. He also wasn't scared during the Bug's Life movie which I know a lot of kids can't handle.
  
  
• The oldest son wore a pirate hat that I think we got from a dollar store or somewhere and it was a lot of fun with characters interacting with it.

REST Day 3:

Our third rest day we went to a Church in Celebration that is part of the same network of Churches as our Church in Houston (Acts 29). It was good to do something "normal" again and hear a great message on how the love we show for others is a response to the intimacy we have with God. Later that evening we met Mommy’s friend for dinner who works at Disney World, she explained to us how the talking Mickey's work and that each head costs $40k+!!!


Magic Kingdom Day 3:

• Saw the festival of fantasy parade, can’t say enough great things about it. Loved the music, performers and the floats.
  
  
• Rode a lot of classics including Tiki Room, Haunted Mansion and Peter Pan.

Date Night 2:

We had our second date night at Magic Kingdom, eating dinner at the Kona Cafe at the Polynesian Resort. Kona Cafe was ok, I probably won’t go there again as it just wasn’t worth it to me. The food was good, service poor and atmosphere kind of bleh. We rode a couple rides at MK and then watched the fireworks in front of the castle. Afterwards we decided we had to let the boys watch fireworks the last night we were at the park which we were originally not planning on doing due to it putting them in bed several hours past their bedtime.

Animal Kingdom Day 2:

• My oldest really enjoyed Triceratops spin.
  
  
• We finished off our Wilderness Explorer activity book by collecting over 40 badges, we were worried they wouldn't give us the final badge at the end since we left our book in the car with all the badges from day one but luckily they were able to work some Disney Magic.
  
  
• One of the walking trails has a family of Gorillas which was incredible to watch, we got to see the entire family including the big daddy Gorilla all the way down to the 6 month old baby gorilla getting thrown around by his older sister.

Rest Day 4:

• Our last rest day we went to Sanaa for dinner at the Animal Kingdom Resort. It overlooks the savannah with Zebra's and Giraffes.
  
  
• We ordered the bread service which comes with 14 different dipping sauces spanning the gamut from cool yogurt to flaming hot peppers. The oldest even got in on it trying about a 1/2 dozen of them out, we shared the cilantro dip as our favorite.
  
  
• My youngest showed his propensity for ethnic food by eating his weight in "Butter Chicken" which is one of the more ubiquitous Indian dishes. It was funny to see him take to such a foreign dish.
  
  
• We did have to wait 45 minutes or so for a window seat at Sanaa, the service was pretty poor but it was a cool experience and the food was good. It was fun to walk around AK lodge and see everything there.

Magic Kingdom Day 4 & 5:

• We decided for our last two days to go back to Magic Kingdom since there is just so much to do there and we didn't really feel like there was much more we wanted to do at the other parks.
  
  
• We redid a lot of our favorites including meeting mickey mouse, driving the cars at tomorrowland speedway, Dumbo and Peter Pan.
  
  
• We did The Mad Tea Party teacup ride for the first time and the boys both loved it, though my wife sat it out since she isn't a big fan of spinning.
  
  
• I sat down with my oldest the night before our last day and we went through the rides on the Disney website to see what he wanted to ride one last time. Our conversation went like this: "Do you want to ride Dumbo or Peter Pan", then he would reply "How about Dumbo AAAND Peter Pan??".
  
  
• Eventually we settled on Winnie the Pooh, Monsters Inc, Seven Dwarves Mine Train and to our surprise both Country Bear Jamoboree and the Tiki room. Our oldest loves the talking animals.....even though those rides are antiquated to us adults he still sees them as real and waves bye to all the animatronics.
  
  
• We took a longer than normal afternoon break so we could be well rested for the long evening. We got back to the park at around 6pm, had hotdogs at Mommy’s request and then stayed for the Electric Parade, Castle Projection Show and Fireworks. It was a wonderful end to our trip and the boys did very well considering we kept them up until 11pm.

Drive Home:

• We left Orlando around 9:15AM EST. Our youngest was a pill and took a lot of energy to try to keep entertained. Neither of the boys took naps in the car. Immediately after dinner the youngest completely passed out from exhaustion. Our oldest does great entertaining himself by drawing and watching movies on his tablet.
  
  
• We made it back into Houston at 12:15 AM CST. I feel like I could drive anywhere after that long of a drive. When I put my oldest son to bed he asked me what we were going to do at Disney World tomorrow

Disappointments

• Philharmagic - We aren’t big on 3D and their just wasn’t much to this show. In comparison I like the Muppets show much more even though it is more dated.
  
  
• Monsieur Paul - Too much money for food that we just didn’t like that much. We aren’t fancy food people though so if you are it may be worth it to you.
  
  
• Seven Dwarves Mine Train - Just needed one more slow down section with characters to make the ride a little longer.
  
  
• Under the Sea ~ Journey of the Little Mermaid - Just no big draw here for me.
  
  
• Character breakfast - I don’t think we will be doing any more Character breakfasts, the interaction wasn’t anything more remarkable than what I get at a non-meal meet and greet and the prices were just too much for what is essentially an average buffet.

Favorites

• France Movie - The cinematography and perspective of this movie really blew me away, I loved it. On the other hand my wife didn’t see what the big deal was.
  
  
• Enchanted Tales with Belle - This attractions encompasses what makes Disney so special for me, but my kid got picked for the biggest part so I am, of course, biased.
  
  
• Talking Mickey - Just perfect, the interaction with my 3 year old and pictures we got are priceless.
  
  
• Festival of Fantasy Parade - What a great way to spend the afternoon, this is where Universal has some catching up to do.
  
  
• Animal Kingdom - My first time at AK, I loved it. Wilderness Explorers was perfect for us and I think we ended up doing the Safari 3 or 4 times. Can’t wait to do the night safari, Avatar and River of Lights. And I didn’t even get to ride the big rides!

Longest Distance Walked in One Day: 14 Miles!


Disney Photopass: This was totally worth it for our long trip. I can’t remember exactly how much it cost, something like $150 but we got so many great photos that we wouldn’t have otherwise. I did bring my camera to the park for a few days, but relied completely on the photopass the other days. It’s hard to do any better for staged shots yourself because the cast members literally sit in the same spot all day and take the same photo over and over and over so they get pretty good at it.


In Retrospect:

The big question before I started planning this trip was would it be worth it with such young kids. I was worried there wouldn’t be enough to do to keep us busy or we would get bored doing the less thrilling activities that those with younger kids are limited to. Experiencing the park as a parent for the first time ended up being such a different but equally wonderful experience. I did have to give up riding on the more thrilling attractions, but seeing my kid having the time of his life interacting with all the characters and riding the rides was truly amazing and dare I say even more fun than my past experiences. I know my wife feels the same way if not even more strongly about the experience.

Future Trips:

For our next trip I will continue to keep dining in the parks to a minimum. The high cost is just too much for me to enjoy it and I feel guilty afterwards having spent so much food. One notable exception will be Ohana, that is now a tradition as we always enjoy it so much. I can say I've done character dining now and will avoid it in the future as well for the same reasons.

My new dilemma is that I want to go to Disney or at least start planning a trip already and it hasn’t even been a year since we went! I’m targeting 3 years between trips because I think that allows for the kids to experience it in different stages of life, allow for new experiences as the park changes and help keep everything exciting and fun. Sadly our next trip will have to be just 1 week as our oldest will be in school and I refuse to go during the summer. We will also have grandparents in tow who have already made me promise they can come next trip. It will be nice to have some extra help with the kids but also bring along it’s own challenges trying to keep everyone happy. My planning has already begun, starting with trying to figure out how to fit in as much as possible and not wear everyone out.

Can't Wait to take this little Lady on her first trip!