Friday, April 6, 2012

Now that I've gotten started, I'm going to post about one of my best trips ever:

On October 1, 2008 I got an email telling me I won a trip for 4 to Walt Disney World.  As soon as I established that this was not spam, I wanted to know if we would be able to use this for our upcoming trip in the end of October.  They needed a minimum of 45 days notice, so we proceeded with that trip as planned and   I just proceeded to do all my paperwork and wait to be contacted again.

It was the Year of a Million Dreams and I had won 1 of 5 Grand Prizes from Disneyshopping.com.  It consisted of airfare for 4, 4nights/5days in a hotel at Walt Disney World or 3 days/4 nights in Disneyland and (4) 5-day park hopper passes.  I spent some time emailing back and forth with the lady from Disney Destinations regarding the prize until all the arrangements were made for us to go in July of 2009.

Since we won the trip and were paying for neither airfare nor park tickets, we decided to splurge a little on some other stuff.  We planned an appointment for my daughter at the Bippidi Boppity Boutique.  My husband and my son did a tour.  We couldn't get the dining plan, so we made a lot of reservations for character meals and sit down restaurants.  We even planned to rent a car for a few days to go to Universal.  Then we decided it was too much to do in 5 days, so I asked if we could add on a few nights at the hotel.  Then we decided to just go ahead and purchase 10-day hopper tickets and add the no expiration option to them.  In the end, we got a great price on the room and they let us stay in the room we had for the prize.  The tickets we used only 2 days on, so we had enough left for an 8-day trip at another time.

I learned a lot that trip.  I became way more active on some message boards that I frequent and on Facebook.  I made my daughter custom-made Disney outfits for every day that we were there.  I totally admire the ladies and men who do this on a regular basis, because that was a tremendous amount of work and took me the better part of six months to do for one child!

Hope everyone has a nice holiday!

Finally a beginning

Hi!  I keep saying I'm going to start a blog.  Well, here it is. 

We've been going to Walt Disney World since 1987.  The first time I went was on my honeymoon.  I had never been as a child.  It was fascinating!  Since then, I've been on trips that were just my husband, myself and my daughter, a large family trip where there were 21 of us including relatives from overseas and everything in between. 

Bringing my son was a thrilling eye-opener.  Years later when I brought my daughter was a totally different experience.  He loves it, even though he is a thrill-ride junkie.  She is 14 years younger and loves it for totally different reasons.  She's more of a parade-watching, show-seeing, doing everything kind of girl.  She likes any kind of attractions or rides.  She likes all the restaurants and the character meals. 

My husband and I like all of it.  We loved it so much that we even ended up joining the Disney Vacation Club and are taking our second trip as members this year.  We're going to spend our second trip at Boardwalk Villas. 

So far we've stayed at moderate, deluxe and deluxe villa resorts.  We've loved them all.  The only reason we haven't stayed at value resorts is because they don't have rollaway beds or rooms that they'd fit in.  We definitely need one when our son joins us, so it's more of a logistics matter rather than a money matter. 

The new Art of Animation Resort looks amazing from the pictures I've seen online.  I have friends who swear by Pop Century and other friends who swear by the All Star resorts and don't care for Pop Century.  I think it's all just a matter of taste, myself.

I hope I can reach out and connect to people who love Disney just as much as I do.  I'm looking forward to making many new friends and hearing from some old ones on here. 

I have always helped my friends and family plan their trips.  I loved it so much that I just recently became a travel agent with Magic of Mickey (http://www.magicofmickey.com/) and I know that I can't wait to share the magic of a Disney vacation with others.