Planning a Disney Day Trip

So now that I have finally updated our trip report from November, it's time to address the planning of our next THREE Disney trips. I've never been planning THREE trips in one calendar year, but that is the case right now.

The first trip is not definite yet, but it's looking more and more likely. My 8-year-old is really into Star Wars right now. When I learned that the Star Wars weekends at Disney this year happen to coincide with the time he'll be out of school, I started thinking about a short trip. Airfare is not cheap though and we know it has to be a short trip because of other planned family vacations for the remainder of this year. I already decided that I'd be driving down to the NC/SC border area in June to spend a week with my parents in June. That puts me only another 9 hours drive from Walt Disney World so I've decided to make it a day trip for Nicolas. Right now it looks like I'll drive down with all 3 kids early in the week, spend a few days with my parents at the house. On Thursday morning, I will pack up Nicolas and we'll head out for a drive to Florida, arriving sometime around dinnertime there. Since Frank can't take a lot of time off work, and one-way flights aren't too bad, he's going to fly down sometime that evening as well and he can take the Magical Express (free shuttle) to our Disney resort. Right now we're booked at Pop Century, but I haven't ruled out possibly using our DVC points and booking a DVC resort for free for those 2 nights that we'll be there. Friday we will spend all day at Hollywood Studios, just taking in that park and the sights and all the Star Wars stuff like the parade and different events. I've reserved dinner that night at the Prime Time Cafe as we haven't eaten there in years and I think it would be cool for Nicolas to experience that. We'll head back to our room that evening as late as Nicolas can hang, and the next morning the three of us will drive back to North Carolina. We'll get to have dinner in NC with my parents and on Sunday we'll make the drive back home to Maryland.

Coming up in September/October, we have the big 10-year anniversary trip to Walt Disney World. I was lucky enough to snag a room at the Beach Club Villas for the two of us for 4 nights, which will be cool as I am sure it will be warm enough that we can enjoy the very cool pool there. We'll spend some time at the Food & Wine Festival, have a few nice dinners and just generally enjoy taking in the adult stuff throughout the parks at our own pace. We'll even probably spend one evening attending Mickey's Not-So-Scary Halloween Party, because it's just too cool to be in the Magic Kingdom at night!

The last trip is planned for early in 2009 right now, but it's a more difficult planning situation because right now we don't have the points to book the entire trip and we won't get them until December of this year. We are already borrowing into future years for these other trips, and this one will be the same thing. We have plans to head back to Disney in January 2009 for a week. I'll start the process of booking that in June, which is the 7-month mark where I can try for a resort other than Saratoga Springs. I'm really leaning towards a stay at Animal Kingdom for that time, but we'll have to see what is available when I call in June. I'll only be able to book the first weekend and a few of the weekdays for now. Then I'll either have to wait until December to book the rest (cutting it really tight there) or try to purchase some points from another DVC member before that time. We'll just have to wait and see.