In just a few days the countdown to our September trip will hit double digits.  With every week that comes and goes, we get ever closer to what will be a much-needed eleven day respite in Central Florida. If only time would move a little faster!

Some planning updates worth mentioning:

Resort Changes:

We had such a good time at the BoardWalk Inn in April that we decided to stay there again in September. Club level. Yes, it’s true what they say – once you go club level, it’s really, really really hard to go back. As I’ve detailed elsewhere we didn’t love the club level experience at the Polynesian (well, it was good, but not ~$500 a night good), but club level at the BoardWalk was absolutely fantastic.

Before our April trip I had made three (three!) separate hotel reservations for September, thinking we would try out a couple new Deluxe resorts. The original plan was to stay a few nights at the Contemporary, a few nights at the Yacht Club, and then end the trip with a few nights (club level) at the Animal Kingdom Lodge, one of our old favorites.  We were excited to stay at AKL again but honestly a bit on the fence about the Yacht Club (dark, too serene…and do I really want anchors on my shower curtain?).  Nevertheless, we were going to proceed with this plan…and then we went on our April trip.

By the second morning of our trip I knew we’d be back to the BoardWalk in September, and CP wholeheartedly agreed. Once home – and conveniently once a public room-only discount came out – I called and put the poor Cast Member who answered through misery to re-arrange our trip. I had her change our Yacht Club reservation into a BoardWalk Inn club level reservation, cancel our Animal Kingdom Lodge reservation, and then apply the discount to our Contemporary and now BoardWalk stays. So, that leaves us with:

3 nights at the Contemporary, theme park view (for my birthday no less!)

8 nights at the BoardWalk Inn, Club Level (with a BoardWalk view to be requested and hopefully granted)

Now, this could change again – I’m hoping that a passholder discount comes out that will be even better than the public discount; if that happens, resort availability could force us to change the plan once more. But for now – we have a plan.

Airline changes:

Imagine my surprise when I received an e-mail from JetBlue a couple weeks ago notifying me of a schedule change for our fall trip – here I was, thinking maybe they had changed our flight by an hour or two. Nope – instead of leaving around 7pm, our flight had been changed to 8am. There goes my plan to work a full day before flying out. My first thought was to change our flight to a different one later in the day, but then I discovered…the 8 am flight is now the only flight to Orlando all day. I even checked flights into Tampa – or flights out of Boston into Orlando/Tampa – but it was soon clear that there really was no way to handle this but to go with it.

So that’s what we’re doing. Happy extra full day of vacation for us!  My tentative plan now is to arrive and eat here for lunch, maybe hit the Disney store at the Orlando Premium Outlets, check in, and then hit the Magic Kingdom for a few hours. Maybe the Universe is trying to tell us we need one more day of relaxation?

Non-Disney (gasp!) diversions:

With such a long trip we have the blessing of time. We’ll have plenty of time to do what we want within the confines of WDW, and time to do some fun things outside of it, which helps to keep trips fresh. On this trip, we have a tentative plan to spend a day in the Tampa area. I wouldn’t mind dipping a toe into the Gulf of Mexico and looking for some shells, and with the Red Sox in town, we feel compelled to spend an evening at the lovely (!) Trop.  I’m also hoping that a mid-trip day off will keep us from tiring out, and will give our feet a break (something we’ve both struggled with on past trips).

To eat or to eat…a lot

Tonga Toast FTW.

I’m a person who loves spreadsheets. Uber nerd here, obviously. So you can trust me when I say that I’ve spent my fair share of time calculating whether the Disney Dining Plan would ever be a good value for us.  To date the answer has always been either a resounding or pretty certain “no,” especially back in the days when we were both vegetarians.  I even contemplated the “free dining” discount this year, thinking maybe we could find a way to get our money’s worth. The answer was still no.

Well, folks, I have a new spreadsheet to work on. Earlier today, Tom Bricker of the Disney Tourist Blog penned a very compelling piece on one surprising way to get your money’s worth out of a dining plan – instead of buying the regular plan, you buy the Deluxe Disney Dining Plan. I wholeheartedly agree with him that trying to eat your money’s worth of Disney for a long trip like ours could actually be a money-losing drudgery-fest, but my curiosity is piqued nonetheless. In the next few weeks I’ll be doing the math to see whether we might at the DDDP for the Contemporary Resort portion of our stay only – which would be a very manageable three day period in which to try out the dining plan.  Stay tuned for the results – will this be the trip where we taking the dining plan plunge?

Odds & Ends

We’re playing the Crowd Calendar waiting game. Meaning, I figure that in the next three months, park hours and crowd projections are destined to change. With that in mind, there are a few things I’ve yet to plan or book that will depend upon these factors. Namely:

1. Halloween party – first, are we doing it? And second, what day are we going? Third, I kind of want to go on a Friday night; is that suicidal?

2. All-day Backstage Magic tour. We know we want to do it, but what’s the best day? It’s going to be walking-intensive, so probably before or after our rest day, but much will depend on crowds and park hours.

3. Which Red Sox game to go to (i.e. which day to spend in Tampa).

4. To buy or not to buy a new camera before the trip. I’ve been making due with an old but respectable Nikon D40, but I think it’s time for an upgrade. The question is…to what?

More thoughts on this trip to come.