Well, truth be told I haven’t actually taken a summer vacation, so it’s more like “What I did on my weekends during the summer.” In any case, it was this. This fantastic puzzle! Purchased at the Emporium on our May trip, the puzzle is an ode to WDW’s 40th anniversary and features a panoply of lovely images from WDW past and present. It doesn’t appear you can buy it online, but should you be at WDW this year, check it out – I highly recommend it.
I suppose it’s time for an actual comprehensive update about our upcoming spring getaway. 11 days from right now, I will have arrived (knock wood) at the Magic Kingdom for our first night. There will be fireworks. There will be ice cream. There will be…shorts! (Shield your eyes from my poor, pasty legs.) Right now, the plan is this:
Depart Thursday, May 5th. I’m going to work half a day; CP is going to take a full day off to finish packing, console the cat, and get us ready to depart. We arrive in Orlando late evening, will proceed directly to the National Emerald Aisle (with thanks to MouseSavers for providing this incredible link which gets you Emerald Aisle membership for FREE), get our rental car, and then head directly to the Magic Kingdom, do not pass go, do not check in, head straight to Space Mountain.With the MK open until 12am, we can get in a few hours of fun on our first night, and since the sixth day of our tickets were free (oh yes! another fantastic discount, this time on Disney tickets, can be found here), and we only have five full days on this trip, we wanted to get our (free) money’s worth.
Thanks to a lovely spring discount of 35% on Deluxe Villa hotels, we are staying at the Boardwalk Villas from May 5th-May 10th on a cash reservation. (DVC membership is definitely in my plans, but not in the immediate future.) Truth be told we could have stayed at the adjacent Boardwalk Inn for nearly the same price (maybe twenty dollars more?), but we were persuaded by the kitchenette that would come with the Villas studio. On the downside, I can’t say I’m blown away by the color scheme or soft goods in the BWV studio (even Hampton and Holiday Inns use duvets these days, hello!), but we’re big fans of not having to rely on Disney “pastries” or “coffee” for breakfasts in the morning. (You’ll notice both of those words are in quotations. That was very, very intentional. Bleccch.) Sure, we could have made do with just a refrigerator in a regular room, but there is something to be said for flatware and a microwave and a toaster. So, BWV it is. Technically I could check in on-line tomorrow to try and maximize my chances of getting us the best “standard” view available, but I kind of like the idea of playing check-in roulette to see what we get – with our late arrival, I can always cross my fingers and toes for a pool view or some other unexpected upgrade.
With a longer trip planned for December, and with both of us having busy spring work seasons, this trip was designed to be short. Our main goal is to spend time at Epcot (another perk of BWV is the short walk to Epcot and DHS, swoon) and take in the Flower and Garden Festival. We’re spending a scant few hours at the Animal Kingdom on our first day, and after that we are mostly rising early to ride Toy Story Mania!, spend long days at the MK and Epcot, and eat some good meals at night. No dining plan for us; it’s way too much food, way too much commitment to eat three scheduled meals a day, and probably not a good value for only five days. We’re thinking breakfast in the room with goods procured from Whole Foods Market and Target, counter service lunches/snacks during the day, and so-called signature meals at night.
Time for an update.
18 days until our spring getaway! Our dining reservations are set (until the next time I play around with them, which will probably be in, oh, another five minutes?), the basic plan is laid out (we’ll see if we stick with it; a recent analysis of our October, 2010 trip showed that we stuck to our plan from dawn-to-dusk on only four of our nine days. Still thinking about what that means.), and soon I can start pondering our packing list and debating the merits of online check-in. It’s been a long couple of months at work, and this lackluster spring isn’t making things any easier. This vacation is well-timed.
In other news, the nerds will again be visiting Disney with an entourage – our next trip (after our next trip) is 228 days away and counting! This December I will finally get to experience my childhood dream of seeing this:
Cinderella Castle at Christmastime. Swoon!
I don’t know what it is about the potential of seeing fake snow in Florida, but the idea of Christmastime in Disney gets me a little giddy in a way that I am loathe to admit to anyone over the age of, say, 10. I can’t help it. I’ve wanted to see it for years, and now it looks like (knock wood) I’ll have my chance.
The plans are still a bit unformed – it will be CP and my grandparents at the very least. Perhaps my aunt and cousin(s) will also join? We will be staying in a DVC villa on my grandparents’ points; we’ll find out tomorrow what is available. Hopefully it will be a two-bedroom villa with three bathrooms (especially if our travel party includes four women again), so that would make Kidani Village at the Animal Kingdom Lodge and Bay Lake Tower at the Contemporary Resort the two best options. The former costs significantly fewer points than the latter, so that’s where I’m putting my money. Either option – or something else entirely – would be lovely. How can you resist this?
The Animal Kingdom Lodge, decorated for Christmas. (c) AllEars.net
In any case, it will be early December with family in WDW. I can’t wait.
On tap this week: some pre-trip thoughts before our imminent spring trip, and a comprehensive review of our October Food and Wine Festival- Animal Kingdom Lodge-Incredible 10-Day Extravaganza Trip ™.
In 26 days, CP and I will be back in the World. It has been 5 months, 24 days since our last visit. 11 months, 8 days since our visit before that. In approximately 7 months, we will go again. I think it’s official: we have a Disney habit.
In the circles we run in (read: cadres of over-educated, left-leaning, corporation-suspicious, MSNBC-watching bleeding heart liberals), there is something of a notion that vacations should be….serious. Exotic ports of call. Patronage of cultural institutions. Service trips. At the very least, haute cuisine. That’s fine. We like those things, too. But a few years ago, something happened – maybe it was the recession, or family/work/school drama, or the drudgery of year after year of terrible New England winters. Maybe it was all of those things. In any case, we cried uncle, and decided it was time for a WDW vacation. Serious could wait. It was time to enjoy some nice weather, ride some rides, be a kid again in a place no one would judge us for doing so.
I think the idea might have been mine, but CP was the easier sell. For several years, I had kept my distance from Disney. On a lark during my sophomore year of college, I applied for and was accepted into the WDW college program. This experience sits squarely in the column of “things I wish I had known more about before I jumped into.” My roommates partied constantly; thus I never slept. My work location was considered one of the least desirable; my coworkers suffered from a dispirited malaise. I felt trapped in a bad decision. Seeing Disney from the inside out was equal parts fascinating and frustrating. Underpaid and overworked, a series of incidents ultimately led to me leaving the program early. I was burned out on Disney. I ran the other way, headlong into my books, my exams, my family drama, and into the uncertainties of the post-9/11 world.
Several years passed, and then we cried uncle. Or maybe I was the one who cried uncle, finally ready to forgive Disney (and myself) for one bad spell in an otherwise unblemished record of lovely childhood trips to – and countless family memories made in – WDW. It was time to go back and suspend disbelief for a time, to revel in an environment where the real world stopped at the water’s edge. And, as they say, the love affair began.
Up next: A brief stop in 2008, and a retrospective of 2010 as we prepare for our first trip of 2011.
Nerds in Wonderland 
