Disney Fund Deposit

There has never been a more pathetic Disney Fund! Here we sit 3 months from our Disney vacation and I haven't even been able to save $200, let alone $2500.

I found out that my jar is not as hidden as I had hoped.  The hubby knew where it was all along and was dipping into my savings.  Don't worry--I made him pay for taking the money. LOL!

Today I added $100 to the Disney Fund from two mail in rebates from our cellphone provider.  Those are Visa gift cards, so I don't think his fingers will get sticky.

Pre- Trip Report -- Part 2: Starting a Disney Fund

We are finally going back to Disney!!!

The kids and I have been having serious Disney withdrawals the past year and I was finally able to talk the Dear Hubby into booking a trip. How much fun is it that I get to shift into serious planing mode?

The first order of business is researching and deciding on where we would stay within the DVC resorts.  Every trip I consider different resorts and I always book our stay at Boardwalk Villas.  There is just something about the Boardwalk area that draws us back trip after trip.  The vicinity to our favorite park--Epcot--just can't be beat.  Nightly entertainment, clubs, and restaurants are a convenient walk away.  What could compare?  Disney's Tree House Villas.

This has come as a surprise to me too that I would choose a resort so vastly different from our usual haunt.  One of my new hobbies is camping with the family and friends.  So I guess that in some way the Tree House Villas is the best of both worlds.  How awesome is it that I get to go to Walt Disney World and stay at a resort that feels like I am in a secluded cabin in the woods!

I came across an interesting website today (Couponing to Disney) that has inspired me to start a Disney Fund.  In order for this trip to happen I will have to work harder than ever and be creative with how I save.

My opening balance in my Disney Fund is $40.  I had $24 and some change in my savings account (how pitiful is that!), received a $4.50 rebate check from Pilot, and decided to throw in a few more dollars to make it an even $40.

Stay Tuned as we plan our adventure. 

Pre-Trip Report -- Part 1: I have a confession...

I have a confession to make and hopefully it won't get me hog-tied and run out of town. After our last trip to the Walt Disney World Resort in January 2009, I felt that I was done with the Disney trips. In all honesty, the thought of returning any time within the following year--made me cringe.

Now several years ago we purchased a camper and we've spent considerable time with close friends and family in the woods. When money got tighter and I couldn't find permanent work, the thought of selling the camper never cross my consciousness. But selling the DVC did several times.

Guys I think I just saw someone pass out in the back row!  Before anyone else requires medical intervention let me put your mind to rest.   Recently I came to my senses with a little help from some friends.

That's us in a photo from May 2008.  The last time we went to WDW as a family.  I'll introduce you to everyone starting from the bottom.

That's "Cinderella" who will be 6 on our next trip.  She is a 100% bonafide princess with all of the girly tendencies you would expect.  And as the smallest member of the clan she sometimes has the biggest presence. 

Standing next to her is "Buzz" who might see 10 years old.  Living with all of these women is hazardous to his health.

The lady with the braids is me, your story telling, trip planning, budget keeping, suitcase packing, surprise making, coupon clipping Momma.  I will henceforth be referred to as "The Queen".  Let's not forget people!

The devilishly handsome gentleman to my left is the self-proclaimed "King Louie".  We let him suffer under the illusion that he has a say in the upcoming trip.  His role in the outworking of this trip is to drive the Disneymobile safely to our destination.  Its not hard, but he some times has to have me (let me) tell him the way.  Also, he gets to express his artistic side and decorate the aforementioned Disneymobile.

Last but not least is our oldest daughter "Pocahontas".  She is a teenager and for most mothers that is all I need to say cause you understand my struggle.  Most days she is a sweet, loving child who greets the day with a smile and laughter.

So now you have met the cast of characters (literally) that will be going on this adventure with us.  Who knows we may even have some more people joining the fun.


Head on over to
Part 2:  Starting a Disney Fund
Part 3:  Possible Disney Fund Deposit

Disney Revisted

I just downloaded some new actions and thought I would give them a spin with some older Disney photos.

My attempt at Project 365

Project 365 has taken over the net for the last week and everybody is jumping on the bandwagon--yours truly included. I just got a Canon Rebel XTi as an anniversary present, so I saw this as a perfect opportunity to sharpen my picture taking skills. Let's hope that I can stick with it and complete the entire year.

I didn't think to post the pictures daily with the story behind them, so I will catch up tonight with both pictures.

I decided to start my album on January 1 which as everyone knows is a US holiday. My husband was home from work for the day and the kids decided to take advantage of this and climbed into bed with him. I thought it was too sweet not to click a photo.

My picture for Day 2 represents our anniversary trip to Walt Disney World. Pulling out our "disney clothes" and starting to pack them makes the trip seem real. This is when I finally start getting excited that we are going to my favorite place and staying at my favorite resort.

We had originally planned to go on this trip in December, but because of budget constraints we pushed it back several week. The budget is still out of balance and yet we are still going. Sitting in the room at Disney broke is a whole lot better than sitting at home broke!

Jan 08 WDW Trip Re-Visited/Day2--Part2

I know that you are wondering how we possibly ate anywhere in Walt Disney World for $7 and came out full.

First let me give you a list of the items we ordered to show that we got more than enough food.

Sonny and I ordered:

A Caesar salad to share -- $5.49

An Awesome Appetizer platter to share – 16.99

Water for us both -- $0

Brianne and LJ ordered:

House Salad to share -- $5.49

Coconut Shrimp -- $9.99

Bacon Cheeseburger -- $13.97

Ice tea and a coke -- $5.98

Our Subtotal was $57.91

Several trips ago I signed up for RFC’s Safari Club for $15 and I can say that it was money well spent. The club card allows you to receive a free appetizer or a percentage off your bill. Plus, they periodically send you email coupons.

I originally was going to use my AP discount, but the manager came out and told us that we could use the coupon with the SC discount and save more money.

Our Subtotal was $57.91

Minus Safari Club discount $4.10

Minus an email coupon $5.00

Plus tax $3.18

Plus tip $12.00

For a grand total of $63.99

Brianne and I are also members of Mypoints dot com, which is a reward program that gives you points for reading emails. We both had enough points to redeem for a $25 Rainforest Café gift card.

For a grand total of $63.99

Minus gift cards of $50.00

Total due $13.99

Therefore, after deducting the $50 rewards, our coupon, and our Safari Club discount, our out of pocket expense totaled $14. Split between the two couples -- we each paid $7. Voila!

Coupon Clipping Momma, say what!

After our awesome lunch, our next stop was the Island Mercantile so LJ and Brianne could browse for hats.   LJ did buy a hat and he wore it every chance he got our entire week.

At some point we lost Brianne. I don’t really know how you lose a person, but we did! After a few phone calls we found out she was in the restroom. 

Our fast passes weren’t ready yet, so we decided to head to Festival of the Lion King.

A few pictures along the way.

 

  

I love Animal Kingdom's Festival of the Lion King and that love has not diminished with seeing this show every trip.

There is not much I can add to the reviews you have already read, so I will just show the great pictures I was able to take sitting about the third row from the top.

Jan 08 WDW Trip Re-visited/Day 2

The morning of day 2 illustrates why I need to learn to listen to my bodies cues. Plain and simple I pushed too hard and as a result I woke up in a foul mood.

The alarm clock sounded and I jumped out of bed to take my shower. While I was getting dressed I woke Sonny up for his turn in the bathroom. I also suggested that he call LJ and see if they had started getting ready yet. We had plans to get to Animal Kingdom this morning and I didn’t want to meet a line at Expedition Everest.

My intentions were to walk down to the food court and possibly bring my hubby some breakfast to the room. But I realized that Brianne and LJ would still need breakfast, so we would still have to stop later. I nixed that idea and walked into the gift shop. I just did some general browsing and picked up a pair of cute iridescent Mickey earrings.

On the way back to the room I took some more pictures of the grounds and stopped for about 15 minutes down by the pool and read a few chapters from a book I had been reading. All of the things that I did was to give everyone else a chance to get ready without me hovering and rushing them. I was seriously trying to take the vacation as it came and chill out.

That all went out the window when I got to the room and everybody was still asleep! When I, not so gently, nudged Sonny he immediately got out of the bed apologizing for falling back asleep. You know that inner struggle you sometimes go through where you want to scream, but you feel like decorum calls for you to act like a non lunatic? Well that is the place I was at.

It was after rope drop at this point and I saw the chances of us getting to ride Expedition Everest more than once go sailing out of the window.

Pulling out my laptop and going through the pictures we had taken thus far put me in a better frame of mind. When Brianne came through the connecting doors apologizing for turning their alarm clock off, I told her no problem and I really meant it. I simply explained to her that my main concern was that if we got into AK too late they would see some horrible wait times and fast pass return times into the evening.

We arrived in Animal Kingdom at about 10:30 and walked straight back to Expedition Everest. 

The wait time was at 60 minutes and the fast pass return time was showing between 2:40 and 3:40. With only one glitch with LJ’s ticket we got our fastpasses and contemplated our next move. There definitely was a consensus that we didn’t want to stand in line for an hour, but with only a short time before our reservation at the Rainforest Café we were limited in our choices.

The four of us are standing there talking and I said something to Brianne that came across to Sonny the wrong way. So 15 minutes got sucked into a vortex as Sonny and I had a heated discussion about our “collective attitudes”. Trust me when I say that it was not pretty! Brianne and LJ walked off to give us some time and space. I didn’t realize until later that LJ was upset because he thought we were arguing about them. NOPE! Mr. & Mrs. SarCastro just had to take a minute to clear the air.

Once we expressed ourselves, cleared the air and made up, everything was fine.

By this point it is time for our reservation at RFC so we headed that way. Plus, with the late start we didn’t have any breakfast.

We browsed the gift shop until they called us for lunch and waited no more than 10 minutes.

I love the over the top theme in the Rainforest Café and we usually go at least once a trip. Brianne and LJ had not been prepped before hand about what to expect. We wanted them to be surprised. They loved the entire experience and the food was good.  

The best part of the entire lunch was that we only spent $7 each couple for our meal and tip. How was that possible you ask? Stay tuned.

Up next: A $7 meal and Festival of the Lion King.

Jan 08 WDW Trip Re-Visited/Day 1 Part 5

Brianne and LJ going through the gates for the first time.

We spent quite a bit of time touring the different pavilions and snapping a ton of pictures!  I won't bore you with all of them, but here are a few.

Mexico Pavilion:

It had been a long day and we were getting hungry again. The guys walked ahead to get in line for ESPN for dinner since they don’t take ADR’s. Brianne and I took a more leisurely pace and noticed a roped off area beside the bridge leading to the France pavilion. Nosy women that we are we had to find out what they were giving away.

Turns out it was Extra Magic Hour bracelets. We tried our best to sweet talk the CM into giving us bracelets for our husbands, but no dice. I was afraid that with such a long day the guys wouldn’t want to stay for EMH.

Once we made it to the ESPN club the guys were being shown to our table. Nice! I felt like we hadn’t eaten in days. Plus, we hadn’t eaten any snacks all day. 

All of the times that we have stayed at the Boardwalk this is the first time that I have actually been inside the ESPN club. I’m sorry Jordan- I know this is one of your favorite spots.

The food at the ESPN club was either some of the best ever or we were just extremely hungry. We will try it again on our next trip and I will let you know.

You would think that we would have been too full to eat another bite, but the Boardwalk Bakery was calling our names. We snagged some yummy desserts and coffee and ate it with our CM friends.

The Chocolate Peanut Butter Cake was the only dessert I managed to snag a picture of. Everything else was gone pretty quickly.

 

It was approaching 8:45 and we were all itching to see Illuminations. When we walked towards Epcot we had the intentions of just watching from the bridge and then heading back to ASM. But what we ended up doing was going into the parks, picking up EMH bracelets for the guys, and staying until close. Yikes!

Again in retrospect we should have called it a day, but smarter thinking did not prevail. We had so much fun, but our bodies paid for it later.

I had been talking to Brianne about Soarin so much that she was as eager as me to ride. When the board showed a stand-by time of 45 minutes it was unanimous that we would have to come back another time. Spaceship earth had little to no line. We walked almost right up to the door and waited about 5 minutes to be ushered into the ride.

My randy husband just had to have a kiss once we were seated in the ride. We didn’t know that this would mess up the ending for us and we know better for next time. I won’t give away what happens at the end of the ride, but I will say that I enjoyed Spaceship Earth. I know that there has been some debate about the changes to the ride and I have to respectfully disagree. Taken on its on merits and not comparing it to what it “use” to be meant that we had no expectations and was not disappointed.  

Next we got to ride Test Track. For the first time in a while we actually got to get in line, ride this ride, and there were no mechanical malfunctions.

Brianne and LJ decided to be brave and ride Mission Space while Sonny and I elected to just wait for them. We scooted through gift shop and entered the game area. I took a moment to jot down some notes for my trip report and Sonny played Space Race. His team got skunk both times! Its okay baby, you’ll get them next time.

Pretty soon we were headed back to ASM for the night.

This day was too perfect! Something has got to go wrong tomorrow.

  

Up next: Starting the day from the wrong side of the bed.

Day 1 of Our Disney trip continued

One of the nice things about this anniversary vacation was that I got to spend most of my time behind the camera. Normally when the kids are with us, I don't have a free hand for the camera or the time and attention to taking pictures. Since it was just the four of us, I had a blast snapping to my hearts content.





Once we left visiting our CM friend at the Boardwalk we headed for Epcot for the rest of the day. LJ and Sonny were so excited to be in Disney World that they decided to do a dance. This would have been a perfect time to film them for blackmailing later.

More to come...

Day 1 continued of Jan 08 WDW trip

It took a sec to get LJ to register what Sonny told him and I don’t think he every got to a point where he understood my need to take pictures of everything that we eat. At this point Sonny just takes it in stride. It is the least of my addictions and quirks.

My corn chowder

Sonny's philly cheesesteak & fries
My side salad

LJ and Brianne’s Food

We enjoyed our lunches and moved back to the room.

After checking our keys again to see if they actually worked we decided to exchange anniversary gifts with LJ and Brianne. Our personal couple gifts were going to be exchanged later in the week.

Our gift from LJ and Brianne:

I love the way that they wrapped our gift. She kept apologizing and we kept laughing. Inside was Yankee Candles, Godiva hot chocolate, peppermints, Dove chocolates, two coffee mugs, and a big fat Visa gift card!

The card they got us was too cute.

LJ and Brianne’s gift from us:

I posted most of the stuff that was in their gift bag, but I will do a quick recap. There were pajamas for LJ, a robe for Brianne, wine, chocolates, a calendar, aromatherapy candles, a set of personalized Minnie mouse gloves and hat for Brianne, and anniversary pins that we picked up on our last trip.

After the gifts were opened and thank you's were exchanged we plotted out our next course of action. We originally had planned to go to Downtown Disney, but the plans were further changed when Brianne suggested that we go to Epcot and start our tour of the World Showcase. Epcot is my favorite park, so it didn’t take long to convince me. The guys wanted to do whatever was necessary to make us happy, so they went along with no complaints.

So this is an example of things changing minute by minute. We were in the truck headed toward Epcot when Sonny suggests that we head to the Boardwalk to visit with a CM friend. Then we could go into Epcot through the International Gateway.

Up next: The Boardwalk & Epcot through another’s eyes.