Well here is my last post before the Christmas vacation! The site will be going down for some maintenance after Christmas and January 1st I have a big surprise in store for everyone!
To round things out, today I wanted to share a kind of recap of our trip...what we would do again, and what we wish we hadn't done!!
To round things out, today I wanted to share a kind of recap of our trip...what we would do again, and what we wish we hadn't done!!
What We Would Do Again
- Stay at Port Orleans French Quarter...honestly I can't say enough good things about this resort. I love Riverside and Coronado too, and might stay there when the kids are older, but I love the intimate feel of this small resort!
-Skip the Park Hoppers. As usual it really worked out for us. We didn't have a great reason to park hop and it saved us almost $200!
-Book early! We loved having mostly our pick of Fastpass+
-Book a preferred room...we didn't' technically do this but that's what we got and I would pay for it over and over again! Again, things would be different if the kids were older but having 2 small ones and being SO close to the food court, transportation and the pool was amazing!
-Buy discounted Disney gift cards. We paid for them ahead of time on black Friday and saved 10%! The night before we checked out I simply went to the front desk and paid our bill with the gift cards. Easy peasy!
-Attend Mickey's Very Merry Christmas party! It was amazing as usual! We saw the parade in Frontierland (only showed up 20 minutes early) and skipped the fireworks. We got on tons of rides with no wait and had a really magical time. It was completely worth the cost!
-Bring our own dress to Bibbity Bobbity Boutique. The dresses there were beautiful but a bit pricey and the experience was a little overwhelming. I don't know that my 3 year old would have been able to decided so having it already picked out ahead of time made it easier. She got tons of compliments on her dress too!
-Have a date night! It was only a few hours but between the sicknesses and a baby who hated the stroller, Hubby and I were beat toward the end of the week. A few hours at EPCOT was just what we needed to relax.
-Be at the parks for open and take a mid-day break! It really saved us more often than not! We got to stay pretty late at night and the kids weren't too worn out.
What We Wish We Hadn't Done
-Skip the Counter Service plan...we really didn't love it and I feel a little cheated by missing out on our favorite Table Service Restaurants!
-Skip shipping ourselves snacks and breakfast! We love breakfast...we really do BUT we love a good, hearty sit down breakfast. We rarely munched on the granola bars and pop tarts I had bought. The only thing we did use were the baby puffs and yogurt bites for the baby. They came in SO handy! We came home with TONS of bags of goldfish crackers.
-Buy diapers and ship them. We ended up bringing home most of the diapers we shipped because we easily packed so many in the outside compartments of our luggage!
-Rent a car...Hubby decided at the last moment to that we should rent a car. It did come in handy ONCE when we had to run to the drug store but with 2 small kids it was more of a pain to drag along the car seats, park, take trams, get them in and out. It's MUCH easier just to jump on the bust with the kids and their stroller. Plus we would have saved $150!
-Pack so much...I always over pack! I should pack and then just take half of it out! We ended up with a lot of outfits coming home.
-Ignore crowd predictions...I don't do this for my clients so who knows why I did for my own family. My hubby insisted that Magic Kingdom be our first official park, and then we changed plans to arrive early but had already booked Bibbity Bobbity and 1900 Park Fare so I left things alone. Magic Kingdom was SO crazy busy and it kind of threw my plans off. Honestly, planning which day to visit each park is no joke...if you aren't experienced, be sure to enlist the help of a travel planner who can do it for you!
Merry Christmas everyone and I'll see you in the New Year!
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