Vacation Prep



Do you ever sit and think about when you planned a vacation, how it all seemed so far away and then when you are actually there it seems to have flown by? Perspective seems to be everything not only with vacations but with life too. We started school this week but of course have been overwhelmed with the thought of our vacation that there it is really easy to distract everyone! We keep getting shipments in the mail whether it be from Disney World, Disney Cruise Lines, The Disney Store or other random purchases we have made to prep that it's easy to get off track!

How far in advance do you begin packing? Our Disney Store order arrived (part 1 of 2) and I really wanted to begin right away but I knew that suitcases would just get in the way of our daily lives. We packed about a month early for our winter in Mexico and well let's just say it got aggravating to see things laying around all the time! I felt that it was necessary so that we would have all that we need but of course we ended up with WAY TOO MUCH!! I am hoping to avoid that this time around as we are driving AND we are now driving a rental that is MUCH smaller than our regular car...why? Oh because the engine blew on our vehicle and it will take them about 30 days to put in a new one...YUP, when it's vacation time for our family something drastic always happens. It also happens to be the week that our property taxes are due and that happens to be ON our anniversary! Can we have an anniversary dinner at McDonald's please? Oh well, we are thankful no one was hurt and that the Lord has provided us with all that we need, it could be worse!

One way we love to countdown our vacation is with a simple paper chain. The entire family gets involved in making the paper chain and then the top of our countdown becomes a window or door decoration on the trip too! With each day we take off a paper strip and pull one question from our Disney Trivia game and ask it out loud. This helps us prepare for the DCL trivia game onboard and also to have fun every day when pulling off the link for the day.

I have been hitting up Disney Outlets and used video places (they sometimes sell Disney pins) to fill up their lanyards with pins to trade! I love spending next to nothing on pins and they get ones they really want and have fun doing it! It's an activity that can be enjoyed in the parks and on the ship. The kids also have their own itineraries and money put on a gift card for them.

I've also kept busy making door and window décor for our resort and cruise stays. Getting the kids involved in one activity a week, 1 Disney Family Movie a week, 1 package arrival a week takes car of almost half the week and easily helps it fly by. We also like to spend 1 day of the weekend chatting about things we like to do where we want to go first and sometimes opinions change and others they stay the same. Needless to say the planning all goes by in a whirlwind.

 We also like to buy books that pertain to our vacation destination once every other month or so to help with planning but mainly to look at all there is to do! We are Members of B&N and that gives us 20% off coupons that come in the mail every other month or so and then add it to the 10% members discount we get daily and it's well worth it! We always know when a coupon comes in it's time to buy a vacation book!

My daughter and I are having a blast making bows for our MagicBands that can easily be made into hair bows on the days we do not have them on the bands. We are also cute bag obsessed! This is a lunch cooler that we have decided to carry around as a purse! LOL

Even when we are not planning for Disney, it's always on my mind! Here I am at my book club and ready to talk Disney with anyone that eyes my purse! The Disney Dooneys are my biggest weakness!

The planning binder is a MUST for our Disney trips. We change out the cover sheet for each vacation and each page inside can easily be accessed for additional information. We use highlighters and different colored pens and inside is a folder that holds any documents we get from Disney. I will be doing a Disney Binder post in the future where I will just go through this binder. One thing we love about our cover sheet is that it has the vacation year on the bottom and destination at the top but the center is plain and this is done with a purpose. When it's time to go, we ditch the binder and put all the sheets inside the pockets of our passporter on the coordinating days and then we pull out the cover sheet, laminate it and use a magnetic clip to turn it into our dry-erase board on our resort room doors or cruise line door! It's so much fun to read all the messages from people.

Just a hint of our planning madness, but it sure is fun! With our Transatlantic cruise next year, I hope to document our entire planning process with a once a week post, but we will see as I have already booked the trip and we have been getting things in the mail for some time now. Having 2 trips booked at one time is crazy! Enjoy every minute my friends, time certainly flies when you are having fun!



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How to Prepare for your Disney Trip!

You're going to Disney!!! Congrats and be prepared for the trip of a lifetime. In order to make Disney affordable, we book a year in advance (in fact we book while we are still on Disney Property!!) and pay it off monthly. Doing this means our trip is SO FAR AWAY, but it also makes for some awesome things we can do as a countdown!! Disney sends you packets of information from booking all the way up to your trip, which is awesome when you have little ones! We love yelling DISNEY MAIL!!! Then everyone gathers and we open it all together. This is a fun way to count down to Disney, not the mundane 'what to pack' type of posts. You can find those anywhere and for us, packing is the least of our worries! LOL!

Once you book your trip, QUICKLY order the current DVD planning video. Yes, you have already booked your vacation, but this video is PERFECT for getting you all in the Disney mood and you can watch it often. It's important to arrange for Disney Mail to arrive at least once every 3 weeks or so, so that the countdown seems real. If a few things arrive at once, save some for another week to keep the suspense. Onve we get down to 2 months before we head out, I usually have enough for once a week DISNEY MAIL packages!

Head on over to Your Disney Side and create your own decal! Let your children each create themselves, so that it becomes a fun fun family activity and once again more Disney Mail to look forward to!

Get your guide book on! Many libraries carry these guide books, but we like to buy our own so that we can write in them, fold pages and constantly refer to them. We usually pick one up every month as a countdown to our trip. Many can be used year after year and others that are dated, we just cut out for our scrapbooks when we get back or hand them over to friends that are headed there next. Some of these books like Hidden Mickey's are AWESOME for bringing with you on vacation, because they will keep you and kids occupied while in lines and during down times. Order them online and you have more Disney mail arriving at your house. Start with planning guides far in advance and work your way towards dining guides when it's time to book your dining reservations (180 days). Work your way to Trivia, Engineering and specialty guides as you get closer and then be sure you have your Planning Guide ready and marked up to book your Fastpass + reservations (60 days).

Next, head on over to the WDW website and it's time to create your own park maps. Be sure to have your park guides with you so that you all can discuss rides and you can be sure that everyone meets the height requirements. This part is a lot of fun, we usually do this with dessert one evening around the dining room table. These usually arrive within 3-4 weeks but have sometimes arrived in 2 weeks, I guess it all depends on how much they have going on at that time!

Now it's time to head on over to EBAY and order your pin trading lanyards. No only are you saving money by doing this on Ebay and NOT at the parks, but you are adding to the fun of the trip. Disney sends awesome luggage tags with your Magical Express information, but if you don't need that many,  let the kids put those on the bottom of the lanyard and they will also have your cell phone # on them in case of a worst case scenario. Another option is to let your children put their spending money on a Disney gift card and put that on the bottom of the lanyard, that way it is always with them. Now it's time to begin buying a handful of pins for each lanyard. Keep these pins to hand out on weeks that you have no Disney Mail coming and don't do them all at once, it makes it more fun for them to add as they go.

When it comes to Disney Pins, why spend top dollar on ones your children are just going to trade anyway, especially when you don't want to influence what they trade for.  When buying from Ebay, be sure they are OFFICIAL Disney Trading pins ONLY! They will be marked on the back that way, you don't want cheap pins that the cast members will NOT trade for as it is. Pin trading keeps the kids engaged and having fun, without any additional monies being spent while in the parks. We usually then let the kids pick out one special non-tradeable pin in the parks. All the pins hit our shadow boxes at home once we get back from our trip.

Before you know it, it's time to go and THE DISNEY PACKAGE arrives. This is the one with your Magic Bands and you are now READY TO GO! Before these arrive, there are a few more things you can do to prepare for them! On Ebay, you can find a plethora of Bandits and Coverbands. These are things to decorate your Magic Band with. Let me inform you that if you WANT these items, to get them through Ebay and do not pay a lot for them. We lost so many bandits, I am glad I didn't pay full price for all of them. They pop off easily, so be sure to use E-6000 glue to glue them in place once you have sized the bands. This will go towards saving your sanity. The coverbands are a complete waste of money, the bands slide around non-stop and you can't always get a good connection with the wand when you are entering the park or using a fast pass. Of course, you are then holding up the line while you try and fish the band around. Disney claims that they can read through the material and for the most part they can but every now and then (usually with the longest line behind you), they don't. All of these fun little gadgets and do-dads help the time go by so much faster and add more levels of excitement that also lead you to save money when in the parks. You aren't spending on extras and your trivia guides give you something to do instead of wandering into the shops! We attempt to do Disney once a year and follow this plan as much as we can. Our break in our streak came when we bought the house and we had to put 2 years on hold and now we are preparing for a 3 week stint in Mexico next year and Europe the year after. 

While waiting for that last week to DRAG BY....head on over to your local drug store and pick up some glow in the dark polish, glitter polish, favorite color and then a base and topcoat. Now you are ready to decorate your magic bands! We kept it simple by just painting the mickey head (this does not affect how it works AT ALL) with glitter polish and then the entire thing in glow in the dark polish. This is awesome in the evening and even better in dark rides and shows. The kids loved this part the most. You will need around 4-5 coats to get the most out of the glow polish.

How true! I always hear about how people think their children are too old or too young for Disney but this is just not true. My kids have gone as young as 2 months old and I was still going with my parents through college! Disney has no age restrictions on Magic and that is exactly what a trip to Disney is!

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