Dragoncon mode: off. Disneyworld mode: engaged.
Disney trip 2015 – booked!
We are going in February this time around. 5 day trip. We’d picked our dates a few weeks ago, and when we went to book – surprise, they’d just announced free dining for that time period! So we booked, got the free dining, though we upgraded it to the mid-tier plan. Whee!
I know a lot of people say don’t get the dining plan. But we really like doing it. It just gives us a freedom when we are there, that most of our food is already paid for and we don’t have to worry about budgeting for food while we’re there.
This time around we’re doing a value resort. Never done one before except for that one night at Art of Animation last trip – but we wanted to try to do this trip a little cheaper, since we are planning a Universal day!!!! I haven’t been to Universal Orlando since…. 1990? When it was brand new. And obviously I really, really want to see Harry Potter world. I usually tide myself over by going to the Universal gift shop at the airport. But this year, we decided let’s do it, let’s take a half a day and go.
(We were originally weighing Disneyland/Star Wars Celebration and Disney World/Harry Potter. Disney World/Harry Potter won out.)
And yeah I think we can do it in a half a day or so. I only want to see the Harry Potter stuff between the two parks, and the Simpsons stuff. Other than that I’m not really interested in the rest. We’ll see how that goes.
(I’m sitting here thinking about Universal Studios and going on a bit of a tangent. I’ve been to LA three times in my life. Two out of 3 of those times we went to Universal Studios. Once we went to Disneyland. What the heck? How did that happen?? How did I go to LA 3 times and only do Disneyland once???? How have I been to Universal California more times than Disneyland???)
So anyway, I had already booked our dining a while back – good planning since probably would have been hard after the free dining was announced, but we weren’t really trying for anything hard to get anyway.
We’ve got Ohana on our first night there, which I’m really excited about because I really wanted to eat there last time but we didn’t get over there. I intend to try the Lapu Lapu.
For one night we’ve got the Fantasmic package booked with dinner at Mama Melrose’s. Never eaten there. And never been at Hollywood Studios that late at night. It’s usually a halfday park for us and we usually visit in the morning. So new restaurant AND new show since I’ve never seen Fantasmic.
Rose and Crown for lunch one day, because we always do Rose and Crown.
Teppan Edo for dinner that same night. Chase has asked to eat in Japan almost every trip and I always talk him out of it because I ate at Teppan Edo in 2001. Which isn’t really fair LOL So this year we’re going!
And finally Boma our last night there. Scheduled an early dinner for that one so we could go back to the parks afterwards with plenty of time.
Fastpass reservations start for us in December. We don’t have a ton we want to do this time – we have two goals:
Go on attractions we haven’t done (I tend to skip over things so I can do my favs again)
Go tech-free (to a point)
Outside of checking our phones in the mornings and evenings, and taking phone calls, we’re going to try to stay off them as much as possible. I’m even planning on taking a film camera instead of using my iphone – yeah, film. I thought it would be a fun experiment. I’ve got to dig out my old film camera and make sure it still works. And then I’m going to confine myself to only one roll of film for the trip, and try to focus on taking photos that don’t really give away “when” they were taken. Could have been taken in 1974 or 1984 or 1994 or 2004. I thought it would be a fun project and with it only being one roll of film, wouldn’t take up a lot of time and would really force me to think about what I REALLY want a picture of.
(Still taking my little digital for pictures with characters though. I WILL find the stepsisters this trip.)
