Have annual pass and airline points will travel. That’s my motto! Ok, in all seriousness, as I was waiting for my flight for my December Holiday Extravaganza (see previous posts), I got kind of...well...jealous...of those doing a full Disney trip. Don’t get me wrong, I loved seeing how all the different parks were doing Christmas, and I spent a fair amount of time at Disney. But there’s just something about those yellow DME tags, and the ease of a trip to just Disney. I didn’t have any only-Disney trips in the works, and I started really wanting to book one.
Sometime in January, on one of our half dozen snow days, or dozen (literally) delayed openings, I found some airfare I liked for July. I wasn’t 100% thrilled with the dates, but I had the points, so I decided to book that and keep monitoring. I heavily debated between a summer trip and booking a long weekend Food and Wine Fest trip, but I just couldn’t justify booking a trip for just a couple months after the AP expired. So summer it is! I’ve done summer in Disney before and done just fine with it, so I had no concerns about booking.
I continued to monitor airfare. I also started playing with dining reservations. As luck would have it, on one snow day, I managed to nab a dinner reservation at Be Our Guest, at a reasonable dinner hour, and a lunch reservation at Be Our Guest for the next day. Of course, the days of these reservations were Saturday and Sunday. I had hoped to shift the trip away from the weekend, but, I decided I could deal with weekend hotel pricing and potential weekend crowds, in order to be able to dine at Be Our Guest. I continued monitoring airfare, but only for points credits for decreasing prices and for a better flight time on departure day.
Since I had other vacations on the books that required more planning than this one, this trip got pushed to the side. The school year was...intense...and there just wasn’t time for everything. Then I went on the Made in America roadtrip (see earlier posts), and again, pushed planning to the side. So, I ended up just planning very lightly which park I would start at each day, and decided to mostly wing the rest of the trip. I have a park strategy that works for me, so might as well just roll with it. I only made a couple of FP+ reservations too.
The details that did matter? The trip would be July 17-22, staying at All Star Music. My flight out of Manchester was scheduled for 6:05 am, so I planned to stay at mom’s the night before departure, but then the week of the trip, Nick’s work schedule changed and he ended up with a day off the day of my departure. Since he had the potential to go home and nap after driving me to the airport, we decided it would be better for him to drive me to the airport. Our bedroom has a window air conditioner. Since I’m no longer living at mom’s, the window ac was not put in my room this year. My bedroom at mom’s backs up to attic crawl space. It gets a little warm in the summer.
The day before departure arrived more quickly than expected. The shopping and packing got done, and I tried to go to sleep early, knowing the 3:15 alarm would come early. Of course, about the time I fell asleep, an Amber Alert notification on my phone startled me awake (the child was located safely a few hours later), and then it took even longer to get to sleep. This does not bode well.
