[Lisa29]

How the trip came about

As I mentioned in my previous post, I think the title of this report gives away what this trip is about.

With 2015 being all about Danielle (it wasn't really), my sister Michelle decided that she wanted to get in on the action and have a holiday all about her (again, it really isn't!)! In all seriousness, Michelle has been talking about getting married in Orlando for a very long time.

I need to backtrack a bit here. We had always hoped to go back in 2019. We had some savings policies that were due to be cashed in during that year and we had planned on using the money to go back to Disney. However in June 2017, my Nana passed away (my Grandad had passed away 11 years before) and shortly afterwards, the opportunity to purchase their home of 50 years came to us and we just couldn't turn it down. It meant cashing in the policies and using the money towards the house, rather than being able to keep it for a holiday. We were a bit disappointed but we had our dream house and we knew that was far more important and we would go back again, albeit later than we had originally planned.

At some point between then and us completing on the house in December, Michelle told us all that her and Jamie were definitely going to get married in Orlando, and were planning to do so in October 2019. We were then in the horrible position of having to say no, as we knew we wouldn't have the money to be able to do this. This was awful. There was a time when Michelle and her family weren't coming to Danielle's wedding and we all knew the day would not have been the same if they weren't there…and there we were being in that same situation of having to say we wouldn't be able to go and we both felt terrible about it.

We discussed lots of options - only going for a week, staying offsite and doing no parks, Phil even said he wouldn't go so there was only me and the girls to pay for, but nothing was a good enough and affordable enough solution. We left it that we would be a no but would still try and work something out to enable us to go.

Fast forward to December when we completed on the house and we found out that my Nana and Grandad had left each of their Grandchildren some money. This was a lovely and unexpected surprise and we said we would put the money away for now, just in case. Christmas then came around and my amazing parents gifted my siblings and I with some money and we knew there was only one thing we would be spending it on - we were going back to Disney World in October 2019!

We were so happy and started talking about what we wanted to do, when we were going, where we would stay, and were eagerly awaiting April 2018 for Disney to hopefully release a free dining offer.

I'm going to leave this there because of course it is never that simple and of course there was some drama and plan changes when the release finally happened!

Next up, our plans version 1.