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Old 10 Dec 19, 04:27 PM  
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Floridadreams
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Mobile The “we are never going to Florida” pre-trip report UPDATED with plans & restaurants pg 3 & 4

This will be our first trip to Florida, as you can probably tell from the headline, and as I’ve got so many tips from these boards, I thought I’d attempt a trip report. So, here’s my pre-trip report to help set the scene.
Firstly, we have spent years telling the kids that we are never going to Florida because it’s too expensive. There was also the small matter of my darling husband who doesn’t really do theme parks and the fact that I don’t do rollercoasters! As well as there being a hundred and one other places to visit. But, after a short trip a few years ago to DLP where we all had a ball, the idea grew on us. Although obviously we never told the kids that! After a couple of welcome changes in our financial situation we decided just over a year ago to start booking our trip of a lifetime.
So we are me, Floridadreams, Mum, organiser and main planner. Then there is my darling husband, Mr Floridadreams, Dad and main financer! Then there is our son who is 15 and loves all of the thrill rides, and our daughter who is 11 and even more of a daredevil than her brother! We are all massive Harry Potter fans and varying levels of Star Wars fans (er-erm!). We also enjoy the Disney Magic - although again to varying degrees.
So, the plan is to fly from Dublin to MCO on 8th February 2020 and spend four nights at the Royal Pacific Resort where we will spend most of our days in the Universal parks. Then we move to Floridays to focus a few days on Disney. We are in Orlando for 14 nights in total and have 14 day tickets for Universal and 7 day tickets for Disney. After a lot of research we decided this mix would suit us best as we expect the kids to enjoy the thrill rides of Universal more. It also worked out cheaper than the 14 days for both Universal and Disney combined tickets.
We decided not to tell the kids until nearer the time as it was a very long time to wait! More about that another time.
So that’s us - all really excited and cannot wait for February!
I’ll post more about us telling our son and daughter, and our plans so far later. Thanks for reading

Edited at 03:56 PM.
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Old 10 Dec 19, 05:09 PM  
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vampiress88
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Will be following along
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Old 10 Dec 19, 05:19 PM  
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ziggyzag
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Following!
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Old 10 Dec 19, 10:52 PM  
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dreamadream
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Sounds like a fab trip planned, and we will be out there from the 6th feb!
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Old 11 Dec 19, 12:49 AM  
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Floridadreams
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Originally Posted by dreamadream View Post
Sounds like a fab trip planned, and we will be out there from the 6th feb!
So exciting! Your first family trip too I see 😍
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Old 11 Dec 19, 07:35 AM  
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Taffy1959
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I'll be following along.
I can still remember our excitement when we booked our first trip for 2003.
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Old 11 Dec 19, 08:41 AM  
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tink111
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Following! Sounds like a fab holiday plan already
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Old 11 Dec 19, 09:44 AM  
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colin39
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Following along, i remember our first time, the itll be a once in a lifetime holiday, 2020 will be our 10th time, and 3rd time as just me n wifey since 2006. Looking forward to 2021 and celabrating my 50th and the boys, and their partners will be coming along for 2 weeks while we stay for 6.

Happy planning and i hope the surprise goes well, the kids will be sooooo excited.
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Old 7 Jan 20, 02:46 PM  
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Floridadreams
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Sorry to have taken so long to get back to this! I had all of these grand ideas to update this every few weeks, and now here we are only a few weeks to go 😆
So we did the big reveal a couple of months ago - with a Harry Potter treasure hunt. I spent ages researching clues, finding the right background paper and so on, but it was soooo worth it!
We started by threatening (sorry, encouraging!) our 15 year old son to play along and help his 11 year old sister with the hunt. There may have been a small bit of bribery involved - something along the lines of “it will be worth it to you too!” 😉 then we gave them a HP style envelope which had the first clue inside.

The first clue led to a wand in our daughter’s room, the next led to what should have been her robe in the washing pile, but I couldn’t find it and had to make do with the Gryffindor scarf that went with it! The next one led to a fluffy Hedwig that was by the fireplace

The fourth clue led to a brush/broom, then a golden snitch in our son’s room (can you tell we’re fans with all of these props just lying around?!) the last clue led to our daughter’s bed and under her pillow was another envelope with a letter inside

Our daughter seemed to take an age to read the letter, reading the heading and address and so on. But being well trained she did read it out aloud as she realised I was filming it! Then, the biggest grin I have ever seen on our son’s face since he became an uncommunicative teenager appeared as he read ahead. And then, the most almighty ear-piercing weird scream noise from our daughter! She kind of did an inhaled scream that went on forever, she began dancing in her chair, feet wiggling and was far too excited to get the rest of the words out! Finally, she calmed down enough to read the important paragraph out loud!
It honestly was fabulous! I’m so pleased that we kept it a secret for a while, but then did an elaborate reveal. It was really worth it!
They both then spent some time finding out what plans we have (I’ve still kept some secrets, like lunch at Be our Guest!), researching rides and planning FPs and our daughter has become a bit obsessed with snacks - I have no idea where she gets that from 🙈
So the cat is out of the bag, and we are getting excited about our trip all together. Just the small matter of booking FPs from next week (providing our tickets arrive!) and then we’re off. I do have a rough itinerary so far, which I’ll post soon too, along with our ADRs, and then what FPs we have hopefully 🤞
Thanks for reading, and sorry again for the time lapse!

Edited at 02:49 PM.
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Old 7 Jan 20, 03:06 PM  
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3disneykids
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Your post describes us (we hadn't even do DLP) . I used to say it was a waste of money. Me and DH weren't into theme parks and now we are true Florida and Disney addicts lol. Hope you enjoy your first trip to WDW but be warned it probably wont be your last

Your reveal sounds amazing what special memories

Edited at 03:08 PM.
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