The three caballeros take on the World! Pics galore!

[Guest]

Ok, so this is my first pre-trip report and the start of what will be my first trip rep on The Dibb!

I'd like to say up front that I am a photoaholic, so if you like pics this will be the report for you. If not...run away now you have been warned.

Well, this trip literally came about on a whim. It was considered, organised and booked all within four days. We jokingly said 'we should go' and the next thing I knew I'd booked a room and was on expedia checking out flights. Yep, it's a bit of a whirlwind and we can't really afford it but oh well...WE'RE GOING TO DISNEY WORLD!

We (the three caballeros) are due to fly from Manchester, England to Orlando with Virgin on 18th April 2010 - 2 weeks today. We then have a late flight home on the 29th, which means we should have ten full days and two half days. We're going to be sharing a room at POP Century and at the moment we have no plans to do anything non-disney, except maybe a mall. I've requested one of the new POP rooms, purely for the dividing curtains...we'll see if we get one. If not, oh well, we're only there to sleep...and POP is fun.

Ok, let's get this trip rolling. Introduction time (the CAST):


I'm Helen (yes I love Captain Jack). I'm 33, English and have three jobs - I teach (part-time) audio postproduction at a University, I have my own small film production company (which we're still building) and I work for the mouse. I've been working part-time for Disney (in stores) for about fifteen years. Does this give me a unique view of Disney World? Yeah probably in a way. I think it makes me much more critical of the 'show' but at the same time it means I'm a HUGE fan!

The other two caballeros are:


Andy (30) who currently works selling solar panels. I've known Andy for about 7/8 years and we first met when he was my assistant manager. Andy left Disney about five years ago but he is still a Disney nut (much to his partner's annoyance ). Andy and I share two big things in common - we are birthday twins (same day not year) and we both adore Pochahontas! I worked on the USA promotion for the movie and Andy's mum worked on the UK one. Andy is also a Daisy Duck fan and if he doesn't actually explode with excitement in the next 14 days I will be really surprised!

Rounding off the gang is Jenni (pronounced 'Jen-eye')


Jenni (26) is actually called Jennifer but when she started working with us we already had another Jennie. So I called her JennI and it kinda stuck Jenni works with me for Disney (so yep, it's a cast member trip) and has been there about six years. She really wants to become a visual merchandiser and her windows are really pretty



Jen loves Kronk, Lilo and Stich...in fact she'd marry Kronk if she could! And while she may look a bit like Lilo she's definately more like Stitch in personality.


So, that's the gang - the three caballeros . Oh, I forgot to say, Jenni and Andy have NEVER been to WDW before. I still find that hard to believe but needless to say it's gonna be very exciting!

Ok, that's the intros. I hope you'll join me for the ride. Pre-trip rep starts now...

[Guest]

So as the holiday quickly went from 'we should' to 'lets book' we had a lot of running around about 75 days ago. I phoned Disney and managed to book a room at POP for the dates we wanted. We got a great deal because I got a CM discount. Annoyingly we could have stayed for 3 more nights for only £40 ($60) more each but we couldn't get any more time off.

We had to wait until the following Monday to check Andy could get the time off, which meant a nervous weekend, but we still managed to get flights for £429 each, direct from manchester to orlando. From what I've seen this year, that's pretty darn good, although it still seemed on the high side to me. I remember the good old days of £270 flights! We're lucky though because we can go outside of school hols.

Because I'm the only one who has been before most (make that all) of the organising has fallen to me. I've also decided that I'm going to do everything I can to make this trip as magical as possible for them. I want them to love WDW as much as I do and thanks to all my online disney friends I'm getting some great things done.

First thing I did was book a few meals (I have been well trained in the ADR system by all of you on here and another forum). I figured we could cancel them if necessary but I wanted to get certain ones sorted while we could. CRT only had two morning slots left for our whole trip so I'm glad I did it when I did. Our bookings are:

1) Akershus Princess Breakfast - 8:05am, 19th April. I've done this before and I just figured it was a nice way for them to meet the princesses. I've currently nominated this as Jenni's day.

2) Donald's Safari Breakfast - 9:25am, 21st April. This was recommended by disney people online as a great breakfast and a good place to see Daisy. Which will make Andy VERY happy. I've nominated this as Andy's day.

3) Cinderella's Royal Table - 8:25am, 22nd April. It's the castle...do I need say any more? It's actually not my favourite but then, to be fair, the one time I ate here I was really tired and ill so I'm glad I get to give it another try. I know they'll both love just being inside the castle.

4) Chef Mickey's - 7:25pm. This is my fave character meal. We're going here for dinner because this is Andy and my birthday . I spent my 32nd birthday here and Donald blew out a candle with me.


5) California Grill - 9:05pm, 25th April. It's kinda late for a meal but Wishes is supposed to be on at 10pm this night so I'm hoping I got the right time booking for it. I just thought it would be an extra special thing for them and it was the earliest slot I could get after 6pm.

After sending the others a whole host of info on meals etc, we decided to also book T-Rex for the last day (12:30pm) - which Andy is very excited about - and we got the LAST slot for the Fantasmic! Meal Package for the entire time we are there. It's at Hollywood Brown Derby on 20th at 3:45. Early I know but it was the last slot and after reading all the stress about people trying to get in, I just thought it was safer.

So that's the meals so far!

[Guest]

With the help of some designers on another board, I started to put together a bunch of little surprise things for the others. Just some silly fun but I became somewhat addicted to it...as you'll see.

The first thing I made - which was great suggestion by a fellow fan - was an EPCOT passport. I asked a few people about the idea of doing one for adults (cause I know you can get a kids one and get it stamped) and I got some great feedback (thank you) so I went ahead.

On a design thread I came across some lovely work. Not sure I can post the link as it's another forum but you can pm me for it. The designs were amazing but not exactly what I was after, so I adapted them and reworked them for what I needed.

Here's what I came up with:

Cover (not my design)


Belongs to (inside front cover):


Sample Country (Mexico)


And this is what they looked like finished:


They're printed on cardstock and are about normal passport size. Since this photo was taken, I also coated the cover in plastic and staple bound them.

[elliemay]

wow thats some organising, cant wait for the trippies

[Guest]

Andy has never been on a flight this long before - never been to the USA! He made the mistake of asking me if they'd feed him, have movies etc and that got me thinking So, I've created activity books for all of us.

The covers were adapted from a design I found online. Anyway, I borrowed a couple of pages from the same designer and then went routing around the net. Thanks to some searches I found a puzzle-maker, some dot-to-dots and colouring pages. So I've put them all together.


Here's some sample contents:

[Guest]

Originally Posted by elliemay

wow thats some organising, cant wait for the trippies

See more...

Thank you and welcome aboard!

[Guest]

This is where the addiction took hold I started off with creating a 'welcome' letter. I'm going to do a package for the airport and another one for the hotel when we arrive. Most things are going in the latter one.

The welcome letter was designer by someone else. I've been on lots of design boards on diff disney forums and I've been adapting their designs.


Then I thought I'd do a welcome note for when we actually arrive - to go with all the other goodies (passport, etc) that I'm working on.


I printed both on cardstock and cut them out around the print edge exactly. They look cute - particularly the little message.

The next essential was, of course, the mousekeeping envelopes. We have 11 nights accomodation so I wanted 11 diff designs. Most were found on forums, along with the template, but a couple were my own old designs from 2006 and 2008.



I found some great meal invite designs online too, which I thought was a great idea. I made small (about passport size) invites to all the meals, just really to add some excitement and so that they can be stuck in photo albums later. I adapted the invite designs for what I needed and they look so cute.


Again I printed them on cardstock and cut them out against the edge of the print. There's no HBD one here because I hadn't booked it at the time I took this picture. The Cali Grill one is also wrong because I changed the ADR after I'd made this. I've done new ones for these, which I'll post a pic of in a few mins.

[Guest]

On one of the designer boards I found a testtrack license, which I thought was one of the funniest things. So I looked up some cheezy pics of all of us and printed the cards with the holiday dates and our pictures. I then laminated them at business card size.



I made Andy a seperate Star Wars one too, which has been laminated since this picture was taken.

[Guest]

The EPCOT passport got me thinking and in discussions with other fans, I came across a scavenger hunt for Tom Sawyers Island. Now, I dunno at the moment if we'll make it across there or not. It's not high on the others list but then it's hard to explain to someone who hasn't been. Still, I liked the scavenger hunt idea so I thought I would make a passport sized version...just in case.

It's exactly the same size as my EPCOT passport and is also printed on cardstock. I'm not looking to put a plastic cover on it at this time cause it's only really two pages stuck together and I don't think it needs it. I'm really pleased with it though, it looks so cute:



The pages to print, if anyone wants to are:


Boys cover:


The hunt itself isn't mine and I do have the link for anyone who wants it!

Addicted to creating things? Me? A little LOL but I'm having fun

[Guest]

Purely by chance I came across a discussion on a forum about people making their own autograph books. To be honest I'd not really considered if before because I wasn't sure how they'd look. I'd toyed with the idea once of doing a photobook type thing but then I thought the pics I'd have would be of previous character meetings not the ones where I was actually getting the autograph...if you know what I mean. But then I found some lovely designs for individual character pages and became inspired. I begged a disney designer to come up with a clever cover design for me and this was the result.



I printed the pages on cardstock and cut them out around the design. The pages themselves are about 6x4 in size. The laminated cover I cut bigger to protect the pages inside and that takes the overall book size to about 7x5. I had them spiral bound at Staples.

Inside front covers:


Back covers:


inside back cover:


Using the photobook idea though, I created a different inside front cover for myself: