Happy Holidays in WDW, 2-year-old-style! Day 00 Introductions & Plans

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[-- Trip INDEX --]

Hello everyone! I so enjoy reading trip reports here on The Dibb, that I figured it’s time I write my own, while I can still remember everything haha! This report details the 2 weeks we spent in Florida from December 19, 2018 to January 4, 2019. We travelled with myself, my husband, my mom, and our then-2-year-old daughter Myla. My brother, sister-in-law, and their kids (Jesse, a month shy of 3, and Nina, 7 months old) were in WDW around the same time as us, so we spent 8 park days with them as well.

Due to personal circumstances related to my husband’s oldest teenage daughter, who moved in with us unexpectedly and against her will earlier that year, we hadn’t been on our usual summer vacation, and as we’d had a couple of really rough months, we just needed to get away to our favorite place, Disney World! The teenager choose not to come with us, so it was just us 3 until we invited my mom, and until my brother announced they'd be in Florida at the same time!

Christmas time wouldn’t have been my top choice to go, due to the more expensive hotel rates and crowds, but we couldn't make it work any other time, and it was an awesome trip regardless. Celebrating Christmas and New Years in Disney was definitely super special, and even though it wouldn’t be my top choice of time period to go in again, I also wouldn’t avoid it, especially if it was that or nothing!

Introductions


I’m Micah, 37 years old, huge Disney fan, and main trip planner. I’ve been to DLP 6 or 7 times as a child, and this was my third time to WDW. I work from home for our own online family business (as does my husband), so we’re very lucky to be able to take holidays whenever we want!



This is my husband Michael, 43 years old, theme park fan and closet Disney fan, all-round awesome dad. This was his second time to WDW (the first was our honeymoon!).



This is our daughter, Myla. She’d turned 2 in September, and as we had an annual pass to DLP in 2018, she’d already been there 5 times. This was her first trip to Florida and first long plane flight. From our DLP trips, we knew what she liked (animal characters! ) and we were so excited to show her all the awesomeness!


Joining us was my mom, Hetty, 68 years old, retired nurse, and a Disney nut before I was even born - she visited Disneyland in California in 1981, and fell in love - hence her taking us as kids to DLP so often! Seeing Disney World was a dream for her, and I felt so lucky to share this with her.


And my brother Steven (35), sister-in-law Ramona (36), with their kids Jesse (nearly 3) and Nina (7 months) joined us for 8 park days as well.


The Plans

Due to circumstances, this was actually quite a last-minute trip. It was only booked in October, which is madness for a Christmas trip haha! We normally are absolutely on-site-only people, but there was nothing reasonable left to book on-site 2 months out for 14 days, so we ended up booking a lovely Windsor Hills 3-bed apartment with a pool view via Magical Vacation Homes (property MVH_019M if anyone is interested!). This was reasonable, still pretty close to the parks, and worked out perfectly as we were then able to invite my mom to come along too - in a normal hotel room, this would have been a bit much for 2 whole weeks! But with the apartment, everyone had their own bedrooms and bathrooms, and we all had some privacy and space to spread out.

Because I knew it’d be super busy, we basically planned each day to pretty much do the 3 FPs I’d booked, and not count on much else. If any other rides had short queues, we might do them, but we weren’t counting on it. This actually made for a quite relaxed pace, and helped us brave the crowds a bit better. Luckily, we were here for enough days that I was able to get FPs for every single ride/show we wanted to do!

I also booked a few TS meals (whereas we normally mostly do QS when the fancy strikes us), to avoid looking for food on the busiest days: Mickey's Backyard BBQ on Christmas Day, Be Our Guest for Boxing Day, and Garden Grill for New Year’s Eve. This combined with Mobile Ordering, worked out perfectly and we didn’t queue for food even once.

Our flights came in around £600 per person, and were Amsterdam-Gatwick with BA, Gatwick - MCO with Virgin on the way over, and MCO - Manchester with Virgin, Manchester - Amsterdam with BA on the way back. Absolutely no complaints there, the flights were all great, no problems luckily!

[ravenwing]

Hi Micah, I've just started reading this as I've missed loads of trip reports over the summer - but then I recognised your photo It is indeed a small world afterall...

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Haha it is indeed a small world! As a genuine Disney fan, I can say my browsing The Dibb outdates my company lol!

[minnie52]

I have just found this - looking forward to reading about your trip. We have planned to go just after Christmas this year and have been worried about the crowds but good to hear you still had a good time.

[2017dream]

hi there...
Just been having a look at Magical Vacation Homes website at the apartment and some villas ..
How did you find the company, only booked through vrbo before but found a perfect villa on here and wondered what they are like to use
Thanks and looking forward to reading your trip report
Claire

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Originally Posted by 2017dream

hi there...
Just been having a look at Magical Vacation Homes website at the apartment and some villas ..
How did you find the company, only booked through vrbo before but found a perfect villa on here and wondered what they are like to use
Thanks and looking forward to reading your trip report
Claire

See more...

Hi Claire! I found them through recommendations in a Facebook group I was in at the time. We had no problems at all with them, the apartment was lovely and SO reasonably priced. If we were staying offsite again, I definitely wouldn't hesitate to use them again.