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Old 4 Jun 18, 11:03 AM  
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#1
Mrstenberge
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Join Date: May 14
The 40th Birthday trip, 3 years early-May 2019

Hello and welcome, if you are here!

Cast of 2, as always.

Firstly, me (Kelly), will be 37 during the trip, how did that happen!?! I am the chief planner and creator of spreadsheets.




And Mum (Maxine), will be 61 at the time of the trip. Happy to leave the planning to me, but does have some input. Mum is being made redundant quite soon, so is going to retire, so she will be all relaxed when we travel.



The title comes from the fact that, we definitely weren’t going back until my 40th. This has changed for 2 real reasons and 1 that I tease Mum about! The real reasons are that we’re not sure we’ll be able to afford it in another 3 years if prices keep rising and then let’s face it, who can actually wait that long! I teased Mum on the second of her 60th birthday trips that she’d be too old by the time I’m 40! I love her really!

So, what’s the plan?

If you read my previous reports, you will know that we were upgraded to SSR on our 2017 trip less than 2 weeks before we flew owing to the CBR debacle. We loved it, so the plan was to stay there again. Disney had changed the way they sell SSR, so we started to look at other options, just in case. We had narrowed it down to 2 alternatives, POFQ and AKL (which is my dream!).

Along with lots of other Dibbers, we were on Free Dining watch for weeks and when it was finally released the website was a nightmare. I had priced up AKL on Virgin that morning, but POFQ wasn’t available but at least I had an idea of a price for one of our options. Come lunchtime and I can finally get on the Disney site, where POFQ is still not available and AKL is coming up at roughly the same price without flights as Virgin was offering with flights. No brainer, quick call to Mum, and the decision was made. 14 nights at AKL, flying Virgin, with Free Disney Dining and $200 Gift Card, most expensive lunch I’ve ever had!

We were originally going to book either POFQ or AKL and then see if we could pay to move to SSR at a later date, but we’ve both got our hearts set on AKL now, so we’re staying put. Let’s just hope they don’t decide to knock half of it down before next May, I cannot go through all that again!
Rough plans so far;

ADRs

Tusker House (Lunch)
Hollywood and Vine (Dinner)
Be Our Guest (Breakfast and Lunch)
Crystal Palace (Lunch)
Akerhaus (Lunch)
Garden Grill (Breakfast)
Chef Arts Homecomin’ (Dinner)
California Grill Brunch
Grand Floridian Café (Lunch)
Frontera Cocina (Dinner)

We cannot decide between Boma, Sanaa and Jiko, but one or more will be involved at some point. Tiffins is also in contention though!

Fast-passes

Mum loves Space Mountain and I love Haunted Mansion so our MK days will be interspersed with several rides on these 2!



We both loved FOP in AK, so will be hoping for a couple of Fastpasses during the trip. Oh and Expedition Everest, firm favourite with both of us.

We’re not planning on any water park trips this time, we never seem to stay there long anyway, so will probably do our relaxing at the AKL pool instead.

We usually do an organised shopping trip, but have decided after trying the Uber’s out on our September trip, to use them instead. Much cheaper and you only have to go where you want to go.

It will be our first trip Flower and Garden Festival, so we’re looking forward to that, all the snacks!

We’re almost at seat booking stage but then that’s it until November so I’m in that planning stage where you know what you want to do, but you can’t do anything about it, so I’m currently reading trip reports and trying to pick up tips along the way.

We’ve got a trip to DLP in December which was planned before WDW was even being considered, so we’ll have a Mickey fix before the end of the year!

Thank you for reading.

Edited at 11:43 AM.
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Old 26 Jul 18, 08:50 PM  
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AKCK
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Looks like you had a blast on the last trip .
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Old 11 Aug 18, 03:12 PM  
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Unexpectedpenny
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We’re going in May too but staying at POFQ!
Sounds like a good trip planned so far. I’d pick Sanaa out of those 3, it’s one of my favourites. Flower and garden is the best time at EPCOT, I hope you enjoy it, it’s so pretty!
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Old 14 Jan 19, 11:08 AM  
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Mrstenberge
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Join Date: May 14
Little update. We had a little Disney fix at Disneyland Paris just before Christmas, which was lovely and not nearly as cold as we were expecting. All the ADR's are booked, too many ADR's actually, but hopefully it will all work out!

So we've booked;

2nd May Be Our Guest breakfast and Storybook Dining at Artist Point
3rd May Yak and Yeti dinner
4th May Birthday trip to Akerhaus lunch with Garden Rocks seating for Herman's Hermits! (Mum sings a Herman's Hermits song to me sometimes to wake me up, so it seemed like serendipity when they were playing on my Birthday!)
5th May Grand Floridian Cafe dinner
6th May Tusker House lunch Rivers of Light package and Pizzafari family style dining
7th May Crystal Palace lunch
8th May Minnie's Seasonal Dine at Hollywood and Vine Fantasmic package
9th May Chip n Dale's Harvest Feast breakfast at Garden Grill
10th May Be Our Guest lunch
11th May Chef Art Smith's Homecomin' dinner
12th May California Grill-Brunch at the Top (I've booked this for 12.15 but I've seen reports that if you have a later reservation, they're pushing you out and not topping things up, so I'm not sure if I've done the right thing)
13th May Coral Reef lunch and Storybook Dining at Artist Point (I've booked a second reservation here in case it's amazing and Mum loves Dopey!)
14th May Sanaa lunch
15th May Boma breakfast before hometime

We're both on the old Slimming World in preparation so looking forward to all the food!

Edited at 11:11 AM.
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Old 9 Jun 19, 02:32 PM  
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mick
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Location: Rugby

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All sounds like a great holiday

Joan
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