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Planning Disney – STEP 1 – Where and When

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STEP 1 – choose when and where for how long

Now that I’ve listed all the parks, the earliest and first step is choosing which parks you’re going to, when you’re going, and for how long. Although it’s warm in Florida for most of the year, one of the water parks close down during different months in the fall/winter for maintenance…so if you have your heart set on snorkeling with sharks, you better make sure they’re not shutting the Lagoon for maintenance. Also the time of year affects what special events are available.

So we’re going during the Halloween season, and we’re going for a decent length of trip. (I’m fuzzy for security reasons.) We’re not hitting any water parks, though mini-golf MIGHT be on the menu, we haven’t decided yet. We’re hitting MK, AK, Epcot for sure. We now hit other places in Orlando, so we’ll hit Universal this trip (No Seaworld this time) and we’re deciding on how long and when still as we’re not that far in planning yet.

In this step, I really want to emphasize how much better it is to stay ON DISNEY PROPERTY.

I used to think that was a bunch of hype-ey crap, but now that I’ve done this a few times, here are the reasons why, and here are some budget solutions as well:

A) Driving in and parking means having to find a place, having to remember where it is. It also means fighting the lines of folks to get in, finding your car to get back, and driving back out along with every other tourist. There’s also about 16 bucks a day for parking. You can stay off site, but then you’re stuck with their schedule for their shuttles, which may not be as convenient, as opposed to the constantly running buses at the hotels on site. The nearby hotels aren’t as nearby as they could be (it’s certainly not New York) and if you’re driving on unfamiliar roads at night while exhausted, that just sucks. The parking lots are so huge they have trams that drive around to give you a ride to the park. This is incredibly time consuming, which doesn’t sound like it’s such a big sacrifice until you consider:

B)How exhausted you and your children will be. Almost no child gets tired at Disney World. There’s too much stimulation. But by the time you start to leave and the park closes down (different times of night for different parks and events) we see it all the time, every time. The kids pass out. They’re asleep sometimes before they even get to the gate, and they’re dead weight, along with all the souvenirs you’ve bought. If you have the type of kid that needs a nap and then wakes up ready to run again, you have to make sure you don’t wake them up while finding the car, strapping them in, driving to the hotel, unpacking them and the car, putting them to bed, etc., and if they wake up and realize they’re in the land of the Mouse, getting them back to sleep might be a problem.  By contrast, when you stay on Disney property, you get on a bus, someone else drives, you arrive very quickly without having to negotiate unfamiliar roads, and your hotel room has of course been Disnefied in your absence (often with your stuffed animals posed around the room watching TV or looking out the windows waiting for you to get there. Once ours were on the bed which had been turned into a “swimming pool” with towels, and my teddy bear was holding on to the TV remote.) It’s really nice for the kids, if they’re still moving.

C)Speaking of souvenirs – when you stay on Disney property, you can sign a slip of paper, and they will send the items directly to your room. It takes a day for delivery, so you can’t do it on your last day, but when you come “home” all your items are in your room waiting for you. No carrying it around the park. **addendum – Rob says that he believes they no longer deliver to the room, only to the main desk. We’ll confirm that when we get back, if someone remembers to ask**

D)Early open hours – One of the parks (it rotates which ones) will open early every day for the guests that stay on property. If you can get your kids up and moving early, that means you can get first crack at some of the newer more hard-to-get-to rides. We find, however, that most people with children INTEND to do that, but don’t actually get to do that, because kids are kids and foil plans. Our usual plan is to hit the early-open park really early, and then leave around lunch and hit any park that is NOT an early-open, as the early-open park tends to get crowded by all the people who tried to get there hours ago. The non-early-open is, by contrast, much less crowded.

E) Another little known secret – Disney Wake Up Calls – When you stay in a Disney hotel, call and ask for a wake-up call, and then get your kid to answer the phone.  Have a video camera ready.

Wake up calls come from the Disney characters themselves, so Mickey, Tigger, Goofy, you name it, call and tell you how glad they are that you came to the park and how they can’t wait to see you. Rob and I have to share the phone in the morning, it’s pretty awesome.

SO – Budget solutions on that…..

DELUXE

– MONORAIL CIRCUIT – The hotels go by order of convenience, really. The most expensive hotels are the ones that are on the monorail circuit. The monorails run to both the MK and Epcot and are truly the quickest methods of transportation. I don’t know all the hotels by heart (I’m sure Rob does) but among that list are the Grand Floridian, the Contemporary, the Polynesian (which has a Hawaiian theme) and I think the new one they just built is on the circuit as well. So with a monorail hotel you not only get to ride the tram (“por favor mantengense alejado de las puertas!”) which is a nice experience in itself (if you have a small child, ask for the front car. The view is great, and when I was little they used to give out little co-pilot wings) but really is super-super convenient.  Rob has just piped in to tell me that not all the deluxe hotels are on the monorail circuit. AK Lodge and Wilderness Lodge are two examples. Also epcot resorts the Yacht and Beach Club (those are for really rich folk as far as I can tell. They have their own restaurants and dining experiences, and sometimes have more than one.

MODERATE – The mid-range hotels are nice. I rather like them. I think my favorite so far has been the Mexican themed one, Coronado Springs…I meant to get to their swimming pool but I never did. Port Orleans has a mardi gras flair, but there’s also the French Quarter which has theming there as well, and a third part called Dixie Landings which has a plantation style theme. The mid-range hotels have large group dining, but they also have a restaurant. There’s others, but those stand out to me.

VALUE – there are many many other hotels on the property, each one with it’s own design and flair. The budget ones are called the “All-Star” hotels, and believe me, you’re not really sacrificing. Each of them also has theming, All-Star Movies, Pop-Resort, Music, and I think Sports are the themes, and there’s everything from giant toys to climb on to memorabilia all over the place. The rooms are smaller, the pools aren’t as themed, but really…how much time are you going to spend in your room anyway?

BONUS VALUE: As far as I’m concerned, if you like camping, Fort Wilderness is totally the option! If you can drive to Disney and bring your camping equipment, you can camp on the grounds and get all the benefits of being on property (I don’t know how they take care of your souvenirs…they probably send them to the courtesy desk and you pick them up there) for much cheaper. I remember my very first trip the year Disney opened and we camped on the grounds. They sent a little tram around to pick up all the kids and take them to a place where they showed old Disney movies on a screen (Mouse and Goofy cartoons I think) in order to give the parents a little down time and privacy. I don’t know if they still do that, but it’s something to consider. Rob and I have never done this, though if I ever win Lotto, this is totally on my list of things to do. I’ll probably rent one of their log-cabins, though.

STEP 2 – CHOOSE YOUR RESTAURANTS.

…in the next note. But why is this next? I’ll explain that too.

Why I Love My Husband

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I know that people look at Rob and I and see us as an odd couple. Rob seems kind of stiff until you really get to know him, and I’m so NOT stiff, and people have asked me everything from like, “wow…um…how did you meet him?” (It was a karaoke bar) to, “wow…um…how do you put up with that bullshit?” (that’s a very long explanation. Let’s just say that what pushes your buttons doesn’t necessarily push mine, and as long as he doesn’t push mine (or is willing to learn to stop pushing mine) then I’m willing to stick around.) So I figured I’d explain this for valentines day.

There’s these moments in life that define a relationship. After we were engaged, we were fighting, and I took off my engagement ring and I threw it at him. Rob went BALLISTIC. After we were able to discuss things rationally, rob explained something to me that I didn’t know. He said, “You don’t throw things that are emotionally significant. If you must throw things, don’t throw things that MEAN things.” I used to throw things a lot. I used to be really angry a lot of the time, and really frustrated, and I would get to the point where I would throw things, break things. Not a lot of things, not trash a room or anything, I would throw ONE thing, something not breakable. Sometimes it would crash into something breakable, but more often than not, my aim was pretty good. Sometimes I’d just aim at the floor. Rob had to talk to me about my rage issues, and we had to go talk to the therapist about it, and we had to work it out together. The significant thing here is, HE WENT WITH ME. He helped me understand why it was not o.k. to do what I was doing, and he helped me work through it. It took a couple of years, but I don’t do it any more. And I’m a lot less angry.

Another (still when we were engaged) time we were fighting. I was in the shower, and Rob was outside the shower, and I was saying I was just going to leave. You have to imagine that this is my gut instinct, I have moved from place to place more times than I can count, and I was forbidden to call my old friends and had no way to visit them. It was pointless to keep contact. I leave EASY. For most people, it’s the final option. For me, it’s the first and easiest…starting over is WHAT I DO. So when things got tough, I would want to leave, and for Rob…well…change is bad. Rob says if you love somebody, you stay and you work it out, as long as you both want to do so. So here I am, crying in the shower, and Rob’s outside the shower door because he was going to go somewhere, and he just came into the shower. Clothes and all. He just held me and let me cry, and his clothes got soaked and he didn’t care. And he asked me not to go. So I didn’t.

The point is, Rob knows this about me, that it’s my instinct to leave, and that sometimes he has to talk sense into me about that, and that he’s had to teach me about working to stay together. Can you imagine your partner just giving up when you hit a really rough spot? Just giving up and going? I literally just disappear. I wait until he’s not home, and I just go, and then we have to work it out by cell phone. Rob has had the patience to teach me the work part, and when I think about leaving, I think about that moment in the shower, with his jeans and t-shirt getting soaked, feeling his socks next to my bare feet, and knowing that he wasn’t noticing the water at all. All he cared about was me.

Another time, Rob and I had gone to a pin trading event in Manhattan. We were in an atrium, it was winter, and every once in a while you’d hear this CRASH Crash crash-crash. The ice on the building above was melting and falling down in chunks. We ignored it like everyone else and went on trading and looking around. Then the roof shattered.

Rob grabbed me and pushed me up against a pole. He grabbed my face and pushed it into his shoulder so that I wouldn’t get broken glass in it, he spread his back as wide as he could to shield me with his body. In that moment, I buried my face to protect my eyes, and when the crashing stopped, we looked at each other, and then we split into different directions, grabbing people’s children and possessions and handing them back before the next crash came. Rob is protective of me, he likes to know that we live not too far from a hospital (and is leery about living in PA for the same reasons), he wants to know that I have a good winter coat, that my shoes are warm, and that, while he’s in law school all these nights, that I have a comfy couch with a good working gaming system, and stuffed animals that I can hold for comfort when he’s not here. AND EVEN WITH ALL OF THESE PROTECTIONS, Rob also knows that we both have to do what we have to do, and in an emergency, we take care of each other, and then the rest of the world. (I don’t think there were any serious injuries that day. Some minor cuts for people. We were all very lucky.) I am mindful that there are women that have panicked and run out of burning buildings without their children. You never know what you’re going to do until you are in that moment. But I know what Rob would do…he would find me. No matter what.

Then there’s this other thing of mine. I’m just super deep. I do it all the time, I can’t turn it off. My life is therapy. Errol says it’s my kryptonite. If you’ve ever had one of those deep conversations with me that really suck, you have to imagine that Rob lives with that ALL THE TIME. And Rob has the ability to kind of cajole me out of it. He’s silly, and he gets me to be silly with him, and he makes me laugh a lot. He saves me from myself at times (the most recent time I was reading him a text I was sending and he shut my phone and said, “God, Kat, you can’t send that!” I was like, “really?”) even if it’s just knowing where I probably put my keys down, because it’s like I lose them every 15 minutes or something.

Most often when we fight, we’re fighting because he wants more of me. He’s often working or in school, and he misses me a lot. He’s got a dog/wolf spirit, and he’s a one-person animal. So if he doesn’t get to see me he gets really depressed. Dogs and Cats require different maintenance, and they give different rewards. The love you get from a dog is invaluable, they love you no matter what. They require more work, they require company and walking and training, but they live to be with you, and they love you even when you’re a jerk. Even when you don’t deserve it.

He loves me no matter what, and he forgives me my junk. He teaches me how to love deeper and more, and has patience with me in my depression and anger. That’s not to say that he does it perfectly…he often rages right back at me. But he forgives me for it because he does it too, and if the shoe were on the other foot, I would have just let me leave right back at the beginning. Fuck this shit, I would say, this is too much work.

There IS NO “too much work” for Rob. Not when it comes to loving me. That includes all the “No. I really need to discuss this,” and, “I know you don’t like it but I need it,” and “Have you considered that this might be about you?” and “I’m sorry I’m asshole, it’s because of X and Y, can I talk to you about that?” and all the other stuff that most people avoid because I can’t. It’s not my nature to do so. I do that ALL THE TIME. Just about 24-7. Except when he catches me and my life becomes something else.

Something lighter.

He says, “We can discuss that, but first you have to hug me,” or “Explain to me how it’s about me,” AND HE’LL LISTEN. He says, “It’s o.k. if you’re being jerky, I’m a jerk too sometimes. How do we fix that?” Or “I know you’re telling me not to yell, but can you see that the only one yelling right now is you?” In the middle of all my falling down all over myself he catches me when I don’t expect it, he stands me back up again and says, “O.K….now let’s start over.”

I love him. I just do. I am privileged to see parts of him that only get exposed by long-term contact. He doesn’t hide from the rest of you, not really. It’s more like he’s surrounded by a lot of territory and you have to hunt to kind of find him…but once you find him, you have him all the time. The things that he really is. He doesn’t care who sees it. You just kind of have to kind of find it first.

I love the shit out of him. I couldn’t imagine myself trusting anyone more, or living with anyone else.

Happy Valentine’s Day, Rob.