We are now one month from our trip to Mickey’s house (that is what Shayna calls it) and we are beginning in earnest to plan the trip. We actually planned one piece a while back. About two months back, I called 407-WDW-DINE and made a reservation for breakfast at Chef Mickey’s. This restaurant, which is in the Contemporary resort near The Magic Kingdom, serves only Breakfast and Dinner and both meals are character meals. Different Disney characters will come out during the meal and visit each table and take photos and sign the kids’ books. Everyone always has a great time at these meals, and the book up very fast which is why I reserved so early. We are going on Wed at 8:15 am. Early, for sure, but we will then have most of the day at The Magic Kingdom without losing much time.
Beyond that we have not made any meal reservations. One thing about staying at a time share resort is that we save money by doing our own dinners. We may have dinner out once and mkm and I are definitely going out for a meal one night, but the rest of the time we eat in house.
Part of planning out the week involves deciding which parks to go to on which days. Disney sells many different kinds of tickets. The basic ticket allows you entry into one park for one day. You can then purchase multiple days which allows you into one park on each day. The interesting thing is that when you get to a four day ticket, any extra days are about $2 – $4 per day. So we are purchasing 5 day tickets. We will have Tuesday – Thursday to go to parks and we are buying the 5th so we can go for a few hours on Sunday as well.
The next part of ticket purchasing is park-hopper or no park-hopper. Park-hopper is a $45 add on which allows you to move between parks on any day during your stay. You can go to The Magic Kingdom in the morning and Epcot in the afternoon. When you are staying onsite (on of Disneyworld’s resorts) this makes sense but when you are staying off site, it does not, so we are not getting it.
We will arrive in Orlando at about 9:30 and by the time we get our car and get to our resort; it will probably be about noon. We’ll give the kids some lunch and let them go in the pool while we unpack and then probably go to Downtown Disney for a few hours at the end of the day. If you have not been to Downtown Disney it is a lot of fun. It is mainly a shopping area, but at the different stores there are lots of things for the kids to play with, especially at the giant Lego store.
On Tuesday we will most likely go to Epcot. This way we will know if we want a second day there or not later in the week. Wednesday is The Magic Kingdom and the rest of the week is yet to be planned.
Come back to find out more!