I occurred to me that I should maybe explain how we ended up with so darn many trips to Disney between August 2014 and August 2015. Believe it or not, even though I love all things Disney, it didn't exactly start out as a plan to see how many times we could get there in one year. So we'll just consider this the prologue or prequel to my series on Saving Money on your Disney Vacations.
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| Our first Disney Cruise: November 2013 |
It actually started with our first Disney Cruise in November, 2013. I never suspected we would enjoy cruising as much as we did. And Disney offers a 10% discount and a $200 on board credit for your next cruise if you book on board. So we booked a "place holder" cruise, planning to move it to an Alaskan Cruise for the summer of 2015 which we did actually booked as soon as we could and started to get really excited about.
Then, my brother, Hyrum, decided we needed to go to Disneyland with him in the Summer of 2014. (Truth is, we had discussed maybe going in August right after Orange County and LA Unified went back to school and before we did.) I hemmed and hawed because I wasn't sure how we'd pay for Alaska and Disneyland, even if they weren't in the same year. But Hyrum and his cute family live in Texas and we don't get to see them nearly as often as we'd like. And he got right on top of planning it and was texting me so much, I actually had to change my cellphone plan to keep up. (True story!). Then not too long after he launched the plan, my cousin's husband died and she asked if she could come with us and bring her toddler. How do you say no to all of that!?!
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| Disneyland, August 2014 with my brother Hyrum and his family (including his brother in law), and my cousin Carol and her son. |
To make a very long complicated story short, we then found out the boys' school schedule would not allow us to take that Alaskan Cruise we had booked. (We thought we were going to transfer to a traditional school but God had plans for us to stay at a year round school.) Ugh! Even our backup plan to go on the West Bound Panama Canal Cruise fell through. However, a four week break from MLK Day to Presidents Day would be a great time to visit the Caribbean. And since it was much cheaper than Alaska, we could pay for Disneyland too!
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| Formal Night on the Disney Fantasy, January 2015 |
Next, We toyed with the idea of spending an extra week in Florida before or after the cruise. After all, we were paying all that money to get to Florida in the first place and the boys were out of school for FOUR LONG WEEKS in the middle of winter. To make another long story short, my good friend Angie told me her family was going to Walt Disney World the week before our cruise. Shut the front door! How fun would it be if we were there at the same time!?!?! And that, in a nutshell is how out week at Walt Disney World came about.
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| Walt Disney World, January 2015 with our North Carolina besties, the Pegrams and Hatleys. |
Then, we talked about how we would not want to miss the Disneyland 60th Anniversary Celebration. After all, we went for the 40th and the 50th. And since the boys were on year round school why not just upgrade our tickets for our August trip to annual passes so we could go a few more times during their breaks. When would we have another chance to visit the park so many times during non-peak times?
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| At Mickey's Halloween Party, Disneyland, October 2014 |
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| Riding Splash Mountain, April 2015 |
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| Celebrating the Diamond Anniversary: August 2015 |
You can see, like so many other things in my life, what started off as a trip-of-a-lifetime to Alaska morphed into our Year of Disney Magic. And no, I never grew tired of it. Neither did my kids. (James is another story. Ha ha!) I would do it all again given the same circumstances.
I'm planning to share my next post on Saving Money on Your Disney Vacations next week so stay tuned! If you missed the first post in the series it's here:
Saving Money on Your Disney Vacation Part 1: Gift Cards
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