Thursday, August 30, 2012

We're heading West!!!

The second I read the details for Carsland at Disneyland, I had already started planning a trip out west!! We are HUGE Cars fans here and it's a must do for us. No "someday," no "maybe," no "when we get the chance." It was "we are going...I don't care how much it costs!"

For us, a trip to California involves a long cross-country flight. That is not cheap. The flight itself is not much less than our entire Disney World package for this year, including resort and park passes for 7 nights. (We got free dining, so technically the $2300 includes food too.) But yeah...I priced flights and for the four of us, we'll be lucky to do it for $2000. We will most likely fly home from Las Vegas, which should save us about $400.

So yeah, our vacation will include a night in Vegas. And a night in Hollywood. And a couple more nights in So Cal, in addition to the 5 nights at Disneyland. If we're flying that far for that much money, we're sure making it into a grand vacation!

In the end, the trip will cost almost double what we pay for a trip to WDW. It will be longer though...11 nights versus 7. And we have to rent a car for the second half of the CA trip, which is something we never do at WDW. But I know it will all be worth it to walk down the street in Radiator Springs!!

Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Decided against Be Our Guest for dinner

Everyone in the Disney community was all a flutter when it was officially announced that the new Be Our Guest restaurant in the Magic Kingdom would open on November 19th. We arrive only 9 days after that!!! When I made my original ADRs, I made one for Liberty Tree Tavern with the hope of canceling it for the fancy new place. Not that we don't love LTT, we do. The food is awesome, but since they discontinued the characters there, we haven't been back. There always seemed to be somewhere else that sounded more fun.

But anyway, our ressie at BOG would be the final piece in making this upcoming trip fantastic!!! Until I saw the official menu posted just a  few days ago. It's not all that great, in my honest opinion. Did I really want to give up a good meal for a so-so one? Did I really want to get up early and wait on hold for who knows how long...and possibly come up empty-handed anyway?

After talking with hubby, we decided to skip it. The lunch menu for BOG sounds awesome and much more up our alley. And since it's a counter service place during the day, we can still dine there and see how cool it is. Win win!

I perused the Disney boards to see how my fellow Disney mega fans fared in the great ADR hunt. I read stories of it taking hours to even get through the phone lines, to hold for an hour or more, and not get a reservation. Others had luck, but not without hours of calling and trying to get through.