Minnie Minus Mickey: A Single Mom Plans for Disney—Planning Your Parks, Day 1

photo via http://www.flickr.com/photos/peterpanfan1953/2988432838/

Happy Friday, Disney-lovin’ friends!  One thing that is on my mind when planning a Disney trip is which park I’ll be in which day.  So, I check out the calendar for school, flight schedules, and, of course, the Disney Parks calendars.

Since I booked over six months out, I had to wait (and wait, and wait) for the events calendar to come out on the Disney site.  I’m not a big fan of waiting for information I want it NOW, so I checked out historic crowd levels for certain days (all of them were low, due to the time of year we’re going), as well as expected dates for Mickey’s Not-So-Scary-Halloween Party, which we are so excited about!  The dates for that still haven’t been officially announced, but that is a separate ticketed event, and we can get in even if we end up in a different park that day.  Whew!I was considering traveling Saturday to Tuesday to save money (a shorter trip that didn’t include the higher price room rates of both Friday and Saturday). With the help of my travel agent, though, I discovered that Thursday to Monday, though a day longer and including both weekend nights, was almost exactly the same price in the end!  How is that possible?  One word…Airfare.  Traveling on a weekend is significantly more expensive.  The prices dropped (one-way for one ticket) from in the $190s to the $120s.  So, by changing my dates a bit, I saved an estimated $140 on two tickets, which is more than enough to cover an extra night at Pop Century, and breaks me right about even including our meal plan for an extra night.   I cannot express how relieved I am to be staying an extra night for the same amount.  That means we’ll get to do so much more, and see all of the parks!  🙂

Our flight on Thursday is early, so when we arrive, I plan on having a little down time unpacking before we hit our first stop, and one of my favorite places in all of Disney World…Downtown Disney!   When we arrive, I plan to give my son one of the “souvenirs” I am working on now.  Each day (ok, sometimes twice a day), I will have little surprises for him, both to cut down on the cost of buying souvenirs there and to watch his excited little face as he gets a present from Mickey, Goofy, or, my favorite, Luke Skywalker.  Our first day, he’ll get a birthday present from the Big Cheese himself, I’m thinking a LEGO set, since we’ll be doing Downtown Disney.  The biggest draw there for my LEGO-fanatic son is, of course, the LEGO store.  By giving a LEGO set before leaving, I’m hoping to cut down the overwhelming need he’ll feel to buy everything in the store, where he knows he’ll be bringing his own spending money.

We should be ready to leave the room for Downtown Disney by about 2:30, and tour until 7:00, when we’ll need to leave for our first ADR at Chef Mickey’s!  I think that’s the perfect way to end the transition day from normal life to the magical Disney life.  We’ll follow up dinner with a Magic Kingdom “Wishes” fireworks viewing from the Contemporary, and end with a (free!) ride along the monorail to the transportation hub, where we’ll catch a bus back to Pop Century, where a stuffed Mickey will be waiting on Andrew’s bed, ready to help him get to sleep.  The next morning, Friday, we will be heading straight for Magic Kingdom, and I’ve got a special gift for my special boy then, too.  🙂