November 2011
Fresh off last week’s list of five Disney things I learned on our recent trip is another installment.
Beware of Hidden Fees. This first one isn’t good news, my Disney friends. I was initially charged a $20 processing fee for two cases of water I had shipped to my resort from Costco.
Three months earlier, I ordered a case of water from Staples and shipped it to a different resort and there were no processing charges. The difference, it turns out, is whether the resort has a business center.
After some investigation (and a call to the resort manager), I found out that non-USPS packages are received by the business center, if the resort has one. Since the businesses centers are operated independently from Disney, they may charge a processing fee. My water arrived via UPS, the business center received it, and I was charged by weight. The manager did refund the charges to my room after I expressed my dissatisfaction but had no satisfactory answer as to how to avoid these charges in the future if I ship packages via UPS. The moral is I will continue to ship my packages of kids’ supplies via USPS and have water delivered by a local delivery service.
You Won’t Find any Mickey Impersonators Among Cast Members. My six year-old was having a moment and in my own moment of frustration, I foolishly told him if he didn’t start listening, I would tell Mickey not to bring his gift that day. (Mickey visits our room while we’re at the theme parks and leaves a small gift for the boys each day). Wouldn’t you know it but he called my bluff and wanted to know exactly how I was going to contact Mickey? I bought myself a few minutes, grabbed a crayon, and headed to the front desk. I asked the friendly Cast Member to write a short note from Mickey on resort letterhead; I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to disguise my handwriting. She politely refused and explained Cast Members cannot write notes from Mickey Mouse. She did give me a piece of letterhead though. My left hand, a crayon, and the letterhead did the trick and Mickey paid my son a visit every day for the rest of the trip.
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Today’s article is quite the hodgepodge. It is a list of random things I either learned or was reminded of while on my last Disney trip. Enjoy!
1. Two Mouths are Better than One. My mom and I have similar taste in food and in the past we’ve tackled the Epcot Food & Wine Festival without an effective plan. We would stop at a booth and each order what we wanted. The end result? We picked the same thing and after eating only a few dishes, we were stuffed to the gills. This year, we used our noggin instead of just our taste buds and went in with a plan. We picked dishes we both would enjoy and split them, thus doubling the number of items we ate. Over the course of week, we had at least one dish from almost all the booths which was a marked improvement over our previous attempts.
2. Invest in a Stroller Rain Cover. This is one essential that I have been cavalier about packing in the past. It has rarely rained during our October trips so I never worried about having a rain cover for our stroller. Big mistake. I looked at the weather forecast a few days before our trip and saw dark rain clouds for more than half the days on our trip. Luckily, Kingdom Strollers, who provided our double stroller, includes rain covers upon request. We were able to keep the kids and the stroller very, very dry while spending our days in the parks instead of climbing the walls in our resort room.
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Investing in a few good, key pieces of travel gear for your Walt Disney World vacation can make a great trip really outstanding. A sturdy, quality walking shoe; the perfect theme park bag to carry water, a camera, and ponchos; and if you’re traveling with kids – a high-quality, maneuverable stroller will smooth out some bumps in your theme park touring experience.
Through the years, I’ve learned that I need some different features on the stroller I use at Walt Disney World than at the local mall; namely, a large sunshade, maneuverability, and ease of pushing are my highly prized Walt Disney World stroller characteristics. Of course, the stroller must be super-clean, recline and fold easily, and have storage. My two strollers at home just don’t cut it.
My umbrella stroller doesn’t have enough storage, the sunshade is inadequate for being out most of the day in the strong Florida sun and it doesn’t feel sturdy enough to stand up to the workout we give the stroller while touring the Disney theme parks.
My sturdy Graco stroller is a champ at home – surviving two kids and more than six years of use. However, maneuverability and easy of pushing are not some of its key attributes.
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Halloween was going to be special this year. We would be in Walt Disney World and my husband and I decided to take our six year-old to Mickey’s Not-So-Scary Halloween Party for the first time. It would be a special night for him. He would stay up late trick-or-treating in the Magic Kingdom with his mom and dad all to himself while Grandma had a date (aka babysitting) with his little brother.
A wonderful, special time was had by our little group of three but days later, I’m still wondering if “it was worth it.” The best answer I can come up with is one my friend, Nancy from The Affordable Mouse, likes to say, “It depends.”
Here’s a little background on my son and Mickey’s Not-So-Scary Halloween Party to put our experience into context.
My Son
My son just turned six and is in bed before eight on school nights. He does however stay up as late as 9:30 on weekends with very little effort if something special is going on.
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Sometimes as a parent you tell your kids to do something that you don’t exactly follow yourself. Of course you know snacking before dinner isn’t the best choice but sometimes the leftover Halloween candy seems to call your name. The problem is you may be too full to enjoy the surprise dinner your husband cooks for you.
The same thing happens to veteran Disney-goers also. As the author of a Disney travel guide for families visiting with young children, I recommend attractions in each park that are appropriate for preschoolers. Innoventions in Epcot is one of those attractions. It’s a great option for young kids who learn best by touching and doing because of its many hands-on exhibits. It’s also one of the attractions my family always means to experience but never quite gets around to when faced with other Epcot greats like Soarin’, Spaceship Earth, Turtle Talk with Crush, and Test Track.
Enter the rain. On our recent trip, rain threatened our plans a few days. We decided to forego Downtown Disney one such day in favor of Epcot. Epcot is a great park to visit in the rain because many pavilions have more than one attraction under the same roof. We headed over to Innoventions and our six and two year-olds happily spent a couple of hours exploring the exhibits. The real treasure, however, was the Great Piggy Bank Adventure by T.Rowe Price.
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