You can see in the video that I took exactly how we told Abi where we were going. It was such a relief to finally tell her!
After I had stopped filming the excitement grew more and more as it became more and more real that we were really going to Disney World.
A great story from this time is that when I was telling her about the hotel and its many pools I told Abi that I couldn't find my swimsuit before we left home. A few minutes later I pulled out the girls birthday gifts from Aunt Stephanie and her family... Disney gift cards! I told Abi she could use hers to get anything she wanted. She said, "Mom, I'm going to buy you a swimsuit!"
I thought that was so sweet but of course I didn't let her do it.
We were all a little giddy as we drove under this sign indicating we were entering
Walt Disney World!
Then the excitement grew again as we found the turn off for our resort. We stayed in the Pop Century Resort. I picked it because it is one of the value resorts. They have three levels- Value, Moderate, and Deluxe. I was a little worried about being in a value because they are the cheapest and have the fewest amenities and we had heard bad things about the place from one of Doug's friends... but I had heard many good things about it from people on the Dis.boards. The Dis boards are an online forum of all things Disney that I have been reading for a few years now and where I got almost all my information that made this trip so great.
So, we decided to take a chance on it because it made the trip so much more affordable.
Our first glimpse of Classic Hall- this is where you check in, shop, catch buses, and eat...
Ready to go check in! As you can see from all the dates behind Doug and the girls, the theme of Pop Century is different decades. There is the 90's building, the 80's building, and so on. Each building has these huge icons of that time period. It looked really cheesy online and in pictures but I knew Abi would love it. Turns out, we all did!
We were thrilled when we walked in the lobby. What I had heard was true. It may not be as grand as walking into the lobby of a deluxe, but it is shiny, pretty, and most importantly CLEAN! Disney really goes above and beyond in this department. Everywhere we went was clean and well taken care of. I love that.
Each hotel has a little kid area where they can hang out and watch cartoons while their parents check in.
We arrived at about 1 pm and since check in is at 3, the room wasn't quite ready yet. They were able to check us in though and then we just needed to call back over at 3 so they could tell us which room. We already had our keys to the world and they would then activate them.
She did tell us we were in the 70's section which is what I requested! Yay! I wanted the 70's because I knew they had just been refurbished, they are close to classic hall and the pool but not close enough to have all the noise, and they were close to the playground.
The lady that checked me in gave us our first dose of Disney magic by giving the girls each a balloon. A pink one for Maddy and a purple one for Abi.
After checking in, we walked over to look at the lobby Christmas tree. A cast member (that's what people that work at Disney are called.) came over to us to ask us if we wanted him to take our picture. He then gave each of the girls a bunch of stickers and talked to us for a few minutes. He was from Jamaica.
Then we walked through the gift shop. I bought a bunch of refillable mugs- one for Doug, one for me, one for Abi, and two for my parents. These are great because they are cute mugs that you can use as a souvenir. They cost around 12 dollars and you can fill them up with soda or hot chocolate as much as you want your entire stay. We definitely got our money's worth!
Abi was beyond excited. Maddy was too. There was just so much to look at. We decided to go explore the grounds while we waited for our room. We looked at the pools...
this one was the bigger heated pool...
and this was the kiddie wading pool where we spent a lot of our time...
There are also two other huge pools in different areas of the resort.
As we walked around I think we all just felt so happy. They were playing Christmas music, it was warm (this wouldn't happen much during our trip) and we were all just so excited!
Outside of our room there were a few Twister areas. Abi had never played Twister before and this became something we had to do almost every day.
We liked the giant Mickey Mouse phone because Doug's parents have a Mickey phone. We didn't know at the time that we were playing here at this giant foosball game that our room would be right by the Mickey phone!
Another one of Abi's favorite things during our stay was to have Doug put her up into the giant numbers by classic hall..
this is the gift shop and food court...
Another favorite... the Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head icons. We visited them a lot.
At 3pm we called to get our room number. It was 6171. We were so excited!
Abi was very happy to see we had a towel animal waiting in our window!
I had Doug stay with the girls while I unloaded the car. It took forever! I wanted to get a picture of our room before it got completely taken over by all of our stuff...
The rooms are very small but they are fine for how often we were in them. They were very clean and the beds were very comfortable.
After I was done getting everything in the room, I had Doug take Abi to the wading pool while I set up the gift bags and banner I had brought. This is the little card I made to set next to the bags. I got all my cards, invitations, and tags designs from designers on the dis boards for free.
the welcome bags lined up.... Maddy's was the Minnie Mouse, Abi's was the Ariel, and the Princess one was for Doug and I.
When this was done, I went over to the pool to meet up with Doug and Abi. Abi was having a blast swimming around. She made some friends and swam for quite awhile but by this point it was starting to get much colder so we soon had to go back to the room.
We changed clothes and then went to the food court for dinner.
We were on the dining plan which turned out to be the best thing ever. When I was planning the trip we were originally going to be arriving on the 5th of December which is the day that my parents came in, but when I found out they had free dining at different parts of December (we were there during black out days for that) I called and asked a cast member if we could arrive three days earlier on the last day of free dining and still get it for our entire vacation... I had heard this was the case on the dis boards. He said yes. So, I extended our vacation to arrive on the 2nd instead and we got the dining plan for free our entire trip as well as we saved $200. We were already doing the plan so this was just great to get it for free. The only thing was that we already had a 20% off coupon for our room that we couldn't use along with it... which is why it was only $200 off. My parents were able to still use the room coupon though.
My biggest advice when going to Disney is to always ask for discounts. They will never tell you about them.. but if you ask you will be surprised. Never pay full price!
So, the dining plan is programmed into your Key to the World cards. These are the coolest. Each family member gets one and they are your room key, your park ticket, your dining plan, and you can even use them to charge things to your room and then go back later to pay the front desk in cash. Because of this we didn't ever have to carry money with us!
The dining plan allowed for one table service (sit down type restaurant), one counter service (fast food type) and one snack per day per person. You do not have to use all those every day though. It just gives you the credits all on the card for how many you get for your entire stay.
Our first meal was in the food court that night.
Abi had a hot dog with fries, jello, and apple juice. She loved it.
Doug and I both had the veggie lasagna which was so good. It came with a salad and breadstick. Doug got a powerade and I got orange juice. Each adult counter service comes with a dessert as well so I got a cupcake that I shared with the girls and Doug got an ice cream Mickey bar. I shared the lasagna with Maddy too and she loved it. All the food was great.
There is a story here. Doug was the only one that had been to Disney World before. He was very young and was only there for a day... and only went to Epcot but he had wanted a Mickey ice cream bar and didn't get one. So, he had many of them on this trip!
After dinner we went back to our room and opened our welcome bags.
This was another idea I got from the dis boards. The idea is you fill them up with the little things that are Disney themed and it keeps your kids from wanting them at the parks so you can spend souvenir money on the cooler bigger things.
For example, Abi had a bunch of different kinds of glow bracelets, sticks, and necklaces. They each had a few little toys, books, and stickers as well as a stuffed toy and some new Disney pajamas. I got everything for the bags at home from Target's dollar section or the Disney store clearance. I've been collecting for a few years now.
For ours I put in rain ponchos, notebooks I made, magnet stickers to decorate our door, candy bars, some Harry Potter stuff, and our refillable mugs.
Another thing I did was to buy pins on ebay. I knew Abi would like pin trading.. although I had no idea how much she was going to LOVE it! So, I bought a lot of 20 random pins on ebay for $12. We kept the ones we all really liked from the bunch. (I'll post a picture next post) and then Abi traded the rest. She traded every single pin and got great ones in return. The trick is to mostly trade with cast members. They have really good ones and will trade for anything.
We came home with 20 really awesome pins that would have each cost at least $6 or 7 or more.
I also made Abi an autograph book- I'll post pictures of that next post as well. So, that was in her bag as well although I did tell her that I made it. She thinks the bags were left by Mickey and the princesses so I told her I threw it in the bag.
It was so much fun to open the bags and get even more excited about everything. The girls slept in their new pajamas that night.
Abi said her favorite thing was the chocolate frog... because it was food. Haha.
I gave the girls baths which ended up with me having to wash my jeans out in the tub.. thanks a lot Maddy. Then we all went to bed.
It was such a great day and so surreal to finally be at Disney!
