Sunday 12 February 2012

Planning our Disney / Florida Trip


Planning Disney / Florida ...
   For a few years my kids have been harassing us to go to Disney.  In my mind the cost was astronomical, and we would tell them "sure when we win the lottery".  I would tell my husband Christopher that if we were going to spend that kind of money, I would like to go to Scotland or Italy.  Then a friend of mine went to Disney with her family of 5.  She told me that it did not cost nearly as much as she thought it would, she then told me what it cost them.  I then went onto the Disney website, and discovered that she was right, it was not cheap, but it was not astronomical, we could do it.  I also found out through our CAA travel agent that we could make payments a year in advance, in other words, we could lay away our trip.  That sealed the deal.  I am happy to tell you that we made the last and final payment this past Wednesday.  Disney here we come!   When we booked the trip it seemed like years away, but time is really creeping up, we leave at the end of March!
    I am a PLANNER, I hate schedules, but I LOVE planning (I guess I am just a riddle wrapped in an enigma).  I picked up an inexpensive binder, some stickers, and some clear page protectors and a snap page protector.  This has become the trip bible.  It contains our trip itinerary, map quest directions to and from each destination, our trip budget, and our hotel reservation numbers, as well as maps of the different states that we will pass through (the snap page protector).
    We have our trip completely planned out.  We have set a budget.  We have guesstimated our gas costs in a very scientific manner ( it takes us a full tank of gas to get to Acton, we then divided the total miles to Florida by the miles to Acton, which told us the amount of times we would have to refuel, and then figured a tank of gas costs $100.00 and multiplied the amount of stops by $100.00 and then added a cushion to that).  We have decided that we will need 8 hotel rooms on top of our Disney Resort, and figured $100.00 each stay.  You get the drift.  We have also investigated the costs of the other attractions that we will be visiting.  Inevitably there will be something that we will not have taken into consideration.
    We are now have just a little over a month until we leave and there is still so much to do to get ready.  We are not new to the long distance road trip.  We have made a few family vacations to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.  I consider myself to be an expert packer, and I think I am ready for this one.
I will keep you up to date with the preparations.  Now if anyone can suggest ideas that I can use to hypnotize my husband into buying me a laptop so that I can blog every day on the trip.





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