"Our Disney Experience" Began Tonight

So we did it. We took that step from finally, definitely planning to really and truly go to Disney World in November to making reservations. It was a pretty good week, I had a pretty big "win" at work yesterday and was pretty pleased with my bad self already, but this just put my Friday night over the top. It's real. I have the confirmation number and email with said confirmation number. And I've hooked my reservation into the My Disney Experience website and app.

I picked out my MagicBand color.

Red.

It's really happening. 

This isn't to be a big trip, it's another one of our "commando raids" on Walt Disney World. We are lucky enough to live an easy day's drive from The Dis and we aren't at all averse to long car rides, so nine hours is cake. We usually split it up anyhow, leaving the night before we plan to arrive and driving until I feel tired. This makes it easy for us to go for a long weekend.

This time we are (I just wrote "we plan to" and erased it to write "we are". Heh) leaving Thursday, November 20th after work and arriving at Disney on Friday the 21st, The Lovely Miss Lisa's Birthday. We'll stay at Port Orleans French Quarter, our very favorite resort. We have a strategic plan, because, well, you kinda need one to make a weekend trip to Disney from North Carolina worth it. In the past, we've just resort hopped and explored on arrival day of our commando raids, visited one park the next day, then hit Downtown Disney on our leaving day. This time, I really wanted to try to squeeze a bit more out of our time and I think I came up with a good plan.

We wanted to see the Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party because we never have and we loved the Halloween party so very much. I looked at the schedule from 2013 and made the leap that 2014 would be pretty similar. The plan depends on that. It looked to me that MVMCP was held on Fridays but not Saturdays. This works well for us. We'll arrive Friday at about lunchtime, get lunch, check in and be at the gates of the Magic Kingdom in plenty of time to enter as soon as they will let us. We will get from (at the worst) 4 pm until midnight in the Magic Kingdom, plenty of time to experience the party and see the New Fantasyland. Then it's back to our usual schedule and hit Epcot Saturday and Downtown Disney Sunday, leaving about lunchtime Sunday to drive home.

My theory is that this gives us two park days a little less expensively than buying a two-day ticket. MVMCP tickets ran about $65 last year and with park tickets going for about $100, that saves us quite a bit between three tickets. We also lucked out getting a room discount from a friend that saved us a bunch. We'll use those savings to eat very well. We have plans for dining that deserve their own post. There's a bit of a story there....

I like my plan. It's a good plan. And I'm hoping and praying that I can enjoy a little Disney Magic and  actually get us into the Magic Kingdom a couple hours before the official unoffical time of 4:00 pm, because........