Crazy couple hops to 5 resorts at WDW & UO with 5 kids (Sept 2015)

[dr&momto2boys]

...also attempts all rides at all 4 parks in 1 day! (Too long of a title for sure!) (Also not sure which part of the title is crazier!)

Hi all! I have to add our latest WDW trip to my TR series if for no other reason than I love to go back and read them years later and my signature looks like we've been neglecting Disney. If you like to read about how one crazy couple does Disney and Universal with five kids then take a look. It's two weeks of fun, fun, mostly fun! There are lots of pictures and details. Plenty of resort and food pictures too. We stayed at five resorts on this trip...
We started with 2 nights at Disney's Beach Club's 2 bedroom villa, then went to family suite at Cabana Bay at Universal Orlando for 4 nights. We returned for a first ever stay at Disney's Grand Floridian Villas, followed by 2 nights at Animal Kingdom Villas with a savanna view, and finally 4 nights in a treehouse at Saratoga Springs. Whew! How did we move into and out of 5 different hotels? Well, without too much trouble. We didn't lose our underwear until nearly the end of the trip.

This TR is actually nearly complete. We blogged as we went along. I have to apologize in case you notice missing "P"s. Our laptop took a tumble and two keys popped off on this trip. My sister who was reading along at home was laughing her butt off at my post about "fast passes" (...now take away the p.)
I've replaced most of them now, hopefully all. Personally, the old saying "Welcome to my ool, notice there is no p in it" kept running through my mind nightly as I added to the blog since we went swimming often.

We did several new (to us) things on this trip. Staying at Cabana Bay, Grand Floridian, and a Tree house villa were all new. As a birthday present to my husband I watched the 4 littlest kids one day while he and my oldest son accepted the challenge of riding every single ride at all 4 WDW parks in a single day. From morning EMH at Hollywood Studios to evening EMH at Magic Kingdom they had 17 hours to complete the challenge. I had...one of the toughest days of vacation ever.

We did this as one big long blog post. It was already tough enough to load the pics onto the blog, so hopefully it is still okay to just link to it rather than spending hours uploading the same photos here. It is our family blog. The only "advertisement" is my husbands TA logo on the top banner. You do not have to click on it or anything, just enjoy the trip report. Feel free to comment here or there or ask questions. I love Disney and sharing our Disney experiences with other Disney lovers is half the fun!

Click here to read our trip report!

 

[jwwi]

Great trip report, although it makes me feel tired just thinking about it! That's a lot of moving. I especially love the one day four park challenge

 

[jandlinz]

Just read through your blog. It looks exhausting. I feel so bad that your kids were sick. Sick kids on vacation is a true fear of mine, actually a sick kid is a fear even at home. Once one gets sick they all seem to.
We're new DVC owners and were hoping to do a split stay. We'd love to try Animal Kingdom. The pictures look amazing. Did the bus rides seem long from the resort?
Also, a quick question, you referred to Zach as a baby yet he was tall enough for Barnstormer. Can I ask how old he is? Our youngest will have just turned two when we go in a year and was thinking he'd be too small, but then reading your report thought he might be tall enough. Our kids typically are short for their age, but thought if you're little one could ride then maybe our little one could. One more question, can you explain more about the rider swap? Do all the rides do this, even SDMT? I was also wondering if you did fast passes for everyone plus rider swap. How many rider swap passes can you get? When we go in about 13 months (not that I'm counting or anything) our kids will be 2,4,6,8, & 10. I would love to hear your tips.

 

[dr&momto2boys]

Oh no! It wasn't exhausting! We love WDW for vacations because it's one of the few places that aren't exhausting with a family this big (except that one day I switched rooms with a sick kid...but that was because my DH and best helper weren't around.) It wasn't our best Disney trip because of the illnesses, but fortunately no one felt bad for more than a day or day and a half and we still had a ton of fun!
Zach was 2 years and 3 months. He is a bit of a shorty too but I think he had a growth spurt halfway through the trip. He wasn't tall enough for Barnstormer the first day we went, but was later in the trip! Our kids are basically the same ages (2,4,6,9,10) your will be.
Rider swap is the best! For any ride that at least one of your children doesn't meet the height requirement, you all present to the line entrance and ask for a rider swap ticket. Sometimes they hand you a ticket right then (to the person waiting with the child) and sometimes the person getting in line gets a lanyard to take to the front of the line where they'll exchange it for the rider swap ticket then. The cool thing about the ticket is that it didn't expire until the end of the month. So especially if we were in a hurry to get on a lot of rides in the morning before the park got busier, we would just save the ticket and sometimes use it on a different day. The ticket allows 3 guests to ride.
You can and should still get FPs. You can get a rider swap even before getting into a FP line too which is especially nice. Even if we didn't want to go on a particular ride again that day we would just collect the rider swap ticket in case we wanted to use it another day. We also split up our FP reservations sometimes including rider swap as part of the strategy. For instance at DHS, we would get 6 FPs (children too young for tickets don't need a FP but can still go on with you) for Toy Story, 3 for Tower of Terror, 3 for Rock 'n Rollercoaster, and 6 for Star Tours. Everyone could still ride all if they wanted. At Epcot, we always got 3 for Soarin' and 3 for Test Track since you can't get both otherwise. Rider swap and splitting FPs is the one advantage to having kids still too little to ride some rides.
And yes, all rides with a height restriction have rider swap available. SDMT included. This was awesome. We had many rides with little waiting on SDMT.
It takes a lot of planning especially with a large family, but it's a great time for all! Have a wonderful time!

 

[dr&momto2boys]

Oh yeah, buses. Where will you be staying?
The buses were fine. We were fortunate though with where we stayed we could often walk, boat, or monorail to parks too. At Saratoga Springs we walked to the first bus stop rather take the treehouse bus to the last main bus stop.

 

[Nicholmom3]

Great trip report! I'm sorry you had to deal with so much illness, though. It doesn't seem to have stopped you all from enjoying it!

 

[jandlinz]

Oh yeah, buses. Where will you be staying?
The buses were fine. We were fortunate though with where we stayed we could often walk, boat, or monorail to parks too. At Saratoga Springs we walked to the first bus stop rather take the treehouse bus to the last main bus stop.

Thanks for answering the questions. I wasn't sure how the rider swap worked. It's great to split up Fast Passes like that. I thought that we could do that, but wasn't sure if we would have to use the FP first. That's a clever trick! I guess the only trouble might be if the other kids want to ride, but you only get 3 rider swaps so 2 could be left out. I guess that's when we would have to pay close attention to height restrictions. Did any of your kids argue about not getting to ride twice? I guess this will take more planning then I thought. We were also thinking of waiting until the kids were a little older to do Universal, as I've heard it's geared more toward older children. Did you think it was worth it or would it be better to wait?
We're hoping to do a split stay. We would love to get into BLT for a couple nights and then switch to AKL. My parents will probably come with us and my mom wants to stay at BLT the full time, but we would need a transfer to make that happen. We've stayed at SSR and OKW renting points. We really loved the two bedroom at OKW. It was very spacious, but we were on the top floor and I was pregnant with our fourth so climbing those stairs with sleeping children was tough. We did SSR as our second family trip because my mom wanted to try it over AKL or OKW (we were within the 7 month mark). It was a very pretty resort. We loved the elevators, but the two bedroom was tight with our family now four kids and the grandparents. We were close to the hospitality house, I forget the section, and sometimes waiting for a bus took a long time. My parents went back to SSR last winter and stayed at The Grandstand and said the bus situation was better so if we end up there that's where we'll stay. I'm excited to try something new. We are driving down and I thought the car garage at AKL, Kidani, would be great, but my mom is worried about the bus ride to the parks.

 

[dr&momto2boys]

Yes, you'll spend a lot of time on the buses when you stay at AKL but of course it's a lovely resort. I would also recommend requesting a room close to the lobby as those hallways are looong! Since we split our stay 5 ways we didn't have to do much bus riding from Kidani, we went to AK one of the days. The Grandstand is the first bus stop at SSR so it's definitely an advantage. I taught my boys to stand up and offer their seats to adults or smaller children, but my main concern was getting us all on the bus! I really didn't like SSR though mostly because of our poor check experience and mousekeeping there, so I don't see staying there again. I'll take the long bus rides at AKV over SSR. Our home resorts are BWV (though we usually book there and drop it for BCV at 7 months), BLT which is our favorite home because of the location, and AKV which we enjoy but prefer a split stay there with some time closer to the boats or monorail.

I think Universal is fun with kids these ages, but we only go when we have plenty of time at Disney or it makes everything seem to rushed.

 

[cbrown1007]

Loving your trip report!! Did you make your Mickey head tie dye shirts? I want to try to make some!

 

[dr&momto2boys]

Loving your trip report!! Did you make your Mickey head tie dye shirts? I want to try to make some!

Thank you! Yes, we did. It was messy but fun and turned out pretty well. We should have doubled up the bands around the Mickey head because the dye really ran. So we used a bleach pen to make it stand out more.