Three-Day Pretend Solo Trip

TennesseeGirl

Mouseketeer
Joined
Jun 20, 2013
Hello and welcome to my first pre-trip report. This will be my 8th trip to Disney and my shortest. Who is going? One adult - that would be me - and three 14 year old boys. I will refer to them as thing one, thing two and thing three... or t1, t2 and t3 for short. T1 - my lovely ds - has been going almost every other year since he turned five. T2 and t3 are friends from school.

So I have always wanted to go on a solo trip and this will probably be the closest thing to doing it. I plan to acknowledge the three boys if I see them with direct eye contact and a quick nod but other than that the plan is to imagine that I am in Disney all by myself. Based on experience I predict that if they see me first they will dart into a store or pretend they don't see me which will secure the illusion of touring solo.

In planning this trip I have to overcome at least two hurdles that I can think of right now - The first one being that it is such a short trip. To save money for everyone involved we are not getting parkhoppers. Which makes sense but I'm a little sad that we have to cut out one park. Can you guess which one? That is right - Hollywood Studios. I dearly love TSM and T1 has finally gotten up the nerve to ride an upside down roller coaster so he's sad not to try out RnRC ... omg I just got the pun. Why am I so slow? Also... he loves loves loves ToT. But at any rate, we are going to AK instead.

Hurdle #2 involves some unknown factors. T1 is a t1d (no pun intended) but in an early stage of type 1 diabetes (go here:https://www.trialnet.org/t1d-facts/stages-t1d if the phrase early stage type 1 sounds strange. I have yet to meet anyone else who got diagnosed this early.) So it is going to be really hard to figure out what he is going to eat. He does not take insulin right now but has to really watch the carbs. Last week he was in the 340's after dinner two days in a row and back down to the low 100's the next morning - both times. Right now he is more like a type 2 - he really has to watch what he eats. His endo is considering having him start insulin to cover eating grains - which he doesn't seem to be able to eat without his numbers going up. Just this morning he said the first place he is going when he gets to EPCOT is Club Cool. My response was "oh really..." and a disapproving look. At some point he is going to be insulin dependent - I am just trying to delay it for as long as humanly possible. So part of this pre-trip report will be playing the guess-the-carbs game.
 
Just a bit of background. I have been putting this trip off since November 2016. We were going Thanksgiving week last year and I decided I couldn't bear the crowds and cancelled. Then I considered going in January 2017 but nixed that. Then when free dining came out in the spring I booked us for the weekend before Thanksgiving leaving on the Wednesday before and I cancelled that one too. Basically we have never been when its hot or super crowded. My husband doesn't care for disney so we only have to work around my and t1's schedule ... which has involved taking a few days off school every time. Luckily it has never been an issue. I don't know how long he will want to go on disney vacations - maybe forever? Every year I wonder if it is the last time he's going to want to go. In the 6th grade we went just the two of us and he commented that it didn't feel as magical for some reason. I'm excited for him to bring friends for the first time. I am good friends with t3's mom and we all went to disney at the same time 3 years ago. T3 got sick on the last two days and found out it was strep when he got home. He hasn't been back since so I think of this as a do-over for him. T2 has never been which is probably more exciting for me than any one else.

I think they are going to have a blast. We went to see the latest version of IT and it's a perfect depiction of my son and his friends ... that cringy combination of nerdy + foul-mouthed. As an older female I just don't get them but that is ok.
 
First things first.... After spending about three hours going back and forth over various web-sites with touring plans and finally going to touringplans.com I came up with our park order:

Saturday January 20th = Animal Kingdom
Sunday January 21 = Epcot
Monday January 22 = Magic Kingdom

I am picking them up from school on Friday around 11:30 am so they won't be counted absent. Right now I'm debating how far to drive - all of the way? Its a 9 hour trip with no stops which means realistically we could do it in 11 hours. I have done it before but that last leg is painful. I'm thinking about going ahead and booking a hotel somewhere between Jacksonville and St. Augustine and leaving around 5:00 the next morning. Animal Kingdom has emh - opens at 8:00 so if we don't have any delays we could get there before rope drop.
 
Tomorrow our window to book fast passes opens up. For the kids here is what I'm going for in order:
Na'Vi
Frozen
Safari
Peter Pan
Expedition Everest
Space Mt.
Big Thunder
Space Ship Earth
Living with the land

And then for me:
Na'vi
Frozen
Safari
Peter Pan
Haunted Mansion
Pirates
Dinosaur
Space Ship Earth
Living with the Land

Luckily no one wants to ride 7 dwarfs and no one wants to ride flight of passage. Taking those two off the list makes getting what we want a lot easier. My heart is breaking though because I just saw that Splash Mountain is going to be closed while we are there. WHY!!! It was closed this fall. It was open in January two years ago when we went. Doesn't make any sense but oh...well... It's just our favorite ride ever.
 
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In my mind we are going to do everything we want to do. HAHAHAHAH... even though we are going at a slow time I know how quickly 3:00 rolls around and the shock of realizing that you only did half of what you planned to get done by then. The culprit is usually those rides we love that have short wait times ... and so we get on just one more time and ok just one more... because who can resist a ride that is practically walk on? I have spent a good two hours riding Haunted Mansion over and over again. So I am going to make a list ... a list of attractions I won't be heart broken about if I have to skip them this time around.

Here goes!

Animal Kingdom - I am planning to leave around 4:00 and go check into our hotel. T1 wants to go to Disney Springs so this seems like the best day to do it. First on my list is Kilamanjaro Safari. It takes up a good deal of time and I would rather spend an hour watching the chimpanzees. I might not even make a fast pass for it. Next - Festival of the Lion King. Again it takes up a chunk of time. I definitely want to see Nemo so if time feels squeezed I will cut out the other. I am planning to see Flights of Wonder for the first time ... but I've never seen it so if I run out of time I won't know what I missed. Since we are leaving so early that automatically eliminates Rivers of Light and all of the other night time attractions. I'm more sad about missing the Tree of Life thing than anything else.

On to Epcot - I don't really think there is anything I'll have to cut out but there might not be as much time to spend in World Showcase as I'd like. If anything I won't go see the Pixar films.

Magic Kingdom - here is the hardest one because I truly will ride things like It's A Small World over and over and over again. I won't be sad if I don't do Buzz Light Year or Monsters Inc. I'm already not going on Space Mt. and probably not Big Thunder. I like roaming around Tom Sawyer's Island but will be ok if I have to skip. The River Boat? I won't be sad if I don't ride that. I never ride anything that spins so that cuts out a lot of rides right there. The train? I can take it or leave it so I might just leave it. Do I want to see the afternoon parade? Probably not on this trip. Enchanted Tales with Belle? Nah. Little Mermaid? Nah.

I think it will actually be easier for the boys - they already don't want to see any shows. Don't want to walk around and see animals. I am going to predict that in MK they will have like 7 rides they HAVE to ride and will be able to take or leave the rest.
 
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