Disney Madness!!

If any of you follow me on any social media outlets then you know I am pretty obsessed with Disney world. I try to go every few years and will be making the trek back to the land of mouse in just 39 days!!

I've been on Disney overdrive for at least the past month - although I'd probably admit to longer than that. I've been planning this vacation for at least a good 4 months now. I decided in the past week that I need an outlet for my madness so I decided I would start over here and see if this fills my void.

I've made a very meticulous spreadsheet used to calculate every possible expense for this trip - this spreadsheet was started 4 months ago too by the way and has only gotten more and more tedious as the months have gone on.

My original spreadsheet called for all the possible travel options there were to get to Disney world. First I started out with the following 4 options:

#1 - Drive to Disney and Stay at Disney resort
This called for calculating gas to and from Orlando, hotel costs, food costs, parking fees for Universal because we are going to spend one day there, spending money, and Universal tickets.

#2 - Drive to Orlando and Stay off Disney property
This called for pretty much all of the same costs of #1 but also parking fees for each day at Disney - unless the resort we stayed at had a shuttle to Disney or Universal then we could cut some parking fees.

#3 - Fly to Orlando and Stay at a Disney resort
This called for calculating airfare, hotel and food costs, transportation to Universal and back to Disney, spending money, and luggage fees.

#4 - Disney world Magic Your Way Package
This option is the "all-included" Disney package - you can have resort, tickets, and airfare all packaged in to one deal for one price.

In the end we made the best financial decision for us to drive to Disney and stay on the property. It seemed like the best deal for us and while we are not particularly looking forward to the 12 hour drive we will be OK too. Our plan is to leave at 3am Memphis time and drive all day long. We should reach our Disney hotel around 4pm, just in time for check-in which is the plan. The last time I took B to Disney I did the drive all night thing and it did not work out well at all. B slept in the car the majority of the time and so when we got to Disney she was ready to go and see. All Mommy wanted to do was go to bed. It got our vacation off to a very tiring start so I learned my lesson. Plus I like to drive during the daytime more anyway so it works out better.

So that is how we plan on tackling our trip - tomorrow I'll post my extensive packing list that I'm going to start on this weekend!!