Originally Posted by
123LuckyMom
Okay, ignoring EMHs, we could do this:
Arrival day: We may have a morning flight that gets in to the airport at 10:30am. I would imagine we could get to the resort by 12:30pm and could do a character (or other) lunch or dinner. We could kick things off with Chef Mickey (?) or any resort character (or otherwise) meal. DH and I really want to use the day to see other resorts. If the weather's nice, the kids can swim. This day is a prep day!
Day 1: MK all day w/ midday break
Day 2: AK full day with extra morning hour. Day ends at 5pm
Day 3: DHS full day ending with Fantasmic (or switch the AK and DHS days to avoid AK on EMH day.)
Day 4: EPCOT all day, midday break, Illuminations
Day 5: MK all day with midday break
Day 6: EPCOT until done, MK for fireworks
Departure day: There's definitely time for a character breakfast, but no park ticket today as of yet.
The idea of paying $50 for an extra day is really tempting. We haven't booked our flight yet, so we'd want to wait to decide on that until we knew we'd be able to leave late in the day. We already ordered our park tickets. Is it hard to add an extra day?
With this schedule, we have a bunch of slots for character (or other ADR) meals. We've got arrival and departure days. Either of the MK days could be a Crystal Palace breakfast before the park opens or lunch before our midday break. The AK day is good for a dinner. Since we're staying at the Contemporary, any day with a midday break would work for Chef Mickey's for lunch. I worry about lunch ADRs, though, because I want rides to take priority, and I don't like downtime. If we finish rides too early, we'll be twiddling our thumbs waiting for our reservation, and if we do just one more ride we could miss our reservation. I am NOT a fan of how overly planned WDW has become!!!!!! I remember the days of flitting from ride to ride, encountering characters by surprise just walking around, and popping into a restaurant when hungry and being able to get a table. Sigh.
I think my kids would choose the Mickey characters and Pooh characters over princesses, but they've not expressed interest in meeting characters before, so they might be entranced with the face characters. We want to do all meals together. DH is highly opposed to paying huge sums for breakfast, because we're not big breakfast eaters, and we usually just eat something like Greek yogurt and fruit in the room. I could convince him, though.
1900 Park Fare breakfast is definitely a possibility, though I would be super sad to miss Eeyore and Piglet!