Trip Chronicles: Our Next Disney Vacation
*December 30th, 2019. Our trip is just days away. Follow along on instagram to get ideas for your trip. *
On February 6th we booked our next vacation to Walt Disney World. Our next trip is going to be January 6th-16th 2020. Now for those of you who follow along here at Chasing Walt, you know we try to make our way down to Walt Disney World every year. Despite that, we are not heading down to Walt Disney World in this calendar year, 2019. Why we’re not making our way to Disney this year can be found in this previous post. We’re booking so far in advanced because we are DVC members and we’re able to book a vacation at our home resort 11 months ahead of time. So to make sure that we have accommodations on the dates we are planning on, we booked this far in advanced. Right now we’re booked at Saratoga Springs Resort but we’ll likely change that when we’re able to, 7 months before our vacation date.
We decided to choose the second week and third week of January for our next vacation for a variety of reasons. We are going to be participating in the Walt Disney World race weekend next year. As of right now, I’m planning on running the 1/2, Jeff is planning on running the full and we want to put all three kids in the kids races. The race weekend takes place January 9th-12th. So we didn’t want to be leaving the day after the race so we added some days after the race and we didn’t want to arrive the day before the race, so we added days before.
Another reason we’re heading to Disney in January is because it costs the least amount of DVC points. By staying in January we only have to use a fraction of the points we would have to use if we were heading in February, which had been our original plan. By using a smaller amount of points, we’re hoping we’ll be able to go back to Disney in December 2020.
Last January, we celebrated MacKenzie’s 5th birthday at Walt Disney World. During this celebration we promised Lincoln we would head back to celebrate his 5th birthday. His birthday is in February but because of wanting to stretch our points, we’re going to be celebrating his birthday early. But one of our vacation days will be reserved for him. He’ll get to pick which park we’ll be going to, which attractions we go on, where we eat and we’ll make sure to get his face painted just like his older sister got to do.
Galaxy’s Edge, the Star Wars expansion at Hollywood Studios is set to open this fall. By heading to Disney in January, Galaxy’s Edge will be opened and hopefully fully functional. We’re a big fan of Star Wars in this household, so going to Disney before this expansion is finished would have been a big disappointment.
We recently added a new member to our family, our son is 5 weeks old. So by the time our trip comes next year, he’ll be close to a year. Which means he’ll be down to 2 naps a day, eating solid foods, and able to interact with characters. I know there are many people who take their infants to Disney but being such a terrible flyer, flying down to Florida with a little one so dependent on me wouldn’t be a good use of our funds.
The next thing on our list of planning is figure out exactly where we’d like to stay, if there’s availability at 7 months out, and start deciding our major must do’s. We’re contemplating purchasing the Annual Pass but want to make sure that we’ll get more than the value of the price. And of course, I’ll start planning out where we want to eat and when. I love planning out our vacations. I try to add a new element each time, so we can experience new things. I can’t wait to get back to running runDisney events. We haven’t participated in one since 2013, too long. Stay tuned as we make our plans and share ideas you may want to use for your next vacation. Happy Planning, Friends.
