Introduction

Before I begin the day-by-day report I should touch a little bit on the pre-trip planning.

We didn't have any big plans for this year. In 2009 we are planning to spend 3 weeks in Tahiti, New Zealand and maybe Australia, for our 20th anniversary. We keep taking 2 week trips them one-days here and there that keep me really low on vacation time so we wanted to find a place we could go this ear that would only cost me 3 or 4 days of vacation time. Thought about staying in California. Monterey or the north coast maybe but nothing really jumped out at us. It wasn't until I was playing around wit h Google Earth while listening to a Disney related podcast, (Micecast if you must know). I mentioned to Kel that next time we go to WDW we ought to stay at the Yacht Club Resort because it's so close to our favorite park, Epcot. Here's the weird part: Kel said, "hey why not go there this summer instead of finding someplace local?". I totally did not do the suggesting, really!

This trip actually was super easy to put together because I let Disney do most of the heavy lifting. I researched it for weeks before settling on the dates, that we were in fact going to stay at the Yacht Club and then where we were gonna eat. I used the Disney website which was painful at times. We chose June for a couple reasons. We really wanted May, around my birthday, between spring break and the schools letting out. Unfortunately May is a very busy month for us, and Kel's Mom was planning on coming down for a week-long visit. She's not specified exactly when however. April was too early to get it all planned and once I looked at the Yacht Club prices it turned out June was cheaper than May. This is unlike the economy and moderate resorts.

We did it all online for the most part, lodging, flight, park tickets etc. We went for the Park-Hopper ticket add-on since we like doing one park in the morning and another for dinner. Just went for a standard room, not really caring about views at the time and the extra expense seemed silly. No dining plan either. We don't eat 3 squares a day but do like to buy wine and cocktails so we were fairly certain we'd end up spending more than we would if we just paid as we went. I chose a non-stop flight from SFO so we could take BART. I don't like relying on connections on my way to vacation. One stop on the flight home. We'd be arriving at 6:00pm, which is perfect for checking in and getting a late dinner at the hotel.

The day after everything was reserved and paid for, a date conflict came to mind! Oops. So we called Disney up and asked if we could move the whole thing a week. We totally lucked out and they were able to re-book everything with only a $37 difference. Whew. A month later we got word form them that United was changing their schedule and our flight would now be arriving at 11:08pm at night. Sigh. United was really not our friend on this trip. Kel and I pored over all our books and websites and settled where we wanted to eat that needed reservations. Made the call and it all went swimmingly until the reservation for dinner at the Restaurant Marrakesh. It was not in the brochures yet but they had just changed dinner there into a bloody "Princess Dinner". This means the place would be swamped with children who were just there to meet Jasmine. Camera flashes and annoying characters all over the place. Ugh. Back to the drawing board. Picked a new place and called that one in. We were set for 4 dinners and 1 lunch. After that there was nothing left to do but to plan each day minute by minute. Well maybe not.

The next couple months went by SO SLOWLY!! Paperwork from Disney trickled in, including Magical Express vouchers and luggage tags, other vouchers, the itinerary etc. I bought an updated copy of the Unofficial Guide and a new Passporter and played with those for weeks. Finally the day to leave arrived...