I’ve been planning my family’s first trip this Halloween, which many of you are familiar with (last update was ADR day in May: ProphetPaul’s Planning Process - Part 5 – ADRs - #27 by Agent355. I’m sure my Disney-obsessed, Type A, overplanning personality pre-qualifies me for Liner status (see link above for evidence), but since I haven’t actually BEEN to the World, sometimes I feel silly considering myself part of “the group”.
Well, here’s another entry for my Liner resume: I’ve just booked another trip two months after my first, and it will be a solo trip! Here’s how it happened…
A few weeks ago when the AP prices jumped up I expedited the process of convincing DW that I should get one (at old price through Sam’s Club). The AP discounts for our Halloween trip would pay for the AP and actually save us some money on top of that. We had casually talked about this, but I had planned on just upgrading to an AP on our trip. Plenty of time to think about it. Fortunately for me, the Disney planning is overwhelming to her and she just goes along with my plan (so far at least). So I’m now a Passholder, yay!
Over the last few months, a co-worker and I started talking about running the Dopey Challenge together, sometime in the next few years. I hadn’t thought about this in the context of getting an AP, but now that I had one I started to think about the 2020 Dopey (this January). Fate was on my side - my co-worker had just booked his family’s next trip for the week leading up to the event. So we talked and schemed, with my 2nd Disney trip being booked as a result!
In stark contrast to my big family trip over Halloween, the Dopey trip will be an exercise in frugality. I’m running for a charity (no race fees), staying at Pop (charity discount), no dining plan (marathon diet), no park tickets (AP), no souvenirs (ok, maybe a few), etc. I’m figuring this 4-night trip is going to cost me about $800-$900.
Now, the planning fun begins!