For me, clicking “cancel” a few months ago was tough, but knowing that we should have been in WDW this week is even tougher.
I keep thinking about where I would have been each day. Of course, like any good Liner I had my TPs memorized back in January for this October trip. Those were the days …
In trying to capture a small bit of the magic, I announced it was Disney Week in our house this week. Here is what we have done:
Monday: The kids each got to pick a virtual Disney ride to watch on Youtube (They are 5 and 3 so we usually don’t let them watch youtube videos).
Tuesday: My parents came over for dinner and we had a dessert party (DW is a wonderful cook) and watched Happily Ever After together on our big screen.
Today: We are going to watch Fantastic after dinner.
Tomorrow: DW and I are dressing up as Mickey and Minnie for breakfast and we will do “Chef Mickey’s.” DW will make Mickey pancakes.
Saturday: I will recreate a “Disney ride” in our house. Decorations, music and pulling the kids on a toy train and dragging them on blankets.
Anyone have any suggestions for Friday and Sunday?
I feel your pain. It’s emotionally draining to hit cancel on everything from flights, hotels, park reservations dining reservations etc etc. So, Friday night is always movie night in our family. Perhaps Disney movie paired with a copycat disney specialty popcorn treat.
Great ideas! I cancelled a trip this week also and had forgotten until today when a colleague pointed out that I was still on the vacation calendar for this week and she was surprised I was here at work. Still hoping for my couples trip next month but there are no guarantees until we are on the plane. Which is killing me because there is an awesome DVC confirmed reservation for our exact dates that I would love to book, but I’m afraid that would jinx the trip! And I still haven’t had the heart to cancel our December dates which is the Bounceback package I booked in August 2019 and fretted over through all the changes, but I know I have to. Boo Covid!
I am holding off cancelling our December bounceback offer, booked last November 1st. Since the reservation was for POFQ we have been moved to Gran Destino at the rate we were paying at POFQ.
Have a backup trip for April, just changed from CBR to YC at 35% off. Thank you TP for the email notification of the offer this morning. @touringplans.
My postponed trip was supposed to start today! So I feel you! Although April hurt more. I think I knew this trip wouldn’t happen for us. But yea it stinks!
I feel you @davej. We were also supposed to be there this week. Cancelled a month ago b/c of the COVID numbers here and in FL and b/c of pressure from family members. Cancelled all our dining, but somehow they stayed on my Google calendar. So I get reminders daily about what might have been.
Wow, that’s a great upgrade. I’d be extra sad to let that go. I had planned on DLR for next April but now even that is looking unlikely. Might have to think about WDW instead.
Hope you’re able to get back to the World sooner rather than later. Awesome idea to do a Disney week though! Maybe watch some of the AK show on Disney+ (if you have Dis+) to get AK some representation?
Also, add monorail sound effects for the Chef Mickey’s experience.
And, for recreating a Disney ride, you’d better hope they pick something like Dumbo and not RotR or you’ll have your work cut out for you.
ETA: I guess you didn’t say they get to pick that one, just the ride videos from earlier in the week. Then you have your choice of difficulty level.
Months ago I actually did do a version of RotR for them. It took me about 3 hours to set up … combination of props, video screens, pulling them on brackets across wood floors, crawling through forts, knocking down walls of cushions set up in doorways, and music.
We did something very similar during the week we were supposed to be there in May. I even bought a bunch of carnival games and set up an at home version of TSMM in our backyard. We did a lot of DIY disney foods. It wasn’t the same of course, but I think it helped. Disney parks has a youtube channel that has “family game night” so we did that as well as Disney Head Banz and Disney Eye Found It board games. I bought glow sticks and we watched all of the night time spectaculars. We had a Pirate Party and dressed up like pirates. I cut pirate swords out of cardboard for them to decorate with markers and stickers, then we played “keep it up” with balloons (I called them cannonballs.) We also had a “pirate battle” between Parents vs Kids where we drew an imaginary line in our yard and threw balls back and forth; the side with the most balls at the end of the time lost. I bought mini beach balls from Oriental Trading for this, but you could use any kind of balls you have. It was a lot of fun, and two months into quarantine it was much needed exercise!!!
Impressive! This is some ‘Best Dad Award’ stuff. Sometimes these are the moments the kids end up thinking back to and cherishing just as much as the expensive vacations.
I’m so sorry you had to cancel! We did the same back in March and tried to do a version of the trip from home. One of the best things we did were the Disney animation classes on YouTube or Disney parks blog. They came out amazingly well! My daughter just said the other day how that week was still such a fun trip! Meanwhile I still feel cheated out of our perfectly planned week!!! We usually only did 2-3 days
I’m sorry. I know how you feel b/c I still sort of can’t believe my first cruise didn’t happen last summer. It was weird thinking about all the adventures of the day. I rebooked the same thing for next summer but am completely expecting to have to cancel and move to 2022. Someday…
That sounds so magical! I’m sure the kids will have so much fun. What about drawing your own park on the biggest paper you can find? You might need to help them, but my kids (7 and 4) really enjoyed drawing our own Disney park earlier this year. They come up with some really interesting ride ideas.
Good for you!
Sometimes these are the moments the kids end up thinking back to and cherishing just as much as the expensive vacations.