Hello all my friends!

I’m very happy to be sitting on my couch right now.  Phew!  What a tiring few days.  We had a blast of course, but seriously the most exhausting 5 days of my life.  It was non-stop, action-packed fun.  The crowds were amazing.  The longest line we stood in was about 20 minutes.  January rocks!

Some highlights were that my daughter got picked to go up on stage during one of the shows and she got a hand drawn picture of Sleeping Beauty from an actual Disney animator, then Sleeping Beauty signed it for her.  That was neat.  Also, when we saw the Incredibles, Elastigirl just went nuts over my son.  She bent down and was whispering in his ear even though they aren’t supposed to talk.  We asked him later what she said and he said “very cute… so sweet”.  lol.  He’s only two so who knows, but I bet that is what she said.  And for me… We saw Lacy from Rock of Love.  She was at California Adventure. I got a picture but it’s from the back.  I didn’t want to be all psyco about it.  Ok, yeah I did send my husband to follow her and try to get a pic from the front but he couldn’t.  So you will just have to believe me.

Here’s what we ended up spending (and here is my post with our estimates)…

Gas: $67  Awww yeah!  We had budgeted $100.  Obviously I’m happy with coming in under budget here.  The van gets better gas mileage than we thought out on the highway.  The drive is basically a straight shot through the desert, so it’s cruise control for about 300 miles.  Seriously.

Hotel: $436  We had originally planned on about $250 so we are over budget here.  I’m totally fine with it since we did end up upgrading the room to the two room suite.  We called on Friday and asked for a free upgrade, they ended up giving it to us for $30 a night which was half price.  They also charged $15 a day for parking and a $4 per day fee for breathing and there you go.  The upgraded room was totally worth every dollar.  It was so wonderful to be able to put the kids to bed, close the door, and have a little grown up time.  We were even able to watch TV!  I am now officially a hotel room snob.

Food: $115 plus $150 in Disney Gift Cards we got for getting the annual passes through Costco.  We had a very loose budget of $170 including the gift cards but I had a feeling that was unrealistic.  We decided to have breakfast and dinner at the hotel and eat lunch at the park.  A couple of things caused us to go over budget.  First off I was thinking $30 for lunch at the park and it was really $40.  Also, the first day I totally forgot to bring water with us, so we ended up spending $8 on water.  Blah.  I was so mad at myself.  After that we took waters and got cups of ice at a restaurant.  It worked out perfect.  We brought 31 bottles of water and still ran out.  We also brought a gallon of milk and I still had to go spend $7 on milk for the last night.  That’s $15 on drinks I wasn’t planning at all.  Walking around the park is thirsty business.  We also got pizza one night ($24) in the hotel and ice cream ($16) one day at the park. One thing that we did that I highly recommend was breakfast with Minnie and friends.  It was $60 but totally worth it if you like seeing the characters.  We did it last year and loved it so we did it again.  The kids go nuts and you get lots of one on one with the characters, and about a bazillion pictures.

I have mixed feelings about bringing so much food with us.  Breakfast and snacks for the park was great.  I will never buy water or snacks at the park again.  Dinner though wasn’t so fun. On one hand it was great to be able to go back to the hotel and have food right away.  No waiting, no walking, just eating as soon as possible.  On the other hand I was starving and exhausted by the time we got back to the hotel and I really didn’t want to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on the bed.  Not appetizing at all.  The thought of sitting down at an actual table and being served a hot meal was very appealing.  But in the end it worked out.  The kids didn’t mind at all and now that it’s done, who cares.  In the future though, I don’t think I will be bringing dinner foods.  Unless I can think of some better meals.  Maybe cook something at home and bring it as leftovers.  That might work.

Souvenirs:  We bought my son a hat for $9. That’s it.  Very proud of myself.  My daughter had $50 of her own money that she got for selling some of her video games on Amazon so she bought herself some stuff, but I’m not counting that in our budget.  So $9 for a hat.  Go us.

So the whole trip cost about $1,350 which means we have $100 left in our vacation fund. Wohoo!  And we have our park tickets for our December trip.  So next year should cost us about $1,000.

pic by: Idcross

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