Tomorrow we’re off for our first family vacation since February 2004. As members of the Disney Vacation Club since 2001, we’re off to visit the mother ship. This will be the girls’ 4th visit (previously 2000, 2002 and 2004) and our first during the summer. The other three trips were in February. I’ve been to Disney World in late August before, I know it will be hot. But I also know that the lines will be considerably shorter. And I don’t remember the February weather being all that great. If anything, it was cold and dreary…and very, very crowded. I have memories of going in August and waiting in lines for under 5 minutes for most attractions. I don’t know if it will be that good…but it should be much better than in February.

Because we’re traveling in a “value” season, we had enough points to stay in a Savannah-view room at the Animal Kingdom Lodge. This morning, I made reservations for two character breakfasts (at MGM and Animal Kingdom), two evenings for the kids at Simba’s Clubhouse (the resort’s childcare center), and 4 dinners (two with the kids at Jiko and Tony’s, two without the kids at San Angel Inn and Wolfgang Puck). Believe it or not, the girls were the ones who begged for at least one evening at the childcare center. They have dinner, play video games and board games and watch movies. My kids’ idea of paradise and they’ll be able to chill out after busy days. That will allow Eric and I have to have one evening of adult fun at Downtown Disney/Pleasure Island and one evening to hit Epcot and attractions the girls aren’t interested in. I had no problem getting the reservations I wanted. I remember having a bit of a challenge for our February trips, even calling weeks in advance. We learned a long time ago that you don’t plan to have any kind of waitress service at a Disney restaurant without an advanced reservation…and you don’t do this trip at all with children without having a bit of a game plan going in.

Only bummer is that the Who Wants to Be a Millionaire game at MGM is closing for good tonight. We liked that one.

This is the first time that I will be away from C3 for more than a couple of days since I started in August 2005. I’m not bringing my laptop. I will have my phone and I can read email, but I promised that I would limit it to a couple of minutes a day and I would only respond to emails that would involve someone having to call 911 if I didn’t. They’ll be fine without me, I’m sure. Our new Executive Director starts on Monday.

tags: Disney, vacation, Magic+Kingdom, travel