Monday, December 5, 2011

Minnie Moms: Biggest Disney Splurge

Natalie: This year, I took the plunge and purchased my top dollar Disney splurge, thus far. My family and I took a cruise aboard the Disney Dream. When I heard that Disney would be introducing new cruise ships, I could not resist. I had been on several cruises through the years but had never been able to take one aboard the Disney Cruise Line. I had wanted to take one of these cruises with my son, in hopes that he would enjoy cruising as much as I always had.

We booked our vacation aboard the Dream and were so excited to see what Disney had in store. Our room was one of the great inside rooms with the virtual porthole. We enjoyed sitting looking at our virtual window see what was going on outside and being occasionally greeted by a Disney character. The room was spacious and much nicer than what I had thought we would experience being in an inside room.

We quickly found that the Oceareer's Club was everything we hoped for. My husband and I found that we felt comfortable leaving him there to the Cast Members' care. My son found that he loved the Club so much that he often preferred the fun there to time with his parents!

My family found that Castaway Cay was our favorite part of the entire vacation. The island offered many unforgettable experiences for all of the family from snorkeling to water fun with the Club to water slide excitement. It was so very nice to have all of these offerings without paying extra for their enjoyment.

I hope to again board a ship owned by the Disney Cruise Line. If I do, I hope it is as exciting an experience as it was the first time!

Photo from DisneyStore.com
Amy:  My biggest Disney splurge of something just for me was my WDW 40th anniversary Dooney & Bourke tote. Thankfully, my brother purchased it for me on his 20% premium annual pass discount. Even with that and the fact that I was using Christmas and birthday money, I still had a hard time justifying a purse so expensive. I'm deep in the world of diaper bags and don't have an opportunity to carry a purse often. The 20% off finally twisted my arm and Chris was gracious enough to be my personal shopper and stop by World of Disney. Now I am really thrilled with the bag. It makes a lousy diaper bag but I carry it from time to time anyway just for the fun of it.  The pattern shows images from years past at WDW but isn't specifically marked for the 40th or for 2011, so it won't be dated and I should be able to use it for years to come.  Now they've tempted me with the new Minnie Mouse line of Dooneys but that will have to wait.


Janine: My answer to my biggest Disney splurge is quite simple and short - the holidays themselves.

As you will probably know by now, we live in the UK.  Therefore when we make a trip to the US, whether it be to Florida or elsewhere, we usually stay for 2 weeks.  So that's Trans-Atlantic flights, 2 weeks hotel accommodation, 2 weeks car hire, park tickets (both WDW and ahem, all the other Orlando Parks and Busch Gardens) for 14 days, spending money for food, sundries and souvenirs to cover whole fortnight, extra stay in a hotel in St Petes, tickets to the Rays, clothes money (we stock up on things like trainers, jeans and Abercrombie etc. as they're sooooo much cheaper in the US) and any other little treats that we can think of while we're there such as tickets to Cirque de Soliel.

So, all of that adds up to roughly about £5-6,000. That's about $7819-9382. Wow. That's a BIG spend ... Oops. No wonder we've only been 4 times in 10 years (with 3 other trips to America too ...). Hmmmm, now I know why DH says if I wanna be a stay at home mummy we have to wait until 2014 to go back lol.

I can't think of any single huge purchases that we've made whilst at WDW to add, asides from every time we got to World of Disney the bill ends up in triple figures. I think the most expensive items that we've bought have probably been clothing, I have a lovely Tink hoooded sweater from Tinks Treasures that was $65 and I know DH has a Jack Skellington baseball shirt which was around the same price. Funny how I would balk at paying the equivalent price in pounds in a High Street shop in England but in Disney I'm like, wow, what a bargain! That's how Disney make their money I guess?


Thanks to our regular contributor, Janine, and Natalie from Meet the Magic for joining me today.  Please visit the Minnie Moms page for past articles and more information about these fabulous ladies. 
~~Amy

1 comment:

  1. I won a Disney Dooney & Bourke 40th Anniversary purse and I'm in love! While I could never have justified the cost of one before, now that I've been using this one for months, I can totally see the value of them. I can tell this purse is going to hold up forever. So, I may just be able to splurge on one - in another style - sometime in the future!

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