Tanner Life

In Mourning

So here it is upon us. Today is the last official day that Andy & I can go to Disney World and use our annual passes. Seems the annual part of that is over. I thought it would be the coolest thing in the world to be a pass holder. I spent years telling Andy of the amazing things life would bring "if we just had annual passes". Andy was pretty convinced if he gave in, it would bring world peace and cure hunger. While those things didn't quite happen, we did have a fantastic year filled with fun at Disney!

We enjoyed our trip last February, despite the cold and crazy crowd control. We loved being at Shades of Green that February and found Soarin' to be one of our favorite things down there. Then in May we had a great week long trip where we had a fantastic family of friends join us at All Star Sports. It was our first stay at a resort other than Shades in a long time. Andy enjoyed several days of golf while I enjoyed hanging with friends and reading by the pool. The parks were fantastic; crowds low and weather perfect. Then we were able to spend another week in September at the beginning of our Disney Cruise vacation with my parents. We returned to All Star Sports and felt back at home there as well. We had low crowds and the weather was again, perfect! The four of us were on the FREE dining plan and ate ourselves silly, truly the trip of Disney Dining! In October we returned with Andy's brother Steve and my sister in law Teresa. It was great to take a mini vacation with them. I'd always wondered what a quickie trip down there was like and if I could hack riding in the car for a short weekend Disney trip. It was great just to be there and we had a great time! The ride was worth it. (though I do still hate riding in the car) Our final trip with the passes was our December/January trip. It went from being planned as just a long weekend to one of the longest vacations we've taken. I think we were there for about 9 nights. We had a great time when we were staying both off and on property, with our first stay at Pop Century. We park hopped like crazy, used our passes for 50% off putt putt and took the long awaited helicopter ride. It was cold and crowded, but we had a fantastic trip!

We got our money out of our passes without a doubt! We used them for approximately 25 days worth of parks, can you beat that? We used them to buy the dining club card and saved 20% off every meal we ate on all our trips, saving for family and friends too. We were able to give my parents free days at the parks that came with the dining plan trip since we already had the passes. We stayed for $49 a night on a few trips, no way you can beat that. We were able to preview Haunted Mansion before it officially opened.

It was fantastic, a dream come true for me. I have the most amazing husband in the world that humors me constantly with making my nutty dreams come true. He's pretty great like that!

We have chosen not to renew the passes this year. We figure with all the excitement coming and hopefully the addition of a baby Tanner in our near future, it wouldn't make much sense. We may not be able to make the most of them. We are cruising for spring break and will then just see what our year brings. Andy has two more trips out of town for two weeks at a time and we will travel when we can. We have gone back and forth dozens, ok hundreds, of times about renewing or not. We made final decisions and then changed our minds over and over and over. Each of us coming up on different sides of the discussion, hilarious!! We'll save about $60 (I think that's right) if we renew instead of buying them again and we were trying to justify doing it.

Moving along, here I sit not in the car headed to Orlando, so our decision is made. I told my friend Jo just the other day that I was seriously in mourning. It was fun and I feel sure we'll get them again when we have a little one who will enjoy it like we have. Until then, *sigh*sob*, I am not a Disney annual pass holder.