Thursday, January 21, 2010

vacation

So I had $400 planned for vacation this year. An off week at the beach. Ha

Now we are doing 2 weeks in Orlando. I got a Baymont room on hotwire for $29 a night. With tax, $470 split in two.

Then listen to this!

Hotwire emails me and says they had a typo on the listing and the children's program had been canceled. They offered a cancellation and $50 hotwire bucks or keep the ressie and get 50% hotwire bucks! Hot dang! I now have $235 in hotwire credits to use on another trip! Woot! I didn't know there was a children's program lol

We are going to volunteer for a day to get the Disney ticket. We are also going to get the $99 Seaworld/Aquatica unlimited 14 day pass. A shuttle launch is scheduled for the first week we are there so we'll drive over. I've requested Kenney Space Center passes from my Senator (that is supposed to work) . We'll hit the beach several days. We'll also go to the Disney salvage store!

So my $400 trip? Eh. Maybe $750 if I am lucky. But it will be fun, I've never gone to Orlando without focusing on Disney the whole time. Natalie will get a kick out of Seaworld. Aquatica looks super cool!

We are going to "room cook" which is fun if you've never done it. First, you need to be poor. If you have any money, after day two, you'll be like screw it! I'll just eat fast food! Room cooking involves planning out what food you can take with you and what food needs to be purchased there. It requires a hot pot, crock pot and electric skillet (oh ya, we ARE that redneck family). It requires adding a few items to your shopping list everytime you go so you don't have that $200 pretrip run to the store. Some popular things "room cookers" make is:
Sandwiches - well duh. PB&J, ham, turkey. We'll get fancy and use the electric skillet to make some of them hot!
Baked potatoes - nothing says "ohh I'm on vacation!" like a big old baked potato in your hotel room. This delicacy is simple to make when you have a microwave. One night we'll do ranch and canned chicken breast, another night we'll do chili and cheese.
Spaghetti - yes we did go there. On one of our pool days, we'll put our precooked frozen ground beef (brought from home, remember it is in the plan) and mix it in with all the traditional sauce fixings in the.....crock pot! Yay for the crock pot! And guess what? We'll make noodles in the....hot pot! Are we having fun yet?
Breakfast for Dinner - Electric skillet? Check! One night we'll have sausage, eggs & toast. One night we'll have french toast and bacon. Who doesn't like breakfast for dinner?
Chicken fingers - why not? We have an electric skillet.
hamburgers - um hello? I said we have an electric skillet!

Add in the fruit, salad fixings, raw veggies, snacky salty foods & chocolate and it's not too shabby!
(I know three of you just said - she has to be kidding - but be assured, I'm not! I already have the cooking layout planned based on the room. I already have the shopping lists and cooking items lists ready. I know what type of containers I need to store food (in FL, you double store food and wipe all your counters down three times!) Shoot, planning out your room cooking is half the fun of planning.)

AND overplanning-control-freak-kim isn't going to research anything past the times when the parks open. I'm not going to preplan our meals at the parks, I'm not going to search for uber super things to do. I'm just going to ....go. On vacation, like to relax. And if we miss a super show/parade yada ya, then so be it. It won't be the end of the world and we'll be back at Disney in 2 years anyway!

5 comments:

bajones said...

That sounds like such a fun trip! We did something similar several years ago - rented an RV and camped at the wonderful Disney campground. My brother-in-law, who is your doppelganger, had all our meals planned and we had stuff like frozen chicken tortilla soup that they made before we left and defrosted in our teeny RV kitchen. I would love to do that again.

Shauna and MacLean said...

wow that sounds great when are you going to Orlando??? We too will be there in March for our spring break and will be seeing a shuttle launch my parents have a condo close by. It sounds like the deal of the century.

Good job!

Genijer said...

You always have such wonderful ideas. I love this one. I didn't think I could afford disney for the kids and now you show me how its possible.

Thanks!

Kristen Bieber said...

If you don't get the tickets to KSC for the shuttle launch, you can see it from a beach across the bay. I haven't personally done it but its worth a try!

ryarosh said...

That is awesome! I think our next Orlando trip will involve Sea World, Aquatica, maybe even Universal along with at least a couple of days at Disney. But I don't expect that to happen for a few more years.. :-( You found an AWESOME deal! I really like finding stuff cheap.
Room cooking isn't so bad. You "could" even do some freeze ahead meals to take along.. ( like a dump chicken recipe ) that is super easy and tastes great.. would travel well if it's in a plastic bag going down, etc.