Disney, Here We Come!!

Tomorrow we are just TWENTY FIVE days away from our FIRST FAMILY DISNEY vacation experience!!!!

This is a big deal, people. If not solely for the fact that we are dropping a LOT of dough on this. I still can NOT get over how much they get away with charging! $85 a day? Each adult? And only a bit cheaper for kids at $80 a day!

Disney really knows what they are doing too since every additional day you go the ticket prices drop SIGNIFICANTLY!

Price Options for a family of FOUR {including tax} through Mousesavers… Price in parentheses is the OLD price before it was raised. :(

1 day = {$333} $350

3-4 days = {$908} $946 {same price for four days as it is for three days…}

5-6 days = {$926} $988 {same price for five days as it is for six days…}

7 days = {$950} $1048

I am SO SAD that we will be paying the NEW… just raised ticket prices!! Boo to the double Hoo. The prices just went up the middle of June… :(

To get those price options, you have to sign up for Mousesavers newsletter and wait for the next issue to come out. {It’s only sent once a month.} Then you have to order them online and have them mailed to you. You’re really not saving a whole lot, but every little bit helps! Four seven day passes on the Disney site with tax is $1097… so at most we’ll be saving about $50.

Anyway, since we were going to spending so much, I really wanted to help the kids see what a big deal this really is!

I don’t remember where I first heard of the idea of doing a Disney Countdown, {I’m pretty sure it was Pinterest.} but I have since searched the whole wide internet looking for ideas.

I loved the idea of an Activity Countdown with something for the kids to take down every day showing them a fun Disney related activity to do that day. I found this Disney Countdown that used Home Depot Mickey Head paint samples and this one using red and yellow chains … both of which were pretty cool. :)

I also ran across this poster… How many more days to Disney?? which would be a veeeery simple way to do a Disney Countdown. Just print, laminate, and use a dry erase marker to keep track of the days.

Because I can’t do anything “simply,” I decided to do the Countdown using the Mickey Heads!

Chris and I went into Home Depot for our mission. I honestly did feel bad taking that many paint samples, but I thought of nine hundred plus reasons to justify it.

YaknowwhatI’msayin????

We both started grabbing heads and then stopped to do a count. In the time it took for me to get around TWENTY, he had managed to grab SIX.

SIX!!!

The Mickey Heads actually peeled off from their square background, but they were soooo thin they curled up a LOT! I fixed the issue by making sure to peel up some of the backing too {that you’re not really supposed to peel} which gave it a sturdier back.

I used my cricut to make all the numbers for the countdown using a variety of scrapbook paper. I ended up writing down all the numbers I needed and then crossed off each number as I cut it so I could keep up with what numbers I was cutting.

After my numbers were cut I debated how to lay out the Mickey Heads…

I considered putting them in the shape of… well, a Mickey Head.

But in the end thought that may take away from the fact that all the numbers are in the shape of the Mickey Head too, and I thought that was pretty cool. :)

After laying out all the heads in random-but-evenly-spaced colors, I had to divvy out the letters using the “random” method again so I wouldn’t end up with two colors or patterns too close together. :) I like to LOOK spontaneous… not BE spontaneous, OK??

My Little Gems shared her countdown activities to go on the back of the Mickey Heads, and I adapted it to make MY OWN VERSION of Disney Countdown Activities… added what I wanted and included some sources of where to get the printables I used. {You can click the link above to get your own…}

And like I said earlier, I can’t do anything simply. I just can’t resist making stuff look cute. It’s some sort of sickness, really.

Here’s some of the activities I found… a Disney Word Search for Haylee and Disney Coloring Pages for Wade. The actual Disney site linked to all these Disney Crafts that were pretty amazing… a lot of them were things you could print and make fairly easily!

Things like a Rapunzel Crown, a Tangled Activity Kit, a Toy Story Character Set, Mickey Bookmarks, Mickey Airplanes and much, MUCH more. I also found this printable Free Kid’s ID and I made these printable luggage tags. There are even more Disney Countdown Activity ideas here.

For the Disney Gift Day, we bought some Disney things at Walmart that we’ll give them, and the rest we’ll pack in the suitcase to be their “souvenirs” during the week we’re there! Ha! Walmart is much cheaper than WDW gift shops! :)

I printed the page of activities, cut them out, and glued them on the backs of the Mickey Heads. I decided to laminate them too so it would be something I could reuse if we ever rob a bank er… save up to go again. :)

I masking taped them all to a poster board for easy removal and even made a nifty title for the project…

This really was a SIMPLE project, though I worked my “magic” and made it much more complicated, ha ha! :)

Though now that I’ve done all the work, maybe it won’t be so difficult for YOU!

Feel free to to download a copy of all that hard work for your very own Disney Countdown!!

Disney, Here we Come Poster Title

Disney Countdown Activities

Here are some fun Walt Disney Quotes for you…

“I only hope that we don’t lose sight of one thing – that it was all started by a mouse.”
Walt Disney

“I would rather entertain and hope that people learned something than educate people and hope they were entertained.”
Walt Disney

The Countdown BEGINS TOMORROW!!!!

{Linking to Hooking up with House of Hepworths & Thrifty Décor Chick…}

You can also check out these posts to see what a grand time we really did have…

1 Week to Disney

Our Countdown Culmination

Disney Debut Part 1

Mickey Mania Part 2

Disney Wrap Up Part 3

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Disney, Here We Come!!