Honeymoon Registry Alternative

A couple of years ago, Girl Scout Fiancée and I started going to a new and awesome dentist's office right in the same office plaza where she has her office. One of the nice perks of going to this office is that they reward you for successfully referring someone to their office, to the tune of a $100 gift card from any place you like. Recently, through a stroke of luck, Girl Scout Fiancée referred someone to the dentist's office and had the keen insight to ask for a Disney gift card. At the time, I thought that seemed like a great way to get some spending money for the parks during our honeymoon; little did I consider the greater possibility of using them as an alternative to the Honeymoon Registry.

When I see this, I see a delicious steak at Le Cellier.

As I learned through a little bit of Internet research, Disney gift cards can be redeemed for just about anything during a Disney World vacation--including food, hotel rooms, and park tickets. Since food and hotel rooms are going to take up a lot of our honeymoon budget, this seemed like a good use of any gift cards we might receive. Moreover, Disney gift cards don't expire and don't have any fees, so they're just as good as cash (except you can't be tempted to spend it elsewhere).

Due to the craziness of the holidays, some of our relatives didn't get a chance to send us any Christmas presents, and decided they wanted to contribute to the wedding instead (which, admittedly, is what I asked all of my family to do this year for Christmas). I suggested Disney gift cards as an alternative for these relatives, since the honeymoon registry does take a cut out of any gift, and close relatives have our address and can just send us things directly. For more distant relatives or friends, the honeymoon registry is still probably a good choice, because your best man/maid of honor/other family members can spread the link around easily and quickly.

Also, digital donations are pretty disappointing to open on Christmas day.

There are also some perks to buying Disney gift cards ourselves. Some stores let you buy gift cards at a discount, while our local Safeway (where we do all of our grocery shopping) occasionally runs a special where the purchase of gift cards nets you 5X reward points toward gas rewards. Seeing as how, when I fill up my tank, gas rewards have saved me upwards of $20 on the whole tank, that's a sizeable percentage of a gift card's value recovered right away. That doesn't even take into account the extra rewards points I'll earn on my credit card, which I wouldn't normally get just putting that money into our savings account. Of course, we have lots of non-Disney expenses coming up, so I wouldn't want to lock our entire wedding fund up in gift cards, but grabbing one or two here and there could be a nice way to chip at the mountain of expense instead of trying to blow it up all at once. I would say, though, that for anyone looking to do the honeymoon registry, Disney gift cards seem like they could be a nice alternative way to help pay for the honeymoon without going through a third party vendor.

Merry Christmas from the Disney Groom and Girl Scout Fiancée!

Today Girl Scout Fiancée and I would like to wish you all a Merry Christmas! We hope that, wherever you are, you're enjoying a day with friends and family, even if you don't celebrate the holiday. We had a good Christmas together today, and both of us received some cool Disney gifts; I got Girl Scout Fiancée a Mickey Mouse casserole dish, and she got me a Disney Infinity power disc album and several of the Toys 'R' Us exclusive power disc booster packs, which I'd been hunting for a while. I also put together a very "Mary" Christmas package for her, containing the new Blu-Ray of Mary Poppins, a boxed set of three of the original Mary Poppins books, and a Funko Pop vinyl figure of Mary Poppins. A friend of ours also got us each a few Disney Funk Pop figures, of which I have become a huge fan. So Happy Holidays, and thanks for stopping by!

Jasmine, the Rocketeer, and the Genie now adorn my computer desk.

More "Presents" from Disney

December has been a slow month for wedding and honeymoon planning, as faithful readers can almost certainly tell. Combining the fact that we have few decisions to make and that the holiday season is always packed-to-the-brim full of holiday parties, gift-buying, visiting friends and family, and scrambling like a madman to get all of my work done before vacation begins, I haven't had much time (or need) to update the blog. Fortunately, Disney sent us some more goodies in the mail for me to blog about, and since it's Christmas day and we are killing a little time, I might as well write a little Christmas blog about a present from Disney. So sit back and enjoy another Lazy Man's Blog: The Unboxing.

One cold and rainy day in December, the mailman delivered a box with the face of none other than Mr. Incredible (star of Pixar's best film, The Incredibles, a fact that is beyond argument for all rational minds) adorning its outside. I'd heard rumors that Disney was sending little packages out to many people that had a Disney vacation coming up, but it doesn't seem to be something that everyone is getting so I wasn't expecting this one. The image of Mr. Incredible, however, is merely a paper wrapper, and inside is...yet another box. The box inside that is actually pretty cool and sturdy, and I can see myself repurposing it for some of my gaming supplies. The top of the box is embossed with a Mickey Mouse head, as you can see in the photos below.

"Anyone who disagrees that mine is the best Pixar movie is getting a fist in the kisser!" says Mr. Incredible.

Boxes within boxes: the new Disney way.

Opening the inner box reveals a few more layers of goodies, including a helpful piece of cardboard telling you what's in the box, so that you don't miss anything as you dig down through the layers of the box like an archaeologist hunting for dinosaurs. There's also a loose piece of paper that reveals the true purpose of this package: to orient you with MyMagic+, Disney's new all-in-one trip management system tied tot he MagicBand technology that is rolling out in tests right now, and possibly in actual blanket use in the new year. Apparently, Disney really wants to make sure that everyone is aware of MyMagic+ and all of the upcoming changes, which is understandable for anyone who hasn't done any of their trip planning over the Internet. For Girl Scout Fiancée and I, though, this was all old news; we've been using the website for months, as evidenced by all of the previous posts I've made about dining reservations and trip planning. I guess whoever is in charge of sending out these kits has no way of knowing if I'm fully aware of the MyDisneyExperience website or not, so everyone gets one!

Like a terrible-tasting layer cake.

Thank goodness this was on top; the anticipation of waiting several seconds to see what lay within was killing me!

It was upon reading this that I began to suspect this was a package for the non-obsessed trip planner.

Below all of that is a manual that is your standard vacation-planning flyer, and it includes suggestions on rides, shows, and other things-to-do while on your Disney vacation. This was something I wasn't surprised by, as it's a pretty standard method for keeping you excited even though your vacation is still several months away. Honestly, I love getting mail from Disney, even if it's information that's readily available on the Internet, because it does succeed in keeping my excitement up. Moreover, the entire insert is filled with Incredibles images, hitting both my love of Disney and my love of superheroes over and over again.

Dash looks like he's ready to get away from his family...

The booklet is customized for our trip, including my last name on the front, information about our specific hotel throughout, and so forth.

The last page actually contains a refrigerator magnet.

At the bottom of the box was the real treasure: a Disney flash drive! When I saw this, I nearly cackled with delight. What could be on it? What is so important that Disney felt the need to send me physical media, something that is no small fee to manufacture, something that needed to be delivered by such a secure method that it couldn't be sent via e-mail. I feel like Ralphie when he gets his decoder ring, and just like Ralphie the answer to all of my questions is nothing but ultimate disappointment. After popping the flash drive into my computer, the autorun system brings up a web page, and then plays a pair of videos teaching you how to use MyDisneyExperience. That's it. The videos aren't even loaded onto the flash drive; it literally just connects to the Internet through your browser. There is no reason why this couldn't have been sent in an e-mail link and been just as effectively done.

Don't forget to drink your Ovaltine.

At least it looks cool.

And it glows bright green when you insert it into your computer!

Combining two more of my loves: Disney and Tron.

In the end, this package is nice but ultimately unnecessary. We're young, hip, Internet-savvy individuals, I'm plugged into the online Disney community, and even Girl Scout Fiancée has been hitting up message boards and MyDisneyExperience for months, so this didn't really tell us anything that we didn't already know. On the one hand, it's nice that Disney is reaching out to guests, whether they need it or not, to smooth the transition to the new system. And I'm ultimately very optimistic about our digital vacation planning future. On the other hand, part of me can't help but wonder how many other families are going to receive a package like this and feel exactly the same way. In the end, I basically got a free, awesome flash drive with a glow-in-the-dark Mickey head on it, so I'm going to view this as a nice souvenir that came packaged with a bunch of information I already had, and say I came out ahead. Thanks, Disney!

Cinderella's Royal Pain in the--hey there, kids!

At the end of October, I embarked on a magical quest. This quest had one thing as its goal: to secure dining reservations at many amazing restaurants around Disney World for our wedding. This quest was, for the most part, successful, though a quick glance back at the post I made on the first day of November reveals that I did fail to get one of my top-tier reservations, Cinderella's Royal Table during the Wishes fireworks show.

I typically prefer this particular kind of magical quest.

Over the course of the following four weeks, every morning during my post-run coffee-and-almonds breakfast, instead of playing some video games or watching a show on my tablet, as I would normally do, I headed upstairs to the office to hit the Disney Dining Reservations portion of the MyDisneyExperience website. My first stop on the information superhighway each morning was a search for reservation times for Cinderella's Royal Table, and each day I met with the same result as before: no reservation times appeared in the system for a late dinner the first week in May. This became my routine through most of the month, as the cast member I spoke to had assured me that I should have no problem securing a reservation once they were in the system; apparently, reservations for 2 are fairly rare at Cinderella's Royal Table, and they should have little difficulty accommodating us.

Finally, on November 27th, my search turned up something other than frustration and the creeping fear that, somehow, I had actually missed my shot at a reservation a while back. My first search turned up a reservation time at 9:15 for the day I wanted, some 45 minutes before the fireworks show is scheduled to begin.

Got me a reservation now, haters!

Let this post be a word of advice to anyone planning out a Disney trip and seeking to get a reservation that doesn't appear available at first: persevere! In this case, it's clear that reservation times for Cinderella's Royal Table had not yet been entered into the system, and didn't appear until nearly a month after my initial attempts. Throughout my explorations of message boards devoted to Disney Dining, I've also found a lot of folks saying that they snagged a hard-to-get reservation when someone else canceled, so even if you don't succeed at first, just keep checking back. Of course, it seems like taking advantage of the 180 days (+10 for resort guests) advanced dining reservation window is the best way to go, but if at first things seem full up, keep trying back.

Now on Twitter!

You can follow @TheDisneyGroom on Twitter now for updates from this blog. I'll also be checking the Twitter feed regularly, so it will be a good way to get a hold of me if you have any questions or comments that you want a direct answer to. I have no idea whether or not this is useful to anyone, but there you go.

Unboxing a Special Present from our Wedding Coordinator

It's been a busy week here at the TammRod Estate, with my brother and sister-in-law spending the week here in Seattle and joining in our big Thanksgiving event we have every year. Last weekend I returned home from a weekend of beer and board games in Blaine, WA (a trip that we've done nine times now!) to find a special package waiting on me, addressed to Girl Scout Fiancée and I both, from our wedding coordinator, Danny. I wasn't expecting anything, and in the package were a couple of presents from Danny to each of us. Since I'd never heard of anything like this on any of the other wedding blogs I'd read, I figured this might be something worth writing a post about. In the tradition of game unboxings that are all the rage on the internets these days, here's a brief photographic unboxing of our presents from Danny.

The box the presents came in wasn't anything special, but it was very obvious that it was from Disney right from the beginning. Even the exterior label was all fancified, albeit a bit incongruous with the very simple cardboard box.

The Disney Infinity card was not included; I just used it to hide our address.

After breaking the box's seal, the first thing that greeted us was a card from Danny. It's pretty cute and simple, but I think it's a nice indication of the sentiment. Disney is all about going above and beyond your expectations, and I think this sets a great tone for the wedding, even though it is still 5 months away.

I'll admit, when I read the word "treats," I thought it was chocolate.

There were two actual gifts in the box. My gift is a small coin that came in a pouch that fits in the palm of my hand. It's a little charm or token, no real practical use, but it did come with a card that has some suggestions for how it could be used. I'll admit, I'm a sucker for cool little trinkets like this, and definitely want to keep this in my pocket during the wedding and honeymoon.

I'll be like the Disney version of Two-Face.

Girl Scout Fiancée's gift is something a little more practical. Hers is a nice silky bag intended to hold the shoes she's going to wear at the wedding, with a cute little saying about Cinderella emblazoned across the front. Like my gift, hers came with a small card with some suggestions for making the wedding more memorable. This is one of those rare cases where I feel like the groom's gift is actually nicer than the gift for the bride, even though hers is actually more useful.

Useful silky bag vs. shiny useless piece of metal: you the the judge.

I fully realize that the gifts are just a small token in the grand scheme of things, but the fact of the matter is that Disney didn't have to send us these things. If we'd never received them, we wouldn't know the difference, but it's just a nice touch that shows that they want to make this as memorable as possible. Danny is so far exceeding my expectations for what a Disney wedding coordinator should do.