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Tara's Scrapbooking Article of the Month
OTHER ARTICLES • SAMPLE LAYOUTS Planning Your Walt
Disney World Vacation Scrapbook! Sure, you knew the trip
required planning, but do you realize that planning can make your vacation
scrapbook better than you ever thought possible? Where else to begin but at
the beginning? The time to start
planning your scrapbook is when you begin planning your trip!
Save all those travel agency brochures, notes, ticket confirmations and
especially those Disney resort reservation confirmations.
It’s just occurred to me now as I plan the sixth and seventh trips of
the last 2.5 years that I should not only scrap the trip itself, but the
planning stages as well! See, I’m
as rabid about trip planning as I am about scrapbooking.
I take pages of notes, create schedule spreadsheets color-coded by theme
park, listings of important numbers. Why
not scrapbook these items to show the work that went into planning the trip?
After all, many of us pour our hearts into this planning! I had my
husband journal about the trip and the wonderful time he had thanks to my
planning. I’ve already begun saving things for the next album and can’t wait
to compare the initial plans to the final itinerary to see how it evolved!
Photographs will certainly
be the stars of your scrapbook. They
are so important that I’ve devoted another separate article just on this
subject. Click HERE to read more
about taking photos with scrapbooking in mind! Of course, scrapbooking
goes beyond photographs. Memorabilia
will play an important part in bringing back the good times after the trip has
long past. When I arrive at my
Disney resort, I immediately begin collecting and I don’t stop until the trip
is over. Whenever possible, try to collect items in threes.
This way you can include front and back of the item in your book, plus
leave one copy intact for any pocket pages you might do. I basically save
anything that isn’t nailed down that is somehow related to my trip.
When making an album of a trip my husband and I took in April 1999, I
ended up with a 2-page spread just for memorabilia.
It might have seemed silly to save napkins at the time, but they made a
cute addition to my page! And what
could be more perfect for doing journaling on that resort stationery??
And, if you ever feel silly saving items in threes, remember that others
have gone to greater extremes. I
offer myself up as an example: for
that October trip last year I planned on making not just a book for myself and
my husband, but gift albums for my sister-in-law and her family and my parents
and younger sister. So I was saving
everything in NINES!! So, when you
start to feel sheepish, just remember that I must have looked a lot
“crazier” than you! Here are some things to save: q
Resort newsletter q
Receipts from check in (room,
park passes) q
Park admission tickets q
Resort Ids q
Map of resort q
Resort stationery (in the room in
most deluxe resorts) q
Resort postcard (found in the
bedside table drawer at all Disney resorts) q
Mickey coasters q
Maps of each park (including
Downtown Disney, water parks, and the Epcot Resort Area map) – remember that
most of these have the dates you are there on them! q
Any fliers or brochures (examples
– Millennium Pin Trading, Fast Pass) q
All receipts from purchases and
meals q
If flying, your plane boarding
passes q
Leftover FastPass tickets q
Character autographs (of course) q
Any special items, like Fantasmic
dinner package seating vouchers (which used to be really cool with Fantamic
graphics but are now just orange cards with printed text). q
The little cards the attendant
writes your photo number on for buying attraction photos at Splash Mountain,
Tower of Terror, etc. q
Speaking of ride photos – you
can often get a second print at a significant savings – buying two means you
can use one in your book and still frame one for home or work. q
Park passports – like the ones
sold for Epcot’s World Showcase or Animal Kingdom.
Be sure to have them stamped at the appropriate places – it’s a fun
activity and makes a wonderful keepsakes. q
Special recipes – yes, Disney
restaurants will give these out upon request!
The Brown Derby gives out its Grapefruit Cake recipe on request, printed
on a card shaped like, what else, a brown derby!
One rainy Saturday on our
last trip, my sister and I took the Missing Quote Challenge at Magic Kingdom.
Not only did we have fun AND win, but we had the question sheet to save
(with our scribbled answers and the 100% grade), 6 front-of-the-line passes (our
prize for winning) and a special certificate!
Since we were leaving Magic Kingdom and weren’t coming back for the
rest of the trip, we gave away 4 of the passes, saving 2 for my scrapbook!
Just the pictures and journaling would have made for a nice page, but the
addition of the memorabilia really makes it great! Professional park
photos make a great addition to your
scrapbook. Each park has
photographers stationed near the entrance.
They’ll take your photo with the park’s icon in the background
(Spaceship Earth at Epcot, for example) and give you a numbered card so you can
view your photo a few hours later. You
are under no obligation to buy the photo, but they are great for making
introduction pages for each park. They
also come in decorative photo folders that can provide inspiration for page
decoration and color choices. (This
is another good way to get a shot of everyone at once.) Be sure to take along a container
to put all your memorabilia in, too. There’s
nothing worse than saving something only to end up tearing it!
A large manila envelope might do the trick, but some sturdier options are
plastic letter or legal size folios (the kind with the fold-over flap that
secures with a cord) or containers specifically designed to hold scrapbooking
paper, like Cropper Hopper’s Fast Filer case (clear or green plastic, $5.95,
holds 12x12 paper). Perhaps the most valuable
tool for making a great scrapbook is a trip journal.
Most of us who read these boards write trip reports, so we’re used to
taking notes. Remember that your
scrapbook is like visual trip report; taking notes — even if it’s at the end
of each day — can help you remember the little details that made the trip so
special. Another helper in putting
the pieces together is to save your resort bill.
Since we always stay at Disney resorts and always charge everything to
our room, we have a day-to-day outline of where we were.
If there are any gaps in my trip journal, I can use the itemized bill to
fill them in. Just as a little careful thought can make your Disney vacation an even more magical experience, a little planning and attention to detail can make your scrapbook better than you ever imagined! Yes, the Cast Member who checks you in might think you’re off your rocker for asking for three copies of the BoardWalk Bugle newsletter, but it’ll all be worth the effort when you flip though your scrapbook years from now and feel the magic all over again! Copyright © 2000 Tara Whittle Do not copy this article in part or in full without prior written permission from the author. This article used on Disneyzone by permission. |
