The Year of the Mouse Pre-Trip - May 2014

[fleur_charms]

Long time lurker, first time pre-tripper!

We’ve been talking about writing up a pre-trip for ages now, and I’m just finally getting round to it. I’m an obsessive list writer, so I’m thinking this is going to be a big help to me with the planning, and remembering what I’ve done and haven’t done! I have a strange brain that gets paranoid when it thinks it’s forgetting something…

So, without further ado!

The Cast

Me – Hazel or fleur_charms – 22, but will be turning 23 while we’re out there!
I am a lover of all things Disney, as well as roller coasters and generally just… the experience of Orlando! I am a Marketing Assistant and when I’m not Dibbing I can usually be found baking cupcakes, attempting to complete some form of exercise, or just generally moaning about something.



DBF – Liam – 29.
Liam’s main love is of Universal Parks and the rollercoasters – he particularly enjoys Harry Potter too. He’s an IT Technician who has many, many passions and hobbies including remote controlled things (helicopters, cars, you get the idea), photography, mountain biking and surfing.



And together we look like this:



We met in 2011 when we were both at the Uni of Lincoln. We had a ridiculous amount in common, including at the time we’d both been to Orlando four times. We’ve since said we could never ever be with someone that didn’t want to go there, so it’s a good job we both love it!

We’ve been together now for two and a half years. We last went to Florida in June/July 2012 – with my parents, to celebrate finishing uni! We were spoilt because we went for just over three weeks and we stopped in a really great villa. It was probably the best holiday of my life but I’m a glass half empty sort of person so I spent the first week proclaiming to everyone how the holiday would go so quickly it would be over so soon and I’d have to go home to be unemployed and depressed!

Me and Liam finally managed to acquire jobs in November 2012, he, at the beginning of the month, and me, at the end. Liam is from Bedfordshire originally and moved to my home town on the promise we wouldn’t stay forever… Wolverhampton is not exactly the nicest of places! There was a tense period where we were living with my parents but luckily it was short lived as we moved into our first place together in December of that year.

We had never planned to do Florida in 2013, but in February 13 we visited Lincoln and stayed in a hotel for the weekend. The hotel made us nostalgic and reminded us so much of the night before flying out in 2012 and it was decided then we would go with my parents again when they went in Sept/Oct 13.

We started saving right away. Unfortunately, fast-forward to April and the bullying in my job had become unbearable. My manager was a living nightmare and with no way out I ended up quitting and feeling a failure doing so. All of the money I’d saved to go on Florida was now paying my bills while I was unemployed. Luckily it was only for four weeks, and then I managed to find a temp job to tide me over for another five week until I was very lucky to get another marketing job for a global company.

That set us out of balance for the whole year, and despite our extreme love of holidays we only managed Cornwall and Centre Parks in Holland in 2013. 2014 was to be the year of the Mouse!

We originally said we’d go in February… We couldn’t bear to wait any longer than we had to so it was perfect – low crowds. But we were a little put off because we wanted hot weather and of course, it is hot all year round but we found out if could be hit and miss. So despite the fact I was bursting to go immediately we eventually settled on May. It meant I could spend my birthday over there too!

We decided a while ago it would be the first two weeks of May. The 3rd – 17th, and my birthday would be on the middle weekend – the 11th. There was only one problem… Liam works in a school and is only allowed holidays during the school holidays.

Hmmm. He had wanted to leave for a while and due to the fact we apparently value holidays more than job security, we booked our flights on Jan 6th on the promise he would put his all into finding a new job.

Cue an awful period of time where, due to me being a little on the pessimistic side, it looked like we’d maybe have to cancel everything and live in a pit of despair because we’d lost all the money we’d spend on the holiday so far. But luckily Liam is the clever kind and somehow, with the odds stacked against him, managed to acquire a new job just three weeks after he started looking!

From March he officially works in an Academy instead of a School – he earns more AND its full time (ie. 52 weeks per year) so he can book holidays whenever he likes! Perfect!

To be continued... The Flights! The Accommodation! Not that exciting... but you get the drift.

(I apologise, despite the fact I am trained as a Journalist, I don't tend to proof read anything outside of work so I'm sure I've made a load of typos!)

Done

Flights

Hotel

ESTA

Hotel night before

Travel insurance

Car hire

One night at Loews Royal Pacific

ADRs

Park tickets

Memory Maker

Spending money


To do

General arranging of things

Stocking my Tab up with goodness for the plane

Lose a stone!


Index
The Flight Saga
The Dark Days (Skip if you're only after Florida goodness)
Happier Days (The actual plan lives here!)
Surprises!
Shopping!
Restaurants
Plans
Bumper Florida delivery
6 weeks to go - clothing purchases ahoy!
Restaurant Updates
4 weeks to go!
3 weeks to go!
10 days to go!

[Guest]

Omg love this already! Your hair is such a lovely colour btw!

2014 is definitely a great year for the mouse! We cancelled 2014 plans too, I feel your pain! Can't wait for more!

[fleur_charms]

Originally Posted by Mermaids

Omg love this already! Your hair is such a lovely colour btw!

2014 is definitely a great year for the mouse! We cancelled 2014 plans too, I feel your pain! Can't wait for more!

See more...

Thank you I am just recovering from having dyed my hair for the past ten years. The final straw was 2011/12 when I went blonde and my hair was literally straw (ha see what I did there). My hair is auburn so the kind of colour I hated growing up and then was desperate to get back! I don't think I'll ever dye it again - there's still blonde at the very ends and its been a year and a half! Anyway I'm off on a tangent lol...

I told Liam we had a reply an he responded 'ahhh I'm not sure I like being a celebrity' haha! Will write more tomorrow evening - now for a Breaking Bad fix (please no spoilers! Still working my way through)

[beautybutterfly]

you go just before us, DH and I go on the 8th May... so excited!

Glad your OH has sorted his job out, now you can concentrate on worrying about what you're going to do with your 2 weeks in Florida

[Guest]

Cool start , don't forget to come back and fill us in . We go around same time ... May seems so,popular on here this year

[Redrach1903]

Great start You are there the same time as is, not long to go now! Woohoo!

Looking forward to more updates

[fleur_charms]

Originally Posted by beautybutterfly

you go just before us, DH and I go on the 8th May... so excited!

Glad your OH has sorted his job out, now you can concentrate on worrying about what you're going to do with your 2 weeks in Florida

See more...

Lots of people seem to be going on odd dates like the 8th or the 6th - I always assumed everyone went on holiday on a Saturday haha! Guess not when it comes to Florida! It is sooo exciting, I'm bursting! And thanks - I am so glad it's all sorted and I can now be excited without feeling bad for him!

Originally Posted by Hodgy28

Cool start , don't forget to come back and fill us in . We go around same time ... May seems so,popular on here this year

See more...

Will definitely fill everyone in...but will also definitely waffle on and on about something or nothing! May seems incredibly popular! I'm not sure whether it's a new thing or I just didn't realise before as I was never looking at May!

Originally Posted by Redrach1903

Great start You are there the same time as is, not long to go now! Woohoo!

Looking forward to more updates

See more...

Yes, it's so exciting! I've seen your pre-trippie but am yet to post because, as I say I'm a bit of a lurker! I'll get round to it!

Now hold your hats I'm about to post a very wordy update...

[fleur_charms]

The Flight Saga (aka pricing up a holiday we shouldn’t really be thinking about)

Warning: This is wordy!

Since we had decided on the dates we wanted to go sometime last year, I had been sporadically dipping in and out of the thrilling world of Orlando flight prices. By all means, I wasn’t undertaking what you would call extensive research at all! The number of operators I knew of that flew to MCO was limited, so I’d mainly check Virgin as we had some miles with them I could use to knock some money off the price.

Being uneducated we were originally all set to do a package with Expedia. This made me sort of nervous though as I’m not sure where Expedia stand with seat booking and allocation and some of the reviews I’ve heard weren’t exactly great. Still – they were consistently coming out as the cheapest package for flights and hotel (We’d already picked the Enclave Suites – cheap and cheerful!). I think it mainly hovered between £850 and £900, and every now and then I’d check in and it would be something even lower but it would say “Only 1 ticket left!” as if it was trying to coerce you into booking now or something. Every time that happened I would naïvely have a mini meltdown thinking there were no more flights to Florida for our dates and we had to book NOW NOW NOW! But with Liam’s job issues we thought it was best to wait until he had found a new one.

Over the Christmas period is really when I started checking more frequently, and checking everywhere I could think of. Flight comparison websites, TA websites, package holiday websites. And it was the first time I considered DIY – having previously thought I could not be bothered with all the faff just to shave a few pounds off the holiday. There were lots of sales over Christmas and the New Year and I was left to my own devices to obsessively check flight prices over and over again due to the fact Liam went home to spend most of the holidays with his family.

The date it got really intense was the weekend of 3rd-5th January. I had already had two days back at work but Liam, working in a school, was still off for the holidays so he was still in Bedford with his family. I had virtually spent this entire weekend glued to my Kindle looking at different offers, deals and flight combinations. I had finally found what I at the time thought was an amazing price with Thomson for a package including flight, hotel and car hire. I can tell you it now as like a saddo I emailed it to myself so I would remember – it would work out to be £962 per person – without seats booked, as they had an offer at the time where if you spent over £2000 you’d get a £100 discount. So despite the fact to use the ‘free’ hire car they offered you had to pay extra for the car insurance, with the £100 off it wasn’t too bad a price – or so I thought at the time.

We also liked the added security of the fact it was a package holiday and I had a look around and saw a few people who said Thomson held the money they had already paid and deferred the holiday – good news for us if we needed to cancel in case Liam didn’t get a new job. And we could also pay a deposit rather than the full amount – again good news as we were poor at the time! Still am now this holidays wiping all my pay out!

However, at the same time of finding this package I also found hideously cheap flights with flythomascook (I say cheap, maybe we didn’t get a great deal but it was great compared to what I’d seen elsewhere!). This meant paying in full and possibly not being able to cancel in the event Liam didn’t get a job. This threw up the prospect of him preferring to go on holiday and come home to unemployment than cancel the holiday K strange boy. The outbound flight was showing up as £291.49 and the inbound was £232.49 making for a grand total of £572.49 each – without food or

seats. BUT they had a sale on at the time which amounted to £30 off each, and I found various voucher codes online which helped… Now, I have no idea how we came to get this price but I managed to get it down to £510.98 each, WITH seats. We thought that was great, and I added in an extra case on the way back for £50. I actually to this day cannot tell you how I got it for that price? Must have been some voucher code I used. We’d found this price on Sunday 5th Jan and talked about it extensively – we didn’t think we’d get better than that, with seat booking included, unless we waited until the very last minute, which we didn’t want to do. But he didn’t have a new job yet and to be quite honest, he hadn’t even started looking. This was an issue for me as I’m an obsessive worrier, but not for him, so I made him promise if we booked he would work really hard, spend hours a day looking for a job to increase his chances. (As a side note, you have to understand, I was starting to become sceptical in his commitment to finding a job because he had been saying for the past year he was going to and then putting it off because he loved having all the holidays! )

I hadn’t asked for the time off work and didn’t want to book without doing so (as they had been very funny about holidays in the place I had left) so we had an agonising wait until I’d got the ok. I have a really lovely manager who I asked for the time off and she just put it straight in the diary! I talked her through the whole affair with Liam’s job and her advice was that we’re only young once! Throughout the day I was convinced the price was going to jump up, but it didn’t, and first thing when I got home at 6 o’clock that evening we booked… and it was set in stone forever!

[Guest]

Congratulations on getting it all booked, it is always such a great feeling when you can finally stop looking and just get on with the planning. We don't go until the end of June so look forward to hearing any tips you bring back on best places to visit and what to avoid.

[miss_mouse]

I'm so pleased you booked!

I've loved reading your pre trippie, how exciting.
The time will fly by.
Happy planning : )