Big Summer Blowout! July 2015

[neilhd]

So we're going back. You already knew that though, given you've clicked on the Pre Trip! I shall now fill you in, in excruciating detail, the minutiae of every last tiny, painstaking, boring bit of what we have planned. I know you love it really. Dibbers are masochists when it comes to things like car hire research. You want flight-finding porn? Right here, baby.

Yet again we find ourselves attempting to somehow reconcile several issues:

1 - I want to get to the parks at opening.
2 - I want to stay at the parks until closing.
3 - I want to eat breakfast out at Dennys as often as possible.
4 - I want to eat dinner out at my favourite restaurants as often as possible.
5 - I want to enjoy the resort we stay at and relax around the pool.
6 - I want to not get up early.
7 - I want to go to all my favourite places.
8 - I want to do some new things, too.

Frankly, this is the problem with an Orlando holiday. Meeting all of these requirements just doesn't happen. Doing #1 precludes #3. Doing #2 precludes #4. Doing #7 precludes #8. Doing #5 is largely unlikely, and we can just completely forget about #6.

2 weeks just isn't long enough, but sadly it's all that finances and annual leave entitlements will allow until that elusive Euromillions jackpot arrives. Wanna hear a great story about lotteries? I don't care if you don't I'm going to tell it anyway. This is my pre-trip and I'll do what I like thankyouverymuch. I do the normal lottery and the Health lottery. I don't do the same numbers on both, as I do 2 normal lottery lines and only one Health lottery line. Also, Health has one less number. I have literally never watched a Health lottery draw until about 2 months ago when one happened to be one the TV whilst I watched. And then I watched all of my normal lottery numbers come up, one by one, on the lottery I don't play them on. I wasn't annoyed. I didn't really need that £100,000 anyway.

I suppose the important questions are the Who? Why? When? How? Where? and What? Probably in that order. So that is the order in which I shall answer them. Read on, but I hope you have a good couple of hours to spare...

Who

Neil (that's me, that is). 36. Planner. Unbelievably good looking. Occasionally prone to exaggeration. And ranting. Has bad luck with lotteries.

Ele (DW). 37. Co-planner (or so she thinks, she isn't really). Reasonably good looking I suppose, on a good day. With make-up. And dim lighting. I kid. She is of course beautiful, and being married to me for 12 years now has made her even more so. She's a lucky lady indeed and I make sure I remind her of this frequently. It'd probably be worth some of you reminding her of this, too. Ele causes much merriment in our family with her habit of saying the wrong thing. Her most recent one was when meaning to refer to a child as “Streetwise”, she instead said they were “Roadworthy”. Although that pales into insignificance compared to when she mean to call the then 8-year-old Joe a “Dumbo”, but instead called him a “Dildo”.

This is Ele and I. This was taken on a day-trip to Bruges last year. After about 300 selfies on that day I was suffering from a little selfie fatigue:



Jess (DD). 18. Somehow the little 11-yr old we took on our first trip is now 18. Of course as far as plane and theme park tickets are concerned she has been an adult for years, but now she legally is one. In our eyes of course she is nothing but a child still and always will be. Despite the fact that she has a job and will be off to University when we get back. There's also a very real chance this could be her last proper family holiday with us. She is a real family girl, but when she makes new friends at Uni I'm imagining that she'll start to go off holidaying with them, rather than with her boring old parents.

This is Jess in what I hope is a suitably embarrassing picture:



Joe (DS). 9. The little 2-year old from our first trip is now an enormous 9-year old, who is in age 12 clothing. Complete Minecraft addict. Being away from the computer for 2 weeks will be a test of his endurance and patience. Luckily, there should be one or two things to keep him occupied in Florida...

This is Joe:



Saffron (Ele's sister). 41. Came with us on our last trip in 2013, which was her first trip.

Anise (Saff's daughter). 9. This obviously makes her Joe's cousin and our niece (for those of you that missed the joke in 2013, yes I have a Niece called Anise. If you're expecting new jokes this year you may be sadly mistaken). Also came in 2013.

George (Saff's significant other). 42. Never quite sure of the official status here. In Facebook terms it'd probably be "It's Complicated". Has known Saff (and Ele) for about 25 years and me for over 10 of those. Basically part of the family. Has been before a few years ago, but not with us. For the record, not Anise's dad!

This is Anise, Saff and George in that order, in case you couldn’t work it out.



Sarah, Brad, Charlie and Archie. They are not actually coming with us, but are there at the same time as us (they fly the day before us), so undoubtedly will feature in this report every now and again. Sarah is one of Ele's bezzie mates, Brad is her husband, Charlie is Joe's age (they go to school together) and Archie is 4. They are staying onsite at Caribbean Beach Resort. They went for the first time last April after hearing us go on about it constantly for a few years. Brad is actually the one who got hooked (must be a guy thing as in our house it's me who's hooked!) and is now firmly of the opinion that it is simply the best place on earth for a family holiday. I can't argue with that.

Why

We all know why. All of us here on The Dibb decided to go on a once in a lifetime trip at some point in the past. This will be our 6th once in a lifetime trip, which is pretty good going. Our last trip in 2013 was a joint undertaking between the usual 4 of us, Saff and Anise, and 3 other friends. It was an amazing trip, different because we went with others, and often better for it. I did start a trippie (The 4 Pigs and 2 Chickens Tour) but did not finish it. I'm not sure why as I always finished the others - I think because I was limited to writing it whilst sat at the computer in the front room. Now I have a decent laptop I'll probably do a lot better as I can write it in bed!

After that one we knew we couldn't afford another trip for a while, so had tentatively put 2016 in the calendar for the next one. Well, figuratively speaking. In 2013 we didn't actually have a calendar that went up to 2016. In fact, we still don't.

In 2014 to give the bank account a much-needed rest we went to Wales for a week. It was lovely. We stayed in a little cottage right on the beach in a really secluded place. Every night we gazed out over amazing sunsets over the ocean and were lulled to sleep by the lapping of the waves. Sounds idyllic and it was. It was also, if I'm completely honest, a bit boring. And it rained a lot. We all wished we were in Florida and so changed our minds on the 2016 trip and decided on 2015 instead. With some hearty scrimping and saving we worked out we could just about afford it as long as we didn't leave the house for the next year and lived entirely off value baked beans on toast for 12 months. Stay away from our house if you value your sense of smell!

When we mentioned it to Saff she wanted to come too. I was quite surprised. She only went last time for Anise's sake really, and I really did think it would be a once in a lifetime thing for her. It turns out, she actually loved it, and the pull of another trip was strong. She's a cynical old thing like me, and yet we both love the blatantly fake and commercial Orlando. Weird. Something about that place! George had been before a few years ago with some friends and needed no persuading to join the gang.

So in August 2014 we collectively decided to do it. Being "the planner" I was put in charge of getting us there. No pressure then!

When

Dates were tricky. We normally go mid-end of August as a) If you go on the "magic date" the flights get cheaper, and b) It's significantly less busy. However end of August is out as that's when Jess's A-Level results come out and we need to be here for University purposes. So that left early August, but Ele is really busy at work at that point so is hard for her to get the time off. Saffron also finds that time difficult. So in the end we decided on mid-end July, settling on 18th July - 1st August. Not so ideal - it will be busier and more expensive - but we'll manage. Hopefully prior experience (and the new FastPass+) will get us around the parks, and we're planning on Hard Rock Hotel again for Universal Express Passes, but this time for 2 nights as we love that hotel and never get time to appreciate it enough when staying for a single night.

How

Now this was the really hard bit. Having been spoiled in the past by going mid-August, we've always had reasonable flight prices. Last time we did Premium Economy with BA cos I got a great deal on it, but my budget wouldn't stretch to that. I remembered indirects from that time coming in at around £500, but now we were looking for mid-July. This is a very different proposition! Initial searches revealed prices that were ridiculous - well over £1000pp direct, and not much less indirect. And I had set a budget of about £650pp... this was going to be tricky!

Then I learnt about Boomerang flights. This was very promising, but it seemed most people had booked in December/January for July/August departures. I wasn't sure I had the patience for that. I did find a couple of fairly promising ones from Dublin via JFK coming back via Gatwick that I was tempted by, but they didn't feel right, although they were coming in fairly cheap (about £650pp, but still with flights to Dublin and hotels etc to add on, not to mention the hassle, and the fact that they were with American (BA codeshare) and had no IFE.

My day job is as a software engineer for a large online travel agency... which does have the advantage that I can look at flights and hotels all day and nobody bats an eyelid! It also means that I have both the skills and the resources to write my own flight finding software, so I wrote an application to automatically search flights for me against our flight systems. Every 4 hours it would then email me with results from all London airports to every airport in Florida on our dates, filtered to show me the cheapest MCO, cheapest Tampa, cheapest Miami etc, and then also the cheapest direct versions of those flights. I then also added departures from Manchester and Birmingham (which were coming in a lot cheaper this year), and departures from Dublin, Shannon and Cork...

Obsessive? Moi?

I checked our historic flight bookings at work to see what people had paid who travelled around our dates in previous years. The results were not good. Nothing really under £900pp apart from a few who booked United flights in a sale in about May time. I definitely don't have the patience to wait until May.
On top of that I spent most evenings on Skyscanner, Kayak and Netflights doing various other searches. And I practically lived on ITA Matrix for a few weeks.

Ok, I am obsessive.

Then, one morning in mid-September, my 10am flight search email pinged into my Inbox, and there was something new. A Norwegian Air flight, flying on the Saturday direct to MCO from Gatwick. And for a price beginning with a 6. I'd looked into Norwegian previously as their Ft Lauderdale flight was promising, but as Tuesdays only it was a no-go. I quickly went onto the Norwegian site and sure enough, it was the long-rumoured new direct LGW-MCO route, launching in April. A quick search revealed that it was definitely there on our dates, and including baggage, meals and seat reservations it was coming in at about £680 per adult and £580 per child. That put it right on budget, and for a direct flight from our preferred airport. It gets in very late (8pm Orlando time, but that also means we don't have to get up early!), and the return time is fantastic (10pm depart Orlando/11am arrival at Gatwick). We plainly were not going to get better than this. I emailed the others quickly, and got "WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?! BOOK IT! BOOK IT NOW! " responses from everyone.

I'd already gone as far through as entering our details and selecting our seats (including snagging 3 extra legroom seats for both outbound and inbound at no extra cost!) and so quickly put my card number in and completed the booking. And we were booked! In the hours that followed I watched the price go up by £50, then another £50 (and I do mean hours - it was £100pp more by the time I went home!) Then in the next couple of days the price rose again and again and by the Friday (we booked on Tuesday) the price was up to over £980 per person - a full £300 more EACH than I paid and getting on for BA/Virgin money. We're going on a Dreamliner, too. A few weeks later and they were £1080 each, and Virgin was actually cheaper! At the time of writing this at the end of Feb, they are over £1200 each!

I don't think I've ever felt so smug.

It goes to show that you have to be super quick on these things. If you see something within budget that looks ok, you just have to do it there and then. Do. Not. Wait!

Oh, and I didn't swear even a tiny bit when I found out I could have got 2.5% Quidco back on a Norwegian booking. Oh no, not at all.

Never mind, we're going. And on budget with a great price for a direct flight. And with exit-row seats both ways. That's all that matters.

After that we could relax a bit. Finding flights is THE most stressful thing about going to Orlando, especially if you are on a budget. Ok, the budget of £650pp I set myself was fairly arbitrary and I could have increased it if I needed to, but not up to the £1000 mark this year.

Incidentally, this will actually be our first time going to MCO! We've flown to Atlanta, Miami (twice), Sanford and Tampa (really rate Tampa!), but never to MCO. After the horror stories of immigration there I'm a bit nervous, but hoping a bit that as we take off late most other international flights will have got there and cleared before we do. I realise this may be wishful thinking. We're at the front of the plane so should be off pretty quick, albeit at 1am our time, with a Joe who normally doesn't last much beyond 8pm... going to be interesting!

Where

This was going to be a bit more complicated than usual. With 4 of us, it's easy. Last year when Saff and Anise joined us, it was also quite easy as they were happy to stay on the sofa bed for free.

This year, there are 7 of us, we're sharing a car, and that means we have to either:

a) Book 2 condos/units/apartments in the same place (expensive).
b) Book a 2 bed place that sleeps 7 (uncomfortable).
c) Book a 3 or 4 bed place (expensive).
d) Book a villa (expensive).

Then George came up with an idea - his sister owns a number of timeshares and last time he went they were able to use it. This could work - if she would let us use them, we could get at least 1 week for free in a 2-bed-but-sleeps-8 place. George's sister then actually told us that some of her timeshares are 3-bed units, and that we could have 2 weeks if we wanted. This was amazing news, so we put a request in for a 3-bed unit at Marriott's Grande Vista which looks amazing. It's a different location to where we've stayed before being at the southern end of International Drive. I've always avoided I-Drive as it's always busy and a bit awkward to get to Disney. So it looks to be 10-15 minutes extra in the mornings. Frankly, for 2 free weeks in a very nice place, I care not one bit!

However, I'm not sure what's happening here. The request has been in for a few months now, but nothing has come up yet. So we're going to have to make a decision on that pretty soon. Do we keep waiting? If so, how long for? Do we try re-booking with a 2-bed (I can't say I really fancy 2 weeks on a sofa-bed but if it's free...)? What if that doesn't come up either? Do we just give up and just pay for a place? The longer we wait the more availability will go, and the more expensive it'll get to book somewhere else. Decisions, decisions...

Hard Rock. This was coming up really expensive this year. Almost £600 (although I get a bit of a discount) for 2 nights per room, and we'd need 2 rooms. Last time we went I booked a travel agent rate direct with them, but they are a little more strict on that now, requiring an IATA card. So I applied for and received one of those. This will let me get a good rate. I'll probably end up booking a King Suite as that'll sleep 8, but annoyingly their website doesn't let you specify that many people so I'll have to call them. That works out at about £950 for the 2 nights, which is definitely better than £1200 for 2 separate rooms. Plus I get to say "Us? Oh, we're in one of the suites. Are you in a standard room?" whenever we talk to anybody. I've not booked it yet though as I've been waiting to see what happens with our main accommodation. If we end up getting 1 week of Timeshare and then having to move, it'd make some sense to move to the HRH, and then move on again, to avoid double-paying. More hassle, though. Again, got to decide on this soon as otherwise it'll sell out!

What

Car Hire - Last trip we got a stupidly good deal with Hertz at about £235 for 2 weeks in a 7-seat SUV. This was because of a 40% off deal combined with 10% Quidco. This didn't seem to be happening this year and the prices they were quoting were so high I could've just gone and bought a brand new Tahoe for about the same money, so Alamo Brits was the answer at £450. Not a bad price and much better than anyone else could come up with. Looking forward to trying out SaveTime. Except of course I didn't book it straight away (waiting to see if Hertz came up with another cracking deal), and in the meantime the price went up to £500. I gave it a few more days in case it was a blip and suddenly it was £750! Panic time! I checked USRentACar (whom we have used previously on several occasions) and they were still £500 but only with 1 driver. I booked it with a £50 deposit immediately. Don't want to end up paying any more! I paid the extra tenner for cancellation protection so if an amazing deal did come up elsewhere I can still take advantage. What is even more annoying is I could've got a Trade rate with Alamo for about £350 (pay on arrival), but because I didn't then have the IATA card that I now do have, I couldn't book it. Oh well. We're splitting the cost between us so it's not bad really. Unless we get lucky with an upgrade to a Suburban it's looking likely that we might have to stick at least some of our party in a taxi from the airport though, as we won't get 7 people + suitcases in it!


Tickets - Will be bought at some point from work as I get them a bit cheaper that way. I'll probably spend ages comparing MYW tickets to 14-day Ultimates, and then just give in and buy the Ultimates. Then I have to learn all about FP+. I'm still not convinced by this. I don't like the idea that all the FPs can be booked by onsite guests before I even have a chance. Especially as we are going at peak time. And I further don't like the fact that you can't get a FP on the day for some rides at all because they're all gone before you even get there. I'm normally good at having a plan and sticking to it, but this means you have to have everything planned down to the day a full month in advance, and if you change your mind for any reason (e.g. weather, tiredness, medical reasons, whatever), you might lose your chance to ride altogether unless you queue for ages. We've ridden everything before of course - except the 7 Dwarfs coaster - so I know there's only a couple of things we have to rush to. TSM requires an opening-time rush. Likewise Soarin'. And, I presume, the new 7 Dwarfs coaster. Frankly that's the one I'm most concerned about, as whilst I'm happy to rush straight to TSM or Soarin', I refuse to rush like that as we enter MK. There's just too much to take in and rushing straight to Fantasyland will ruin it. So I'll pin my hopes on a FP and if not, well, we'll see. Even though it has downsides I do like the fact I'll (hopefully!) have FPs for most of what I want to do.

Photopass share has been joined. This is also all a bit complicated now. Hopefully when I buy Magic Bands when I get there and link them all to my MDE account (Everyone else is just a Guest on my account, and I am linked to the share organiser) then it'll all just work.

Eating - I've done a grand total of 2 ADRs. One for T-Rex cafe because we've not been for a few years, and one for a Fantasmic dining package at Hollywood and Vine. I don't know if I'll do any more. I wanted Be Our Guest but I totally missed the 6-month window so I've got more chance of inventing a time machine to go back in time to try again than getting one now. We also intend on eating at Bahama Breeze (my favourite restaurant in the entire world), Cheesecake Factory (Jess is planning lots of shopping whilst at Mall @ Millennia), Hard Rock Cafe (love it!), Bubba Gumps (never been but want to try it), Outback Steakhouse (another family favourite), Manny's Chophouse and probably several more as well.

In totally pointless news, I have purchased a new pair of Crocs for the trip. I know they went out of fashion around 2009 (if they ever were actually in fashion) and I'm the only person wearing them now, but I've still found nothing better for 2 weeks of theme parking in 35C heat with frequent thunderstorms. I will probably leave the bumbag behind this year as Magic Bands make it a bit less necessary. Fashionista that I am!

So, there we have it in painstaking and boring detail. Hopefully the trip will go smoothly, I will get an upgraded car, the queues will be short (maybe not), the food portions bountiful (definitely) and the rain limited (we'll see).

Less than 5 months to go... on with the show!

[Loulabelle18]

A great read. You are a total planning genius! Looking forward to reading more x

[DisneyBelle]

Gah I literally winched when I read you lottery "luck" story! fab pre trippie, off to read your previous reports don't know how I missed them!

[jocat]

Am glad there's going to be anther trippie from you.

Can't believe how much your children have grown up over the past couple of years!

[Jessika]

Looks like you have a great trip planned, we have a now 19 year old DD she holidayed with friends last year, is in her first year of uni at present and is holidaying with us to Florida this year which has as you can imagine bumped the price up nicely! Having two other school age kids one collecting gcse results we've had to plump for the earlier end of August this year but do prefer those last two weeks. We are on our first boomerang so a little nervous! Looking forward to reading more.

[neilhd]

Originally Posted by Loulabelle18

A great read. You are a total planning genius! Looking forward to reading more x

See more...

Well, I don't know if "genius" is the right word. Perhaps... oh I don't know... actually "genius" is fine.

[neilhd]

Originally Posted by DisneyBelle

Gah I literally winched when I read you lottery "luck" story! fab pre trippie, off to read your previous reports don't know how I missed them!

See more...

You winched? Was your car stuck somewhere?

I didn't wince(or winch), but I did swear a little bit. Or a lot.

[neilhd]

Originally Posted by jocat

Am glad there's going to be anther trippie from you.

Can't believe how much your children have grown up over the past couple of years!

See more...

Thanks Jocat, nice to see you back here reading one of my ramblings again!

This is what they looked like back in 2008 when we first went:



I do suspect my kids are not the only ones to have grown in the past 7 years though!

[neilhd]

Originally Posted by Jessika

Looks like you have a great trip planned, we have a now 19 year old DD she holidayed with friends last year, is in her first year of uni at present and is holidaying with us to Florida this year which has as you can imagine bumped the price up nicely! Having two other school age kids one collecting gcse results we've had to plump for the earlier end of August this year but do prefer those last two weeks. We are on our first boomerang so a little nervous! Looking forward to reading more.

See more...

So they still want to come even though she's in Uni? Damn.

Definitely prefer the last two weeks. We did early August on our first trip and managed fine. I'm sure your boomerang will work out nicely.

[neilhd]

UPDATE!

As time is getting on, and it's now only about 4 months to go, I'm getting a bit worried about the fact we don't have any accommodation booked! Timeshares can take a while to exchange and so far we've got nothing...

So I've been looking around, and have seen at least 2 places I was considering as a backup get booked up already. So to make sure we don't end up sleeping in the car I've booked 2 weeks at Encantada resort, for a very pleasing price. I've only paid a £1 deposit and I can cancel it for free if I need to. Hopefully the timeshare will get sorted and I can cancel this, but at least we've got a roof over our heads if we need it!

I've also booked a couple of ADRs:

T-Rex Cafe
Whispering Canyon (only because Anise is rather fond of ketchup, so this should be a laugh - obviously I won't tell her!).
And also a Fantasmic Dining Pacakge because I can't be bothered with all that queuing.