So we finally have an update!
I'm not going to rant anymore about Virgin ... there's no point really, what's done is done.
After speaking to a lady on a FB group who works for Virgin but is furloughed, she managed to get a member of the customer service team to get in touch with me via email. We asked to rearrange to 27th September for 2 weeks and she said they were struggling with availability of a room for 5 of us ... yet on their own Virgin Holiday's website it showed Art of Animation as being bookable
yeah go figure. So we've cancelled and are awaiting a refund now. We don't expect to get it before August really, but our balances don't need paying till November anyway so that's fine.
Anyway today is our 72 hours prior to departure, instead of phoning Virgin I decided to phone BA and see about extending our dates in December as this was looking like the most likely option. After less than half an hour on the phone I had spoken to a lovely lady who changed our booking for us. The planning side of me is yearning to plan so I've done a little comparison below
Original Holiday
Departure: 28th December - 12.20pm - Gatwick to Tampa
Car hire: Avis - Large (Ford Escape or similar)
Return: 9th January 7.25pm - Tampa to Gatwick
Duration 10 days
Revised Holiday
Departure: 24th December - 12.20pm - Gatwick to Tampa
Car hire: Avis - Large (Ford Escape or similar)
Return: 16th January 7.25pm - Tampa to Gatwick
Duration 23 days
Total Price Difference:
£325
How amazing is that?!
So we get to spend Christmas AND New Year in Orlando with a whopping 23 days out there. We are hoping to change our villa dates to 24th December - 2nd January and I have provisionally booked a preferred room at Port Orleans Riverside to ensure there's availability. When Disney release free dining we will see if we can amend or make a new booking and will only lose the £50 deposit. So that will be 14 nights at Disney too.
We will be arranging a 1 night stay at Clearwater again and probably Universal. We will also be upgrading Chris's and the kids Universal passes from seasonal to Preferred like mine as there's no blackout dates for Universal doing it this way meaning we'd visit Universal in the week over Christmas that we have at the Villa
Chris and I need to sit down go through things properly, so will probably do that tonight.
We've worked out and even after adding Disney on, the price increase of the fly drive and upgrading the Universal passes we will still be over £3250 better off! (This includes cancelling HRH, car hire and airport hotel and parking for May)
Now I need to make a complete new trip report I think ... or do I just continue using this one?
ETA: Do we tell the kids or do we still keep it a secret? Chris wants to tell them and his parents, but I think I'd rather wait till the weekend before to tell them, once they've broken up from school maybe? X