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Old 27 May 15, 10:25 PM  
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moosha
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Parks, Pins, Puke, Pennies...Not Enough Planning - April / May 2017

Hello and welcome to my fifth pre-trip report .

EDIT January 2016: This trip has now been postponed until April 2017. I have posted an update on page 2 with the new details, but I am leaving this post in the report even though none of this is taking place in March / April 2016 as per the original plan.

EDIT March 2016: Everything has changed again! Nearly a year since this trip was first conceived, after cancelling and postponing, we've now completely changed our plans for the holiday again. All the twists and turns have made it feel a bit like a soap opera and I was very close to starting a completely new pre-trippie because the holiday we're going on now bears very little resemblance to the one we originally booked in April 2015. The only similarities are that the cast is the same and that we're still going to Orlando...oh yes, and we're still doing a Disney Cruise . I'm going to do a proper update very soon but I think I have definitely learnt my lesson when it comes to starting pre-trippies very far in advance.

EDIT June 2016: My proper update is coming soon (once I can fix some technical problems with my photo sharing website of choice) but I wanted to quickly add that we aren't moving to the USA next year which had been on the cards last time I updated. I will explain the reasons for changing our minds properly in the update, but now I can crack on with planning the holiday (which has changed yet again, although you guys didn't know about the last set of plans as my update was too slow ). I will explain all in the update, but just wanted to add that we're now not doing a Disney cruise either next year as the holiday has become much more of a 'budget trip' but I'm so excited about our plans . I'm going to finish writing the update now and will get it up as soon as possible.

Links to updates:

Update Jan 2016 - change of plans (post #19)

Update June 2016 - another chance of plans (post #32)

Update Oct 2016 - additional plans and shopping (post #39)

Update: Tickets

Update: Accomodation Changes (again)

Update: ADRs and Daily Plans

Update: Cheeky Bookings Part 1

Update: Cheeky Bookings Part 2

50 Days to Go Update: Two More Cheeky Bookings and General Update

May 2015: I would usually wait until much closer to the holiday to get cracking on the pre-trip report, but having done so last year, I then ended up neglecting it as I ran out of time to post all the details and updates. So this time I'm giving myself almost a year's lead time in the hope that I will then be able to fit in all the information I would like to post before we go. So please excuse the fact that I am starting this pre-trippie 301 days before we actually go and accept the excuse that it will hopefully mean the report ends up being a bit more insightful and less rushed.

First up, some quick introductions if you haven't read any of my previous trip reports. Here we are looking very scared outside Tower of Terror this year:



We are:

Me: Michelle, 36 and lover of all things Disney / Florida. I Dibb / plan Florida holidays / read Disney blogs and forums and write trip reports pretty much as a full-time job (which I obviously don't get paid for.) I don't have a proper / paying job but my Disney 'hobby' is much more enticing than the housework I'm supposed to be doing when the rest of the family are out at work and school. Outside of Disney / Florida, I also love going to the gym, dancing, yoga, quality time with my girls and my husband, music and movies.

DH: Mat, 38 only contracted the bug in the last year or so. He works hard with regular trips away from home and enjoys having quality time with the rest of us on holidays. I was going to say he likes to relax on holiday but we all know Orlando holidays are not exactly relaxing. He pretty much leaves all the planning to me which suits me fine as I'm a control freak. Outside of work and Disney, he loves music and writing and writes about music for magazines and websites.

DD1: Seren, just turned 9 and DD2: Freya, 7. Both were born with Disney in their blood. Seren's favourite character is Stitch and Freya's is Marie (Aristocats.) They both also very much love the Princesses and it makes me very happy that Seren still loves character meets and Fantasyland rides as she approaches double figures. Apart from Disney, they both love dancing. Seren is a real bookworm and loves Harry Potter, and Freya loves running around like a crazy person and animals.

I've been to Florida around ten times. Approximately six times with my parents and sister between the ages of eight and 16, once with Mat (his first time) when we got married at Disney's Wedding Pavilion in 2001 when Disney weddings were a bit different (more low key), and three times with Seren and Freya in 2012, 2014 and 2015.

So right now we have been back from our 2015 trip for just less than a month and our Easter 2016 trip is already completely booked. This is a record even for us. In fact, part of this trip was booked before we'd even gone to Florida this year, and another two elements of the holiday were booked the day after we flew home. I did this for a combination of reasons: 1. Booking another holiday really helps with the Post-Florida Blues. 2. We were very sure of what we wanted to book as soon as we got home (well two hotels anyway), and 3. I was worried what we wanted would not be available over Easter for very much longer.

Let's go back to 11th March when I was very much involved in the last minute finalising of daily plans for the holiday we would be going on a month later. For some reason, I had also started to jot down the dates of our 2016 holiday based on Seren and Freya's school holidays and start thinking about how to divide it up between the things we wanted to do. All of us were keen to try a Disney cruise in 2016 and I had recently read a couple of cruise trip reports that just increased my excitement about the idea. I stumbled into the cruise forum on the Dibb and found that I would already be able to book the cruise element of the holiday at that point. I knew I couldn't add on a Disney hotel stay if we wanted one until free dining was available in April and we wanted to wait until after we'd done Orlando again to make any more decisions.

So I tentatively wandered onto the Disney Cruise Line website and had a little looky at the April 2016 dates. I knew we wanted to 'test the waters' (excuse the pun) and do a three night Bahamas cruise, what with us being new to cruising rather than a longer trip. I wanted to see how many cruises were on offer during our 3.5 week window because I figured as the cruise dates were specific, we'd need to build the rest of the trip around it. The site gave me about four date options that would work. I selected 1st April which fell quite nicely towards the beginning of our proposed dates and was cheaper than the ones that fell later in April. For some reason I didn't just make a note of the price for future reference, I clicked on to look at cabin options. I sent Mat a text telling him that the cruise prices were lower than I (and he) had expected. Before I knew it, I had reserved a deluxe family ocean-view stateroom with oversized verandah. I was able to hold the reservation for 24 hours (I think it was 24) without paying the deposit so we could think about it and discuss it. We hadn't really spoken about Disney cruises at all apart from me saying that they looked great from the reviews I had read, and Mat and the girls seeming impressed by what I told them.

The following day, when it was time to pay the deposit, I didn't actually confirm the reservation after all. Between my first visit to the Disney Cruise Line website and my second 24 hours later, I had read a trip report on the cruise forum here in which the Dibber had gone concierge. Concierge looked even better than what we had already booked and it was the concierge outdoor deck that really sold it to me in the end; the idea of a nice quiet space to chill out in, especially if the girls were off at the Kids' Club which I fully expect them to be for a lot of the time. The upgrade to concierge was an extra £800 or so and I reasoned with myself (and my husband) that it's his 40th birthday next year and this can be a special birthday treat.

So we're all booked on a three night Disney Dream cruise from 1st - 4th April. Being a complete newbie to DCL, I've got a lot of researching and planning to do as it gets a bit nearer.

The rough plan for this holiday had originally started off as a few nights in New York before flying to Orlando as we really enjoyed flying domestically to Orlando and avoiding busy immigration at MCO in 2014. We also wanted to spend a few nights at Clearwater, and didn't want to make any decisions about our Orlando accommodation until after this year's trip to see how we felt about onsite / offsite / Universal and how much time we needed to spend in each place.

This year's holiday came and went and we came home having made the following decisions about next year:

1. We missed the Disney bubble and Disney Dining Plan. We had a much better experience at Disney overall this time and came back wanted to stay onsite for a chunk of next year's holiday.

2. If we were staying at Disney next year, it had to be at least partly at the Contemporary Resort as we really dislike the Disney transport bunfight at the start / end of the day between Magic Kingdom and TTC. We wanted the luxury of walking to the park.

3. We were also quite partial to the idea of a split Disney stay between the Contemporary and the Beach Club. We loved staying at the Yacht Club in 2012, particularly because the Boardwalk is so beautiful and we loved walking from the hotel to World Showcase. This year Mat couldn't participate in any of the delicious cocktails at World Showcase.

4. We loved the Universal Express Pass which was new to us this year staying at Portofino Bay.

5. We also popped back to our beloved Cabana Bay for a visit and still felt like we would love to stay there again so had some thinking to do about the pros and cons of Express Pass v Cabana Bay.

6. Our four nights onsite at Universal this year were not long enough. We preferred our week at Cabana Bay in 2014 when we were able to spread the Uni parks out and also chill out / spend time at the pool / non-Disney restaurants / shopping / other attractions e.g. Legoland. This year our Portofino Bay stay felt quite rushed and flew by. We would rather have that week in Orlando than a few nights at Clearwater / a beach resort and a few nights in New York so they would be out for this trip.

There's a good chance we will take a break from Florida in 2017 to visit California instead so I decided to make 2016 the 'Greatest Hits Tour': repeating some of the things we love about our Florida holidays (staying onsite at both Disney and Universal, choosing the Disney hotels we really wanted to stay at, potentially the Universal Express Pass, Disney Dining Plan) and adding in some 'new material': those couple of new bonus tracks you find on the end of a greatest hits album (i.e. the cruise and staying at new hotels.)

Booking our Disney Hotels: (in my usual style, the following is a very long-winded account of booking the Disney part of the holiday .)

Once free Disney dining was released on 24th April, when we were still in Florida, I had a couple of quick looks at the Disney website while we were chilling round the pool. I found that the Beach Club only had Club Level rooms available during our dates for a ridiculous price and the Contemporary wasn't available for the two weeks we wanted. I guessed the standard rooms were being held back and in the case of the Contemporary, I know they hold back most of the rooms for conventions and release them nearer the time if they're not booked. The bottom line being that I couldn't get either hotel to show reasonable availability for the two weeks we wanted.

Then, the day after we got back from this year's holiday, on Tuesday 28th April, I priced up the first week at the Beach Club and the second week at the Contemporary separately and amazingly they were both showing reasonable prices for the room types we wanted. The Beach Club had pool / lagoon view rooms available (not club level) and the Contemporary had tower rooms available. I had done a bit of research on the Dibb about booking a split Disney stay and knew it was technically possible even if it wasn't going to be the most economical way to have a Disney holiday. I also knew how lucky I was that a tower room at the Contemporary had come up. It definitely wasn't available when I'd checked a few days before. And if I tried to switch the weeks around (Contemporary first), it wouldn't give me availability for that either. Almost like my original choice was 'meant to be.'

It seemed like it had all fallen into place and I needed to get it booked sharpish. I decided to phone Disney to see what they recommended and if there was any way to book both hotels as one booking. Disney were offering free Dining Plan and 14 day Ultimate Tickets for the price of 7 days, so we would therefore technically end up with double the park tickets we needed to be able to take advantage of the free dining since you need to buy the park tickets with each booking to get the dining.

I called them and spoke to an American lady who didn't exactly scream Disney to me with her customer service skills . I explained what I wanted to do and she confirmed that a split-stay couldn't be linked together. I told her that we wanted to spend a week each at the Beach Club and the Contemporary and she said they would have to be done as two separate bookings. She also said that we shouldn't do that as we would end up with double the park tickets (which I knew.) She even said she didn't know whether we would be able to put through the two bookings in the same name. She wasn't particularly helpful and certainly didn't want to assist in making a booking for me.

She did suggest that we book, say, 10 days at the Beach Club with the free dining and book the park tickets with that booking to get the 14 days of tickets for the price of 7, and then make a separate booking for a few days at the Contemporary with no park tickets (as we'd still be using the other set.) This would mean we wouldn't have dining during the Contemporary part of the trip as it's necessary to book park tickets and be staying more than five days to get Dining Plan.

By the time I put the phone down, I could see what she was saying and realised this would definitely be the best value way of booking the trip. The downside was that we didn't want to visit Magic Kingdom until we were staying at the Contemporary so we'd have to do all our Magic Kingdom days together at the end which wouldn't be ideal, and also we didn't really want to stay at the Contemporary without Dining Plan as we'd want to visit monorail resort restaurants (California Grill, Ohana) while staying there. I plugged the dates back in anyway with 10 days at the Beach Club, and it only offered me the club level rooms that it had been offering a few days before, still at a crazy price. So I tried 11 nights and got the same result. Nine and even eight nights still didn't offer standard rooms so no decent rates. For some reason the system would only offer standard rooms on those seven nights. Also, the Contemporary only offered Garden Wing rooms for three or four nights, no tower rooms until I put in seven nights. So I couldn't get her plan to work at all without booking a Club Level room which would cost more than the unnecessary park tickets anyway, and we still wouldn't have the Contemporary as there was no room at the inn.

When I had told the lady on the phone that a week in a tower room had been available, she was surprised and repeated 'the Contemporary is available?' I told her that I knew the resort didn't come up very often and she agreed with me. All of this made me more keen to just crack on and book the week at each resort while they were available, even though we'd have to pay for park tickets twice. Paying double for park tickets might seem crazy, but we were really set on these two hotels and a week at each would be ideal for us. Although we would have to pay over £1000 for park tickets we didn't need, I reasoned that this would be at least partly offset by the 14 days free dining, 2 x $200 gift cards (one for each booking) and a free Memory Maker which we have always paid roughly $170 for. I also told myself that if the 14 nights for the price of 7 tickets promotion wasn't available, we would have had to fork out for two lots of 7 night tickets anyway.

I quickly placed both bookings, trying not to make any mistakes, as I was rushing to go out to pick the girls up from school. The system most definitely allowed me to place two different concurrent seven night bookings with the same email address / names and addresses, and both invoices came through fine.

I'm really excited about spending a week at both of those Disney resorts . We stayed at the Contemporary in a tower room for a few days on our honeymoon back in 2001 and we've both always loved the resort. And as I said earlier, the idea of walking back to our room at the end of a Magic Kingdom night is a benefit we're really happy to pay for.



We also wanted a Boardwalk resort because as I've said, we love the area and being able to walk to Epcot and Hollywood Studios. We chose the Beach Club specifically because we've already stayed at the Yacht Club and the Beach Club has just been renovated. We didn't want to stay at the Boardwalk hotel because we wanted our pool to be Stormalong Bay.

Here are my girls playing at Stormalong Bay back in 2012:



Rather than link the two bookings together on My Disney Experience and potentially use the same set of Magic Bands and possibly the first set of park tickets only, I am setting up two MDE accounts and keeping both bookings entirely separate. Because each Dining Plan and each set of tickets is linked to each stay, I don't want to end up with confusion or problems with park tickets or anything when we try to use them. I don't fancy a trip to Guest Relations to try and work out what's going on with duplicate tickets. So I've linked my Beach Club booking to my usual Disney account, and I'm going to use a different email address to set up another account for the Contemporary booking. I'll book all our FastPasses and ADRs separately for each stay, and then when we check out of the Beach Club, we'll turn up at the Contemporary and start again as though we've just arrived at Disney, using our new bands and new park tickets. Better that than having to waste precious holiday time sorting out any problems with duplicate tickets etc.

Next up: Universal hotel decisions and Easter flight fun and games.

Edited at 01:09 PM. Reason: Updating Title
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