Another Dose of Disney Dreams! - August 2016 *Updated 20th July-Daily Plans*

[Jessika]

We are also doing the jersey to miami route and like yourselves added the car for a fab price. I also added 2 nights at Loews Miami beach to kick start the holiday! We boomeranged last year doing the whole boomerang in one day, we done lhr dub lhr jfk. It was the longest day but so worth it for the savings! We are doing the jersey part the day before flight day this year, think we're going to hire a car and explore! Looking forward to reading more of your plans.

[juliab]

Originally Posted by Momofboys

Oh I missed you starting this. loved your wedding report. In fact it sold me that August is doable, so we're off for 16 nights at POR this August! I shall blame you if the heats too much

A cruise too, fabulous, I did briefly look at doing one but we're a 5, like you, but our older 2 will be 15 and 18 so more expensive in every way!

Look forward to reading along with more of your plans

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Oh wow you'll be there the same time as us, glad our report helped with your decision. I think after a few days you adapt to the heat!

The cruise is a crazy price and more so because there's 5 of us! We've cut back in other areas so that we can afford this extravagance

Thanks for reading

Originally Posted by Lisa29

Wow, what amazing flight prices! Such a bargain for the 5 of you.

What a lovely long trip you have too.

It's difficult to try new resorts when you have a favourite that you are happy with.xx

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We're so chuffed with the price Lisa of both the flights and the car

Looking forward to lots of days in the Florida sun

Thanks for reading xx

[juliab]

Originally Posted by Jessika

We are also doing the jersey to miami route and like yourselves added the car for a fab price. I also added 2 nights at Loews Miami beach to kick start the holiday! We boomeranged last year doing the whole boomerang in one day, we done lhr dub lhr jfk. It was the longest day but so worth it for the savings! We are doing the jersey part the day before flight day this year, think we're going to hire a car and explore! Looking forward to reading more of your plans.

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It is such a great price isn't it and with the cheap car hire too it was almost too good to believe. I am a worrier though and will feel a lot better once we've landed in Jersey. That sounds like a good idea exploring the island, I've not even thought about what we're going to do for the day

Glad your boomerang for last year went well, think the price makes up for all the travel.

Wow I had a look at the Miami Loews hotel, It looks amazing. What a great way to start your holiday

Thanks for reading along

[Tinkertangled]

Great start Julia! Looking forward to the rest. Poppy is the same age as my DD who also loves Lego and Shopkins must be the age!
We are at SSR from the 18th!

[juliab]

Originally Posted by Tinkertangled

Great start Julia! Looking forward to the rest. Poppy is the same age as my DD who also loves Lego and Shopkins must be the age!
We are at SSR from the 18th!

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Yes I think it must be the thing for little girls! I can see us spending quite a bit of time in the Lego store!

How fab for you, SSR looks a lovely resort.

Thanks for reading

[juliab]

Accommodation Update

With our flights booked and dates set we had the task of deciding where to spend those extra few days The reality is we’re not particularly good at making decisions so this wasn’t going to be easy for us lol. At first Scott was keen to drive up to Miami straight after the flight but after much discussion we both agreed it would be better for us to stay in Miami for the night. I’m sure we’ll be up nice and early the next day so we can set off for Orlando at the crack of dawn

Next decision made was to cut our Disney stay from 16 nights to 14 nights and change the tickets to the 14 day ones. We upgraded our Quick Service to the full dining plan…yay (get to book lots of table service meals). With all the changes it increased our cost. I made our original booking through Quidco and received a payment of £140 a few weeks later

This left us with 5 nights before our Disney stay to play with. The easy decision was made to devote these days to the Universal parks. I had a look at the hotels on International Drive and our favourite (Rosen Inn Pointe Orlando) was coming in at £250, a really good price. Loews Royal Pacific was coming in at £240 for a midweek night so all in all just under £500. Still not quite sure we left it then a short while ago, thanks to the fab dibbers, I saw a post about the cheap Universal prices on the BA site Went over and had a quick look and saw a great price for the new Sapphire Falls hotel which opens late this year. Now I knew that this resort isn’t classed as a deluxe, which means we wouldn’t have the FOLP, but we would be able to enter the parks an hour earlier. Yes the parks will be really busy but I reckoned that with the early entry we should be able to a few of the busier rides done before the park gets mega busy. Priced it up for 5 nights and was happy with the cost of £564 so we booked it straight away Excited to be staying at a new hotel, I’m hoping it’ll be really quiet as it will have only just opened. The pool sounds fantastic and I know that the kids will really love that area of the hotel. Fingers crossed that it’s finished when we get there

(Google photos)

So that is the bulk of our Florida accommodation booked! Need to sort out a room in Miami and somewhere for us to stay near the Port, but at least the main ones are sorted now.

5th August – fly to Miami, stay over for the night (hotel to be confirmed)
6th August – drive up to Orlando and check into Sapphire Falls Resort for 5 nights
11th August – check into Port Orleans Riverside for 14 nights
25th August – drive to Port Carnaveral and stay over for the night (hotel to confirmed)
26th August – Board Disney’s Dream for 3 nights
29th August – Disembark the Dream, drive to Miami for our flight home

UK Accommodation

I began looking for Travel lodge hotels for us to stay in as this is what we normally do or the Premier Inn’s. We need two rooms which work out more expensive but I still think at around £70 for 2 rooms, they’re really good value. Yes, of course it adds extra expense on to the trip but the reality is we’d have stayed for one night regardless. Again thanks to the Dibb I remembered the offer which Holiday Extra’s do, the find it cheaper deal. I set myself a task of trying to find a cheaper Gatwick hotel room. Was so surprised when I saw the Hilton cheaper on Hotels.com so I promptly booked through Holiday Extra’s, remembering to take out the cancelation insurance. I waited a few hours then sent my claim in for finding the room cheaper on Expedia. I couldn’t believe it when the next day I received an email to say our claim had been accepted! We will receive our money back once we’ve completed our stay, £286 for a family room with breakfast!

So that was the Gatwick hotel sorted next up was the Heathrow one. I couldn’t find any rooms that would sleep 5 so started to look for 2 rooms, a few came up. Took me a few days but I eventually saw the Novotel Heathrow coming up cheaper on Hotels.com again. Booked it then put a claim in the next day! Pleased to say that the claim was accepted so we had another free hotel booking. Like the Hilton we’ll receive payment after we've stayed there. Both bookings were made through Quidco and they tracked straight away

Managed to book our Universal 14 day tickets with Attraction Tickets Direct with just a £50 deposit last week . Glad I did as the ticket prices have now gone up! The balance needs to be paid off 4 weeks before we depart.

Total price for 4 adults and 1 child £667

We don't need any more park tickets, we'll concentrate on the Universal parks and of course Disney. Feel we've got enough there to keep us occupied for 3 weeks

I went onto my Disney account and couldn’t see my reservation , the system prompted me to link it but I was totally clueless as to how? Got on the phone to Disney who were brilliant but after half an hour of trying different ways to access my account we were still getting nowhere. He explained that he’d pass it onto the IT department to sort out. The next day I logged into my account and could see our reservation talk about feeling giddy. Feel like I’m all set up now for our ADR’s only problem is we’ve not got round to choosing them yet or having a rough plan of our days . Next task is to sort them all out, that’s going to be a real challenge for us Off to have a look at the Disney menu’s


Thanks for reading

[nicki2014]

Hey Julia, so excited you are doing another trip report- loved the last one (fellow Disney bride ) your kids are so lovely I bet they cant wait to go away for nearly 4 weeks how amazing! Not long until London looking forward to a catch-up! xx

[Sinead]

your wedding looks amazing, we get off the dream on 26th so the day you get on

[juliab]

Originally Posted by nicki2014

Hey Julia, so excited you are doing another trip report- loved the last one (fellow Disney bride ) your kids are so lovely I bet they cant wait to go away for nearly 4 weeks how amazing! Not long until London looking forward to a catch-up! xx

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Ay up Nicki thanks for stopping by. I can't wait for next week, 4 weeks and counting. It's going to be such a fab day

We're going to tell the kids once we've got the Center Parcs holiday out of the way, but yes they will be super excited.

Aww thanks, you always say such lovely things xx

Originally Posted by Sinead

your wedding looks amazing, we get off the dream on 26th so the day you get on

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Thank you We nearly booked that cruise but decided to spend more days in Orlando

[Cherrypie]

Hols sounds fab. Could I be really cheeky and ask what you roughly paid for the cruise, I'm loving the idea but not really understanding the pricing on dcl website - is it better to go through an agent? Or surely I've got price wrong as its coming up at £13k There are 5 of us and we'd go in August so I thought I could get a rough idea and talk to Dh xx