Pre-pre-pre-pre planning report

[Clarkkent]

Seeing as this is a popular thing to do, and I’m new here, I thought it might be nice to share our planning (already this early! ) for our trip for September 2022.

Introducing:
Me, Stephen (Clarkkent), 45 years old (at the time of writing, although recently I was compared to a 12 year old sporting his first attempt at a beard). Been visiting Disney since 1999, initially staying off site, but then fell completely in love with staying on site not too long afterwards and haven’t looked back. Obsessive about planning, packing (don’t you dare touch that suitcase!). Preppy, English, bit of a geek, international spy. (Disclaimer - one of these might not be true).

Other half/significant other/dear husband/ball and chain:
Jeff (you all know him as Deafjeff who’s been a member here for years). Even more of an obsessive planner, though he’s not allowed anywhere near that suitcase. Generally has all the bright ideas (whereas I’m just the tall, leggy blond), lover of all things Star Wars.

Yes, we do have a spreadsheet for things like comparing quotes, holiday planning options, restaurants we’d go to again/never again, and dining prices (comparing paid prices to how much you’d save with DDP).

Disney Travel history

Separately:
For me - 3 offsite stays (those that shall not be named)
Jeff - never stayed offsite.

Together:
2 stays at Pop Century (2006, 2008)
2 stays at Coronado Springs (2010, 2012)
3 stays Animal Kingdom Lodge (2014, 2016, 2019)
Trips in 2018 (AKL) and 2020 (Yacht Club) cancelled.

You can see that our holidays have progressively moved through the hotel tiers - normally as a result of good prices/free dining plan/only ever going once kids are back at school.

Current Plan for Sept 2022:

Hotel: Initial plan was for 17 nights, staying at the Dolphin, flying UC with Virgin (always turn left when boarding a plane!). Booked through Charter Travel (who we’ve always found to be good - YVMV). We were hoping to be able to re-book the Yacht Club, but 2022 prices are incredibly ludicrous - pretty much double what we would have paid for the 2020 stay. It will be our first joint non-Disney hotel, unless we decide on an alternative plan - more on that later.
Recently extended the 17 nights to 19, having realised that instead of flying out on the Monday, we could fly out on the Saturday instead and not have to use any additional annual leave.
For those two nights we are hoping to stay at AKL just to kick start the holiday, and get our fix of that particular resort before moving across to the the Dolphin.

As an aside, we regularly spent 14 nights at WDW, but extending it to 17 really just allows you to enjoy those additional days without always feeling the need to do the countdown on how many days you have left. If you’re able to coordinate weekends to cover those additional three days, travel times and the slight additional costs, we’d always recommend that you’d consider extending out past 14 days. I don’t think we’d be able to go back down now to a standard 2 weeks.

Parks - we have no plans currently other than doing the Disney parks. We do like the water parks, so we tend to do those a few times, arriving before rope drop and staying until lunch time (when it starts to get busy), go back to the resort for a quick change and lunch and then hit a park for the rest of the day. Other days we would normally park hop at least twice, if not three times. (Damn you, Covid!) 90% of the time we will grab one of the evenings shows (fireworks, Fantasmic etc) after usually having had a meal earlier on in the same vicinity. (I refer you back to our planning spreadsheet - although thank God for MDE which can help you plan everything!). We do also occasionally hit the dessert parties, with a strong preference for the Star Wars party because the drinks are alcoholic (duh!), and you know… stormtroopers!

We do keep looking at whether we should go to Universal Studios - we are both big fans of IOA but ticket prices have seriously escalated since we last went, and you know it’s then a day out of Disney…and given that you lose a couple of days because of travel, and then the obligatory mall/outlet shopping day, those park days are super precious.

We have also previously done Discovery Cove a couple of times (we do like the conservation element) , but have decided to leave it for a while before we go back there. We never do Seaworld (we aren’t always sure of the ethics of keeping those animals caged) and Busch Gardens is a dim and distant memory, so it might be worth us reconsidering that again. Similarly, we have yet to do Volcano Bay or Aquatica and, having been many years ago, wouldn’t touch Wet n Wild with a large pointy stick (is it still around?!)

Quick comment about the park tickets - absolutely gutted that the 21 day ticket no longer exists. Essentially means we have to double up on the 14 day tickets if we want to be able to park hop/race around as much as we normally want to. 7 day tickets are the same price as the 14 days at the moment and while it might cost a little less to buy individual days, we would much prefer just to have an ultimate ticket to cover those other days.

Options we are considering:

We are keeping a beady-eye out on whether we can grab a reward flight and then rent DVC points to completely change our current plans. It would mean having the ability to stay at a deluxe resort for much less than we are paying for our current package (even when including any cancellation fee).
If that was the case, we would use DVC for the 2 nights at AKL, and then the further 17 nights at either Beach Club or Boardwalk - or even a split stay across both those resorts if for some reason DVC availability doesn’t allow us to stay fully at one resort.

Changing over to this different holiday is very much contingent on a UC reward seat being available on the exact dates we want and then DVC being available at the 11 month window for the resorts we want. We’ve never done DVC so we are nervous about the whole thing but from the research we’ve done the overwhelming opinion is that it tends to work well - I’d be open to any opinions (for and against) on the use of DVC points if anyone has any experience. We are having a wobble about trying to co-ordinate the flights (and then paying for them) and then hoping the resorts are available to rent - what we don’t want is to be committed to one half of the holiday and the other one not being available and then being out of pocket. Nervous!

The one thing we have to remind ourselves about is that we have a good package already, which is not even a ‘last resort’. It’s a great package, it just happens to be a non-Disney hotel but still within walking distance of Epcot and HS (a HUGE perk for us this time round). So, if the reward flight and DVC renting thing doesn’t pan out, we still have our current plans.

That’s us… for now. Happy to chat/discuss, would love some views on any of the above.
Thanks for reading.

[Clarkkent]

And then just as a little update, we’ve today booked our airport hotel at Heathrow. Whoop.

[MamatoFelix]

Oh exciting! Looking forward to seeing how your plans come together. Wet n Wild closed in 2016 😅 I have many memories going to that place in the 90s!

[halloweenbaby2]

Hello there
Great start.
Looking forward to reading more about your trip. I've often wondered about renting DVC but I like to have everything sorted way before the 11 months mark.

[Clarkkent]

Originally Posted by MamatoFelix

Oh exciting! Looking forward to seeing how your plans come together. Wet n Wild closed in 2016 😅 I have many memories going to that place in the 90s!

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I had a feeling that it was closed, but wasn’t quite sure. Thanks for the update

[Clarkkent]

Originally Posted by halloweenbaby2

Hello there
Great start.
Looking forward to reading more about your trip. I've often wondered about renting DVC but I like to have everything sorted way before the 11 months mark.

See more...

Hi!
We certainly like to have everything sorted by the 11 month mark (we usually book about 18 months out! ) but we are open to seeing what we might be able to actually do!

[Moleymole]

Sounds like a good plan to me. We also usually try and go for over the 14 nights, at the minute it’s 16….but that may increase! We were thinking about dvc for a couple of nights because we wanted a theme park view ( well I did for my birthday &#129395, but then I managed to book a room normally.

[deafjeff]

Just to add that we will be going to Victoria and Albert We (the royal we) are really looking forward to it