A change of scene trip

[bearandbuzz]

Hello... is it me you're looking foooooooorrrrrrrr?

So I lasted approximately 4 months after we got back, I'd revelled in the afterglow and relived all the experiences in my trippie. Then the inevitable happened - I got itchy feet.

I was fine, I could control the symptoms for a while. Dh insisted that we needed to wait until 2019, I agreed. But those darn feet just wouldn't stop itching! February came by and I was playing around with flight prices for the coming August, as you do. Not because I wanted to go away this coming August (well of course I would if you offered it to me for free!) but because I like to see what options may be available in the future. I noticed that the BA sale offered some decent flight prices for August, flying direct to Miami. Hmmmm, those feet were twitching!

I still knew that we needed to hang it out, money is always going to be the deciding factor and no matter how much I jiggled my spreadsheets, I couldn't find enough cash. Then one day dh said the magic words... I've got some shares that can be released ... before he could even take a breath I was on it, telling him about the decent flights that could be purchased and a plan started to form!

So here we are, the beginning of our next adventure. The cast will be myself(Kirsty), dh(Steve), ds1 (Ethan, who'll be 13), ds2(Alistair, who'll be 11), plus my mum and dad again.

We've decided to go a little different this year. The past few times we've done purely onsite but we want to mix it up a little and are going for a villa option, with a stay at universal for a couple of nights.

A villa has been booked for mid August ( slightly earlier than we usually go, but only by a week or so). Dh had a strong opinion of what he wanted and we trawled through many, many villas trying to find the perfect one. Even this far out we found some of our favourites were already booked. Eventually (and after much deliberation) we found one in Davenport that ticked all the boxes and it was booked. The deposit has been paid and I'm raring to go!

My hopes are that I manage to find a decent flight price (£3000) for the four of us in August. We've previously flown via Virgin each time due to the flying club points. However, I don't think we've got enough for it to really make a difference since they've changed their rules. This means I'm going to look around a but more. The one rule I have is that it must be a direct flight. There are no exceptions to this rule, it can be a flight to anywhere within driving distance of Davenport - we were thinking of staying in an airport hotel the night we fly in and then driving down the next day. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for some blinding deals over the coming year, you'll probably see me subscribe to the thread that usually comes around about August 2018 flights!

I'm on the lookout for a sale at the universal hotels, we'll be looking at 2 nights in hard rock ideally, but if there's a big difference in price I'll be fine with either of the three that offer express passes.

I'll be buying the 14 day passes for universal and Disney beforehand, I've used a couple of sites in the past so will get them nearer the time.

No discovery cove this time. We've done it the past three times and loved it, but we need to save some cash!

I'll be trawling through food reports and trip reports to get a good idea where we can eat - I'm really looking forward to eating offsite. After a few years having just the ddp, it's quite refreshing to see what else is out there.

Mostly I'll be keeping my fingers crossed that the exchange rate starts to work more in our favour!

So here we are again, let the planning commence!

[bearandbuzz]

Seeming as it’s been over a year since I wrote this, I thought I’d give you an update and there’s been a few!

The biggest change is that we are no longer a party of 6, we’ve increased our numbers to 8! It all started one evening when Steve & I were taking the dog for a walk and we started talking about our two nieces (Steve’s sister’s children) and how they’d not been able to visit Florida yet. It sparked an idea - we have a 4 bedroom villa booked, which would easily sleep an extra 2. If they could find the cash for flights and tickets, we could cover the extra in food and they’d be able to experience a ‘once in a lifetime’ trip. A few calls to Steve’s sister and the idea became a reality, now we have a party of 8!
This means the holiday has changed in dynamics as we will have an 11, 13, 14 & 17 year old with us, which I’m assuming means there will be more rides and possibly later nights and mornings (which actually fills me with a little fear as I do like to get up and go!)

Once we’d sorted out the logistics of taking the girls I got cracking with the flights. Pretty much as soon as they were released, I found i good deal on a flydrive direct from Gatwick to Tampa with BA, I snapped it up and we ended up paying under £850 each for the flights and a 12 seater car/magic bus. I’ve committed the cardinal sin of checking back at the prices periodically, but I’m pleased to say the prices haven’t gone lower (not that I’ve seen - and if they have I’m going to shove my fingers in my ears and pretend it’s not happening!)

At around the same time I took advantage of a ‘throw away’ booking at Fort Wilderness, where I booked a tent pitch for £60 for one night. This means we get 8 magic bands, 2 days of parking and the elusive 60 days fast passes. I know this doesn’t sit well with some of you dibbers, but I’m comfortable with doing it.

The next thing that was sorted was rooms onsite at Universal. After checking in with the guru known as the dibb, I found some excellent advice on how to maximise our stay. I’ve booked one night at RPR, then we have a day at the villa and we come back again for a night at HRH. That way we actually get 4 days of express passes and early entry, meaning in reality we’ll get 3 days in the parks and one at Volcano Bay. I booked 2 rooms (a boys room and a girls room) via Expedia (making use of topcashback), which offers 100% refunds should you needs to cancel (I believe until a few days before the booking starts). Which is just as well really because every time the prices went down, I jumped on it! So much so that one day I realised I could upgrade the rooms, on both stays, to club for £150 per night (yes that’s £75 per room!), I jumped at this chance as when I’d totted up how much we’d be spending on snacks for 4 adults and 4 teenagers (we are now going to assume that 11 makes you a teenager &#128512, it came to a lot more than £19 per person! I also purchased the 5 day photo package when it was on special last summer (I think it’s on special now as well), which covers the time we are there - hence only a day between the two bookings, and means all our ride photos will be included, which I think the girls would appreciate.

Just after Easter I bought our Disney / Universal tickets via Orlando attraction tickets, using their Easter special code. It ended up as £569 per person, which was a definite saving on the original £625 that kept popping up.

At some point I found a deal on the Bloc hotel at Gatwick, where I’ve booked 3 rooms for £200 (1 family and 2 doubles), which pleases me greatly because our holiday can officially start a day earlier 😀. While I was looking around for rooms I also saw that Gatwick were offering a good deal on parking, so I booked 16 nights self parking for £60. We’ve parked here before and prefer it as you get to keep your own keys, plus the car park is secure and only a 5 min bus ride away from the terminal. Winner, winner! While I was on a roll I started looking around at the airport lounges, I have to admit that we’ve always had a lounge and I was wondering if we could sneak one in on this trip too. Luck was on my side and I managed to book the No 1 lounge via Virgin rewards for £200, which if you tot up how much we’d spend at the airport on breakfast and drinks etc for 8, £25 per person isn’t that bad.

So that was it, by February this year everything had been booked and although it wasn’t entirely a budget trip, I was happy that we’d kept to our own budget. Until...

Disney only went and released the MNSSHP dates in March and would you believe they’d pushed the date of the first party into our holiday dates? I have it some thought (for about a nanosecond) and gave the mouse a quick call. Shortly afterwards I came away with 8 tickets 😀. Now in my defence, I’ve always wanted to go to the MNSSHP, but as I work in a school I’m limited to just the one week during the October half term, but I don’t think I could limit myself to just 1 week in Disney. This is like a dream come true so there really wasn’t any debate - we were going! I’ve now got the whole group into candy stashing training so we can get our moneys worth!

So that’s it, all booked; a night at the hotel before the flight, parking, Gatwick lounge, BA Fly drive, Fort Wilderness, 4 days at Universal, 1 evening at MNSSHP.

I’ve booked three onsite meals - Chef Mickeys on the first day (Now a tradition of ours), Fantasmic packeage at Mama Melrose and Tusker House Rivers of Light package. I’ve got to admit, I’ve missed the thrill of booking all those reservations at 180 days when we’ve stayed onsite. We’ve got a list of places we love to eat, but just can’t justify spending out of pocket for them. However I’ve been signing up for various discounts, I used groupon the other day to buy a $20 Steak and Shake credit for $10 and of course we have the good old Landrys card (mum has ordered one too), and obviously our birthdays just so happen to be in August...

Now I look at it, I’ve done a lot of organising (and spending) for our budget trip! Our fastpass day is fast approaching, as far as I understand it I can book the first 2 days at 60 days as I have the Fort Wilderness booking, then as each of the rest of the days reaches 60 days I can book fast passes for that day only? Obviously we are after the elusive FOP and Slinky dog fast passes, I’m going to have to just fit everything else around these. Well actually I won’t really be booking them at all - it’ll be Steve as I’ll be in the middle of a lesson when the booking opens and I believe it’s frowned upon to stop everything in order to ensure you get the fast passes you want!

And now that really is it. Tick tock, tick tock. The countdown continues and the excitement rises every day.

[bearandbuzz]

Well, the 60 day rolling fastpasses have been and gone. With a lot of jiggling, I’ve managed to get Slinky dog for us all, with 5 different fastpasses that all overlap by a grand total of about 20 mins! I’m happy with that 😀.
FOP however is a different story, there hasn’t been anything at all so far. I’ve tried individually and as a group of 8 (yes I know that’s never going to happen, but I can hope!) but there’s not been anything for the whole 14 days. I’ve seen a few posts from lucky people who’ve managed to bag some after repeatedly checking, so I’ve not completely given up hope yet. Our fall back plan is to use our jet lag to our advantage. We are going to MK on the first day, not even FOP can break that tradition, but the following day we have our Slinky FPs, which are at about 8pm. This means we can get up and go to AK and just wait it out. The plan is that everyone will be up at silly o’clock (even if they aren’t, I’ll make sure they are &#129323, we can grab some breakfast on the go and then get in the queue ASAP. The park opens at 9am, so I reckon we will have to get there at about 8am I now order to get to the front of the queue! Not exactly my favourite way to start a day - I hate, hate, hate queuing, however, my desire to try FOP is too strong!