After years of mainly lurking it's nearly our turn! August 2018

[mermaidhair]

The index is here

Hi everyone

So as you folks at the Dibb were the ones who, way back in 2015, inspired me to start talking my husband into taking our first family holiday to Disney World (it took a while!), I thought it was only right to give back a little by trying to do a trip report. It's going to be unconventional as I'm doing it in the form of vlogs rather than writing it but here goes!

My trip announcement and vlogging plans:


Pre-trip Disney clothing haul


Disney World Essentials haul


What's in my DS age 5 and DS age 8's plane bags (spoiler alert - we are already in the US and they barely looked at most of this stuff as they were glued to the IFE!)


We left LGW on the 9th on a direct flight with Norwegian to Austin. My brother and his family live here so we are enjoying a few days with them while we acclimatise to the heat and timezone! We then fly to MCO with Southwest Airlines on Thursday morning 🤗 and are staying at POFQ for 14 nights.

Edited to add: There won't be any more content for the pre-trip report but I hope to upload some content for the QSDP food trip report by next Monday ☺ Norwegian Airlinea reviews will follow when we get home.

I hope you'll read/watch along to share in the magic for a family of first timers!

[mermaidhair]

So it turned out I wasn't really very good at being a Disney vlogger Think I was too selfish to spend the whole of my holiday looking through a camera!

But I've decided it's time I tried to belatedly write this report! It may be a struggle though as I only have proper notes for the first four days!

I'll start with a post-trip pre-trip report to introduce us to you all.

Me (Clare): 37 years old at the time of the trip, and definitely the one in charge! It was my second trip to WDW with the first having been in 1996 when I looked like this - hideous 90s culottes and all



DH (Peter): 39 years old at the time of the trip and the one that needed convincing but loved it when he got there!

DS1 (Sean): 8 years old and lover of all things Disney and Star Wars. It was his birthday in the middle of the heatwave just before we left for the States and of course I had to attempt a Disney (Pluto) cake, though the icing was melting rapidly!



DS2 (Luke): 5 years old and such a lovely little boy, but life can be challenging for him (and us!) due to his additional needs. He is currently only diagnosed as globally delayed and we are awaiting a formal autism assessment. His main delay is his speech so he can get frustrated and have meltdowns if we don't understand what he is asking for. Luke is the main reason my husband was reluctant to take this trip but (spoiler alert!) he did amazingly well for the majority of our holiday. Luke also had a Disney cake for his birthday just before we travelled.



I had hoped to convince Peter to allow me to book the holiday during the Free Dining promotion of 2016 for travel in 2017, but at that time I was planning to choose CBR as our resort, so we would have been caught up in all the construction chaos there! So between that and the addition of alcohol to the QSDP, I think it was the right decision to wait until 2018.

By the time the free dining booking period came round in 2017, I had done a lot more research and decided POFQ seemed more suitable for us. We had already decided we didn't want to hire a car, so being reliant on the buses I felt the size would be better. And also I had found a lot of places at Disney Springs where I wanted to eat so having the boat ride to it, POFQ made sense.

We booked direct with Disney on 4th May 2017 and paid £4622 for 14 nights in a standard room with free QSDP from 16th to 30th August 2018 plus 14 day tickets. Cashback from Quidco was £184.88. We also got the $200 gift card. We opted not to upgrade as Luke struggles to sit still in restaurants but planned to use the gift card to book a character meal...or maybe two!

The plan was to book the flights at 11 months out, but I was undecided as to whether to tag on an extra week visiting my brother and his family who live in Austin, Texas. I also had a crazy budget of £2500 for direct flights in mind so when the flights came out I waited...which turned out to be a mistake!

I no longer have details of how much flights cost at release date but it was definitely less than we ended up paying!

We finally made the decision to add Austin to the holiday and booked the outbound leg on 7th February 2018 direct with Norwegian for £1363.40 LGW to AUS (Low Fare +) on 9th August 2018.

I then continued to wait (first time booker foolishness) to book the return flight from Orlando, hoping it would come down in price but of course instead it went up! However I discovered it was still around the price it had been before through Opodo so on the 12th February 2018 I went ahead and booked that for £1836.96 MCO to LGW direct on 30th August 2018. This exorbitant rate did include 2 x 20kg bags each (though how we would have managed those and a special needs child through the airport I don't know!) plus all the usual Low Fare + inclusions.

So bottom line, if you are booking with Norwegian, or set on direct, do it as soon as the flights are released!

Already well over budget , I still had to book the internal flight from AUS to MCO. I had discovered Southwestern was one of the few airlines that did direct flights so found out when the date we needed would be released and was on it within seconds! On 15th February 2018 we paid $363.92 (£260.06 on the Halifax Clarity statement) for our 16th August 2018 flights.

ESTAs were then done costing $56 (£40.58 on the Halifax Clarity statement).

Finally, as much as I'd have liked to have a night in an airport hotel like most Dibbers, we opted to leave at the crack of dawn and go for the Gatwick ABC Meet and Greet parking, which cost £138.75.

So if you're keeping track, that's £8076.87 spent so far So let's hope that QSDP was as good as I'd read on the Dibb!

As this is already so belated, I promise to be back in the next few days to post our travel day!

Thanks for reading!

[Twinkletoes47]

Loving this report, and looking forward to hearing at what point your DH became a fan
Also looking forward to hearing about Norwegian Air and the QSDP
Always a challenge to know when to book, people say book when you see a price you're happy with but I want the cheapest price and then I get nervous I'm going to end up with nothing

[mermaidhair]

Thanks Twinkletoes47. It didn't take him long to be converted! Re the flights, I really was starting to be concerned I'd end up with nothing, but knowing my luck the prices probably started going down again after I booked 😂

Travel day is now up - I may have confused people as the title is not the same as the pre-trip report, it's now Mermaid Hair Don't Care!