Free Dining Plan or Bust 2010 (Working Title)

[wizzo]

The Usual Suspects (Cast List)

Paul (40) Party Leader, Photographer, Author and Keeper of Money and Tickets
Lynn "LoMaddy" (33) Chief Shopper, Chief Facebook’er and Proof Reader
Lauren (6) Loves everything Hanna Montana (Apart from the show itself! )
Madeleine (Maddy) (3) currently addicted to Hercules and Princess Tiana


Cast Photos


Me (Paul) Underwater you can't hear wives or kids! Brilliant!


Lynn She's the one on the left pretending to smile.


Lauren Basking in her own magnificence having beaten me last year on Buzz


Maddy Proudly showing you her Discovery Cove Lanyard which is now the single best thing about going to Florida for her. She can't wait to get another.

So here we are again, a new adventure to look forward to. For those of you familiar with the last trip report we left you having spent 2 weeks in December soaking up the Disney Christmas Magic. If you haven’t read, it’s HERE. I commented at the end of the last trip report that we’d sort of ear marked some dates in Sept/Oct and those dates have come to fruition!

We picked 23rd of September as a potential departure date because the kids will have been back at school 3 weeks and flight prices become more sensible. We also picked it because our flights of choice would be Thomsonfly out of Manchester and we thought “Go on the Thursday, land on the Friday and have all weekend to recover”. An excellent plan I thought!

We took the plunge in the first week of March and I booked 2 weeks in Saratoga Springs with free Dining and 14 day ultimate tickets for the price of 7 day tickets. Not a big gamble, just a small deposit to pay and we would be able to change dates if needs be at a later date for no fee.

A plan was hastily drawn up. Well I say drawn up, I have an excel spreadsheet that I use every time, so in truth I just changed the dates and cleared some cells!

With having the dining plan this time it was even more important to book our meals and as soon as the 180+10 window opened I was online and booked most of them straight away. After a couple of days I’d done the remaining 4 days also. This trip will be the first time that Maddy is old enough to go to the Bippidi Boppidi Boutique so we’ve booked them both in for a makeover one morning with an ADR at Cindy’s gaff for lunch afterwards. As things stand Maddy will be Princess Tiana and Lauren wants to be the Winter Belle.

ADRs include Chef Mickey’s, Le Cellier, 50s Prime Time, Sci Fi Diner, Turf Club, Yak and Yeti, Wolfgang Puck and Jiko. We’re also braving taking the kids to The California Grill! Eeekkk we’ve got a 5:30pm ADR, we’ll dress them up nice and pray they are good. To be honest, they are always good in restaurants so we should be fine.

So the weeks went by and Thomsons prices didn’t really change, Virgin’s just went up gradually (mainly because of the reduced number of VS flights this year). I setup tons of email alerts on kayak (if you’ve never used them they are excellent for Scheduled flights). At one point I had 25 different alerts setup to tell me the prices daily on a number of dates, routes and airports.
During the time I watched these prices one thing became clear, scheduled prices change daily and go up and down like the proverbial working girls lingerie! I also started playing about with dates that saw us return a couple of days later on the Saturday. Once we sat down and thought about it we decided that we’d rather go indirect and forget about the 14 day flights from the Charter companies.

Lynn being Lynn, as quick as a flash said “If we go for 16 nights we could have a couple of days in Animal Kingdom Lodge or similar before flying home! ” It was agreed then, we’d try and get flights to cover 16 nights and finish off in AKL.

Within a few days American Airlines had a sale and I found flights that were £1500 for the four of us from Manchester via Chicago. A great price but it had a 5 hour layover on the way back and then I’d still have to drive the 2 hours back from Manchester. I changed my search to fly from our home Airport of Newcastle and it added £300. It was a done deal. Flybe and BA flights to London are £300 anyway so it was still a good deal.

So, like so many Dibbers this year we are flying via Heathrow and Miami going out and returning via Chicago and Heathrow coming back. We connect to Heathrow with BA (fingers crossed no more strikes) and then 777s over the pond. So despite our route NCL-LHR-MIA-MCO we arrive in Orlando at 5:15pm in the afternoon and we won’t have to go through immigration because we will have cleared it in Miami. It’s going to be an adventure and hopefully our luggage will keep up with us. We have 2 hours at every changeover so hopefully we’ll be fine.

When we talked about what we’d do in the final 2 days we both agreed that we’d use the lovely pools at AKL and Kidani Village more than anything so I said “Why don’t we stay at the Yacht and Beach Club as they have the best pool of all? ”

It was agreed, we’d stay at the Yacht Club (as you get a full size balcony, essential when your kids are asleep most nights by 8pm!) and splash about in a pool we’ve not splashed in before.

I rang Disney and had a rush of blood and changed our Saratoga Springs booking to 12 nights and tagged a new 4 night booking on the end at Yacht Club. Of course this meant we’d only get 12 days worth of Free Dining Plan because it’s got to be attached to a single hotel stay of more than 5 days with park tickets! We decided this wasn’t a great loss as you get sick of Disney food after a while anyway and we had a number of 2 credit ADRs for this very reason. Thankfully they assured me that our 14 Day Disney tickets will be valid for 14 days after first use still. So we now plan to go to Seaworld on our first morning thus making sure we have valid Disney tickets all the way up till our last night in the Yacht Club.

So there we have it, the basis of Trip Report Number 3! No grandparents this trip so we’ll predominantly be on the likes of Goofy’s Barnstormer rather than Kraken but we’ll do the odd single rider. I won’t be able to walk past Manta without having another go for sure!
We’re going to Discovery Cove again but not doing a Dolphin swim.
I think we’re going to give Universal a miss this trip despite Harry Potter. The kids aren’t big enough to go on the main ride and they’ve been on the Flying Unicorn before anyway.

We’re also going to venture to the Gulf Coast for the first time this trip too. We have a day making sandcastles pencilled in on Clearwater Beach.

On this trip we will...


Not be swinging on parade ropes MADDY!


Not enter water areas in just our pants! MADDY


I wont even be mentioning lazy so and so's on scooters that actually can walk. I've ranted enough about them in the past!


I will navigate to perfection once more!


We will endeavour to eat every credit of our Free Dining Plan!

But most of all we will...


Be on our best behavior (that includes you Lynn! )


and have fun like this at every opportunity!


***Update 13/5/10***

Having received a very generous contribution towards our holiday from an old friend (Thanks Bern if you're reading this) we have upgrade our last 4 nights at the Yacht Club and are now staying Club Level.

***Update 25/5/10***

We have officially "bottled it"... we've cancelled Cali Grill and swapped the two credits for a Raglan Road and a Chef De France instead. I'm sure the kids would have been fine in the California Grill to be honest but the lure of an extra meal and the kids seeing Reme on a cheese board in Epcot was too tempting. We've also a changed the date of Chef Mickey's and added a Crystal palace.

On a positive note, I made all these changes with ease and got the times I wanted. Given that people have been booking these dates for 2 months now it suggests that WDW will be nice and quiet in September again.


***Update 4/6/10***

Bought our Discovery Cove tickets. Ended up buying 1 Swim ticket and 3 Non swim. Although you can buy all non swim tickets if you ring DC direct doing this was £250 more expensive than buying a swim and 3 non from FloridaTix. DC's tickets weren't discounted at all and I got choice of adventure tickets for £126 swim and £66 Non Swim. I spoke to an English woman when I rang DC and she said the cheapest they ever do non swims is $99 very rarely and told me I wasn't going to beat that price so buy them elsewhere.

She also told me that "sometimes" if people buy swim tickets like we have and don't actually want the dophin swim they "may" arrange something else like the opportunity for all of us to meet a dolphin on our own for 5 minutes. It sounded rare but we'll see in a few months.


***Update 7/6/10***

So with 107 days I have made the girls their "new and improved" countdown calendars (twice as big as last time) and they can start ticking the days off tomorrow!



Below is a test video. I am planning on having plenty of videos in this upcoming trip report!




***Update 9/8/10***

So...with 44 days to go I've taken the plunge and bought Universal 2 Park 14 day tickets. Apparently just in time as they have just had a price increase. Get them from the online ticket sellers now before that increase kicks in for their pre-bought tickets.

With the exchange rate on the rise I've watched the car hire prices come down accordingly and snagged another Dodge Charger like the one we had below in May 2009. It was £360 from Carhire3000 for 16 days fully inclusive with additional drivers and a tank of gas.



Having paid the balance on our Disney Hotels this week too, I think we are all set. Just waiting for the single digit dance now!

***Update 17/8/10***

Added a couple of these babies to the planning arsenal!



It's my normal planner that I use every year but this trip I've printed out a mini version and had it laminated. On previous trips I've had the paper plan in my pocket for 2 weeks and it's been illegible by the end. This is tiny and has everything we need, Best/Worst parks (busy days), which park we plan to go to, ADR times and reference numbers, Extra Magic Hours, hotel checkin and checkouts etc etc etc.

***Update 5/9/10***



I appear to have been talked into going to Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween Party... how on earth did that happen?

We'll be there 28th September. I'll be looking to recoup at least half the ticket price in sweets!

[mkingdon]

Thank God for that, you've booked!

The Kayak email server can now have a well earned rest.

Sounds like a great plan though, especially the Yacht Club bit.

Pretend I never told you about our indirect flight escapades...it will all go to plan... it will all go to plan!

I will wish you a lovely holiday now, as when you actually go, I will not be long back and will be unable to force myself to wish anyone a good holiday, in my depressed state.

Cheers

Craig

[Iloveflorida]

Sounds like you are going to have a fantastic time and your little girls look so sweet.

[wizzo]

Originally Posted by mkingdon

Thank God for that, you've booked!

The Kayak email server can now have a well earned rest.

Sounds like a great plan though, especially the Yacht Club bit.

Pretend I never told you about our indirect flight escapades...it will all go to plan... it will all go to plan!

I will wish you a lovely holiday now, as when you actually go, I will not be long back and will be unable to force myself to wish anyone a good holiday, in my depressed state.

Cheers

Craig

See more...

Don't wee in the pool out of spite on your last night or there will be trouble!

[Guest]

Great start. I read your last trip report so am looking forward to this one. Your girls are so cute!

[margyloveswdw]

Thanks for sharing once again. I enjoyed your last trip report so am looking forward to this one.

[bel]

Fantastic photos, sounds like you are gunna have another brilliant time.
Im now off to read your previous trip reports...

[Helen0705]

Thanks for sharing - looking forward to reading your trip reports !

[Cinderellie]

Look forward to reading the trip report!

[warbiespig77]

Sounds great your pre trippie made me laugh have a great time