Pre trip chatter; west coast sept/Oct 2020

[nursetina]

Hi everyone
I have never done a pre trip report before, well to be honest I've only ever done 1 trip report before
I thought by writing this all down it might help me to look forward to my trip a little more and perhaps start to get a little excited. I have been swinging between... well that's it we aren't going to days when I'm convinced we will get there all be it not the trip we originally planned.
Going on this west coast trip is me Tina, 55 year old lover of travel and Disney. Coming with me is my daughter and travel/ Disney lover Charlotte 29. My DH isn't coming with us this time as he had a bad motorbike accident last year which has left him with pain/difficulty walking for long, so it's just mother and daughter. We travel together a lot, we are both AP holders for DLP and try to get there 4 or 5 times a year (Pre covid) and we did WDW together last Sept which was amazing.
We are both nurses and work in front line roles so this is now a much needed holiday!

We booked this trip in Feb when Covid was just happening in wuhan... little did we know then how this was going to pan out for everyone! In hindsight perhaps we shouldn't have booked but we don't have access to a crystal ball, we are covered by travel insurance as booked before everything shut down.

Holiday plan;
Sept 27th virgin Atlantic direct flights Heathrow to Las vegas.
Pick up hire car and drive to Venetian. Stay for 4 nights.
Plan to take a tour to grand canyon south rim with 'my vegas' points I've accumulated. We were going to use for buffets but think they may still be closed at that point.
Oct 1st, drive to LA where we are staying at the Garland Hotel for 5 nights. we have 2 day tickets for universal and also plan to lots of touristy things here.
Oct 6th we drive to Anaheim and stay at Hilton Anaheim for 5 nights. We have 5 day hopper tickets for Disney.
Oct 11th we fly home from Lax to LHR overnight.

We booked with Charter Travel who so far have been great.
Sean contacted us a few weeks ago and advised we could cancel trip at that point and get our £500 deposit back, we discussed between us and decided that we had such a good deal, if we rebooked for next year the price would likely go up a lot. We decided to stick with it and hope we could travel by then. If we can't travel then we will rebook but would rather wait and see what happens.
We pay balance at end of June.

We know it will not be the holiday we planned but as Disney is only a part of it, as long as flights go and trump let's us in... we will be there!
Any Disney to us is better than no Disney at all. If it is only rides as no fireworks, parades or character meets we will still be there... it just means we will have to go again when things settle down

Now we wait it out, hopefully we hear soon about plans for re opening in California. Vegas is starting to open up again and we still have 4 months to go so today I am hopefully.
Just writing this gets me excited again, I may even start doing some more planning

I will come back and update when we have anything to add or any news.