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Old 6 Oct 20, 01:43 PM  
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#21
The Fatadder
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Finally after a week of checking Virgin’s website every day to check prices, I have sorted out our booking and the biggest remaining task can be ticked off the to do list.


First of all was a shock at just how much more expensive the tickets were for August 21 vs October 20, followed by the disappointment seeing that the outbound flight had already sold out of economy delight seats. I guess a result of the lower capacity of the A330 being used on the flight vs the old 747. Thanks to the bank holiday we had some flexibility with the date, and it turned out that booking for the 29th August we would save £800 vs the originally planned flight on 28th. Even more could have been saved going home via NYC or Boston, but this would have ended up with either the total loss of the last day or a change in the middle of the night. I’m quite happy flying indirect on my own, I used to do it a lot for work, but I didn’t really fancy it with the children in tow (even with a £1000 saving).

So having found a suitable flight, I set about trying to adjust our booking. First I tried the SMS number Virgin include on their email, only to get a message back saying we would get a call back within a few days. My concern was that the price could change in that time, so I really wanted to sort it imideatly. So after an hour on hold I got through to a person and set about trying to rebook the flights, it was a good thing to as during the time spent on hold those Economy Delight seats I had found for the inbound flight had sold and the price was now the same for Economy Classic as it was previously for Delight! Fortunatly they did still have an exit row available along with the two rows behind it, so I was able to book the exit seats + the row behind (and my parents got the row behind that). So while on the booking the girls are sitting in a row on their own (not ideal for a 7 and nearly 5 year old), we can rejig it between us so that Dad and I have the exit row, and the girls can get a window seat each sat next to mummy and nanny. In the end the flights cost an exta £990 vs last years booking + the extra £250 for the pair of exit seats, which to be honest was not far off what I was expecting.



That leaves one final job, sorting out the hire cars. Our previous cost was £288 for 8 days, this time round for 9 days it is coming out at £558. Would be interested to hear if this is par for the course for a last week of August booking, or whether we should be expecting to see prices fall as we get in to 2021.
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Old 27 Oct 20, 07:47 AM  
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#22
sheluk
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Just caught up, we too should have been flying out shortly (30 Oct) but it’s great you have all your Planning under way for next year.

Ouch to the extra costs but I’m sure it’ll be worth it and the fabulous time you are going to have.

We anxiously wait for rebooking in December and wait to see what happens! X
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Old 2 Mar 21, 12:04 PM  
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#23
The Fatadder
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While I still have my doubts as to whether August is going to happen, or for that matter whether I want it to happen with Disney et al's OTT approach to mask wearing, we are still continuing as though it is going ahead.

With the news that POFQ is not currently available for booking at the launch of 2022 bookings, it is looking like there is no chance it will have reopened by August. This left something of a dilemma. There were 3 options available, change the booking now to another moderate (and save £1k in the process) but we are not keen on any of the other moderates. Wait and hope to be moved to a deluxe resort (but risk being moved to CSR/CBR without the 1k saving we could have made moving now). Or finally add another £800 per family onto the bill and move to SSR (getting a 2 bed and a studio).

After discussion option 1 was ruled out as no one fancied the other moderates, and with 3 room bookings the gamble just looked a little too risky (getting everyone together and in a resort that we wanted. So in the end we have bit the bullet and upgraded the booking to SSR. I guess its a benefit of lockdown and all the money thats been saved not doing anything that the extra cost is not so material now.
Just need to check and see that our park bookings have all been transferred correctly...


I am also going to be booking a night in the second week at RPR for Universal Express Passes, though this can wait until we are closer and its looking more likely the trip will happen.

Car hire is finally getting to sensible prices, so will sort that next...
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Old 16 Apr 21, 11:32 AM  
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#24
The Fatadder
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Originally Posted by The Fatadder View Post
Car hire is finally getting to sensible prices, so will sort that next...

I didnt, and now its stupidly expensive...

This is the problem with all the uncertainty, I go through phases of thinking the holiday will definitely go ahead (like now), and spells where I think there is no chance and completely loose interest.

Currently car hire is showing as £900 for a full size SUV for 9 days. I had two of them booked for a lot less than combined that last October!


I had a bit of a worry earlier this week after seeing on Disney social media that Hollywood Studios was now fully booked through to July 1st. Checking My Disney Experience it still showed our old POFQ booking. Thankfully after calling up Disney it now shows SSR and all our park reservations are still showing.)

After the joys of Virgin making a bunch of changes (and screwing up our seat reservations in the process) we now have the flights sorted, we are arriving earlier than originally booked (always good) and departing half an hour earlier on the way back (not so good).

The upshot of this is that I am now adding an extra park reservation to the booking, the plan being to spend a couple of hours in the park on the evening of arrival. It is not something we have ever done before, but my logic is that the girls always sleep on the plane, and normally we end up going out to Disney Springs for dinner and staying up fairly late. So instead we will go to Magic Kingdom, get a QS dinner and a couple of rides (hopefully some fireworks) and head back to the hotel. Even without the jet lag the girls would still be up at 5-6am (just like every other day of the year...)

Our Nectar balance is looking very healthy, so should sort out a night at RPR in the second week, though I am reluctant to book it until I know we are definitely going. I want the early entry to have a chance of getting on Velocicoaster...

Hopefully it is starting to look promising that mask wearing outside should be a thing of the past by mid August, hopefully...
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Old 15 Jul 21, 09:48 AM  
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#25
The Fatadder
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And with one email from Virgin another year's plans go up in smoke, yes, it has been confirmed that our outbound flight has been cancelled... I have yet to start cancelling things, holding fire until Virgin make contact around the weekend to verify the cancelled flights (living in hope for that 0.1% chance that sleepy Joe opens up the borders in the next couple of days and we can go after all...



In all honesty I am in two minds about this. While on one hand I am incredibly disappointed that my 28 day countdown is now 393 days. On the other than it does now mean that we will get to experience the 50th anniversary, the new rides and hopefully a return of Fastpass and Character meets.

Thankfully unlike the move from 2020 to 2021 it doesn't look like the holiday is going to cost any extra, in fact we might even be saving a little money (is it considered saving money when you immediately decide to spend it on extra things for the holiday?)
At first glance it looks like you can move the Virgin flights to next year at no extra charge (though this will of course not be possible until September)
Thanks to the dining credit promotion, it looks like we can get 3 rooms at Animal Kingdom Lodge for the same price as the 2 bed and Studio at SSR we had booked this year. At the moment the plan is to look at moving back to SSR once it goes on sale, however there is a big part of me that likes the idea of AKL and trying something different. Need to get a booking in place by Friday to secure the gift basket bonus on the order...
We loose a little on the villa, which will need to be rebooked again. Subject to sign off by work the intention is to stretch out the holiday from 18 nights to the full three weeks. (adding the time to the villa stay).
I live in hope that car hire should at some stage over the next 6-12 months dramatically reduce in price, seeing as one of the key drivers remains the lack of inventory (due to the shortfalls in US car production) which one would expect to see overcome before the end of 2021.

Other upsides:
  • Imogen will be old enough to swim with dolphins at Discovery Cove
  • Ratatouille, the new Epcot fireworks, Ice breaker and Iron Gwazi will all be open, (and you would think Tron and Guardians will also be done). Likewise you would think a lot of the Epcot construction walls should be down. Velocicoaster should have somewhat more manageable queues having been open for a year.
  • Extra magic hours will be back (including the extra evening hours for deluxe hotel guests)
  • Some form of Fastpass will be back (hopefully still free or at least a free for deluxe hotels option)
  • The extra time added to the holiday will give time to fit in a trip over to Kennedy Space Centre.
One disappointment is that there will be no Magical Express, Going to have to give this some thought in the new year once the replacement Meers service has started. I am assuming it will be stripped of all theming / the Disney overlay onboard. In which case I have no desire to get off a long plane onto a bus and will look into alternative transfers. I know that in real terms there is not really a difference between a yellow Meers bus taking you to your hotel or one vinyled up in Disney livery, but to us it makes a difference!

All in all, gutted we are are not going but excited that when we do go it should be even better than was originally planned.

Edited at 09:55 AM.
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Old 17 Jul 21, 07:05 PM  
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#26
The Fatadder
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Unfortunately was only able to get 13 days off work, so not quite the full 3 weeks I had hoped for. However the extra day vs this years plan does give us a chance to take the girls to Kennedy

Animal Kingdom Lodge is now booked (9 nights from the 11th August), while DFCH have been emailed to sort out moving the hire cars.
Next step will be working out a plan to book park reservations and trying to get discovery cove moved.
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Old 18 Jul 21, 08:49 PM  
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#27
The Fatadder
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The rough plan has now been completed, ready for booking parks just as soon as the new reservation shows up on My Disney Experience. I am working on the assumption that some form of free FastPass will appear for guests in deluxe hotels, and that Tron / Guardians of the Galaxy will join Rise of the Resistance in needing a boarding group to ride. Hence booking a throwaway extra day in HS / MK / EP at the end of the Disney block just in case. My logic is that if we have not managed to get on the rides earlier in the trip, we can log in at 7am and try for access on those 3 days. If we get it, then can go their first and head on to the intended park later on. (yes its expensive as you are by default paying an extra parking charge for one ride, but should be worth it...)

The Plan:
10th August - Finish work at 5pm, drive up to Heathrow. All being well I am hopeful to actually make it to the office (in Chippenham) for the day and be picked up on the way. The plan is a room at the Terminal 3 Garden Inn (using Hilton points).
11th August - Arrive and check in to Animal Kingdom Lodge. Assuming the flight times are unchanged the early Virgin flight gets us in early enough to have an evening at either Animal Kingdom or Magic Kingdom depending on closing times.
12th August - Magic Kingdom
13th August - Animal Kingdom
14th August - Epcot
15th August - Typhoon Lagoon it surely must be open by next August...
16th August - Hollywood Studios
17th August - Magic Kingdom
18th August - Epcot
19th August - Hollywood Studios (along with needing to pick up the hire car at some point during the day)
20th August - Check out of AKL, Magic Kingdom for the day (with the potential for park hopping to catch anything thats been missed.) Transfer to Villa
21st August - Discovery Cove, booking Epcot for after but may well end up at SeaWorld
22nd August - SeaWorld (with a HS park booking)
23rd August - Volcano Bay / Universal Studios (with a MK park booking)
24th August - Busch Gardens (with an Epcot booking)
25th August - Aquatica / SeaWorld
26th August - Islands of Adventure (check in to Royal Pacific Resort)
27th August - Universal Studios (check out of RPR)
28th August - Kennedy Space Centre
29th August - Open - spare day if there are issues with SeaWorld experiences, potential re rides at Universal
30th August - Fly home (early afternoon), spend morning at SeaWorld
(arrive home on 31st August, straight back to work (potentially in the office booking a hotel for that night!)
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Old 26 Oct 21, 05:15 PM  
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The Fatadder
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It has been a while since the last update, in which there have been a lot of very large bills. The flights in particular had doubled in price compared to August 21! I need to make a change to my brother's hire car (as they were unable to get the full trip booked), however for the moment its cheaper to just keep the existing booking as to book a Focus sized car for 3 days less is costing over twice what we are paying for the existing full size SUV!)

At the weekend we were discussing the need to keep an eye on the flights booking, given that it was showing as an A330 which didnt really make any sense. The next evening we checked the booking and its now showing as an A350 (and Virgin had completely messed up the seats requiring yet another phone call to Virgin to get fixed). Hopefully that is the last aircraft change...

Park bookings have also finally been made, so the main job that is remaining is to work out how best to get 6 people from MCO to Animal Kingdom Lodge thanks to Disney scrapping the Magical Express. Right now I am hoping that Meers decide to add a one way option to their premium offering...
Other than that, the only other job is to keep an eye on the car hire and hopefully at least get the second car rebooked for the right size / length at a cheaper price than the current full size suv, along with planning out the ADRs. The latter will become a little easier once people start travelling with the dining credit (living in hope that there will be some way of using the credit towards purchasing a dining plan...)
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Old 23 May 22, 04:07 PM  
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#29
The Fatadder
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79 days to go... It feels strange to be this close to travel and not yet had to make any ADR (and is very disappointing that its not fastpass day in just under 3 weeks time!)

The flights continue to be a pain in the backside, with Virgin having randomly moved a 5 and 8 year old to sit on their own! The joys of having a booking where the girls were split on a separate reference to the adults (a quirk needed to get the exit seats booked apparently.)

Next on the hit list was sorting transfers to the hotel upon arrival, pricing up Mears / Sunshine Flyer for 6 people. Given the expense, I figured it was worth a quick check as to what a privet transfer would cost. Given that it was only about £30 more expensive than the bus options, for a direct service I couldnt resist.

Speaking of transfers, the plan had been for my parents to drive up to Heathrow with the cases while we took the train. However again seeing that the price of the train + carparking was about the same as getting a door to door transfer it made perfect sense to travel up together. This should mean I can get a couple of hours sleep after we land and be ready for work by the time we get home...
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Old 14 Jun 22, 09:49 AM  
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The Fatadder
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Having passed our ADR booking day at the weekend the last major job for the trip is now complete. So the plan is now pretty much finalised

11/8 Arrival, Virgin keep messing with the flight times so the arrival time is now later than when we originally booked. We do have a park entry booked for Magic Kingdom but in all likelihood will just go to the AKL pool and eat at the hotel.
12/8 MK, with an early dinner booked at Skippers Canteen
13/8 AK, to make the most of early opening breakfast at Tusker House is booked for half 9 (park opens at half 7) with the plan to get FOP ridden before breakfast. Dinner booked for Jiko
14/8 Epcot, lunch booked at Garden Grill
15/8 Typhoon Lagoon in the day, then evening magic hours at Epcot (with a plan to eat at Food & Wine)
16/8 HS, no ADR booked as cant decide if we will be there until late.
17/8 MK in the morning then back to the hotel for a rest, ADR at Storybook Dining followed by evening magic hours at MK.
18/8 Epcot, Calli Grill for Dinner
19/8 HS, Topolinos for a 7:30am breakfast then skyliner to the park. Again no dinner booked. Have to go and collect the cars in the afternoon.
20/8 AK, dinner at Space 220, move to villa.
21/8 Discovery Cove, plan is to head over to SeaWorld afterwards
22/8 IOA
23/8 Kennedy
24/8 Busch (my current plan is to drive over to St Petes for dinner once we have finished at Busch).
25/8 Volcano Bay / US
26/8 IOA
27/8 SW
28/8 US
29/8 Aquitica / SW
30/8 half day in a park, then fly home


Jobs remaining:
Try and improve on car hire. We currently have one car picked up from Hertz and one from Avis (both in Kissimmee), rather than lowering the price what I really hope is to move to pick up from Alamo at DCC.

Extras, still need to book a SeaWorld experience or two, maybe MNSSHP or a night at RPR. Just a case of working out what the budget will allow (particularly having booked for a few days at Longleat Centre Parks for the first week of the xmas holls...
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