Faux-LIVE WDW Trip Report

[BrightlyBob]

One of the things I really like about theDIBB is the few that generously give up their holiday time to run a live Trip Report. Being able to read new daily content as it happens brings you closer to the holiday!

Of course none of that is happening now. BUT I ran a live blog about my July 2018 Disney trip on a different, non-Disney travel forum and thought, well, here’s an opportunity for a day-by day as it happens trippie when it can’t be done!

So here I’m simply lifting my daily posts and presenting my FAKE-LIVE (from 21 months ago 10-24 July 2018) DAILY TRIP REPORT!

There’ll be photos, friends, British waistcoats, food and for the eternal DDP-v-OOP fans here daily food totals!

So what’s the plan, and who are we?

Well had this been 2012 we would have been:

And had it been 2014 we would have been:

But as this is NOW we are:

Yup - it’s an empty-nester trip to WDW. And for us this means Premium return Manchester to Sanford flights with Tui and 2 weeks at the Dolphin being the bigger half of Marriotts on-WDW Swan and Dolphin hotel situated midway between Epcot and Hollywood studios, roughly a 15 minute stroll along the Boardwalk to Epcot and a 20 minute walk to Hollywood Studios.

And it all begins on the 10th of April!

Daily (faux) LIVE (real) TRIP REPORT! Not bad for a lockdown!

[BrightlyBob]

WooHoo, it’s packing day - yes, we don’t bother to pack till the day before! Lovely weather here in Manchester but hot, hot, hot weather forecast for Florida. We looooove all that heat!

I guess this is a good time to say how we got here and our plan.

Basically, we asked the kids a year ago if they wanted to go to Disney and they replied they were Disneyed out - Lets face it, cool kids at 18, 20 & 22 think Disney is “too young” for them - aah, the vanity of youth!

Well, it’s not “too young” for us so we decided to do our first ever no-kids WDW trip! Firstly flights - well we found Tui offering its Premium Economy Seats from Manchester to Sanford for £900pp return which whilst no bargain certainly seemed good to us our post-kid bones need a bit of luxury and paying for only 2 instead of 5 really racks up the savings.

Next up was the accommodation. We decided we would spend the arrival evening in the Sanford area, get some cheap food and beer shopping in and then an early-morning UBER over to WDW to Checkin and straight over to Epcot for rope-drop. We definitely wanted to stay onsite for the rest of our fortnight and would hugely prefer to be in the Epcot area, Yacht Club, Beach Club, Boardwalk Inn or Swan & Dolphin. The good news was Disney was offering free dining, the bad news was the price - The cheapest in the area was the Beach Club at £6,000 for the 13 nights. With full DDP costing £50pp this represented a £1,300 saving over our fortnight and since we really didn’t think we’d eat £1,300 of food and so felt that anything under £5,000 room only would represent a fair outcome - Cue a search for the Swan & Dolphin duo

And their King bedded room priced-up at $5,200 which is about £4,000. Result - especially as the twosome are part of the mammoth Marriott hotel group and as I’m a regular staying at Marriotts for work I've joined their loyalty program which gives me free upgrades, free breakfasts and points against future stays. So for me that room only rate included breakfast - extra value! However it’s possible to do even better than that, by searching momondo.com I was able to find a rate for $2,800 for the same dates and then claimed against Marriotts best rate guarantee which matched and reduced the price down to $156 per night which after adding taxes and the Resort Fee made the total $200/nt. At that rate we decided to stay the first night there as well! So two weeks at the Dolphin for $2,800 which is £2,200. A very nice price, especially as it included daily breakfast!

Finally we postponed buying our tickets till Christmas when the resellers reduced the prices and we saved another £50 on each ticket! Every little helps!

Then a big happening, just a month before we were due to depart Disney announced the new Toy Story land would fully open just days before our stay and Hollywood Studios would be open for the whole month at 7am every day! Since with our jetlag we would be up and ready to go at 5am on the first morning it was easy to see what we would be doing first thing - an early tour to Toy Story Land it would be!

So there we are. 2 weeks at the Dolphin. First day EMH Toy Story Land. We’ve fixed all our fastpasses 60 days beforehand but as it’s only 2 of us we’ve made just 3 ADRs at one at Lunchtime for Be our Guest on day 2, evening Coral Reef on day 3 and evening Liberty Tree Tavern on day 5. The rest of the stay we reckon we’ll be Ok to turn up where we want, when we want as there’s only 2 of us. Hope we’ve got this right!

[Palm trees]

Fantastic prices on your hotel there. Looking forward to reading more of your report as it happens (happened!)

[Floridadreams]

Ohhh love a trip report! Looking forward to this!

[Holiday time]

What a brilliant idea to post a faux trip report. A bit of Disney escapism is exactly what is needed at this time. Thanks for posting

[BrightlyBob]

Originally Posted by Palm trees

Fantastic prices on your hotel there. Looking forward to reading more of your report as it happens (happened!)

See more...

Very happy with the price which at £2,200 for the fortnight ended up £1,000 lower than POFQ. In fact I kept a note of prices for the 13 nights I was initially booking onsite and booking end October just before then end of free dining for our dates saw Grand Floridian at £8920, Beach Club £6460, Saratoga £6930 all with free full DDP. Port Orleans was £3160 and Caribbean Beach £2770 both with QSDP. Lastly Pop and All-Stars were £1940 & £1560 respectively both with free breakfast which is a single daily QS meal.

At the beginning of January, after the free dining ended the cheapest way to get the rooms was via consolidators and priced at £6230, £4720, £4010, £2390, £2190, £1750 and £1650. The 3 Deluxes each saved huge amounts and for 2 were better value booking in January, as were the 2 moderates, however Pop was slightly better value with the “free breakfast” and the All-Stars were actually cheaper booking in October with the free brekky than booking in January without! Such are the oddities of pricing up Disney!

Originally Posted by Floridadreams

Ohhh love a trip report! Looking forward to this!

See more...

I’ve always enjoyed the trip reports. Of course the live ones are typically shorter than the full ones and I’ll be keeping this all on the same thread as I reckon it’ll still be manageable that way... enjoy!

Originally Posted by Holiday time

What a brilliant idea to post a faux trip report. A bit of Disney escapism is exactly what is needed at this time. Thanks for posting

See more...

That’s what I thought, and I get to relive my holiday too - day-by-day, as it happened. Win-win!

[BrightlyBob]

So here we are. All that saving, planning, booking, ADRs, fastpasses and seat selections have led here.

Manchester to Sanford with Tui on their Dreamliner in Premium.

Now, this is actually a very convenient place to examine the comparison between Tui and Virgins 787 PE as we did fly Virgin PE to LAX in October.

CHECKIN
DRAW - Both have priority checkin for PE.
LOUNGE ACCESS
TUI - Virgin has no lounge access for PE, Tui does have homebound lounge access
BOARDING
TUI - Both allow PE priority over Economy but with Virgin also offering its Upper Class priority over all, you’re not quite first-to-board with them.
SEAT
Here I actually measured the seat using my transatlantic reading materials!
So here’s Virgin

And this is Tui

As can be seen, the Virgin seat is slightly, very slightly, wider. It’s also a little better padded, so VIRGIN wins this by millimetres...
ENTERTAINMENT
VIRGIN - Huge selection of entertainment with Virgin but TUI does have a selection that’s good enough for the flight
FOOD
VIRGIN - just does better in-flight food overall, but TUI is still pretty good. Virgins Wonderwall is very convenient for snacks and non-alcoholic drinks
DRINKS
DRAW - Both offer beer, wine and bubbles replenished throughout the flight. If you want more just ask and you shall receive.
DEPLANING
TUI - Both prioritise PE meaning you’re close to the front at immigration, but again with Virgin PE has to give way to the Upper cabin.
LUGGAGE COLLECTION
TUI - Both prioritise PE luggage so it comes out quickly

This looks pretty even and actually it really is in the thing that really matters, the seat you’re sat in fir the 10-hour flight but it is the case guess that Virgin doesn’t quite give the same priority to PE checkin, boarding, deplaning and luggage as Tui, but really it made no practical difference with Upper being such a small cabin.

Overall, by a whisker I prefer Virgin PE on its 787 to Tui’s but it is close. Both are a real step up from Economy!

Upon arrival at Sanford our driver from Happy Limousines was awaiting us. I decided to splash on a meet & greet as I wanted to make the arrival as easy as possible and we’ve used Happy Limos before and found them to be reliable. We didn’t bother with a limo but the Lincoln SUV they sent was very comfy and after a quick Publix stopoff where we brought plenty of beer and Pepsi fir the room and a good quantity of snacks for the fortnight, then it was onto WDW where we drove through the entrance at 4pm

And arrived at the Dolphin at a few mins later. Alas our room wasn’t ready but they had our number, took our luggage and we went out to the Boardwalk for a beer while we waited. About an hour later we received the text that our room was ready and off we walked back to the Dolphin to collect our roomkeys.

And wow! What a room, we are delighted to find we’ve been upgraded for the entire 2 weeks to a suite! Absolutely fabulous way to end our travel day and start our holiday.

So, a quick unpack and downstairs to Fuel (the Dolphins coffee shop) for a couple of hoagies and drinks before turning in for the night and our 7am EMH tomorrow at Hollywood Studios...

And finally the daily food cost summary. The full cost of DDP would have been £50 each per night, £1,400. For our arrival day we spent:

Big River Brew works 2 x beer & coffee $18 + $3 tip
Fuel at Dolphin 2 x hoagies, beer and nesquick $27 (say, 2xQS)
Beer & Pepsi in suite

[BrightlyBob]

Well, it’s day #1 - Jetlag day. I’m up and working at 04:30. Woke Mrs BB at 05:45 and we catch the boat for Hollywood Studios at 06:30. And then... well, I’ll let the pictures tell the story...

Park #1 - Hollywood Studios. It’s 08:45 and I’ve been in the Park for 2 hours without breakfast, the horror!

Park #2 - Walked back to the Dolphin for breakfast and then onto Epcot. It’s amazing how good Danish pastries and the freshest of fresh OJ can lift your spirits!

Park #3 - Animal Kingdom. Third park of the day and we’re pretty as a picture!

Park #4 - Magic Kingdom. Displaying the strength needed to do all 4 parks in a day - Grrrr, hear me ROAR!

[BrightlyBob]

And food costs for the day. I’ll post each day separately, comparing to DDP. My Platinum membership of Marriott gives us free daily continental breakfast. For Tink (MrsBB) breakfast is mostly just a coffee and croissant, for me it’s mostly the free continental which includes fruit, yoghurts, fresh juices, tea, coffee, cereals, breads, danish and toast. I can upgrade to add the hot choices for $8 which I may do a few times.

For our 14 days if we had DDP we would have received 28 Table Service (TS) credits, 28 Quick Service (QS) and 56 Snacks (Sn). We are fully intending to choose some of the eateries not covered by DDP but I will make equivalencies since if we had DDP we would stick to it.

Plat Breakfast at Dolphin $0 (say $20 DDP 1xQS&1xSn)
Dinner at Yak&Yeti Fried chicken on Waffles for me; honey chicken for Tink. No dessert 2x22oz beers, total $40 ($65 before $25 welcome bonus) (2xTS) + $10 tip
Beer & Pepsi in suite
Daily Summary $40 - Tips $10 - DDP 2xTS ($65) 1xQS ($15) & 1xSn ($5)
Holiday to date $85 - Tips $13 - DDP 2 TS/3 QS/2 Sn (value $112) + $18 OOP

[Palm trees]

That's pretty impressive, 4 parks on day 1!