The Haunting Sequel - Or The Phantoms get scared!

[Safyre]

I am so excited!
It is currently 68 days until we go!
Where to start!

Oh yeah, the cast!
There is me, Gill, and my long suffering husband Dave.

Our last trip was September 2016, and we loved the Halloween season so much we knew we wanted to do it all again, and this year in August is a certain persons 40th birthday. I’ll give you a clue, it’s not me!

We would have liked to be in Florida for his actual birthday, but knew we would have missed the Halloween fun, so delayed a month, meaning we get to celebrate our 6th wedding anniversary while we are away as well.

We enjoyed our last trip so much (despite the best efforts of Hurricane Matthew) that we wanted to basically recreate it all. BA flights, onsite at Coronado Springs, then Royal Pacific. Unfortunately the only thing that stuck was BA.

Our last trip report is here

We booked Disney first, having only a rough idea of dates, when the free DDP was first released, meaning we booked at 508 days out. Ouch.

The construction work going on at CSR really put us off going back again, even though we really enjoyed it last time, we decided to go for a different resort, and have agonised over this a LOT. We would have picked CBR had it not been for the work there too, meaning we were really looking at Port Orleans.

One of the things we liked most at CSR was our room location as it was near a quiet pool, and we ended up not really using the main pool. We preferred the theme of FQ, but decided we really wanted quiet pools, so have gone for RS. This does not mean we haven’t uhmed and ahhed about this for the last year. So much so that I have now, twice, called up about changing resort as we just don’t like the theme of the Alligator Bayou area, and really don’t want to be in that bit. We’ve added a note to our booking, and have our fingers crossed now.

I actually think if not for the work, I prefer the look of CSR but it’s done now, so this is the last time I will think about it!
We have also booked 14 day tickets, meaning we have the QSDP and memory maker included. We had QSDP last time too and were more than happy with it. We did discuss upgrading but decided it wasn’t for us.

This was going well, we had the first bit booked and were waiting for Universal to release our dates for their hotels. So all we had to do was wait patiently.

Yeah right.

One random day, sitting on the couch, a nice little advert popped up, for a Carnival cruise out of Port Canaveral. And an idea was formed. So I wiled away an hour or so pricing it up. We worked out the total price for a balcony etc and all the extras we would be looking at. Then someone, I forget who to blame for this bit, probably me, decided ‘hey, lets price up a Disney cruise’. Yup.

It was actually not much more than the Carnival one plus the extras. Well, this is my story and I’m sticking to it!

Not ones for thinking about it, on impulse, we booked. A 3 night cruise to the Bahamas, stopping at Nassau and Castaway Cay.
We booked an extended balcony room, and we’re actually really looking forward to it.

Over the following six months, we looked into it a lot more, read trippies and watched YouTube videos, signed up for the cruise facebook group, signed up for a mixology class, and (WHY!?) have joined the Fish Extender! I am officially insane!

A fish extender, if you haven’t heard of it (and lets face it, why would you!) is a mutual gift exchange between a group of prearranged cabins. We currently have 8 in our group but it may increase to 10 later. In a strange way, this has been a blessing and a curse.
It has given the ‘obsessive planner’ part of my brain something to do even when there was nothing else to plan. The logistics etc however could well be my downfall, and I’ve already bought more than I need, including things I have yet to make! Better get busy!

When we booked the cruise, the dates worked better before our Disney stay, so we were now doing the Cruise Friday to Monday, then going to PORS on Monday.

We were still almost 500 days out.

When Universal released the dates for our stay, which was decided as at the end, after Disney, so we could do HHN, the prices were wild. Like three times what we paid in 2016.

Expedia however, showed a hotel we hadn’t yet heard of, the Aventura at Universal Resort. The price was much better for an on site stay, so we went for it. This is still not actually open, but hopefully it will be when we get there! Despite this being booked, I couldn’t shake the desire to go back to RPR and kept checking prices. It never dropped below twice what we paid in 2016, but we did come across a cheaper again price for the Aventura with BA, and we had a refundable booking with Expedia so we cancelled and rebooked. This saved us about £100, and we got a $50 dining credit with the room.
Our flights were finally released, and again we were using our prices from 2016 as a guide to what we wanted to pay.
After reading some trip reports here where people had been delayed and missed the first day or even two of their stay, we were apprehensive about when to arrive in Florida. We decided to arrive 2 days before the cruise, meaning a Wednesday flight. This narrowed down our options for airlines, as we wanted to leave from Glasgow, either direct or indirect, and left us with BA.

This had been fine before, so kept an eye out for prices. I had priced up for economy fly drives but had also looked into the price of PE fly drives, and ruled it out.

Then on Black Friday, 2017, quite late at night, when I should have been in bed for work the next day, a facebook friend mentioned getting a really good price on BA flights elsewhere. I hadn’t even thought about it, so had a quick peek, and good grief, the PE fly drive was £800 less than it had been previously. And actually less than we paid last year with only the return flights as PE, and this was for 3 weeks.

So snapped them up! Last time we had an SUV, but have settled for a full size this time, which I’m sure will be fine, and it did save us over £100.

Because we fly in 2 days before we cruise, we needed a place to stay.

We settled on 2 nights at the Clarion Inn Lake Buena Vista.

Because we have this extra day really at the start we played about with adding on Seaworld, or Busch Gardens, and came across a 2 day ticket on Groupon USA, so we are doing Busch on the Thursday, and will do Seaworld later in the trip.

Because it’s Dave’s birthday, I’ve added in a couple of surprises, and the first one is at Busch Gardens. We’re doing the Serengeti Safari! I’ll tell him on the day.
I’ve also booked all day dining for this day, as I prefer to prepay as much as possible.

Another surprise we have is on our wedding anniversary, while staying at Disney. We have a meal booked at Sanaa at Animal Kingdom Lodge, followed by the Starlight Safari at Kidani House.

(Don’t mention any of this to Dave btw!)

We also have MNSSHP tickets booked, and will be wearing costumes, which I have yet to make so we may still end up reusing the ones from last time!

Then we have Halloween Horror Nights tickets, we have the Rush of Fear with Express tickets, and are planning to do 3 nights. We originally hoped to do 4 nights, but the Thursday we are there, it’s closed for a private party!

Then a couple of months ago, we picked up cheap tickets for Discovery Cove, which we hadn’t planned on, as they were so cheap.

Honestly, I think we’re over doing it. Again.

Everything’s booked now, although I’m keeping my eye out for the airport lounges at good prices.

[Goldia]

Ooh Starlight Safari sounds like a fun activity and will be a great special treat. It looks like you're going to have a great time and your plans sound fab. Not long until you can do your FP, good luck I hope you get everything you want.

[Safyre]

Thank you!

We planned our fast passes out last night, so at least we have an idea of what we want when they open, with FOP, Na'vi River Journey, Slinky and ASS on the hit list, wish us luck!

[SaratogaSp2015]

Wow! This sounds amazing! I can't wait to read the trip report

[Safyre]

I cant believe how close we are now, it’s crazy. 16 days!

We did our FPs at 60 days, it was pretty easy actually, but we couldn’t get a couple of things, and we were in to the second week before we could get Slinky Dog and we didn’t get 7DMT for our day at MNSSHP but that was fine. I had seen people getting FOP and NRJ on the same days, but we couldn’t do that, so glad we have a few days planned at AK.

I’ve more or less finished our Fish Extender gifts, just need to put them in individual gift bags, and that’s ready.

We had an email from Disney Cruise Line to remind us to bring our Halloween costumes – eep. We were expecting the Saturday night to be Pirate Night, and had been planning on making pirate costumes, but this changed things so we had a quick think of what we could dress up as, and have decided….. now I just need to make the costumes. I’ll tell you when we get back in case they don’t turn out nice and I have to change it last minute. And yes I have already made costumes for MNSSHP, and technically we could have worn them again, but we (I) wanted to have a different costume.

Speaking of MNSSHP, the costumes are made! I’m ridiculously pleased with how they turned out, they are quite simple but effective. Although less simple than the last ones which were skeletons.

Back to the cruise, our date to book our activities opened up, and we went for a look as you also do a sort of on line check in, and pick your port arrival time, as the actual check in is staggered to avoid a huge scrum at the port. We want on the ship as early as possible, so have a port arrival time of 10.45.

We also booked to go Parasailing at Castaway Cay, which led to some interesting shopping including swimming shorts for me (knee length as I hate my legs) and a go pro with chest harness. (We will be vlogging our trip)

We’re watching The Last Jedi just now, more Dave than me, then I’ll spend the rest of the weekend making the costumes for the cruise, and making Dave try on shorts to find his comfiest ones.

The packing will begin really soon, but I do have a tendency to keep buying random things that I may or may not need, like a new backpack and beach cover ups I bought late last night.

[Safyre]

We're home! It's ever so depressing, it feels like we missed autumn. We left and it was still summer and now it feels like winter!

We're working on the trip report, and we vlogged our trip too, which may be quicker to update.

This is the , there are some Minnie (mini) Vlogs on the channel too from when we were away.