The Stones Family Vacay - May 19

[MrsEgg]

First off, introductions and apologises are required, we are not the Stones but Stones does make up part of our last name and after our 9th trip to Florida and not a single American being able to pronounce our last name right, we are now the Stones as declared by a very lovely lady in Red Lobster 7 or so years ago.

This will be my husbands and I’s 9th trip to Florida together (his 20+ trip overall) and it will be Chester’s 4th trip and our very first attempt at a trip report.

So who is going, there will be myself Amanda 32, planner of all things and spreadsheet lover, my husband John who loves all things Florida and is happy not to have to plan a thing and Chester 5 who loves anything to do with superheroes or Mickey Mouse.

This trip was originally going to be a joint trip with John’s best friend and his family, I had priced it all up as 2 weeks at CSR with DDP, direct flights from Manchester, Car hire and $300 Visa Gift Card each during May Half Term, we were really happy with the price. However when it came to booking it they pulled out and by this time there was no longer a 14 day stretch available at CSR, so the spreadsheet came out and the re-planning commenced.

My parents kindly offered to let us use their CLC timeshare points as I think they could tell how disappointed I was to being so close to booking and then not being able to. We have stayed before in Florida using their points at the CLC Regal Oaks resort before however when we enquired there was only availability for 1 week from Sat 1st June and it was at the Encantada resort. It looked very similar to the Regal Oaks Resort but towards the other end of the 192. We booked this straight away and then started to look at where to stay the week before.

As I had done so much research on CSR previously thinking we were going to book there, John decided we should still go and do the DDP the first week, I got in contact with Attraction Tickets Direct and there was still availability this week so we booked for 1 week at CSR and upgraded to DDP with 14 day Disney Tickets.

I found some really good flights MAN – GLA – MCO out and MCO – MAN back with Virgin. We hadn’t flown indirect before but felt stopping in Glasgow wasn’t really a big deal and we had a 3 hour layover in-between, the only problem was it was for 17 days Fri-Tues rather than 14 Sat-Sat it meant that we would need to extend our CSR stay by a day and then look for somewhere else to stay after Encantada as there wasn’t availability there after our week. However the saving we made by booking these flights paid for the extra 3 days car hire and also left us enough to book somewhere else for 2 nights for what the Sat-Sat flight costs were coming in at.

These flights cost us £984 for the 3 of us, this included seat selection on the transatlantic part of the flight (operated by Virgin) and also hold baggage. There was an option to pay to book the Flybe MAN – GLA part but we decided against it as it was a 2-2 configuration plane we knew one of us would be next to Chester and it was such a short flight it would be OK.

We then spoke to ATD to change our CSR reservation to 8 days which was no problem at all so the 24th May – 1st June, 14 day Disney tickets, upgraded to DDP and $300 Disney gift card cost us £2914. We also used TheDibb discount code too which they accepted no problem.

We found the cheapest for Car Hire was Andy from Discount Florida Car Hire which was via Alamo. He was the cheapest by quite a bit, we normally book via Alamo Brits but it was coming in over £600 for an intermediate for 17 days. The great thing we found with Andy was that if I saw the price cheaper on his site he would amend it to the cheaper price, we saved over £40 by doing this. Final price was £368 for 17 days for an intermediate from Alamo.

As we were now staying longer and we were not paying for the second week at CLC we decided to get Universal tickets too. As a couple we use to love Universal but haven’t been back since Chester was born. I booked via Florida Tix for £628, the handy thing with Florida Tix is you can put a deposit down to secure the price and pay later, the deposit was £10 per ticket and once the balance was paid off the tickets were sent out and they are real tickets rather than the paper ones you need to exchange.

The last part of the package would be where to stay for the last 2 nights, we played with the idea of staying at a universal hotel but John didn’t want to go over the cost saving we made from the cheaper flights so I had a budget of £300 for 2 nights which would have got us a lower level Universal hotel however the cost of parking too was putting me off. I saw on TheDibb that 2waterford was renting DVC points so I took the plunge and we rented 2 nights at AKL in a standard Studio which cost us £308. I have adored AKL forever so John let me slide on the £8 over spend. We oth thought Chester would really love the animals and all the activities on offer there too.

So along with Meet and Greet at Manchester Car park £88.11 for the 17 nights our grand total so far comes to –
£5290.11 + $300 Disney gift card.

We later also added on the Early Morning Ticketed Event for Toy Story for £185.63 (I think the exchange rate was around 1.29 when we purchased these). Tickets are priced at $79 for adults and $69 for children plus tax, I booked this for Memorial Day as I knew we would still be getting up early at this point and they were only on Mondays & Wednesday at this point. Ticket price includes for Early Morning Entry to Toy Story Land from 7.30 – 9am and also includes breakfast which is served until 10am.

I’ll try and keep a running total as we go along as I find it really useful when others to this, hopefully you will all too.
Our ADR day for our onsite stay was easy, we got everything we wanted at the times we wanted, John has put his only request in for Beaches & Cream as he had seen on YouTube the ice creams and loved the look of them. I was a little nervous if we would be able to get in as I know how notoriously small it is but I needn’t have worried.

I planned all our days via TheDibb’s busy day guide, it has served us all so well in the past and highly recommend it. I worked our ADR’s around it and then when our 60 FP window came and went and we got all the FP’s we wanted, Slinky was the hardest with only evening availability on the day we were going to be at HS but it was day 4 of our trip so I was half expecting it. We managed FOP for a couple of days which I was happy about. Our offsite stay at 30 days were a lot harder and as expected Slinky and FOP were nowhere to be seen but we still got a pretty good selection apart from 7DMT on our MK day. This was what swayed me with planning too, we would do Universal when we were offsite, makes sense for the free parking for onsite guest (until the end of 2019) and the 60 day fast pass window.

Total so far - £5475.71 + $300 Disney Gift Card

The Stones Family Vacay - May 19 - Travel Day
The Stones Family Vacay - May 19 – Day 1 – MK, Walmart, Chef Art Smiths Homecomin’ & Disney Springs
The Stones Family Vacay – May 19 - Day 2 – AK, CSR and Yak and Yeti
The Stones Family Vacay – Day 3 – Early Morning Magic at HS, Memorial Day Shopping, Ale and Compass & Fantasmic
The Stones Family Vacay – Day 4 - AK, Tusker House & Disney Springs
The Stones Family Vacay – Day 5 - Epcot food & Wine, Whispering Canyons and Summerland Golf
The Stones Family Vacay – Day 6 – MK, BOG Breakfast, O’hana, MK Evening
The Stones Family Vacay – Day 7 – Epcot More Food & Wine, Chef Mickey & MK Evening
The Stones Family Vacay – Day 8 – Move to CLC Encantada, Shopping, Beaches & Cream, Epcot Evening
The Stones Family Vacay – Day 9 – Universal Studios & Red Lobster
The Stones Family Vacay – Day 10 – Volcano Bay, Outlet Shopping, Planet Hollywood & Disney Springs
The Stones Family Vacay – Day 11 Islands of Adventure, Voodoo Doughnuts & Splitsville
The Stones Family Vacay – Day 12 I-Hop, Blizzard Beach & Bahama Breeze
The Stones Family Vacay – Day 13 MK, Red Lobster & Winterville Mini Golf
The Stones Family Vacay – Day 14 Outlet Shopping & Rainforest Café & Disney Springs
The Stones Family Vacay – Day 15 – Move to AKL, AK, Wilderness Exploring & Satu’li Canteen
The Stones Family Vacay – Day 16 – AKL & Sanaa
The Stones Family Vacay – Day 17 – Disney Springs, Chicken Guy & Travel Home

[TINKERBELL44]

Looking forward to reading xx

[MrsEgg]

Travel Day now Added

[MrsEgg]

Day 1 now Added

[MrsEgg]

Day 3 Now added