Disney at New Years…Was I Crazy?

Walt Disney World Resorts booked, Flights booked, now we needed to decide how many days we wanted to do in the parks.

Walt Disney World Map courtesy of Walt Disney World for Grownups

After asking my family, and knowing our touring style, I decided to purchase a 5 Day Park Pass.  For those who have never visited Walt Disney World in Florida, it is important to realize that this Disney park is huge.  Size of Manhattan huge.  In Walt Disney World alone, there are 4 Theme Parks, 2 Water Parks, 25 Resort Hotels, 1 Campground, 4 World renowned Golf Courses, 2 Mini Putt courses plus water sports, fishing, Spas and more.  The 5 Day Park Pass that I purchased for us gave us 5 days of Theme Park time.  You can also purchase a “Park Hopper” option that gives you the opportunity to go from one park to another and another in one day.  You can visit one, two, or all 4 parks in one day with this feature.  I chose to not purchase this feature for this trip as I figured the parks would be very busy and that we would not want to waste any of our time travelling to a different park.  That decision saved us some money, but limited some of our touring options.  More on this in another post…

After reading various posts online, I decided to purchase our Park Passes through Undercover Tourist.  (www.undercovertourist.com)  I could have purchased the passes through Disney online or on the phone, but purchasing from this vendor saved me about $20.00 per person USD ($80.00 total).  I had never purchased from a vendor other than Disney and I was happily surprised to see how easy it was.  I simply created an account with Undercover Tourist and bought the tickets.  The tickets came to me via an email almost immediately, and I was able to link them to my Disney account very easily.  They them became part of my reservation and I could use them as I liked for our upcoming trip.

My family at the entrance to Epcot.

My family and I decided that we would do 2 days at the Magic Kingdom, 2 days at Epcot, and one day at Disney’s Hollywood Studios.  We decided to not attempt Disney’s Animal Kingdom on this trip, but to wait for the opening of the new Avatar land and explore there once it is open.

Although I am happy with our decision, I missed some of the shows at Animal Kingdom and would have liked to have a half day there.  Perhaps I should have purchased the park hopper option for our tickets after all…

The Festival of the Lion King has always wowed the crowds at Disney’s Hollywood Studios.

Next Blog post….the 180 day dilemma.  Booking our Dining
Options!!!

New Years at Disney…Was I Crazy? (part 3)

 

2 Queen beds and lots of space in a Studio Villa at Disney’s Old Key West resort.

Now that we had our flights booked and finalized, the next step toward our New Years Family Extravaganza was to decide where to stay.  We toyed briefly with staying off site somewhere in Orlando or Kissimmee but it was DH who said we should really stay right on site at WDW.  Being “Peak Season”, we were looking at paying top dollar for our rooms, so I decided to look into something I had read about but had never done…. rent DVC points and stay at a Disney Vacation Club Resort.

To those who are unfamiliar with DVC, it is the timeshare that Disney owns and operates.  People who buy in, purchase points that they can use toward their Disney vacation at any of their 13 resorts in Walt Disney World, Disneyland and elsewhere.  For those of us whose Hubbys are not sold on the idea of purchasing into a Disney timeshare, there are other options to stay at a DVC resort like paying Disney out of pocket or to rent points from someone who has timeshare points they cannot use.

There are various ways someone can rent these points, but for our use I chose to use a David’s Vacation Club Rentals which is a Canadian Company that DVC owners can rent out their points to people like me.  This can be a huge savings for people who are looking to save on deluxe accommodations at Disney.  Using their online calculator, I realized we were better off to just stay at a DVC resort for half of our vacation.  (January 1-4) The cost of staying on New Years Eve just was going to be way too much for us.  I filled out the online request form and within 2 days I received confirmation that there was an availability for us at Old Key West.  This made me extremely happy as this was Disney’s original Vacation Club resort and I had wanted to stay there for many years.  Although there are one and two bedroom villas available there, we booked in at a Studio which boasts a room larger than a regular hotel room with 2 queen beds, a kitchenette, and a large bathroom.

Wanting to keep something familiar for the first half of the trip, I decided to book us in at Port Orleans French Quarter Resort.  We had stayed there in 2008 and it has been our favourite of all the Disney resorts so far.  Hubby likes to stay at places he has stayed before, but I like to try new resorts and experiences, so this “Split Stay” seemed to be the best of both worlds for us.  I was uneasy about how the move from resort to resort would work for us (especially without a vehicle) so I went to various online Disney forums for advice and reassurance.  Needless to say, the online community was extremely helpful with my questions and any of my fears were quickly put to rest.

(note to everyone:  when in doubt, ask the Disney online community.  Whether it is a forum or a group on Facebook, Disney people are extremely helpful and love to talk Disney)

Next to ponder…. how many Disney Park days did we need?  Did we need Park Hopper or any extras?  That post coming next….

Disney at New Years…Was I Crazy?? (Part 2)

Being fairly adept at booking a Disney vacation (or so I thought), I decided the first order of business was to look at flights.  I knew we had to book our flights for December 28th to get to Orlando and January 4th to come home because of family Christmas commitments and my DS’s classes at Carleton resuming January 5th.

I decided to look online before contacting a Travel Agent just to see what prices I was looking at.  WOW!  Some of the airlines were charging a premium for that time of year. I had quotes from $800.00 CAD for a return flight up to $1500.00 CAD for a return flight.  I wasn’t sure if we could afford the trip based on those prices.  I was originally looking at Toronto (YYZ) to Orlando (MCO), but widened my scope to leave from Ottawa, Buffalo, and Rochester.  I would have loved to fly right out of our home city of North Bay, but I knew from past experience that would put the flights out of our price range.

I then started looking at some of the flight search engines such at Kayak.com and Priceline as well as many others.  Some of these websites saved my search history and let me know when a flight would have a drop in price.  That is where I hit my jackpot.  One evening in late March when my Hubby was at an OHL hockey game here in town I received an email from Hotwire.com that said there was a drop in price for the dates I was looking for.  When I clicked on the link I saw that it was a WestJet flight from Toronto to Orlando return on the dates I needed for $1547.00 USD total for all 4 flights!  Even with the exchange rate, this booking was well within my budget.  I texted my Hubby who’s response was “Book it”!  I then sent a long and detailed text about the flight times.  We would be flying out late evening of the 28th and flying home very early on the 4th.  He then replied “Can this wait until I get home?” Seriously??  Did he not know what a great deal this was and that someone else might buy our seats before us?   I reluctantly agreed and waited for him while just knowing that someone else was snatching up our fabulous deal and we would be left flightless.

When he got home I explained the flight times and how they were less than ideal, but what a great price they were.  He agreed and I booked our flights late into the evening.  I couldn’t sleep!  I had done it.  Flights were booked and now I could start pricing our magical trip!  But wait….I just booked a flight on a “budget” search engine.  Were our flights really on Westjet?  Would our seats be saved for us or were we some “extra bookings” to fill some overflow?  Did I just make a mistake???

Around 4am the worries got to me and I got out of bed.  I arranged my printed out flight confirmations as well as my credit card and waited until the phones opened for WestJet and called their customer service number.  The girl on the phone was super helpful and didn’t laugh at all when I asked “Was my Hotwire booking truly a WestJet flight?”.  In fact her answer was “I see your reservation right here, would you like to book your seats?”  YES PLEASE!  Before I had my first cup of coffee, I had our seats booked, my stress was gone and I was even happier to find out that since I had a WestJet MasterCard we all didn’t have to pay for our luggage!!

Over the next few weeks I told people about booking our flights through Hotwire and most had never thought of it.  Or were wary of trying.  I am happy to say that Hotwire put our trip into the right budget catagory and searching flights for our dates for fun made me realize how right I was to book when I did.  Flight prices continued to climb for New Years and I was content know that I had done something right.

Now all that was next was to book our Disney resort…..

Disney at New Years…was I crazy?? (part One)

New Years Day 2017

Almost a year ago I felt a tremendous need to get to Walt Disney World.  Not just me, but to have all 4 of us at Disney at the same time.  Due to school schedules, work, and other trips, our last trip to WDW with all 4 of us was January 2008.  A lifetime ago by my own addled standards!  I had gone with both kids twice in that time, but both times my Hubby was unable to come along.  Now I was determined to make a full family trip a reality!  The question was, When would all 4 of us have time to go away together.  When would my DS’s University schedule allow a break that would coincide with DD’s High School schedule as well as Hubby and my work?  After careful scrutiny of various calendars there was only one option….New Years.

Now, it is fairly well known that I am a huge Disney fan, and that I read many (many) Blogs, Websites, Books etc…devoted to traveling to WDW and I knew that I was proposing a trip during the busiest time of the year.  Not just a few days busy like on our MLK trip or American Thanksgiving, but all 8 days being full to capacity crazy busy.  This was going to be a daunting task.  Every source I could find showed that the parks would be at a 10 out of 10 on the Crowd Calendar scale.  On top of all of this, the price of flights, hotels, etc were going to be at their highest. Could I plan our family a trip that would be as Magical as I wanted while fitting our set budget of what we could afford?  That was the question I pondered for weeks.  Was it worth the cost of the trip if we were going to be shuttled around the parks like cattle?  Would Disney lose the magic for us when they were full?  Could my family handle the crowds while staying in full vacation mode.

Fast forward to December 31 and my answer was a loud and resounding “YES”!  It took a lot of work and planning, but we had the Disney trip I was dreaming of.  I made the memories I was craving deep in my bones (I’m sure other Moms know that feeling) and will treasure the time I spent with all of them.

The next few posts are going to be my journey of planning this trip.  The mistakes I made as well as the successes!  There were times I was sure I was the only one looking forward to our trip (I was wrong), and there were times I couldn’t sit still because of my anticipation.  This is my journey….a Magic Journey (sing the song you Disney fans that know it…) where I made memories that I will treasure always.

 

Greetings and Salutations

As my first Blog post, I suppose I should write a little about me so you, the curious reader can understand a little about where my stories and musings come from.

I live in a small city in Northern Ontario.  I love it here.  I love all 4 seasons (Winter is a little too long for me though…) , I love the many lakes within our city, I love that you can walk to our Ski Hill and I love that I know my neighbours and that we all look out for each other.

I am married to a fabulous Hubby of over 23 years, and as we approach our 25th Anniversary I am amazed at how quickly the time has flown by!  He is definitely a “Sports Guy” and I follow his Sports conversations relatively blindly.  He does the same when I talk about Disney…and I do that a lot!  Most household conversations begin with daily conversation and end with me saying “Did you see (random Disney fact) online today?”  The answer is almost always “No”.

I have 2 amazing kids (aren’t all kids amazing?  LOL)  Dear son is 20 (DS20) and is our technical support, a student of Engineering at Carleton University in Ottawa, and is usually the grown up voice in our family.  He definitely is older than his years.  Dear daughter is 16 (DS16) and is our glimpse into a world full of glitter and fun.  She has been a competitive dancer for 9 years and her dancing has taken myself and her to New York, Germany and yes, Disney!

I studied English Literature at University and fully intended to become a teacher.  During my 3rd year of school I realized that I truly loved my part-time job of working at an Esthetic Studio and decided to pursue my career as a Nail Technician instead after achieving my degree.  I have been polishing, buffing and trimming nails for over 28 years and I still love it.  My clients have become some of my dearest friends and I look forward to my visit with each and every one of them.

My world is full of fun and family.  I do my best to put good vibes out in to the world and to help those I can.  Let’s face, it we all need a healthy dose of Pixie Dust!  So for now, keep your hands and arms inside your ride vehicle, buckle up, and most of all, Have a Magical Day!!