With one
Disneyland Paris trip over and the details for the next one all finalized, it is now time to turn my attention to the November trip. Our cruise documents were issued a couple of days ago and this focused my mind. So today, I went on My Disney Experience to check if my window for online check in has now opened, which it has. So I took care of this. For Vero Beach, this was pretty straightforward as there are very limited options for request. I have gone with upper floor and near an elevator for this. Saratoga Springs was a little more complex. As per the recommendation of
@Paula Sedley-Burke, I have gone with Congress Park and also specified that I want to be near the walkway to Disney Springs. This should work out great for us. I also like that the quiet pool in this area is a proper quiet pool. I am sure Graham will get plenty of use out of this.
I was also able to make my Fastpass reservations for the cutover period when I can enter the park with my party ticket before the party officially starts. This required some serious juggling. I was quite surprised how much that process has changed since I made my reservations for last year. Initially I though booking one Fastpass at the time, would make things easier, but that did not turn out to be true. This ended up being a major pain. In the end, I was quite happy with what I ended up with. I ended up changing my reservation for Jungle Navigation Co., Ltd. Skipper Canteen from the Tuesday to theSunday as this fits in better with my plans. I managed to fit in Fastpasses for Peter Pan’s Flight and for meeting Mickey. On the Tuesday, I have Fastpasses for Big Thunder Mountain, Space Mountain and Seven Dwarfs Mine Train. I figure that between the two parties, I should manage to get a chance to ride Pirates, Haunted Mansion, It’s A Small World and Buzz Lightyear standby.
One thing that I am agonizing about at the moment is whether or not we should be visiting Universal this time round. Graham is quite keen and I would love to see the two Harry Potter areas. We could fit this in. Apart from the two parties, I am hoping to see Celebration, head to Orlando Premium Outlets and potentially the Florida Mall and explore Disney Springs. We can check out Celebration on the day we head from Vero Beach to Saratoga Springs. We can easily fit in Disney Springs before one of the parties and potentially do Orlando Premium Outlets in the morning before the other party. That gives us two full days, which we could use for Universal. We can always visit Florida Mall on the way to the airport. What is making me doubt if we should do this is the cost of Universal tickets. Actually the cheapest way to do this would be buying two 14 day tickets that can only be sold in the UK. This seems to be a bit of overkill especially as I am not sure that we would actually find enough to do for two days as neither of us will do the big rides. On the flipside, it is Graham’s birthday next week and I am at a bit of a loss as to what to get him so this would solve this problem.
Other things that are still outstanding are booking car hire. Much of this depends on whether we will do Universal. If we do, the best option is to keep the car for the Orlando part of the trip. If we do not, then we can drop it off once we arrive from Vero Beach. We also still have to excursions to book, but that is just a question of getting around to it. We know what we want to do and may tackle this over the weekend. The last thing that is outstanding is getting the standby tickets back. I was going to sort this out yesterday, but apparently you can now only get them 60 days ahead of time rather than 90 so I have to wait a bit longer.
Corinna