Time to get booking? How do I find an agent?

[Beetuna]

Hi all!

Two things:

You may have seen a previous recent thread of mine regarding a trip my wife and I would like to take. We are shooting for sometime around the 2013 Christmas season. Hopefully we'll be with some extended family too! We're still contemplating between going early in the month, prior to the crowds, or, jumping into the madness.

So, given the business of that time, is it time to start getting things booked?


Also, for our last trip, we used a travel agent. She:
- made all the reservations for us, including at the restaurants we wanted.
- sent itineraries with all the plans for getting to parks,
- also printed up when to leave parks to eat and see shows, & which buses to take
- handled adjustments and payments
- knew all about how to get discounts and best pricing
- knew and kept up on the Disney news much better than I have the time to do!


It was incredibly helpful, and I want to repeat this process! But I'm not sure she is still in the business. I can check, but maybe I'd like to give someone else a turn too! How can I go about finding someone qualified, and also genuinely interested in helping put together this trip?

(Don't want someone that's going to phone it in after receiving money, or is just a general-purpose agent with limited WDW knowledge!)

Thanks for the input!

 

[Mrs Grumpy]

I use Dreams Unlimited and my agent is Dan. Have had nothing but great service for our past three trips.

 

[moonangel]

It's never too early to start booking...just realize that this far out, you may be booking at rack rates until discounts start to come out later this year for the timeframe you are looking to travel. For me personally, I always prefer going earlier in December to avoid the crush of people you will see the closer you get to Christmas and New Year's (we usually do either the first or second week of December, no later). It gets so busy the last week to ten days of the month that the Magic Kingdom can easily reach capacity and close to further guests entering until the crowds ease up.

If you do decide to book this early to secure the location and dates you prefer, your agent can always contact Disney when new discounts are released to have them applied to your booking--assuming the dates/resort for your trip qualify for the promotion.

I know The DIS had its own sponsoring agency here so you may not get many TA recommendations other than those since there's no advertising...those there are several of us on the boards that would be glad to help