This trip is not allowing itself to be planned easily. Now that my mini trip is over I have to sit down and make some decisions as the 6 month date is approaching at the end of the month. Oddly enough though, the one thing I'm not really worried about is dining reservations. I've made a little priority list for myself.
1) Book a Resort - Disney still hasn't released the amount of the discounts for the official resorts. It's getting closer to the 6 month mark so I'm going to have to pick somewhere if I want to be able to make my dining reservations at the 180 day mark. I really want to stay at a deluxe ( I am turning 40 after all), but without a discount the prices are just crazy. My first choice would be an Epcot area resort. I fell in love with the location while staying at the Boardwalk Inn in December. During Food & Wine the location is even more of a prime feature. At the moment I'm leaning towards the Beach Club (if I can finangle a good code). It's one of the official race resorts, so we won't have to worry about transportation. I also figure that the day after the race we won't really be up to doing a park so Stormalong Bay will be a perfect place to chill and relax with some drinks. Since Yacht Club and the Boardwalk are both within walking distance I'd consider either of those as well with a good discount.
Without the discount I'll probably have to go with POFQ. I really like it there, so I wouldn't be too upset. Staying deluxe this last trip really did spoil me a bit though. AsSp is the value race resort, but I really want to go at least moderate this trip.
2) Figure out How Many Days at Disney and How Many Days at Universal - I put my friend off on this one last year, and now I have no choice but to work it in. I really do want to see the Harry Potter world at Islands of Adventure, but I hadn't really thought about how hard it would be to work into the schedule. Optimally I would have liked to start the trip at Universal and then move over to Disney. The problem is that I'll never make it through the race if we do parks first and then the race. I'm already exhausted at the end of a week of just the parks. I'm torn between 5 nights at Disney or 6. If the race wasn't occupying most of the first 2 days I'd do 5 without a problem, but pre-race relaxation and prep stuff will take up most of that first Friday and Saturday. We might do a little bit of park stuff, but they defintely won't be huge park days. So far this is my preliminary plan:
Friday Oct.1 - Arrive on Early Flight. Check in to resort and head over to World of Sports for race packet pick up. Possibly head to a park at night. No real major park touring though.
Saturday Oct. 2 - Possibly head to a park for awhile in the morning before heading back to the resort for some rest in the afternoon. The race is at 10 pm, and the after pary goes until 3:30 am. (Of course, understand, that I'll be finishing the race at about that time
).
Sunday Oct.3 - Sleep in! Have breakfast at the resort and spend the afternoon relaxing by the pool with a couple of drinks. Possibly a spa treatment in the morning. (Pedicure after the race perhaps?) I'm thinking this will be a good day for
MNSSHP. We are both considering this a must this year, as we both loved it backin 2007. We can go to a park right when it opens to party goers at 4pm and possibly eat at CRT.
I'm feeling pretty confident about my plans up to this point. I can't deciede if we need two more full days after this or three. I'm leaning towards 3, but we could save some money by doing only 2. We really aren't going to be doing much park touring the first 3 days so I'm thinking we'll need the 3 days later. Anyone any thoughts?
Monday Oct.4 - If we do only 2 more days, this will be an Animal Kingdom morning, possibly heading to Epcot or DS at night. If we do 3 days it will be a DS day.
Tuesday Oct. 5 - Again on the 2 more day plan this will be a DS morning, Epcot evening. On the 3 day plan it will be an Epcot day.
Wednesday Oct. 6 - On the 3 day plan this will be our Animal Kingdom day. Otherwise we'll check out early in the morning and head over to Universal early so we can enjoy a full day at the parks using their front of the line guest pass perk.
Thursday Oct. 7 - On either plan it will be a Universal/Islands day.
Friday Oct. 8 - Will be spent either flying home, or at Universal.
Saturday Oct. 9 - If we do the 3 day plan this will be the return home day.
I'm also toying with the idea of renting a car at the end of the week and going to visit my grandmother. If I do that then the 2 day plan would be a better choice. I'm going to drive myself nuts with this. I'm thinking of just booking my flight down now while it's cheap and then making a decision about the rest later. I'm feeling very Scarlett O'Hara worrying about that another day.
I'm planning on 2 nights at Universal, and have pretty much settled on the Hard Rock Hotel. It was between that and the Royal Pacific. The Royal Pacific was a bit cheaper, but the Hard Rock is defintely more us. The price difference for the 2 nights wasn't really enough to make a huge difference.
I just love that there are so many people ready to help me talk my way into a deluxe resort. 
Visions of myself chilling on the Poly beach rapidly disappeared then I read a bit further and saw that the rate quoted was per person, per night with 2 people in a room. 
Seriously, who in the world quotes prices like that? They were obviously trying to get people all excited to call, and then once they get them on the phone they get the full price which would be double what is listed on the website. All the race resorts were listed that way, and it just rubbed me the wrong way. I don't think I've ever seen them list rates in such a sneaky way before. Usually the room rates are always listed as the rate for up to two adults.
For a standard view room at the Beach Club, I'll be saving about $140 a night. I didn't even have to have her check the prices for POFQ too. I booked the standard view room at the Beach Club.
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