2025 Travel!!

[BecBennett]

Starting a little late, but better that than never!

Where is everyone traveling in 2025?

I finally booked flights for my Alaskan Disney cruise in September, and have managed to squeeze in a 5 night stay in Anaheim on the way home In addition to our cruise and Disneyland we're also going to rent a motorhome in Vancouver and do a 2 week road trip around the Canadian Rockies.

I missed out on tickets to the Sydney Symphony Orchestra playing Disney songs at the Opera house, so I won't get to go to that, but I must admit I'm still eyeing off the Melbourne dates...

 

[kirstyfly]

Keeping it local and staying in New Zealand. Have booked a Magic at sea cruise on the wonder for December for 5 nights.

 

[masterpabu]

Starting a little late, but better that than never!

Where is everyone traveling in 2025?

I finally booked flights for my Alaskan Disney cruise in September, and have managed to squeeze in a 5 night stay in Anaheim on the way home In addition to our cruise and Disneyland we're also going to rent a motorhome in Vancouver and do a 2 week road trip around the Canadian Rockies.

I missed out on tickets to the Sydney Symphony Orchestra playing Disney songs at the Opera house, so I won't get to go to that, but I must admit I'm still eyeing off the Melbourne dates...

Ahhhh an Alaskan cruise plus Canadian Rockies trip sounds amazing! can't wait to hear about it! I've been wanting to see the Rockies since forever though DH doesn't get enough annual leave to go outside the Disney bubble yet


Sadly I've pushed back my wdw trip from Dec to late Jan, so I look forward to seeing/hearing about anyones' holiday this year

 

[aussie shaz]

I’m back on the boards after a few years break. Planning Hong Kong and Shanghai for March 2026 and just started the planning.
We’ve just come back from a week at the Blue Mountains and Kiama, and have South Island NZ trip booked for September.
Haven’t been to a Disney since Japan in 2016, but I’m soooo excited to be planning again. When discussing next holiday, hubby asked if I wanted to try to do all Disney parks. We’ve done WDW, Anaheim and Japan, so decided to add Shanghai and Hong Kong next!
Paris will need to wait a few years I think, until we don’t have the dog to get looked after.

 

[BecBennett]

I loved our trip to the South Island! We were there in October and still got snow

Paris is the only Disney park I haven't been to yet, and like you it's still a few years away yet - unless my brother books a trip over there, it's a race between us to see who can get to all the Disney parks first, and I will not let him beat me

 

[ColinA]

Doing the usual routine. London in mid May for 3 1/2 weeks including The Cotswolds and Marlow for 4 nights each, no Scotland this year, then the Knoxville Nationals speedway in Iowa in August, Aulani for the first week of September for our 40th anniversary and then back to The Boardwalk for 5 weeks over Christmas. Life is good.

 

[BecBennett]

damn

 

[Chol]

We just got back from Japan for our 20th Anniversary, and visited DisneySea while there. It's a massive park and lines there were next level.

@ColinA that's an impressive itinerary. Congratulations on your upcoming 40th anniversary!

Doing Aulani in November with the in-laws, it will be their first Hawaii trip. No WDW this year or next year as I am attending my dad's 70th in Africa, but planning a 2027 trip. Far away, but I can't help my planning

 

[ColinA]

We just got back from Japan for our 20th Anniversary, and visited DisneySea while there. It's a massive park and lines there were next level.

@ColinA that's an impressive itinerary. Congratulations on your upcoming 40th anniversary!

Doing Aulani in November with the in-laws, it will be their first Hawaii trip. No WDW this year or next year as I am attending my dad's 70th in Africa, but planning a 2027 trip. Far away, but I can't help my planning

Congratulations on the 20 years

We will get to meet at The Boardwalk one of these years

 

[Chol]

Congratulations on the 20 years

We will get to meet at The Boardwalk one of these years

Thank you. One day it will happen

 

[zanzibar138]

We did our trip early this year - road trip around Vegas followed by 2 weeks at WDW, via KL on the way there and Singapore on the way back.

Need to save up the cash, leave and Qantas points again now, but hoping to do 3 weeks in the UK + DLP late 2026.

 

[ozliz]

I have a milestone birthday mid-year so will fly off to WDW a few days after then doing a cruise on the Treasure. It’s a solo trip using DVC so decided to celebrate at home before travelling. Very much looking forward to it though. A few new rides have opened since I last visited WDW.

 

[BecBennett]

We did our trip early this year - road trip around Vegas followed by 2 weeks at WDW, via KL on the way there and Singapore on the way back.

Need to save up the cash, leave and Qantas points again now, but hoping to do 3 weeks in the UK + DLP late 2026.

Tell me your experiences with breaking up the trip in KL and Singapore - we usually book our flights with points too, so I know this is an option, but it feels too much like flying in the wrong direction to me

 

[zanzibar138]

Tell me your experiences with breaking up the trip in KL and Singapore - we usually book our flights with points too, so I know this is an option, but it feels too much like flying in the wrong direction to me

Ok, I don't know if anyone else is having trouble with the DisBoards randomly refreshing and losing everything you've typed - this is my third try so hopefully it will stick this time!

We're in Perth, so it wasn't really out of the way for us.

I have a process for booking long haul flights:

• Book the longest flight first in whatever business class cabin I can get. We only had enough KrisFlyer points for one flight with Singapore Airlines, so we ended up with China Airlines for the flight over, which was relatively easy to get with Qantas points.
• For the flights on either end, try to keep it direct and short enough that I'm happy to fly economy. KL and Singapore are both around 5 hours from Perth. We ended up with business class flights to KL with Malaysia Airlines, but I couldn't get business class from Singapore with Qantas points, so we ended up just booking Scoot.

China Airlines turned out to be our favourite airline! Unfortunately they don't fly out of Perth so it's really only useful for us going to the US, which we don't plan to do again for a long time. From the east coast though, you could fly directly to Taipei and then take your pick from a range of destinations. I'd also consider Tokyo or Seoul from the east coast, but they're trickier to get to from Perth so didn't make the cut as stopover destinations for us.

 

[BecBennett]

I tried so hard to get a business class leg on this trip, but getting 4 seats just proved impossible. Which particularly sucks because now with all the Qantas changes our points are going to end up being worthless

 

[BecBennett]

Ok, I don't know if anyone else is having trouble with the DisBoards randomly refreshing and losing everything you've typed - this is my third try so hopefully it will stick this time!

Oh and yes - there's a whole thread about it on the technical board. I discovered it a few weeks ago when searching for answers as to why I kept getting these scammy pop ups.

 

[zanzibar138]

I tried so hard to get a business class leg on this trip, but getting 4 seats just proved impossible. Which particularly sucks because now with all the Qantas changes our points are going to end up being worthless

Yikes! It's difficult enough trying to get 2 business class seats, so I do not doubt that at all!

We're also pretty peeved about the Qantas points... We had plans in place based on the amount of points we needed for our Europe trip late next year, but now we'll be coming up short again We can't just put it off as we're hoping to be able to take hubby's grandma. We already have our concerns about whether she'll still be up for it at the age of 91, but she's very keen to make it happen! If we can get business class for at least the long-haul flights, it would make it a lot easier for her to manage.

 

[Chol]

I've tried to get business class with points with Qantas from Brisbane to WDW but I can never find availability. I really want to try do that for 2027.

I have Qantas points and a bunch in my Amex I can convert to various other airlines. Any tips and tricks that anyone can share would be appreciated! Beware, Im a noob in this area haha Might even be worth it's own thread!

 

[zanzibar138]

I've tried to get business class with points with Qantas from Brisbane to WDW but I can never find availability. I really want to try do that for 2027.

I have Qantas points and a bunch in my Amex I can convert to various other airlines. Any tips and tricks that anyone can share would be appreciated! Beware, Im a noob in this area haha Might even be worth it's own thread!

As someone with zero status, I know the chances of me finding any direct fares is slim to none. My process has been to look up all the destinations that are a short-ish direct flight from Perth, and then all the destinations that are a short-ish direct flight from my final destination, and search availability for those. It's always been a very manual and time-consuming process requiring a complex spreadsheet, but has given me a 100% success rate so far, at least for the long-haul part.

I've recently discovered Seats.aero, which actually has the functionality to search multiple routes for any given rewards program at the same time (eg Asia to Europe). I've gone ahead and purchased a subscription because this is EXACTLY what I've always been looking for and will make things so much easier for me next time!

Other rewards programs generally have better availability than any of our Australian ones, so you might have more luck converting your AMEX points. I actually converted Velocity to KrisFlyer to book Singapore Airlines for our last trip, which was so much easier to get! You probably don't want to fly via Singapore from Brisbane, but I'm sure there would be other reward programs you could try.

 

[Chol]

As someone with zero status, I know the chances of me finding any direct fares is slim to none. My process has been to look up all the destinations that are a short-ish direct flight from Perth, and then all the destinations that are a short-ish direct flight from my final destination, and search availability for those. It's always been a very manual and time-consuming process requiring a complex spreadsheet, but has given me a 100% success rate so far, at least for the long-haul part.

I've recently discovered Seats.aero, which actually has the functionality to search multiple routes for any given rewards program at the same time (eg Asia to Europe). I've gone ahead and purchased a subscription because this is EXACTLY what I've always been looking for and will make things so much easier for me next time!

Other rewards programs generally have better availability than any of our Australian ones, so you might have more luck converting your AMEX points. I actually converted Velocity to KrisFlyer to book Singapore Airlines for our last trip, which was so much easier to get! You probably don't want to fly via Singapore from Brisbane, but I'm sure there would be other reward programs you could try.

Thank you so much That's some great advice to get me started! I'll definitely look into seats.aero.

Do you have any issues booking far in advance? And do your connecting flights link to your long haul? Having separate bookings has always worried me.