A (1st) Birthday and a Budget, the Pre-TR

[ariel1025]

I've hemmed and hawwed over writing this Pre-TR for several reasons. Do I have the time? Will I even finish it? If I do, will I find the time to write the TR? Will there even be a TR??? That last one had me contemplating the longest. For a long time we weren't even sure this trip was going to happen...

But, wait, I'm getting ahead of myself a little bit. Let's stop for a moment and figure out who "we" are first, shall we



There's me, Shannon. I'm the Disney fanatic of the family. Though with his daily asking of when we are going to ride "Mickey's choo train" again, I'm pretty sure my son is quickly catching up. My first trip to Disney World was in 1996, and I've been back four times since then (really, only four??? need to change that!). I've also been on three Disney Cruises, and have four Disneyland trips under my belt.



Next up we have the Hubs, Candi. He grows to love Disney more and more with each trip, but it took a lot of convincing to get him to go together for the first time (our Disneymoon in 2008). Including that trip he has been to WDW three times, on three Disney Cruises, and Disneyland more times than he can count.

Now, for the real stars of the show.



First up is our oldest, Candido V, but we call him Cinco. Sometimes James (his middle name). Or bubba. Or brudda (what sister calls him). Or Stinks. Okay, so he goes by several nicknames, I'll try not to confuse you too much as I'm writing this He is 3.5 years old and has been to WDW once (only MK for a day though), on one Disney Cruise and one visit to Disneyland (for his birthday earlier this year). Pretty lucky dude



Lastly we have our baby, Eliana. She only has one Disney trip on her roster so far. Our trip to Disneyland for Cinco's birthday. She will turn one right before we leave for this trip. Hence, the birthday portion of this title.

Phew, now that we have the intros out of the way, let's start getting back to some of those questions we had at the beginning. Let's see how do I make this long story even longer...eh, I mean short

We originally had a huge WDW trip planned for October/November of 2013. It was all planned out a year in advance. We were going for 12 nights. Gonna visit every park multiple times. See the seasons change at the World. Timed it just right to go to both MNSSHP and MVMCP. We were excited. Then we got a little surprise. Hello Ellie bean

Okay, I love me some Disney, but going on a vacation with a one month old didn't sound like such a great plan for us. So, that trip got nixed, and we were none to sad about it. But then time kept on ticking and we still didn't have a trip to look forward to or one that was seriously in the books. A few ideas were hatched, but they always got thrown to the wayside for one reason or another. Then we took Cinco to Disneyland for his 3rd birthday, and that was to be our big trip for the year. All was fine and dandy. It was a great trip. Couldn't have gone better. If you don't count the first day. Ahem. Anyway. We were doing well, happy with our plans of not returning until our vacation with my parents in 2015.

Then it dawned on me. 2015, that's an entire year away!!! That simply wouldn't do. So, we started throwing around a few more ideas that never came to fruition for various reasons. The time. The money. The schedule. Blah, blah, blah.

Fast forward to whatever month we were in when we started talking about a trip again. We thought maybe a quick trip to DL just to scratch the itch a little. But we needed to go on our remaining DVC points. Grand Californian was booked up. Disneyland Hotel and Paradise Pier were so many additional points we couldn't do more than three nights. We wanted five. I put spreadsheets together. On paper. In my head. On my phone. You name it, I tried to tweak it, stretch it, make it work. But Disney got thrown to the wayside. Again.

In the midst of all that we got big news about the Hubs job, we moved, we got the old house off our hands (long story!), we found out Candi would be relocated for work next year (hence, possibly ruining our summer vacation plans), and several other things I'm sure. It was a stressful few months for sure.

Fast forward to June. More life stuff happened (medical, family, work), more stressful than before, it became tough to handle really. We started tossing around the idea of a trip one.more.time. A lot of late night discussions, a lot of work day text messages, a lot more spreadsheets. And then it was decided. This trip was happening. Ellie's big 1st birthday bash was not. At least not in the traditional sense of the party. I had a hard time dealing with this at first. Yes, even with the trip being the alternative. But based on personal family situations it really is the best idea not to have the traditional party.

Finally, we have a real, live trip, and it is going to happen. But it has to be on on a pretty tight budget (hence the second part of the title).

So, if I haven't sent you running for the hills after all of that I hope you'll join me as we settle out the plans of this trip

 

[ariel1025]

Since we are planning this trip pretty close to the actual travel dates we figured the first place we should start was purchasing flights to get there. And I suppose getting home, though that is way less fun to hit the purchase button for

When I first looked into air fare I pulled up my favorite, Southwest, and they were offering some pretty good pricing. $167 per person each way. Not the best price we've ever booked at, but in line with what we were expecting to spend. I calculated out the cost for all of us (thank goodness Ellie is free!) and had intended to book it that night. Why not right then you ask? Well, since we are trying to save as much money as possible I wanted to run out to Target to purchase Southwest gift cards first. For those who do not know if you purchase them with your Target RedCard (credit or debit) you save 5%. Now, I know 5% doesn't sound like a lot, but when considering our total roundtrip was just over $1,000 that would save us $50, which is a quick service meal for us

Anyway, I'm sure you might see where this is going. Life, as it does, got in the way, and I never made it to Target that day. No biggie, Hubs was off work the next day for 4th of July, I would just run out then and get everything done while he watched the kiddos.

Dun dun dun

If you haven't guessed already when I pulled up the prices the next morning to make sure I had done my math right I saw that the flight cost had gone up. Significantly. $42 per person each way to be exact. That's $252 total for us

I hung my head down and went to go tell hubby the news. You could tell he was a little frustrated, but what could we do. Can't reverse time. So, it was back to the drawing board. I found a $161 fare through Orbitz, and it even had a slightly better time line than what we were gonna purchase through Southwest. But that meant paying baggage fees. We have a baby and a toddler...we do not travel light people We figured we would each have a suitcase, so the cost was really more like $186 each. Still better than $209, but it frustrates me to no end to have to pay to take my suitcases on a trip!

I made the decision to wait and see if prices went back down on Monday after the holiday weekend ended. Hubby thought it was too big of a gamble since that meant the Orbitz pricing could also go up between now and then leaving us with higher ticket prices no matter what. I was willing to take the chance.

Monday rolls around and Southwest prices are still the same. So are the Orbitz prices. So, I did what any logical person would do. I ran to Target and bought enough gift cards to purchase our flights to get to Disney through Southwest. Those are the tickets that matter anyway right

Okay, so I know that actually doesn't seem logical at all. But I just had a feeling that the prices would go back down if I stalked the website enough. Then we could transfer the flights (yay for free transfers!) and use the credit towards our flights home. So, that's exactly what I did.

Guess what? After checking throughout the day on Monday and Tuesday the cost had not gone down. I started worrying that I made a stupid choice. And hearing the Hubs say "I told ya so babe" is really no fun at all Thankfully Wednesday happened. I logged onto Southwest not expecting to see a change, when lo and behold I saw a flight pop up for $174. Granted it was for two days later than we had planned to go, but it would work. I transferred our flights giving me a $35 credit for each of us to use towards the flight home. Then for some reason I checked again that afternoon and saw the same flight went down to $160. Another transfer and another $14 in credit. I may or may not have called the Hubs to tell him how smart I was to book Southwest over Orbitz

A couple days later we got paid, so I booked our flights home using the same Target gift card trick combined with our credit from our two transfers. Those flights were just slightly more expensive at $164. Not gonna cry over $4, especially when they were over $200 just the week prior. Yay for the important part of the trip taken care of. Well, besides where we are gonna sleep, and how we are going to get into the parks, and where we are gonna eat. Minor details.

Savings so far $45. Thank you Target RedCard! And if anybody cares, I have the debit card, so no interest to worry about on a credit card either


***Quick side note, when purchasing Southwest flights you can only use a total of FOUR payment methods in a transaction. I learned this the hard way, which required me to have to manipulate the system a little bit to use all my gift cards on the original purchase. Basically I had to book a dummy flight that was less expensive, then transfer that flight to the one I really wanted where I was able to use additional gift cards on top of the credit from the transferred flight. Also, when I switched from the $209 flight to the $174 flight that was one credit, and the switch from $174 to $160 was an additional credit, so it counted as 2 payment methods when I purchased my return flight. Just thought I would throw that out there for anybody else who was interested in using the gift card method for purchasing their flights. Sounds like a lot of work, and it kinda was a pain in the rump, but since we need this trip to be as economical as possible it was worth it for us ***