A fairy's pixiedust and a muggle's magic. April 2018 PTR

[cdnusagurl]

It all started last year when the sudden urge to go to Disney World hit me like a ton of bricks. I don't know where it came from, but suddenly I wanted to go back to the World (haven't been in almost 20 years) so here we are. It's time to plan our once in a lifetime Disney/Universal trip.

Table of Contents
Relax, pull up a chair as I proudly present ... Cdnusagurl and her husband
Oh the places we will ... stay?
A change in plans​

 

[cdnusagurl]

Relax, pull up a chair as I proudly present ... Cdnusagurl and her husband

So for this trip, it'll just be my husband and I going. Originally the plan was to meet my sister and my nephews down there since we haven't seen them in person since our wedding two years ago. However, they are going during spring break which still gives me nightmares as an adult. You see, I went to the World once as an child and only once with my sister and my parents during spring break. There were no fast passes then, so all I remember other than loving the fireworks every night over Main Street and being in awe of the Tree of Life, was the insanely long lines. So to avoid that we're going in mid April which means we will miss my sister and her family by a measly two weeks. With that said, I promised this post would be an introduction post, so back to our regularly scheduled programming.

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First off, I'll introduce myself. I'm Tiara (the one on the right) and work as a bank teller in Canada. I'm originally from the US although you can't really tell since I don't have an accent until I start talking to people. My favorite Disney movie is the Lion King and my favorite Disney character is Tinkerbell. In fact, Tink is actually my nickname in real life. I've been to Disney World once as a child, and literally saw the revolving world at Universal as a child before we turned around and left. My sister was throwing a tantrum so instead of going into Universal, we went back to our hotel room which was a bummer since I really wanted to ride Jurassic Park. Oh well, better luck this time I guess.

The handsome fella on the left is my husband, Colin. He works in the oil and gas industry here in Canada. He's a hard worker and honestly the only reason this trip is possible. Without him, I wouldn't be able to afford it, or at least not in the one year I've taken to plan it, haha. His favorite Disney movie is Aladdin since he loves the genie. It's one of the things we disagree on, although I will watch the movie with him if he asks me to. He's never been to Disney World, Universal Orlando, or Florida in general. And although he won't admit it, he's pretty excited to see Hogwarts and Diagon Alley in person. He's still kinda meh on visiting the World although the idea of Drinking around the World has him somewhat pumped.

Oh and those two cuties between us are our fur babies, Khloe and Koda. We've had them for a few years now and love them to death even though they are super mischievous and too smart for their own good at times. Now on to where we plan to stay ...

 

[cdnusagurl]

Oh the places we will ... stay?

Alright, so for our trip which by the way will be April 17th to April 30th, we'll be staying at two hotels: Pop Century at Disney World and Royal Pacific at Universal Orlando. At first I was torn on which order to do this in, since it would have been wayyyy cheaper for us to stay at Royal Pacific first for 5 nights and then move over to Pop Century. However, I also thought that going from a borderline deluxe resort to Pop would've felt a little underwhelming. So I hemmed and hawed over it for awhile while annoying my husband in the process.

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I actually ended up booking about 6 hotel rooms in the span of 3 weeks. Yeah, it was bad. At first we were going to just do Disney and the beach, but then I found at my hubby couldn't smoke on our balcony at Clearwater beach, so that got scrapped since my husband thinks he is the incarnate of old school James Bond mixed with the humor of Archer. So back to the drawing board I went.

Eventually I stumbled upon a nice place in Hutchinson Beach with a great price to boot. I was seriously floored when I saw the price. $180 CAD a night with a balcony overlooking the ocean that DH could smoke his cigars on. I praised the hotel gods internally and thought I was done with looking for hotel rooms while I breathed a sigh of relief. However, that was short lived since my husband had other plans ....


Turns out, he really wasn't interested in going to the beach. Nope, he wanted to go to Universal to see Harry Potter stuff instead.

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So back to planning I went. I scrapped the hotel at the beach along with a car rental I'd made while my credit card balance went through a roller coaster of being almost maxed out and having a credit of almost double my credit limit in a span of four or so weeks. It definitely wasn't a fun time, but hey, we were going to Universal and Disney World for two weeks, so who was I to complain? Turns out I had every right to complain when I saw the price of Royal Pacific for four days and wanted to have a heart attack.

$417 CAD a night! I thought I might have to start early for our trip if they thought I was gonna pay that. And of course, we could've went with Cabana Bay, but my husband unfortunately heard about the express passes and said we were gonna go big or not go at all. So Royal Pacific it was, I just had to find a cheaper price.

 

[cdnusagurl]

A change in plans


After much internet sleuthing, I found a price for Royal Pacific at $309 CAD a night for a standard king room (woohoo!), but it required us to stay at Universal for 5 days instead of 4, which meant we'd have to stay at Universal before we stayed at Disney World. I wasn't a happy camper about this, but it was what it was. I booked the hotel with a one night deposit and started to look at booking our second hotel for our trip, which was Pop Century. Thanks to this board, I'd read alot about it already and with the room refurbishments, I was certain that it would be our hotel unless by some miracle the price of Port Orleans Riverside came down. Of course, my dreams were dashed and so Pop Century it was.

Everything was finally booked. I had us in a standard room at Pop for April 22 to April 30th, and a standard king room at RPR for April 17th to April 22nd. Then Priceline threw me a much wanted curveball. They had a sale. A sale where that $417CAD a night room at RPR dropped to $333 a night. I did the math. We could save $400 by booking things that way and I finally got my dates in the order I wanted them with Pop Century being our first stop so we could ride the magical express to Disney {This has me super excited since I've never stayed on property before) and then end our trip with the express passes at Universal within budget.

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Getting our trip back on budget was truly magical since I was already planning on how I was going to tell my husband that we'd be staying at Cabana Bay (which I still want to do one day so I can get a room with a view of the Volcano) with no express passes. I knew it would've bummed him out, but now I don't even have to tell him that, so yay me!