Arrival @ Rush Hour & General Delta Advice Needed

[cariann77]

I'm currently pricing flights for our May trip and need some help. We rarely, pretty much never fly. I'm terrified of flying so, this whole process is overwhelming for me.

- The original flight that I wanted to book arrives at MCO around 5:30pm on a Friday. Then it occurred to me that we'll be leaving the airport at rush hour on a Friday. We've never flown into MCO before so, I am not familiar with the route to get to the parks. It's $150 more total to take an earlier flight. I'm leaning towards saving the money, but if we're going to be stuck in traffic for a long time I'd rather pay the extra for the earlier flight. How bad will leaving the airport at rush hour be?

- I've chosen Delta since we are able to select our seats and I want to make sure that we are all sitting together. Do prices really vary that much based on booking dates? I want to book now for early May, but am not sure if I should hold off hoping for lower rates especially since sitting together is a big priority.

Any tips or advice about Delta is welcome please.

Thanks!

 

[xlsm]

I'm not sure how much help I'll be, but I'm chiming in anyway!

We always fly Delta. In the past three years we've flown with them exclusively for three trips to Orlando and one trip to California. All but one of those trips involved changing planes - 14 flights! I can't imagine flying with a different airline, because we've always had a great in-flight experience, and that matters to me more than almost anything else.

Our most recent flight, landing at MCO on Friday 12/16, arrived around 5:30. We had no issues with traffic and getting to our resort at all on the Magical Express.
In my opinion, MCO is an easy airport to navigate. I've flown into there several times since 2001, and it's probably one of my favorite airports.

We usually book our flights around 6 months out or so...or just when I can't stand it anymore and want to get flights off the checklist! Being totally honest, I don't pay that much attention to cost after we book, so I have no idea how prices fluctuate, but I know our family of four flies between $1200 - $1400, usually in comfort plus seats. Prior to that, I do obsessively check google flights pretty much every day to see if anything has gone down. But at a certain point, I just bite the bullet and buy.

I'm going with my mother-in-law the first week of May, and we bought our tickets in November. Prices were a little higher than I wanted, but we had a free companion ticket to use, so that helped! I just checked right now, and the cost of tickets for our flight has gone up.

I don't know if I was any help, I feel like I just rambled, but let me know if you have any more questions!

 

[bumbershoot]

I use toll roads to get to I4 to get to wdw. That means it's not really clogged up in my experience. Those roads are 417 or 528. I bring ones and a roll of quarters to pay the tolls.

If you decide to take surface streets then you'll likely be running into commuters.

 

[OKW Lover]

The original flight that I wanted to book arrives at MCO around 5:30pm on a Friday. Then it occurred to me that we'll be leaving the airport at rush hour on a Friday.

Don't worry about rush hour. By the time you get your bags and rental car you'll be closer to 6:30 pm. Also, the route from the airport to WDW using the south exit to 417 is not a "commuter" route. Traffic will not really be a consideration.

I've chosen Delta since we are able to select our seats and I want to make sure that we are all sitting together. Do prices really vary that much based on booking dates? I want to book now for early May, but am not sure if I should hold off hoping for lower rates especially since sitting together is a big priority.

Delta, like other airlines, change their prices regularly. The real question is if they will go up or down. If anybody here knew the answer to that question they could get rich. So, best strategy for buying air is to watch the prices for a while (several weeks) and buy if you see a "good" price. You can set up a price watch on www.kayak.com.

 

[cariann77]

Thanks everyone! We're flying Friday - Friday so, today I went through and checked prices for the next 4 months on Fri/Fri flights and our flight was cheaper than all of them so, I went ahead and booked. Based on all of those, I didn't see ours going too much cheaper. I went with the 5:30 arrival, too.

 

[sam_gordon]

Thanks everyone! We're flying Friday - Friday so, today I went through and checked prices for the next 4 months on Fri/Fri flights and our flight was cheaper than all of them so, I went ahead and booked. Based on all of those, I didn't see ours going too much cheaper. I went with the 5:30 arrival, too.

Now that you've booked, at least once every 2-3 weeks, keep logging in to Delta and make sure they haven't made a change that affects your seating arrangement. Even if the times don't change, they can change aircraft causing seating issues.