Disney Jazz Hands - - We are FINALLY going back

[jsanders82]

I want a super jazzy heading and great commentary, but this will probably end up being a boring ad wordy pre trip report. So, bear with me and let’s do jazz hands together

This is our second “long term” Disney trip. We did an 8 day trip back in March 2019 with my family and my brothers family for a total of 9. We have gone back to Florida since then on large family vacations and done single days at Magic Kingdom. We are finally getting back to do an extended stay with just the 4 of us. Unfortunately, my stepdaughter cannot join but we will bring her back some amazing gifts!

Who we are:

Me – Loves Disney World but not huge into Disney movies. I love the planning aspect, watching the Disney YouTube videos (shout out to Molly), and coordinating our clothes. I work a stressful job so I love that I can turn off work while at Disney and just be with my family. I have been to Disney 9 times since I was a child.

DH – was not a DW fan until our trip in 2019. Now, he is all about going back and even our smaller day trips / long weekends. He definitely just goes with the flow of what I plan as long as there is a turkey leg for him.

DD – she will be 15 on this trip and finishing up her freshman year. She is cautiously excited because it’s not hip to be too excited for things as a teenager. She always uses her vacation money to buy a lounge fly in the parks. Her requests are to eat around the World in EPCOT and ride the Skyliner.

DS – he is 16 and very much like his dad. As long as he gets a turkey leg and rides Rise, he will be happy as a clam. He also loves EPCOT and wants to see Star Wars land since we have not yet.

When are we going:

The plan is for the kids to miss the last 2.5 days of school (Monday – Wednesday) so we will arrive in Disney the Friday or Saturday before. We are looking at May 17/18 – May 24/25. My husband always like a few days to recoup from vacation So, we will be coming back with the Memorial Day weekend for him to lounge.

Where are we staying:

Super excited about this. Due to the large family vacations, we have taken (some were 20 people), we have always rented house nearby. But this time, we are staying on-site and doing a split stay!!! I have the AKL Jambo house booked for May 18 – 21 and then moving to the Beach Club May 21st-24. I tested my Disney knowledge and rented DVC points so that onsite rooms would be more in line with my budget.

At AKL (Jambo house), we have a standard view studio so we will see if we have a good view. Even if we do not have a good view, the resort has viewing decks so that will work perfectly too. I’m extremely jazzed that I booked us in the Beach Club. We also got a standard view studio. I have wanted to stay at this resort for a long time. My husband and I stayed in the Swan back in 2021 and loved the area.

How are we getting there:

Thank you for asking because I don’t know. There are several factors weighing in – mostly cost.

Right now, the cost for 4 round trip flights form Dallas on SW is about $1500. I have never, never, never paid this much for our flights. I am a SW member so I have a decent amount of points that I can use. I also travel quite bit for work, so I am 13,000 points away from a SW Companion pass for 2024. Pretty sure, I will hit that and get the pass but who knows for sure. Never liked putting all my eggs in one basket

So, if I am unable to get our costs for flights down to about $800, we will be driving. I calculated our gas costs to be about $400 round trip (high side) so I don’t want to pay more than double that number for flights. We have driven the 18-hour trip before, so we know what we are getting ourselves in to. We are straight through drivers so until I know how we are getting there, not 100% sure our arrival and departure dates.

Everything else Disney:

I haven’t decided on tickets yet. We usually do 1 park per day but thinking park hopping may be better this time. We are onsite and our kids are older.

Rental car – absolutely. We have done Disney without one and did not care for it. We want to be able to go and leave when we please.

Dining – we are more of a quick service family. We love Homecomin and Via Napoli. I think I may try to add in a breakfast somewhere but unfortunately, no need for the characters. Hoping to add Nomad Lounge as this is right up our alley.

Genie+ - not really planning on using this feature. I feel like with lower crowds, early morning resort entry and hopefully the extra evening hours, we can accomplish most of what we want. I may get it for the last day if there is a ride or two we haven’t been able to get on. Otherwise, we will just relax in the lines enjoying the Disney magic.

Lightening Lanes – absolutely. These rides are cannot misses for us.

That’s it for now. Until the next update….

 

[Counting Stars]

Sounds like the beginnings of a really terrific trip! Love both AKL and BCV We will be visiting this spring as well, longish trip, AKL, CCV and BCV. I will definitely be following you since we will both be planning for May!

 

[footballmouse]

 

[jsanders82]

We are now 78 days until our trip!! Excited and ready to go.

I was able to get my companion pass for 2024. With this in hand, I booked our SW flights for May 17-24 back in January. Grand total for flights: $45. Can't get much better than that. I used our points for the and my flights. I just rebooked our flights and saved 1500 points. I check every week to see if the prices are dropping. Our flights get in 8pm on Friday evening and leave at 9pm the next Friday.

I have paid off the DVC rentals for AKL and BCV. We have never stayed on-site so that will be a new adventure plus doing the split stay. Kids are looking forward to pool time while I need a umbrella drink in my hand.

Thinking about our dining plans as we are not a big table service family. We will do a couple sit downs but more on the go. Homecomin' is a must do for us. We have done Via Napoli the last couple of visits but may branch out. It is hard to do a sit down with an EPCOT festival since we snack so much. I was thinking of adding O'hana breakfast for our rest day and then doing a sit down breakfast our last day since we are doing the BVC pool. Due to our late arrival, I need to figure out the grocery delivery. I really like Aldi's but the timing doesn't quite work.

I keep going back and forth on our park tickets. I can't decide between 4 and 5 day PH tickets. We usually do non-PH tickets but with the extended evening hours not quite matching up with our hotels (when we are at AKL, it is EPCOT), we want to be able to hop to the park to use that benefit. Four days just doesn't feel like enough.

Getting closer to our trip so need to pull the trigger on tickets and finalize any dining bookings we need to make.

Just dancing away over here. Ready for a magical time away

 

[jsanders82]

We are 22 days away from our check in day. I have spent so much time, effort and money to get to this point. Now, I am just in an ugh mood. I can't excited. I have been feeling like this for months.

We are selling our home and buy a new house. New house closes June 14th and our house lists May 2nd. We have been doing so much house work and trying to secure a new house. It is exhausting.

My husband's job did an unexpected layoff end of March. I'm the breadwinner and it doesn't effect our loan but still somewhat of a kick in the stomach. I told the kids originally that we were cancelling the trip but that was a gut reaction. The flights and hotel are all paid and non-refundable. Still haven't bought our tickets or Disney gift cards for dining.

I made our restaurant reservations but may scale down to stay more in budget. We will have to do 'Ohana breakfast another time. Doing an Instacart delivery for in room food and drinks. I am hoping that once I get to WDW, some of these "life" feelings will disappear. My kids are super excited - - well, as excited as teenagers can get.

Does anyone else get the Disney dumps? Send me some pixie dust so I can get excited

 

[piglet1979]

You have so much going on. I am so sorry. I am sure when you get to Disney it will be different. You just have a lot of stress right now. Disney always makes me forget about the stress back home.

 

[Nicnicnic.nic]

Sending warm wishes.

 

[jsanders82]

We are now back from WDW about 2 weeks. Straight back into real life of basketball tournaments, summer school work outs, work deadlines and my husband branching out with work. No Mickey waffles when we pay our mortgage.

This trip was different than the other trips we have taken. Our last “big” stay was in March of 2019. Star Wars, Tron, Guardians were just some of the new rides we have not seen since our trip. We had planned another trip for 2021 but due to the pandemic that did not happen. Since 2019, we have taken a long weekend to EPCOT and one day at MK.

Money Talk: Hotel, Tickets, G+, LL - This trip we stayed onsite for the first time and went all out with a split stay. We stayed at AKL and Beach Club. We rented points from the DVC section of this forum and had no issues. 8 days / 7 nights worked out to be on average $257/night. Huge savings over renting directly from WDW. We bought the Magic our way tickets which saved us about $1,000 over our original plan of 6 day park hopper. I just couldn’t say no to the savings! I also booked our tickets starting the Wednesday before we arrived since it was $200 savings. This meant that we had to finish all parks by Wednesday. We only did G+ for MK and Hollywood Studios. We did LL for Guardians, Tron and Rise.

Travel - My company has a Hertz discount that I used when I booked our car in October. It had more than doubled within 3 months of our trip. We ended up only using about ½ tank and was about $25 to fill up. I have a SW CC that I save points throughout the year for our vacation. I also travel for work and got a Companion Pass for my husband. We flew for just the $11.20 taxes for each of us. I want to say I booked our flights in October but reduced our travel points 3 times before our trip. The total cash value per person was about $280 p/p round trip.

Food - I had Instacart delivered to our hotel our first night - AKL. I bought breakfast, room snacks, water and Gatorade for $80. We did have to make a quick stop to get a case of Pepsi and Sprite Zero. We ran out of food the day before we left so it all worked out. I bought $1,200 of Disney GC’s at Sam's and saved about 3%. I bought the lower amounts at higher discounts than the $500 amount. We used these GC's for food.

Since we were onsite, we did the DVC tour at AKL on our off day. We received our $200 GC by the time our tour was over. It took about 45 mins as we asked lots of questions. It is something that we are interested in but will look at the after-market sales first.

I know lots of people ask questions about budget. I am posting ours here. We went over budget eating out by $150 and souvenirs at $150 as I didn’t budget gifts for young family members at home. Otherwise, we stayed in budget.

Pre Trip Budget

Flights	$45
WDW Tickets - 4 days Magic	$1,635
Rental car	$288
Gas	$50
Hotel - Onsite (7 nts @AKL & BCV)	$1,812
Food	$1,200
Grocery delivery	$80
Souvenirs	$400
LL	$300
Genie+	$200
DVC Gift Card	($200)
Total	$5,810