Disney virgin from Ontario with a couple of questions.

[mom2brats]

We are flying from Buffalo on SWA in May. Our flight leaves early (7:45) so We were thinking of spending the night in Buffalo. Any advice on where the best place to stay is? We would like to leave our car at the hotel. ALso How early do I need to be at the airport? Any other advice would be greatly appreciated I am planning this trip by the seat of our pants and really have no idea what we are doing LOL But we are all really EXCITED

 

[poohbear7]

Hi we are also flying from Buffalo in May. We stay at the Holiday Inn Express across from the airport. We pay $89. US includes breakfast ,for our early flight in the morning they pack us a breakfast to go also includes parking. They have a shuttle on demand just tell the front desk and she will call him.
When you arrive back in Buffalo just call the hotel and they will send the suttle to pick you up. Very easy and a lot better than flying from Pearson.

 

[hockey mom]

Have fun. We also stayed at the Holiday Inn Express(buell ave.) and loved it. Great shuttle service. They keep your car in their lot. We generaaly go to the airport one hour before our flight leaves.

 

[dsneygirl]

We've stayed at the Best Western by the airport. With tax $100 and I think you can leave your car up to 2 weeks.
Since SW is first come first serve seating I would get there as early as you can. At least 90 minutes before hand. Your kids will probably be so excited they won't be able to sleep.

 

[dimoe]

I too am going to wdw for the first time. We are flying out May 1st . We have the hotel holiday inn express booked for the night before. I am wondering about seating if you print out your tickets at midnight which you can do at the hotel so they tell me. Does that get your seating spot depending when you print them out or it is when you arrive at the airport?? If we cant sleep we will be at the airport waiting.
thanks Diane

 

[cdnmickeylover]

Southwest boarding passes are grouped in A, B or C depending on when your boarding pass was printed. First to board are the pre-boards, then group A, group B and then group C. You line up according to your group so even if you are an A you might be at the end of the line of A's depending on when you get to the gate. It actually works quite well. When we flew down at the end of January we were C's but ended up sitting next to each other across the aisle so it was fine. We had a great flight.

Have fun at Disney!

 

[dimoe]

Just so I understand right. You are grouped into preboards children under 5 board first , then a , b, and cs.
You get a letter as to when you print out your tickets so if I print them out right at midnight I should get a good chance of getting As. Then as you arrive and line up you get a position in the line a then . Is that right? How is the leg room for southwest my hubbie is a football player size??
thanks for all your help
Diane

 

[dimoe]

One more question ... how far inadvance can you line up? How far inadvance of the flight do ppl arrive??
thanks Diane

 

[cdnmickeylover]

You got the idea right about boarding except that preboard is for under 4 rather than under 5. We've only flown Southwest twice (there and back) and from my experience some people line up right away but they do call for you to line up about 15 minutes before boarding. We actually didn't have a problem with the system and we didn't get our boarding passes til we arrived at the airport which was about an hour and 15 minutes before it left. On the way back the flight was delayed leaving Orlando and we had to connect through Baltimore -- they actually held the plane in Baltimore for those of us connecting and we arrived on time in Buffalo with our luggage intact. The speed with which they changed our luggage and ourselves was quite amazing. Would fly Southwest again in a heartbeat.

 

[dsneygirl]

I can't recall the amount of leg room but if you're in A get in line and try and get the wider emergency aisle for your DH.

 

[maryliz]

When you arrive in waiting area by the gate, look up and you'll see that the A,B, and C seem to correspond to 3 different rows of seats. Find a spot in the row marked with your corresponding boarding letter so that when they call for you to line up, you're already where you want to be. We arrived at the gate about an hour before departure and there were already people there. If you're at the same gate we were on the 7:30AM flight in January, there's a place right across the main hallway to get coffee/snacks, etc. We had a seat by the window and watched the planes get de-iced!

MaryLiz

 

[CindyAnn]

Hi Mom2brats - I have to agree with those who have said that the Holiday Inn Express on Buell Ave. is a good choice for an overnight stay. We were told we could park for up to 10 days for free (they said no problem when we told them we would actually need 11 days when we checked in) and the long term parking is right beside the normal hotel parking area. I had been afraid that the car would be off in a field somewhere, but that wasn't the case at all. The only drawback was that the adults heard the planes taking off until about 11:30 p.m. or so, but that wasn't too big an issue since the children both slept right through it.

Don't forget to ask them to give you a bagged breakfast for the next morning when you check in. They'll make note of it and have it waiting in a refrigerator for you.

We arrived at the airport (literally RIGHT across the road) at about 5:45 for our 7:30 a.m. flight. Southwest had curbside check-in, which was great, and we got our "A" boarding passes right there. The security line was surprisingly long - probably 30 minutes or so, and then we went right to our gate. We sat and ate our bagged breakfasts (bottled water, yogurt, banana, bagel and cream cheese) from the hotel. One good thing to note is that they use sturdy paper bags with good handles, so they're easy to carry.

We didn't bother getting into the "A" line until they announced boarding, so only had to stand like sheep for about 10 minutes. Even being at the end of the "A" line, we got 4 seats across row 13 or 14, and the back half or so of the plane was completely empty at that point.

I thought the leg room and seat room on Southwest (I think they generally use 737s) was much better than our previous trip using Air Transat.

We were very pleased with our Southwest Experience, and would do it again in a microsecond. The tickets for all 4 of us were $540 US (last November), which came out on VISA at about $700 CDN. At the time I booked, I wouldn't have been able to get a flight out of Toronto without spending an additional $1,000 or so, so it also made good sense from a financial standpoint.

Hope you have a wonderful trip!

 

[dimoe]

Do you really have to to be there for 5:30 . I was thinking of printing out the tickets at the holiday inn at midnight like someone suggested which gets you A seating and then being at the airport for like 6:45. Any thoughts is this okay??? We booked the holiday inn express. Do you just tell them when you will be back or call once you get back to get picked up by shuttle?
thanks Diane

 

[dsneygirl]

I flew Southwest out here to Las Vegas last Wednesday from Buffalo. I printed my boarding pass before I left home. My flight was at 2pm and one woman told me she had arrived at 9am and was already in group B so apparently a lot of people are catching on to print out their boarding passes at home.

I lined up probably 30 minutes before the flight left and got the emergency aisle for more leg room. One thing that I found infuriating was the preboarding of families with children 4 and under. They repeatedly made the announcement that only children and their immediate parent board NOT everyone in their party, however I saw many families with 1 child under 4 and 3 more older and the grandparents go on pre boarding.

I imagine it would be just as easy for mom and kid to hop on and save a row for hubby and other kid. Oh well.

Also I noticed they are building a new hotel, I believe it was a Garden Inn, directly across the street from the airport. You would easily be able to walk across the street.

 

[mom22belles]

Fruggal Shopper? Hi there its Nancy13 known in these parts as mom22belles! This site is great for advice someone on here can answer every Disney question you could think of!

As for hotels we stayed at the Wellsley Inn but that was 4 years ago. They allowed us to park there , had a free airport shuttle and a free breakfast. The hotel itself was fairly clean although we could only book a smoking room so it did smell of stale smoke.

If you go to the Buffalo Airport website they have direct links to area hotels.

Nancy

 

[CindyAnn]

As far as the SWA boarding passes are concerned, it's my understanding that they issue the on-line boarding passes in A and then B and then C order. Supposedly it's a completely separate pool of boarding passes that's available at the airport, again in A, B, C order.

Dimoe - I'm not sure when your flight leaves, but I would think that if we had to wait for 30 minutes in the security line at 5:45 a.m., it would only get worse later in the morning. At least leave yourselves plenty of time to clear security. When you check in you tell them when you're coming back, so they know how long to expect to see your car in the parking lot. They give you a card so when you actually arrive in Buffalo, there's a number to call for a shuttle. Please make sure you're waiting in the correct spot for the shuttle, though. We weren't, and had to wait while they dispatched the shuttle a second time!

Have fun!