feistyblue
Mouseketeer
- Joined
- Nov 2, 2003
- Messages
- 312
Pre Trip Report The Booking/Planning
Cast Members
Me (Claire - 31) WDW addict and super organised mega-planner
DP (Bev - 33) Never flown before let alone been to WDW!
DS (8) Loves all things Disney hates TOT!
March 2005
After a fabulous first trip to the World for Christmas 2003, DS and I are left dying to go again so I book 10 days with Virgin, leaving the choice of hotel to DS. He knows I will only stay on-site and that is my only proviso he may choose from any Disney hotel in the Virgin brochure and having stayed at ASM last time he chooses Pop Century. Onto the net I go with one excited little boy and duly book 10 days in November 2005, flying PE both ways and staying at Pop Century, pay the deposit and I swear the people in the next City could hear his cheers of joy!
For Christmas 2004 I had purposefully bought him a WDW Kids guide to enable him to read up and predictably straight after booking he spends the next 4 weeks reading it each day!
May 2005
Having met my DP by this time, we have to extend our holiday plans to include her naturally. We also decide to change our plans to November 2006 as she needed some more time to save for her share of the holiday. So after a little discussion we decided to extend the holiday to 26 nights and play around with the hotels a bit. All three of us discuss the hotel situation and flick through the brochure and decide on one week at Pop Century and the remainder at CBR. I change the booking with Virgin, pay the admin fee and were all set.
Summer 2005
At various times throughout the summer, I stock up on little bits and pieces for the trip, mainly from the Disney store and mainly for DS. I buy some Disney t-shirts and PJs that I have put in the Disney drawer and also a Disney autograph book and book for him.
September 2005
Having experienced a negative result to my IVF treatment in the summer, I realise that there are two problems with the 26 nights we had booked. The first is that company policy only allows for a maximum of 3 weeks holiday to be booked at one time and the second is that I will need 5 days of my holiday leave kept in reserve for my next IVF treatment in summer 2006. So, after much jiggling around and looking at 2006 calendars I finally contact Virgin and change our plans to 21 nights departing on 4th November 2006, with 7 nights at Pop and 14 nights at CBR.
Then theres another hitch no PE flights out on the 4th! Were stuck with flying on this date though as if I did get pregnant next time, I would need to make sure I am well within airline guidelines for flying whilst pregnant. We decide we will try to put up with Economy seats on the outbound flight, at least we fly back PE!
I plan to do Twilight Check-in on the Friday anyway, arriving as soon as they open and requesting those fab bulkhead seats right behind first class as we had those going out last time. There are only 4 rows of economy seats in that section and its nicely curtained off from all the noise in the main economy cabin.
I order a Sat Nav this month, partly because I hate getting lost and can see how useful it will be here but also because I intend to buy a US card for it and use it on our trip.
Ive printed a load of November 2006 calendar pages from the web and start making provisional plans about what we will do each day.
November 2005
I order and receive Steve Munns Disney and Orlando map and it is absolutely fantastic. I drool over seeing where all the restaurants and shops are, as each is marked individually on this amazing map. It will make our trip so much better!
Christmas 2005
My beloved DP buys me the Brits Guide 2006 as a present and I spend the next few days pouring over it with glee, and make plans to go to Gatorland and Busch Gardens after reading about them.
January 2006
Ive spent some time this month checking out ticket prices and calculating who is the cheapest. We plan to buy 21 day ultimate tickets for Disney, we will all do the Discovery Cove dolphin swim, DS adores SeaWorld, were undecided on US/IOA as yet but are pretty keen to do Busch Gardens and Gatorland sounds fun for an hour or two.
Ive planned that we can do each Disney Park and SeaWorld twice and still operate on a one day on, one day off style of touring where on alternate days we wont do Disney Parks but shop or do a water park or any of the other 100 million things there is to do in Florida.
13th January 2006
I received a surprise in the post today another Virgin Holidays invoice. Puzzled I look through it and realise that they have added outbound Premium Economy charges!! I gather this to mean they have found us PE seats and so we are now flying PE both ways wooohooo!
I will continue to add to this thread with all my planning as I am determined to keep full trip reports this time for the whole 3 weeks and the planning.
February 2006 Update
Whilst joining up to the Hilton Honors club in order to gain extra Virgin Flying Club miles I suddenly remember I hadn't booked the airport hotel for the night prior to departure! So, one family suite duly booked at the Hilton for £205.63.
Still no further in deciding upon exactly what tickets to get other than the Disney/SeaWorld/Discovery Cove ones. I just can't decide on Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure. We may well just purchase Universal tickets when we get there and if we decide we want to go. I definitely think it was easier in 2003 when our Disney tickets were automatically included in the Virgin holiday prices. I wouldn't mind seeing a return to this policy for those that book packages - makes more sense to me for it to be an opt-out.
We also have La Nouba and an Illuminations Cruise on our maybe list and DS is desperate to eat at the Castle. We're also hoping to try the Toy Story/Boys character meal at Disney Studios if they happen.
Virgin have let me know they messed up on the PE seats for the outbound leg. There aren't in fact any available at the moment, so for now we're stuck with economy. I've been considering upgrading from PE to Upper Class to come home, but apparently Virgin Atlantic only release two seats in UC to VH and we need three. More pondering on this one is necessary.
There have been some new additions to the "Disney Drawer" this weekend in the shape of small travel sized shower pouffs, travel bad for DP's tablets, insulin and needles and two new tops for DS.
We're planning to sample plenty of off-site dinning too on this trip - mainly for dinners on park days and lunch or dinner for non-park days. I hope that abley assisted by Steve's fab map we might actually find some of these fab restaurants. As we drove down the 192/I4 last time - I found myself wondering exactly how to get to most of them.
We have plans to try the folllowing off-site restaurants:
Cheesecake Factory
Sweet Tomatoes
Bahama Breeze
Macaroni Grill
Tony Roma's
Olive Garden
Ruby Tuesday
Don Pablo's
Other possibles are Cracker Barrell/Golden Corral/Ponderosa/Sizzler as I've heard everyone should at least one of these once. I believe Golden Corral is the best of the bunch.
August 2006
After several months of cancelling and rearranging this holiday after realising that due to starting a new online business ( selling toys and baby gifts) that we can't go away in November for obvious reasons, we finally make a firm decision and rebook for January 2007.
It feels very exciting to have finally been able to make more definite plans so we paid off the balance of the holiday with VH, have added 21 day tickets to the package too.
We're going to be leaving on 8th Jan and my ds has his ninth birthday on 15th. I originally tried to book Discovery Cove for that day but the first availability they have is the 22nd so we take that instead. I've also booked tickets for the Princess & Pirate Party on the 22nd. The hotel at Gatwick and the car hire have also been booked along with a Fantasmic Package and 10 other ADR's including CRT dinner. Phew!
We watched the Disney planning DVD this weekend which added to our excitement although we still haven't told DS we are off to the World. We plan to tell him on Christmas day by way of various gift ideas collated from the DIS.
Cast Members
Me (Claire - 31) WDW addict and super organised mega-planner
DP (Bev - 33) Never flown before let alone been to WDW!
DS (8) Loves all things Disney hates TOT!
March 2005
After a fabulous first trip to the World for Christmas 2003, DS and I are left dying to go again so I book 10 days with Virgin, leaving the choice of hotel to DS. He knows I will only stay on-site and that is my only proviso he may choose from any Disney hotel in the Virgin brochure and having stayed at ASM last time he chooses Pop Century. Onto the net I go with one excited little boy and duly book 10 days in November 2005, flying PE both ways and staying at Pop Century, pay the deposit and I swear the people in the next City could hear his cheers of joy!
For Christmas 2004 I had purposefully bought him a WDW Kids guide to enable him to read up and predictably straight after booking he spends the next 4 weeks reading it each day!
May 2005
Having met my DP by this time, we have to extend our holiday plans to include her naturally. We also decide to change our plans to November 2006 as she needed some more time to save for her share of the holiday. So after a little discussion we decided to extend the holiday to 26 nights and play around with the hotels a bit. All three of us discuss the hotel situation and flick through the brochure and decide on one week at Pop Century and the remainder at CBR. I change the booking with Virgin, pay the admin fee and were all set.
Summer 2005
At various times throughout the summer, I stock up on little bits and pieces for the trip, mainly from the Disney store and mainly for DS. I buy some Disney t-shirts and PJs that I have put in the Disney drawer and also a Disney autograph book and book for him.
September 2005
Having experienced a negative result to my IVF treatment in the summer, I realise that there are two problems with the 26 nights we had booked. The first is that company policy only allows for a maximum of 3 weeks holiday to be booked at one time and the second is that I will need 5 days of my holiday leave kept in reserve for my next IVF treatment in summer 2006. So, after much jiggling around and looking at 2006 calendars I finally contact Virgin and change our plans to 21 nights departing on 4th November 2006, with 7 nights at Pop and 14 nights at CBR.
Then theres another hitch no PE flights out on the 4th! Were stuck with flying on this date though as if I did get pregnant next time, I would need to make sure I am well within airline guidelines for flying whilst pregnant. We decide we will try to put up with Economy seats on the outbound flight, at least we fly back PE!
I plan to do Twilight Check-in on the Friday anyway, arriving as soon as they open and requesting those fab bulkhead seats right behind first class as we had those going out last time. There are only 4 rows of economy seats in that section and its nicely curtained off from all the noise in the main economy cabin.
I order a Sat Nav this month, partly because I hate getting lost and can see how useful it will be here but also because I intend to buy a US card for it and use it on our trip.
Ive printed a load of November 2006 calendar pages from the web and start making provisional plans about what we will do each day.
November 2005
I order and receive Steve Munns Disney and Orlando map and it is absolutely fantastic. I drool over seeing where all the restaurants and shops are, as each is marked individually on this amazing map. It will make our trip so much better!
Christmas 2005
My beloved DP buys me the Brits Guide 2006 as a present and I spend the next few days pouring over it with glee, and make plans to go to Gatorland and Busch Gardens after reading about them.
January 2006
Ive spent some time this month checking out ticket prices and calculating who is the cheapest. We plan to buy 21 day ultimate tickets for Disney, we will all do the Discovery Cove dolphin swim, DS adores SeaWorld, were undecided on US/IOA as yet but are pretty keen to do Busch Gardens and Gatorland sounds fun for an hour or two.
Ive planned that we can do each Disney Park and SeaWorld twice and still operate on a one day on, one day off style of touring where on alternate days we wont do Disney Parks but shop or do a water park or any of the other 100 million things there is to do in Florida.
13th January 2006
I received a surprise in the post today another Virgin Holidays invoice. Puzzled I look through it and realise that they have added outbound Premium Economy charges!! I gather this to mean they have found us PE seats and so we are now flying PE both ways wooohooo!
I will continue to add to this thread with all my planning as I am determined to keep full trip reports this time for the whole 3 weeks and the planning.
February 2006 Update
Whilst joining up to the Hilton Honors club in order to gain extra Virgin Flying Club miles I suddenly remember I hadn't booked the airport hotel for the night prior to departure! So, one family suite duly booked at the Hilton for £205.63.
Still no further in deciding upon exactly what tickets to get other than the Disney/SeaWorld/Discovery Cove ones. I just can't decide on Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure. We may well just purchase Universal tickets when we get there and if we decide we want to go. I definitely think it was easier in 2003 when our Disney tickets were automatically included in the Virgin holiday prices. I wouldn't mind seeing a return to this policy for those that book packages - makes more sense to me for it to be an opt-out.
We also have La Nouba and an Illuminations Cruise on our maybe list and DS is desperate to eat at the Castle. We're also hoping to try the Toy Story/Boys character meal at Disney Studios if they happen.
Virgin have let me know they messed up on the PE seats for the outbound leg. There aren't in fact any available at the moment, so for now we're stuck with economy. I've been considering upgrading from PE to Upper Class to come home, but apparently Virgin Atlantic only release two seats in UC to VH and we need three. More pondering on this one is necessary.
There have been some new additions to the "Disney Drawer" this weekend in the shape of small travel sized shower pouffs, travel bad for DP's tablets, insulin and needles and two new tops for DS.
We're planning to sample plenty of off-site dinning too on this trip - mainly for dinners on park days and lunch or dinner for non-park days. I hope that abley assisted by Steve's fab map we might actually find some of these fab restaurants. As we drove down the 192/I4 last time - I found myself wondering exactly how to get to most of them.
We have plans to try the folllowing off-site restaurants:
Cheesecake Factory
Sweet Tomatoes
Bahama Breeze
Macaroni Grill
Tony Roma's
Olive Garden
Ruby Tuesday
Don Pablo's
Other possibles are Cracker Barrell/Golden Corral/Ponderosa/Sizzler as I've heard everyone should at least one of these once. I believe Golden Corral is the best of the bunch.
August 2006
After several months of cancelling and rearranging this holiday after realising that due to starting a new online business ( selling toys and baby gifts) that we can't go away in November for obvious reasons, we finally make a firm decision and rebook for January 2007.
It feels very exciting to have finally been able to make more definite plans so we paid off the balance of the holiday with VH, have added 21 day tickets to the package too.
We're going to be leaving on 8th Jan and my ds has his ninth birthday on 15th. I originally tried to book Discovery Cove for that day but the first availability they have is the 22nd so we take that instead. I've also booked tickets for the Princess & Pirate Party on the 22nd. The hotel at Gatwick and the car hire have also been booked along with a Fantasmic Package and 10 other ADR's including CRT dinner. Phew!
We watched the Disney planning DVD this weekend which added to our excitement although we still haven't told DS we are off to the World. We plan to tell him on Christmas day by way of various gift ideas collated from the DIS.
) already.
great read, will look out for the updates,
)
I'm just about to start planning our Nov 06 trip (not written up the 05 report yet but I love your pre trip planning. Here's my HOs on your plans...
