First "Home" stay - VGC - June 2024

[VGCgroupie]

I ran that by my wife and she said if we can’t afford to not to take a red eye then we can’t afford to take the trip and to just cancel it….

I actually upgraded the outbound to 1st class because the cost to upgrade wasn’t that big of a jump with the economy plus already being so darn expensive.

They let us upgrade the companion fares for the same price… so…. I guess I’ll take that as a win.

Id take 1st class for a small fee no problem. My husband is not thrilled with my booking the red eye... but I said it's that or another day off work so he gave in. Can we sleep at the water park??? I kid.. kinda.

 

[tx911]

Nope. Nothing within a couple hours.



Such a bummer.

I'm going to have my husband run the numbers on what it would cost to drive (tricky because you never really know what gas prices will be so he'll estimate high to be safe.) I'll price out hotels and food on a drive. And dog sitter for extra days. If it's similar or less than flying.....we will have to decide if we want to do that in February (decided that would be better than March if we use the days my son has off for conferences/presidents day) and then skip our June DLR trip.

It's a bummer and we might actually end up with VGC points (2026 UY) we can't use before expiration. So we'd have to rent them out maybe.

I'm going to hold out hope for SOMETHING doable on Southwest in December. I'm antsy waiting for flights to come out.



We have to be so picky about flight times and layovers because of our son. It just makes our options so limited. And it a big reason we actually prefer driving. It will be much easier once he's out of school (in 2032. Ha!)

Are you able to make carry-ons work? I've gotten pretty good at packing into a carry on. That will definitely be my default on Southwest from now on.

 

[VGCgroupie]

Are you able to make carry-ons work? I've gotten pretty good at packing into a carry on. That will definitely be my default on Southwest from now on.

I have gotten SO MUCH into whats considered a personal bag! The backpacks on Amazon are amazing.

 

[tx911]

I have gotten SO MUCH into whats considered a personal bag! The backpacks on Amazon are amazing.

I agree, just a simple little personal item.

 

[AstroBlasters]

How do you mean??

Sitting in a car for a day or two, no one ever arrives from that feeling refreshed…. it takes a lot out of you.

As I have gotten older…. the amount of Advil I would have to take…. my liver would scream at me….

 

[AstroBlasters]

Id take 1st class for a small fee no problem. My husband is not thrilled with my booking the red eye... but I said it's that or another day off work so he gave in. Can we sleep at the water park??? I kid.. kinda.

Yeah… you have to make the best call you can.

Traffic will be lighter, so that is a plus.

Are you booking a room for the night you fly in so you have a room to go to after you land? That’s what we would end up doing.

 

[ClaraOswald]

Are you able to make carry-ons work? I've gotten pretty good at packing into a carry on. That will definitely be my default on Southwest from now on.

I'm the queen of over-packing. Ha! I'm honestly not too bothered by checked bag fees. I'm mostly annoyed that SWA is going back to when flight credits expire. It's been nice booking my flight immediately when they are released. Then if prices go down, I get a credit to use next time.

It also made it so easy if we ever needed to reschedule or change flights. It still might be better in that way than other airlines (which are super pricey for refundable and whatnot.)

Sitting in a car for a day or two, no one ever arrives from that feeling refreshed…. it takes a lot out of you.

As I have gotten older…. the amount of Advil I would have to take…. my liver would scream at me….

We stop so much that it hasn't really been a problem yet. The only time is was bad was driving home when we all had Covid. We actually like the drive (well, except the boring parts through Nebraska, part of Colorado, and the last bit in California.)

 

[VGCgroupie]

Yeah… you have to make the best call you can.

Traffic will be lighter, so that is a plus.

Are you booking a room for the night you fly in so you have a room to go to after you land? That’s what we would end up doing.

Nope. When I originally booked this we were point poor. Now that we have a bunch of points no rooms that day. I could possibly change resorts. WDW is pretty foreign to me especially at DVC so I cant decide which place is best to pick. We originally had BLT/AKV. Now it's BWV/AKV. We don't plan on going to Magic Kingdom this trip and didnt want to be at AKV more than 2 nights.

 

[AstroBlasters]

Nope. When I originally booked this we were point poor. Now that we have a bunch of points no rooms that day. I could possibly change resorts. WDW is pretty foreign to me especially at DVC so I cant decide which place is best to pick. We originally had BLT/AKV. Now it's BWV/AKV. We don't plan on going to Magic Kingdom this trip and didnt want to be at AKV more than 2 nights.

I think either sound like great locations!

 

[ClaraOswald]

I think BWV over BLT makes the most sense if you aren't planning to go to MK at all.

 

[ClaraOswald]

Well, tomorrow we will know if we'll be heading back to VGC in December or not. Southwest is set to release their next chunk of flights through December. Crossing my fingers that there will be a flight that works for us!

If not...I think our back up plan is to skip this Disneyland trip and just go in June. And then maybe try to use our points that we can't bank towards a WDW trip in January.

But I really, really hope we can make this December trip work!

 

[ClaraOswald]

The December trip is a go! Woohoo!

Flights are definitely more expensive than I had hoped. And flight options weren't 100% fantastic. But they are tolerable so we'll hopefully be there in December! (Of course, you never know when it comes to winter and illnesses and whatnot but I'm not going to stress about something out of my control. At least not at this point. Ha!)

I decided to pay for the higher tier tickets so they are refundable and we get to board in group A1-A15. For our January WDW trip this year, we decided to do that last minute and even though it's expensive, I think it was worth it for us. This is definitely the most we've ever paid for Southwest flights though since I've always chosen the cheapest tier before.

255 days to go! I'm glad we have a non-Disney vacation planned before now and then to keep me occupied.

We ended up using 124 of the 126 points we had banked from 2024 into 2025 (June UY.) So 2 points will go unused and expire but such is life.

We plan to take a road trip out to Disneyland in June 2026. Before we book that in July, we will be banking all 160 of our 2025 points into 2026. And we plan to book a 1-bedroom. How we'll ever go back to a studio at VGC, I don't know. But I guess we'll survive. Ha!

 

[VGCgroupie]

The December trip is a go! Woohoo!

Flights are definitely more expensive than I had hoped. And flight options weren't 100% fantastic. But they are tolerable so we'll hopefully be there in December! (Of course, you never know when it comes to winter and illnesses and whatnot but I'm not going to stress about something out of my control. At least not at this point. Ha!)

I decided to pay for the higher tier tickets so they are refundable and we get to board in group A1-A15. For our January WDW trip this year, we decided to do that last minute and even though it's expensive, I think it was worth it for us. This is definitely the most we've ever paid for Southwest flights though since I've always chosen the cheapest tier before.

255 days to go! I'm glad we have a non-Disney vacation planned before now and then to keep me occupied.

We ended up using 124 of the 126 points we had banked from 2024 into 2025 (June UY.) So 2 points will go unused and expire but such is life.

We plan to take a road trip out to Disneyland in June 2026. Before we book that in July, we will be banking all 160 of our 2025 points into 2026. And we plan to book a 1-bedroom. How we'll ever go back to a studio at VGC, I don't know. But I guess we'll survive. Ha!

Glad it all worked out