Last Big Trip - Reboot

[pbruce706]

Our trip is coming up at the end of August, and it's starting to feel real, so I thought I'd write up a Pre-Trip report. I'm sure everyone is just as excited about our trip as we are!

It'll be me , DW and DD(15) . The last time we were in the world was February last year (2013) and we said that it would probably be our last Disney trip as a family. We stayed at POFQ and got in on the free dining. Unfortunately, the night before we left, our daughter started feeling poorly and by the time we arrived at the World, she was fully into the flu. As the week went on, we all shared in it's misery and as much as we love the dining, there was usually at least two of the three of us who really didn't want any kind of food.

There were also a few days where someone was laying in bed feeling horrible for most of the morning. It was still a wonderful trip, with lots of great memories, but there was a lot we weren't able to do. So when we were looking at trips this summer, and deciding what to do, the Disney bug started biting at all of us.

We live near the Toronto area in Ontario, and school doesn't start until after the Labour Day weekend in September, so the last week of August seemed to hit the sweet spot between crowd levels, price and not missing any high school. Plus, we're celebrating out 20th wedding anniversary on the 27th so it just seemed like all the pieces were fitting together. The seed had been planted and we started thinking about it.

We wanted to stay at the Poly, but when I was reading about the construction, I didn't want to take the chance on how much it would impact the stay, so the great resort search began. After looking at all the resort choices, many times, we decided to try the Beach Club, in part for the pool, in part for the look of it and in part for it's proximity to Epcot and DHS. So in September last year, I booked the stay. 7 Nights, 8 Days, DDP, park hoppers. At this point I wasn't sure if we'd actually be going, but I thought it'd be good to at least book something and work from there. Our expectations were pretty low since it was so far off and a lot of things could change over the next 11 months. And if we had to cancel, there wouldn't be much to lose.

Up next, the first three months of waiting... nothing to do but lots to see.

 

[pbruce706]

So we booked our trip and were pretty excited, but a lot can change over 11 months. Barring any unforeseen circumstances we could afford the trip or we wouldn't have booked it, but given how things can change we also were realistic that maybe we wouldn't be able to go.

The last trip we booked through CAA, and while they were very helpful, I like planning and having control over everything. So this time we booked directly through the Disney Website. Worked without any issues and linked up to our MDE account.

We opted for the Dining Plan, not so much because we expected to save money, but more because as the trip would progress, we would naturally want to spend less and less on food simply because it would "feel" to me as if we'd spent so much already. The last trip we had the free dining, and I didn't worry about the price of anything, it just made the whole trip more relaxing.

I started learning more about MB and MM+, FP+ was in testing then but I frequented the forums often to get an idea of what it was about and how I thought it would work for our trip. We'd always gone during the slower times of the year, mostly in February, a couple times in November and used FP- but weren't commandos about it. This trip I wanted to "maximize" our time at the park and figured I'd learn all I could about FP+.

Of course I started the spreadsheet. Kept one for every trip we've done before, just a way of tracking the parks we were going to, the reservations we wanted to make, hours, and so on. This time I wanted to follow Josh's advice on EasyWDW and other than a few exceptions, based my plan around his recommendations.

Being in Canada, air fare can be quite expensive, so I thought we'd look at flying out of Buffalo. We didn't do it on the last trip mostly because we were leaving in February and I didn't want to chance driving through a snow storm down to Buffalo the morning before our flight. And yes, while we live in Canada, snow storms in August just don't happen. In December options started showing up for flights out of Buffalo and when Jet Blue released tickets for the dates of our trip, I decided to grab them.

I was a little nervous, since we still weren't sure the trip would happen, but I thought that in a worst case scenario we'd lose the money spent on the air fare and it wouldn't be the end of the world.

Now we're locked in, I've got the initial planning stages started and I'm scratching the surface of the new Fast Pass system. And we're still just talking about the trip as that "trip we hope we can take". But since I've already committed the air fare, I figure it's time to start paying money on the package. That, by the way, is one of the great things about booking through Disney, it's much easier making small payments over time as opposed to my travel agent who preferred me making one payment in full for the amount of the trip.

Up next... countdown to 180... or.... No, it doesn't stand for A Daily Ritual