May 2011 flights

[Lamping3]

I have a couple questions about flights/options for my family and I know how experienced everyone on this board is so I hope you can help me out.

I have been checking the various websites for flights for my May trip (4 to 14). I can't technically book my flights until after the first of the year because my vacation will not be approved for sure until then. I have been just looking and I am concerned of the flight times/# of non stop flights available. I am not too concerned about the price.....as long as it ends up below $900 or so for the 3 of us round trip I will be fine. We are flying St Louis to MCO and really the only non stop flight available there leaves St Louis around 5pm. The earlier flights all have stops with layovers...the shortest being an hour. I was not opposed to having connecting flights before children but now flying with our 3 year old for our sanity and the passengers around us I prefer a non stop flight.

Just as a backstory last December we flew home with a layover (our original flight was changed). She did horrible on the 2nd flight. She was soo tired and couldn't get calmed down to fall asleep. She cried and whined and at one point there was nothing that we could do to calm her down. I finally got her to go to sleep about 15 minutes before landing. I was soo frustrated and embarassed that I was the one with the "crying kid" on the flight that I hope to do what I can to avoid that again.

After my long winded story I guess my main question is when are flights pretty "set" or how far out do they have the majority of the flights that they plan on having out?

I am going to outline my options in another post....sorry this is so long!

 

[Lamping3]

Ok...so these are the options I came up with pending no other flight times come out. (sorry I am dealing with a little insomnia...what better to do then dis?)

1) Take the earlier flight with the layover and just deal with it. DD will be 1.5 years older than the last time so we might do a little better with 2 flights.

2) Take the 5pm flight and pretty much lose any plans for arrival day.

3) Fly out on the 5pm flight on the 3rd and either
a. book another night at the WL
b. book a night at the hotel in the airport*

*I had questions about this option. Can my bags from the night before be sent on ME (we would carry on 1 days worth of neccesary items) so we didn't have to deal with baggage claim that night? Would we be able to take ME the next day (4th) even though our flight came in on the 3rd?

4) Drive....I am not opposed to this one....getting there is fine it is just the drive home that I go nuts on!

TIA for any suggestions/tips. I really want this trip to be special because this is going to be our last trip before we start trying for baby #2 and this will be DD last time at Disney as an "only child".

 

[PoohsFan1]

If I were you I would just wait on your flight since you have 6 months before your arrival date, maybe they will open up more non-stop flights that will work for your family. What carrier are you wanting to fly on? We bought our tickets through AirTran for our May trip and have non stop flights going and coming back. Our flight going is at 10:20am which has us arriving at MCO by 1:53pm (out of Chicago) and then on the return flight we have an 8:42pm flight out which has us landing back in Chicago at 10:15pm. Now these types of flights may or may not work for your little one, my kids however are 9 and 7 so they can deal with the early and late flights. If it doesn't matter what carrier you use, look around or wait a bit longer. The one problem I do have about AirTran is that they are notorious for changing flights even with 2 weeks out, but I can't justify paying higher prices for AA or United. Good luck.

 

[girlpenguin]

OP - I'm from St. Louis and am also doing a May 2011 trip. Did you check out Southwest? They have several non-stop flights, including a 6:05 a.m. flight, a 11:35 a.m. flight and a 2:35 p.m. flight. Like you, we are only interested in non-stop flights.

 

[dudspizza]

just checked Southwest and those 3 flights are available for around 952 total. I would guess that the price will come down the next time SW has a sale.

The 5:05 non-stop is on Airtran. Keep in mind they constantly change flight times, so that departure could actually move closer or later, depending on what Airtran decides to do...