My AP is Burning a Hole in My Pocket!! - January 2012 Pre-Trip Report!!

[maman_et_fille]

I'm so excited about our upcoming trip, I decided to do my very first pre-trip report. Not sure why this one seems more exciting than the others . . . maybe it's the relatively last-minute decision, or that we're keeping it a surprise from our 5 year old for now. In any event, I'm looking forward to keeping and sharing a record of our planning insanity!

Here's who we are: (oh my heavens, if anyone knows how I can make this photo smaller please speak up!)

Me - Megan - a semi-retired teacher (stay at home mom right now)
DH - John - just as much a Disney nut as I am!
Peanut - our five year old - smart as a whip and cute as a button
Petunia - about 14 months right now - gets into everything

I: A little introduction:
This will be our sixth trip to Disney as a family and our fourth with our current APs. Before our first trip in June of 2009, we expected to make visits to WDW every few years so our kids could enjoy it during different phases of their lives. We never expected to fall in love with the magic and wonder of Disney World ourselves! But the truth is, we fell hard, and we couldn't wait to plan our next trip!

The combo of deep room discounts and low airfares brought us back to WDW in January 2010 while we were simultaneously planning a trip with my SIL and her family for October 2010. We had to cancel on the October trip when we found out Petunia would be arriving in late September, so we went ahead and scheduled a January 2011 trip for ourselves (with a four month old - what were we thinking??) and rescheduled our SIL combo trip for November of 2011. Two trips in one year meant APs would make a lot of sense, and having them was such a blessing when our flight home in January 2011 was cancelled and we got three "bonus" days at Disney. Having the APs also made it easy to throw in a quick visit in May 2011 when John's brother and family decided to make a trip to Orlando - we joined them for a few days of their trip. We had thought our most recent trip (November 4-12, 2011) would be our last before the APs expired and until at least January 2013, but John and I both had the idea of trying for one more trip in the backs of our minds. It had to be the perfect conditions, though, because Disney trips are expensive!

Links to the other entries in my pre-trip report (links will become active as the entries are posted):
II: What's the pirate password? Yo-ho-ho!
III: "it's a small world" after all
IV: Dining Details

 

[maman_et_fille]

(In which we get two gentle nudges that convince us to plan this trip.)

I had already told John that I was willing to make a January 2012 trip my "present for the year" to help carve out some of the funds we would need for the vacation. I had priced out airfare at just under $500, but we were willing to wait and see if the flight prices would drop. We tossed around the idea of driving but weren't convinced it was worth the roughly $200 it would save us over flying. We looked into applying for a Jet Blue rewards credit card to try to cash in the bonus points you get for signing up, but they wouldn't have been credited to our account soon enough to use before our APs expired (January 24, 2012). All of this was still very hypothetical discussion. We went to Disney with my SIL and her family and had a great time with them and made a lot of wonderful memories, but we couldn't shake the bug to return in January.

Then, on our Jet Blue flight from Orlando back to DC on Nov. 12th, the Direct TV wasn't working - Jet Blue gives an automatic $15/seat voucher when the TVs don't work. John and I raised our eyebrows and both had the same thought about applying the vouchers ($45 total) to a hypothetical flight back to WDW.

To make things more interesting, Disney announced on November 13th that Jake from Jake and the Neverland Pirates was not only going to start meeting at DHS's Animation Courtyard, but that he would be joining the line-up for Hollywood and Vine's character breakfast/lunch. Peanut is such a huge fan of the show and she was Izzy for Halloween:

Before our November trip, she was begging to meet characters from Jake and the Neverland Pirates, and the irony of the meet & greet starting just a day after we left Orlando was too much for me! (No, I don't give her everything she wants; remember, we were searching for an excuse to go back!) Still, though, it wasn't enough to overcome our concerns about cost/budget.

The stars aligned on November 14th, though, when I got an email from Jet Blue offering a one-day sale: 20% discount on airfare. I spent an hour on the phone with Jet Blue that morning trying to get the TV vouchers pushed through (normally takes 7-10 business days) so that I could combine them with the special 20% offer (which the customer service rep knew nothing about because I guess it wasn't a widely distributed offer or something). Then I found out that to combine the savings offers, I would have to book online with each seat as a separate reservation. I was a little scared at the prospect of not being able to get seats together, but I was determined to save that $45! Everything was going smoothly until I entered John's True Blue number at the same time I had browser tabs open for Peanut's and my seats . . . I think the browser "cookies" messed everything up and his True Blue number and the associated $15 voucher credit got applied to Peanut's ticket! At that point I panicked because that's what I do best - all I could picture was ending up with only my five year old having a flight to Florida. I didn't bother trying to figure out the voucher issues for John's or my ticket - just quickly used the 20% to make sure we each had a seat on the plane.

Of course, this meant another call to Jet Blue to see if I could get the vouchers applied retroactively. The representative was very nice and super-helpful, but I was on hold for the better part of an hour while she and her supervisor worked to apply the vouchers. Apparently the problem they were having was that their system reported that one of the vouchers had been credited to us AFTER I booked the tickets for January, which I knew was not the case. I cannot give enough credit to the customer service agents for Jet Blue - they worked really hard to save me money that day. The funniest thing was that I started my call to them around 2:20 and had to pick Peanut up from school at 3:00 (remember, this trip is a surprise for her?). Fortunately the weather was nice and she didn't pay much attention to what I was doing as I let her play on her school's playground while I spent until 3:30 on the phone with Jet Blue.

Saving money is apparently very time-consuming. We saved a ton of money, though; including taxes and fees, our total cost for airfare was roughly $360, bringing it much closer in line with the cost of driving. We're flying down Monday, January 16 and coming home Friday, January 20!