My family thinks I'm crazy..but I know you all won't! Back and my TR is started!

[TeaForTulips]

Catching up!

I adored your video! I must say my favorite part was your DS so excited about his backpack and had to try it out!

Your Disney theme night was great! I will be checking out the thread you suggested.

I am so sorry about your Delta drama. My vote is for the later non stop flight. I must say I hate ATL. The airport is just so huge and heaven forbid you don't have a decent layover and you are hauling it to your gate with kids. They seem to always change gate numbers too. Maybe I just have bad luck there I don't know. I always try to avoid ATL. We even just booked my mother in law a flight to visit us in Feburary and I insisted her stop be in Memphis rather than Atlanta. Yuck!

I hope it works out for you. I must say you did get an awesome deal on the price!

 

[Jonesloonybin]

Man that sucks about the flights! I hate Delta too. And I have not had great luck talking to their customer service either! We also avoid Atlanta airport like the plague. The last time we went through there, I was pregnant with my youngest and suffering some of the WORST morning sickness ever! And they kept changing our gates and we would have to run down the stairs, get on the train, get off, run up the stairs, discover the change and repeat!

I would go for the nonstop or see if you can get a refund.

Terri

 

[AKL LOVER]

Catching up!

I adored your video! I must say my favorite part was your DS so excited about his backpack and had to try it out!

Your Disney theme night was great! I will be checking out the thread you suggested.

I am so sorry about your Delta drama. My vote is for the later non stop flight. I must say I hate ATL. The airport is just so huge and heaven forbid you don't have a decent layover and you are hauling it to your gate with kids. They seem to always change gate numbers too. Maybe I just have bad luck there I don't know. I always try to avoid ATL. We even just booked my mother in law a flight to visit us in Feburary and I insisted her stop be in Memphis rather than Atlanta. Yuck!

I hope it works out for you. I must say you did get an awesome deal on the price!

I'm so glad you enjoyed the video! So not what I wanted to hear about ATL but thanks for letting me know...not so sure the awesome deal was worth this headache in the end

Man that sucks about the flights! I hate Delta too. And I have not had great luck talking to their customer service either! We also avoid Atlanta airport like the plague. The last time we went through there, I was pregnant with my youngest and suffering some of the WORST morning sickness ever! And they kept changing our gates and we would have to run down the stairs, get on the train, get off, run up the stairs, discover the change and repeat!

I would go for the nonstop or see if you can get a refund.

Terri

Thank you for the info about ATL. I am really leaning towards the later flight, but just have to convince DH that one is better. He wants to do the earlier one...I'm just not crazy about a lay-over or plane change with the kids.

 

[Becc1]

Hey there, I'm subbing in on your TR! The video of your kids on Christmas was great! I still haven't figured out how we are going to surprise our kids for our trip in May. Love the theme night too, we did an Aladdin one too but you out did mine definately on the food!

 

[hurleysweety]

I can't believe that Delta did that to you! My flight arrives at 11:45pm instead of 11:30pm and I just laughed since it's so late anyway, what does 15 minutes really do. But 1 PM, 3.5 hours earlier on departure day? I would have been an absolute mess of anger!

And on mother's day? That is not okay! Doesn't Delta know that you're seeing Mickey and have important ADRs? I just hate that feeling on departure day, it reaches a point where sadly, I know that reality is waiting for me and I'm not doing anyone any favors by being so sad for leaving Disney, instead of sleeping at home. Especially if work is waiting for you the next day...So I'd pick the 4:30 for the reason of being able to keep your ADR. Enjoy your meal, make some last memories, and then head home. So you have 3.5 hrs more in Disney, 3.5 hours still on vacation. But thats just my two cents. I'm sure whatever you choose, you'll still have sooo much fun in between the flights, they'll just be bookends to the wonderful novels of memories you'll be making! (and an extra cheesy lol to that last line, its late and I'm tired!)

 

[bcnorth]

I have been reading your PRT since the beginning but since we are staying at the same resort at the same time I thought I would say hello and maybe we might meet up in the Club Lounge one morning.

I have never flown with Delta, but Air Canada does that all the time and we really don't have many choices in western Canada to do any flight swapping. At least you get to leave in the afternoon still, we are leaving MCO at 7am on May 9th and willingly booked this flight or had to take another two days off work to get home again. Now I know being at Disney for an extra night is not the worse thing but it will take our family four separate flights and three days of travel to just arrive home from this vacation. Yes, we live in the middle of the frozen north and we like it!!!!!

Great PTR sorry for stealing the thread for the moment, we will be at AKL April 30 to May 9 and we probably will see each other when we both go for the Zebra Domes!!!!!

 

[AKL LOVER]

Hey there, I'm subbing in on your TR! The video of your kids on Christmas was great! I still haven't figured out how we are going to surprise our kids for our trip in May. Love the theme night too, we did an Aladdin one too but you out did mine definately on the food!

Thanks for joining! I'm glad people are enjoying my video. I was really hoping for some jump up and down, freak out kind of reaction, but oh well Guess that gives me a reason to try and surprise them again!

I can't believe that Delta did that to you! My flight arrives at 11:45pm instead of 11:30pm and I just laughed since it's so late anyway, what does 15 minutes really do. But 1 PM, 3.5 hours earlier on departure day? I would have been an absolute mess of anger!

And on mother's day? That is not okay! Doesn't Delta know that you're seeing Mickey and have important ADRs? I just hate that feeling on departure day, it reaches a point where sadly, I know that reality is waiting for me and I'm not doing anyone any favors by being so sad for leaving Disney, instead of sleeping at home. Especially if work is waiting for you the next day...So I'd pick the 4:30 for the reason of being able to keep your ADR. Enjoy your meal, make some last memories, and then head home. So you have 3.5 hrs more in Disney, 3.5 hours still on vacation. But thats just my two cents. I'm sure whatever you choose, you'll still have sooo much fun in between the flights, they'll just be bookends to the wonderful novels of memories you'll be making! (and an extra cheesy lol to that last line, its late and I'm tired!)

I got it things situated...mostly. The new flights I got are not as great as the first, but it's better than what they tried to give me! And I know once I'm there and on vacation all of our airfare drama won't matter because we'll be having a fantastic time!

I have been reading your PRT since the beginning but since we are staying at the same resort at the same time I thought I would say hello and maybe we might meet up in the Club Lounge one morning.

I have never flown with Delta, but Air Canada does that all the time and we really don't have many choices in western Canada to do any flight swapping. At least you get to leave in the afternoon still, we are leaving MCO at 7am on May 9th and willingly booked this flight or had to take another two days off work to get home again. Now I know being at Disney for an extra night is not the worse thing but it will take our family four separate flights and three days of travel to just arrive home from this vacation. Yes, we live in the middle of the frozen north and we like it!!!!!

Great PTR sorry for stealing the thread for the moment, we will be at AKL April 30 to May 9 and we probably will see each other when we both go for the Zebra Domes!!!!!

I know that DH is excited about all the tasty beverages he can possibly procure from the lounge...so we are definitely bound to run into each other at some point! I myself, think a little more like you, and will head to the Zebra Domes...right before I nab a glass of wine

Perhaps I should wear a sign on my back that says AKL LOVER...do you think I might get some strange looks from people around the resort??

 

[AKL LOVER]

Yes, we live in the middle of the frozen north and we like it!!!!!

Oh, by the way...I think this is fabulous! DH and I really love winter and the cold. We visited Alaska years ago (before we had kids) and fell in love with the landscape and the weather (all the snow ). If it weren't for being so far from family, we would be tempted to move up there! Now that I think about it, another big downfall to living up there would be the distance from Disney ...

 

[AKL LOVER]

So I wanted to pass along a little update on our flights. After taking some time to calm down, I figured it was safe to call them back again. I was hoping that taking the approach of upset but calm, inconvenienced but flexible that I may get what I wanted...

I couldn't convince DH that the later non-stop flight would be better. I tried and tried, but he just didn't like the idea of it. Not sure he understands what a pain in the butt a layover and plane change are going to be with the kids , but oh well. We'll see what tune he's singing that night ...And I still wasn't really happy with the 4:30 flight that would give us a layover in Atlanta. So back to the computer to see if I could maybe find something else. After a couple of searches, low and behold I find a Delta flight that leaves at 4:30 and has a layover in Atlanta but it ARRIVES in Richmond, VA (as apposed to DC) which is closer to our home. SCORE. That is the flight I want!

Back on the phone with Delta...waiting on hold...explaining to the rep what I want...waiting on hold...finding out that I CANNOT fly back into Richmond. At this point, I'm not quite sure that this situation could get any worse. He tells me that I have to choose an airport in the Washington DC area because that's where I booked. I tell the rep that does not make any sense--The only reason I booked out of DC was for the originial flight, but now since I can't have it, I want to fly back into Richmond (which is my preferred airport). I even still want to leave from DC because we like that flight. I explain that thanks to them, I no longer have a direct flight and will now have to take a layover, so all I'm asking is to fly back into the airport of my choice.

But no, no can do he says and he can't even really explain why. He just keeps saying I apologize, but that's the way it is. So fine, I book a flight that leaves MCO @ 4, has a layover in Atlanta, but arrives at Dulles (which is even further from our house). Problem not solved...I am still angry, but it's late and I don't really feel like arguing. I have to say that I was very polite on the phone. I did not yell or get overtly angry. I'm sure he could tell by the tone of my voice and my short answers that I wasn't happy, but I wanted him to know that I was not satisfied.

The next day I am still fuming over my flight. The more I think about it the more that I get angry over the fact that the rep couldn't TELL ME WHY I still had to fly back into DC...he couldn't give me a reason.

So, back on the phone I go...this time I get a rep who actually seems to want to help me. First, he explains the reason that I experienced the large time change in my flight times is because my original flights were canceled. (At least that explains the flight time change!) Then he listened to me explain that I had spoken to someone last night and that I was mostly upset that he couldn't explain WHY I couldn't fly back into Richmond...especially when it was still a Delta flight, I was just requesting a change in the airport. I wanted to know if he could explain why. He puts me on hold and checks into it and low and behold comes back on the line and says he would be happy to make the change for me!! Woot Woot! Something is finally going my way in this whole situation!

So this rep gets my flights changed, and he also verifies all of our names to make sure they are going to appear correctly on our tickets.

I should also stop here to say that while I was waiting on hold, I was looking at my reservation on line and I noticed that the dingbat the previous night just assigned my plane seats without asking me what I wanted. So guess how he assigned them?? This should come as no surprise, but he put 2 seats together, the 3rd one 4 rows up from those 2 and the 4th one 3 rows back and across the aisle from the 2 together. Well obviously this is not going to work with a 6 year old and a 4 year old. So the new rep takes the time to ask me what kind of seats I would like for my new flights.

All in all, I am mostly satisfied with our new departing flight. We still have a layover in Atlanta, but at least when we land in Richmond we will be closer to home. Besides, it could be worse laughing: now that I've calmed down I can say this!!)...I could be stuck on a really early flight, but with this new one, I can still spend part of my Mother's Day in one of the parks before we leave.

And I have definitely not ruled out the 'I told you so' to DH if the layover in Atlanta doesn't go well

 

[AKL LOVER]

And on mother's day? That is not okay! Doesn't Delta know that you're seeing Mickey and have important ADRs?

I could hear myself now....

"Excuse me, but you do realize that day is Mother's day right?? And we are at Disney. I want to see Mickey. I want to ride Dumbo. And ADR's...what about my ADR's????

...they probably would have thought I was crazy and given me a refund just so I wouldn't end up on one of their flights!!

Maybe I should have tried that approach. At least it would have been more fun!

 

[Lifelong_Dreamer]

Well, at least you got somebody helpful the second time around.

Are you getting driven to and from the airport? Or won't your car still be in DC if that is where you are departing from?

 

[AKL LOVER]

Well, at least you got somebody helpful the second time around.

Are you getting driven to and from the airport? Or won't your car still be in DC if that is where you are departing from?

When I found the alternate flights that I liked better coming into a different airport, I called my FIL and asked him if he would be willing to drop us off and pick us up. He was nice enough to say yes. This also saves us almost $100 in parking fees at the airport, so it's extra great!

 

[bcnorth]

I think your sign would go over well at the resort, most Disers would be able to easily recognize you and say hello, my sign will say "Back Off, get your own Domes!!!!!"

I'm thinking my sign may get more glares then yours!!!

 

[AKL LOVER]

Last I left off (before I got side tracked by my Delta Rant) I had posted my ADR's. Once I had actually listed out and booked all my ADR's the thing that jumps out at me is that I have WAY TOO many ADR's for the regular dining plan. Can't decide if that's a good thing or a bad thing...


For our trips in the past we have done the DxDP and found it to be a great value for us. 2 reasons why:


1. Our kids like 3 square meals a day, so just doing a big breakfast and dinner doesn't cut it for our kiddos. They also enjoy a hot breakfast most mornings, even when we are at home!

2. Since we're on vacation, DH and I like to eat at some of the signature restaurants and sometimes do a dinner show (things we might not normally do at home...), so having the extra credits worked well for us.


This was especially true for us since DS was under 3 for all of our previous trips and the extra food at each meal on the DxDP was more than enough for me plus him! Now that he is over 3 and we will be paying for him on the DP, when we booked our trip I just booked the regular DP for us.



So after I see that our ADR's exceed our credits, I realize that I have some tough decisions to make. Here are my options:


1) Cut out some of our ADR's This is sad, because of course we have some favorites that we want to do as well as some new places we want to try...how do you decide???

2) Keep all of our same ADR's but pay OOP for some. This is not appealing to me because IMO it almost defeats the point of having the DP in the first place...I like prepaying for food ahead of time. Also, we are not as big on counter service meals, so I'm afraid that those meal credits wouldn't get used from the regular DP. If I had to choose, I'd rather do a TS than a CS.

3) Keep all of our same ADR's and down grade our room from CL to just a regular Savannah view. The money we save, will allow us to upgrade to the DxDP



So I think and think about this for a couple of weeks...DH doesn't want to bump down (I have my suspicions that he's looking forward to the beer in the lounge ) but says it's up to me (boy do I love him! ) Finally I decide that as much as I want to stay CL, the extra $$ just isn't worth it. I mean, I've made all of my ADR's myself so IPO didn't have to. I'm not worried about turn-down service or bathrobes in our room at night. And, I just didn't think that the extra $$ we paid for the room would equal out the snacks or tasty beverages we would consume in the lounge (although DH sure was going to take a shot at it...) We'd be better off paying for the tasty beverages OOP as we wanted them and we would get extra snacks to use with the DxDP. So there you go, decision made! Option 3 it is...


With these arguments in mind, I get on the phone to (regrettably) change my room ressie...little did I know what was in store...


Until next time--

 

[Lifelong_Dreamer]

Your reasoning sounds logical to me. I am nervous to find out what happened when you called!

 

[bcnorth]

I am anxious to hear waht you decided, I just started pricing out dinner and lunch with snacks and it was like OMG!!!!!! I can't believe that dinner just about every night will cost us $80-100 for three people, starting to think that my Sunrise Safari and CL may have to be compromised to take on DDP for all of us. They have Zebra Domes down in Mara right?!?

I have some time so going back to what I do best, cost out yet another option of this vacation while my husband roles his eyes at me, good thing he works away from home and doesn't see the endless scapes of paper on the floor and the guide books scattered everywhere..........Not to mention the time spent on these boards everyday, my son now thinks I work on the internet.....

 

[AKL LOVER]

So I just realized the other day that my ticker officially says less than 4 months!! WooHoo!! So excited


But back to business--I have a lot to do and slowly but surely my time is ticking away.

I left off with the fact that I had decided to downgrade from club level so we could upgrade to the DxDP. We just had so many ADR's and I didn't want to give any up...bring on the food

Now I had originially booked my trip with a PIN that I received back in October. It was 35% off Deluxe and I was thrilled that it also applied to a CL room. *SIGH* but that was back in October and this is now, so I'm sticking with my decision to downgrade! There--now that I've said it, I must do it!

I call and get a really nice CM and explain what I'd like to do. So the CM looks to see if there are any Savannah view rooms available for my dates that my PIN will apply to and there are. Thank goodness for that. So he's looking at making the changes and get this........



.........




.........are you ready?? are you sitting down??




....because I couldn't believe it myself.......





............and it's a good thing I was sitting down myself while I was talking to him because if not I would have fallen on the floor........




It was $20 more to downgrade from CL to a Savannah view. I was like, WWHHHAATT?? I seriously had to ask him to repeat what he said. But my confusion quickly went to

That's right--you heard it here first!! Disney was paying me $20 to upgrade to CL. I really had to contain myself from screeching so I didn't wake up the kids (who were in bed). My DH thought I was having a fit of some sort. I kept telling the CM thank you thank you thank over and over again, like he was soley responsible for this! I was just over the moon excited!! Now I know that I'm not getting any sort of special deal or upgrade here, but it sure does feel like a free upgrade to me and that's all that counts! Finally I was able to calm down enough that the CM was able to explain that I was actually receiving a 40% discount with my PIN because I booked CL, so that's how the 35% discount on a regular room ended up being $20 more. Believe me, I am not going to complain!

So now this leaves me to decide if I want to keep regular dining or upgrade to deluxe without taking into consideration what type of room we booked. And I'm still deciding this...I go back and forth on the topic daily...


....so obviously the logical conclusion to help myself decide was to ask the opinons of other DISers!! I'd like to hear all of your suggestions on the topic based on the ADR's I've planned...See the handy dandy chapter links in my first post to take a peek at them again...

Anyone? Anyone??

 

[hurleysweety]

Woohoo! Disney PAID you!

Upgrade DP? That's a tough choice! By going down to a Savannah room you expected that $$ to then go to your upgrade of DxDP. Kind of a bittersweet thing. Sweet because you know you'll stay CL now...but also confusing about all those wonderful ADRs that you've booked.

This is coming from someone who has only used the DP once, and will not be using it at all on our next trip (just works for us). If we had the time, money, and the kids, we'd probably do DxDP sometime too. Just seems like sooo much fun to me!

You've mentioned that you would choose CS over TS, so I don't know how many CS credits you'll actually end up using. In my breakdown of Disney math, we also had to try and make sure we were getting a good value on our CS in order to justify the daily cost of the DP. I think we had to make it at least $14-16/pp/per CS credit. Sometimes that meant ordering something you weren't too fond of...and I was not a fan.

Also, using 2 TS credits on the regular DP just seems silly to me. We've never done signature dining because of this (looking forward to our first sig dining on our next trip!). And I know, from other reviews, how special those sig dining places can be - very hard to give up, or pay OOP for!

So tough decision - my vote is to upgrade and find a way to save elsewhere. If you don't, I have a feeling you'll be paying a lot OOP, and not feel good about that at all.

 

[bcnorth]

We are doing Jiko, Sci-Fi and Yak & Yeti also, I have never been to WDW so everything you have going on looks great. We are doing a couple of character meals, Donald's Safari breakfast and Mickey's Backyard BBQ, since we have a DS we are also doing the Pirates League and thinking about a Pirate cruise for him one morning.

 

[AKL LOVER]

Woohoo! Disney PAID you!

Upgrade DP? That's a tough choice! By going down to a Savannah room you expected that $$ to then go to your upgrade of DxDP. Kind of a bittersweet thing. Sweet because you know you'll stay CL now...but also confusing about all those wonderful ADRs that you've booked.

This is coming from someone who has only used the DP once, and will not be using it at all on our next trip (just works for us). If we had the time, money, and the kids, we'd probably do DxDP sometime too. Just seems like sooo much fun to me!

You've mentioned that you would choose CS over TS, so I don't know how many CS credits you'll actually end up using. In my breakdown of Disney math, we also had to try and make sure we were getting a good value on our CS in order to justify the daily cost of the DP. I think we had to make it at least $14-16/pp/per CS credit. Sometimes that meant ordering something you weren't too fond of...and I was not a fan.

Also, using 2 TS credits on the regular DP just seems silly to me. We've never done signature dining because of this (looking forward to our first sig dining on our next trip!). And I know, from other reviews, how special those sig dining places can be - very hard to give up, or pay OOP for!

So tough decision - my vote is to upgrade and find a way to save elsewhere. If you don't, I have a feeling you'll be paying a lot OOP, and not feel good about that at all.

I am totally leaning towards the DxDP again. Thanks for the vote in that direction--it makes me feel better! I actually went onto allears and priced out what we would probably order at each meal if we paid OOP. I did not factor in dessert for any meal. I did however add apps at some of the meals. I came out just about dead even with the cost of the DxDP. But wait--this bit of Disney math also did not include any snacks at all or the refillable mug costs! So I figure by the time I added all that in, I would be saving, so that's good enough for me! We really love the snack credits on the DxDP. These are super important to my kids--they don't always eat a whole lot at meals and then need yummy snacks later on!

We are doing Jiko, Sci-Fi and Yak & Yeti also, I have never been to WDW so everything you have going on looks great. We are doing a couple of character meals, Donald's Safari breakfast and Mickey's Backyard BBQ, since we have a DS we are also doing the Pirates League and thinking about a Pirate cruise for him one morning.

You will LOVE the Tusker house breakfast--my kids adore it. The jungle juice (or whatever they call it) they serve at this meal is amazing! We've never done Mickey's BBQ. We've done Hoop Dee Doo before and really loved that. I like that the adults get tasty beverages with the dinner shows and that gratuity is already included!



Thank you ladies for sticking with me and still reading!! I love the ideas