Need advice from travel saavy west coasters!

[karebear1]

We are moving to Oregon in the late summer. early fall and we're planning a trip to WDW in the winter. Here's my question. What time do you make your flight arrangements for to get to Orlando? I know there are late night flights from Portland to where we live now- they leave Portland at 10:30pm and arrive Detroit at 6:00am, so I would imagine they'd have something similar to that for Orlando also??? Checking online all I've seen are early afternoon flights to go to Orlando, not arriving there until 9-10pm or later. That seems so late, and it'll kill me to be there and not be able to do something disney when we get there. What have been your experiences and the pros/cons of those experiences? No kids to worry about here, we will be empty nesters in September! thanks everyone!!

 

[Meriweather]

Well, I don't know about Portalnd. We leave from Seattle.
Always catch the flight that leaves around the midnight time frame. One stop over. Arrives in Orlando in the 11:00 am area.
Plenty of time to do something before we collapse , but I won't give up a day for just traveling either and this works for us.

 

[JenniBarra]

For my February trip, we took a red eye (around 10PM) with a connecting flight at 6AM East Coast time. I am prone to motion sickness, so I took the kind of Dramamine that makes you sleepy and we basically tried to get in as much sleep as we could on the plane. Once in Orlando, we were able to check in early, so we had the option of napping then if we wanted to, but we wanted to get to the parks. We ended up having most of the afternoon at Epcot, but we didn't stay until park closing because we were, by then, tired and jet lagged.

 

[WDW2002]

Wouldn't call me "Savy" but I am looking into a flight from SFO (san francisco) to MCO (orlando) that leaves at 11:30pm and arrives at 10:40am. Even if we left at 6:30 we would get there until late afternoon.

Not to mention for us we would have to leave home at 1:30AM to make that flight (with 2 1/2 - 3 hour drive and the 1 1/2 - 2 hours prior you need to be there). The late night ("red eye") flights just make more sense for us.

 

[Dana_Buckley]

I can never sleep on the plane ( and we have a 2yr old), so I would probably take the earliest flight & stay the first night at the hotel at the airport, then go to WDW first thing in the morning.
Our first trip was this June, but we went to Daytona Beach first, and got to our hotel around 9pm. We could have gone earlier, but it would have been a 7am flight (and gotten us into Daytona 6pm), so we would have had to get up around 4am, and I didn't want to start our vacation that way. DH gets grumpy!
You know best how you can manage, if you do take a red-eye, try Tylenol PM to help sleep a little, without a full sleeping pill.
Have a wonderful vacation!

 

[KJMAX1]

We always leave for the East Coast on red eyes to avoid any jet lag. That is if you can sleep on a plane......my husband cannot sleep on a plane but I can, and frankly Id rather him be cranky then me. He's like a kid though and is always too excited to rest once there.

However, this flight we are taking is a daytime flight and that is because we were able to pay 85.00 each way! Sooooo......off we go for a whole day on a plane. yuck!

 

[nwdisgal]

I can't sleep on the plane, so I'm the get up with the roosters type and hit the first am flight (~ 6:30 am). That will get you in to Orlando about 5:00 pm. I did try leaving later this last time - a 1:00 pm flight and that sucked. We ended up getting in close to midnight in Orlando, then being on West Coast time couldn't get to sleep once we were in, and there was nothing to do. If you can hack it, I'd either do a red eye, or an early flight. The good news is... you gain time coming back (more time to spend at WDW).

 

[all4fun]

Hi Karebear1,
we live in Vancouver, WA, just on the other side of the Columbia River from Portland. We've been going to WDW almost every year since 1996 and have yet to find a red-eye flight from PDX. We usually take a 6AM (Pacific time) flight and with the time change and layovers we are usually landing in Orlando at about 4PM (ET). If you can find a red-eye out of Portland let us know! We would actually like to try that.

Since most of the day is over by the time we get there, we usually just plan on getting settled into our hotel, buying some groceries (we are DVC members as well) for our stay and maybe going out to eat somewhere in the evening at some point. We get rested up from a day of travel so that we can hit the parks bright and early the next morning!

We have also been able to find late afternoon/evening flights for our departure back to Portland, arriving at PDX at about 11pm (PT), that way we can maximize our stay and actually visit a park or do something on the day we fly home.

Hope this helps!
~Cheryl

 

[Otisp]

I'll agree with all4fun. On our last trip, we flew out from SoCal (Ontario) at 6am and got into Orlando at 3:50pm. We stayed in a cheap motel ($29) offsite the first night just to relax and be ready to "attack" the parks early the next morning (ALWAYS go early to the parks). During our mid-day break we checked into our onsite Resort (Dolphin).

 

[juju]

We fly United and take the early flight out of Seattle too. 6am and gets in around 3:45pm. We are DVC too and since we usually have difficulty checking in any earlier than 4pm, it is too grueling for us to take the red eye and arrive early in the AM and not be able to go to our room to unpack and cleanup. Luckily we have APs so we still have quite a bit of time to visit the parks (usually Epcot) that same day. My sister just took a flight to Orlando last weekend that left around 1:15 am and arrived at MCO around 8:30 am on NW.

 

[tink2dw]

We dropped the car off at a hotel with security that cost $40. for 15 days at 4:30am. Then they shuttled us to PDX airport[portland airport]at 5:00am, so we could be ready to board our Continental flight at 6:10am, with a stop over in St Louis [no plane change altho you do need to leave the plane!]arriving at MCO at
4:53 PM.

Hope this helps!!

 

[karebear1]

thanks everyone for your responses. I was hoping to take a red eye, but it sounds as though there are really only early morning flights from that area. I guess I'll just have to look REAL hard to try to find something to do, in WDW, after 4:00pm!!! Who knows.... maybe we'll end up on the same flight as some of you!

 

[slstorey]

DH & I fly out of PDX (Portland, OR). Its been about 4 years since we took a red-eye flight due to NW & Continential being morning/early afternoon departures only and that is who we have our miles with. Usually a 8-9 hr. flight.

Went to travelocity and looked up a sample flight. It looks like AA, Alaska, AW, United among others have red-eye flights.

For better deals, we usually book about 100 days in advance. Around then is when the prices drop by 1/2.

Let me know if you have any questions about OR. It's a wonderful place to live.

 

[tink2dw]

We went to Epcots Illiminations that first night. Another great place to go is FW to the Campfire,they have s'mores[$4.00] or bring your own fixing,and watch the movie!!

 

[tammyh-oregon]

American Airlines has a 11:55 PM flight out connecting in Dallas. You get into Orlando I believe sometime around 10 am or so. We did this Sept 2001 and it was great.

We are scheduled on this same flight for our trip in Nov. The only bummer for us is the connecting flight into Portland from Pendleton..a 6 hour layover..UGH!

That American airlines flight is hard to find online. You have to play around sometimes with the date and time in order for it to show up but it is there.

Don't know about any other airlines through to Orlando.

Welcome to Oregon.

 

[all4fun]

We finally found one that will work for us.

We booked a Delta flight that leaves PDX at 9:45pm on Friday evening. It stops in Atlanta and then gets us to MCO at 7:39 Saturday Morning.

Our trip is right after Thanksgiving, but the flight info should be the same:

Flight # 1576 PDX to ATL

Flight # 329 ATL to MCO

Hope this helps!

 

[karebear1]

Thanks all4fun- that is handy info!
tammyh- UGH!!!!!!!!!!!! a 6 hour layover- I'd be going nuts!!

 

[tammyh-oregon]

Actually that six hours won't be so bad as long as they still have lockers at the airport. We are thinking about taking the MAX train into town for dinner instead of eating at the airport. Yuck!

Luckily there is only an hour layover on the way back but we have to leave Orlando at 6 am and that means getting up around 2 or 3 am to get to the airport. Yuck!

But we get to sleep on the plane and be ready to have an extra half day at WDW instead of wasting a day flying across the country. Yeah!

 

[karebear1]

Tammyh that's a great idea about taking the max into portland to have dinner! Ya know, that stops at the Lloyd Center- they have a Disney Store there if you need to fill your time. It's a nice mall- give ya something else to do !

 

[all4fun]

Tammyh

I was at PDX in June.

The lockers are still there, so you will be able to make use of them.

I don't know if you like German food, but a new restaurant named Gustav's has opened up at PDX. I haven't eaten at this one, but there are two others in the Portland area that are very good.

If you want to take max to Lloyd center, it's pretty easy from the airport. I looked up these basic instructions at www.trimet.org:

- Board MAX RED LINE TO CITY CENTER.
- Get off at Lloyd Center/11th MAX Station

Walk 0.1 mile north to Lloyd Center (NE MULTNOMAH ST & NE 11TH AVE)

Travel time: 25 minutes (including 3 minutes walking).

If you plan to eat at Lloyd center, you may want to consider Stanford's located near Nordstrom at the mall. It's yummy!