Premium Plan for One Night Just for the Tours, LaNouba, etc.??

[equinoxman]

Check out my ticker. Thats when we do our 1 day premium.

 

[MinnieVanMom]

Next question:
With the dining is it 3 meals per person or does it have to be a breakfast, Lunch and dinner?

I want to do two signature dinners but can't if we only have one night right?

I did call back and asked if we get a planner and she didn't know what I was talking about. Neither did I. We are booked at AKL for one nite on the platinum but I could really use help with the booking of tours, etc. Do we get a planner? Can we use the club level lounge at AK? I have read that at AK we can but wanted to make sure.

 

[MinnieVanMom]

I really did read all 70 pages. I now understand it is 3 meals, any meals at any time.

I am trying now to figure out how to do both segway at FW and tours. We want to do the personal watercraft and parasail. I want to do the scuba tour. I think DH and I are going to divide and conquer. For now I am just going to work on a spreadsheet and see what we can do.

 

[gibbersome]

2. Can we book for free dining and upgrade the either the P or P plan?

I don't think you can (my travel agent said no discounts on the Platinum plan). Moreover, it might actually end up costing you more since the free dining requires 3-night minimum stay. The best value for the Premium and Platinum is when you stay for one night and enjoy two days worth of benefits! One member here mentioned getting a 15% discount on their room part of the package by booking through AAA.

 

[HaleyB]

I am happy to share my numbers if it helps anyone.

We go in Feb.

We are staying at AKL on the Club Level. I may have been able to save some $ on the plan night by booking the lowest category room and crossing my fingers that we'd be assigned the CL room any way, but it was not worth the risk of switching rooms for me. Plus it means CL staff can handle the check in/out process for us while we sip on our morning coffee. Sweet.

For the nights before the Platinum Plan our room only rate w/AP discount is $279 including tax.

Our night on the Platinum Plan, 2 adults, same room is $933 including tax.

Room only following the plan, with the GP discount code previous to the current one is $316 including tax, that is a weekend night.

So the real cost for us to do the plan (upgrade cost + extra $ for room due to no discount) is $654 or $327 a person.

We are eating at V&A twice
Fit in the massages
Doing the Aqua seas tour
Doing the Epcot Segway tour
Parasailing x2 (both days)
La Nouba
Would need to look up my records to remember what meal #3 is...
And we will get the Photopass CD
Might do the Photoshoot, DH hates having pictures done so we shall see (also depends on how my diet goes between now and then).
I might be forgetting something.

And we will each have a 1 day ticket towards next year's trip.

I think a conservative estimate was we were getting $800 in value each. And more than $327 in things we would have done anyway (just at a slower pace), plus a couple of things off my DW bucket list

We are in no way maximizing the possibilities of the plan. I tried to balance my 'go get 'em' Disney style with my husband's 'it is a vacation' Disney style. We are not getting up super early either day. We also could have gone with the least expensive room, which would have saved us $115 plus tax.

BTW, AKL is not the best choice for doing this plan, but we love it there.

HTH

I will post a review when we get back!

 

[MinnieVanMom]

I had accidentally booked the 25th, not the 26th and when we went to fix it we found no availability at AKL so we are FWL. I think it will work better as we need to be at GF for our cruise and dinner, segway at FW and few tours in Epcot and MK. Perhaps God watches over his foolish children after all.

I have to figure out touring and plans now but somethings are set like Cirque on Sat and cruise on Sunday since that is our only days.

Wish me luck!

 

[MinnieVanMom]

Is it possible to do the 4 park, 7 hour tour and still make the 5:30 Dive Quest tour?

Then have dinner and make Cirque?

 

[gibbersome]

Is it possible to do the 4 park, 7 hour tour and still make the 5:30 Dive Quest tour?

Then have dinner and make Cirque?

I'm not sure about doing DiveQuest after the Backstage Magic so I'll leave that up to more experienced members. The bigger problem is getting dinner squeezed in between Divequest and Cirque. If you did the 5:30 tour, it won't end till around 8:30 (it's 3 hours long) and making it to Cirque, let alone dinner would be hard.

There's a Mousesaver's link about doing the Platinum/Premium plan that was extremely helpful for our own planning: http://www.mousesavers.com/onenightplatinum.html

 

[MinnieVanMom]

I'm not sure about doing DiveQuest after the Backstage Magic so I'll leave that up to more experienced members. The bigger problem is getting dinner squeezed in between Divequest and Cirque. If you did the 5:30 tour, it won't end till around 8:30 (it's 3 hours long) and making it to Cirque, let alone dinner would be hard.

There's a Mousesaver's link about doing the Platinum/Premium plan that was extremely helpful for our own planning: http://www.mousesavers.com/onenightplatinum.html

We now have come up with plan...umm....k, l, m....

I will go to divequest at 4:30, the rest of the family will go and play but eat dinner at Coral Reef so I can wave to them. I will be out by 6:30, most likely 6 and then grab a quick snack or left overs from family dinner. Then we go to room, change and go downtown for Cirque.

 

[Bete]

Is it possible to do the 4 park, 7 hour tour and still make the 5:30 Dive Quest tour?

Then have dinner and make Cirque?

to leave whereever if you have a time conflict. Missing a little bit of the first tour is not going to be terrible. Call and find out if Epcot is the last stop on the first tour; it would be convenient if it was the last park on the tour. The tours are probably up to 15 minutes late if there are late arrivals for it and slow touring going on. If you have to transfer parks to get to Dive Quest in Epcot then I would allow at least an hour for that situation. I would not eat dinner before doing Dive Quest; that's looking for trouble with a belly ache. I would allow at least 15 minutes for waiting to be seated and an hour for dinner and more if it's a popular place. I would have dinner reservations either at Epcot near Dive Quest (preferably in Future World near the Living Seas, ei: Coral Reef) or Downtown Disney before Cirque. You don't want to add another destination to the mix. Depending on how you go to Downtown Disney (car or bus) will dictate how long it will take to get there. There's some walking to get to the theater, too. I would say that's going to be at least an hour commute to be on the safe side. I've always felt the Downtown Disney buses don't run as often. I think it would be better by car; I know there's valet and that may help you with parking there.

You are doing a lot of hopping with this day and you lose a lot of time doing it. You may want to take another tour in Epcot instead like Undiscovered Future World or the World Showcase tour with Dive Quest. You would be in the same park. You might even squeeze in a nap or a late morning if you tweak it some.

I still feel the best advice is to leave the tour if you are running late.

 

[Bete]

I'm not sure about doing DiveQuest after the Backstage Magic so I'll leave that up to more experienced members. The bigger problem is getting dinner squeezed in between Divequest and Cirque. If you did the 5:30 tour, it won't end till around 8:30 (it's 3 hours long) and making it to Cirque, let alone dinner would be hard.

There's a Mousesaver's link about doing the Platinum/Premium plan that was extremely helpful for our own planning: http://www.mousesavers.com/onenightplatinum.html

There's a lot of knowledge and experience put into that link.

 

[PureTcrazy]

Sorry, deleted! I wasn't paying attention to how I replied!

 

[weHEARTmickey]

Well, we are back from our trip & we stayed 1 night premium. We played golf, rode horses, parasailed, saw Cirque du Soleil, had portrait session, rode sea racers, & ate at WGP, Fulton's & Hoop Dee Doo. We LOVED the premium portion of our trip, although we had SO much trouble with different CMs not knowing what to do/how to charge for the services. We spent probably 2 hours (of our 1night premium stay) explaining to different CMs how it worked/ waiting on a "runner" to run our Cirque vouchers to the ticket booth/ on the phone with a recreation specialist who had to explain to our resort how we should've gotten boating vouchers, etc....... Other than Disney CMs not knowing enough about the plan, it was great!

 

[MinnieVanMom]

That link was really very very good and gave us ideas of what works.

Because we are doing this on a weekend, we don't get the 4 park tour so we are doing the behind the magic in MK. It looks something like this: SAT
Breakfast
Tour MK lunch included
Water sports, parasail, ski, wakeboard
4:00 pm - I leave for DiveQuest while rest of family goes back to room and cleans up.
DS goes to child care center, DH and DD go to signature dining. They have car.
I leave a bit early from Dive Quest, go back to room and clean up, snack on left overs.
DH and DD take car to DTD and get tickets for Cirque. I meet them and we see show.

SUN:
Breakfast at CR
Personal Watercraft Tour 10:00
FW segway
Lunch - the Wave?
More water fun ski/wakeboard OR is there an afternoon tour we can do?
Photoshoot Poly
3:30 Massage
5:00 V&A dinner
7PM Fireworks Cruise

Is it possible to make it to Epcot for Illuminations?

How does that plan look? We do have a car and we are staying close to the things we want to do.

 

[gibbersome]

That link was really very very good and gave us ideas of what works.

Because we are doing this on a weekend, we don't get the 4 park tour so we are doing the behind the magic in MK. It looks something like this: SAT
Breakfast
Tour MK lunch included
Water sports, parasail, ski, wakeboard
4:00 pm - I leave for DiveQuest while rest of family goes back to room and cleans up.
DS goes to child care center, DH and DD go to signature dining. They have car.
I leave a bit early from Dive Quest, go back to room and clean up, snack on left overs.
DH and DD take car to DTD and get tickets for Cirque. I meet them and we see show.

SUN:
Breakfast at CR
Personal Watercraft Tour 10:00
FW segway
Lunch - the Wave?
More water fun ski/wakeboard OR is there an afternoon tour we can do?
Photoshoot Poly
3:30 Massage
5:00 V&A dinner
7PM Fireworks Cruise

Is it possible to make it to Epcot for Illuminations?

How does that plan look? We do have a car and we are staying close to the things we want to do.

Is this plan for Dec 25th and 26th 2010?

 

[Disbug1]

Is this plan for Dec 25th and 26th 2010?

Don't think that you can use the Platinum plan on Dec 25th for Victoria & Albert's Not sure i would only allow 2 hrs to dine at Victoria & Alberts Dine there at 5 & then Firework cruise at 7 bit rushed is it not?

 

[MinnieVanMom]

March 26 and March 27. Got it all booked.

 

[gibbersome]

March 26 and March 27. Got it all booked.

Great! The IPO office is usually very good about letting you know if your plan won't work. But what you've got looks really good.

We're doing our own plan at the beginning of Jan, will post a review to let everyone know how it turned out!

 

[MEK]

I don't think you can (my travel agent said no discounts on the Platinum plan). Moreover, it might actually end up costing you more since the free dining requires 3-night minimum stay. The best value for the Premium and Platinum is when you stay for one night and enjoy two days worth of benefits! One member here mentioned getting a 15% discount on their room part of the package by booking through AAA.

This is true. I booked the premium for one night at a value for November 28, 2011. My total was $611 and change. So I did save 15% of the room rate. It honestly wasn't much more to book a moderate resort for the night, but we still have to book the night before and after the package, so that all adds up. Plus, the way I want to use the premium plan brings new meaning to the saying, "We won't be in the room much".

However, if the room rates for mods are killer low next year then I will rebook the one night package at a mod.

I should mention that I plan to stay 3 nights at a value for the purpose of cramming in the premium package, then I am moving to a 3 night DVC stay to relax!

This thread has been really helpful in my planning, so THANKS!

 

[TDC Nala]

2. Can we book for free dining and upgrade the either the P or P plan?

No. You can upgrade to one of the higher level Disney Dining Plans, but Premium and Platinum are not Disney Dining Plans. They're a different program.

It's also true that free dining requires a 3 night minimum.