Save $ on flight, this tip may help.

[NvrBnToWDW]

I've been waiting for flights to go down for months and last weekend they went up! A flight for the 4 of us is now over $1000 roundtrip! But when entering the date and time of a flight search I checked off "anytime of day" and Bingo! The 6:40 a.m. flights were only $210 each! A total of $843 (including taxes and fees) for the 4 of us. I wasted no time in booking this flight. We'll have to get up extra early, but it's worth saving almost $200 which we could use for dining or souvenirs. I thought this tip might help anyone that's been searching for cheaper airfare.

 

[Sherri]

We have a 7:00am flight booked. I like this for many reasons. If it all works out then we seem to have a whole first day to get settled in vs a half day. Or its early enough that if the flight is overbooked we can give up our seats for a later flight and get airline tickets for a future trip return for our flexibility.

 

[aka-mad4themouse]

We had a 6:30am flight out of PHL last July. We arrived at MCO at 9am and we got to the Peabody on I-drive by 9:30, where we were delighted to find that a room was already available for us! Lucky me!

DH & DD immediately sacked out, leaving me and DS to stare longingly at our park tickets for the day. By the time that those two sackrats finally woke up, it was dinner time! Lesson learned: No more early morning flights for me if I have to drag those two characters along. It only makes for a wasted (and very frustrating) day. For our next trip, the flight gets us into MCO at 10:30pm.

 

[Sherri]

We are leaving out of Phl. I always count the first day as a day to hang out at the hotel or to do some shopping outside of Disney.
It is nice to hear that your room was ready when you arrived.
Where did you stay?

 

[Cheshire Figment]

One thing to look at is a hotel at your airport (unless you live very close). When I lived in Virginia if I was taking an early morning flight I would stay at a hotel on or very near the airport at a special price that included parking in the hotel's lot for up to two weeks. This way I was there and already parked. I would take the hotel's shuttle to the terminal. When we got back, the shuttle would, upon request, drop us (and luggage) right at the car.

 

[Sherri]

You mean you can stay one night at the airport hotel and park there for the entire week for free?
I would have thought that you would need to move your car when you check out the morning of your flight.
It might be worth it for us to do that since parking will be close to $100.00 for the week. But then again, thats one more night away from our cats which is hard enough.
We live an hour from the airport.

 

[calie_j]

You mean you can stay one night at the airport hotel and park there for the entire week for free?
I would have thought that you would need to move your car when you check out the morning of your flight.
It might be worth it for us to do that since parking will be close to $100.00 for the week. But then again, thats one more night away from our cats which is hard enough.
We live an hour from the airport.

We always do this since we're 3-4 hours from the bigger airports that have cheap flights so we can save @ $100 per ticket. You want to find a hotel that offers "park and fly". We've never paid over $100 for our park and fly night and in Chicago it was very cheap at $60. It's so convenient too not having to deal with driving yourself early in the morning or dealing with traffic and trying to find where you're going, and not dealing with paying the high cost for airport parking and lugging all your stuff from the parking ramp to the airport. You simply get up in the morning and take the hotel's shuttle with an experienced driver who knows his way around and drops you off right in front of the terminal you need to check into. When you get back just call the hotel # they give you to request a pick-up.

 

[Cheshire Figment]

You mean you can stay one night at the airport hotel and park there for the entire week for free?
I would have thought that you would need to move your car when you check out the morning of your flight.
It might be worth it for us to do that since parking will be close to $100.00 for the week. But then again, thats one more night away from our cats which is hard enough.
We live an hour from the airport.

I used to live about 30 minutes from Dulles International Airport.

The Marriott on the airport grounds had a "Stay and Fly" program that was usually less than $100 per room. They would allow you to park up to two weeks. They would give you a special card to put on the dashboard.

A couple of times I could not get a very good price from the Marriott so we stayed at another nearby hotel which also had a S&F program.

I real good thing about this method is you do not have to worry about any traffic or car problems on the way to your flight.

BTW, when we would go we would tell the cats to take charge of the house; their response, of course, was "who was normally in charge anyway"?

 

[Sherri]

Thanks so much for the info. I'm going to check out the hotels near the airport. Thats a typical cat response (lol). They must know they are incharge when they sleep in the middle of the bed and we sleep around them.

 

[pozey]

NvrBnToWDW,

May I ask which airline you are flying and which site did you book on?

Thanks.

 

[1MegMeg]

Another great thing to remember - airline tickets are usually cheapest on Wednesday mornings (supposedly that is when the airlines are changing their prices).

We are going in St. Louis in May and for at least the past month I have been waiting for ticket prices to drop. Wednesday morning I checked a few different site and the tickets were down to $200 (from $250). Then it was actually later that same day that I read the tidbit about tickets being the cheapest on Wednesday mornings.

Yesterday morning and this morning I searched for flights to St. Louis (same parameters used) and sure enough, they are back up to around $250.

So check flight prices on Wednesday mornings.

 

[pozey]

I just noticed that Southwest's reservations now show travel through August 3rd. Up until today, it went only went to June 6th.

I have been looking for flights in June and flights have been in the 350 per person range. Now, I have a flight on Delta for just over 200!!

 

[ncbyrne]

We fly out of Newark International. I checked on hotels and the only one that allows 8 days of parking is $143. It would be cheaper for us to take a cab from home!

 

[Sherri]

I checked from Phl. The hotel park and stay allows up to 7 nights and I found a place for as low as $70.00.
It seems to good to pass up with such an early flight out.