GrandCalifornian
Can't Wait To Go Back
- Joined
- Mar 16, 2012
Contents:
TOC, Introduction and Background (This Post)
ADR Day!
MDE + Premier APs (Part 1 of ?)
Pass update (2 of ?) and a Minnie Dress
Pass Update (Part 3 of 3, we think) and other Randomness
Magic Bands (Round 1)
A Dining Addition
Allie's Birthday Plans
Double Digits!
Anniversary DLR Day
Fast Pass + Schedule and other random updates
PIF Day!
Sewing Update: Baloo Dress
Stroller Makeover
Final Schedule Tweaks
Magic Bands (Round 2)
Decorating Magic Bands Part 1
Disneyland Half Marathon
Decorating Magic Bands Part 2
Sewing Update: Elsa Dress
Packing Up and Partying
20 Hours to go!
Introduction and Background:
This is a Pre Trip Report for our upcoming trip, which will be September 13-22nd. As we have in our other trip reports, Paul will write his portions in Blue and Melissa in Orange. We'll start with the background on how this trip came to be:
When we left off, on the last day of our 2013 trip we decided to go ahead and call to take advantage of the bounce back offer, just in case we got to go back in 2014. For only a $200 deposit, we had the chance to lock in free dining for 2014.
We booked at WL again for 10 days but decided to schedule the trip later than we had been gone in the last two years so we could be in WDW for Allie's birthday.
Once we told my parents that we booked the return trip, but were unsure we would keep it, they said that if we went they again wanted to go with us. They had a great time with us in 2012 and enjoyed hearing daily updates during our 2013 trip.
Financially it was going to be a huge stretch for us to make the trip for the third year in a row.
After we got home we headed to DLR on 9/30 for dinner. When we entered California Adventure our passes were denied. It wasn't really a big deal the manager CM came over and took down our pass numbers and said they had to manually enter them in the CA system because we had bought them in FL. On a trip in November we pulled into the parking garage and the parking guy said that our pass was scanning expired despite the expiration date printed on the pass being ok so he let us have our free parking but said to visit guest services on the way in to check on things.
So we stopped by to see what was up. At the window, the CM was as confused as we were as to why the pass showed expired in the computer but had expiration dates of next September printed on them.
So he called a supervisor over showed her the problem and got authorization to fix it. Because the CA and FL systems aren't linked the first use on the pass he saw was Sept. 30 so instead of resetting the expiration to Sept. 6th or 7th whichever it was originally he set it to Sept.30th for all of our trouble (which really wasn't much). This was amazing of him and meant that we'd have passes for the entire 2014 WDW trip!
We thanked him profusely and talked the entire night about how this made the trip to WDW even closer to happening.
So with our tickets valid for the whole month, this meant we could reduce the cost of another Florida trip. We knew we had to buy park tickets to keep our free dining, but by reducing them to the minimum number of days we could save money, and those tickets won't be used this year anyway. We called Disney one night to find out what the minimum number of park ticket days for the promotion was, and the CM on the phone had to check with another department, but they figured out that we could reduce the number of ticket days to two, and that by not using those tickets we could apply their value to a future ticket purchase. The CMs were super helpful, and appreciated that we wanted to have free dining while taking advantage of our APs. We successfully reduced our outstanding balance by a few hundred dollars.
While on the phone we also asked about possibly switching resorts. We were told no problem, and if we went with a Value resort we could pay the difference to upgrade to the regular dining plan. For us and our trip, this would be $371, which would provide material for further resort cost cutting option discussion.
To figure out a minimum cost option, I started pricing packages at Pop Century. We liked Pop when we ate there on our 2012 trip, and knew that it would have its benefits. The biggest negative to us was the bed size, but we still did some number crunching.
Looking at the value option I thought that AoA had a lot of plusses for us traveling with Allie that Pop didn't, namely the theming. I thought Allie would really enjoy the Little Mermaid theming and the pool and playground are great. It however had the same bed size drawback as Pop and we were guaranteed a long walk to and from the bus stop and lobby from the Little Mermaid section.
With the small price difference between Pop and AoA, we got excited at the prospect of maybe staying there. We knew we still preferred WL, but there would be some fun things at AoA for Allie. The nagging drawback however, was the walk to the little mermaid rooms. We looked at the maps, and measured with Google earth and convinced ourselves we could handle the walk. We had concerns though about my parents. They were glad to hear that the buildings had elevators, but we were all concerned about the walk to the bus and food court. So, we were back to sticking with WL.
So fast forward to February. Our ADR dates are fast approaching and airfare opens up.
We found that we could get nonrefundable tickets for $870 total, which was a great deal for three of us flying cross country. This really made me want to commit to go, but the total trip cost was still too high. The airline website had a $1000 room only option at Pop that we briefly considered, but that put us in the same Pop -> AoA -> WL loop
We couldn't secure airfare because we had the opportunity to bid on a wedding with our photography business and the wedding date was smack in the middle of the trip that we currently had booked.
If we got the wedding, we could shift to later dates in September. If we didn't, our original dates looked good because we would catch the begining of Epcot's Food and Wine festival for a few days, but not for our whole trip.
So after two weeks of waiting we got the news that the bride decided to go with a different photographer. Needless to say we were both bummed but the silver lining was we could keep the same time frame for our WDW trip...if we decided to keep it. Unfortunately in that two weeks airfare had gone up some, not substantially but when you are trying to shave money off a trip every little bit matters.
So knowing that we wanted to save some money, and wanting to avoid the resort upgrade cycle we had been considering, we decided to look for an option we had been overlooking. We knew that Port Orleans Riverside was our favorite moderate, and was one of the only resorts we had visited on each of our previous WDW trips.
We priced out a nice package at Port Orleans, and found that even with paying the $25 a night extra for a preferred room we could save $866 over our WL package. This was still substantial, almost enough to cover airfare. By going with a preferred room we would have a decent location, with not too long of a walk to the lobby which would be great for my parents. (And us too, since we are so used to running down for mug refills at WL.) We would miss all being under one roof and right on Bay Lake, but trying something new would be fun.
I was beginning to get tired of the limbo of the trip and watching the airfare go up was gut wrenching for me so I had gotten to the point that we needed to book the airfare or cancel the trip.
We called Disney back and made a one day date shift (to get cheaper airfare by not flying home on Sunday) and also made the switch to Port Orleans Riverside.
I was starting to let myself get excited about the trip and after lots of talking about what it would take to get us to Florida in September we decided it was worth it to pull the trigger and book the airfare.
We made our airfare reservations on a Saturday morning, then got on the phone with my parents so they could book theirs too. Now it's official, we are going back to Disney World!
So there, that's what our last 4 months have been like and how we ended up booking at POR Riverside instead of our beloved WL.
Now we will have the usual PTR details to review and post, but we have 185 days to get to that...
TOC, Introduction and Background (This Post)
ADR Day!
MDE + Premier APs (Part 1 of ?)
Pass update (2 of ?) and a Minnie Dress
Pass Update (Part 3 of 3, we think) and other Randomness
Magic Bands (Round 1)
A Dining Addition
Allie's Birthday Plans
Double Digits!
Anniversary DLR Day
Fast Pass + Schedule and other random updates
PIF Day!
Sewing Update: Baloo Dress
Stroller Makeover
Final Schedule Tweaks
Magic Bands (Round 2)
Decorating Magic Bands Part 1
Disneyland Half Marathon
Decorating Magic Bands Part 2
Sewing Update: Elsa Dress
Packing Up and Partying
20 Hours to go!
Introduction and Background:
This is a Pre Trip Report for our upcoming trip, which will be September 13-22nd. As we have in our other trip reports, Paul will write his portions in Blue and Melissa in Orange. We'll start with the background on how this trip came to be:
When we left off, on the last day of our 2013 trip we decided to go ahead and call to take advantage of the bounce back offer, just in case we got to go back in 2014. For only a $200 deposit, we had the chance to lock in free dining for 2014.
We booked at WL again for 10 days but decided to schedule the trip later than we had been gone in the last two years so we could be in WDW for Allie's birthday.
Once we told my parents that we booked the return trip, but were unsure we would keep it, they said that if we went they again wanted to go with us. They had a great time with us in 2012 and enjoyed hearing daily updates during our 2013 trip.
Financially it was going to be a huge stretch for us to make the trip for the third year in a row.
After we got home we headed to DLR on 9/30 for dinner. When we entered California Adventure our passes were denied. It wasn't really a big deal the manager CM came over and took down our pass numbers and said they had to manually enter them in the CA system because we had bought them in FL. On a trip in November we pulled into the parking garage and the parking guy said that our pass was scanning expired despite the expiration date printed on the pass being ok so he let us have our free parking but said to visit guest services on the way in to check on things.
So we stopped by to see what was up. At the window, the CM was as confused as we were as to why the pass showed expired in the computer but had expiration dates of next September printed on them.
So he called a supervisor over showed her the problem and got authorization to fix it. Because the CA and FL systems aren't linked the first use on the pass he saw was Sept. 30 so instead of resetting the expiration to Sept. 6th or 7th whichever it was originally he set it to Sept.30th for all of our trouble (which really wasn't much). This was amazing of him and meant that we'd have passes for the entire 2014 WDW trip!
We thanked him profusely and talked the entire night about how this made the trip to WDW even closer to happening.
So with our tickets valid for the whole month, this meant we could reduce the cost of another Florida trip. We knew we had to buy park tickets to keep our free dining, but by reducing them to the minimum number of days we could save money, and those tickets won't be used this year anyway. We called Disney one night to find out what the minimum number of park ticket days for the promotion was, and the CM on the phone had to check with another department, but they figured out that we could reduce the number of ticket days to two, and that by not using those tickets we could apply their value to a future ticket purchase. The CMs were super helpful, and appreciated that we wanted to have free dining while taking advantage of our APs. We successfully reduced our outstanding balance by a few hundred dollars.
While on the phone we also asked about possibly switching resorts. We were told no problem, and if we went with a Value resort we could pay the difference to upgrade to the regular dining plan. For us and our trip, this would be $371, which would provide material for further resort cost cutting option discussion.
To figure out a minimum cost option, I started pricing packages at Pop Century. We liked Pop when we ate there on our 2012 trip, and knew that it would have its benefits. The biggest negative to us was the bed size, but we still did some number crunching.
Looking at the value option I thought that AoA had a lot of plusses for us traveling with Allie that Pop didn't, namely the theming. I thought Allie would really enjoy the Little Mermaid theming and the pool and playground are great. It however had the same bed size drawback as Pop and we were guaranteed a long walk to and from the bus stop and lobby from the Little Mermaid section.
With the small price difference between Pop and AoA, we got excited at the prospect of maybe staying there. We knew we still preferred WL, but there would be some fun things at AoA for Allie. The nagging drawback however, was the walk to the little mermaid rooms. We looked at the maps, and measured with Google earth and convinced ourselves we could handle the walk. We had concerns though about my parents. They were glad to hear that the buildings had elevators, but we were all concerned about the walk to the bus and food court. So, we were back to sticking with WL.
So fast forward to February. Our ADR dates are fast approaching and airfare opens up.
We found that we could get nonrefundable tickets for $870 total, which was a great deal for three of us flying cross country. This really made me want to commit to go, but the total trip cost was still too high. The airline website had a $1000 room only option at Pop that we briefly considered, but that put us in the same Pop -> AoA -> WL loop
We couldn't secure airfare because we had the opportunity to bid on a wedding with our photography business and the wedding date was smack in the middle of the trip that we currently had booked.
If we got the wedding, we could shift to later dates in September. If we didn't, our original dates looked good because we would catch the begining of Epcot's Food and Wine festival for a few days, but not for our whole trip.
So after two weeks of waiting we got the news that the bride decided to go with a different photographer. Needless to say we were both bummed but the silver lining was we could keep the same time frame for our WDW trip...if we decided to keep it. Unfortunately in that two weeks airfare had gone up some, not substantially but when you are trying to shave money off a trip every little bit matters.
So knowing that we wanted to save some money, and wanting to avoid the resort upgrade cycle we had been considering, we decided to look for an option we had been overlooking. We knew that Port Orleans Riverside was our favorite moderate, and was one of the only resorts we had visited on each of our previous WDW trips.
We priced out a nice package at Port Orleans, and found that even with paying the $25 a night extra for a preferred room we could save $866 over our WL package. This was still substantial, almost enough to cover airfare. By going with a preferred room we would have a decent location, with not too long of a walk to the lobby which would be great for my parents. (And us too, since we are so used to running down for mug refills at WL.) We would miss all being under one roof and right on Bay Lake, but trying something new would be fun.
I was beginning to get tired of the limbo of the trip and watching the airfare go up was gut wrenching for me so I had gotten to the point that we needed to book the airfare or cancel the trip.
We called Disney back and made a one day date shift (to get cheaper airfare by not flying home on Sunday) and also made the switch to Port Orleans Riverside.
I was starting to let myself get excited about the trip and after lots of talking about what it would take to get us to Florida in September we decided it was worth it to pull the trigger and book the airfare.
We made our airfare reservations on a Saturday morning, then got on the phone with my parents so they could book theirs too. Now it's official, we are going back to Disney World!
So there, that's what our last 4 months have been like and how we ended up booking at POR Riverside instead of our beloved WL.
Now we will have the usual PTR details to review and post, but we have 185 days to get to that...
I'm glad that you were able to make it all work out. Getting free dining at a moderate like POR is a pretty good deal. I'm looking forward to reading all about that resort. 
I really enjoyed the food here last year. I'm not a huge buffet fan so it's nice to have a plated character meal on our lineup.
