Rajah
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Aug 17, 1999
Cast:
Rajah/Tammi -- As usual, trip report writer and trip planner
VonDrake/Michael -- Rajah's DH, whose conference is our excuse for the trip this time
Guest Cast:
Art -- our CM friend, pin-fanatic, and all around cool guy
Marsha and Tom -- aka Mackey Mouse and her DH from the DIS
Carol, Jen, and Kristin -- aka CarolAnnK and her daughters from the DIS
"Aaron" -- another solo IOA guest
Dates: Feb 28 through Mar 4, 2001
Destination: WDW, and for Rajah, USF and IOA as well
Name: "Swimsuit edition" -- keep reading to find out why, though one tip: always take your swimsuit, even if you don't think you'll want it
------------------------
Flashback to December 19th, 2000. Michael and I were leaving WDW for the last time in 2000. As we left, we looked back to the World for what we felt would be last time until the next October or November -- not a long time for most people, true, but longer than it had been since we'd been to any Disney park since our Honeymoon in January of 2000.
Time passed, and late January came around. Michael was informed by a coworker that she would like him to co-present a paper he co-wrote at a conference in early March. The location? You guessed it: Orlando. So we looked at vacation time and decided to add a few days on to the trip.
Now came the question: before, or after? Well, two major elements came into play. One, that Michael would be acting as tech staff for the conference in addition to co-presenting the one paper, and the other tech staff who had done this conference before said it was a grueling time, leaving you exhausted by the end of the week. Two, the conference was March 5th through the 10th, with tech staff having to arrive by noon on the 4th to help set up for the conference. The first week of March is pre-Spring Break for most people. After the conference would be in the Spring Break periods. Taking those factors into consideration, we decided tacking a few days on before the conference would be better.
So I began my search for the perfect plan (as I always do). At first, we considered staying off-site this time as we could save a lot of money that way. But the more we looked into it, the less we liked that idea. The first place we looked at was the Holiday Inn International Drive, where the conference would be held. But when we found out where it was, we decided against that option money-saving or no. None of the other off-site hotels or non-Disney hotels (with the exception of the Swan and Dolphin) made any more sense than the on-site hotels, or had poor reviews. So we decided, as this would be a "budget" trip, to look into the All Stars.
We'd decided to fly in Wednesday night, Feb 28th, which left us Thursday, Friday, and Saturday for Disneyworld, and I would go to Universal and Islands of Adventure (since I wanted to see both and Michael wanted to see neither) after dropping him off at the conference hotel and before going home on Sunday.
Our first choice, All Star Movies, was booked for the entire time. But our second, All Star Music, was available. So I requested a non-smoking room in the Jazz section since Michael and I both like Jazz music.
At first, thanks to the help of the wondeful CRO CM Ydania, I booked a combination reservation: one night room-only at Movies, followed by a package deal with length-of-stay passes for Thursday through Sunday. This was Ydania's suggestion and worked wonderfully at first glance. However, at another look this would require we check out Thursday morning then check back in again and only possibly get the same room, and furthermore it would leave us with a pass for Sunday that we wouldn't use and which would go to waste.
So I did some more checking, and heard about the government discount for the Swan and Dolphin. At first, using DreamsRes, I found only $179/night rates for only parts of the trip, but I knew a better rate could be obtained so called the Swan and Dolphin directly. Sure enough, the Government rate was available at the Dolphin at $129/night pre-tax & resort fee for every night except our arrival night. That wasn't even $30 more than our All Stars rooms, for a much nicer room in a much more convenient location. Since Michael works as a staff member and teacher at a state university, and I work for a contractor of NASA which gives me a NASA badge, we figured we'd be eligible for the government rate.
I went ahead and booked Thursday through Sunday at the Dolphin, then canceled that leg (including package) of our All Star Music reservation, but kept the first night at All Star. I checked back several times, but the first night at the Dolphin never opened up at the discount rate, and finally I gave up, deciding I'd rather switch resorts than keep trying.
Now that we no longer had a package booked, we needed tickets. We considered annual passes, but those were a little more expensive than we wanted to pay at the moment and we knew we wouldn't use them again until October or November -- even March was almost too hot for us. So it would be Park Hoppers, and we'd save the Annual Passes for next trip (more I think about it now, the less sense that really honestly makes, but oh well). I contacted my AAA office about discount tickets and found they still had some -- at the old rates before the price hike! Great, I'll be over to get some!
But when I got there, all they had were 5-day passes instead of the 4-day park hoppers I was looking for. After a few moment's thought, I asked about the price of the 5-day Hoppers. At the AAA discount on the old price (they hadn't received their new batch at the new price yet), the 5-day hoppers were only maybe $15 more expensive than the 4-day hoppers at the new price. Since the days don't expire, we decided to go for it.
The Universal ticket for myself was easier to decide on. There really wasn't much of an option. My local AAA office didn't carry Universal tickets, and I didn't really have time for them to order any. So it was either pick them up at the gate where I could get a discount of about $5-10, but would take more time, or order them online. By the time I decided to order them online, the only way that really made sense at the time (but which I won't do again) was to use TicketRES and have the ticket delivered to the hotel. I decided on the two-day Universal ticket since it allowed park hopping and the unused day also never expired, so put in my order and information, then thought nothing more of it until we arrived.
So now we had tickets and hotel reservations. Transportation and dining reservations were all that was left. Dining, as usual, didn't take very long. I got us breakfast at Hollywood & Vine, Donald's Breakfastosaurus, and Cape May Cafe, and dinner at LeCellier (my choice), Citricos (Michael's choice), and Flying Fish (an old favorite). Our only hang-up with meal reservations was trying to decide between Citricos and Narcosees when I found out Citricos had a dress code. It took another call and several questions on the DIS to find out that our park attire -- full-length non-cutoff or holey jeans and a nice T-shirt -- would be okay, so we went with Citricos and I canceled our temporary Narcosees reservation.
Transportation was another thing. Airfare was easy to come by -- we purchased one ticket with Continental for me, leaving on Wed night and returning on Sunday. Then a second ticket for Michael leaving the same day but returning the next Sunday in case he decided to fly back instead of riding back with a coworker. Again, AAA was no use here because of our travel dates.
Then came the biggest decision of this trip: transportation once in Orlando. One option was to go with Tiffany Towncar like we usually do, but that would only get us to All Star Music easily. We'd still have to get from the All Stars to the Dolphin, then from the Dolphin to Holiday Inn International Drive and Universal, then me from Universal to the airport.
So we looked into renting a car. But in most instances, since we were looking at less than a week, the car was fairly expensive. Twice as expensive as Tiffany and a cab, in fact. So we decided to use National since I'm a member of Emerald Aisle through work, and there's a National counter at the Dolphin. We'd rent a car the first day, return it to the Dolphin counter after checking in, then rent again from the Dolphin on the last day and I'd return it to the airport on Sunday. This brought the cost down to about what it would cost to go with Tiffany for all legs, if not a little less expensive.
Enter the DIS, where once more I learn of the best solution to our problem. While the standard Emerald Aisle rate was a little out of our budget, the Disney Club rate was even better. Plus, we found out we could use both the Disney Club rate *and* a one-weekend-day rental free coupon we also had through Disney Club. Those two together brought the rental price down low enough we decided to go for it. So we made a reservation for a full-size car, pick-up on Wed and drop off on Sunday using the Emerald Aisle, the Disney Club rate, and the free-weekend-day coupon. That brought it down to about $150 instead of nearly $225 -- much more affordable.
So finally we were settled with the first night at All Star Music, and the rest of the trip at the Dolphin at the government rate for a standard view. We had our airfare ($230 round trip each), and our 5-day park hopper tickets. Finally, we had our rental car for the entire time -- our first trip where *we* rented a car. The final detail was settled when I asked my parents to drop us off and pick me up at the airport since I didn't feel too comfortable coming in and driving home by myself. Gotta love parents
Then came the usual waiting game, and as always we had to have one scare. We were cleaning off Michael's desk (where we keep the trip receipts and reservation numbers) when we found the confirmation bills for the All Stars packages. Which... we hadn't sent in
!!! We had a brief moment of panic wondering how on earth we'd missed that and would we still have our All Stars reservation for the first night?? I looked at the receipt again as I quickly dialed CRO -- and then breathed a sigh of relief. It didn't *ask* for a deposit to be sent in, instead it said "guaranteed by credit card". THANK YOU YDANIA!! When she made our reservation, she took a card number to guarantee the spot, which most of the CMs in the past *haven't* done. That act saved us from our own stupidity and our first night was still safe. Just in case, I stayed on the phone and confirmed the reservation: no problem, all good. So we were all ready to go.
On to Day 0
-Rajah
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cdrtrisal@aol.com
(Links will return when I find a new place to host the sites)
Rajah/Tammi -- As usual, trip report writer and trip planner
VonDrake/Michael -- Rajah's DH, whose conference is our excuse for the trip this time
Guest Cast:
Art -- our CM friend, pin-fanatic, and all around cool guy
Marsha and Tom -- aka Mackey Mouse and her DH from the DIS
Carol, Jen, and Kristin -- aka CarolAnnK and her daughters from the DIS
"Aaron" -- another solo IOA guest
Dates: Feb 28 through Mar 4, 2001
Destination: WDW, and for Rajah, USF and IOA as well
Name: "Swimsuit edition" -- keep reading to find out why, though one tip: always take your swimsuit, even if you don't think you'll want it
------------------------
Flashback to December 19th, 2000. Michael and I were leaving WDW for the last time in 2000. As we left, we looked back to the World for what we felt would be last time until the next October or November -- not a long time for most people, true, but longer than it had been since we'd been to any Disney park since our Honeymoon in January of 2000.
Time passed, and late January came around. Michael was informed by a coworker that she would like him to co-present a paper he co-wrote at a conference in early March. The location? You guessed it: Orlando. So we looked at vacation time and decided to add a few days on to the trip.
Now came the question: before, or after? Well, two major elements came into play. One, that Michael would be acting as tech staff for the conference in addition to co-presenting the one paper, and the other tech staff who had done this conference before said it was a grueling time, leaving you exhausted by the end of the week. Two, the conference was March 5th through the 10th, with tech staff having to arrive by noon on the 4th to help set up for the conference. The first week of March is pre-Spring Break for most people. After the conference would be in the Spring Break periods. Taking those factors into consideration, we decided tacking a few days on before the conference would be better.
So I began my search for the perfect plan (as I always do). At first, we considered staying off-site this time as we could save a lot of money that way. But the more we looked into it, the less we liked that idea. The first place we looked at was the Holiday Inn International Drive, where the conference would be held. But when we found out where it was, we decided against that option money-saving or no. None of the other off-site hotels or non-Disney hotels (with the exception of the Swan and Dolphin) made any more sense than the on-site hotels, or had poor reviews. So we decided, as this would be a "budget" trip, to look into the All Stars.
We'd decided to fly in Wednesday night, Feb 28th, which left us Thursday, Friday, and Saturday for Disneyworld, and I would go to Universal and Islands of Adventure (since I wanted to see both and Michael wanted to see neither) after dropping him off at the conference hotel and before going home on Sunday.
Our first choice, All Star Movies, was booked for the entire time. But our second, All Star Music, was available. So I requested a non-smoking room in the Jazz section since Michael and I both like Jazz music.
At first, thanks to the help of the wondeful CRO CM Ydania, I booked a combination reservation: one night room-only at Movies, followed by a package deal with length-of-stay passes for Thursday through Sunday. This was Ydania's suggestion and worked wonderfully at first glance. However, at another look this would require we check out Thursday morning then check back in again and only possibly get the same room, and furthermore it would leave us with a pass for Sunday that we wouldn't use and which would go to waste.
So I did some more checking, and heard about the government discount for the Swan and Dolphin. At first, using DreamsRes, I found only $179/night rates for only parts of the trip, but I knew a better rate could be obtained so called the Swan and Dolphin directly. Sure enough, the Government rate was available at the Dolphin at $129/night pre-tax & resort fee for every night except our arrival night. That wasn't even $30 more than our All Stars rooms, for a much nicer room in a much more convenient location. Since Michael works as a staff member and teacher at a state university, and I work for a contractor of NASA which gives me a NASA badge, we figured we'd be eligible for the government rate.
I went ahead and booked Thursday through Sunday at the Dolphin, then canceled that leg (including package) of our All Star Music reservation, but kept the first night at All Star. I checked back several times, but the first night at the Dolphin never opened up at the discount rate, and finally I gave up, deciding I'd rather switch resorts than keep trying.
Now that we no longer had a package booked, we needed tickets. We considered annual passes, but those were a little more expensive than we wanted to pay at the moment and we knew we wouldn't use them again until October or November -- even March was almost too hot for us. So it would be Park Hoppers, and we'd save the Annual Passes for next trip (more I think about it now, the less sense that really honestly makes, but oh well). I contacted my AAA office about discount tickets and found they still had some -- at the old rates before the price hike! Great, I'll be over to get some!
But when I got there, all they had were 5-day passes instead of the 4-day park hoppers I was looking for. After a few moment's thought, I asked about the price of the 5-day Hoppers. At the AAA discount on the old price (they hadn't received their new batch at the new price yet), the 5-day hoppers were only maybe $15 more expensive than the 4-day hoppers at the new price. Since the days don't expire, we decided to go for it.
The Universal ticket for myself was easier to decide on. There really wasn't much of an option. My local AAA office didn't carry Universal tickets, and I didn't really have time for them to order any. So it was either pick them up at the gate where I could get a discount of about $5-10, but would take more time, or order them online. By the time I decided to order them online, the only way that really made sense at the time (but which I won't do again) was to use TicketRES and have the ticket delivered to the hotel. I decided on the two-day Universal ticket since it allowed park hopping and the unused day also never expired, so put in my order and information, then thought nothing more of it until we arrived.
So now we had tickets and hotel reservations. Transportation and dining reservations were all that was left. Dining, as usual, didn't take very long. I got us breakfast at Hollywood & Vine, Donald's Breakfastosaurus, and Cape May Cafe, and dinner at LeCellier (my choice), Citricos (Michael's choice), and Flying Fish (an old favorite). Our only hang-up with meal reservations was trying to decide between Citricos and Narcosees when I found out Citricos had a dress code. It took another call and several questions on the DIS to find out that our park attire -- full-length non-cutoff or holey jeans and a nice T-shirt -- would be okay, so we went with Citricos and I canceled our temporary Narcosees reservation.
Transportation was another thing. Airfare was easy to come by -- we purchased one ticket with Continental for me, leaving on Wed night and returning on Sunday. Then a second ticket for Michael leaving the same day but returning the next Sunday in case he decided to fly back instead of riding back with a coworker. Again, AAA was no use here because of our travel dates.
Then came the biggest decision of this trip: transportation once in Orlando. One option was to go with Tiffany Towncar like we usually do, but that would only get us to All Star Music easily. We'd still have to get from the All Stars to the Dolphin, then from the Dolphin to Holiday Inn International Drive and Universal, then me from Universal to the airport.
So we looked into renting a car. But in most instances, since we were looking at less than a week, the car was fairly expensive. Twice as expensive as Tiffany and a cab, in fact. So we decided to use National since I'm a member of Emerald Aisle through work, and there's a National counter at the Dolphin. We'd rent a car the first day, return it to the Dolphin counter after checking in, then rent again from the Dolphin on the last day and I'd return it to the airport on Sunday. This brought the cost down to about what it would cost to go with Tiffany for all legs, if not a little less expensive.
Enter the DIS, where once more I learn of the best solution to our problem. While the standard Emerald Aisle rate was a little out of our budget, the Disney Club rate was even better. Plus, we found out we could use both the Disney Club rate *and* a one-weekend-day rental free coupon we also had through Disney Club. Those two together brought the rental price down low enough we decided to go for it. So we made a reservation for a full-size car, pick-up on Wed and drop off on Sunday using the Emerald Aisle, the Disney Club rate, and the free-weekend-day coupon. That brought it down to about $150 instead of nearly $225 -- much more affordable.
So finally we were settled with the first night at All Star Music, and the rest of the trip at the Dolphin at the government rate for a standard view. We had our airfare ($230 round trip each), and our 5-day park hopper tickets. Finally, we had our rental car for the entire time -- our first trip where *we* rented a car. The final detail was settled when I asked my parents to drop us off and pick me up at the airport since I didn't feel too comfortable coming in and driving home by myself. Gotta love parents
Then came the usual waiting game, and as always we had to have one scare. We were cleaning off Michael's desk (where we keep the trip receipts and reservation numbers) when we found the confirmation bills for the All Stars packages. Which... we hadn't sent in
!!! We had a brief moment of panic wondering how on earth we'd missed that and would we still have our All Stars reservation for the first night?? I looked at the receipt again as I quickly dialed CRO -- and then breathed a sigh of relief. It didn't *ask* for a deposit to be sent in, instead it said "guaranteed by credit card". THANK YOU YDANIA!! When she made our reservation, she took a card number to guarantee the spot, which most of the CMs in the past *haven't* done. That act saved us from our own stupidity and our first night was still safe. Just in case, I stayed on the phone and confirmed the reservation: no problem, all good. So we were all ready to go.On to Day 0
-Rajah
<table><tr><td width="50%">
</td></tr></table>
cdrtrisal@aol.com
(Links will return when I find a new place to host the sites)
I didn't check the TR board for the last couple of days, so when I just looked now I was surprised and happy!!
