The Incredible Shrinking Family Vacation in Summer

[insoin]

OMG How could I have gone so long w/o posting. Heck this will be the never finished PTR soon. I leave in 8 days. I will be posting tonight and this weekend. I promise!

 

[heath-and-javens-mom]

I am HERE NOW!!
Looks like you are leaving VERY Soon....hope you have a wonderful trip and I cant wait to read the TR!!!

 

[insoin]

Flight Reservations

Wow I guess I am a horrible PTR person. I have gone months without updating. I kept waiting for my 45 day mark to hit because as I stated earlier, my brother has a bad habbit of backing out of things. So I was waiting for then to see if he really would go. But that is another post.

I had some time to kill here at work so I thought I should post the next grand set of events that happened. Don't tell the boss ok

So we are trying to figure out how to get down to WDW. I have gotten used to flying places for work, and I admit it, I’m a bit spoiled and I think my time flying is worth the cost I pay over the cost savings I have if I drove. Plus it gets me down to Orlando a lot faster. Two hours flying time vs. 14 hours driving! That means more time at WDW.

So I told the family that I would fly down and be more than happy to meet up with them all when they get down there, and they could either fly or drive, doesn’t matter to me. I can understand why they would want to consider driving, it has a lot of advantages and the drive down would be fun, but that LONG drive home, not for me.

So I go ahead and book my airline tickets months in advance, well before everything that has been going on with the airlines as we have today. I just hope that for some strange reason my flights do not get changed this close to vacation.

I booked non-stop flights there and back and I leave it up to everyone else if they want to fly, I gave them my flight numbers and said get on this one if you can.

William decides they will drive down, they simply don’t want to spend all the money it would cost a family of four to fly. I say that is fine as long as you are there by 5:00 on the 14th to check in and meet up for the HDDR diner show we have at 7:30.

Now Marla and her family is a bit harder to pin down what they are gonna do. She would like to fly but they have to consider the cost of a family of 4 flying, and they would also like to get a rental van so that her family and Amie’s family can all drive down together. They checked into the price of renting a van for this. And they figured by the time they did that, and the cost of gas, it would be expensive to do. Add to that the fact that Amie can’t really afford an extra day for SWW, they don’t want to leave early. So it is decided that Marla and her family would go ahead and fly down with me, and Amie and her family would drive down by themselves.

Yippee all is set. They are able to get on the same flights I have so even better that we will all be arriving/departing at the same time.

 

[insoin]

The Ever Changing Airline Flight Issues

Well, as time progressed, I kept checking my flights because my good friend Nic works for Delta. He said he would bid on the flights so that he may be on the same one. I have this issue of worrying way to much about stuff.

So I keep checking the flight online and one day I look and it has changed!!!!! I was like what the heck, so I look at the details, and its got a layover, oh great. The layover is in Cincinnati, just up the road from me here in Louisville. But the flight time changed from 7 AM to 6 AM for an hour layover in Cincinnati. Just to fly back over Louisville on the way down. Grrrr I am not a happy camper about this. I did check and made sure that Marla and her family were still on the same flights, and yes they are, so that is not gonna be an issue.

Well I keep checking every so often online to see if they add a non-stop flight back into the system. Did I mention how much I hate having a layover? Well sure enough one day they had added some back in. So thinking that Delta would do the right thing and put me back on the non-stop, I check my reservation online. NOPE! So I call Delta and ask them why they didn’t do that, the response is that they simply don’t move people off one flight to another unless they have to. I stated that since it is the exact same flight that Delta canceled on me, then why wouldn’t they put me back on it?

Anyways I was able to get them to change me back to the non-stop along with everyone else. And they did not charge us anything to move the flights because we had booked that to begin with. So that did make me happy.

On a side note, I really hope that with everything going on with the airlines right now, that nothing changes here in the next week. I have really been worried, but not nearly as I am for my September trip!

 

[insoin]

The Jaden Dilemma

OK so at this point in planning we are about 57 days out from the trip. I have called my brother and reminded him that he has to pay his trip off in full. He is telling me that his work is having work issues still and they may go on strike. Since both he and his wife work at the same company, that means they could both be on strike at the same time. So they are not sure if they are going yet. I tell them they have to cancel by 45 days out if they are going or they are gonna get penalized and not get a full refund.

My sister and Amie came over for a visit that day for some reason. And then Amie goes ahead and tells me that she can’t go either. They simply can’t afford it because Pleas got hurt and is off work. Bummer that she wont be going because they were not cutting Jaden’s hair so he would be able to have his first haircut at the barbershop on Main Street. My sister has the bright idea that she would still like to take him but we can’t because of the flights and he is not on them. Well I proceed to open my big mouth and say oh since he is a baby he can sit in your lap no problem.

We then proceed to call Delta and try to have him added. Since we do not have Marla’s reservation number, we have to add Jaden to me. No worries he will sit with his Granny on the trip, not me for sure!

Well a couple of days later I check online for my reservation, and WHAM, I’m not listed anymore. I proceed to call Delta and ask them what is going on now. They said that since I now have an infant in my lap, I cant sit at a window seat. However since there are no seats on the plane that are not reserved then I am booked for the flight, I am just not guaranteed the flight. So I then go through a process of about an hour getting him switched off my reservation and over to Marla’s. It was not easy, but I got a very good person on the Delta end of the phone and they helped me a lot. So now I have my guaranteed seat back, and Jaden is with his Granny!

A couple more days go by and I’m talking to James, my brother-in-law. I asked him if he is happy that Jaden is going. I get the look of don’t ask me that. Needless to say this is his first time going to WDW. He really didn’t want a 15 month old to watch after for the entire trip. So I call Marla and I try to state how hard it will be on them to have Jaden. It is finally determined that since his parents are not going, then we would never get a break form him, and that may not be the best thing for a trip.

So after all the flight mess with figuring out where he was gonna sit, we take him off and tell his parents, sorry but we don’t want to watch a baby that long, in that heat, with no breaks from him. It was gonna be different with the parents going because we would then watch him to give them a break, but not constantly.