bababear_50
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Feb 5, 2007
Thanks for your kind words Hon!
Hugs Mel
Hello Disboards!
My name is Rob. My family and I live in Calgary and I am planning our first trip to WDW for the end of next summer. Five of us will be travelling; My wife and I, our two children (7 and 9 at time of travel), and grandma! Ill lay out the potential plans I have so far and then I have a few questions I hope someone will be able to help with.
We intend to fly out the last Saturday, August 25th, stay over labour day weekend, and return on Saturday Sept 8th. We will be flying those days for the following reasons:
-Westjet flies direct on Saturdays
-We have 2 Westjet rewards mastercards and therefor 2 pools of points to draw from as well as two of the 99 dollar companion flights
-All signs point towards those dates being low crowd days
-My kids will only miss the first week of school as opposed to missing 2 weeks later in the year (mid summer crowds are not a thing for us)
With these dates in mind we will have 13 days outside of travel days. We will be buying 10 day park hopper + passes which leaves us with 3 days to fill (or relax).
We intend to stay at the Art of Animation but are more than open to suggestion to other suggestions. The most important features of the hotel for us are sleeping comfort, a decent place to buy breakfast/lunch foods, a decent pool for those off days.
Unless something drastic happens we dont plan to use a travel agent. I will take care of booking our dining reservations and fast pass + as well as the usual travel bookings.
So my questions are (some might seem obvious but I'm asking to reassure)
1. If we book our room and buy our passes as early as possible and a deal comes up (like the 25% off ticket prices deal for Canadians that I just missed) am I able to contact Disney and get the deal? Or would I have to cancel my current reservations or get the tickets refunded and then rebook/repurchase in order to get the discount?
2. I noticed a transportation option in the Disney website menus when making a reservation. Is this simply transportation from hotel to park or is this transportation from the Orlando airport to WDW? What is the best way to get from the airport to the hotel reliably?
3. When I purchase the tickets are the directly entered into the mydisney experience? Perhaps a better way to ask is... is the disney website login and mydisney experience the same thing?
4. I took a look at the chart under the ticket faq but was still confused. How easy is it to add a couple days to the 10 day pass, how expensive (ballpark), and how do I go about doing it?
5. Who makes the best itinerary spreadsheets?
6. Whats everyone's favorite dining experiences? I will be booking asap so I should be able to reserve anywhere. Are the meal and fireworks combos worth while?
Thank you for your time and advice! It probably seems silly to be obsessing 14 months in advance but it keeps me motivated. We traveled to Disneyland last year and made the mistake of telling our kids 8 months before hand. This time we are going to keep it a surprise but I want to make sure I have done everything that I can do to make the trip the best possible experience for everyone!
Hello Disboards!
My name is Rob. My family and I live in Calgary and I am planning our first trip to WDW for the end of next summer. Five of us will be travelling; My wife and I, our two children (7 and 9 at time of travel), and grandma! Ill lay out the potential plans I have so far and then I have a few questions I hope someone will be able to help with.
We intend to fly out the last Saturday, August 25th, stay over labour day weekend, and return on Saturday Sept 8th. We will be flying those days for the following reasons:
-Westjet flies direct on Saturdays
-We have 2 Westjet rewards mastercards and therefor 2 pools of points to draw from as well as two of the 99 dollar companion flights
-All signs point towards those dates being low crowd days
-My kids will only miss the first week of school as opposed to missing 2 weeks later in the year (mid summer crowds are not a thing for us)
With these dates in mind we will have 13 days outside of travel days. We will be buying 10 day park hopper + passes which leaves us with 3 days to fill (or relax).
We intend to stay at the Art of Animation but are more than open to suggestion to other suggestions. The most important features of the hotel for us are sleeping comfort, a decent place to buy breakfast/lunch foods, a decent pool for those off days.
Unless something drastic happens we dont plan to use a travel agent. I will take care of booking our dining reservations and fast pass + as well as the usual travel bookings.
So my questions are (some might seem obvious but I'm asking to reassure)
1. If we book our room and buy our passes as early as possible and a deal comes up (like the 25% off ticket prices deal for Canadians that I just missed) am I able to contact Disney and get the deal? Or would I have to cancel my current reservations or get the tickets refunded and then rebook/repurchase in order to get the discount?
2. I noticed a transportation option in the Disney website menus when making a reservation. Is this simply transportation from hotel to park or is this transportation from the Orlando airport to WDW? What is the best way to get from the airport to the hotel reliably?
3. When I purchase the tickets are the directly entered into the mydisney experience? Perhaps a better way to ask is... is the disney website login and mydisney experience the same thing?
4. I took a look at the chart under the ticket faq but was still confused. How easy is it to add a couple days to the 10 day pass, how expensive (ballpark), and how do I go about doing it?
5. Who makes the best itinerary spreadsheets?
6. Whats everyone's favorite dining experiences? I will be booking asap so I should be able to reserve anywhere. Are the meal and fireworks combos worth while?
Thank you for your time and advice! It probably seems silly to be obsessing 14 months in advance but it keeps me motivated. We traveled to Disneyland last year and made the mistake of telling our kids 8 months before hand. This time we are going to keep it a surprise but I want to make sure I have done everything that I can do to make the trip the best possible experience for everyone!
Love BC! We had a fireworks view from our room and didn't know it until our last night when we happened to be in our room packing Be sure to put in a room request on your res for a full balcony. The water parks are awesome! You won't have any trouble filling free time.Pretty damn excited right now!
Just booked the family and I in for the Beach Club Resort for 2 weeks at the end of august and start of September for 2018. Got the 10 day passes with park hopper and waterparks! Did I mention I am excited? We are hoping they offer the free dining for this period too later on that we can jump on. Looks like its been offered for this time since at least 2014. Fingers crossed.
Thank you all for your help in this thread and especially to Mel for the awesome coupons! Next big days are February 27 for ADR followed by June 26th for Fastpass+ Im going to drive myself crazy waiting.
Rob
CL is addicting lol maybe if you ditch DxDdp and book CL instead? Just saying..... personally imo DxDdp is ALOT of food. If you did 1 signature and 1 regular TS a day, that's taking a lot of time out of park time. When we stay CL we never get a DDP, we book a late lunch ADR at whatever restaurant we want and the rest enjoy the eats in the CL. Good breakfast spread, and in the evening lots of appies, wine, beer(American water) lol, then there's desserts and cordials. Eating a late lunch, we find the appies are enough to satisfy us.Ill try to keep this thread updated, unless I start up a pre-trip report thread at some point.
I have been hard at it with research. Not fun at all planning a Disney trip right?!? (sarcasm) I had a budget sit down with DG and I've been working 60+ hour weeks so we will have a bit more to work with than we thought. We booked our 2 weeks at the beach club during the tradition free dining period. We intend to upgrade to the DxDp! I created a thread in the dining plan forum regarding ADRs. I am going to try to get us into around 8 signature dining experiences. Everything from Yachtsmen to Hoop Dee Doo!
The thread really drove home the fact that I should be taking advantage of the park hoppers and deluxe park location. So we are going to split our days between a far park (ak and mk) and a near park (epcot and dhs).
@TJLLWDW1 We looked at the cabins. I had seen it suggested to rent a golf cart while there because it is very spread out. I was very much considering this an option (and including the cart rental as part of the per night stay). The reason we ended up doing Beach Club, besides the increased budget we saw, was the upgrade from free QS DDP to regular DDP. That $1000 dollar savings would be used up in upgrading to this plan. That being said, I think I may consider a cabin for the trip after this one as I would like to bring my older step children. It would than have to be either cabins or dvc.
Question for any other Alberta people - How are the steaks at Yachtsman? I rarely order steak (no pun intended) when out for dinner abroad because our steak is so killer back home on my BBQ. I hope Yachtsman can blow my mind.
In fact, since my brain is in ADR mode currently, here is my list of signatures we will hopefully be enjoying: Yachtsman, Tiffins, California Grill, Hollywood Brown Derby, Jiko, BOATHOUSE, Monsieur Paul, Hoop Dee Doo, Artist Point, Flying Fish, Cinderella Castle
Which means we will not be eating at: Citricos, Narcoosee, Le Cellier, the Spirit of Aloha, Paddlefish, or Morimoto. (not including non dining plan restaurants)
Would you guys swap out any of those? Maybe Morimoto of Paddlefish over Boathouse on our Disney springs day? I have a day at Ohana, would you swap in a signature instead? If you had to do a lunch at a signature, which would you do?
@sue I am on the guest list for the beach club thread! That thread is dangerous, makes me want to stay at club level... hmmmm maybe if I sell one of the kids??