Florida flowers and Caribbean cruising LIVE TRIP REPORT COMPLETED 3/8 - Page 16 - PassPorter - A Community of Walt Disney World, Disneyland, Disney Cruise Line, and General Travel Forums
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Pre-trip report – part twelve: we were supposed to book those two days ago?
Sunday 4 January
I saw on the boards that they had opened up bookings for the IllumiNations sparkling dessert party for January and February. Now I’m a bit on the fence about this, but I figured I’d have a look to see what dates were showing up. Well, I went on to the Disney World website, and nothing was showing up for either month. Apparently, I wasn’t alone, as someone else posted that they had a similar issue, and they’d tried calling Disney, and the Cast Member they spoke to knew nothing about it either. Ok, so I guess I won’t be doing this, at least not yet anyway….
On the subject of dining, I did something I’d been planning to do for some time, and that was to work out whether it’s worth getting Tables in Wonderland for this trip. I was conscious that for a couple of days, we’re on the Dining Plan, so we wouldn’t be making any savings on food for that portion of the trip, although I do appreciate that there is the potential for saving on drinks.
I put together a table, using the prices in my trusty PassPorter as a basis, then working out what the saving would be with Tables in Wonderland. I checked to see which restaurants had a DVC discount, and actually it was surprisingly few of them, but where DVC Members get 10% off, I then only calculated a 10% extra saving on top of that. By the time I’d finished, the total saving worked out to $242, and the card only costs $100 for DVC Members, so that sounded good to me.
Even better, we’d get valet parking at a number of different resorts when we were dining there, so I think I’ll be purchasing Tables in Wonderland before we head out, as it seems to make financial sense.
Tuesday 6 January
I heard from Maci this morning, and she won’t be on a solo trip any longer, as she’s got a friend joining her, so I need to change some of our ADRs. However, I wasn’t 100% sure which ones, so I messaged her to ask her…
Wednesday 7 January
A message was waiting for me from Maci this morning, and I tell you what, I so should’ve just gone ahead and made the ADR changes that I thought were needed last night. Have I mentioned recently that I really hate the Disney website? This morning, when I tried to make the changes, the site kept telling me it couldn’t recognise my login details. I know it’s the site, and not me, so there’s nothing I can do right now.
Finally, when I got back from work, I was able to log into the Disney website and get all the changes made. I knew it wouldn’t be an issue to go from three to four people, and so it proved. I was able to snag tables at the same time as I’d had for the three of us.
Thursday 8 January
I was looking in my diary at work for something, and I realised with horror that there was a note for two days ago, reminding me that I needed to book our seats on our flight home. Oops… Of course, as soon as I got home, you can guess what I did? I was expecting there to be no choice by this stage, but we seriously lucked out, as there were loads of choices. The seats we’d been allocated were on the upper deck, which usually we tend to prefer, but this time, we found some seats we liked the look of on the lower deck, so we swapped to those instead. Phew – crisis averted!
I also took the opportunity to change the times slightly for our Fastpass+ for our final full day, Friday 6 March. With all the changing around I’d done to our dinner time, it had crept up a bit, and now we wouldn’t have time to visit the Epcot character spot, so something needed to be done about that, and a couple of minutes later, it was!
Friday 9 January
I was very excited to read on the boards this morning that Remy will be doing new tastings, but sadly the information on the Disney Parks blog didn’t give us much to go on. When will they become available, in time for our cruise? How much will they cost? I’m interested at this stage, but no more than that until I know more about it. Hopefully Disney will reveal more soon…
Saturday 10 January
This morning, there was an email in my inbox from the Disney Cruise Line called “some helpful information for your cruise”, and it was interesting to read. It talked first about pirate night, setting out what happens during the evening, which is good for first timer cruisers. Then it goes on to talk about celebrations, and what you can get delivered to your stateroom, before talking about formal attire. That may seem strange, given we’re only on a four night cruise, but essentially this section says that there’s no formal night, but reminds people of the dress code for Palo and Remy, which is helpful. It finishes off by looking at air and ground transportation, neither of which concern us, given we’ll have a rental car, but again useful, and not something I remember receiving for previous cruises.
I also printed out some reading material for our flight out, as it’s nine and a half hours long, and while later in the trip, I have trip report to write, on the way out, you don’t, so I need to keep occupied. I saw Carolyn (silvercat) had posted her trip report all in one go, and it sounds like an amazing trip, so I can’t wait to enjoy it on the plane. It runs to a total of 69 A4 pages, so it’ll certainly keep me occupied.
Sunday 11 January
It was while reading an update to Maci’s pre-trip report, where she mentioned checking in online at 60 days out, that I suddenly realised we could do the same. I went to the DVC Member website, not realising it would eventually take me back to the Walt Disney World website, but could I get into the darned thing? Of course I couldn’t! I’d sometimes be able to log in, then not be able to get to our reservations, then on other occasions, I wouldn’t even be able to log in. I gave up in the end!
Monday 12 January
Well, I managed to get into the Walt Disney World website today to do online check-in, and I thought it was all going smoothly, until I realised that every time I was modifying the check-in of one of our later stays, it was defaulting back to our first stay at the Treehouse Villas at Saratoga Springs. After finding this out about five times I gave up for the night. Well, I guess at least the first night is done anyway…
I made a very pleasant discovery while doing the online check-in as well. The Magic Kingdom now opens for Extra Magic Hours at 7:00am on our first full day there, not 8:00am. This is great news for us, because we’re usually hideously jetlagged and awake at some appalling early hour. I don’t think I’ve ever slept past about 4:30am, let’s just put it that way. At least now we can get up, check out of the Treehouse Villas, drive over to Bay Lake Tower, check in there, and then hopefully get to the Magic Kingdom for 7:00am. Result!
I also had more good news, as I heard from Sharon (PrincessSharon). Now I knew that when we started to plan this trip, she was looking at visiting Disney at the same time as us, but I’d heard nothing from her in months, so I had no idea whether she’d still be coming or not. I hoped so, and ironically I’d made a mental note to contact her this coming weekend to ask. Well, obviously we were on the same wavelength with that. No promises, but she’s asked for our dates, and plans, which I’ve given her, so fingers crossed it’ll all work out, as we’d love to see her again.
Tuesday 13 January
I’ve managed to get online check-in done for our stays at Bay Lake Tower, and Animal Kingdom Lodge now, but it looks as if you’ve got to log out and back in to do separate resort check-ins, which is a bit bizarre. Trust Disney not to make it easy with their website.
At work, I rang a company that specialises in cell phones for America, as to cut a very long story short, our Tracfone that we’ve had for years, has vanished. Because it hasn’t been used in over a year, it means we’ve lost the number, as you have to make a call at least once every 365 days, so I want to look at other options. I found a company online, but it all seemed too good to be true, so I wanted to check it out. I called them, and it was exactly what I thought.
You buy the phone, and that’s it, then you get your American number, so at least I can let friends have it before we travel, which is the problem I’ve had with other sites I’ve looked at, as with them, you only get the number when you arrive Stateside. You then pay for texts, calls etc., and the charges are reasonable, so as soon as we move on to the next credit card month (oddly this one has been a bit of a pricey one ) then I’ll order that, and that will be something else sorted.
Next: improving our fitness by visiting my friends…
I also printed out some reading material for our flight out, as it’s nine and a half hours long, and while later in the trip, I have trip report to write, on the way out, you don’t, so I need to keep occupied. I saw Carolyn (silvercat) had posted her trip report all in one go, and it sounds like an amazing trip, so I can’t wait to enjoy it on the plane. It runs to a total of 69 A4 pages, so it’ll certainly keep me occupied.
YIKES!! 69 pages?? It's no wonder it took me a week to write the blooming thing!! And not a photo in sight, either .....
Interested in the American phone thing .... Who are the company? Only my little AT&T GoPhone drove me nuts last year. Like you, because I hadn't used it in 365 days, the SIM card expired and it took me till nearly the end of the holiday to find a new one for it; this also meant the number changed AGAIN. I was thinking of getting a Tesco pay-as-you-go one for this year, but would like to investigate your option ......
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I feel like I'm repeating myself, but their website can be so frustrating! I'm glad you got it all sorted out, but it really shouldn't be that difficult! (I know I'm repeating myself!)
Glad you still got good seats for your flight home despite missing the date for those!
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YIKES!! 69 pages?? It's no wonder it took me a week to write the blooming thing!! And not a photo in sight, either .....
Probably just as well, as my printer wouldn't have reacted well to photos...
Quote:
Interested in the American phone thing .... Who are the company? Only my little AT&T GoPhone drove me nuts last year. Like you, because I hadn't used it in 365 days, the SIM card expired and it took me till nearly the end of the holiday to find a new one for it; this also meant the number changed AGAIN. I was thinking of getting a Tesco pay-as-you-go one for this year, but would like to investigate your option ......
It's Mobell. They started out renting out phones, but moved into selling them - that's what they told me when I called them to query something. It's not cheap in terms of calls (incoming and outgoing are 25p per minute and same price for voicemail retrieval) or texts (12p incoming and outgoing), so that's a factor - we won't be having long conversations with anyone, but if we're say running up £5 a day over two weeks, that's only £70. Bearing in mind that the phone cost us £180 (we got the Samsung Galaxy one), but with Tracfone, we'd have been paying a minimum of $99 per year, I think it will work out cheaper in the long term.
I feel like I'm repeating myself, but their website can be so frustrating! I'm glad you got it all sorted out, but it really shouldn't be that difficult! (I know I'm repeating myself!)
I'm glad it's not just me, because I feel like I'm repeating myself with my experiences with the website too.
Quote:
Glad you still got good seats for your flight home despite missing the date for those!
That was such a relief, given we had a nightmare over that on our last trip.
That's great that you are able to get a phone for your travels.... Do you and Mark each get one or just share?
we only have the one. Mark's UK phone should hopefully work abroad, although I'm not sure about this trip, as he's changed provider. As for my UK phone, don't ask! It's supposed to have been set up to work across Europe on three separate occasions and it's never worked, so I doubt it will work in the States!
Wouldn't it be nice if cell phones just all worked anywhere, without the hassle of setting them up for a different country or having to buy a different one!
Wouldn't it be nice if cell phones just all worked anywhere, without the hassle of setting them up for a different country or having to buy a different one!
The thing is, technically they do, but it's the charges that are the problem. We now have a deal in the EU that phone charges are capped, but of course that doesn't apply in America and I dread to think how much it would cost us to regularly use our UK cell phones in the US...
Pre-trip report – part thirteen: improving our fitness by visiting my friends…
Thursday 15 January
Today is the first chance I’ve had to read this week’s All Ears Newsletter, and in it, I found this, which is interesting:
Beginning January 17 and continuing through March 21, Disney's Hollywood Studios will host an exclusive preview of the live-a_ction film Cinderella (due in theaters on March 13, 2015) at the ABC Sound Studio. The preview will start on the half-hour, from 10 a.m. until 30 minutes before park closing. Annual Passholders can get an early sneak preview on January 16 by showing a valid pass and photo ID at the ABC Sound Studio from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.. You'll also get a complimentary magnet (while supplies last). The original golden coach used in the film will be outside the movie theater facade on Streets of America from February 1 - April 11. 2015.
I’ve made a note of it in our itinerary for the day we’re at the Studios. Whether we’ll do it or not, I don’t know, as we’ve only got one day there, but at least with it in the itinerary, I won’t forget about it.
The newsletter also gave me a bit more information about those new tastings at Remy, and they won’t be cheap. They’re $50 per person. I don’t think, at that price, it’s something we’ll be doing, as that’s double the price of a dinner at Palo! As for the truffle menu, the price of that is $250 per person! Excuse me while I pick myself back off the floor at the shock of that one…
I finally managed to do online check-in as well for the remaining reservation, the final part of our stay at the Beach Club Villas, so we are now finally set with that.
I got home to a message from Sharon (PrincessSharon) and she is joining us. She’ll be on a short break right at the end of our time in Disney, but some time is always better than none at all. I’ve already managed to add her to a couple of our dining reservations, and she now has our Fastpass+ reservation details, so hopefully she’ll be able to snag some that match ours.
Friday 16 January
Well, we fly out five weeks today! Not long to go now…and heck, it’s about time I checked the extended weather forecast out, now that Accuweather has a much more extended forecast than they did a couple of years ago. So what did I see for the first few days of our vacation? Pretty much sunshine the whole way through, with just a day of showers, and temperatures all at either 77 or 78 degrees. Talk about constant! If it stays that way, then I’ll be very happy…
Saturday 17 January
Mark pointed this out to me today from Deb Wills on Twitter. I guess by the time we get there, the hat will be a dim and distant memory. I can’t say I’m bothered either way. I did prefer the park before the hat went up, although I did grow to like the thing.
Sunday 18 January
I had a look today at the Memory Maker photo package, and had to post a question on the boards, as I couldn’t quite believe what I was seeing. It’s $169 (discounted price – you save $30 by booking in advance), and that’s exactly the same price as the PhotoPass CD. As far as I could see, it’s a no-brainer to get the Memory Maker package, as it adds in photos from some meals, and rides, and even if it’s only one or two (which it would be for us), then it’s got to be worth it. Sure enough, that’s what people on the boards confirmed. We’d be able to get photos from Chef Mickey’s and ‘Ohana breakfast, and from the Seven Dwarves Mine Train, and Test Track, so that’s better than nothing. I’m guessing that Disney will eventually phase out the PhotoPass CD, as why on earth would anyone buy it, given you pay the same and can get more with Memory Maker?
Today, we also started on our bid to get fit ahead of Disney. We drove out to Cobham Woods, a National Trust property, as we’d seen it featured in our National Trust magazine, and they’d been explaining how they’d introduced Highland cows here. Well, there was a good reason to visit, and improve our fitness levels in the process. When we got there, we parked up, and headed along a concrete path for a while. As you can see, it was a beautiful day:
We had quite a walk, I’d estimate easily a mile if not more, and the further along we went, the more muddier it became, to the point where we were eventually trying to pick out the least muddy path. It was worth it though, as eventually look what we found!
Just to give you an idea of how far away they really were, here’s a shot of them with no zoom:
After watching these beautiful beasts for a while, we carried on, and made our way towards the mausoleum here:
We then made our way back, and had some more great sightings of the Highland cows, although I cannot begin to tell you how much trampling through the undergrowth we had to do, through mud and brambles, but I think it was worth it for the shots I got!
It certainly gave us a lot of good exercise, and some cows into the bargain. We’ll try to do more of that over the next few weeks to get us ready for the parks…
Monday 19 January
I saw someone had posted on the boards this morning that they’d managed to get the IllumiNations sparkling dessert party for early March. That was the first I knew that they were booking into March, as previously I understood that they were only booking until the end of February. Well, guess what? No surprises here, I tried for either the Wednesday or the Friday, which seemed to be the only nights it’s on for that first week, and absolutely no joy. Oh well, it’s not the end of the world. It’s a “would be nice to do” rather than an essential thing for us…
Wednesday 21 January
This week’s All Ears newsletter had details in it of the Garden Rock concerts (what used to be the Flower Power concerts). Well, we won’t be bothering with them, as the act for our dates are Gin Blossoms. Never heard of them, so we won’t be doing that. Now had it been early May with Taylor Dayne, I would’ve happily seen her, as she’s got an amazing voice, but it wasn’t meant to be.
Thursday 22 January
Our cruise documents awaited us when we got home! I have to say I was impressed at how far ahead they arrived. Usually, we have our wonderful travel agent Sara looking after us on our cruises, and she always ensures that the package arrives in plenty of time before we leave the UK. Well, I have to say the Disney Vacation Club did a pretty good job too. I guess that means it’s real then – and heck, it must be, as we board a month tomorrow!
So there are the Highland cows living near you! They really are cute, although with their size it seems funny to call them cute.
Gin Blossoms?! Who knew they were still around?! You might like them. They were fairly popular in the US for a time. Do you know the song Hey Jealousy? That's them. They were a late 80's band.
Catching up while on our very long drive to FL. I think you will be really happy with the TiW card. Happy the phone worked out and I love the cow pics! Your trip is almost here. See you next week!
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Apparently, I wasn’t alone, as someone else posted that they had a similar issue, and they’d tried calling Disney, and the Cast Member they spoke to knew nothing about it either. Ok, so I guess I won’t be doing this, at least not yet anyway…. 
Have I mentioned recently that I really hate the Disney website? 
This morning, when I tried to make the changes, the site kept telling me it couldn’t recognise my login details. I know it’s the site, and not me, so there’s nothing I can do right now. 
Of course, as soon as I got home, you can guess what I did? I was expecting there to be no choice by this stage, but we seriously lucked out, as there were loads of choices. The seats we’d been allocated were on the upper deck, which usually we tend to prefer, but this time, we found some seats we liked the look of on the lower deck, so we swapped to those instead. Phew – crisis averted! 
Because it hasn’t been used in over a year, it means we’ve lost the number, as you have to make a call at least once every 365 days, so I want to look at other options. I found a company online, but it all seemed too good to be true, so I wanted to check it out. I called them, and it was exactly what I thought. 
) then I’ll order that, and that will be something else sorted. 
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Pixie Dust
It's no wonder it took me a week to write the blooming thing!! And not a photo in sight, either ..... 
we only have the one. Mark's UK phone should hopefully work abroad, although I'm not sure about this trip, as he's changed provider. As for my UK phone, don't ask! 
It's supposed to have been set up to work across Europe on three separate occasions and it's never worked, so I doubt it will work in the States!
I don’t think, at that price, it’s something we’ll be doing, as that’s double the price of a dinner at Palo! 
Not long to go now…and heck, it’s about time I checked the extended weather forecast out, now that Accuweather has a much more extended forecast than they did a couple of years ago. So what did I see for the first few days of our vacation? Pretty much sunshine the whole way through, with just a day of showers, and temperatures all at either 77 or 78 degrees. Talk about constant! 
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