Dreaming of a Disney spring break! THIS SECTION COMPLETED - Page 5 - PassPorter - A Community of Walt Disney World, Disneyland, Disney Cruise Line, and General Travel Forums
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There are other changes as well.
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It's time to move on and move forward.
PassPorter is a small business, and for many years it supported our family. But the world changed, print books took a backseat to the Internet, and for a long time now it has been unable to make ends meet. We've had to find new ways to support our family, which means new careers and less and less time available to devote to our first baby, PassPorter.
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On the return flight, there were only two individual seats left, one downstairs and the other upstairs. Not what I needed to see. I rang Virgin Atlantic and told them what had happened and the guy I spoke to assured me that I’d be able to switch things around when online booking opened 24 hours before the flight. Well, I sure as heck hope so. I don’t relish the idea of not being able to sit next to my husband for a seven plus hour flight home. :
I had a similar experience booking flights for our trip. On one set of flights (I think it's going there) we don't have reserved seats because there weren't 2 together anywhere on the plane.
I called US Air and said: "Um, I'm traveling with my 9 year old daughter, can we get seats together"
the response was "Well, you can buy preferred seats with more legroom for $20 more"
Me: "uh, no, I just want to make sure my 9 year old daughter doesn't sit with a stranger on the flight"
Her: "Well does she have special needs"
Me: "No, but I can assure you that she'll have a panic attack if she's no where near me on the plane and most likely will start crying which will make it real interesting for the people around her"
Her: "Well unless she has special needs I can't talk to you until 24 hours before the flight takes off. Call us back then"
So... for you and Mark that you get to sit together so if you happen to fall asleep on the flight you don't drool on a stranger
I'm so sad we're missing you. Do keep December 2012 free, as I hope to be back at WDW then for my 40th! Maybe we'll see you this side of the pond on one of your travels as well?
I will definitely be around to help you celebrate your 40th! I don't think you've got plans to be in Italy in late May/early June, so it'll have to be 2012 for us. And there's Tokyo in 2013 as well!
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Mickey's so happy to see me back, he can barely contain himself!
I will definitely be around to help you celebrate your 40th! I don't think you've got plans to be in Italy in late May/early June, so it'll have to be 2012 for us. And there's Tokyo in 2013 as well!
Well, you never know about Italy... I'd have to check airfares... we could possibly do it in a day!
Glad 2012 sounds like a goer and that you haven't been put off Tokyo by recent events. to everyone out there.
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Pre-trip report – part four: 180 days out – and time to make some serious plans!
Eventually, the magic day dawned when we could make our ADRs. Wendy had already secured a few by this time that we’d be sharing together with her family:
Cape May Cafe (dinner)
La Hacienda (dinner) – new to us this trip
Crystal Palace (late breakfast – Sean, Sharon and Ciaran would be joining us for this as well)
Ohana (dinner – just Wendy and Heather and Brandon for this one)
Knowing those were ticked off the list was a good start. When I was finally able to get the Disney reservation system to accept me - at first it kept telling me that our reservation was “less than 180 days” at the 180 day mark – then I pretty much scored everything I wanted, almost to the exact time:
Teppan Edo (lunch with Sean, Sharon and Ciaran)
Coral Reef (lunch with Bruce and Marta)
Biergarten (lunch with Sean, Sharon and Ciaran)
Artist Point
Ohana (breakfast with Sean, Sharon and Ciaran)
T-Rex (lunch with Sean, Sharon and Ciaran)
California Grill (with Elaine and Keith)
I did make bookings as well for Boma and ‘Ohana, even though I knew Heather had asked her concierge to do that. I figured that, as my window opened up first, it wouldn’t hurt to get some bookings, just in case, if you know what I mean. The only one I couldn’t score was Le Cellier for dinner for the four of us, which really surprised me. Under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t have batted an eyelid at that one, but with it turning into a signature meal at the beginning of March, I figured demand for dinner there would drop off rapidly. Apparently not. I did start to wonder if they were booking at all beyond the change to signature dining for dinner, as I tried various dates from March onwards and couldn’t get any availability from 4.30pm to 8.30pm, which seemed very odd.
In the meantime, I’d been getting e-mails from our concierge, as we’d be staying there for the last two nights of our visit. I had a day off and one of my jobs for the day was to call them, as I wanted to book us on the Sunrise Safari Breakfast Adventure. I knew this was only available to concierge guests and it was something I was desperate to try. I also knew that it took place on a Sunday and that would be our last day at Disney, so what a way to end our trip if we could get booked in on that. I e-mailed through my request and asked about a credit card to hold the reservation, as that part wasn’t clear in the e-mail I received. I duly got one back, saying that they did indeed need a credit card number to hold it and to call with it, not e-mail.
I tried once and got an answerphone, so left a message, but I wasn’t that comfortable with that, given the difference in time zones between us. I didn’t really want them phoning back late at night when we were in bed! : I tried one more time and finally got through to someone and sorted out the credit card details for the safari with him. All booked in!
Of course, he asked if there was anything else he could do for me. Well, that’s a silly question – of course there is. I then got him to see if there was any availability at Le Cellier and he scored a reservation straightaway. I have no idea what was going on with the online bookings, but at least I knew we were in. I knew this was another one Heather was going to do, but at least we had a back-up plan. I figured I might as well ask about Chef Mickey’s as well, as getting 13 of us in there would be a challenge surely. Again, no problem whatsoever – all easily sorted out.
I e-mailed Heather to let her know what I’d done and said I’d be very happy to cancel my bookings if hers came through, which they did 24 hours later. Still, better safe than sorry. By now we had added the following ADRs into our schedule:
Chef Mickey’s (dinner with Wendy and her family, Heather and Brandon and Sean, Sharon and Ciaran)
Le Cellier (dinner with Heather and Brandon)
‘Ohana (dinner with Heather, Brandon and Wendy)
Boma (dinner with Heather, Brandon, Sean, Sharon and Ciaran)
Something else we’d also decided on was that, at the start of our trip, we’d have a day where the guys (Mark, Sean and Ciaran) went to the Kennedy Space Center, while Sharon and I would have a pampering/shopping day. It worked out well, as I have no interest in going back to the Space Center again and Sharon was delighted to be able to have time to herself and do the shopping for anything they might want, without the guys getting in the way.
Those were as many plans as we could make at that stage, but it’s probably just as well it stopped there, as we were struggling with the latter part of our vacation. We’d be back for a week, but had barely filled in any blanks as far as dining was concerned. It made sense to use this time to go to any other parks, as we had no lunch plans to keep us on Disney property. I know, gasp go off Disney property, but we were toying with the idea of going to SeaWorld and possibly Busch Gardens. Even if we didn’t do that, St. Augustine and Sarasota were both also possible day trips, so I thought we’d keep some time free for that. Let’s face it, this would be the run-up to Easter, one of the busiest times of the year at Disney, so perhaps getting away from the crowds at either another theme park or somewhere else altogether wasn’t such a bad plan....
We got there in the end with our dining plans, with Mark throwing in the odd idea and me finding a few old favourites to go back to and some new places to try out. We ran some of the ideas past Bruce and Marta, who we’d first cruised the Mediterranean with in 2007 and had then seen on all our subsequent visits to Disney World for at least one meal. They came back and said they liked the idea of the meals that we were looking at for the Coral Reef, Sanaa and Boma, so I immediately put their names down for those. Now just to see if we could get the latter two when the ADR booking window opened up...
When we got back, I was hoping to go back and make the various changes to our dining plans that we needed to do, as we were still holding two reservations between us all for ‘Ohana, Chef Mickey’s and Boma, which didn’t seem fair, and I needed to add Bruce and Marta to the Coral Reef booking. It’s probably just as well that I checked out PassPorter before anything else, as otherwise I think I’d have been climbing the wall, like various posters already had done, at getting the message that I had no dining reservations. Ok, so I guess the upgrade to the Disney system didn’t go too well then, echoed by the fact that it would be taken down again the next week. I figured I’d just go back and change those whenever I could finally find the reservations in the system.
In the meantime, as I had done regularly ever since we were waitlisted for Bay Lake Tower for those two nights, I logged into the DVC member website, not even expecting to be able to get in there, never mind bring up our vacation details. I guess that part of the upgrade went through then... I clicked on to “our vacation details” section, fully expecting to see a list of Animal Kingdom Lodge Villa bookings again, but luck must’ve been on our side. After being waitlisted for just a couple of weeks, it was now showing that we were booked in a studio with a lake view at Bay Lake Tower. I was so pleased this had come through for us and we would just be able to walk back from dinner at the California Grill.
I also got in touch with Gemma (Gembley) on the boards around this time, as I knew that their holiday dates were about the same as ours. It’s ironic, but she lives in the UK as well and here I was thinking “it would be good to meet up with them at Disney”, but somehow that’s how it works out. I gave her a list of the ADRs we were still looking to book and asked which, if any, they’d like to join us at. Tutto Italia was the answer, so I plugged that into our plans.
Next: all I want to do is book the rest of our ADRs!
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I rang Virgin Atlantic and told them what had happened and the guy I spoke to assured me that I’d be able to switch things around when online booking opened 24 hours before the flight. Well, I sure as heck hope so. I don’t relish the idea of not being able to sit next to my husband for a seven plus hour flight home. 
: 
Do keep December 2012 free, as I hope to be back at WDW then for my 40th! 
Maybe we'll see you this side of the pond on one of your travels as well?
Disney Magic - Oct 2015
PassPorter Guide Author
I'd have to check airfares... we could possibly do it in a day! 
Deb
- at first it kept telling me that our reservation was “less than 180 days” at the 180 day mark – then I pretty much scored everything I wanted, almost to the exact time: 
I did start to wonder if they were booking at all beyond the change to signature dining for dinner, as I tried various dates from March onwards and couldn’t get any availability from 4.30pm to 8.30pm, which seemed very odd. 
they did indeed need a credit card number to hold it and to call with it, not e-mail. 
Still, better safe than sorry. 
Ok, so I guess the upgrade to the Disney system didn’t go too well then, echoed by the fact that it would be taken down again the next week. 
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