Meri's Dream Come True - A Birthday Celebration! - PTR updated 02/04/2014 - PassPorter - A Community of Walt Disney World, Disneyland, Disney Cruise Line, and General Travel Forums
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Meri's Dream Come True - A Birthday Celebration! - PTR updated 02/04/2014
Hi all! Welcome aboard! As usual, this trip evolved from an entirely different trip!
Last fall I decided that it was time to go to WDW again. I knew we would be on a VERY tight budget, so after much tweaking (which I'm famous for), I came up with four nights at WDW over her birthday weekend!
I spoke to my CM friend, who gave me the news that they wouldn't be able to let us into the parks this visit. They said that with CM passes, Disney now prefers that the CM accompany the friend / family members for the entire park day, and that would make it impossible with a new baby. Ack! That significantly changed the budget, and made it out of my range. Ok, no problem, I said. We re-tweaked, and decided to just do one park day, out of pocket, on Meri's birthday. I coordinated with Laurie to meet up at least once, if not twice, and made all of my ADR's, planning to spend Friday and Sunday doing character meals and enjoying the resorts.
We hadn't booked a resort yet, because my friend was having her baby, and life got in the way, and honestly I was just a slacker. Finally it came time to really get down to brass tacks with 5 1/2 weeks to go... and I'll be dipped - ALL of the values and ALL of the mods were sold out for the CM discount! That's never happened before (and trust me, I've switched resort reservations up to the week prior to a visit before with no availability issues)! Ok, ok, no big deal, I said, we'll just take the cheapest value at rack rate and call it a day! Except fate had other plans for us! All values and mods were unavailable for my dates! At Kelly's suggestion, I contacted Meg and asked her if she had any magic to work... and she was able to find us a preferred room at POR! She put it on hold for me while mom and I discussed options and finances.
Finally, mom said, "Are there any cruises that weekend?" I laughed in her face and told her that Disney cruises are out of our budget range, since we're trying to keep this trip to a certain level.
But, because I'm a curious person by nature, I had to look and see. I pulled up mom's Interline discount travel site (for airline employees / retirees) and I'll be dog-gone! There were not one but TWO three-night cruises over Meri's birthday weekend! Both for the same price! One was on the Dream and one was on the Magic! And believe it or not, the cost for all three of us would be only $200 more than what we would be paying for the hotel ALONE at WDW!
Mom and I immediately crunched a few more numbers and did some quick figuring, and after about 5 minutes, we both said, HECK YEAH! Now we had to decide... the Dream or the Magic? We'd already done the Magic, but we really wanted to see the new changes... so there was more conversation! Finally we decided on the Dream. We were going to do an outside cabin, but the one we could afford was a "guarantee" cabin, meaning we could get stuck with those two teeny tiny portholes. I pulled up some video of the virtual porthole on Youtube and mom was sold. For three nights, we could deal with an inside cabin, and Meri would LOVE the virtual porthole!
With that decided, mom called her agent at Perx, whipped out her credit card, and booked us on the Disney Dream for a 3 night cruise from Feb 6-9! We will spend Meri's 8th birthday on board! We've decided not to tell her, and let her think we're just hanging out in Orlando instead! Then on the day of the cruise, we'll drive to the port (saying we're going to look at the beach) and bam, there it will be! And then SURPRISE!!!!! LOL! Oh, I can't wait!
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