Living the dream and remembering the Bagman LIVE UPDATE 10/2 About This Page:

[chezp]

Although this pre-trip report includes plans for Walt Disney World and a Disney cruise, by far the largest part of this trip will be in Canada, New England and New York, which is why I've chosen to put the pre-trip report in this forum. Without further ado, let's get this show on the road....

Living the dream and remembering the Bagman

Pre-trip report – part one: remember where you were on 22 September 2015?

Dates: Saturday 10 September – Saturday 1 October
Adventurers: Me, Cheryl (43) and DH Mark (51)
Destinations: New England, eastern Canada, Walt Disney World and Disney Dream
Resorts: too many to mention outside of Disney, but at Disney, Animal Kingdom Lodge, the Polynesian, Beach Club Villas and the Disney Dream
Meets: So, so many!
Celebration: remembering a wonderful man…

Remember where you were on 22 September 2015? Some of you won’t, but some of you will, and I’m guessing those that will are also the same people who knew Bill Myers, otherwise known as LizardCop on the boards. That date was the day he was murdered, shocking all of his friends on the PassPorter boards. We were at a hotel near Heathrow Airport, as we were due to fly out on our New England trip the next morning, so I remember very clearly how I found out. It was actually a status update from Marnie (ColexisMom) on the boards, saying that Bill was dead. I was just stunned, and stared at the news, desperately hoping it wasn’t true, but I’ve known Marnie for many years, and I knew it was, as there was no way she’d have posted it otherwise.

The trip was definitely marred by that news. How could it not be? However, even before the trip was over, we were invited to join a closed group on Facebook called Bagman Days 2016. Someone had come up with the wonderful idea of commemorating Bill’s life on the first anniversary of his death. 22 September in 2016 would be on a Thursday, and the suggestion was for a four day weekend. We didn’t think much more of it during the rest of our trip, although I did start to think about it a lot more once we got home.

The original plan had been for us to head back to Walt Disney World in late October/early November to experience the Food and Wine Festival and Halloween Party. I’d programmed it quite carefully to also catch the Christmas Party, We’d already booked our cruise when we’d been sailing through Alaska on the Wonder for November.

Almost as soon as I got back, I realised I wanted to join everyone for Bagman Days. It was a bit like Dave and Robert’s wedding. I hadn’t had any idea how I was going to make that work, but I did, and I was so glad I did. I said to Mark more than once that night that I would’ve been devastated if we had missed it, and I started to feel the same about Bagman Days. I couldn’t bear the thought of lots of Disney fans and good friends getting together, and us not being part of it. It didn’t help that people were starting to sign up, people that we desperately wanted to see again. As I said to Mark, there was no way they’d be returning to Walt Disney World a few short weeks later, if we stuck to our original plan of visiting in late October/early November.

I did a fair bit of research before I actually mentally gave it the go ahead. There were some serious downsides for starters. We’d be going to Florida in September, a month we’d always said we’d never visit Florida, as it was too hot and humid, so that was going to be an issue for us. Of course, it’s also peak hurricane season, but as everyone says, Disney’s one of the safest places to be in a hurricane, so that didn’t worry me too much.

There were other logistical problems as well, like the fact we’d already booked our cruise on the Dream. I did some playing around with dates, and realised we could take one right at the end of September, but would it cost us more? I checked out the Disney Cruise Line website, and it didn’t appear that it would. Ok, that’s set then…

Now the plan we had originally was a three week vacation, broken up in this way:

• One week, or possibly a bit longer, in eastern Canada, visiting Toronto, Niagara Falls, Ottawa, Montreal and Quebec City
• One week, or possibly a bit longer, in Walt Disney World, but also involving a day at Universal Orlando, as we still had tickets leftover from our spring 2015 trip, when we didn’t get there, as the rain put paid to our plans for the day
• A four night cruise on the Dream

I knew that I wanted to start off in eastern Canada, as the later in September that we could get to Florida, the better. The next challenge was then to see if we could sort out flights. I had already checked flights to and from Florida for October/November 2015 earlier in the year, as I had the idea of the timing of next year’s trip already in my head. I knew that we could get reward seats through Virgin Atlantic either in Premium Economy or Upper Class with no problem, but of course I hadn’t looked at September 2015 at the time. After all, a couple of months ago, who would’ve thought we’d be thinking of visiting Disney then?

Of course, the flights weren’t out at this time, as airlines traditionally only publish flights up to 11 months out, and Virgin Atlantic publish their fares a few days before their reward seats. I guess it’s probably to see how they sell.

Originally I was thinking we’d fly out to JFK Airport, then take a flight on to Buffalo, and we’d start our tour of Eastern Canada from there. However, then it crossed my mind that perhaps I could reverse the itinerary, and maybe we could fly into Boston. If we did that, then we wouldn’t even need an internal flight, as we could head up to Maine, visit Acadia National Park, and go on to Quebec City from there. Hmmmm…

Eventually, when the flights appeared on the website, lo and behold, there were Upper Class seats available out to Virgin. Ok, bingo – all set then… hmm…. Not quite. We didn’t quite have enough points in one of our accounts. We both had a lot of points, but only enough to book the flights separately, and I would much rather book them together at the same time, just to be on the safe side, but that was no problem. I knew I had lots of Tesco Clubcard points I could convert into Virgin Atlantic miles, but there were a few problems, so I had to call them. This was on a Friday night. “They’ll transfer from us overnight”, the guy told me, “so they should be in your account tomorrow morning.” Fantastic!

I checked the next morning… no sign of the miles. I kept checking throughout the day, still nothing. I checked again throughout the day on the Sunday. Still nothing! It was painful waiting for them to show up, and it was finally the Tuesday night when they made it into the account. I hadn’t dared check to see if the flight to Boston was still available, just in case the website logged your interest every time and then somehow took it away from you. You never know…

Next: when are those miles going to show up?