Florida flowers and Caribbean cruising LIVE TRIP REPORT COMPLETED 3/8 - Page 4 - PassPorter - A Community of Walt Disney World, Disneyland, Disney Cruise Line, and General Travel Forums
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Just love how you pack it all in there! But with a cruise in the works, I'm wondering if you have to cross off some of those restaurants on your list?!
I just added it up and I don't think I did too badly - we only had to cross a total of five off the list.
I am bummed we missed you by a few short weeks, but because we were unable to take a trip last fall because of DH's work we had a deadline to activate our PAP from DVC.
I am so sad too.
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Your plans sound wonderful. When we went in fall 2013 we did 4 resorts (WLV, BLTV, BWV, and OKW). This trip we did 2 (BWV and WLV). Although we rented a car the only time we used it was to go to AK. In hindsight we should have used Disney transportation and/or cabs (to move from one resort to the other) and saved a bunch of $$$. Next trip for us is on the other side of yours - June with our DD and her family. And one more in perhaps late October. DH and I are starting to feel like the Chez and Mark!
Oh darn - we keep missing you, as we'll be in the States in early September for the Alaskan cruise and Disneyland and then late September in Boston. I won't say so near, so far, as really we'll probably still be thousands of miles from you at any of those stops!
Joining in! I love your dining choices. We are looking at dining options for September and have chosen many of the same restaurants! Can't wait to hear all about your dining experiences.
I think it's got a lot to do with the fact that we love Bay Lake Tower, Animal Kingdom Lodge and Beach Club Villas and like to stay at each every trip if we can.
Your plans sound great! So you're there when we are? Is there any chance we'll see you around the parks over the few days we're there? We'll be in the Magic Kingdom on 21st, Universal on 22nd and Magic Kingdom early on 23rd.
We will be at Disney at the beginning of our trip Feb 9, to 12th trying to go before it gets to busy. We head to Tampa on Feb 19th until we leave on the 25th, it would have been nice to meet you.
Great plans and dining choices! We like to do split stays while at Disney too. I think that each resort has its own feel and each time we move to a new place, it feels like a new vacation has started. Great deal on the Legoland tickets! My son was really hoping we could work in another visit there on our upcoming trip, but we just couldn't work it out. I am really looking forward to meeting you and Mark.
All your plans and dining choices look great at this point. Congrats on getting all your tickets so far in advance.
It's so funny, as Mark said to me last night "do we have all our park tickets?" and I proudly showed him and told him I'd sorted all of that months ago!
Joining in! I love your dining choices. We are looking at dining options for September and have chosen many of the same restaurants! Can't wait to hear all about your dining experiences.
We will be at Disney at the beginning of our trip Feb 9, to 12th trying to go before it gets to busy. We head to Tampa on Feb 19th until we leave on the 25th, it would have been nice to meet you.
Oh that is a shame. I hate it when we just miss people by a few days.
Great plans and dining choices! We like to do split stays while at Disney too. I think that each resort has its own feel and each time we move to a new place, it feels like a new vacation has started. Great deal on the Legoland tickets! My son was really hoping we could work in another visit there on our upcoming trip, but we just couldn't work it out. I am really looking forward to meeting you and Mark.
We're looking forward to meeting you as well. I just posted in the running forum, asking everyone for times they're expecting to come through in front of the Contemporary in the half marathon - I am remembering right and you're running that, right?
Pre-trip report – part three: why don’t we add a cruise into this trip?
Monday 21 July
Well, since I last updated this almost a month ago, a lot has happened. We’ve had our cruise on the Magic around the Med, and that set us both thinking about how much we enjoy cruising with Disney… I think you can see what’s coming next…
We talked a lot about the possibility of doing another cruise on the Dream as part of this vacation, and although we’re not really fans of shorter cruises, we figured we could spend all our time on board, and enjoy the facilities of the Rainforest, which is much superior on the Dream Class ships, and enjoy meals at Palo and Remy. The more we thought about it, the more it made sense…
I had a look at the DVC points charts, as we were going to use our points for this, and discovered that the four night cruise that leaves on Monday 23 February costs literally just a few more points than the three night cruise that precedes it. Ok, that sounds interesting…
We got chatting to the DVC Cast Members on board, and asked them if there was a discount for rebooking while on board with your points in the same way you get a discount if you pay with cash. We’d done this a few years earlier, getting 10% off the price of the last Alaskan cruise of the 2015 season, and a $200 on board credit, which is well worth having. I was half asking out of hope, but we were told there’s no on board discount, but if you call Member Services within a week of returning home, you can get up to 10% off. Ok, well that’s worth knowing!
Of course, we didn’t get back to the UK until almost a week later, so tonight I called Member Services, not knowing whether I could still get the deal or not, as technically we had got off the Magic over a week ago – last Monday morning to be precise. Oh well, it had to be worth a go at least…
It took me about 15 minutes to get through to Member Services, as you have to ring a specific department. When I got through, they first had to check availability on the cruise we wanted and the stateroom category, as when you’re booking with points, they only have a certain allocation, but thankfully both were available. I asked about the discount, and sure enough I got it – this was the final day to get it as well!
I wanted a category 4A stateroom on deck 9, rather than deck 10, as I don’t like the idea of being right underneath the deck with the pools on it. I always worry that they’ll be quite noisy. The woman I spoke to warned me that there wasn’t much availability, but I asked her to see what was available midship. She came back with room 9090, which worked for me, but by the time she went to book it, it was gone. Thankfully room 9096, which was only a couple of doors further down was still available, and we were able to snag it.
Once that was all sorted out, I then had to go back and rearrange our DVC bookings, as I’d already made bookings for Animal Kingdom Lodge and the Beach Club Villas. There was still plenty of availability at both, so I was able to cancel what I’d booked, and rebook four nights at both, getting a one bedroom villa at each of them, with a savannah view at Jambo House for Animal Kingdom Lodge.
I then went on to have a look at the Grand Floridian Villas and Bay Lake Tower for the couple of nights before we head off on the Dream. Amazingly both resorts had availability, and much as I’d have loved to have gone back to the Grand Floridian Villas, Mark had his heart set on Bay Lake Tower, so I was able to get a one bedroom villa there with a theme park view.
Honestly, by the time I’d finished cancelling existing bookings, and rebooking, I think I was on the Member website for about 20 minutes. Thank goodness it’s now so easy to do all of that. Now the plans look like this:
Friday 20 – Saturday 21 February
Stay the night at the Treehouse Villas, Saratoga Springs
Saturday 21 – Monday 23 February
Stay for two nights at a one bedroom villa with a theme park view at Bay Lake Tower
Monday 23 – Friday 27 February
Take a four night cruise on the Dream
Friday 27 February – Tuesday 3 March
Stay for four nights in a one bedroom villa with a savannah view at Jambo House, Animal Kingdom Lodge
Tuesday 3 – Saturday 7 March
Stay for four nights in a one bedroom villa at Beach Club Villas
Now of course that’s going to mean some changes to our park and dining plans… but I’m sure I’ll get to that in due course…
Saturday 9 August
I started to have a look at revising our park and dining plans. As you can probably tell, I’d been putting it off for a while, but I figured I needed to get moving on it, given that our 180 day window was fast approaching. Actually, it wasn’t as bad as I feared. I had about three nights where I hadn’t allocated any restaurant for dinner, and as the cruise is only for four nights, we can just about keep all of our dinners.
Now the parks… well, that’s another story! I’m now having problems fitting in a day at Universal (and I realise even that’s not really enough… ) along with all the other parks we’ll be visiting (Busch Gardens, SeaWorld, LEGOLAND and Kennedy) and of course the Disney parks. That definitely still needs some work doing on it…
Sunday 10 August
Right, we now have a revised itinerary that gives us one day each at Universal (in fairness, we’re not coaster fans, so there’s not that much we enjoy there…), SeaWorld, Busch Gardens, the Kennedy Space Center, LEGOLAND, Animal Kingdom and the Studios and two days each at the Magic Kingdom and Epcot. In fairness, that means there’s really no down time or time for shopping, but when I say days, I’m figuring (with the exception of Busch and LEGOLAND, as they’re about an hour’s drive away from Disney), we’ll have some down time each afternoon and I’m sure we can squeeze shopping in as and when we need it…
The dining plans are also all set and ready for me to try and get what we need. I have rough times for all of them, apart from Be Our Guest, as of course we know it’s pure pot luck as to whether you can get in there at all, so if anything’s open on the night I want, I’ll just grab it. I won’t say anymore here about what I’m going for, as I can’t see much point. I think it’s better to fill you in once we’ve hopefully got everything we want – which will be in a couple of weeks’ time.
On that subject, I now have a list of when we can book various things, and I don’t just mean ADRs. I also mean Palo and Remy for our cruise, and meals at other theme parks (of course, they don’t make it easy and all have different booking windows ). With that, I must admit I feel this vacation is now a little bit more under control…
Next: battling the Disney website to get our first ADRs
I'm really looking forward to your trip report on the Dream since i'm so looking forward to the Dream.
I really do not know how you fit so many parks in. I'd be exhausted. I think our next trip to Orlando we are planning 1 day at a water park and 1 or 2 at Universal and that it the rest for chillaxing
Looking forward to seeing how you fit all that dining in as I'm assuming you are on the Deluxe again. I'm contemplating it for our next trip as we want to do 3 or 4 signatures but will probably pay OOP as deluxe is probably too many credits.
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Great deal on the Legoland tickets! My son was really hoping we could work in another visit there on our upcoming trip, but we just couldn't work it out. I am really looking forward to meeting you and Mark. 
there’s no on board discount, but if you call Member Services within a week of returning home, you can get up to 10% off. Ok, well that’s worth knowing! 
) along with all the other parks we’ll be visiting (Busch Gardens, SeaWorld, LEGOLAND and Kennedy) and of course the Disney parks. That definitely still needs some work doing on it… 
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