Spring Break at the Beach Club - April 2012 PTR - PassPorter - A Community of Walt Disney World, Disneyland, Disney Cruise Line, and General Travel Forums
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Hi everyone and welcome to my pre-trip report! Our trip is still a ways off, but the excitement got the better of me and I decided to go ahead and start my PTR. I'll start off with a little background on the trip.
Who: Me, DH and DD (will be 7 at the time of the trip)
Where: The Beach Club
If you've read any of my other PTRs, you know that I am prone to second guessing lots of things about our trips, especially our resort choice. Well for once I'm happy to report that this was an easy choice and I've done no waffling what-so-ever since booking! For the past several family trips we've stayed at MK-area resorts because our park time was very MK-heavy. But now that DD's getting a little older and enjoys Epcot and DHS more, we're able to spread our park time out more between the parks. I love the Epcot area resorts and have been wanting to get back to the BC for quite some time now. So really, BC was an easy decision! Not to mention that it'll be April (vs. January, which is when we went in 2010 and 2011) so SAB is a huge plus.
When: Leaving Monday, April 16 for 5 nights
We were lucky that DD's April break falls after Easter week in 2012. While the prices for airfare were still higher than normal just due to general Spring Break demand, they weren't as crazy high as they would be over Easter. And in terms of Disney seasons, rates go back down to "regular season" on April 15 so that saved us money on the room and dining plan. The only wrench in this plan is that it's looking very likely that we'll be losing days off our April break. See our school system will only extend the year by 4 days for snowdays - and we've already had 3 (two for Hurricane Irene and one for the October blizzard). After the 4th day they start taking days off April break, which happened last year. Of course when I booked everything back in the summer, I was thinking there was NO way we'd have two crazy winters in a row, but alas here we are. The thing that bums me out is if I'm going to have to pull her out of school, I would've booked a random week in May or some other time that's not during a break. Oh well, what can you do? Can't control the weather (pudge controls the weather!).
Why: Well, I don't really ever *need* a reason, but we'll be there right after DD's birthday, so we'll definitely be celebrating that while we're there!
Great start! Three days off because of weather already! Can't believe we've already had a hurricane and enough snow to cause power outages this year
I know! But truly, we are the lucky ones - towns near where I grew up have missed 6, 7, 8 days due to the extensive power outages! I don't know how those towns are going to handle the make-up days because surely there will be more snowdays come "real" winter.
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Great start! We'll be there that week, too. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that our April vacation stays intact. Like you, we were lucky to have only missed 4 school days total for TS Irene and WS Alfred. We've lost 3 days of February break already. I'm a teacher so that makes it complicated. Last year, staff with unrefundable vacations scheduled were granted leave. I hope that, if worse comes to worse, that will be the same.
I hope that you and your family have a magical time at the world
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Great start! We'll be there that week, too. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that our April vacation stays intact. Like you, we were lucky to have only missed 4 school days total for TS Irene and WS Alfred. We've lost 3 days of February break already. I'm a teacher so that makes it complicated. Last year, staff with unrefundable vacations scheduled were granted leave. I hope that, if worse comes to worse, that will be the same.
Hey, so cool that we'll be there at the same time! Maybe we can try to meet up and say hi in person. That your break stays intact!
I started pricing out airfare during the summer, figuring I should book ASAP given that we were traveling during a popular time. Delta out of LGA had a really great fare but I decided to hold out for JetBlue because I'd gotten somewhat weary of Delta's schedule changes when we flew them in January. Once JB opened their booking window I played with all different date and airport combos so see how we could get the best deal. That's pretty much how we settled on our dates - flying out Monday was much cheaper than over the weekend. I would've liked to have gone for a whole week, but we decided on 5 days since for the first time in a long time we were booking our Disney package with no discounts whatsoever and I wanted to be prepared for the worst case scenario - rack rate.
We decided to fly out of JFK and we got an early morning flight down and a late-afternoon flight home. Of course wouldn't you know, our morning flight has already been moved 30 minutes later. We haven't been notified yet but I check the site regularly and noticed that change. Hopefully it won't change by much more. We picked JFK because there are lots of parking options (although this was before we knew about the great new off-site parking at HPN, oh well) and because they run tons of flights to MCO so heaven forbid there's a glitch, there are lots of other flights to try for. We had a JB credit from a price drop on our October flights, so overall the cost wasn't too painful.
As soon as we booked our flights, I hopped over to the WDW site to book our package. Every time I tried to price out our dates the site errored out - oh no! It was about 11 p.m. by this time so I'd have to wait until the morning. It was a little unsettling to have airfare bought and NO room, but I figured all would work out in the morning.
Sure enough, the next day I got online bright and early and booked everything we wanted: a Garden View Room at BC (decided to spring for the extra $10/night so we wouldn't get one of the rooms that overlooks rooftop), 5 day tickets (although I think I'm going to add one more day so we can do a few hours on departure day), basic DDP. As I mentioned before, no discounts to be had yet for our dates. I have my fingers and toes crossed that there will be a GP or PIN code at some point. I've gotten so used to all the deals in recent years, I'm really spoiled now.
We haven't done the dining plan in a few years but I think it makes alot of sense for this trip. More on that when I post about our dining plans.
So with all that set, it was time to take a breather for a couple of months until our 180 day mark!
About This Page: 
! Our trip is still a ways off, but the excitement got the better of me and I decided to go ahead and start my PTR
. I'll start off with a little background on the trip.
. Well for once I'm happy to report that this was an easy choice and I've done no waffling what-so-ever since booking
, which happened last year. Of course when I booked everything back in the summer, I was thinking there was NO way we'd have two crazy winters in a row
, but alas here we are. The thing that bums me out is if I'm going to have to pull her out of school, I would've booked a random week in May or some other time that's not during a break. Oh well, what can you do? Can't control the weather (pudge controls the weather!
).
Like
Thank
Pixie Dust
Deb
!
That your break stays intact!
and I wanted to be prepared for the worst case scenario - rack rate. 
! It was about 11 p.m. by this time so I'd have to wait until the morning. It was a little unsettling to have airfare bought and NO room, but I figured all would work out in the morning.
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