A Promise Kept: A Cam and Fam PTR Updated 10/9 - Page 4 - PassPorter - A Community of Walt Disney World, Disneyland, Disney Cruise Line, and General Travel Forums
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I first checked our two local school systems to see when their fall break would be. They are all out October 9 – 16. Then I checked the site for Morgan and JP’s school system. Evidently, this district does not announce as far ahead school dates. The ones Luke and I used to work for have a calendar for the next year up no later than December. When I had asked June if fall break would work, she had told me that typically their fall break was the first week of October, which would have us leaving a week earlier than we had expected. She told me she would have the dates for certain sometime in January. She has several friends who work for their school district and did confirm that their fall break would be October 1 – 9. I asked her how many days they wanted to tour the parks. Very emphatically, she said “seven.” Since we’d be traveling via car that meant Saturday, October 1 and Sunday, October 9 would be travel days.
Once I had the actual dates, I checked out crowd levels on touringplans.com. I was cautiously excited by the exceptionally low numbers. But a little voice in the back of my head said we’re still nine months out and these numbers most likely will change. And they have, quite significantly on some days. Both touringplans.com and easywdw.com are still showing that the parks I have chosen for each day are good, except for one day when easywdw thinks we shouldn’t go to Epcot. But as you’ll see when I share plans later, I purposely picked two weekdays for Epcot as I’m quite familiar with the huge crowds on weekends. I made the mistake of going to Epcot on a Saturday the first time we attended the Food & Wine Festival. Never again (if I can help it).
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It's like that here with schools. I need the holidays for something I do at work. Most places have them out already as far ahead as July 2018, but there's one that doesn't even have them out beyond July 2017 yet.
Weekends are the worst at the Food and Wine Festival. It's one of those you can't get there from here things.
I'm sure John Paul will have a great time with you and Luke. The crowds are a lot less than summer except at EPCOT on the weekends.
Liz
October is such a nice month to go to F&W but you're right about going to Epcot on the weekends! We did that with our girls in October 2014 with our first day there on a Saturday and the lines to just get into the park were incredibly long!
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I will be avoiding the F&W Fest on the weekends during my trip as I've heard from so many here to avoid it.
__________________
October 6, 2017-Enjoying an amazing dinner at Victoria & Albert's with PP's Dot and Drew
My TR from my most recent trip is now underway. Includes: Universal Studios Florida, Disney World and Sea World Orlando Trifecta TR -Updated December 10th! TR is now COMPLETED!
Oh, yes, NEVER again on a Saturday during Food and Wine!
I get excited with Touring plans crowd calendars then I always seem to end up in the wrong park anyway!
That first F&WF I had done my research but we were there on a business trip for Luke so what days we could do what was a bit out of my hands. Now that we plan the trip, we both remind ourselves no F&WF weekends, but just wait until you see our plans.
Quote:
Originally Posted by chezp
It's like that here with schools. I need the holidays for something I do at work. Most places have them out already as far ahead as July 2018, but there's one that doesn't even have them out beyond July 2017 yet.
Luke and I were so used to school calendars being out early that we were a little shocked we'd have to way for JP and Morgan's schools. The county and city districts here work together and seem to care that a lot of folks plan vacations around school breaks, so they get the calendar out as early as possible.
Quote:
Originally Posted by clio
Weekends are the worst at the Food and Wine Festival. It's one of those you can't get there from here things.
I'm sure John Paul will have a great time with you and Luke. The crowds are a lot less than summer except at EPCOT on the weekends.
Liz
Touring Plans and EasyWDW are both showing low crowds for the beginning of our vacation, but then each day the level creeps higher. We usually go mid October and crowds used to be low, but as more school further north have fall breaks, the crowds are also growing.
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October is such a nice month to go to F&W but you're right about going to Epcot on the weekends! We did that with our girls in October 2014 with our first day there on a Saturday and the lines to just get into the park were incredibly long!
I love WDW in the fall. We've had a mix of weather over the years, but it's usually fairly comfortable.
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Originally Posted by SuperDave
I will be avoiding the F&W Fest on the weekends during my trip as I've heard from so many here to avoid it.
You are making a very wise choice.
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Originally Posted by Coop
We went to F&WF on a weekend once. Big mistake. We were newbies then. Never do that again! We always plan on a weekday for that!
That first trip we decided to go back for part of the day on a Tuesday and were blown away by the total lack of crowds. We didn't have any wait at the booths and it was so easy to walk.
I agree, Epcot during F&WF on the weekend is a big mistake. Especially at night. I feel like it is just wall to wall drunk people!
That was our experience and it was made worse by the excessive heat. We were there the last week of October when a heat wave moved in. So hot, crowded and drunk don't make for a good evening.
After Luke and I returned from our May 2016 trip, we agreed that we were going to fly in October. We also knew there was no way that June and John or my Daddy who will be traveling along and spending the week with Pam, could afford that. So before we booked our flights, I called and talked to June explaining that my poor body would be a mess if we drove down on Saturday, and then begin park touring bright and early the next morning. She totally understood and told me they really don’t mind driving and that will make it easier for them to get Daddy to Pam’s house in Orlando. So the Vaughns are still driving.
Luke did quite a bit of research on our options once we determined that we’d be flying. We have a local airport from which we’ve flown once, but flights leave for Orlando on a very limited basis. Our dates were already set, so we’d need to work with those in mind. Unfortunately, our local Allegiant flights leave on Wednesdays, Fridays, and Mondays. That wasn’t exactly going to work for us, even though the price was manageable and it would mean a very short trip home since we live only a few miles from the airport. So he checked Southwest for nonstop flights out of both Louisville and Nashville. Both of these would mean a lengthy drive home at the end, but would allow us to select our travel days. Not perfect or ideal, but it was the cost that made us do a little more looking. We remembered that the airport across the river in Evansville, IN, had recently opened Allegiant flights. A check of their website showed that Florida flights left on Thursdays and Sundays. The Sunday flight home would be perfect and the drive is only about 45 minutes from our home to this airport.
Now lightbulbs were going off, could we manage to add a couple days to the start of this trip? Luke looked over hotel possibilities in the WDW area. But we weren’t really liking the idea of spending the money for another two nights. At some point, Luke decided to check the DVC website, even though we’d already spent all our points for this use year. He discovered that a three-night stay at Saratoga Springs wouldn’t be too pricey, so we could borrow some points on the 2017 use year and still get in a stay in May and October 2017 per our usual. He quickly booked a deluxe studio and then headed back to book the flights. We will leave Evansville on Thursday, September 29 at 11:40 AM and arrive at Sanford around 2:35 PM EDT. The flight home will leave from Sanford at 9:55 AM and reach Evansville at 11:00 AM CDT. In fact, we found the Allegiant flights from Evansville/Sanford have less grueling departure times than those from our local airport.
Booking with Allegiant does require a few more decisions. One decision is determining how many bags, both carry on and checked, each guest will be taking in order to determine charges. Since we were paying for bags, we sorted through some possibilities. We will be in a two-bedroom villa for most of the trip, which means a laundry in the room. We both noticed in May that even though we took enough bottoms to wear a different pair every day, we kept wearing about four or five the whole trip. So we can cut down on some clothing. But we also wanted some room for souvenirs because the last time we flew Allegiant we had to ship our dirty clothes home. The weight limit with Allegiant is 40 pounds, ten pounds less than with Southwest. In the end we booked Luke with one carryon and one checked bag. For me, we booked two checked bags. Luke can carry the computer backpack on free and I can carry my purse free. So we should have plenty of room for everything going down and coming back. Of course, if we don’t, this time the Vaughns could probably put it in their vehicle. But my goal is to truly pack lighter. Wish me luck!
Allegiant, from both Owensboro and Evansville, flies into Sanford, which is about 45 minutes from Disney World. That means we will need some form of transportation to WDW and then back to the airport at the end of the trip. The Allegiant website allows you to book a car along with your flight, but Luke first searched to see if we could get a better deal booking a car separately. He didn’t find anything better so he included a full size car in our flight booking. So now we’ll have two cars, the Vaughns and the rental, available during the trip. This will make our transfer from SSR to OKW pretty easy, too. But more on that when I get to the plans. We’ll still have to up get pretty early for the flight home, but not as early as we did when we flew Allegiant before. Then we had to be up by 3:30 AM. Our early rising is offset by the time we should be back home in Owensboro, sometime shortly after noon.
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