2020, the year of the ever-changing trip!

[Tink0812]

Hello friends! I hope everyone is doing well and staying healthy during these crazy times. What a year this has been!

In the fall of 2018 we were in the middle of planning our 2019 big family trip to Walt Disney World when we started to discuss what vacation would look like in 2020 (we are big planners and usually have multiple trips in the planning phase at once). My parents were planning an Alaskan cruise with some friends so I decided that it would be the perfect year for my daughter and I to take our first Disney Cruise. I had been wanting to a Disney cruise for a long time and figured it was time to try something different anyways. As a single mom, I knew committing to a DCL cruise would take a lot of planning and saving so I got right to it. I watched numerous Youtube videos, read countless trip reports, picked up extra shifts at work, and did extensive research. When Fall 2020 sailings were released, I booked a 4-night Bahamian cruise out of Port Canaveral on the Disney Dream for September 14th-18th. We even had a day at Disney Springs planned before the cruise and a day at Magic Kingdom planned after the cruise. My daughter and I were so excited about it.......and then 2020 hit.

I am a nurse working full-time in a large regional hospital on a cardiovascular medical-surgical unit. COVID has had our hospital bursting at the seams and revamping much of how our day to day lives are ran. When Disney first started cancelling cruises in March and April I experienced the first thoughts of "oh no, we may not be be able to go on our cruise". Then came the May and June cancellations. It was sometime towards the end of May that I decided, I will just move my cruise back to December. Surely they will have it all figured out by then! So, I reluctantly moved my cruise back to December 7th-11th. I still had the same port, number of nights, ship, itinerary, etc. It was just a Merrytime cruise instead of a Halloween on the High Seas Cruise. We planned some time at Disney Springs and Magic Kingdom in the couple of days leading up to the cruise. What I didn't know at the time was that my parents were planning an extended weekend trip to WDW for that same time period so we would get to stay with them and get some park time with them. So, yay! We still get to cruise, it's just a little later than originally planned. Shortly after I moved everything, the July and August cancellations came out followed shortly thereafter by the September cancellations. My original cruise would have been cancelled anyways which made me feel better about my decision to move.

Then, on August 5th, the October cruise cancellations came. Over the past two weeks I had really been debating the cruise situation. If the cruise does sail, the itinerary would have to change because the Bahamas still are not allowing anyone in from the US. I guess we would just be at Sea the whole time? Character interactions would be severely reduced, dining experiences would be different, and on-board activities would be different. I really started to question if I wanted to spend this much money and not get the full DCL experience. I started thinking of backup plans. I already have the week off work and I am not postponing again because we already have a 2021 vacation planned for May. My backup plan was to convert to a week at WDW. The more I talked with people that were booked on cancelled sailings the more I realized that there was a large chance that my sailing would get cancelled last minute, my refund could take up to 60 days, and it may be difficult to even get it cancelled as they are strongly pushing rescheduling. I was worried that if I waited until Disney cancelled the cruise that I would not be able to get all of the reservations that I wanted at Walt Disney World and would end up with a very disappointing vacation. All of that led me to cancelling my cruise on August 5th. They said it will take 2-3 weeks to get my refund. In the meantime, I have fully converted my trip to a week at WDW. Here's what it looks like thus far:


Friday December 4th: Drive to Indianapolis which is about a 3 hour drive from our small town in central Illinois. Stay overnight at a hotel located near the airport. We do not have reservations for this yet as my dad is planning to use points earned from his hotel rewards program that he will accumulate with his next few work trips. We will stay with my parents here but we will be driving separately as we are coming home on two different dates.

Saturday December 5th: Up bright and early to leave the hotel around 3:30am and drive across the street to FastPark where we have reservations to leave our car for the week. They will shuttle us to the airport. Our flight leaves at 6:05am and lands at MCO at 8:30am. It is a straight flight. Indy is on the same time zone as Orlando (both are an hour ahead of us here in Illinois). My DD and I were originally on a later flight, around 2pm, but we switched to be on the same flight as my parents. Hopefully that will be a good decision but it will be a bit early for my DD who is 4. Once we land, we will get our luggage from baggage claim and hop on the Magical Express to Old Key West. Our bags will get left with Bell Services and we will enjoy some time at the pool. We are hoping our room will be ready shortly after lunch so we can rest a bit before heading to the Cirque de Soleil Show that evening.

Sunday December 6th: This will be Magic Kingdom day. We all have tickets and park reservations for this day. Ideally lunch will be at The Plaza or Tony's Town Square. It is too early for us to make our dining reservations yet with the new 60 day rule. On previous trips we have left the parks in the afternoon for some down time at the resort but with the shortened park hours, we do not plan to do that on this trip.

Monday December 7th: This will be Disney Springs Day. Shopping, lunch somewhere, and relaxing will be the theme of the day. We are going to try for a dinner reservation at Toppolino's this evening.

Tuesday December 8th: This day is set aside for Hollywood Studios. We all have tickets and park reservations for this day. We would like to try and eat at Sci Fi for lunch as we have had great experiences there in the past.

Wednesday December 9th: My parents fly home. DD and I move to a Little Mermaid room at Art of Animation. We have park reservations for Animal Kingdom on this day. We will probably just do quick service for lunch and make dinner reservations somewhere out of the park.

Thursday December 10th: Magic Kingdom day again with just quick service for lunch and out of the park dinner reservations likely.

Friday December 11th: DD and I fly home at 11:50am. We will use Magical Express for transportation again.


This will be my 18th trip to WDW and my daughter's 4th. While I am still disappointed about cancelling our cruise, I truly do believe this will be a great vacation. I have never had such difficulties planning a trip before and have come to terms with the fact that this trip will definitely be different than any other trip we have had. As plans further develop I will update this PTR and I will certainly do a complete trip report once we return from the trip. Stay tuned!

 

[DLo]

Following along. Looking forward to reading more. Sorry you had to cancel your cruise but sounds like a solid plan b

 

[Tink0812]

Update (it's a happy one):

A few days ago they come out with two different discount options. The 4-night room and ticket package was not going to work for us based on how we designed the trip. As noted above, my parents will be with us for part of the trip and we are doing a split stay. The second offer was a 30% room only discount. At first we were super excited because we had utilized this discount on previous trips and it really helps a lot. But then we read on to find that this discount was only being offered for people living in certain states. Naturally, Illinois was not one of them. I'm not going to lie, it was pretty disappointing.

Thennnnnnn, today my dad and I both woke up to surprise e-mails with discount codes for 35% room only discounts. We went back to the drawing board and weighed our options. For my last two nights that I had reservations at Art of Animation in a Little Mermaid room I could either, apply the discount to my current reservation, upgrade to a suite at AoA (we had stayed in a Lion King suite before so we would probably do Finding Nemo this time), or switch resorts entirely. It was very tempting to switch resorts entirely. The prices for The Contemporary, Riviera, and some of the other resorts were like none I had ever seen before. After all, one of my bucket list items is to stay at each and every Disney resort at least once. My daughter caught me looking at all of the resorts and comparing prices. She was NOT happy to find out that I could potentially be abandoning our Little Mermaid room. I knew she was excited about The Little Mermaid room but I didn't realize that she had her heart set on it. So, naturally, I decided to keep our current reservation and apply the discount code to it. After one very brief phone call with Disney, it was a sealed deal and I saved $150. Every little bit counts when planning a Disney trip!

My dad and I had been in constant conversation since receiving our codes and he was doing a little comparison of his own. He called and asked if I wouldn't mind changing hotels twice during one week because he was thinking of trying somewhere different for our first two nights but keeping Old Key West for the next two nights. Of course, I didn't care. Especially since Disney would transfer our luggage for us.

A little bit later he sent me a text saying he only saved $200 but that was because he switched hotels for all 4 nights. We will now stay Saturday night through Tuesday night in a 1-bedroom villa at Riviera. I am very excited to mark another resort off of my list! We watched the Youtube walk through videos today and are super excited. The trundle bed under the TV will be perfect for my 4-year old and I will get the murphy bed to myself.

We are planners and don't usually change plans this late in the game but it is very hard to turn down offers like 35% off of rooms. It allows us to stay at places we would not have been able to stay at otherwise. Hopefully some of you were able to receive the same Pixie Dust code!

 

[Tink0812]

Hello everyone! I hope you are all staying well and are out of the path of all of the natural disasters that are happening. Since my las update with the resort change we have made enough changes to the itinerary that I feel it is worth a post. Here is our updated itinerary:

Friday December 4th: My mom will work all day and my daughter will go to preschool during her normal hours. This gives my dad and I time to finish packing and get everything ready for the trip. I am one of those people that must have my house completely clean, laundry caught up, etc. prior to any vacation. I also like to treat myself to a mani/pedi! Around 4:30pm we will pick my mom up from work and drive to Indianapolis. Overall it is about a 2.5-3 hour drive and they are one hour ahead of us time-wise (they are in the same time zone as Florida) and we are on central time. The decision was made to all ride together so we wouldn't have to worry about keeping up with each other, parking multiple vehicles, etc. We will likely eat a fast food dinner along the way. We will check in to our hotel near the airport and get to bed early (well as early as we can with all of the excitement)

Saturday December 5th: Up bright and early to get ready for our 6:05am flight. We have to leave the hotel around 3:30am to take our car over to Fast Park right across the street. We will then shuttle over to the airport. Our flight is a straight shot to Orlando and will land at 8:30am. My mom and Natalia will likely grab breakfast while dad and I go to luggage claim to get our suitcases. We will meet up at Magical Express. Magical Express will take us to Riviera where we will drop our bags off at Bell Services and explore the resort. We plan to do a quick service lunch somewhere at the resort and spend some time in the pool while we wait on our room to get ready. Once our room is ready we will move up there, unpack, and rest for a bit. At 5pm I will meet the staff from Kingdom Strollers in the lobby to get the stroller I rented for DD. We used them last time and had a great experience. I was going to try and go without a stroller this time but I think the walking may be too hard on DD after a long day with no mid-day breaks. She is getting too heavy to carry! To close out the evening we are hoping to get dinner reservations at Toppolino's. We are just a couple of weeks away from getting to make our ADR's.

Sunday December 6th: Magic Kingdom day! Breakfast on the go from the resort. Quick service lunch in the park and hopefully a late dinner reservation at The Plaza. We would like to have dinner as close to park closing as possible so we can see the castle lit up with small crowd interference. No mid-day breaks like we have done on previous trips since the park is open for a much shorter amount of time.

Monday December 7th: Late morning breakfast reservation at Topolino's (hopefully) then heading to Disney Springs for a day of shopping. If we are hungry around lunch time we will just snack as we will plan an early dinner reservations somewhere at Disney Springs. We know that Disney Springs has been incredibly busy in the evenings with all of the early park closing times so we are hoping to have an early dinner reservation and get outta there before the crowds hit. We don't have our hearts set on any certain place for dinner as we know reservations have been hard to come by as well. We will just see what is available at the time we want. The rest of the evening will be spent enjoying our wonderful resort and swimming.

Tuesday December 8th: Breakfast on the go again so we can get an early bus to Hollywood Studios. We are spending the day there with a late lunch reservation (hopefully) at Sci Fi. We have really enjoyed it in the past. More resort and pool time in the evening.

Wednesday December 9th: My parents fly home. Natalia and I switch resorts to our Little Mermaid room at Art of Animation. We will have Bell Services transfer our bags for us so we can make an early bus to Animal Kingdom. I am hoping to do a reservation at Yak and Yeti for lunch. Dinner will likely be somewhere out of the park.

Thursday December 10th: Breakfast on the go from Art of Animation food court. Another Magic Kingdom day. I would like to do quick service for lunch and dinner at either Tony's Town Square or Crystal Palace (if they open).

Friday December11th: Meet the staff from Kingdom Strollers at 7:30am in the lobby at Art of Animation to return the stroller. Breakfast in the food court at Art of Animation and return to our room to finish packing. Our plane flies out of MCO at 11:50 am so our Magical Express pickup time will likely be around 8:50am. My parents will drive back to Indy to pick us up at the airport.

 

[Tink0812]

Well, it's been a little over a month since my last update but we have had to make a few changes to our itinerary. As mentioned above, we are planners and usually have our itinerary set in stone six months before our trip so this has been very hard for us. We now believe that, unless our flights get changed again, this will be our set itinerary. We are only 39 days away from our trip!

Friday December 4th: My mom will work the entire day (she gets off around 4:30pm) and my daughter will attend preschool during her normal hours. While my daughter is at school I will finish packing, clean the house, and get everything ready to go. I will pick my daughter up at 3pm and my dad will meet us at our house around 4pm. We will load everything up in my parents' SUV and pick my mom up from work around 4:30pm. From there we will head to Indianapolis. It is about a 2.5-3 hour drive to get there and we will get dinner from a drive thru somewhere along the way. Indianapolis is an hour ahead of us timewise (they are in the Eastern time zone while we are on Central time) so by the time we get to our hotel, it will be time for bed.

Saturday December 5th: Our flight did get pushed back to 7:10am instead of 6:05am so we don't have to be up quite as early but we still need to be leaving the hotel by 5am. We will drive the 5 minutes to Fast Park where we will leave our vehicle for the week. If you ever fly out of Indy, look into fast park. It costs a little over $7 per day to park there (cheaper than parking at the airport) but your car is in a secure, fenced in area under a covered car port. They will shuttle you to and from the air port as well. We love it! Once we get checked in at the airport and make it through security, we will try to grab a quick breakfast (or at least some coffee). Our flight is still a straight flight and we will land in Orlando around 9:40am. After we pick up our checked bags from baggage claim we will board the Magical Express to Riviera. We are not expecting our room to be ready since we will be arriving so early. If by chance it is ready then of course we will head up and check it out. If it is not, then we will leave our bags with bell services and check out the hotel. We can't wait to look around the store, see the grounds, and scope out the skyliner. The skyliner wasn't open yet on our last trip. Around noon we will get on a bus to Disney Springs. We plan to look around a couple of stores before our lunch reservation at Chef Art Smith's Homecomin' which is at 2:15pm. After lunch we may spend a little more time in Disney Springs but we are anticipating that our room will be ready by then so we may just want to head back to Riviera to check it out. I also have to meet the staff member from Kingdom Strollers at 5pm in front of Riviera to pick up our stroller we rented for the week. The rest of the afternoon and evening will be spent enjoying the pool and the resort. If we are hungry for dinner, we will just grab something quick service from Riviera.

Sunday December 6th: After grabbing a quick breakfast at the coffee shop in Riviera, we will head to Magic Kingdom. We plan to conquer Fantasyland and Tomorrowland on this day. Lunch will be at 12:50pm at The Plaza which is one of our go-to table service restaurants in MK. We will head back to our resort before park closing so as to beat the crowds to the buses. We also want plenty of time to change and make it to our 8:10pm dinner reservation at Topolino's Terrace. I don't know if I am more excited for this dinner or for our lunch ressie at Homecomin'.

Monday December 7th: Another quick coffee shop breakfast before heading out to Magic Kingdom again. Today we plan to conquer Adventureland and Frontierland. We have a 12:35pm reservation at Tony's Town Square for lunch. We will likely stay in the park all day, only leaving around 7:30 to make it to our 8:15pm dinner reservation at the Grand Floridian Cafe.

Tuesday December 8th: Breakfast at the resort bright and early so we can be among the first in line for the Sky Liner. We plan to utilize the Sky Liner as transportation to get us to Hollywood Studios. We will spend the day at Hollywood Studios with lunch at 11:40am at Sci Fi. Dinner on this particular evening will be at 8pm at The Edison. This will allow us more shopping time at Disney Springs as well. There really is only a handful of things that we will do at DHS so we believe we will be leaving the park before closing time.

Wednesday December 9th: My parents decided to stay another day so they will be transferring to Pop Century on this day while my daughter and I transfer to our Little Mermaid room at Art of Animation. We will be up early so that our bags can be packed and dropped off will Bell Services for transfer to our respective resorts. My parents are spending the day at Epcot while DD and I will spend the day at Animal Kingdom. DD and I have a lunch ressie at 11:15am at Yak and Yeti. We will all meet up at 7:15pm for dinner at Raglan Road.

Thursday December 10th: My parents fly back to Indy while DD and I will spend the day in Magic Kingdom. We have a lunch reservation at 1pm at Cinderella's Royal Table. Technically we have a dinner reservation at 7:10pm at Whispering Canyon Cafe but we will likely be cancelling this in favor of more time at Art of Animation.

Friday December 11th: Our flight got pushed back to 3:25pm so we have a breakfast reservation at 9:15am at Trattoria Al Forno. Before breakfast we will pack our bags and drop them off with Bell Services. We will also meet the Kingdom Strollers staff at 7:30am to return our stroller. We anticipate DME will pick us up between 12-12:30pm so we will have time to browse The Boardwalk and take the Sky Liner back to Riviera soaking up every last minute. On our way home we have a short layover in Atlanta and will finally land in Indy at 7:10pm. My parents will be picking us up at the airport and we will drive home that evening!

 

[kclark9830]

Your plans sound great! I can't wait to check out Riviera...some day. Lol