Libby_Darling
Flippin' Her Fins
- Joined
- Jul 4, 2010
Planning our planning trip!
I thought it might be nice to include some details of our Christmas trip within my planning journal
The Backstory
Yes, as always with us, there is a back story! So, remember we're from the UK. So 'popping over' for our PS wasn't going to happen, or so we thought. When we really started planning in earnest, we both talked at length about going over for our PS, and how feasible it might be. Now, you can do it over the phone. And plenty of brides do, and it all goes swimmingly and I’ve never heard anything bad about it. But we’re only going to get married once. Something that was also really important to Ben was that if we don’t fly out for our PS, we wouldn’t actually get to see the places we’re getting married at until, well, we get married! Which is kinda mad when you think about it. We have been to the Wedding Pavilion and lurked around outside like two creepy wedding obsessives, but we haven’t been inside. And we’ve never seen the place we’d like to have our reception, or the place we’d like to have our dessert party. Obviously we’ve looked at a million photos online, but it will be so good to see them in person
Saying that, I think we all know that the main reason for going is, of course, CAKE TASTING!
For us, travelling out for the PS is a really important part of planning our wedding, and we decided to factor the cost of the trip into the wedding budget as a whole. So for us it isn’t really an extra trip, it’s part of the wedding! If that makes sense.
NOW. All that being said. Obviously, we aren’t millionaires. Not even close. We work very hard for our money and we save very hard to be able to afford nice holidays.
We also don’t have them every year, as we can’t afford them! So this Planning Trip needed to be on a budget. Like, the smallest budget it’s possible to have a Florida holiday. Think about the cheapest you’ve ever heard of people going to Florida on. Subtract about 90%, and you have our budget Every penny spent on this trip is money coming out of our wedding fund and although we’ve made that decision ourselves, it’s important we spend the absolute minimum!
Obviously, one of the main reasons we can afford this trip (just...) is the AP's.
So, no expensive theme park tickets to shell out for, and we could use them for our wedding trip too and get maximum value. We’re planning a West Coast 1st anniversary trip in 2017 so wouldn’t use the WDW tickets then anyway
Time of Year
So Disney recommend you do the Planning Session approximately 6 months before the wedding.
6 months!? Two trips to Florida within 6 months!? Eeek! Ka-CHING! I asked my faithful UK Disney Brides on the FB group I’m on, and they assured me it could be done up to a year out, we’d just have to be speedy with getting the contract back, and the prices wouldn’t be finalised for 6 months (which is why Disney recommend you do it 6 months out or less.) Phew! Crisis averted.
Ben’s job means he can only have school holidays off. This greatly limited our opportunities to fly out for the planning session. We had 3 options:
1. Fly out October half term 2015 for 1 week.
Pros: F&W, weather, crowds, Halloween etc.
Cons: Probably wouldn’t be able to sign the contract and get it back in time for us to sort out the logistics of the PS, get annual passes etc. Trip would only be 1 week. Still a year til the wedding.
2. Fly out for Christmas 2015 for 10 days or 2 weeks.
Pros: TWO WEEKS. Christmas. New Years! Both off work already for 2 weeks (although this has now changed haha but it was valid at the time!)
Cons: It’s the busiest time at WDW. Chilly. Expensive for hotels and flights.
3. Fly out for February half term 2016 for 1 week.
Pros: Close to wedding. Low crowds.
Cons: Scarily close to wedding! Only 1 week. All my annual leave would be gone (3 weeks for wedding/honeymoon, 1 week for this trip, so no days off left for hen do etc if needed)
After lots and LOTS of umming and ahhing, we decided Christmas made the most sense, all things considered. Christmas 2015 here we come!!!
Accommodation
So our two previous trips have been split stays; half I-Drive, half on-site. This has worked well for us in the past, but after less than ideal experiences with I-Drive in 2013, I think we’d lean towards staying on-site for future trips (Disney and Universal.) However, we all know that staying on-site comes at a cost. I realised pretty early on that this cost was a LOT more than off-site, and thus not in our budget for this trip. Sob!
For our dates, even All-Star resorts (which we would totally stay at, and probably love!) were £100ish a night.
We also know how much it costs to eat at Disney. With no DDP this time we’ll be buying a Tables in Wonderland card with our AP’s. However, it’s still like $15 each for a CS meal. So even if Disney were affordable, we knew the spending money we’d need for food would still massively bump up the price.
So, we began searching off-site hotels. One night, I stumbled upon a little gem called Lake Buena Vista… I didn’t even know this was a thing! I threw myself into researching and after a few hours, I had a complete list and per-night breakdown of the entire Crossroads/LBV area. I was so excited, it really seemed like it could be the perfect option for us! I-Drive is sooooo far away from Disney and we don’t want to drive on our holidays (hello, day-drinking) so to be able to stay in an affordable hotel close to DTD and be able to walk there and get Disney busses…it was like a dream come true <3
…I’m exaggerating, but it really was exciting. We then spent a few happy Sunday afternoons watching YouTube videos of all the hotels in our price range. I tried to ignore how much more expensive hotels were over the Christmas period and instead focused on finding the cheapest hotel that wasn’t totally vomit-inducing to stay in.
And, ladies and gentlemen, I found it in…..THE CLARION INN LAKE BUENA VISTA!
This little beauty was showing an astonishingly affordable £42 a night for our dates. It was walkable to DTD (20-25 minutes according to various trusted sources) had a super regular free shuttle service (no-one likes a hotel shuttle service that rocks up to the parks at 11am) good reviews, in-room fridge, close proximity to a Lynx bus stop…the list went on. We considered looking at hotels that were slightly more expensive but they were either further away which defeated the point, or they didn’t have as good reviews. Clarion seems to be a good, solid all-rounder. We’re both weirdly excited to stay here We’re fully prepared for it to be not great, but it does have really good reviews and I figure if our expectations are low, we’ll be impressed! We know it isn’t going to be like staying at Disney but this is a budget trip, and this is a budget hotel. We keep walking around the area via Google Streetview and I get little excitement spasms when I see all the spiky Floridian grass and the big signs advertising all you can eat buffets and 7-11’s and the like I know, I need to get out more.
Flights
We booked our flights aaagggess ago after I saw a crazy affordable (for Christmas!!) price for the exact dates we wanted. Due to school holidays we were tied to dates, and the optimum ('dream dates!') were Sat 19th December – Sat 2nd January. I booked them straightaway and after a stressful 2 days where they got cancelled due to US airways and AA merging that exact day...we had our flights. Yay!! 2 weeks in Orlando over Christmas baby!!
Once we'd booked our flights (and paid them off!) and booked the deposit for our accomodation....we didn't do anythin for like 6 months. Haha. I think we just couldn't believe it was happening!! And more importantly, we had to save some actual money in order to be able to go!! Which we have been doing, very slowly but surely, and I think we're getting there My next update will be about our plans for the trip! Hit me up if you're gonna be out there for that time too! Or if you've stayed at the Clarion Inn and have words of reassurance!! xxxxxxxx
I thought it might be nice to include some details of our Christmas trip within my planning journal
The Backstory
Yes, as always with us, there is a back story! So, remember we're from the UK. So 'popping over' for our PS wasn't going to happen, or so we thought. When we really started planning in earnest, we both talked at length about going over for our PS, and how feasible it might be. Now, you can do it over the phone. And plenty of brides do, and it all goes swimmingly and I’ve never heard anything bad about it. But we’re only going to get married once. Something that was also really important to Ben was that if we don’t fly out for our PS, we wouldn’t actually get to see the places we’re getting married at until, well, we get married! Which is kinda mad when you think about it. We have been to the Wedding Pavilion and lurked around outside like two creepy wedding obsessives, but we haven’t been inside. And we’ve never seen the place we’d like to have our reception, or the place we’d like to have our dessert party. Obviously we’ve looked at a million photos online, but it will be so good to see them in person
Saying that, I think we all know that the main reason for going is, of course, CAKE TASTING!
For us, travelling out for the PS is a really important part of planning our wedding, and we decided to factor the cost of the trip into the wedding budget as a whole. So for us it isn’t really an extra trip, it’s part of the wedding! If that makes sense.
NOW. All that being said. Obviously, we aren’t millionaires. Not even close. We work very hard for our money and we save very hard to be able to afford nice holidays.
We also don’t have them every year, as we can’t afford them! So this Planning Trip needed to be on a budget. Like, the smallest budget it’s possible to have a Florida holiday. Think about the cheapest you’ve ever heard of people going to Florida on. Subtract about 90%, and you have our budget Every penny spent on this trip is money coming out of our wedding fund and although we’ve made that decision ourselves, it’s important we spend the absolute minimum!
Obviously, one of the main reasons we can afford this trip (just...) is the AP's.
So, no expensive theme park tickets to shell out for, and we could use them for our wedding trip too and get maximum value. We’re planning a West Coast 1st anniversary trip in 2017 so wouldn’t use the WDW tickets then anyway
Time of Year
So Disney recommend you do the Planning Session approximately 6 months before the wedding.
6 months!? Two trips to Florida within 6 months!? Eeek! Ka-CHING! I asked my faithful UK Disney Brides on the FB group I’m on, and they assured me it could be done up to a year out, we’d just have to be speedy with getting the contract back, and the prices wouldn’t be finalised for 6 months (which is why Disney recommend you do it 6 months out or less.) Phew! Crisis averted.
Ben’s job means he can only have school holidays off. This greatly limited our opportunities to fly out for the planning session. We had 3 options:
1. Fly out October half term 2015 for 1 week.
Pros: F&W, weather, crowds, Halloween etc.
Cons: Probably wouldn’t be able to sign the contract and get it back in time for us to sort out the logistics of the PS, get annual passes etc. Trip would only be 1 week. Still a year til the wedding.
2. Fly out for Christmas 2015 for 10 days or 2 weeks.
Pros: TWO WEEKS. Christmas. New Years! Both off work already for 2 weeks (although this has now changed haha but it was valid at the time!)
Cons: It’s the busiest time at WDW. Chilly. Expensive for hotels and flights.
3. Fly out for February half term 2016 for 1 week.
Pros: Close to wedding. Low crowds.
Cons: Scarily close to wedding! Only 1 week. All my annual leave would be gone (3 weeks for wedding/honeymoon, 1 week for this trip, so no days off left for hen do etc if needed)
After lots and LOTS of umming and ahhing, we decided Christmas made the most sense, all things considered. Christmas 2015 here we come!!!
Accommodation
So our two previous trips have been split stays; half I-Drive, half on-site. This has worked well for us in the past, but after less than ideal experiences with I-Drive in 2013, I think we’d lean towards staying on-site for future trips (Disney and Universal.) However, we all know that staying on-site comes at a cost. I realised pretty early on that this cost was a LOT more than off-site, and thus not in our budget for this trip. Sob!
For our dates, even All-Star resorts (which we would totally stay at, and probably love!) were £100ish a night.
We also know how much it costs to eat at Disney. With no DDP this time we’ll be buying a Tables in Wonderland card with our AP’s. However, it’s still like $15 each for a CS meal. So even if Disney were affordable, we knew the spending money we’d need for food would still massively bump up the price.
So, we began searching off-site hotels. One night, I stumbled upon a little gem called Lake Buena Vista… I didn’t even know this was a thing! I threw myself into researching and after a few hours, I had a complete list and per-night breakdown of the entire Crossroads/LBV area. I was so excited, it really seemed like it could be the perfect option for us! I-Drive is sooooo far away from Disney and we don’t want to drive on our holidays (hello, day-drinking) so to be able to stay in an affordable hotel close to DTD and be able to walk there and get Disney busses…it was like a dream come true <3
…I’m exaggerating, but it really was exciting. We then spent a few happy Sunday afternoons watching YouTube videos of all the hotels in our price range. I tried to ignore how much more expensive hotels were over the Christmas period and instead focused on finding the cheapest hotel that wasn’t totally vomit-inducing to stay in.
And, ladies and gentlemen, I found it in…..THE CLARION INN LAKE BUENA VISTA!
This little beauty was showing an astonishingly affordable £42 a night for our dates. It was walkable to DTD (20-25 minutes according to various trusted sources) had a super regular free shuttle service (no-one likes a hotel shuttle service that rocks up to the parks at 11am) good reviews, in-room fridge, close proximity to a Lynx bus stop…the list went on. We considered looking at hotels that were slightly more expensive but they were either further away which defeated the point, or they didn’t have as good reviews. Clarion seems to be a good, solid all-rounder. We’re both weirdly excited to stay here We’re fully prepared for it to be not great, but it does have really good reviews and I figure if our expectations are low, we’ll be impressed! We know it isn’t going to be like staying at Disney but this is a budget trip, and this is a budget hotel. We keep walking around the area via Google Streetview and I get little excitement spasms when I see all the spiky Floridian grass and the big signs advertising all you can eat buffets and 7-11’s and the like I know, I need to get out more.
Flights
We booked our flights aaagggess ago after I saw a crazy affordable (for Christmas!!) price for the exact dates we wanted. Due to school holidays we were tied to dates, and the optimum ('dream dates!') were Sat 19th December – Sat 2nd January. I booked them straightaway and after a stressful 2 days where they got cancelled due to US airways and AA merging that exact day...we had our flights. Yay!! 2 weeks in Orlando over Christmas baby!!
Once we'd booked our flights (and paid them off!) and booked the deposit for our accomodation....we didn't do anythin for like 6 months. Haha. I think we just couldn't believe it was happening!! And more importantly, we had to save some actual money in order to be able to go!! Which we have been doing, very slowly but surely, and I think we're getting there My next update will be about our plans for the trip! Hit me up if you're gonna be out there for that time too! Or if you've stayed at the Clarion Inn and have words of reassurance!! xxxxxxxx