She's Staying DVC, a September 2018 PTR

[kclark9830]

Enjoying your plans!

 

[GrandCalifornian]

Enjoying your plans!

Thanks! We're pretty excited about them too. We already can't wait to post trip pics in a TR to show the DVC accommodations.

We are super excited to be going in September. We'll have a couple of days of overlap, since we arrive on the 6th.

 

[storey13]

We do get a DVC discount at quite a few restaurants, and while it is similar to AP discounts, the list of restaurants is slightly different. It all does help though.
That’s great that you will get to do your favorites in the WL neighborhood. It will be interesting to see what happens with Artist Point at the end of the year.


It is neat to discover new restaurants, especially ones you might not try otherwise. I guess the key either way is to not be too worried about the cost, whether you are on the plan or not. Food is much better when not thinking about money.



That’s one of the neat things about a September trip. We missed getting to enjoy Food and Wine when we went in August last year.


Having a good waiter really helps anywhere. On our honeymoon we had the same waiter a few times at the old Cap’nJack’s at Downtown Disney, and we had fun coming back. (It was also something we could do without ADRs, since we had not made many reservations ahead of time.) We’ll let you know what we think of Boathouse, we have seen some good reviews and there is plenty of variety. We will see.

I'm looking forward to your TR for this trip. I can't wait to see some of those early sunrise pictures that I know you will be taking.

 

[GrandCalifornian]

I'm looking forward to your TR for this trip. I can't wait to see some of those early sunrise pictures that I know you will be taking.

Ahh, us too! We'll probably post some here and on the Copper Creek and WL threads during the trip, since we will be too excited to share them to wait for the TR. Then we'll add more as we write up the trip.

In the mean time, this is what we will be looking forward to one month from today:

 

[dnllmz]

Beautiful!

 

[GrandCalifornian]

We are getting close to the trip now, with just 29 days and hours remaining. I am going through our plans and listing them in a document that we can all keep on our phones to help answer the question of "What are we doing today?"

I'll still ask him 10 times what time the ADR of the day is. I can't help it.

That's fine, this way I can answer quickly by checking my phone, even without connecting to internet. One of the coolest things we have planned this year, and something totally new to us is an Epcot Illuminations Fireworks Cruise.


We are all crazy excited about this cruise. Evening fireworks aren't really my favorite thing because of the waiting and the crowds and all but I'm really looking forward to having our own space and unobstructed views.


Last trip we watched Illuminations from France and saw the people out on the pontoon boats and Brandy said we should look into doing that, and it was his one thing he really wanted to do this time. We will have 8 of us on the boat, and we even got a DVC member discount, so it should be really cool. We are all really looking forward to it. Afterward we will have to get to WL from Yacht Club with Epcot closed, but it is a MNSSHP night so we should be able to take a bus to MK.

We got our luggage tags in the mail this weekend! Our suitcases are still in the shed but we have tags to put on them when we dig them out!


We also found our stash of Magic Bands, which includes the custom Cars one that I bought last trip.

I have super crazy weird sensitive skin and have had trouble with the Magic Bands being irritating in the past so I searched for an alternative this year. I know they sell the puck holder key chain things at Disney but I really like the ease of having it on my wrist. I found this puck holder thing that goes right on my watch band! It should be perfect.



Yeah, it looks pretty neat. I don't have any problem wearing the Magic Bands, but I am always afraid that I will forget to put it on in the morning and lock myself out of the room during one of my early morning walks. If I have a puck on my watch, it should always be there.

Also you can now open the rooms with your phone and you are almost never without that so you probably wouldn't get locked out anymore.

That's true, and the biggest benefit I see of setting up the phone for room access. I'll just have all the gadgets .

Another cool thing I saw is the incredibly low crowd predictions for our trip. During our 10 days, the highest overall crowd rating is a 2 out of 10, and there's multiple days where all four parks are listed as 1 out of 10. I know there will still be people there, but it has to be better crowds than we experienced last year in August.


Lower crowds should be really nice and help us out with our FP+ predicament.

Ahh, good point. It feels so strange to only have fastpasses for two days at this point, but at least we have some and we can wait for anything else that's a must do.

I think it'll be fine, it might also force us to relax more on the trip

I think that's about all for now. We'll post more as we get closer to the trip and actually start packing.

 

[Jenny Sanders]

We have done the MK Fireworks Cruise twice (when the fireworks were called Wishes). It is one of my favorite experiences at Disney World. There were no crowds, unobstructed views, the music was piped in and snacks and drinks for our enjoyment on the boat. It was very relaxing. I would love to try the Illumination's Cruise next...

 

[GrandCalifornian]

We have done the MK Fireworks Cruise twice (when the fireworks were called Wishes). It is one of my favorite experiences at Disney World. There were no crowds, unobstructed views, the music was piped in and snacks and drinks for our enjoyment on the boat. It was very relaxing. I would love to try the Illumination's Cruise next...

That’s great to hear. We have enjoyed renting a pontoon boat at Disney, and getting to go see fireworks will be great. We will all enjoy it, and it will be a special memory for a long time.

 

[sheri18]

So the first part of our Disney trips are trying to figure out how to get there.

Since we knew we'd be making this trip over a year in advance, we started looking for airfare deals right away. We knew from past experience that the better deals would come up later, but we started shopping even before we booked our rooms at the 11 month mark.

I think I was driving Melissa a little nuts with my fare checking, but by early February we saw a dip in prices and decided to go for it.

He was, I don't really do numbers anyway. I just told him that if we could get all four tickets for under 1000 round trip we should book it.

$1000 is our usual flight price target with three of us, but now with Marshall having his own seat, still meeting that round trip from CA sounded pretty good.

So when we saw round-trip tickets with non stop flights at the times we wanted for under 900 we pounced.

I wound up finding non-stop flights on United with great flight times (arriving about 6:30 PM and leaving Orlando at 7:30 PM, maximizing our time there). The only down side was again dealing with LAX, but for the price we figured we couldn't beat it

We bought our four tickets at $221 each round trip, which caused there to be only "1 more available at that price". Jon and Brandy wanted to book too, and wound up carefully timing their purchase to both get the rate we had.

With us all on the same flights we figured we were booked and good to go, with one less thing to worry about. My parents still had to figure out their airfare, but they decided not to travel with us because they prefer to have shorter flights with a break in between instead of the long cross country nonstop flight.

Plus they could fly out closer to where they live in Arizona without having to travel to LAX first.

They booked their flights out of Las Vegas, and we were all good, until a couple of weeks ago...

While having dinner and talking about Disney fun, Jon mentioned that our flight times had changed. We were now arriving a few minutes later, but were set to leave at 4:00! Even worse, the arrival time at LAX wasn't any earlier.

I looked into it further, and the new flight number had a stop in Chicago.

This was obviously not what we wanted or paid for so Paul was given the task to call Customer Service.

I called United to see what we could do. I had seen on the website that we could likely re-book or get a refund because the time change was so significant, even though we had the cheapest "non-refundable" tickets.
The customer service (and I use that term very loosely) rep who answered the phone explained to me that only the flight time had changed, and that it was still a nonstop. I questioned this, and she clarified that, and I quote, "It is still a nonstop flight, you just have to change planes in Chicago."

She did offer to look for another flight, but the only other option leaving in the evening had a stop in Dulles, and she mentioned that then we'd no longer have a nonstop. I explained to her that I fail to see the benefit of the nonstop flight, when we have to get off and change planes. I truly don't think this concept ever sunk in with her, and she continued to refer to our flight as the nonstop. I actually began to get scared that she expected us to switch planes while they were still moving, because she insisted it was a nonstop flight.

I haven't brushed up on my wing walking but it wasn't something I was prepared to do on the way home. I generally don't wish to come home that bad and I really don't like heights.

Since the conversation was making no progress, I asked about a refund for the return portion of our trip. She said that our only option would be a United travel voucher that we could use to book another United flight home. Having just been through the options, and discovering that they did not have a suitable flight for us, I asked to speak to a supervisor since this did not agree with the policy on the website. She put me on hold, then came back and said her supervisor said there's nothing else we can do.

After two more long waits and another 20 minutes on the phone, I finally got to speak to a supervisor who was willing to issue a refund for half of our airfare. It should have been so easy!

So now we got our money back... theoretically but had no return flight. Not really a problem if we wanted to live in Orlando but at some point I think work would miss me...

We also had Jon and Brandy still booked on the "Chicago nonstop". We spent about a week watching airfare and looking at our options. Since Jon had booked through Expedia, he was dealing with them and they offered him an American flight combination with a return flight leaving at 8:15 PM. The American flight to Orlando was within 30 minutes of the original United one, so we figured we could make it work, since we were not able to refund that portion of our tickets.

So we pulled the plug and booked the American return. All in all it didn't cost us a ton more than the United flight we had originally booked and we are now back on a nonstop.

We're still under our $1000 price target, so we're happy as long as nothing else changes. Shortly after we re-booked, my parents found out their flight time had moved up by a couple of hours as well. They are looking at moving back to a later flight, but it will be hard to get the flights close enough to be on the same MDE bus. Oh well, there's only so much we can do, and we're glad to be going to Disney, and even glad to have a way home as well.

I'm still not sure about being happy about having a return flight home but I guess it's not vacation if it doesn't end.

We'd run out of DVC points really quickly, and it gets hot in Florida without AC...

Next up on our PTR we'll go over our ADR list. It's going to be a great list of food, some old favorites make an appearance but we have several new restaurants on the list too.

Just Joined in...great report....You did really well with the price of the airfare ...I have been checking for our upcoming trip from Boston and the prices are so high....love how your TR is lined up...Just started one...and trying to figure it out as I go.

 

[dnllmz]

Woah! I've never seen crowd predictions at 1. I can't wait to hear how your trip goes.

 

[GrandCalifornian]

Just Joined in...great report....You did really well with the price of the airfare ...I have been checking for our upcoming trip from Boston and the prices are so high....love how your TR is lined up...Just started one...and trying to figure it out as I go.

Welcome! We’re glad that you joined in.
Trip reports can be a lot of fun. We are never sure exactly what to include in a pre-trip report, but it is fun to share the excitement before a trip. We really enjoy sharing the trip reports after the trip, where pictures make up the best content. We really enjoy having a record of what we did on our trips, and frequently look things up in our trip reports to see what we did when.

Woah! I've never seen crowd predictions at 1. I can't wait to hear how your trip goes.

We are pretty excited about that. We have done this same week before and enjoyed low crowds, but even then didn’t have that many days of 1 for crowd predictions. Perhaps having the hurricane last year scared some people off.

 

[storey13]

We are getting close to the trip now, with just 29 days and hours remaining. I am going through our plans and listing them in a document that we can all keep on our phones to help answer the question of "What are we doing today?"

I'll still ask him 10 times what time the ADR of the day is. I can't help it.

That's fine, this way I can answer quickly by checking my phone, even without connecting to internet. One of the coolest things we have planned this year, and something totally new to us is an Epcot Illuminations Fireworks Cruise.


We are all crazy excited about this cruise. Evening fireworks aren't really my favorite thing because of the waiting and the crowds and all but I'm really looking forward to having our own space and unobstructed views.


Last trip we watched Illuminations from France and saw the people out on the pontoon boats and Brandy said we should look into doing that, and it was his one thing he really wanted to do this time. We will have 8 of us on the boat, and we even got a DVC member discount, so it should be really cool. We are all really looking forward to it. Afterward we will have to get to WL from Yacht Club with Epcot closed, but it is a MNSSHP night so we should be able to take a bus to MK.

We got our luggage tags in the mail this weekend! Our suitcases are still in the shed but we have tags to put on them when we dig them out!


We also found our stash of Magic Bands, which includes the custom Cars one that I bought last trip.

I have super crazy weird sensitive skin and have had trouble with the Magic Bands being irritating in the past so I searched for an alternative this year. I know they sell the puck holder key chain things at Disney but I really like the ease of having it on my wrist. I found this puck holder thing that goes right on my watch band! It should be perfect.



Yeah, it looks pretty neat. I don't have any problem wearing the Magic Bands, but I am always afraid that I will forget to put it on in the morning and lock myself out of the room during one of my early morning walks. If I have a puck on my watch, it should always be there.

Also you can now open the rooms with your phone and you are almost never without that so you probably wouldn't get locked out anymore.

That's true, and the biggest benefit I see of setting up the phone for room access. I'll just have all the gadgets .

Another cool thing I saw is the incredibly low crowd predictions for our trip. During our 10 days, the highest overall crowd rating is a 2 out of 10, and there's multiple days where all four parks are listed as 1 out of 10. I know there will still be people there, but it has to be better crowds than we experienced last year in August.


Lower crowds should be really nice and help us out with our FP+ predicament.

Ahh, good point. It feels so strange to only have fastpasses for two days at this point, but at least we have some and we can wait for anything else that's a must do.

I think it'll be fine, it might also force us to relax more on the trip

I think that's about all for now. We'll post more as we get closer to the trip and actually start packing.

That crowd calendar is looking pretty sweet right now. I've only been in September once for our honeymoon in 2008 and it was pretty nice.

Our kid's school district is pretty strict, so we have to go on school breaks, so Fall break in mid-October is our best time to go.

 

[GrandCalifornian]

That crowd calendar is looking pretty sweet right now. I've only been in September once for our honeymoon in 2008 and it was pretty nice.

Our kid's school district is pretty strict, so we have to go on school breaks, so Fall break in mid-October is our best time to go.

We are excited. We have done it both ways, with taking our daughter out of school and going earlier to avoid taking her out, but they pushed up the start date this year so we decided to try it again. At least she will be out just enough days to get independent study, so she will have work to do on the trip.
Going in the Fall sounds great too though, and you avoid some of the heat and the chance of hurricanes.

 

[Wood Nymph]

The Illuminations cruise should be really fun. You'll be right there almost at the some level as many of the fireworks.

I hope the crowds will be low in September. We will be there after you, Sept 19 to 23, but I haven't seen the crowd calendar for those dates yet.

 

[GrandCalifornian]

The Illuminations cruise should be really fun. You'll be right there almost at the some level as many of the fireworks.

I hope the crowds will be low in September. We will be there after you, Sept 19 to 23, but I haven't seen the crowd calendar for those dates yet.

Yeah, we think the will be pretty cool to enter Epcot by boat. Definitely something different.

The calendar looks pretty good for your dates too. Mostly 2’s and 3’s overall, except a 4 on September 22. We will see, and report how it goes.

 

[GrandCalifornian]

We got more Mickey Mail. Our Magic Bands arrived today!

 

[GrandCalifornian]

We found a fun new way to pass the time waiting for Disney. Since they don’t send planning DVDs anymore, we decided to look them up on YouTube and play them to the TV.


We were up entirely too late. It was a great way to get really excited about the trip. We have been absorbing anything we can find about the two bedroom and we found a walk through of a dedicated two bedroom.

We are happy with our choice to go with a dedicated 2 bedroom. There is so much space in the second bedroom and bathroom. Allie likes that she will have a real big bed too.

Yes the biggest upside of the dedicated for us is the real second bed.

After the 2 bedroom video we went down the YouTube rabbit hole of Disney resort videos. Besides our beloved WL, we liked seeing AKL and Beach Club. Both of these are on our eventual wish list for potential split stays with WL.

We are always looking ahead at future trips and have been discussing the potential of a split stay with a treehouse villa.

The treehouses have always sounded neat, and Allie loves that they have bunk beds. The proximity to Disney Springs would be nice too. Our concern is getting around, especially if we didn’t rent a car. It might be odd to stay at a resort that’s too big to walk to stuff.

Yes, while they really look like fun we are really concerned about the proximity to things like the pool and bus stops.

On the other hand, staying at Beach Club would be an awesome location, and allow us to walk to Epcot and HS. We love visiting there, and could definitely see a stay there sometime.

Beach Club does have a lot of appeal especially during Food and Wine.

Also staying at AKL would be neat. I have talked about a “lodge split” for years.

I have wanted to stay there since our honeymoon.

One more video that we particularly enjoyed was the grand opening of Copper Creek. Disney put a lot of cute touches into it, with Western performers and the head of DVC and the General Manager of WL. (Who we remembered coming out when Marshall fell at Geyser Point last year).

Copper Creek is just the perfect home resort for us. We can't wait to keep going back and seeing what's new for 50 years.

So exciting! We wound out the night watching videos from Disney Food Blog. We found that we enjoy (and tend to very much agree with) them. We watched a bunch of them until it was time for bed.

It feels very "Millennial" to have spent the night on YouTube, but we had a lot of fun. We're still not going to cancel the satellite TV just yet..

Technically I am a Millennial, but no way are we cancelling the TV!

 

[Jenny Sanders]

OMG! You two are so cute! Keep up the commentary!!!

 

[GrandCalifornian]

OMG! You two are so cute! Keep up the commentary!!!

Thanks! We got out our phones and messaged each other back and forth so that we would capture the back and forth. We're just both super excited to be this close to going back to Disney World, and especially Wilderness Lodge.

 

[Jenny Sanders]

Thanks! We got out our phones and messaged each other back and forth so that we would capture the back and forth. We're just both super excited to be this close to going back to Disney World, and especially Wilderness Lodge.

I just love getting both your perspectives on everything!!!! I can't wait to hear all about the trip!!!