The Happyfingers Family are on Holiday

[Travel Mum]

Happyfingers, we are on Free Dining and we brought our trip forward and extended by two days in order to check in before Free Dining finishes on 29 September (as long as we check in by then, we get it for our whole 9 night stay). As you have said you will be at WDW before me, then you must be staying during the Free Dining offer too. I think it must be booked by sometime in December (I'd been desparately hoping for it so booked within hours of the special being released ) so I suggest you ring Disney asap and see if you can swap onto that special. With the ages of our children (13, 10 and 6), we will have 4 adult and 1 child Disney Dining Plans included in our package at no extra cost I love the thought of not having to worry about how much each meal costs as most of them will be included

 

[HappyFingers]

cool but could you advise what number to ring on ?
also what do i ask for ? (free dining special ?)
what time do you ring ?

does it take a while ? ie: how expensive is the phone call going to be ? being that its a overseas phone call (is it ?)

I cant figure out how to add the dining plan anyway, being that its paid in full i cant seem to add the dining package now

thanks for all your help

 

[aussietravellers]

cool but could you advise what number to ring on ?
also what do i ask for ? (free dining special ?)
what time do you ring ?

does it take a while ? ie: how expensive is the phone call going to be ? being that its a overseas phone call (is it ?)

I cant figure out how to add the dining plan anyway, being that its paid in full i cant seem to add the dining package now

thanks for all your help

not sure of the number, its the number that you booked on I would think (unless you booked online of course). But you can add free dining, if it's available for the time that you are going. You just call them and give them your reservation number and ask about adding free dining to your booking. It does not matter if you have paid in full. Your booking is not final until 45 days out as far as disney is concerned, paid in full or not. So you can call and change your booking in any way (including changing room category, hotel, adding a % off discount, adding free dining or there may be another type of discount that may come out closer to the time, like a 4/3 offer (pay for 4 nights get 3 free). If you call now and add free dining (if it's available for your dates now), then if a better off that suits your family comes out at 46 days before you go, you can call again and have that applied to your booking. If anything you apply makes your holiday package less in value to what you have already prepaid, they will refund your credit card. If you call now and add free dining, then the price ill not be any different as free dining is just a type of discount.

You could always go to the disney world website, go to the special offers page and pretend to make a booking for your dates and see if there is anything available for boardwalk with free dining http://disneyworld.disney.go.com/special-offers/ click on the free dining offer and check availability before you call

 

[HappyFingers]

yeh i just sent them an email

the code is JL6 apparently
http://www.wdwinfo.com/disneypackages.htm#general

Free dining
does that mean you eat free the whole time you are there ?

its all too confusing

 

[kylieh]

We used code NL7 for ours. From the DW website "(407) 939-7926† and ask for booking code NL7." I would give them a call, so it would be 0011 1 407 939 7926. Have your reservation number with you and you want to change your booking. Ask the agent to apply the Free Dining NL7 to the booking. If they can't, you might want to cancel the booking and then rebook your trip using the code.

Here is the link for the offer: http://bookwdw.reservations.disney....=Promo&promotionCode=fy11dine&market=fy11dine

Or, from www.disneyworld.com go to the menu "Tickets and Packages" > "Special Offers" > The first option down under "Vacation Pacakges" is for Free Dining. There are links on the page explaining the dining package.

 

[HappyFingers]

arnt there cancelation fees ?

sorry i hope i dont annoy the crap out of you lovely Ladies

 

[PrincessInOz]

Free dining (FD) does mean that you eat for free. As you've booked into the Boardwalk (shortcode BW or BWI for Inn or BWV for the villa), you should be entitled to the Basic Dining plan.

As Kylieh points out, there is information on the Disney site regarding the different plans. There is also a 'sticky' or information thread on the Dining section of the Disboard. The link is here:

http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?t=2353648

I would recommend reading the first 5 posts in conjunction with the information on the Disney site.

I have also found AllEars to be a good reference site for checking out dining menus. The link is here:

http://allears.net/din/dining.htm

On the left hand side of the dining page, there will be a heap of links - by parks and resorts. The list of restaurants table service (TS) and counter service (CS) will be listed; together with menu and indicative price of the meals.

Have fun! You have heaps of time before your 180 day mark to do the research and work out where/if you want to eat. As you have FD and I suspect the DDP (Disney Dining Plan), you are entitled to 1 snack, 1CS and 1TS meal per person, per night that you are staying. That can save you heaps of money...but it may also mean having to work out where you might like to eat, what time so that you make the appropriate ADRs for you and the family.

In the dining section of the DisBoard, you'll also find lots of pictures or food porn. Might be something that your wife might like to take a look at, with you.

We're all itching to share our experiences....and by and large...we're pretty friendly and don't bite much. Feel free to ask away.

 

[PrincessInOz]

arnt there cancelation fees ?

sorry i hope i dont annoy the crap out of you lovely Ladies

Happy Fingers - are you currently booked on a room only reservation or a package? The cancellation policy is a little bit different depending on which one you've booked. But with this amount of time out, you should not incur any cancellation fees yet. I think the package cancellation fee incursion is 45 days before you check in....I think room only is either 48 hours or 5 days? Can't remember which....plenty of time to change.

What was that I was saying on another thread? We should keep score on the Aussie and NZ Dis-ers going in Sep 11 for number of changes

 

[kylieh]

arnt there cancelation fees ?

sorry i hope i dont annoy the crap out of you lovely Ladies

No cancel fees or change fees I believe until 45 days out. Here are the T&Cs - http://adisneyworld.disney.go.com/media/ibc/DisneyWorldIBC/IBC/popups/popup_terms.html

Can't remember/don't know if you are booking with children. If they are fussy eaters, and under the age of 10, you may wish to book them as 10 year olds, that way they'll get the adult free dining and not the kids and a lot better selections. (Costs about $35 more for a 10 day ticket per child, but worth it for meal selection.)

 

[HappyFingers]

ok ok
starting to get the hang of things

so if they do add the free dining and we wish to upgrade from the basic dining to the deluxe dining can we do that ? and only pay the difference between standard and deluxe ?

ill ring them when i am at mums place international calls are free at mums joint

failing that we will cancel and rebook, and then begin to develop a plan with respect to where we want to eat (no seafood for me, ive never eaten seafood, ever, cant do it )

thanks all for your help
ill get the missus to post and say hello, when she finishes , yeh right

 

[PrincessInOz]

Mmmm...noticed that you haven't had a lot of responses to this....hope I can provide some logical responses...and perhaps some of the other Aussie/NZ disers can chime in with their opinions as well.

wow thanks heaps thats a lot of stuff
we have purchase accom (boardwalk) and magic your way package and we paid full price

ok so ill have to keep an eye on the discounts section

Discounts have historically been either a % discount off your room or Free Dining. Disney have also offered a Gift Card (up to about $750) and Kids Play for Free i.e., the kid park ticket is free; in the past. You can only apply ONE discount per booking. What this means is that you need to work out which discount is best for you and the family.
The BW should qualify for the highest % room discount, which historically has been about 40%.
Free Dining will save you about $50 per adult per night.

If you are obsessive compulsive like me, you'll be running spreadsheets soon to work out which discount is better for you. I'm outing myself here but my spreadsheets also include the dishes the family would be eating per meal! But I don't recommend that you get down to that level of obsession

I do have a few newbie questions if anyone can help me with them

when we get off the ship it will be a sunday morning at around 9am

the plan was/is to then hire a car somewhere (at fort lauderdale)
and drive up to disneyworld in time for check in (we are guessing 2 to 3 hrs drive ??) but really we dont have a clue

A number of us have driven from Miami up to Orlando and Fort Lauderdale isn't that far from Miami. I would allocate about 4 - 5 hours drive for this; more if you plan to stop and sightsee along the way. I've found Alamo to be the cheapest in Florida; but other Aussies have different preferences. It all boils down to the deals the offer at the time. The additional benefit of going with Alamo (or Hertz) is that you can drop off the car on-site within WDW (either at the Swan/Dolphin, which is next door to the BWI or at the car rental site...and they will provide a free drop off back to BWI).

dont really know what order we will be doing things after that, all i know is my wife wants to take the kids for a character breakfast

You have lots of time to plan. There are a number of character breakfast spots; Tusker House seeming to be a favourite on the Aussie section because you can get into Animal Kingdom (AK) park early with an early ADR booking and also because the food is pretty good there. I also like Cape May at the Beach Club; which is about 5 - 10 minutes walk from the BWI. And after breakfast, it also is about 5 minutes away from the International Gateway entrance to Epcot or a short boatride to Hollywood Studios (DHS or HS).

other foods we enjoy are mexican, quality burgers, indian, italian and of course chocolate

Epcot has a fantastic range of counter service and table service places. Indian is a little bit difficult to get in WDW.


sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
after we finish at disneyworld we are then going to universal where we have booked at one of the 4 star hotels that are onsite

how are we gonna get from disneyworld to universal ?
as of yet, no idea, still trying to figure it out

travel from universal to seaworld, once again, no idea ?, we will prolly just stay local somewhere near seaworld.

Depending on whether you are keeping the rental car for the duration, you could drive yourself from BWI to Universal or SeaWorld. The alternative is to catch the Mears Shuttle service or organise a taxi/hire car for this. It depends on how many people there are in your party and whether you plan on keeping the hire car or not.


its a huge trip and the value of the dollar is certainly helping

we are not rich and have been saving for ages to do it and do it in style

from what i have read, everyone seems to fly to LA then across to florida (miami in our case as Kennedy is first followed by the ship)

Some of us fly straight to Orlando/Miami with a short layover either in LA or San Francisco. Depending on whether you are travelling with kids; you might want to consider breaking the trip up in either LA or SF to recover from the long haul. Just depends on what you want to do.

we are budgeting about 15K spending money and will prolly post some stuff home so we dont get caught overweight at the airport

all help and advice appreciated

If this is pure spending money and does not include your airfare, cruise, hotels/park tickets, food and car hire, then WOW!

I did my last trip for 2 adults and a 10 year old to WDW (10 nights), Miami (2 nights) and LA (6 nights) ALL inclusive for a little bit less than this.

 

[HappyFingers]

lol

yeh well that ship is very big and it has lots of shops and my wife will be free on it for a whole week

plus when we go to kennedy i want to buy a decommissioned space shuttle (space shuttle will be retired from service by then )

then there is all the other places

we hope to have all the accom, flights, etc booked and paid for by the end of the year (maybe early next year) then we have most of next year to save up the spending money (we want to avoid a loan redraw )

so the plan is to take 15k pure spending money and what we dont use or need we bring back

yes thankyou i found the alamo website and we will use them for the drive up
shuttle across to universal and then we will most likely need a car to go to seaworld and our accom (might just drop into something simple by then, no need to book)

thanks for all your help
this thread could go 50 pages by the time i actually leave
may need to contact a mod to have the thread title changed

 

[PrincessInOz]

lol
may need to contact a mod to have the thread title changed

I cannot help myself!!

You can change this yourself..without a mod helping...

Go back to your first post in this thread. Hit the Edit button. When your post comes up, there should be a (Go?) Advanced Button. When you hit this button, the smilies will show up again....and so will the Title.

 

[Travel Mum]

Sorry, I can't help with contacting WDW reservations direct because I deliberately booked our WDW package with Dreams Unlimited. They are one of the official Disney travel agents and their packages cost exactly the same as booking with Disney. However, the advantage over booking with Disney is that my DU travel agent will keep her eye out for specials for me and change our booking to a better special if one comes out (but I'm happy with Free Dining though) That's how we got onto Free Dining because she alerted me as soon as it was released. I'm not at the ADR booking stage yet but my agent, Michele, will make all those reservations for me when I tell her what I want. With the time differences between N.Z. and Orlando, this is all much easier to deal with her via email rather than making calls to Orlando in the middle of the night

 

[Ms. Shuttergirl]

Say what???? 15k???? Can I come with you guys .

You are being very generous to your wife and her spending and god bless you for that .

I think that will be much more than you will need but I look forward to hearing the final breakdown when you return.

Sounds like PrincessinOZ has given you lots of great info and that you are well on your "planning" way.

 

[ehsmum]

We moved from The Dolphin Resort at WDW to Royal Pacific at Universal by taxi. I don't remember exactly what it cost but I think it was around $40. We needed a van as there are 5 of us plus luggage and the kids loved it because there were tvs with Tom and Jerry cartoons in the taxi!

 

[shushh]

HappyFingers, you'll have a fantastic time with 15K! What a great way to enjoy the US and WDW. The others have given excellent and detailed advice. The only things that I wanted to add is perhaps do Kennedy Space Centre after the cruise? It is much closer to Orlando than Miami (you're flying into Miami?). You'll be driving up then down then up again. Also factor in extra time for disembarkation for the cruise. My parents went on Oasis of the seas and they mentioned that it took longer than usual to get off the ship because of big numbers.

 

[HappyFingers]

ok thanks for that
thats great advice and will help alot
our flights arnt booked so i guees we are flying into orlando
grab a car and head down there
we cant do kennedy after the ship as we are booked into wdw (it has begun with the shortcuts LOL) on the day we get off the ship
ill let the ship people know we have a 4 hr drive up to wdw and that we would like to get off as soon as possible (it may or may not work) from what i have been reading check in isnt until 3pm and perhaps later anyway

the reason we are doing kennedy first is that we are arriving in orlando (Now) 4 days before the ship departs just in case we have any delays on the way over
you can miss a flight but you cant miss a ship

so we will make our way down to ft lauderdale via kennedy from orlando at a comfortable pace (once again thanks)

then do the ship, wdw, universal, seaworld and then begin our way home again from orlando i suppose

we are going to wait until the travel expo later in the year (melb) and hopefully there will be some cheap return flights to LA on offer




its my day off and im finishing painting the house (inside) i guess waiting 11months to go on holiday is kinda like watching paint dry, so im getting pleny of experience today

 

[PrincessInOz]

HappyFingers - You might want to keep an eye on the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) events and launches (shuttle and rocket). Depending on when you are going, it may coincide with an event......

http://www.kennedyspacecenter.com/events.aspx#2010/10/0/

It takes about an hour to travel from Orlando to KSC. And if you are planning on driving, keep your quarters and dollars handy for the tolls (or research their Sunpass system).

Enjoy watching your paint dry! At least you didn't start the job on wet Saturday.....

 

[HappyFingers]

Im wondering if anyone can help me with a small issue im having at the moment

im sure there is a better way i just dont know what it is

at the moment
everytime i make a payment to WDW or for the ship or for anything actually
i get stung with international transfer fees
they aint cheap either
i paid 100 bucks to the bank just for WDW alone
by the time im finished paying for everything NAB will have picked my pockets for about $500 (thats before we even leave)

theres got to be a better way

anyone know it ?