A 40th celebration to end the world! PHOTOS ADDED 1/1 About This Page:

[shnewell]

Wow, Cheryl! This looks like it's going to be an amazing trip!! Congrats on the stateroom upgrade. I can't wait to read more.

[disneydreamer33]

What an amazing trip you have planned for your 40 th. My plan for my 40th is to spend it at WDW pretending I am not 40!
Can't wait for more details.

[mousestruck]

Sounds like an awesome way to usher in a new decade! What a fanatastic itinerary. Can't wait to hear all the juicy details!

[Wolfy6688]

Wow!! What an amazing way to celebrate your birthday. I can't wait to follow along on this trip report. I hope that I understand this right and you'll be in WDW before your cruise because I would love a PP meet! I've never gotten to do one and I'd love to have one with you. Can't wait to read more

[Cam22]

I was hoping this PTR would be starting soon! You definitely know how to do birthdays right!

[mushu22]

Great start and title. Like Wolfy-- I would like to meet you when you are down at WDW.Looking foreward to more.

[chezp]

Originally Posted by Linnynad

I LOVE the title of this TR Hillarious.

I am sooo looking forward to this TR because that is exactly what we plan on doing for my 40th too, in 2014. Seven night Fantasy and the same itinerary, but I don't remember Puerto Rico on the cruise we want.

I don't think it's featured on very many cruises. From memory, it was only about two or three itineraries for 2012, which is why it appealed so much...

[chezp]

Originally Posted by rlb38

it's begun ! Sounds like a fabulous LONG holiday. I can say from experience that a Disney vacation does take the sting out of being 40.

Glad to hear that!

[chezp]

Originally Posted by disneydreamer33

What an amazing trip you have planned for your 40 th. My plan for my 40th is to spend it at WDW pretending I am not 40!
Can't wait for more details.

That's pretty much my plan too!

[chezp]

Originally Posted by Wolfy6688

Wow!! What an amazing way to celebrate your birthday. I can't wait to follow along on this trip report. I hope that I understand this right and you'll be in WDW before your cruise because I would love a PP meet! I've never gotten to do one and I'd love to have one with you. Can't wait to read more

You did read it right - we're in WDW from 6-15 December, so I think judging by your countdown, our trips should overlap by a couple of days? Drop me a private message with your plans and we'll see if something matches up and we can arrange a meet-up.

[chezp]

Originally Posted by mushu22

Great start and title. Like Wolfy-- I would like to meet you when you are down at WDW.Looking foreward to more.

The same thing applies - drop me a private message with details of when you're there and your plans and let's go from there. There is also a meet already planned by the way for Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party on 11 December... I'll mention that now.

[chezp]

Pre-trip report – part two: so where to spend our final week then...

There wasn’t much more we could do until the flights came out in early 2012. Once they did, they were (yet again) a lot pricier than the last time we’d booked them. This seems to happen with alarming regularity. Ok, so we only book flights to the States on average once a year and I know prices go up, but all the same... one day it would be nice to see prices stay the same!

I knew that I wanted about a week in WDW, then the cruise and, after that, we’d have another week to play with. The plan was to leave a couple of weeks before Christmas and fly back just before the new year, in time to go back to work as 2013 dawned... I had one idea straight away about how to spend that additional week, so as soon as flights were out, I got to work...

So what was I doing? Why, pricing up flights out to Hawaii, as I was desperate to stay in Aulani, as part of my 40th birthday celebrations. At first, when the flights first went on sale, they were a reasonable price – we’re talking about $350 per person each way, which I knew was good. However, within a few weeks, they had rocketed up to over $500. Oh boy, this wasn’t good...

Sadly, I soon came to the conclusion that Aulani just wasn’t going to be an option for us for this trip. However, trust me, it’s still on the list of places to go – fingers crossed, with any luck, we’ll go next year... I certainly hope so anyway!

So, with that idea out of the window, I needed to think about our plans. I went back and had a play with all the options with Virgin Atlantic to see which would be the cheapest for us. I found out that if we flew into Orlando on 6 December, and then waited until 31 December to fly back from Las Vegas, that was the cheapest way to do things. Having said that, “cheapest” is a relative term, and it was still fairly expensive. Having just paid our Disney Vacation Club annual dues, I now had a cashflow problem, and reluctantly decided that we’d have to wait for a couple of months to book our flights. It was so frustrating, as I knew what I wanted to book, but just couldn’t. So, in a position like that, what’s a girl to do?

Well, for this girl, all I had to left to do was plan what I wanted to do in the time we were in the States. I figured that we would either have to do Walt Disney World before or after the cruise. In the end, bearing in mind that the crowds would be lower, I opted for the start of the vacation. That would give us over a week there, which worked well.

So what to do in the nine days after the cruise? I figured that if we couldn’t go to Hawaii, then perhaps another Disney experience for Christmas was in order. Originally, when Hawaii had been in my plans, I was hoping to get a day to spend in Disneyland somewhere along the way, as we’d never been there for Christmas and I’d always wanted to see that park with all its decorations. Well, if you can’t have Aulani, then why not Disneyland? As we don’t own any points at the Villas at the Grand Californian, I wouldn’t know what would be available until late May, but I figured we’d be able to find somewhere to stay out west on our points.

The next thing I looked at was how to get there. Whenever we fly inside the States, I always prefer to fly with Southwest. For starters, their boarding process is far and away above any other airline, but you also get the two free bags flying with you, which is a definite bonus for us, bearing in mind we usually have at least three cases with us. I was disappointed to find out that they don’t fly directly from Orlando to Los Angeles, so I started to look at how we could break up the trip, and perhaps spend a little bit of time somewhere else along the way.

I quickly narrowed down our options, as with it being December, I didn’t want to go anywhere that might be affected by snow. Well, as you can imagine, that ruled out a heck of a lot of places! I was left with about three choices: New Orleans, Albuquerque, and Phoenix. Albuquerque quickly got knocked off the list for a simple reason – there was just far too much that I wanted to visit around there, and I wanted to be in Disneyland for Christmas Day. way could we see all those places in just the couple of days we’d have in between the cruise and Christmas Day itself.

Phoenix was a runner for some time, as it would’ve been easy to drive over to Disneyland from there, and there are a couple of national parks nearby. It’s probably one of the few times of the year that it would be cool enough for us to cope with visiting the area, so it seemed promising.

New Orleans was also promising. After all, we’d hopefully have our own personal tour guide in the shape of Heather, and I knew from other people’s trip reports, what a great guide she is.

A few days after I’d started to do all this research, the decision was taken for me. I got a private message from Heather, simply entitled “sorry”. As some of you will already know from her previous trip reports, she’d had to cancel the cruise, as her best friend had told her she was getting married on 15 December. I could understand completely, although obviously I was really sad she wouldn’t be with us on the Fantasy. I was so looking forward to introducing her to everything on a Disney cruise. However, if we went to New Orleans, we’d still get to spend some time with her. I guess everything must happen for a reason.

At about this time, I also got a guidebook about New Orleans, and I was fascinated to start reading the history of the place. I discovered why there’s so much French, and Spanish influence there, given its rulers in the past. There certainly seemed to be plenty there to visit.

Fast forward a few days to 17 March, or St. Patrick’s Day, as we also know it, and that’s where the planning went into overload! I was going to wait until the start of the new credit card month, which fell on 21 March, but the day before that, the government was due to have our national budget, and there were all sorts of rumours that they could add yet more on the airfare taxes. Great!

So, after checking we had enough cash to pay the credit card off, and fortunately we did, we bit the bullet and went ahead and got the flights booked. Annoying, they had gone up £20 each about two days before, which was very frustrating. Booking them was no problem, but even more frustrating was the clause that Virgin Atlantic have now put on their bookings, that you have to pay any additional government taxes, if more are added, after you’ve paid in full. This was a real blow, as this was the whole point of booking when we did. Oh well, I can’t say I blame them. After all, why shouldn’t they pass on the cost to the passengers? It’s just a great shame that the airlines have wised up to that, as usually we’ve been able to avoid any such increases in the past. I guess it was only a matter of time before that happened...

With the flights booked, the next thing was to book our accommodation. When the original plans had called for a trip to Aulani, I had booked a couple of nights at Saratoga Springs, as I figured that was the bit I could guarantee – that we’d be flying back into WDW a couple of days before the cruise. Well, now our plans had changed completely, I needed to cancel that booking, and make new ones. It took me a while to work out how you cancel an online DVC booking, as it wasn’t as simple as I thought it would be, but once I’d done that, I was free to go ahead and book.

I figured that we’d do a split stay, hopefully between Animal Kingdom Lodge Villas, and the Beach Club Villas. However, as we only own points at the Beach Club Villas, that was the only one that we could definitely book at this stage. I went ahead and made a five night booking in a one-bedroom villa from Monday 10 December until our cruise starts on the Fantasy the following Saturday, so we’re set with that!

For the early part of our stay, the hope is to trade out in May for Animal Kingdom Lodge Villas, but I always make sure to have a back-up plan and this time was no different. I was going to make a booking at Saratoga Springs, but realised that I’d have to borrow even more points to do that. Well, that seemed a bit silly, given that we had points available in our current Use Year for the Beach Club Villas, so I went ahead and used those. Interestingly, I couldn’t get a studio at the Beach Club Villas for our first night, but I booked the rest. I didn’t even bother waitlisting, knowing that we’d want to try and swap at the seven month mark. If the worst came to the worst, then we could always stay somewhere else for night one. Not ideal, but it was a solution. So, within a couple of hours, the flights and accommodation were all booked – not a bad afternoon’s work!

The following day, I also went ahead and pre-paid for our Photopass CD, as I knew that we’d want one, and we always get great value from these. Thanks to the boards, I’d read about the price increase and the increase for pre-paying was particularly hefty, up from $99.95 to $129.95. thanks. I did a bit of reading on the Photopass website and discovered that it says in the small print that there’s essentially no expiration date on the pre-payment option, so it would still be good for December. Ok, that works for me!

Next: I don’t want to be homeless...

[lauriep]

That's a lot of planning, but it's shaping up nicely. I knew that Heather had to drop out of the cruise, but it's still sad to read about it again. When I first started going to WDW regularly, the flight prices were pretty steady for a number of years. Then they started climbing and don't seem to ever stop. What I now consider "reasonable" is about double what it used to be.

[Thomhazel]

I so love the sound of your trip what a fabulous birthday trip. i so want to go for my birthday someday but being in october for the moment it is during the school term. however, when i go for my birthday i will be pretending i am 40!

There is a beautiful looking hotel that we scoped out for our big trip to California and beyond which unfortunately we didn't manage to fit in. It is called the Sheraton Wild Horse Pass and it commemorates native American traditions I thought it looked really beautiful and it is definitly on my bucket list. Although I'll need to be 40 many many times to get through my bucket list and probably win the lottery as well.

[MayraLR]

Originally Posted by chezp

I'm assuming you're nowhere near San Juan, otherwise I'd say drop past and say hello!

Sadly no, I live about 3 hours away from San Juan. But I'm very happy you're getting to visit PR. Are you planning on any tours?