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05-16-2004, 05:00 AM
| #1 (permalink) |
 Join Date: Jun 2002 Location: Maidstone, Kent, UK
Posts: 96,753
| Fun, flowers and firsts THREAD 1 OF 7 Pre-trip report: Dates: Wednesday 28 April – Friday 14 May 2004 Adventurers: Me, Cheryl (31) and DH, Mark (38) with appearances from a number of other Passporters along the way! Resorts: Animal Kingdom Lodge (Wednesday 28 April – Sunday 2 May) Beach Club Villas (Sunday 2 May – Wednesday 6 May) Disney Cruise (Wednesday 6 May – Sunday 9 May) Beach Club Villas (Sunday 9 May – Friday 14 May) Celebrations: Our first ever Disney Cruise, our first time at the Animal Kingdom Lodge and our first ever visit to WDW in May to see the Flower and Garden Festival. In the tradition of all good Disney planners, we started planning this trip (or should I say “I did”) while we were on our last WDW trip in December 2002 / January 2003. Having just spent 19 nights at the Beach Club, we knew there was no way we could stretch to a return trip anytime in 2003, but having also bought into the DVC, our use year ended in August and even banking our first year’s worth of points meant we had to return to Disney by August 2004 at the latest. Shame…  So when to go back? June, July and August were instantly ruled out, as we thought they were too hot and in July and August, it was bound to packed – especially with Brits during the long Summer holidays. January didn’t appeal and neither did anytime around Easter or Spring Break, so that pretty much left February or May. Although we seriously considered February, we opted for May in the end for a number of reasons: 1) The Flower and Garden Festival would be on at Epcot and as it’s our favourite park, I really liked the idea of being at Disney while this was on. 2) The temperatures were likely to be warmer in May. We’d been twice in December and although we’d had a great time, we’d also had a couple of pretty chilly days, where temperatures got no higher than the 50’s. This was especially the case on our 2002 trip and we wanted to go when we likely to be guaranteed warmer temperatures. From my investigations, I wasn’t convinced that would necessarily be the case in February. 3) Going in May would give us an extra three months to save for our trip! So, May it was. I toyed with dates over the next few months and tried to wait patiently for the airfares to be published in June 2003. We wanted to go for just over two weeks and this time, we would be adding in our first ever Disney cruise. The minute DH found out that cruises could be paid for with DVC points, he wanted to take one! I certainly wasn’t going to say no, although I will admit I was a little apprehensive in case I got seasick – but I figured there probably wasn’t a better way to start cruising than with Disney!  We quickly worked out that a three night cruise would mean we wouldn’t have to use our points for a Friday and Saturday stay (these cost about double, compared to the other nights of the week) so a three day cruise it would be. We settled on Thursday 6 – Sunday 9 May for the cruise, as the original plan was to fly out the previous Thursday (29 April), giving us a week in Disney first and then fly back on the Friday night afterwards (14 May). We like to come back on a Friday, as that means our flights arrive back on Saturday morning, leaving us two days to recover from the jetlag, in time for going back into work on Monday. By the time the airfares came out, I’d decided we should fly out on the Wednesday (28 April) instead, my logic being that fewer people would fly out mid-week and as it was a quiet time of the year, hopefully the flight wouldn’t be full. I phoned DVC and booked the Beach Club Villas (our home resort) and our cruise, with the first four days to be spent at the Animal Kingdom Lodge – and hopefully we’d be able to apply an AP discount to that! When it came to book the flight in July 2003, I found some excellent fares on the Virgin Atlantic website, but even better, our local travel agent was able to better them. As the fares were so cheap, DH suggested we upgrade to Premium Economy. This does what it says on the can – it’s a Premium version of the Economy class, but it does offer dedicated check in, dedicated cabin, pre-flight champagne and most importantly for us, extra legroom – very important, when you’re stuck in a plane for nine hours on your way over to Florida.  I wasn’t sure it was worth the money though (an extra £200 (c. $350) per person per way on top of the original fare!) so we only booked on the way out. On the way back, we’d be in ordinary Economy seats. So that was all booked, along with the car rental with Avis, following a very pleasant experience with them in 2002. We were determined to stick with them, after a lousy time with Alamo in 2000. And Avis were really our only choice, as we wanted a car on both sides of our cruise, but we didn’t want to pay for the privilege of having a rental car and parking it while we were away on our cruise. I found out from my DCL Passporter than Avis had a drop-off point at Cape Canaveral – with the prices we Brits pay for car hire insurance daily and the saving on the parking, that was an extra £75 (c. $130) saved to spend elsewhere on our holiday! So the itinerary looked something like this: Wednesday 28 April : fly out to WDW, arriving at MCO at 15.25 local time. Stay at Animal Kingdom Lodge Sunday 02 May : move from AKL to the Beach Club Villas Thursday 06 May : leave Beach Club Villas and head off for our three night cruise Sunday 09 May : arrive back from our cruise and return to BCV Friday 14 May : leave to go home, flight departing from MCO at 21.10 OK so that’s the plan – next for the preparations!         |
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05-16-2004, 08:48 AM
| #5 (permalink) |
| Community Rank: Jetsetter   Join Date: Jul 2003 Location: Massachusetts
Posts: 2,731
| Re: Fun, flowers and firsts Woo hoo woo hoo a Chezp report! Can't wait to read more!! |
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05-16-2004, 06:06 PM
| #15 (permalink) |
| Allergic to planning  Join Date: Mar 2004 Location: NW Ohio
Posts: 3,381
| Re: Fun, flowers and firsts Wow, you are such a good planner! Something I aspire to be one day. I'm still a fly by the seat of my pants girl.  Looking forward to reading more!  |
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About This Page: This is a discussion on Fun, flowers and firsts THREAD 1 OF 7 within the Sharing the Adventure: Disney World Trip Reports, part of the PassPorter Community - Message Boards and Forums; Pre-trip report:
Dates:
Wednesday 28 April – Friday 14 May 2004
Adventurers:
Me, Cheryl (31) and
DH, Mark (38)
...
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