Halloween, Hawaii and holiday celebrations UPDATED 11/28 About This Page:

[chezp]

Halloween, Hawaii and holiday celebrations

After much thought, I’ve decided to post this pre-trip report in both the WDW trip report forum and the Globetrotting forum, rather than one or the other. I honestly couldn’t make my mind up which forum to post it in, and I figured there were merits to both, so that’s the option I went for in the end. I appreciate if you’re reading both, that means that there will be duplication, but I wanted to ensure that there was a record of our planning in both forums for anyone who wants to plan something similar in the future.

Pre-trip report – part one: Are we ever going to be able to get to Aulani

Dates: Wednesday 30 October – Saturday 15 November
Adventurers: Me, Cheryl (40) and DH Mark (48)
Destinations: Walt Disney World and Hawaii!
Resorts: Grand Floridian Villas, Beach Club Villas,Aulani and Animal Kingdom Lodge Villas
Meets: seeing lots of PassPorters along the way. If I try and name everyone, I’m bound to miss someone out, so it’s easier not to…
Celebration: Celebrating our 14th wedding anniversary

Before I begin the trip report proper, some introduction. Hi, I’m Cheryl and I’m a Disney nut! I’m very happily married to my wonderful husband Mark and luckily for me, he’s also a Disney nut. I chose well…

During our time together, we’ve travelled the world, visiting all the Disney theme parks on the way, we’ve sailed on all the Disney cruise ships and we’ve even (shock horror! ) taken a few non-Disney vacations, taking in a variety of places, including large chunks of Europe and America, both cities and national parks. In fact, a lot of my PassPorter buddies joke that I’ve seen more of their country than they have.

Where do I start with this trip? Back in the mists of time I think…

I’ve always fancied the idea of going to Hawaii for as long as I can remember. Back in 2007, Disney announced plans to build a resort there, including a Disney Vacation Club resort. Well, that sealed it for me, we would definitely have to go once that was open. I knew it would be a long wait though, and it was. The resort didn’t open until 2011 and wouldn’t be finished until 2013.

I did look into going to Hawaii over Christmas 2012, playing around with visiting it before our cruise on the Fantasy and afterwards, but sadly the flight prices conspired against me. They weren’t too bad when they first went on sale, but I had to wait for our return flight home to go on sale, as I wanted that secured first. By the time I was able to snag that, fares had risen dramatically. In fact, I couldn’t believe how much they’d gone up by. It just wasn’t going to work out for us for that visit…

After that disappointment, my thoughts immediately turned to “well, can we go then?” and I started to think about our next trip in 2013. I was already planning to go back to Walt Disney World for the Food and Wine Festival, as we hadn’t been to that since 2008. As it was still fairly early in 2012, I could have a look at flight prices for October/November 2012, and see what they looked like. A heck of a lot more reasonable than Christmas was the answer!

Knowing that the whole trip would hinge around being able to get into Aulani, and knowing we could only book at seven months out (DVC Members can book at 11 months out for their home resort and seven months out for all other resorts), as soon as the time came, I checked on our chances of getting in there as well. It all looked good, particularly for November.

I discovered that someone at work, whose holidays mine can’t overlap with, wanted the third week of October off. I’d been half planning on having that week and the next week off, but after a lot of thinking, I opted for the tail end of October through to the middle of November as my dates. I even got my holiday approved, as did Mark, before we went away on our Christmas break, as we knew that the flights would be out in late December.

Sure enough, they came out, although they were a bit more pricey than I’d anticipated, particularly if we planned on flying back on Upper Class, which was the original plan. So, rather than booking straight away, we took some time to think about it…

It’s just as well we did, as when we got back to work, we discovered how tough it is to fly back across eight time zones one night, arrive the next morning, and then 24 hours later go into work… well I discovered that anyway, as I was the one going straight back to work. Fortunately, it was the new year so it was only a three day week, but even that was tough enough for me. Oh boy, I was going to need longer to recover next time around, especially if we’d be flying into Vegas from Hawaii the day before.

I decided to add an additional day on the front of our vacation, so that we didn’t have to shorten our time away and allowing us to have a bit more recovery time. Mark wasn’t so keen on this approach, as he was worried about taking that much time off. He suggested spending less time in Florida, but there was no way I could do that, not with two books to research (PassPorter’s Walt Disney Worldf or British Holidaymakers and PassPorter’s Disney Vacation Club Guide – forgive the quick plug, but heck, I couldn’t resist! ) so I told him I’d fly out on the day we’d planned, it was up to him what he wanted to do….

As a lot of you seemed to like the “blog writing” style that I tried with my last Disney trip report, I decided I’d do more of the same this time around…. I will put a disclaimer in here…. All these instalments were pretty much written on the dates that are shown. This might mean as we go through that you read some things that perhaps make you go hmmmm (to quote a song from the early 1990s… ) and wonder what I’m talking about! I’ll say no more than that at this stage, but that comment will have relevance at a later stage….

Saturday 26 January

I decided it was about to start working out whether I’d planned long enough for the Hawaii section of our trip. I had started off with the plan of flying out there on Thursday 7 November, as then at least we wouldn’t have to spend our anniversary in the air but I quickly came to the conclusion that wasn’t going to be possible. We’d need at least seven solid days in Hawaii to see everything I wanted.

I knew already that I wanted to spend a day on the Big Island, and I’d also opted for a day in Maui, as it was home to a national park and I want to see as many of them as I can. I did briefly consider a day trip to Kauai as well, but during my spa afternoon, I did a lot of reading of my Hawaii travel guide and realised that, while Kauai was appealing, it would mean that we wouldn’t have enough time to do everything I wanted in Oahu. Ok, scrap that idea. That left us with two day trips, and five days on Oahu, which should be enough.

I also had a re-think about our flights to and from the States. Much as I’d really love to fly home in Upper Class again from Vegas, I was getting to the stage where I just couldn’t justify it. It was going to be an extra £2,000 just for a return journey and if we flew Premium Economy both ways, then that would mean the £2,000 could be spent on our flights to and from Hawaii. As Mark said, they’re not short flights – something like six hours, depending how you do it and where you change flights, and being cooped up in Economy wasn’t something that appealed that much to either of us.

I started to do some research into the First Class options with all the carriers who go to Hawaii. I priced them up and then discovered that some of the airlines in the States now offer extra legroom, which was really what we wanted, for an extra charge. Hmmm…. That would put us with 36”/37” of legroom, which is comparable to Premium Economy. That might work. Ironically, that’s about as much legroom as you get with some of the First Class prices so that sounds like quite a good deal. You can’t book any of this online, so when we get to booking flights, I’ll probably have to call and work out what we can do, but it’s another option. So far, American Airlines are coming out cheapest, which isn’t so bad, as we’ve had Ok flights with them in the past, but we’ll see what the prices are like when it gets to April and booking those flights….

Next: we’ll be at Disney at the same time as you!

[Colexis Mom]

Great start Cheryl!

[MayraLR]

Signing in.

[mcc0313]

What a wonderful start

The F&WF, WDW and Aulani - the perfect vacation, so excited to hear all about your plans.

[KMB733]

Great Start!!

[chezp]

Pre-trip report – part two: we’ll be at Disney at the same time as you!

Sunday 27 January

I logged on this morning to find a message from Larry, telling me that he and Bob would be staying at the Beach Club Villas from 26 October until 3 November, so their dates would be overlapping with ours – what great news and what a lovely start to the day!

Today was the day of the Australian Open tennis final, which featured Andy Murray, sadly losing to Novak Djokovic. It was quite a marathon match, and during it, I kept researching away on our trip. I started trying to work out rough plans for each day, just to try and ensure that the flights I was looking at taking would give us long time out there and that we’d have enough time to do everything. I think Mark was quite amused (and possibly quite worried too), as I was doing all this planning, with no accommodation booked, and knowing that I couldn’t book any until early April. In fact, until the accommodation was secured, I wouldn’t be booking anything at all.

I also went on to Amazon and decided to get an updated version of my Dorling Kindersley Hawaii book (otherwise known as the bible! ), as my edition dated from 2007, which just goes to show how long I’ve been wanting to visit the place. I also ordered another book, Oahu revealed, which I figured would give us more information about the island we’d be spending most of our time on. I always love getting new travel books to read!

That evening, we watched Hawaii Five-O and I kept sitting there, saying “I know where that is” all the way through! I think I may have driven Mark slightly nuts during that hour…. It did help that I’d looked up some filming locations for the TV series just prior to that episode airing….

Monday 28 January

I did more research on exactly what I wanted to do on each day, both in Oahu and also on our day trips to the Big Island and Maui. It’s probably just as well I did do some of this work, as I realised how long it would take it to get around the other islands, which meant I could refine our plans to be a little more realistic, shall we say? Ahem… After all, when you’ve got 12 plus hours, you won’t be able to get everything done…

Wednesday 30 January

I came home to a private message from Sharon (Princess Sharon), asking me about when we were planning to be at Disney in the fall, as she was thinking of taking a cruise, and the one she was looking at at the moment was one leaving on 6 November. Well, that works just perfectly, so I told her all about our plans, such as they were at the moment. She even mentioned maybe going to the Halloween Party on Halloween itself, which I thought could be pretty neat, although I know that one probably would be packed and would no doubt sell out far in advance of the day…

Thursday 31 January

I really, really, really PassPorter. Have I mentioned recently how much I love this site? For the third time in less than a week, I got a message, asking for our dates. I woke up to this one from Barb (Grammy Grumpy), as she and Bob were starting to look at their plans for the fall. Again, I happily told her where we were up to, so for those keeping score, so far, that’s Bob, Larry, Sharon, Barb and Bob who may all be there at the same time as us!

However, all of this got me to the stage where I knew I had to book the flights… now here’s a weird thing. I’d been keeping an eye on the flight prices the day I was certainly looking at flying out, Wednesday 30 October, and while the later flight in the day had stayed the same price, the earlier one had just gone up and up. It got up to something like £1,150 for Premium Economy, which was crazy, as the later one was about £990. I really prefer the earlier flight, as it means we can drive to Disney in the daylight, so that was pretty gutting.

Anyway, I had a look tonight, and couldn’t believe what I saw. I double checked the dates were correct, and they were. The earlier flight (and the later one) were both down to £980. Wow, that’s not something I’m used to seeing with Virgin Atlantic. Usually when their flight prices start to go up, they don’t come down again. Bonus!

Friday 1 February

My Amazon order had arrived yesterday, but they couldn’t get the package through the letterbox, so I had to pick it up from the Post Office, which I did. I couldn’t wait to start reading my latest book, and wow it’s good from what I’ve read of it so far. I love the informal feel of it – it talks about “we” all the time, and the fact that the people who write it actually live on Oahu, so it really is tips from residents. They seem to have put an amazing amount of research into each edition (sound like another travel guide you know? ) and the result is an excellent book, packed with lots of useful information, which I know will be a huge help in planning our vacation. Ok, I’m off to go and have another look at it now!

Saturday 2 February

I never quite know what I’m going to get when Mark utters those immortal words “You might not like this, but…” Either I tend to love what he says or I’m left thinking “ I don’t like this at all!” Fortunately, in this case, it wasn’t the latter, although I wasn’t sure at first. Here’s what he came up with:

“I’ve been thinking about Hawaii. Why don’t we fly out, spend a couple of days in Florida, then go to Hawaii, then come back to Florida and spend a couple more days there? That way we could deal with the change in time zones a bit better….” Hmmm… That merits some further thought…

Monday 4 February

Finally I got some time today to play with figures and flights to see if Mark’s idea would work out or not. The first thing I plugged in were flights back from Orlando to see what difference that would make to the price over Vegas. Well, the answer was not very much at all. Ok, that’s a good start.

Now to look at flights from Honolulu back to Orlando. It turned out that the flight prices were almost exactly the same as to get to Vegas, That was looking promising… The only downside was that they were all red eye flights. Not great! I figured that if we could get the extra legroom seats, then maybe that would be do-able. Of course, if those weren’t still available by the time we came to book, then we might have to pay for First Class flights. That could end up being very expensive.. At least now I know where we stood…

I also did a little bit of research into when the Christmas events started at Walt Disney World, realising that maybe we could catch those too, if we did go for plan B. It all looked very promising, with the Osborne Lights and the Christmas Party both starting on 9 November last year. Ok, well that bodes well then. It would be quite the vacation if we could sample both the Halloween and Christmas parties, the Food and Wine Festival and the Osborne Lights in one trip!

We were also watching Top Gear that night (some of you may know it from BBC America?) and they had Mick Fleetwood on it. During the interview, he said that he lived on Maui, so I went to look him up online out of interest – and guess what I found? He opened a restaurant there in August! Ok, so I think we might just have to go and visit that then…

Next: the flights are booked!

[lauriep]

It's all shaping up very nicely! It's so great when you start to get those messages from other PPers who will be there at the same time. Mark's idea to sandwich Hawaii between two stays at WDW was a good one!

[Colexis Mom]

Sounds like everything is coming together!

[KMB733]

Sounds like everything is taking shape!!

[chezp]

Originally Posted by lauriep

It's all shaping up very nicely! It's so great when you start to get those messages from other PPers who will be there at the same time. Mark's idea to sandwich Hawaii between two stays at WDW was a good one!

It was and I have to confess I'd have never thought of it.

[chezp]

Pre-trip report – part three: the flights are booked!

Wednesday 6 February

Finally – our flights are booked!

I cannot begin to tell you how relieved I am to finally have those tied down. Flying Premium Economy means there aren’t that many seats, so I always worry that all of them will fill up, before we book. Thank goodness that’s one less worry for me! Of course, we can’t do that much more planning until we get to the seven month mark, I can see what dates I can get for Aulani, and then what flights we can get, but heck, it’s one step there – we’re definitely going back!

I went to go and have a look at availability on the DVC Member website not long afterwards, and when I went to it, there was an image of the Treehouse Villas on the entrance page. Oh wow – now they look very cool! I’ve always liked the idea of staying there, but of course, they’re enormous for just the two of us (they sleep up to nine people! ) so I figured it wouldn’t be a goer, but then my brain got whirring…

I was already having problems working out how to split this stay, as I liked the idea of being at Bay Lake Tower for the Halloween Party, but equally I wanted to spend time at the Beach Club Villas (well, that’s a given – it’s our favourite ) I figured maybe two nights at each, but the way I was planning things now, we’d have five nights before flying out to Hawaii (hopefully! ), so maybe the first night could be spent at the Treehouse Villas.

I quickly suggested it to Mark and he agreed, so I went ahead and booked it! I don’t usually stay somewhere for just one night, but as we’d be flying in that day and would be jetlagged, meaning we’d probably be up at stupid o’clock in the morning, I figured we could at least enjoy it in the early hours of the morning, and with all that space, if one of us was up, and the other wasn’t, then it would give us plenty of space to enjoy.

I emailed Bob, Larry, Sharon and Barb to let them all know that the flights were booked, and to explain the plans now for Hawaii. Sharon and I were already cooking up some dining plans – like the California Grill and Be Our Guest! How exciting…!

Tuesday 19 February

Wow, I can’t believe it’s been almost two weeks since I last wrote any form of an update for this report, but I have a good excuse. In the meantime, we’ve been busy, booking our cruise out of Venice on the Magic next July!

There’s also not much else I can really plan, until I know exactly what we’re doing about Hawaii, and before I can book flights, I need to know the availability at Aulani. Of course, I won’t know that until seven months out in early April. That’s still an agonising six weeks or so away – so close, yet so far…

I did have another quick look at the American Airlines website, and discovered that fortunately, as of today anyway, there are still some seats with the additional legroom left on the flights I want. Fingers crossed that it stays that way for a few more weeks yet….

Saturday 2 March

Well, again, it’s been a while since I did anything towards this vacation, but then again, we’re still waiting for the seven month window to open at Aulani, and so there’s not much more we can do. However, that doesn’t stop me from looking…

The first thing that happened today was a new package turned up from Amazon, which included the Thomas Cook guide to Hawaii. I just figure you can never have too many guidebooks and heck, if I find one interesting thing out about Hawaii that I might want to see or do, then it’s worth the £5 I paid for it…

I was a bit bored, so I checked out the flights I was looking at, and there were still seats left with extra legroom. That’s a good sign!

I also had a look at Aulani’s availability for early October, and wow, that brought positive news indeed! All seven days from the beginning of October were available for just about every combination I put in, although the one I was hoping for was for a studio with an ocean view. It’s all looking promising so far… just a month left to go. I will try to be more patient, although how successful I’ll be, I do not know…

Sunday 3 March

Well, my patience lasted a long time…. I was back on the American Airlines website and also the Delta website, looking at flight availability and prices. They now both offer the extra legroom seats, and it looks as if they’re the same price - $160 maximum from what I can find out, although annoyingly, you don’t know how much they are for your particular flight until you’ve bought your tickets for that flight. Seems like an odd way of doing things to me.

I must admit Delta appeals slightly more, as the flight to and from Hawaii comes back into Atlanta, which means that it’s a longer overnight flight, which gives you more time to sleep. Also, if we’re going to pay for extra legroom seats, I want those flights to be as long as possible. We certainly wouldn’t pay for those seats on the short haul flights. Two or three hours, I can live with being cramped for that much time, it’s the longer flights I’m more concerned about.

In the end, I decided to post a question on the boards, asking people what they reckoned. If they had to choose between the two airlines, which would they go with and why? After all, we last flew with Delta in 2006 and American in 2005, so it’s been a while…

By now, I was in full planning mode! I had a look at the Disney section of our vacation, and worked out that there was no way we could stay at both the Beach Club Villas and Bay Lake Tower before we head out to Hawaii, much as I’d love to. Bay Lake would work for the nights of the Halloween Party, but I knew from previous years, that was going to be Thursday, which was Halloween itself, and possibly the Friday. I knew that Sharon was keen on going on the Thursday, which I thought would be neat. The only thing that worried me was how crowded it would be and whether we’d be able to stay up that late, given we’d only have arrived the day before…

Anyhow, no matter how we split it, we’d need two nights at each resort. Bay Lake made sense for the Thursday and the Friday. So what’s the problem with that? It would leave us at the Beach Club Villas for the weekend. Not a problem in itself, but obviously while we’re there is the sensible time to go to the Food and Wine Festival. And what do we know about the Food and Wine Festival? Never go at a weekend if you can avoid it! We learnt that on our last visit at that time of the year in 2008. While everything was fine during the week, at weekends, it was a very different story, with lots of alcohol fuelled behaviour that was distinctly un-Disney. Not something I want to go through again….

So the conclusion I came to is that we’d need to stay put for our stay at Disney prior to our departure to Hawaii. Well, obviously, as our home resort and as it’s near to Epcot, it had to be the Beach Club Villas. Just as well everything still seems to be available then…

Then I settled down and had a look at our dining options. My goodness, with such a short stay (well, it is for us anyway! ), those filled up pretty quickly. By the time I’d got our must-dos in, which are:

• Beaches and Cream
• Boma
• California Grill
• Crystal Palace

And then I added in the places that we didn’t make it to/couldn’t get into on our December 2012, which were:

• Be Our Guest (please let there be a reservation for dinner available this time! )
• Mama Melrose’s
• Tokyo Dining

That really didn’t leave many other free slots for our stay… I’d already thought that I’d like to go back to Chef Mickey’s, especially as I figured doing it before the Christmas Party (provided it’s on the nights we’re there) would be perfect, as then we could legitimately park at the Contemporary I then settled down to work out whether we’d have any spare credits from our stay at the Beach Club Villas, and if so, how we’d fill them up…

It quickly became clear that my initial plan to spend four nights there wouldn’t work so well with the Deluxe Dining Plan. Try as I might, I just couldn’t use up all the credits. The reason quickly became apparent to me. If we were going to head to Hawaii on the morning of Monday 4 November, that was about our only option – leaving in the morning, which didn’t even leave time for a breakfast at Disney before we set off for the airport. Hmmm… There was only one logical conclusion…

With all the likely flights looking as if they’d be leaving at around 9:00am or 10:00am at the latest, then we’d have an early start from Disney. Well, we could always spend the night at the Hyatt at the airport the night before. Now maybe that would work better with using up those Dining credits…

Well, it turned out that would, so I guess that’s that sorted then. In which case, I’ll go ahead and book those three nights from Thursday 31 October until Sunday 3 November, so that’s exactly what I did. We now have a one bedroom villa at our beloved Beach Club Villas for that period. Oh I can hardly wait to enjoy that Jacuzzi bath!

Next: re-planning our days

[Colexis Mom]

Boy, when you plan, you plan! No stone left unturned! Glad it's all coming together!

[lauriep]

It's nice to have so many choices, but does make planning more complicated! I know Aulani worked out in the end, but you must have been getting more and more nervous as the 7-month period approached!

[honeybee723]

So happy I found this early! It seems a missed a few of your other reports, but I'm back now.

[chezp]

Originally Posted by Colexis Mom

Boy, when you plan, you plan! No stone left unturned!

Tell me about it!