We last visited WDW in August 2021 in the last blessed days of standby-only lines, and honestly, my family isn't champing at the bit to hurry back given the added complexities of Genie+ and the effect of lightning lanes on wait times, etc. but we have some "souvenirs" we want to use before our son hits his senior year, when college visits will become our main travel objective, and money will be tighter than ever.
Specifically (skip the rest of this paragraph if you're not interested in the minutiae), when we planned our August 2021 visit, we'd booked a room-and-ticket package at the Polynesian (with a "2 ticket days free" special offer), which we ended up canceling in favor of the Dolphin and third-party vendor tickets, once it became plain that the then-ongoing Poly construction projects and monorail station weren't going to be remotely finished by the time of our visit. We saved several hundred dollars by doing so, but ended up with $3,500 in the form of refunded Disney gift cards (purchased with a warehouse club/credit card discount of 9%) we'd used to pay for the package, plus an extra $300 in gift cards left over from what we'd bought to cover food and souvenirs, but didn't end up needing. In addition, we received some travel bank funds from our airline due to issues with seatback screens on the flight over, and were issued 2-day complimentary parkhopper tickets from WDW after a Boo Bash debacle. All of this has just been burning a hole in our figurative pockets for the past 13 months.
So to make a short story long, the upcoming trip is shaking out as follows:
Dates: Sat., 8/12-Fri., 8/18, 2023 (threading in between volleyball camp, and volleyball preseason, for our teens, and hopefully taking advantage of the little crowd dip that occurs when Florida kids head back to school). Yes, we know it will be hot and possibly very rainy, but we've done it before and didn't mind.
Traveling party: Me, DH, and our son (will be 17) and daughter (will be 15)
Transportation: BUF-MCO, direct flights with upgraded seats, FREE using JetBlue credit card rewards points and travel bank funds
Ground transportation: undecided, probably rideshare, definitely won't be renting/parking a car
Hotel(s): 3 nights at Yacht Club (garden view, rack rate of $1,908 after taxes and fees, paid for with Disney GC), followed by 3 nights in a DVC Resort Studio at the Grand Floridian ($1,200 out of pocket, on DVC points rented through David's Vacation Rentals -- half the cost of booking through Disney at the $800/night+ rack rate). [Photo of the GF Resort Studio below.] We've never stayed at either of these resorts before, and are looking forward to something new! Indeed, we'd never even considered the Grand Floridian before, given how expensive it is and how outdated and blah the in-room theming seemed to us, but we were really charmed by the Mary Poppins decor in the new resort studios. The layout of each -- 2 queens + daybed, with a full dresser -- is also perfect for our family configuration, and far preferable to anything with foldout sofas or undersized-under-TV-Murphys.
Tickets: To supplement the complimentary 2-day parkhoppers we already have (which cannot be upgraded or extended), we purchased four 3-day parkhoppers from an authorized reseller for $1,790 (saving about $200 over the Disney online price).
Itinerary: Due to "flight schedule insecurity," we won't plan on visits to any parks on our arrival or departure half-days. We'll have a nice dinner in Disney Springs, maybe visit an Escape Room, and perhaps enjoy the pools at our resorts. We'll visit the parks for the 5 days in between, hopefully with the chance to use extra evening hours if Disney extends them.
Dining: I expect we'll average 5 TS or Lounge visits, 8-10 CS, and a few snacks, during the week, at an average cost of about $200-$250 per day (depending on restaurant choices, which we haven't made yet). Whatever we spend on dining and/or souvenirs will be more than covered by the Disney gift cards we already have, plus the extra $200 or so we've racked up in Disney VISA rewards over the past couple years.
Variables: The Yacht Club rack rate is way over what I'm comfortable actually paying. If the Yacht Club isn't eventually discounted for our dates as part of the usual summer room-only offer (which wouldn't likely come out until around April), and cheaper standard rooms can be had at Boardwalk or Beach Club at that time - we'll change to the cheaper resort for those first 3 nights. Under ordinary circumstances, we'd simply shift to Caribbean Beach, and still be close to HS/EPCOT, but we're worried about weather-related Skyliner closures during that time of year (which happened a lot the last time we came in August, which was prone to thunderstorms and high winds: fortunately, it didn't impact us as we were at the Dolphin and could walk to HS and EPCOT even in a monsoon), and besides, we've got to use up these gift cards on something!
Budget: We've already spent just under $3K out of pocket on supplemental tickets and the 3 nights at GF on rented DVC points. We'll have some other minor expenditures for rideshares, tips, and perhaps an escape room, but there will be no other appreciable out-of-pocket expenses for this trip. Everything else will be covered by Disney gift cards and rewards dollars, with a few hundred dollars' worth left to spare. (I could have used them all up simply by purchasing the tickets directly from Disney instead of a reseller, but I just couldn't stomach overpaying for them given the $200+ difference.) Since I fully expect this will be our "last night in the nursery," in the sense that it will be our last trip to WDW as a family of four before the kids are off to college and all points beyond, and possibly our last trip onsite, I'm praying that it will be a wonderful one!
Stay tuned for inevitable flight schedule changes, hotel discounts and/or switches, weather-related changes, and angsty second-guessing of the plan-in-my-head!
Thoughts, questions, and other feedback are more than welcome. It just feels good to get the plan sketched out in black and white.
Specifically (skip the rest of this paragraph if you're not interested in the minutiae), when we planned our August 2021 visit, we'd booked a room-and-ticket package at the Polynesian (with a "2 ticket days free" special offer), which we ended up canceling in favor of the Dolphin and third-party vendor tickets, once it became plain that the then-ongoing Poly construction projects and monorail station weren't going to be remotely finished by the time of our visit. We saved several hundred dollars by doing so, but ended up with $3,500 in the form of refunded Disney gift cards (purchased with a warehouse club/credit card discount of 9%) we'd used to pay for the package, plus an extra $300 in gift cards left over from what we'd bought to cover food and souvenirs, but didn't end up needing. In addition, we received some travel bank funds from our airline due to issues with seatback screens on the flight over, and were issued 2-day complimentary parkhopper tickets from WDW after a Boo Bash debacle. All of this has just been burning a hole in our figurative pockets for the past 13 months.
So to make a short story long, the upcoming trip is shaking out as follows:
Dates: Sat., 8/12-Fri., 8/18, 2023 (threading in between volleyball camp, and volleyball preseason, for our teens, and hopefully taking advantage of the little crowd dip that occurs when Florida kids head back to school). Yes, we know it will be hot and possibly very rainy, but we've done it before and didn't mind.
Traveling party: Me, DH, and our son (will be 17) and daughter (will be 15)
Transportation: BUF-MCO, direct flights with upgraded seats, FREE using JetBlue credit card rewards points and travel bank funds
Ground transportation: undecided, probably rideshare, definitely won't be renting/parking a car
Hotel(s): 3 nights at Yacht Club (garden view, rack rate of $1,908 after taxes and fees, paid for with Disney GC), followed by 3 nights in a DVC Resort Studio at the Grand Floridian ($1,200 out of pocket, on DVC points rented through David's Vacation Rentals -- half the cost of booking through Disney at the $800/night+ rack rate). [Photo of the GF Resort Studio below.] We've never stayed at either of these resorts before, and are looking forward to something new! Indeed, we'd never even considered the Grand Floridian before, given how expensive it is and how outdated and blah the in-room theming seemed to us, but we were really charmed by the Mary Poppins decor in the new resort studios. The layout of each -- 2 queens + daybed, with a full dresser -- is also perfect for our family configuration, and far preferable to anything with foldout sofas or undersized-under-TV-Murphys.
Tickets: To supplement the complimentary 2-day parkhoppers we already have (which cannot be upgraded or extended), we purchased four 3-day parkhoppers from an authorized reseller for $1,790 (saving about $200 over the Disney online price).
Itinerary: Due to "flight schedule insecurity," we won't plan on visits to any parks on our arrival or departure half-days. We'll have a nice dinner in Disney Springs, maybe visit an Escape Room, and perhaps enjoy the pools at our resorts. We'll visit the parks for the 5 days in between, hopefully with the chance to use extra evening hours if Disney extends them.
Dining: I expect we'll average 5 TS or Lounge visits, 8-10 CS, and a few snacks, during the week, at an average cost of about $200-$250 per day (depending on restaurant choices, which we haven't made yet). Whatever we spend on dining and/or souvenirs will be more than covered by the Disney gift cards we already have, plus the extra $200 or so we've racked up in Disney VISA rewards over the past couple years.
Variables: The Yacht Club rack rate is way over what I'm comfortable actually paying. If the Yacht Club isn't eventually discounted for our dates as part of the usual summer room-only offer (which wouldn't likely come out until around April), and cheaper standard rooms can be had at Boardwalk or Beach Club at that time - we'll change to the cheaper resort for those first 3 nights. Under ordinary circumstances, we'd simply shift to Caribbean Beach, and still be close to HS/EPCOT, but we're worried about weather-related Skyliner closures during that time of year (which happened a lot the last time we came in August, which was prone to thunderstorms and high winds: fortunately, it didn't impact us as we were at the Dolphin and could walk to HS and EPCOT even in a monsoon), and besides, we've got to use up these gift cards on something!
Budget: We've already spent just under $3K out of pocket on supplemental tickets and the 3 nights at GF on rented DVC points. We'll have some other minor expenditures for rideshares, tips, and perhaps an escape room, but there will be no other appreciable out-of-pocket expenses for this trip. Everything else will be covered by Disney gift cards and rewards dollars, with a few hundred dollars' worth left to spare. (I could have used them all up simply by purchasing the tickets directly from Disney instead of a reseller, but I just couldn't stomach overpaying for them given the $200+ difference.) Since I fully expect this will be our "last night in the nursery," in the sense that it will be our last trip to WDW as a family of four before the kids are off to college and all points beyond, and possibly our last trip onsite, I'm praying that it will be a wonderful one!
Stay tuned for inevitable flight schedule changes, hotel discounts and/or switches, weather-related changes, and angsty second-guessing of the plan-in-my-head!
Thoughts, questions, and other feedback are more than welcome. It just feels good to get the plan sketched out in black and white.
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