Trip Report 12 parks in 16 days! Disney Parks Around the World Trip Report

Trip report from 12/19-1/6.

Day 1 - Away We Go
“The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.” – Walt Disney

Enough talk. After over a year in planning, over five years since we last tried to do a similar trip, AND Kendall getting run over by a car in Zimbabwe in that time frame we are finally embarking on our adventure across the globe to do all 12 Disney Parks over Christmas break.

First thing’s first and we had to pick Lucy up from school. Given it’s the Thursday before Christmas break we weren’t too concerned about her missing half a day today and a full day Friday because as everyone knows, the week before Christmas break is spent watching Christmas movies and doing Christmas puzzles and worksheets.

After we picked her up, we went home and waited for our taxi. We had never ridden in a taxi in our town so we were already starting our journey with a brand new experience. Ride sharing does not exist in Ashland, KY and taxi’s are primarily used for medical transport so this was a somewhat bizarre experience for us. Traditionally, we typically just park our car at the airport when we fly out of our local airport because if we go out of Huntington it’s on Allegiant for a quick trip to Florida. This is obviously NOT a quick trip and as such we took a taxi for the first time ever as there are no ride sharing services in our area. It costs $10/day to park at our airport, and when you’re gone for nearly 20 days, it just makes financial sense to take a taxi for $82 dollars round trip.

I cannot even remotely convey the amount of joy I have when we have the ability to fly out of Huntington Tri-State Airport. The convenience of flying out of a small regional airport a mere 25 minutes from our house in which the security line if you have TSA precheck is nonexistent CANNOT be understated. It feels like your own private airport. From when the plane touches down to getting home it typically takes us about 45 minutes. When we fly out of Cincinatti or Columbus, it takes 45 minutes or more from the time we touchdown to just get to our car. Add a 2.5 hour drive after a long day of flying just puts a sour taste in the mouth after a vacation. We would love to fly out of HTS more often but it is incredibly cost prohibitive except when using Allegiant or redeeming award flights on American Airlines.

We arrived at the airport 1.5 hours early which for Huntington is just excessive, but we always budget for a flat tire, or some other bizarre occurrence. As always, the TSA precheck line had zero people in it, and from drop off to gate it wasn’t even 10 minutes. We hadn’t eaten lunch yet today, and unfortunately food options are super limited at HTS, in that outside of one vending machine there often are none. Thankfully today the small kiosk that sells pizza and some snacks was open, and Kendall and I split a small pizza while waiting for our flight.

HTS is a small regional airport with two gates. Back in its hey day it had a number of carriers, but these days it’s limited to American and Allegiant. It’s small and efficient and we love flying out of it when we can.

This is the entire terminal. Not the smallest commercial airport I’ve flown out of, but it’s up there.
Today is by far the most pedestrian of the flights we are taking on our trip, being a standard flight on Allegiant. No fancy lounge, no lie flat seat. Just an standard A320, with a seat with about 17 inches of width with no recline that feels like you’re sitting on a 2×4. You get what you pay for and for this flight of just over 1.5 hours it was just $402 dollars for 3 people including the 3 carry on bags so you can’t really complain on the cost front.

I love this airport!
Boarding and take off and were on time and our flight to Sanford was about as uneventful as it gets. We were seated in row 7, Seats D,E,F.

We never pay for seat selection so these were the Allegiant assigned seats. For a 1.5 hour flight it honestly doesn’t matter to us. The seats have the standard 17 inch width and 30 inches of pitch. This is one of the ONLY times in life being 5’3’’ comes in handy.

There are many disadvantages to being short such as a general disadvantage at the majority of sports or a lower lifetime income compared to your taller cohorts in the same field, but there is one advantage that far outweighs any disadvantage. I can fit comfortably in an Allegiant seat! It’s a pretty great trade off in my opinion.

We landed at 5:08PM two minutes earlier than our scheduled arrival time. Thankfully, my parents live in Orlando and as such they are our own personal uber, which definitely saves on cost. I texted them that we had landed, so they could be ready to pull the car around to pick us up and take us to the Disney’s Polynesian Resort where we were staying.

After we landed, we we were picked up, it was getting close to dinner time, so on the way to the Polynesian we stopped at Lucy’s favorite restaurant, Chick-fil-a. I had originally had ‘Ohana booked and timed the reservation for the Magic Kingdom fireworks, but it was pretty hectic couple of days leading up to this trip, so we decided having a quick dinner and early bed time was in our best interest. Just for the record, if you are foodie, THIS IS NOT THE BLOG FOR YOU. We do a wide variety of activities when we travel, but food has never been our priority, and the one area we can skimp on the budget. My food reviews will be composed of words like “Tasty”, “Yummy”, “Standard”, “Adequate”.

Upon arrival at Chick-fil-a we walked in and it was slammed. Chick-fil-a is always crowded but today was excessive in that when we walked in, there wasn’t a free table anywhere and people were even standing around waiting on tables. We didn’t quite know what was going on, until we saw Santa and a Santa Cow in the corner and realized why it was so crowded. Santa Cow and Santa made their rounds to the table like it was a character dining at Disney.

Lucy clearly is enjoying Santa Cow
Unlike Disney however, it was significantly cheaper. Like $250 dollars cheaper. The food was more than tasty, and tasted just like our Chick-fil-a at home.

 

[Rimmit]

I'm glad you at least got an acknowledgement that it was their mistake and that my suggestion to email the CEO paid off. It doesn't make up for what happened but it's better than nothing.

It’s definitely better than nothing. I was most frustrated with them saying we never showed proof more than anything. I could have lived with an apology and them stating that guidelines for China can be unclear or something like that and some small good will gesture but to have their MIA team lie to CYA is what irked me more than anything. The coverup is always worse than the crime IMO and they were better off just admitting they were wrong than lying saying we never presented our ongoing flight info.

 

[MickeyCB]

@Rimmit I read your link on the events of your wifes injury.
I am a retired internist and I can't imagine your fear and frustration with the the "care" your wife received those first hours of her being injured. You knew all of the things that could go wrong, it must have been terrifying.

It makes me appreciate your Disney adventures and her ability to participate all the more.

 

[Rimmit]

@Rimmit I read your link on the events of your wifes injury.
I am a retired internist and I can't imagine your fear and frustration with the the "care" your wife received those first hours of her being injured. You knew all of the things that could go wrong, it must have been terrifying.

It makes me appreciate your Disney adventures and her ability to participate all the more.

Yes. The frustration was massive. Thank god she didn’t go septic. She did get osteo of her calcaneus in the end. She had 7 different bacteria growing. We kept getting new ones and she kept having reactions to the ABX. She was on 15 different abx by the end. She had a picc line and was on abx for 62 days. Even was doing hyperbaric for a bit. Thankfully she is not diabetic or she for sure woulda lost her foot.

The level of care is even lower than I could have imagined for a third world country and I am Filipino and have traveled the world extensively and was shocked with how adamant they were with the cash first care later regardless of level of acuity. If we did not have travel insurance or if she didn’t have someone to advocate for her care she would have just rotted away, or at best just had her foot amputated.

If you were a solo traveler you would have been screwed as there would have been no one to advocate for your care.

Thank you for taking the time to read that. It was utterly insane and I will never be able to convey just how frustrating and scary it all was. Thank god I am a pretty calm person otherwise I don’t know how this woulda turned out.

 

[rshell68]

You seem like at least a semi normal guy. How can you be a Notre Dame fan?

Notre Dame is my alma mater. I bleed blue and gold. GO IRISH!

How can you NOT be an Irish fan!! Awesome picture!!!

 

[Rimmit]

How can you NOT be an Irish fan!! Awesome picture!!!

Go Irish!

 

[fractal]

Day 4 Part II

“It’s not about how hard you hit. It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward.”

So we approached the Air France desk and I handed over our passports. They then proceeded to ask me if I had a Chinese visa. We did not as for our trip it was not at all necessary. While you need a visa for China if you are touring all around China in non visa free approved areas, if you are entering in from one country and then flying out to another country and stay within approved regions or cities you do NOT need a visa if flying out within 144 hours. This is called the 144 hour transit without visa rule.

Ironically on 12/17, two days prior to starting this trip it was actually increased from 144 hours to 240 hours of allowable transit time and they added the ability to move within allowed regions and cities. So it just changed to the 240 transit without visa rule. They literally just relaxed the rule even more! You can read about this straight from the Chinese embassy or on the US.gov Travel site, via forums, or on a Disney blogs as a just a few references. I had researched extensively about the rule, and through my reading the itinerary of Miami-Paris-Shanghai-Hong Kong was a completely legitimate transit. While Hong Kong is part of China, it is an SAR, Special administrative region, and counts for the transit rule. I fulfilled all the requirements to the letter.

Apparently Air France was not informed of any iteration of the 240 hour transit without visa rule also known as “TWOV” and because of this ignorance upon check in they were refusing to issue a boarding pass despite their OWN website stating that we do not need a visa if transiting.

In highlighted yellow “Transit visa is not required provided they are traveling directly to a third/country or region…. Shanghai Pudong International Airport”
As you can see above there is a clear discordance on their own website. It says “You are not cleared to board this flight.” But the area I highlighted in yellow states “Transit visa is not required …” if certain conditions were met. We met those conditions perfectly.

I continue to persistently argue with the staff that my itinerary is legitimate and I can show them a number of government sources that clearly state it is legitimate. The staff then rehuddle and bring in the manager. They talk in French, but thankfully I know enough French to where I can pick out some occasional words, and it does not sound promising. They then call a someone in France who had the final say on this situation. As they discussed our situation over the phone, Lucy noticed I was shaking due to my apprehension.

I was so nervous as sooo much of our trip was riding on us making this flight as our plans were meticulously timed to make all 12 parks and have some rest in doing so. I’ve been traumatized at airline counters before, the most severe when we were nearly denied leaving Johannesburg after Kendall was run over by a car. I have never written about that, but the day we made it out of Johannesburg was right out of a thriller movie, and honestly, the second most traumatic day of my life, second only to Kendall being run over by a car.

I had spent the last 5 years mulling over how Covid shot down our Disney trip down in 2020. I have now spent the last year planning every detail to try and make this upcoming trip as smooth and feasible as possible. Without the layover in Paris we’d miss Disneyland Paris so bypassing Paris to get to Shanghai was NOT an option. We really needed this particular itinerary to make this trip work and there was no way to replace it.

My heart was beating fast but my mind was racing even faster at this point. If we don’t make this flight what are we going to do?? How can we possibly fix this problem? They then get off the phone with the person in France and come back to the desk. I hope and pray for good news.

Denied! Our hearts were broken. I just about died inside as while I am mentally prepped for a lot of travel situations, denial of boarding was just not on my radar. I had read about occasionally some smaller airports being unfamiliar with the 240 hour TWOV rule, but a large international airport like MIA on a carrier like Air France… I just did not think that was in the cards. Lucy was in tears. I then proceed to beg and plead with the duty manager explaining my case. As he heard more and more of our story and how we don’t live in Miami and how we were doing all the Disney Parks in one trip, and that this trip was 5 years in the making he felt awful and at one point starting tearing up at the desk.

There were so many problems being denied this flight. One is that unlike overbooking, or weather caused issues, they are blaming me and as such it is on me to fix the issue. All they can do, and this was as a courtesy as a business class passenger the manager said, was rebook us on the 24th which is 48 hours later as the 23rd was fully booked and oversold. Because there was not any other issue with the flight like weather or mechanical issues there was no way they could use an interline agreement to get me on another carrier anywhere. We were 100 percent committed to Air France. We had a contract with them to get from MIA to PVG and that was it.

The other issue is that this was a Business Class ticket booked via miles. If I cancelled all I would get were my Air France miles back and the taxes and fees. I wouldn’t be able to get cash back to use for other airlines and all the reasonably priced award redemptions to Paris were long gone. They even refused letting us just take the plane to Paris and not continue to Shanghai as the flights are married in the computer and cannot be separated and as such they refused to let us board so we could at least get to Paris.

Even IF we took the later flight on the 24th that only buys us time to get a visa, as that is all Air France in Miami would accept. So we’d have 48 hours to get a visa. You can only get a visa in that time frame at an embassy and the closest Chinese embassy is Washington DC. In theory we could fly to DC to see if they can get us a visa, and fly back in time but that is crazy hectic and in no way guaranteed especially being the holiday season. I asked if they could just get us to anywhere is Southwest Asia, and that was a no as well. They were contractually obligated to get us to Shanghai and that is all they could do. We were basically stuck trying to find a visa if we planned on using AF out of MIA.

Normally, a couple day delay is a big deal no matter what vacation, for this extremely fast paced itinerary it was EVERYTHING, as every minute mattered. This was a literal make or break moment for our vacation, and flying Air France with a 10 hour layover so we could hit the two Disney Parks in Paris was integral to that plan. If they were willing to fly us to Hong Kong we could still make our original plan work as the HKG flight had the same length of layover, and we could then fly to Shanghai from HKG after visiting the park there. When the guy in France said “no” we were black listed in the system and he said we’d get flagged if we flew that flight.

The on duty manager had to deal with several other passengers during this time and would come back and check on us as we continued to discuss our next move. It was getting late and I pleaded our case one last time to get us approved and the flag removed, and he said he could try to call one more person. He got on his phone and walked away talking for a while, and I was thinking maybe this was it. Maybe this was our Christmas miracle. I had seen it happen in the Christmas movies so many times where the main character has someone be it Santa , random stranger, or a power from above come through for them in the final hour. I was thinking that maybe for once we would get that happy ending, that Christmas miracle and Ariel, the duty manager, was going to be our angel coming back telling me he performed a miracle. I then see him hang up the phone and walk back to us. My heart is beating out of my chest, and I hope and pray he says he got us approved. He then tells us that there is just nothing more he can do. I lay my head on the counter totally defeated and a part of me dies at this point.

So much was riding on going this flight and making it to Paris and then onward to Shanghai. We eventually accepted reality that our only option was to move our flight to the 24th to buy us some time to think about our next move. We felt completely and utterly deflated. My biggest fear was a major delay, causing us to not have enough time in Paris to visit Disneyland Paris, or delay getting back to the airport in Paris and missing our plane to Hong Kong. I never thought the airline itself would be the direct cause of the destruction of our vacation.

At this point we picked ourselves off the mat and I booked the Fairfield Inn by the airport.

We called the shuttle and we left completely and totally dejected. To add further salt to the wound my flight notification app just informed me our flight just took off and was on time. I immediately deleted the flight and subsequent flight to Shanghai from my notifications to prevent any further taunting by my phone.

This is definitely the lowest we’ve felt in a while. I was thinking on the shuttle to the hotel about whether I’d continue the blog at this point I was so down, and how this would not exactly make for much of a “Disney Around the World Trip” if we stopped after one city. We’d just rename it to a “Disney World Trip” I guess. Four out of twelve parks isn’t bad right?? Thirty three percent is abject failure except in the most extreme grading curves, so no matter how you sliced it this was now a failure.

The shuttle dropped us off at about 11:00PM and we order some comfort food as we hadn’t eaten since Orlando. For Kendall and Lucy that means some Papa John’s pizza. I wasn’t very hungry as all the stress and nervousness killed my appetite, but now that I was slowly calming down I could feel my appetite returning.

In the meantime, I breakout the laptop and immediately start doing flight searches, for both award flights and cash flights.

The Tokyo part of our vacation was set in stone. The logistics of planning a Tokyo Disney Vacation is monstrous and if you read the planning portion of this vacation on the blog you will understand why.

I was absolutely desperate so I even crowdsourced some ideas as to what to do from the 10x Travel group I am a part of on Facebook. The issue is there were so many limitations. For one, we had to get from Miami to Paris. This could be on any airline. Number two, we needed to get from Paris to Shanghai or Miami. If we went to Shanghai it couldn’t be on Air France as I had lost faith in them to get me to China. We also needed to do the long hauls in business class.

I know the business class requirement likely sounds snobbish to a lot of people, but due to the break neck pace of this vacation, a lot of our rest, sleep, and relaxation was totally predicated on getting it on a plane. One long haul flight is enough to wreck a body, and doing it back to back while also doing some Disney Parks is just brutal. We have done many long hauls in economy, but never when we are traveling around the world to ALL the Disney parks in a little over two weeks. Buying business class flights in cash with such short notice would be insanely cost prohibitive easily dwarfing the total cost of the vacation.

Our budget for this trip is obviously very high, but we kept the costs down by using our points and miles for the flights. As I started looking at business class flights that got us to Paris and then onward to Shanghai or Hong Kong, we were looking in the 30,000+ USD range minimum and those were often not even direct flights with very long layovers. I was really not looking to spend an extra 30,000 USD right now, so that was a no go.

Unfortunately, AIRLINE STUPIDITY is not covered under travel insurance policies so it was now on me to rebuild an itinerary that eventually ends us up in Tokyo on December 31st. I spent till 4:30AM looking for flight options via points and miles, racing against the clock to find something that would work. After over 5 hours of searching innumerable airlines and redemption programs and airport combinations I FINALLY found something that MAY work without bankrupting us and then went to sleep so I could discuss the options with Kendall and Lucy in the morning.

Day 4, December 22nd, 2024 Step Count – 9,876 Steps

Total Step Count – 73,847

This really stinks! But what doesn't stink is your photography, in fact it's wonderful! Looking forward to seeing more and how this all works out.

 

[Rimmit]

This really stinks! But what doesn't stink is your photography, in fact it's wonderful! Looking forward to seeing more and how this all works out.

Thanks for reading! It definitely turned into a bit of a novel. LOL.