Been a long time reader and follower and this is our very first PTR here!!
We are finally under the 30day mark for our upcoming, 10day vacation-of-a-life-time trip that encompasses 7 days at WDW, a day at Discovery Cove and a day at SeaWorld. When we started planning our trip last summer, it seemed like an eternity but I honestly cannot believe that we are literally less than a month away from our trip!!
Why is this particular vacation unusual from our past Disney vacations? This will be a vacation of many “firsts”. My awesome DW is a kindergarten teacher and if you know anybody that is a teacher, they all seem to be bound by a secret code where they ONLY take vacations during school breaks. No IF’s, AND’s, or BUT’s. However, for this special trip…
- This will be the first time that we’re doing a Disney vacation that is not during summer break.
- This will be the first time we’re doing a Disney vacation that is longer than a week.
- This will be the first time visit to WDW for our DD6.
- This will be the first time to swim with dolphins.
- This will be the first time to Disney without extended family members.
- This will be the first time to visit during flower and garden festival.
- This will be the first time for Free Dining! (We didn’t even know free dining plans existed. Our biggest expense in our Disney vacations has always been food and we’ll probably even end up spending a little extra above & beyond what is covered in our dining plan)
- And hopefully, this will be the first time our trip is not affected by a hurricane.
Our DD6 from Disneyland in 2010
The CMs for this trip: Deona, Madelyn, Danny
Living in Seattle, we live about as far away as you can from WDW and it is a little challenging and a little more planning is required for a Disney trips especially with a little energetic child. Road trip to WDW is not a possibility and the cost of airfare alone is the most prohibitive part of a WDW vacation. We have done WDW vacation twice before our DD was born and Disneyland vacation twice, after our DD was born. And we think timing is just right for a WDW trip with our 6yr old. Last time we were at WDW was back in summer of 2004 where Hurricane Charley hit at the tail end of our vacation. We got extremely lucky as we were able to rebook our flight early in the morning after the hurricane passed through Orlando to a different airport at West Palm Beach. We were one of the lucky few to secure transportation (albeit being quite costly) from Orlando to West Palm Beach.
Since it has been almost 8 years since our last WDW trip, the itch was starting to get real bad for me so I started looking at options for potential dates about a year ago. I don’t know what it is but I love looking through the Disney website and entering in vacation packages with all the different options and dream about a Disney vacation. Window shopping Disney vacation style.
If it was up to me, my first choice would have been for an off peak time like October but after some discussion and some compromises, our choices were narrowed down to President’s week (mid-winter break as it’s called here in Seattle) and Spring Break week. October was out as it was too early in the school year and our daughter would have to miss Kindergarten or 1st grade (depending on when we went). Summer was out as we just weren’t sure how our DD would handle the heat & humidity. Not to mention we’re currently 2 for 2 on having a hurricane affecting our trip and we wanted to experience WDW without having to worry about that.
I was able to compromise and get DW to agree to an “extended” Disney vacation (our past Disney trips were for one week), IF we did Discovery Cove and swam with the dolphins. Hmmm… 7 day vacation or 10 day vacation that included a low stress, non-crowded aquatic park, lounge by the water all day, free breakfast & lunch and unlimited alcoholic drinks, swim with the dolphins, and free admission to SeaWorld. That was a no brainer. I felt like I won the jackpot and immediately started planning our itinerary.
Our initial plan was to split our vacation into 3 parts: 4 nights at Value, 2 nights offsite near Discovery Cove/ SeaWorld, & then 3 nights at AKL. Even though people aren’t too fond of AKL’s location, we are big fans of AKL. From the lobby to the resort theme, to the rich background history, and the proximity to the animals, AKL offers something uniquely different from all the other resorts. Even though we would have liked to stay at AKL for the entire duration of our trip, from a cost perspective, 9 nights at a Deluxe property is a little too much.
The views from the AKL were simply amazing
DW and I are planners and kind of a control freak when it comes to planning our vacations. We always book all of our Disney vacations & reservations ourselves and we meticulously plan out what we are going to be doing every day. I guess you can say that the anticipation and the buildup of the vacation is a way for us to start enjoying our Disney vacation before we’re actually there. For this upcoming vacation, we’ve heard very good things about Kingdom Konsultants so we reached out and Jessica has been fantastic with accommodating our needs and was able to tell us about the free dining promo and helped to put together a package that worked out even better than our original plan.
Without Jessica from Kingdom Konsultants, we probably would have booked our vacation according to our initial plans and only would have been eligible for free dining for part of our trip since we were splitting our stay into 3 separate resorts that included a stay at a non-Disney resort.
What we ended up booking was a 9 night Royal Room at Port Orleans Riverside. Even though we’re not going to be staying at AKL this trip (which was to be one of the highlights of our trip), this actually worked out really well because it allows us to enjoy staying at a Disney resort for the entire duration of our stay. I wasn’t too excited to be staying off site for the 2 nights so that we could be closer to Discovery Cove and SeaWorld as it was really more of an inconvenience having to pack up and move our luggage twice during our trip.
The upside definitely outweighed the downside of not staying at AKL:
Our initial vacation budget included paying for food out of pocket (big savings there!)
Great deal on 9 days park hopper (longer your stay, average daily cost on park hopper get cheaper)
Upgrade on 6 nights of our stay (compared to 4 nights value and 2 nights offsite)
New Royal Room upgrade at POR (perfect for our DD who loves Pink and Princesses)
One of the best food courts on WDW property
Easy access to Downtown Disney
Easy access to beignets!
Horse drawn carriage rides
Fishing
Itinerary coming up on next post…
