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Rosanne Genovese -- November 2001 -- Disneyland (Offsite) / Walt Disney World (Offsite / CR / ASMuR)This report covers only the planning for Rosanne's Upcoming Trip.
Trip was cancelled. I was notified by Rosanne in January.WHO:
WHEN: 13TH NOVEMBER 2001 TO 12TH DECEMBER 2001
PAST TRIPS: In 1982 Mum took Teresa & I to Disneyland for the first time when we were 11 & 14 years old respectively. This was such a huge treat, as we come from a brilliant little place of around 30 000 people on the complete other side of the world. The only reason we even were able to take this trip then, was because the Airlines were running a special deal that for every paying adult who went, a child could travel as well for only $180 Australian Dollars. Thank God for that deal - we fell in love with Disneyland & it started a lifelong desire to revisit if we ever could. In 1993 Teresa & I finally got another taste of Disney when (with a couple of friends), we took a detour on our trip to Italy so as to visit the then named Euro Disney. We had a lovely 3 or 4 days at Disney & decided that for the foreseeable future all of our BIG holidays would involve Disney somewhere! July 1997 we finally got our chance to make our return trip to Disneyland (it only took us 15 years mind you). Teresa & I have 2 older brothers who have 6 kids between them. We have always dreamed of being able to take our nieces & nephews to the most magical of places. Along with Mum, we suggested the idea of taking the kids when they each reached 11 years old to both sets of their parents. They all thought it was a wonderful idea & so the planning began. By the way - we settled on the age of 11 for two reasons. The first was that this was the last year for a child's airfares & Theme Park Passes (which has now changed to 9 years old anyway). The other reason being was, although we certainly hope it isn't - this may be the only time in their lives that the kids get to go to Disney & we wanted them to be big enough to want to have a go on everything & to be able to remember as much as possible. It has been an incredible gift to be able to take the kids for their first visit & it made our experience all the more fun. So that 1997 trip was the same adults as this trip, Luke's older brother & his cousin. We had 3 weeks holiday (but 5 days of this were long, boring travel days!) & stayed offsite at the Anaheim Fairfield Inn by Marriot. Needless to say, the three adults loved it & the two kids were in heaven. June 1999 saw us venture off to the U.S. again (Yay!!). Same adults & next two kids (Luke's older sister & his other cousin). We extended this trip to 4 weeks & added in a 4 day visit to Las Vegas. Stayed at the same hotel in Anaheim. Another amazing time had by all! TIMING OF CURRENT TRIP: As soon as we returned to Australia from our trip in 1999 (I exaggerate not - 2 DAYS later) we had decided that for our 2001 trip with Luke, we were going to go to Walt Disney World. This would mean 4 different plane flights just to get to Orlando! Who cares - we are going!! We have decided to stop in Anaheim for 6 days as we will be going via L.A anyway. This will give Mum a perfect opportunity to have those long, long flights spaced out a bit & would also enable all of us to revisit Disneyland & see the new Disney's California Adventure theme park & Downtown Disney Area. This time we are taking a huge 5 week break (which we will need as 7 days of this are taken up by flights, layovers & so on). Have you noticed each trip is getting longer & more detailed! I am sure by the time we are to take Luke's younger brother in 2005 we will be trying to fit in a visit to Tokyo Disney as well! As only Luke is 11 this year we will be taking him solo. His little brother is still a bit too young to be away from his parents for that length of time. We have only ever been to Disney during the summer season before (heat/crowds/lines) & while we still had the best time, we decided that this year we would like to go in off season to experience something different. Mum is retired so can travel anytime, Teresa & I work in the family business (so have to fit any time off in with other staff, family & the busy times of the year). We had read that the weeks after Thanksgiving were quiet at Disney (relatively speaking of course) & we really wanted to see all the Christmas festivities. So after a lot of thought & discussion we have settled on leaving mid November & returning about 9 days before Christmas. The only setback with our plan was that Luke will be in his last term of the school year (grade 6). After speaking to his mother (who is a teacher herself) & father & Luke's teacher we decided to go ahead with this time of the year. Luke of course has to complete all the work he will miss before he leaves so he doesn't fall behind. When we told him, he was ecstatic - he goes to school for 4 weeks in last term, then has 5 weeks off & returns for the last 4 days! He is not the only one especially excited about getting to go at this time of the year either! HOTELS: Once we had settled on approximate dates of travel, it was time to focus on which hotels we would like to stay at (within our budget of course or else we would be staying in a tower room of the Contemporary Resort Hotel!). We knew we would be staying at the same Anaheim hotel as the previous trips (or so we thought!) & had two other hotels in mind to choose from for our Orlando portion of the trip (these were both offsite). In the meantime I had been reading this wonderful website's many trip reports & also www.wdwinfo.com discussion boards. The main theme that seemed to be coming from these about hotels was, that if you had the chance - stay onsite to enhance your trip. I also came across a trip report by a fellow Australian - Sandie Morthen (on this website - Oct. 1999) & emailed her with a question. We became e-mail buddies (but don't tell her I said anything nice about her please or else she will just be impossible!) & Sandie proved to be a wealth of good advice for us. Through "talking" to her we came to the conclusion to do all our planned trips to Universal (4 days) in one block at the start of our Orlando time (so as not to travel back & forth as we are not hiring a car) & to stay in a hotel close by Universal for this purpose. She also helped us to decide to stay on site at WDW. When we actually went to book the hotel for our Anaheim portion we got a shock - it will be completely booked out due to an American Heart Association convention on in Anaheim at the exact time of our visit. 36000 delegates. Can you believe it - we deliberately plan to go at a quieter time of the year to avoid crowds & we happen across this (you have to laugh!). Well after that unexpected news I am afraid the blood rushed to our heads & we went from one extreme to another & then thought "well why don't we lash out" & so we booked to stay at the Grand Californian Hotel for our stay. Needless to say we have never stayed at a hotel of this grandeur before & are especially looking forward to it's unique location (being adjacent to the new DCA with it's own entrance!). We have opted for a package through Disney for this part (using our Disney Club discount of 10% on the room portion). Total cost for 3 adults, 1 child in one standard view room is USD$2517.01. This price includes the following - 7 nights accommodation, magic feature for all 4 guests (either a backstage tour of Disneyland or a character breakfast in Disneyland), 5 day ultimate park hopper passes for all 4 guests, insurance, collectible keepsake for all 4 guests, ESPN zone game card for all 4, 1 Disney Fastpass per person, storytale adventure for child & 1 California Fun Book per room. We have actually booked an extra night at the start & end. We have done this because we don't depart until late at night on our last day & we are arriving at about 7.00am our first day. Past trips have taught us that we need to have immediate access to our room upon arrival after so many hours travelling. For us, the added expense is worth every cent (especially for Mum). For the Universal part of our trip we couldn't go past staying at The Hard Rock Hotel. The things that sold us on this hotel was it's location & that amazing perk - front of the line access,all day,every day. As this portion will coincide with Thanksgiving, and therefore larger crowds, this will probably be a godsend for us. I have been reading lately on the boards that there probably will be some changes to this privilege before we arrive. We shall see I suppose. The package for Universal we booked through Universal Vacations for a total cost for 3 adults, 1 child in a 1 room with a garden view was USD$1956.14. This includes 5 nights accommodation (again because we arrive at 6.00am we have added an extra night for ready access), 4 park Orlando flex ticket for all 4 of us, 1 meal at select Citywalk restaurants for all 4, Movie pass to Universal cineplex for all 4, Early Park Admission,Front of Line Access all day every day, Gift for child (tote bag or souvenir cup). For our first two hotels because of price we are all staying in the one room. This is no major drama for us, but we thought for the last 19 nights we would like to have two rooms. That made the decision of a WDW resort hotel very easy as our budget for two rooms would only allow us to stay at one of the value hotels. No problem - the way we shop, I am sure if we had to stay in the one room right through until the end we would be tripping over each other & our luggage. Heaven - a bed each (not to mention 2 bathrooms!). We chose the Allstar Movies resort & using the Disney Club card Discount of 10% we paid for room only (no package) for 2 rooms, 19 nights a total of USD$2949.56 ADDED NOTE ABOUT HOTELS: After I had finished writing all the above & was getting ready to submit this report, I came home from work on July 9th to about three e-mail messages from Sandie saying that WDW had just released some special annual pass rates for the Allstar Resorts of $49. As we are staying for 19 nights we had already decided to purchase Annual Passes so this sounded too good to be true, but I phoned Central Reservations anyway to see what the story was. They confirmed this was the case, the only conditions being that it was for a maximum stay of 14 nights at either the Allstar Sports or Allstar Music (not Movies where we had planned to stay). I was so surprised, that I just said "Oh O.K. thankyou" & hung up. I couldn't check with Teresa & Mum as to what they wanted to do as it was the middle of the night. I thought I would just go ahead and try to make a reservation & then we could talk it over the next day. I phoned Central Reservations back & this time I was prepared with all the info such as dates & so on. The operator I got this time said that this rate only applied to Florida residents. As she was quite adamant about it I took some advice that I had read on the discussion boards & phoned again straight away & spoke to someone different. At first I was told again that it was a Florida resident only discount but then I repeated the code (I don't know if it was my Aussie accent or what) but this time she was able to locate the discount that I had been told about. I went ahead & made 2 reservations to cover a period of 17 nights at the Allstar Music. As our first night arriving at WDW is the day after Thanksgiving day we could not book for the first two nights at this time but were advised to keep trying as there might be some cancellations. The rate we got on this deal was $49 US dollars per night ($54.88) after taxes. This came to a total of $1866.00. The next day I explained everything to Teresa & we started talking about how it would be amazing to use some of the money we had saved to spend the first two nights (that we were having trouble booking at the discounted rate) in a tower room (Magic Kingdom view ) of the Contemporary Resort if we could. I again phoned Central Reservations & not only did they have a vacancy but the discount for Annual Passes applied as well. We then booked two nights (one room only & with three adults it was a little higher) for a total of $497.00 after taxes. So in the end our WDW hotel portion is a split stay of 2 hotels (one with two bookings but hopefully we won't have to switch rooms) & came to a total cost of $2363 US dollars instead of the original $2949.56 US. This was a grand total savings of about $1200.00 Aust Dollars to us. We are so happy at this savings (more to spend on other Disney stuff) & also the fact that we get to stay at the Contemporary (& maybe, just maybe get to see the Castle from our room!) To show our thanks to Sandie for making sure that we knew about the special rates, we sent her a nice big present (the Disney Trivial Pursuit Game - it had to be something Disney!) LAST ADDED NOTES ABOUT HOTELS: Once again just when I thought we were set with our hotels, something even better popped up! The amount we had paid to stay at the Grand Californian Hotel had been quietly playing on our minds since we had made the booking. We had accepted it though as all the more moderately priced hotels very close by had seemed to be booked solid due to the convention. Since we had purchased the package, Disney had then released Park Hopper passes for purchase to everyone(which previously were only available to Disney Hotel guests). This had been a deciding factor as well when choosing this hotel. One night in late July we thought we would have one last try to book into our usual hotel & see if we had any luck. Would you believe they had had ONE cancellation (I know, because out of curiosity I enquired about two rooms with no luck) & we were able to book that for the time frame we wanted. No Park Hopper tickets with this, but that we can easily purchase ourselves. The total of the room for 7 nights was $615.31 US. I then purchased 4 day park hopper passes on Disneys internet site for a total of $447.00 US. Disney were having a special of 4 day hoppers for the price of 3 day passes. This deal expires on December 19th, which is the DAY after we leave. I quickly ordered 4 of these. We feel like we have been extremely lucky with the way the Anaheim portion of our trip has turned out. So instead of paying US $2517.01 to stay at the Grand Californian, we are now paying (for room & tickets) US $1062.31. Again this a huge savings of US $1454.70 (Aust Dollars approx $2900.00. Of course we would have loved to have stayed at the Disney property, but for the money we saved & it still only takes us a 5 minute walk from our hotel to the Disneyland/DCA turnstiles it was an easy decision to swap hotels. Just think Disney will still get all our saved dollars but at least we can spend them on "stuff" now! DEFINITELY FINAL ( I PROMISE) NOTES ABOUT HOTELS: My Entertainment Club book that I had ordered in November last year (and forgotten about) FINALLY arrived in late July. I phoned the Hard Rock Hotel out of curiosity to see what it would cost us to book with the Entertainment Card rate. No package available but a room only portion for the five nights that we needed came to a total of US $790.90. This still entitles us to Front Of The Line Access. I booked this and then went to Universal's website and ordered one annual pass and three 3 day park hopper passes for a total of US $ 479.50 (including tax and shipping). The total cost saved from our original booking was US$ 585.74. It has been a lot of rearranging and fiddling about with all parts of our hotel bookings but the savings involved have been immense and therefore worth every extra phone call and fax.
FLIGHTS: This part of the planning has proven to be the most stressful (all I can say is that I am glad for once that I am a little pigheaded & don't give up very easily!). Mum,Teresa & myself have been setting aside & building up our frequent flyer points since our trip in 1997. We now had sufficient points to redeem our flights all the way from our home town to Orlando and return. As we were now set with the dates we wanted to travel I thought by phoning more than a year out I would have no problem getting the flights we wanted. The main thing I had not counted on was the very long wait (anything from 15 to 40 minutes) EVERY time I called, just to get connected to an operator. The other was that the flight details only go into the computer so many months in advance (which in hindsight makes sense). I was advised to phone back 11 months from the date I wanted to travel. On this day I got up extremely early due to the time difference (let me tell you I am not a morning person - but will be at Disney!) & phoned through all excited. This was shortlived however as I managed to book & confirm 7 of the 8 legs of the flights that we needed, but could not get any seats on the all important LA to Sydney flight home. After trying 3 days either side of our original return home date we still had no luck. By this time I was very frustrated & could not understand why we were having so much trouble getting a seat on these flights when they had only gone into the system a matter of an hour or two before. Then just to top it off the lady I was talking to said that she would have to now cancel all of the other 7 confirmed flights we had as we couldn't book the 8th segment. Needless to say, I nearly wept & told her she had better not dare touch those bookings until I had a little time to talk to the others & try to decide another course of action. I then spoke to Mum & Teresa & phoned back. Well someone upstairs must have taken pity on us because this time I was connected to a very helpful lady who helped me sort the whole mess out. She actually suggested a couple of options to me & the one we decided on was that instead of redeeming a total of 130 000 points & using United all the way from Sydney, for 146 000 points we could fly with Air New Zealand (who we had travelled with the last two trips anyway) to LA & have our flights immediately confirmed for the exact dates we wanted. So in the end it ended up costing us more points than we anticipated & it was a very frustrating process, but how can I complain really when all three adults are travelling free (YAY!). This is a savings of approximately $3000 Australian Dollars to each of us! I asked for the confirmation sheet with full details be faxed through to us & once this was received it was simply a matter of refaxing this to our travel agent & having her match Luke up on all our flights. As a matter of interest his ticket from Perth (we got him a redeemed flight to Perth return) to Orlando return cost a total of $2300 AUD. So our flights are as follows - Kalgoorlie to Perth (our state capital & where Mum lives) on Ansett Airlines (flight time - 1 hour) Perth to Sydney on Ansett Airlines (flight time approx 4 & 1/2 hours) Sydney to LA on Air New Zealand (flight time approx 13 & 1/2 hours - YUK!) LA to Orlando on United Airlines (flight time approx 4 to 5 hours) Another gripe about this process was that I finished the booking by the start of January & did not receive the actual tickets until the end of April. I had been told that they would be printed in order of flight dates & therefore would not receive them for about 4 weeks. In the end after they had not turned up, I had to make another 2 phonecalls & found out that they had put a note in the system that someone else would be travelling with us (Luke - who I had informed them would be booked through our own travel agent) & were waiting on that booking before issuing the tickets - Aaaarrrggg!! Anyhow after that was cleared up we did receive the tickets within the next 10 days. All details were correct so I could finally relax about the tickets! PLANNING: Apart from the minor hiccup with the flight planning (& isn't there always one or two problems anyway) we have had an absolute ball planning this holiday. I ordered every travel guidebook I could through Amazon.com & when a parcel arrived - boy would it feel like Christmas. Teresa & I have gone through about 10 packets of sticky tags highlighting everything in them that we are interested in! We have made out a fairly detailed itinerary so far which is a work in progress (it keeps changing as the need or desire arises). We hope to do the MVMCP three times & the Candlelight Procession Package once. When we have these dates set & confirmed, we will be able to plan a lot more. We will also be taking day trips to Sea World, Busch Gardens & Kennedy Space Centre during our Orlando stay (& Knotts Berry Farm & Ontario Mills Shopping Outlet Mall while in Anaheim). We would like to do as much as we can possibly fit into this trip as we can (it will probably take us a year to recover from this our "holiday")! When we are only getting to go to a certain place one time (such as Busch Gardens) we have sat down & both made lists of what we would like to see & do. Talk about two peas in a pod - our lists were identical. Excellent. So now we have a detailed plan (3 months before we go mind you) of exactly what we want to do at Busch Gardens & Sea World. Funnily enough we have had to do this for Disneyland as well. We want to make sure that we experience everything that is different or absent from the Magic Kingdom in WDW. Of course all these plans are just that - PLANS. We will adapt these if need be - for us, all they basically are is a guideline that if we stick too loosely, we should see everything that is important to us & if we don't stick to it then I am sure we will have a brilliant time anyway! Another note about our planning is that Teresa & I are doing ALL of it because the 67 year old & the 11 year old want it all to be "a magicial surprise". God love her - sometimes I wonder who the bigger kid is, the Nanna or the grandson! Speaking of Mum, while doing our plans we have tried to keep her very much in mind so as to have lots of afternoon breaks if possible & if we have a very full day or late finish, to have a much easier one the following day. Not only Mum, but I am sure all of us will benefit if we can stick to this. Mum also loves people watching which will give her a rest & something to enjoy while we do any of the more jerky rides. THINGS THAT WE ARE LOOKING FORWARD TO: Apart from the very obvious - all things Disney, the two things we are looking forward to especially are Shopping & Eating. We know we look forward to the shopping so much in the US because of the limited choices & limited time to do this that we have at home. We even love grocery shopping as believe it or not (because of our business) we never get to do this normally & we just love to see all the different products!! Call us crazy, but we love it. Give a medal to the person who invented Outlet Mall shopping please - best thing since sliced bread! Our enthusiasm has been dampened a little by the state of the Australian Dollar though. As a point of interest, when we first visited the US in 1982 the US Dollar & Australian Dollar were even with each other. When we returned in 1997 the Aust Dollar was down to being worth 70 cents US. This did not worry us at all as we found great bargains everywhere (clothes/CD's/perfume). In 1999 it had dropped to US 65 cents but we still found many great buys again. We are allowed to bring home 64kgs of luggage per person from the US & I am sure we have easily managed this each previous trip! At the time of writing this the Aust Dollar is now at a pitiful 50 cents US. No way has this deterred us in travelling this year - I am just sure that instead of 64kgs of luggage each that we will be bringing home it will be a little less (yeh knowing us still about 60kgs though - we won't be able to resist!). Imagine that though, EVERYTHING we buy (be it food/tips/souvenirs) will cost us double in Aust Dollars. Too scary to think about! Who cares we are going to DISNEY!!!! The other thing we are looking forward to is the Food - Oh the food! Our mouths are already watering at the thought of old favourites such as Chicken Fried Steak, Banana Cream Pie & Churros. Then there is all those new friends to be made such as Beaver Tails, Tonga Toast, PB & J milkshakes & Dole Whips. Teresa & I have already started our strict diet & exercise programme to get in shape for our 5 week long massive pig out fest! Our 1997 trip saw the piling on of a certain amount of kilos (no numbers will ever be revealed!) in the three weeks. In 1999 this increased accordingly for our 4 week stay, so I dread to think of what this 5 week trip will result in. I am sure they will have to roll us onto the plane to get us home (& then sit us apart to distribute the weight evenly throughout the plane). Oh well that is very much a part of the holiday for all of us & I think certainly why elastic waisted pants were invented (which are packed ready to go already!). From reading all the guidebooks & peoples reviews, there are just so many places we want to try. At last count we had 24 places on our list for priority seating requests. We are looking forward to each & every one! FINAL THOUGHTS: The final thing I would like to end this pre trip report with is a thank you. Thanks to every one who has posted a trip report as they have not only provided us with many hours of entertainment after a hard days work, but they have also proven to contain valuable advice & insights. I am sure from having read the previous reports our own trip can only be enhanced. I hope you have enjoyed our pre trip report half as much as we have enjoyed all of yours. ROLL ON NOVEMBER 2001!! Rosanne Genovese teresa@aurum.net.au Mail a Comment to Rosanne Genovese |
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