With our most recent trip quickly approaching, I am getting so very excited. Planning a Disney vacation is always a lot of work but is also a lot of fun. The last trip I planned, I was a pro! It was February 2020 and the pandemic hadn’t hit the United States yet and travel was business as usual. Never did I think that Disney planning could change so much in such a short time. Here it is just over a year later and there is so much more to Disney planning as there was before. Even pre-Covid there was a lot of planning, but there was a possibility of going “on the fly” and not really planning anything in advance. Those days are gone and it doesn’t look like things will get back to ‘the old ways’ any time soon.
This particular vacation is for my son. He is graduating high school and this is his senior trip. So the planning is a little different for this vacation than what it would be for just a family trip. Background information regarding our group is as follows:
- 4“kids” (18+, 2boys/2 girls) – 2 Moms – 1 set of grandparents
- Disney Vacation Club Members
- Retired Military
Planning began last summer when Disney parks re-opened and my son chose Disney as his senior trip destination. I booked a 3 bedroom grand villa at Old Key West for 2 nights and a 2 bedroom villa at the Riviera, both of which are our home resorts so I could make the reservation 11 months in advance. I chose the second week of June as Seniors are usually done in May and graduation ceremony is at the end of May. I thought I would be safe. However, this year, Covid changed everything. The high school here decided to start one week late. It wasn’t long ago that they finally released the date of the graduation ceremony. Which happened to be the day we were supposed to check in to our hotel. I got on the phone with Disney Vacation club and I was able to push our reservation back by one day. But I had to downgrade to a two bedroom villa at Old Key West. They were fantastic about getting our rooms changed by just one day. So now our hotel is all set.
We originally planned to drive from Michigan. It seemed the most economical way to get everyone there. The grandparents were planning to drive down also, which left 7 of us to fit into one mini-van and have a fun road trip. A few weeks ago, the gas pipeline crisis happened which got us thinking about possibly flying so we wouldn’t have to worry about how to get gas in the states that were affected. We got an amazing deal on tickets and chose to fly! It was a totally unexpected change in plans but we are very excited about not having to be in a car for 18 hours! I signed us all up for Disney’s Magical Express, which is the free transportation from the airport to the resorts. (This benefit is expiring at the end of the year and will not be available starting January 2022)
We plan to use the full kitchen in our DVC villa in order to save money on food. We will be taking food for breakfast, lunch, and 3 nights of dinners. Deciding to fly could have put a damper on this plan, but the grandparents still plan to drive down, so we are packing a lot of food in their vehicle. If they had decided to fly, DVC does have a grocery delivery service we would have used. While the prices are a little higher than at a traditional grocery store, it would still have been cheaper than eating out for every meal. We did get a reservation for the San Angel Inn at the Mexico Pavilion in Epcot. The theming is super cool there so we just want to be able to experience the ambience. I did try to get Oga’s cantina and SciFi Dine in Theater but I wasn’t able to get a reservation for those locations. I have tried several times each day and still nothing has popped up. There are plenty of reservations at Disney Springs restaurants at the time of this article but I can’t find any for inside any park. Maybe we will get lucky and someone will drop (cancel) a reservation and I will get to pick it up. I will let you all know how this goes. I did notice that on the MDE app, you can join a walk up list for several restaurants throughout the parks so we will try that as well. It is available for SciFi but not for Oga’s. We shall see.
Military members are able to purchase special discounted tickets for themselves and family members. Because my dad is retired army (thanks dad, for your service), our family was able to get those special priced tickets. For the rest of the group, my dad was able to purchase standard tickets for them. This helped keep the cost of the tickets as low as possible for us. If you are using the Military tickets, the military member MUST be present at a guest relations window prior to anyone entering the park. They will verify their military ID before the tickets are activated.
Once you have your park tickets, you must make your Park Pass selections. This is where you choose which park you want to go to each morning. This is pretty difficult for us to plan, but we just kind of randomly chose since we can park hop starting at 2. We did make a park pass for a couple days for Hollywood Studios so we will have at least two tries to get into the queue for Rise of the Resistance at 7:00am.
I used the online check in service, so hopefully when we get there, we will be able to head straight to our room. I will be checking my app for our room number as soon as we touch down at MCO. I think that is all I have for now. I will be posting when we get back, telling you all about it! Until then, CHEERS! Thanks for reading!
The Mouse Traveler 