If you follow me on social media or have met me in person for more than 30 seconds, then you will no doubt be aware that I am a huge Disney fan! And as a huge Disney fan it has been my life's dream to go to Walt Disney World Florida...and after saving up for a while, we finally booked that dream trip and were all set to make it happen. In September of 2020.
Hmm!
Well it's been a while since I shared my first post about Planning Our Dream Trip To Disney World Florida - but obviously, there was the rather unexpected matter of a global pandemic which pretty much put an end to our travel plans back in 2020!
Rather than cancel our plans completely when Covid came along, I chose to keep on delaying them instead. First we pushed the trip back by a year from September 2020 to September 2021, and then we pushed it back another year to September 2022.
So, as of right now, I'm feeling cautiously optimistic that maybe...just maybe this trip will finally go ahead in September, 2 years later than planned and about 4 years after we originally booked.
My intention has always been to share the details of this trip in an effort to help out anyone out there wanting to plan their own visit - my last post covered the details of finding the best deal for us and booking the flights, though of course the tips I shared in that post are now a little outdated as the pandemic has resulted in huge changes right across the travel industry. It's almost impossible to predict flight prices anymore and I'm so glad that we kept ours as they were - I had heard many horror stories about people being charged thousands in fees to delay their flights but we have had a very positive experience with Virgin Atlantic so far and despite moving our flight dates twice we have only paid an extra £300 or so in total - meaning that our flights still cost less than £2,000 return for the 5 of us.
The information regarding our hotel package in my last post is also now out of date, as the pandemic sadly meant that Disney had to remove the Disney Dining Plan offer. The Disney Dining Plan is currently not available, meaning that - although the price of our hotel and park tickets has remained the same - we are now having to pay for our meals largely out of pocket, making it much less value for money. Although dining is now going to be quite a substantial extra expense, our Disney deal does at least include $850 dollars of dining credit and a $200 Disney gift card.
Its a shame but it is what it is. I'm choosing to look on the bright side - which is that the additional 2 years o staying at home allowed us to save some extra money, which means that we have been able to extend our trip.
Instead of a 14 day trip, we will now be in Orlando for 25 days! I can hardly believe it...our first 14 days will still be on site at Disney's Caribbean Beach Resort as planned, but we will then move to one of Universal's hotels for the remaining 10 nights. I found a deal for this through Booking.com which I was very happy with - 10 nights for just £900!
Staying at Universal enables us to take advantage of their free transport system, which is going to be really handy as we don't intend to hire a car. This price didn't include Universal park tickets, we purchased these separately through Attraction Tickets at £1101 for the 5 of us for 14 days of access.
As well as 14 days of access to Disney World and Universal's 3 parks, we have also booked tickets for Aquatica, Seaworld, Kennedy Space Centre and Discovery Cove for a Dolphin Swim experience.
The total cost of all hotels for our 25 night stay and park tickets for the 5 of us is £9,995. (This includes Dolphin Swim tickets at Discovery Cove and Lunch with an astronaut at Kennedy Space Centre, both of which are an additional charge).
Considering we were already paying over £5000 for 14 nights at Disney alone, I don't think this is too bad for the amount of extra time and experiences we're getting - I booked our theme park tickets during the Black Friday sales and this helped to save quite a bit of money, something I would definitely be sure to do again.
So now that the plans and finer details have been dealt with - it's time to move on to the fun part! Planning our visit!
There is simply SO MUCH to see, do and experience in Orlando that it is almost impossible to fit everything in - even on a 25 night trip!
So I've made a list of our Must Do experiences, and created a rough itinerary which will allow us to make the most of our time there.
At the moment, you need to have a park reservation for the Disney park you want to visit on any given day which means that you need to have a rough idea of what you want to be doing on each day - our Disney park passes are now reserved, and I've been working in our dining plans and activities around it.
Our plan is to use our first 14 days while on site at Disney to focus purely on doing Walt Disney World, and then once we transfer to our Universal hotel for our final 10 days we will use this as a base to explore the rest of Orlando - fitting in our days at Seaworld, Aquatica, Discovery Cove, Kennedy Space Centre, Universal Studios, Universal Islands Of Adventure, Universals Volcano Bay Water Park as well as visits to the town of Celebration, the local Malls and outlets, and The Titanic Exhibition and Gala Dinner. It's going to be a very busy holiday, that's for sure!
I'm hoping to be able to book tickets for Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween Party (Or Boo Bash, depending on which one runs this year) during our trip too, and I'd like to book a Disney Character Dinner at Chef Mickey's for our last day in Orlando as you don't need a Disney Park ticket to do this and I feel that it would be a great way to finish what will hopefully have been a fabulous trip!
I am so excited for September to come around so we can finally get there, although I have to admit - I am super anxious about whether it will actually go ahead this time.
I'm keeping my fingers firmly crossed!
I'll be sharing a post next week about Disney Dining and the restaurants we intend to book, so if you're interested in Disney trips keep an eye out for that.
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