SWA for October...and a Weird DME Question

I can't remember when they release the flights for October. I thought it was sometime in March, but I see that they are not opening up through September until February 8. That's still over 2 months away. Would that push the release of October schedules into late April? I'm not in a huge hurry, per se, since I am overbooking my resort reservations (DVC) and I will drop nights, if needed, to accommodate the flight schedules. I'm also about $400 short of my targeted ticket budget.

Now for the weird DME question...

We are checking out on Friday, that's a given, but if our flight times/prices mean that we need to take an early flight on Saturday morning, we may opt to stay at the airport Hyatt on Friday night. In that case, we would plan to check out of our resort and store our bags with bell services and head to the parks for the day. How would we go about scheduling Magical Express for that evening with no flight? Can I call and explain the situation and just ask that they put us on the last scheduled bus of the evening? Since they put the tags with the pick up time on your door the day before, they should know what time that will be, right? Typically, how late is the latest DME pickup? I would assume that there aren't too many flights that leave in the evening meaning DME pickups are probably not much later than 5pm right? We don't need the extra time for security and such since we aren't catching a flight so we may just pay the extra price for an Uber or car service.

Re the DME question:

There is no "last bus" of the day - DME runs 24/7. Just call them and tell them what you want to do.

siskaren said:

Re the DME question:

There is no "last bus" of the day - DME runs 24/7. Just call them and tell them what you want to do.

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Generally speaking, the last flight out of MCO is around 10PM. While DME will accept people at the airport 24/7, I would not expect them to pick up at a resort after about 7PM.

supersnoop said:

Generally speaking, the last flight out of MCO is around 10PM. While DME will accept people at the airport 24/7, I would not expect them to pick up at a resort after about 7PM.

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That's not really true. Pulling up the Orlando International Airport website departures page, I'm seeing 24 different flights tonight with scheduled departures between 10pm and midnight for tonight.

supersnoop said:

Generally speaking, the last flight out of MCO is around 10PM. While DME will accept people at the airport 24/7, I would not expect them to pick up at a resort after about 7PM.

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I've seen guests boarding the bus, back to MCO at 9:00, midnight and later. Doesn't stop at 7, that's for sure.

writerguyfl said:

That's not really true. Pulling up the Orlando International Airport website departures page, I'm seeing 24 different flights tonight with scheduled departures between 10pm and midnight for tonight.

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The last domestic flight was at 10:55 last night. Looks like Southwest does have some flights approaching midnight on Wednesday; not sure if that’s normal schedule or because of the holidays. The first flight in the morning is at 5am. With the latest DME policies, I’d expect DME to be dormant between 8pm and 2am most days.

supersnoop said:

Generally speaking, the last flight out of MCO is around 10PM. While DME will accept people at the airport 24/7, I would not expect them to pick up at a resort after about 7PM.

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writerguyfl said:

That's not really true. Pulling up the Orlando International Airport website departures page, I'm seeing 24 different flights tonight with scheduled departures between 10pm and midnight for tonight.

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These are two examples of why I would prefer not to make a "dummy" reservation. With only 24 different flights between 10pm and midnight, what are the chances that there would be other people staying at my resort that would be on one of those flights? I would not want DME to be making a "special" trip for only us, especially since we don't actually have a flight. I would rather just plan on getting on the last bus of the evening that is going to be picking up other guests who actually have a flight.

what kind of prices are people seeing for SW for 2018

DME doesn't care what flight you give them. Decide how late you want to stay at the parks and then find a flight that gives you a pickup time (4 hrs before the flight) that works for you.