Our 1st ever kid-free WDW trip PTR

VandVsmama

DIS Veteran
Joined
Mar 28, 2011
493709

Welcome, campers! It's time for a PTR!

For the first time in forever, DH & I are going to take a trip without children....TO WDW! So who are we and how did this trip come about? When are we going? I'm so glad you asked because I have all sorts of fun facts to share with you!

Between DH & I, I am definitely the bigger Disney fan. We started going on Disney trips 8 years ago when we took ODD & YDD to Disneyland for the first time (they were just 6 and 4 back then!). DH has said that he's a little burned out on "Disney trips," but what he's really talking about is DisneyLAND trip.

You see, we live in Arizona. So it's easier for us travel-wise and money-wise to go to Disneyland. A WDW trip is a bigger deal, a bigger effort to get to, etc., etc. Two years ago, we went to WDW for a week in June when DH had to be in Orlando for a work conference. That trip was a lot of fun. But DH regretted that he wasn't able to spend nearly as much time in the parks as the kids & I did. DH really wanted to spend more time in MK, but couldn't because of his work commitments.

At the same time, on our family trips to Disney parks, it's a balancing act. For all of you who have gone to a Disney park with kids, y'all know what I'm talking about here. The kids want to go go go on rides as much as possible. And then there's DH who sometimes would like to sleep in and not have a plan of any kind at all.

The sweet spot we've learned for OUR family on our DL trips is that DH **NEEDS** a mid-afternoon break. For 3 hours, ideally 4. Not hanging out IN a park, but in the hotel room, so he can have mental down time from the crowds and all of that.

In addition to this, DH has felt kind of burned out on work and everything and he said a few months ago that he'd like for just the 2 of us to take a trip somewhere. Without the kids. My sister will stay at our house while we're gone, take care of the kids, get them to school, make sure they do their homework, and all of that normal life stuff.

So...how did I convince DH to agree to a WDW trip? That's in the next post!
 
So...how did DH go from "I'm tired of Disney trips" to "OK, let's go to WDW"?

FIrst, DH said that he wanted to go on a road trip to New Mexico. Hm, ok, I'd like to do that some day. Then DH said that he'd like to go to Zion National Park. I love my DH very much, but he is not an outdoorsy sort of guy. He does NOT go hiking. We're not the sort of folks who enjoy going camping. DH prefers hotels with TVs and Wifi. Um...hey DH, the lodging in national parks don't have either of those. :-)

I did a hard sales pitch to DH. Some of the factors I threw into my marketing pitch were:

  • we aren't tied down to going when the kids are out of school.
  • so we can go any time of year we want.
  • DH likes the Food & Wine festival at DCA that occurs each spring.
  • we could go at a cooler time of year...when it isn't a crock pot of sweatiness.
  • if we want to sleep in, we can!
  • no kids to nag you at 7:00 am saying, "COME ON! LET'S GO!"
  • it'll cost HALF of what a family trip to WDW would.
  • we can even add on the dining plan so pretty much all of our food is paid for ahead of time, so that means that DH won't complain and stress about how much the food costs.
DH said yes! :jumping1:

So when are we going?
Saturday 1/23 - Thursday 1/28/2021.

How did we end up deciding on these dates?

  1. The Epcot art & food festival should be underway.
  2. It isn't next to or on a Run Disney weekend.
  3. It isn't over a holiday weekend like MLK weekend or President's Day weekend.
  4. The weather is likely to be very palatable. In other words, NOT super sweaty.
  5. On site hotel lodging rates might be likely to be lower than at some other times of year.
  6. We'll avoid the 2 months' worth of Spring Break crowds at WDW.
My trip planning for this tentatively began before all of the corona virus shut down stuff started. I'm working with a Dreams Unlimited Travel agent who is helping us get everything set up with a travel package. When all of the Disney parks closed because of corona virus, my agent contacted me afterwards to give me a heads up that Disney decided to allow travel agents to book room-only reservations **as a package.**

This essentially means that in June when WDW normally opens up its 2021 calendar to WDW travel packages, this room-only reservation does NOT have to be cancelled and then rebooked again as a package. You can just add on the tickets & dining plan to the room-only portion.

Apparently, this is a unique thing that WDW normally doesn't do and WDW isn't advertising it on its website, but travel agents are allowed to book things this way right now.

Right now, of course, none of us know what the in-parks experience will be like when WDW re-opens. I suspect that a lot of WDW visitors might stay away for quite awhile to wait and see what happens over the next year with corona virus. DH & I plan on adding travel insurance to our package so we're protected a bit if we have to reschedule kind of last minute because of unforeseen circumstances.

Anyways, I'm excited about this trip and DH is looking forward to us getting away for a few days next January, footloose and fancy free like the days before we had kids! Haha!
 
Let's talk airfare!

With corona virus wreaking havoc on the airline industry, it's hard to know what things will really be like in January. We live in AZ, so we'd probably be flying from the Phoenix airport to Orlando. My favorite airline is Southwest for a few reasons:

  1. there are no fees to cancel or change your flights. You just pay the fare difference if you're changing your flights.
  2. Boarding the plane is simple.
  3. You can check 2 pieces of luggage for free.
  4. It's straight forward.
  5. They have good customer service and don't play games that some other airlines sometimes do.
Many traditional airlines currently have their flight schedules posted 12 months out, so one technically could buy plane tickets now for January. For example, a direct round trip right now on American Airlines for our dates would be $468 per person right now.

United doesn't have any direct flights. Those all require connecting somewhere.

Delta's flights all connect through Salt Lake City (hello snow) or Atlanta (massive airport).

And no way am I flying on Jet Blue (connects through JFK...in the winter? Forget it), Allegiant (say hello to a million add on fees!), etc.

So why not book now on Southwest? Because you can't. On 5/28, they'll open up their booking calendar through 1/4. Therefore, we'll have to wait until, I'm betting, about 2-3 months after that for Southwest's system to open up for fares after 1/4. We're not going to be going at a popular time of year, so I think we'll risk it.

Right now at least for their flight schedule through end of October, Southwest has one PHX-->MCO direct flight that arrives in Orlando around 1:00 pm. That would be awesome! And on the return, there's one direct flight per day that leaves at 6:45 pm.

If we DO have to get connecting flights on Southwest, I think I'd rather change planes in airports in the southern half of the US...places like Texas, for example! :-)
 


Curious what hotel you picked
After the past 8 years of family trips, my Hubbie and I wore able to for 5 days in the winter of 2019 and stayed at the Boardwalk Inn. We had a wonderful trip
 
Well, it's been a busy week so far! Lots of life stuff and trip planning stuff! Let's start with the life stuff first, shall we?

Today, the kids finished their last test of the school year. :jumping1: We went out for ice cream to celebrate. It's been a crazy school year for everyone everywhere! We are relieved to have a reprieve from distance learning. The past 2 months have been challenging. We have no idea what the school year will entail in the fall yet.

Our plans for this summer originally included going to Hawaii for a week with my sister. Well, the state of affairs in Hawaii right now is such that they do NOT want tourists or visitors AT ALL. For example, people flying into Hawaii from anywhere must quarantine in their lodging accommodations for 14 days immediately upon arrival. You may NOT stop by a grocery store on the way home from the airport. You may NOT stop to get a bite to eat...even take out. You may not step one foot outside your hotel room or condo. If you do, you can be arrested and fined or put in jail for up to 6 months.

In addition, when you land, they take your temperature. And you sign a legal document stating that you understand the quarantine requirements and that you agree to abide by them. There's been talk in the local Hawaii news of tracking visitors with GPS tracking bracelets and crazy stuff like that.

On top of all that fun, our flights got seriously messed up going there and coming back home.

Alright, so this may sound like horrible news, but honestly, I'm not too upset over it. My sister got the condo reservation moved to the kids' spring break of next year without any problems. And after about 30 min on the phone with United, I got our flights changed...for about $500 less! AND there aren't any plane changes. NICE!

So what United flights did we end up with to Orlando?
 
Well, the savings on the Hawaii round trip airfare reschedule isn't enough to pay for our round trip from Phoenix to Orlando.

But it DID pay for one WAY from Phoenix to Orlando. The bummer is that United has no direct flights from PHX to MCO. Dang it. That means that we have to change planes. AND to make matters even more interesting, the hub airport options weren't fabulous. Look at these options:

  • San Francisco - notorious for weather delays. Every time it rains or there's a smidge of fog.
  • Denver - in January?
  • Chicago - I'd prefer to avoid the windy city in the middle of winter.
  • JFK - OMG, forget it.
  • Houston
There were a lot of flight options that involved 2 plane changes. Good grief, forget that nonsense. No way. There were options that arrived in Orlando late at night...well, those were out, too, because then we wouldn't even have any hope of doing anything fun on arrival day.

So I settled on a route from PHX to Houston, then change planes and continue onto MCO, arriving in Orlando at 3:20 pm.

For the flight back home, we'll go on Southwest. Of course, Southwest doesn't have its flight schedule open for late January yet. I think that'll open up in 2-3 months. **Right now** with Southwest's current flight schedule that goes through late October, they have one direct flight from MCO to PHX that leaves in the 6 pm hour.

I can tell that Southwest does a lot of flights to Orlando because there's a whole bunch of options through lots of different airports. If we do have to change planes, I'd prefer to stick to airports with better weather, so there's a few options in that area with Southwest...Austin, Dallas, Houston.
 
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I read some Hawaii local news this morning and it looks like their state's governor extended the 14-day visitor quarantine through the end of June like I suspected would happen. So it's good that our Maui trip got postponed!
 
Happy Monday everyone! Hope y'all had a nice weekend. My kids are stoked because their HW and tests for school are all done. Mom and Dad here are also relieved because the last 2 months have definitely been a challenge in the school department.

When we rescheduled our Maui trip, one thing that got affected was our planned day trip flying from Kahului to Honolulu on Southwest in order to spend the day at Pearl Harbor. YDD especially was looking forward to it. It was easy to cancel the round trip flights on Southwest, but I noticed that for about a week after I cancelled the tickets, our Southwest travel funds showed an expiration date in December of this year.

Well, THAT SUCKS is what DH & I thought at the time. How are we going to use those travel $$ before end of December when we don't have plans this calendar year to fly anywhere? Last night, I logged into my Southwest account and saw that they've now updated the expiration date to December of 2022! yay.jpg

The interisland flights were quite inexpensive with Southwest, so the round trip was about $116. This essentially means that DH & I can use those funds toward our return airfare from Orlando back to Phoenix. Hooray for saving a buck or two!

So let's talk budget for the trip...


  • Pop Century preferred room for 5 nights - $945.00
  • regular dining plan for 5 days for 2 people - $780.10 (assuming 2020 rates...2021 rates haven't been published yet)
  • 5-day park hopper tickets for 2 people - $1144.64
  • OR...6-day park hopper tickets for 2 people - $1181.52
Total not including airfare assuming we go with the 6-day park hopper tickets is $2906.62. Airfare is half paid for plus we've got $232.00 in travel funds on Southwest to put toward our return flight.

I'm not sure between the 5-day or 6-day tickets. I'm hoping to get a later return flight on our departure day to fly back home, so we could spend the morning at least at one of the parks before we have to take the sad bus ride back to the airport.


The cheapskate in me also is considering 1-park-per-day tickets, which would be about $80-$100 cheaper. However, I know that DH will want to hit up the art & food festival food booths at Epcot a couple of times during the trip, so it makes good sense to spend a little extra on that.

If WDW has a late night Magic Kingdom event, I think that I'd like to spring for that so we can get some extra park time and cram in a bunch of rides in a short amount of time.

 
Where do we want to use our dining plan TS credits?

DH doesn't have a whole lot of opinions in this department other than "anything as long as it's not burgers and chicken fingers." And since this is a kid-less trip, it makes sense for us to try some more "exotic" places that maybe we wouldn't necessarily go to. DH also is the sort of guy who likes to make up his mind kind of last minute. "OMG," you're all probably thinking, "That doesn't work at WDW for TS restaurants!"

And you're entirely correct on that. For a lot of restaurants, it really doesn't work. So that's where I come in. I know what sort of food DH likes to try. I know that at home, we have some great Mexican restaurants, so we're not going to bother eating at Mexican TS restaurants at WDW. But just about every other type of cuisine is up for grabs.

Here's the 'short list' of options I'm thinking about. What do you guys think? What are some of your favorite TS places?

  • California Grill
  • Tusker House
  • Sanaa or Jiko
  • Akershus
  • maybe Restaurant Marrakesh
  • Skipper Canteen
  • Liberty Tree Tavern
  • Whispering Canyon
Of course, there won't be enough TS credits to do all of those. And I know that DH would LOVE to try Morimoto Asia.

On the other hand, The Boathouse menu looks appealing.
 
I hope everyone is doing well! This is the kids' last week of school. Our family is SO done with school. SO DONE! During this Quarantini Time, I've learned that my DH is a shout-talker. He has a man-cave...a room just for him (his office/Lego construction room) in the house. This is the room he works in when he telecommutes...which has been pretty much daily since mid-March.

He also spends an awful lot of time on the phone for work. And even with his door closed, he speaks so loudly that you can hear every single word from the other end of the house. So yeah, DH is "that guy!" :rotfl2:

Ok, so onto trip planning! DH & I are not huge Beauty & the Beast fans, but I'm wondering if it might be worthwhile to try and get either a pre-park opening breakfast ADR or a lunch ADR at Be Our Guest. We didn't eat there when we went to WDW in June 2018. I think that if I had to choose between the two, I'd probably prefer eating there for lunch because the lunch options seem more appealing.

According to my Dreams Unlimited Travel agent, the day I can book ADRs is 7/27. Ok, so I have a couple of months to figure this out. But you DIS'ers will understand, of course, that part of the fun is figuring out the details. :thumbsup2

So in my previous post, I mentioned that some of the restaurants I'm considering for ADRs on our Sat-Thurs trip are:
- California Grill
- Tusker House
- Sanaa or Jiko
- Akershus
- Skipper Canteen
- Liberty Tree Tavern
- Restaurant Marrakkesh
- Whispering Canyon @ Wilderness Lodge

WHAT DAY TO GO TO WHICH RESTAURANT?? So many decisions! I'll go into it more in my next post!
 
Wow, time sure flies! I thought it had only been a couple of days since my last post but it's been almost a whole week. Here's my thoughts so far on what ADRs to do on what days:

Sat 1/23:
Probably no dinner ADR in case we run into flight delays. Maybe go eat QS at Epcot or use some snack credits at the art & food festival booths. Plus, we can go on some rides there in the evening.

Sun 1/24:
Skipper Canteen for lunch in MK. Tentatively planning on spending the evening in HS.

Mon 1/25:
ADR at California Grill at the Contemporary for dinner. If there's a MK After Hours event this day, we'll do that and get an early dinner reservation.

Tues 1/26:
Dinner at Akershus in Epcot, assuming there's late night EMH at that park.

Wed 1/27:
Probably AK in the a.m., so we can do lunch at Sanaa at AKL since it's a very short bus ride away. End the day at MK.

Thurs 1/28:
This is departure day. We don't have our departure flight booked yet. I'm hoping for a late afternoon flight on Southwest Airlines, so we could go to MK one more time in the morning before we have to leave. I think it'll be QS on departure day, although I could see maybe doing an early lunch at Skipper Canteen and switching the other Skipper Canteen reservation to Liberty Tree Tavern instead.

DH has never seen the Polynesian Resort, so it might be fun to get a cocktail at Trader Sam's over there on one of the days. That would be a good reprieve from park time when DH gets his mid-afternoon Theme Park Fatigue. :-)
 
In this ever changing world, I just read that WDW published its revised park operating hours for the next few months...

MK: 9am-7pm
EP: 11am-9pm
DHS: 10am-8pm
AK: 8am-6pm

Of course, there's no telling WHAT the parks' operating hours will be in January. And who knows at this point if there will actually be an art & food festival in January. Just for the purpose of speculation and developing a "Plan B," how would I change our plans if the above hours were still applicable for our January trip?

First of all...I'd probably take a 2nd look at getting park hopper tickets. Especially if a park reservation will still be required, then getting PH's won't make much sense.

Secondly, for the day that we were going to have lunch at Sanaa at AKL, it would make more sense to either eat IN the park (maybe Tiffins) or have dinner at AKL after AK park closed for the night.

I don't envision us spend an entire day at DHS because hardly any of the thrill rides there appeal to us other than Star Tours or the Star Wars Galaxy's Edge stuff. I'd probably be inclined to combine DHS with MK or DHS + Epcot. But that, again, assumes you'd be able to get reservations in both parks.

If there's no art & food festival in Jan at Epcot, then I think our touring style might go something like this:

  • Sat 1/23 - evening at Epcot after we arrive
  • Sun 1/24 - AK all day. Dinner at Sanaa or Jiko at AKL after AK park closes.
  • Mon 1/25 - MK all day. Dinner at CA Grill in the 7:30 pm range.
  • Tues 1/26 - morning at MK. Lunch at Skipper Canteen. Evening at DHS.
  • Wed 1/27 - pre-park opening breakfast at Be Our Guest (if that's an option). 1st half of day at MK. Then switch to Epcot. Dinner at Akershus.
  • Thurs 1/28 - MK until we have to leave for the airport.
 
The high temp here at my house here in Arizona is going to be 109. It'll be 111 tomorrow. YIKES! So with dreams of future cooler weather, I linked our room-only reservation to my MDE account today (our Dreams Unlimited Travel agent sent me a reminder about it, which I'm grateful for!). MDE even let us pick out the colors of our Magic Bands even though it's way too far in advance for that. DH went with a blue one and I'm getting purple.

Normally, we go to Disneyland, so I don't have much practice doing the MDE thing. We did it two years ago when we went on a family trip to WDW. The whole booking FP ahead of time was definitely an adjustment, as was doing ADRs so far in advance!

I also made another payment towards the trip today. Yahoo! I'm interested to see what the ticket prices and dining plan prices turn out to be for 2021. From what our agent says, it'll be some time this next month (June) when everybody will find out.
 
What about the weather in January and what to pack?

I looked on Accuweather and it appears that the average highs are in the low 70s with average lows in the low 50s. Similar highs to our area of Arizona, but the average low there is higher than here at home.

Of course, there definitely can be a wide range of possibilities there. Orlando could get a couple of days with lows dipping into the upper 30s or the highs could go up to the mid-80s. With everything in between.

OMG, SO HOW DO YOU EVEN PACK FOR THAT?
Not to fear, happy campers. In a way, this will be like us packing for a Disneyland trip, where we're chilly in the morning and evening and warm in the middle of the day. So you need probably a hat, sweatshirt, and a scarf...maybe gloves if the 7-day forecast looks like it'll be extra chilly. But the trick is wearing layers.

What does this look like, though, in terms of what to wear on a day like that?
I think I'll do something like this:
  • jeans or pants
  • t-shirt
  • 1 of my long sleeved Under Armour shirts under the t-shirt.
  • Disney sweatshirt
  • wide brimmed sun hat that I usually wear all day
  • in a.m. or p.m. when cold, wear a lightweight sarong/scarf around my neck. And don't forget to make sure that DH packs a scarf, too.
  • gloves in my purse/park bag just in case
When things warm up, tie sweatshirt around waist. Put scarf in purse/park bag. If need be, take off long sleeved Under Armour shirt & store in purse/park bag (it's light weight). Do the reverse in the evening when you start to get cold again.

WHAT DO I CARRY IN MY PARK BAG?
Normally on a Disneyland trip, I carry this stuff with me...it's gone way down in recent years since the kids are no longer in diapers! LOL :-)
  • wallet
  • sunscreen
  • park tickets (not necessary in this case, we'll be wearing our Magic Bands)
  • poncho for wet rides (or in this case for rain as well)
  • since we'll be at WDW, probably a small travel sized umbrella, too
  • water bottle
  • since tap water at WDW smells like it came out of somebody's butt, I'm going to bring some water flavoring stuff to mix in. The tap water at DL is way better!
  • a ziplock bag to store cell phone in on wet rides
  • cell phone
  • portable charging battery for cell phone
  • cord to connect phone to battery
  • hand sanitizer - used to carry a 3 oz container but now it's an 8 oz one thanks to corona virus
  • travel pack of sanitizing wipes or some Clorox wipes in a ziplock bag
  • park map & entertainment guide - get this at front gate
 
Well, HOLY COW, campers. Wait 24 hours and the WDW news changes even more! It sounds like now through year end 2020, there's:
  • no FP+
  • no ADRs 180 days beforehand.
  • existing ADRs all cancelled
  • can only make ADRs 60 days before
  • must have a theme park ticket AND a reservation for that theme park in order to get in!
As a result, DIS Boards has essentially blown up and lots of people are understandably VERY frustrated and REALLY angry, especially if they rebooked under the free dining offer.

DH & I have thought about it and talked about it and we're still keeping our January plans. NONE of the above restrictions are a negative for DH. You might be saying to yourself, "WHAT? How can he even think that?" Well, it's because he basically hates having plan a bunch of stuff way ahead of time.

When we go to DL, we always take an afternoon break at the hotel. Why? Because he gets tired and frustrated with mobs of people in theme parks. With fewer people actually IN the parks due to reduced capacity, that eliminates a lot of DH's very real Theme Park Fatigue.

In addition, if they continue the reduced operating hours for several months through our travel dates, we're still ok with that. It'll kind of force us to take a chill pill and I won't stress out about getting FPs for all of our favorites.

In terms of ADRs, there's nothing on my 'want' list that's an "absolute must do." In other words, there's no restaurant at WDW where if we could NOT eat there, the whole trip would be ruined. During our WDW trip 2 years ago, I think we only had 1 ADR and that was for Hoop Dee Doo. So we literally have eaten almost NOWHERE in terms of TS restaurants in all of WDW.

Also, DH wants a Disney trip that's at a less frantic/busy pace than all of our prior trips with the kids. We don't care about character meet & greets (and I wouldn't 'spend' a FP+ for a meet & greet anyway). We'd only go to a character meal if the kids were with us...with the exception maybe of the character meal at AK.

I'm looking forward to seeing what the park hours will be. I **do** hope that they add back in the option of dining plans...even if it's just for the QS dining plan. Having a lot of our meals paid for ahead of time is a huge plus for DH. I'd even be fine with getting just a QS dining plan for our stay and then paying the TS meals out of pocket!

I'm the one to book the ADRs because I know where we'll want to eat and I want us to be able to get the restaurant and the approximate time slot that we want. DH, on the other hand,
 
:welcome:
Welcome back, campers!

It's hard to believe that it's been over 10 days since my last post here! Time flies. A lot has happened...and also not happened...since 10 days ago. At WDW, Disney announced that initially they are not opening up ALL of the resorts. It looks like only deluxe resorts, DVC, and Fort Wilderness are going to be open. People who have room reservations for starting later this month into early July are getting moved to other resorts at no additional cost if they keep their same travel dates.

Wow!

Will the Pop Century resort be open for our dates in January? I have no idea. If it isn't, will we be able to switch to another resort at no extra cost? No idea. It's way too early to be able to tell, so I'm not going to worry about it.

I **do** know that DH is looking forward to an adults-only get away. I'm looking forward to it, too! Although I'm going to get park tickets for every day we are there (so 6 day tickets, including arrival and departure day), I do think that we should try to go to Cape Canaveral. DH wants to go see it and tour through the visitor center there.

Random questions floating through my head about Cape Canaveral:

  1. What day should we go? On Sunday or a weekday? Wednesday historically tends to be lower crowds at WDW parks, so I don't want to go on Wed.
  2. Should we rent a car for the day or do a packaged tour (i.e., tour bus)?
  3. If I wanted to rent a car just for a day, what time do we have to return the car by if we're renting it from that WDW on site car rental location?
  4. It's Alamo and Enterprise, right, that are available on site at WDW?
  5. I don't want to rent a car for our entire stay when it's just one day that we'd probably be going off site.
  6. Should I schedule an ADR for dinner on our Cape Canaveral day or is that unrealistic?
  7. I wonder how long it takes to drive from POP Century to Cape Canaveral?
  8. Will we need to use a toll road?
  9. How do I pay a toll on a toll road if I'm in a rental car and I don't have one of those transponder thingies?
  10. How much do the Cape Canaveral tickets cost?
  11. How long will DH want to spend there? With my luck, he'll want to read every sign and display there. So we could be there all day.
  12. What are their operating hours at Cape Canaveral?
  13. Maybe instead of an ADR at WDW, we should eat dinner somewhere on the drive back? If so, where? We can definitely wing it, but I'd rather not go somewhere that you can find everywhere else in the US (i.e., chain restaurant).
  14. Maybe we should do an ADR for dinner that evening at Disney Springs? Or dinner in Epcot?
 
Welcome back, campers!

I've done some homework and some thinking and here's what I think right now..

epcot yes.jpg

So yes...even if WDW cancels its annual art & food festival in Epcot for next Jan-Feb., we're still going to go. If they move us to a different resort if POP Century remains closed through that time, we're still going to go.

I also thought about changing it all around and switching this trip to the end of next school year and adding YDD to the trip (since ODD will be on a choir trip), but I talked myself out of that yesterday...mostly because there were too many unknowns and if ODD's choir trip gets cancelled because of corona virus travel restrictions to the area where they're traveling to, doing something like adding ODD to the same flights as ours to WDW will be hard to do.

So I have an alternate plan for a DH-me-YDD trip at that time frame and it's one that allows for the addition of ODD easily. More on that later!

Ok, so back to Cape Canaveral. What I found out was this:
  • Right now through year end 2020, admission tickets to the Kennedy Space Center are $30/adult.
  • Hours are 10 am - 4 pm.
  • Your ticket will have a designated entry time so they can minimize the # of people waiting in line at one time.
  • You have to select a specific day when you buy the ticket and your ticket is good for ONLY that day.
  • Ticket includes parking.
I do think that instead of getting to the Kennedy Space Center with one of those bus tour packages, we'll just rent a car for the one day through Alamo or National car rental since both of them rent cars through the WDW Car Care Center. So here's what I found out about that:
  • They're open 6 am - 8 pm Mon-Fri and 6 am - 6 pm Sat & Sun. I do think that we may try going to Cape Canaveral on Mon or Tues.
  • The Car Care Center has a shuttle that will pick you up at your resort and drop you off at the Car Care Center. But you have to arrange for the shuttle pick up ahead of time.
  • Resort hotel pick up locations are all basically outside the main lobby of the resort.
  • They'll also pick you up or drop you off at any of the theme parks or Disney Springs. Didn't know that!
  • After hours car return is ONLY available for Alamo (not National). And if you return the car after hours, you have to figure out your own transportation back to your hotel or a theme park because the shuttle only runs during the Car Care Center's operating hours.
 
In my previous post, I mentioned that I had almost ALMOST decided to switch our Jan 2021 WDW adults-only trip to a me-DH-YDD WDW trip at the end of the school year. ODD is supposed to go on a 10-day choir trip starting the day after the school year ends. Initially, I thought it would be easy to just add ODD to a 3-person WDW trip, but then when I thought about the flight logistics, I realized that it wasn't very feasible or realistic.

ODD's choir trip next year also happens to fall over YDD's birthday, which YDD is a little bummed about. ODD's choir trip is pretty stinking awesome and the choir director is still planning on the trip happening, but these days you never know what can happen, so I'm trying to come up with a Plan B that would work for all of us and satisfy everybody's needs.

DH said that he's tired of Disney trips and is 'bored' going to theme parks. OMG, who are you? LOL. But this trip will be for YDD's birthday and she wants to go to "Harry Potter Land" as she puts it and she wants to go to a Disney park or 2. DH, on the other hand, wants to just spend a few days sitting around doing nothing.

We live in Arizona. So the new plans for a May trip will be for us to spend a week in CA. Our Spring Break (March 2021) trip with my sister to Hawaii for sure isn't happening (because of very restrictive travel & quarantine requirements). I think that this CA trip is going to have a pretty good mix of options to please both YDD & DH.

It involves going here.... Any guesses where this is?

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SANTA BARBARA! It's an 8 hour drive from where we live in the Phoenix area.

And we're going to throw in a little of....

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Followed by 3 days of this...

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It'll be a road trip that will go something like this:
  • Thurs - ODD leaves for choir trip, rest of us hit the road for CA. Spend the night w/friends in southern CA.
  • Fri - take YDD to Universal Studios Hollywood, then drive to Santa Barbara
  • Sat & Sun - in Santa Barbara
  • Mon - leave Santa Barbara, visit Reagan Presidential Library near Thousand Oaks, then drive to Anaheim. Probably stay at Park Vue Inn or Best Western Park Place Inn (SUPER close to the main gate!)
  • Tues - Thurs - Disneyland with 3-day park hopper tickets. Stay Thurs night w/friends.
  • Fri - drive home
  • Sat - ODD returns home from choir trip.
AND...if ODD's choir trip gets cancelled for whatever reason, we can easily add her to this trip without having to coordinate airfare and all of that. So the long and the short of it is that DH & I are sticking to our January plans. If WDW doesn't offer dining plans again for January, then that's ok...we'll just pay for our food out of pocket and I'll put in a food order through Garden Grocer for breakfast and snack items.
 

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