Trip date decisions

So we currently have two trips booked - Saturday February 19 to Sunday, February 27, 2022 (Presidents week) and Tuesday, April 19, to Wednesday, April 27, 2022. We are reaching a point when we will have to decide on which dates to take - as flights for Southwest open in a few weeks.

Part of our calculus is when our kids, DS11 and DS4 can be vaccinated, so holding off to April might be the safe choice there. But otherwise,

  • Feb would be sooner, and no school would be missed.
  • April will have later park openings, Flower and Garden (our favorite festival), and possibly lower crowds, although we would be arriving two days after a late Easter.
  • The April trip would require missing 3 days of school on the tail end - which used to bother me but does less after two years of a pandemic.

So, decisions, decisions. I hate having to push off our trip (originally postponed from 2020) another two months, but it kind of seems like that may be the better choice for us.

Anyways, just what’s going through my head on a Sunday morning as we wait for Tropical Storm Henri to hit…

Ooh that’s a toughie. I like the weather better in February, but the possibility of being able to have kids vaccinated by April also gives me pause. I’ve been in that April timeframe and it was HOT. :hot_face: But that may be appealing for you.

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@mikejs78, I think you know how I feel about April that close to Easter but if your goal is to make sure your children are vaccinated I think February is possible, but April might be a safer bet, especially for DS4.

One more thing- I love Flower and Garden but the Festival of the Arts is pretty good too!

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I love both. I contacted @len about Easter and when it’s been late in the past, the week following wasn’t crowded, which is what I’m banking on.

And yes, Festival of the Arts is great too - but since the vaccine situation for DS4 is less clear, April may be safer. Of course that also brings the possibility of love bugs (ugh), although my experience is that they are more likely in May.

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Yeah, I know that is the official story but I will never recover from that experience. Funny, I think it was only a MK issue- but never again (Easter, Passover, NE School vacation)

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We went February break week 2020. The crowds were crazy and the flight prices were outrageous. We normally fly out of TF Green but went out of Bradley at crazy times to make it work. I feel like all of New England goes to Florida that week.

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Although I think I can usually find at least a somewhat reasonable price in February. In April you must get those SW flights on opening morning.

It’s going to be tough because the next SW opening will go through 1/2 of our April trip, so I have to figure that out - book one way now, return trip later, or book a round trip with an earlier return date and reschedule once the next booking window opens?
Or avoid SW? Also I much prefer TF Green to Logan…

TF Green has only had an early morning and late night direct flight I think but Logan hasn’t had any?

If you are committed to SW I would get the one way on opening. April vacation has gone up (never down) for vacation weeks. It is RI vacation too. Sometimes MHT is cheaper since it is not NH vacation.

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I’ve never looked for Easter since my Gold pass is always blocked. I didn’t look the minute the flights came out and was shocked at how expensive they were – $500 each way :scream: I never had to book flights the minute they came out in Chicago but that doesn’t work here whenever I’m looking to travel during break times.

@mikejs78, flights out of TF Green aren’t great these days. SW keeps changing flights. I had a direct early morning flight in September and they canceled my flight and put me on a non-direct flight that now arrives in the evening. I was able to change it to an earlier non-direct flight but it still messed with my plans. The early morning direct flight seems to be day dependent. The week I was looking at, the flight was available on Monday but not Tuesday or Wednesday.

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Ugh, really? Makes me think I should go with JetBlue or something.

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Southwest has been very, very bad lately.

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From personal experience, I would seriously look at another airline, not SW. I’m at WDW now and they cancelled my flight to Orlando with less than 24 hours notice. And mine has not been the only situation like that.

They’re also having a lot of delays due at least in part to having a single flight go through so many cities (I’m not sure if it’s a shortage of planes or staff or both). For example, my rebooked flight that I ended up on was delayed almost two hours (causing me to miss my connecting flight in Denver) because it was delayed in getting to John Wayne from Denver. So that flight, after getting to Denver, was then going to Pittsburg and THEN Midway. You can see how a delay like that would just keep rolling through their system with so many stops.

The SW issues have been an ongoing situation, unfortunately, so I would be cautious and look at other options.

Well, we made the decision. And this time it seems real. We’ve had several dates booked in the past and moved them around throughout the whole pandemic, but this time we’ve gone for it - we booked flights and bought our park tickets. Given that this trip has been postponed numerous times, we’re kind of planning to go all out for this trip - as we haven’t had a vacation outside of a few short trips to Cape Cod since summer of 2019.

So we leave for Disney for seven nights at the Beach Club on Tuesday, April 19th, 2022, returning on Tuesday April 26th, 2022. So excited to finally have this in the plans, and unless things totally go off the deep end, we’re sticking to this one. So excited, it can’t come soon enough after all the stress of the past 2 years.

We decided on JetBlue out of Logan for flights. Even though I’d prefer Providence, I’d rather have a direct flight and with Southwest’s unreliability, I didn’t feel comfortable going with them.

I even made park reservations, although I’ll probably change them at least 16 times before we actually go. This feels real, and I’m loving it. Now on to the obsessive liner planning!

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Congrats! A short walk to Flower and Garden at one of the best times of the year in the world!

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I’m very much looking forward to evening walks over to Epcot for Flower and Garden. That and Stormalong Bay.

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We love Jet Blue

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Well, I ended up going with them!

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