WDW planning for a party of 9 (make that 12)

Hertz is pretty reliable and a 12 passenger van are not rented often so my guess is they will have the van for you but I wouln’t hesitate to call the local office to question what alternatives the would provide if the vehicle wasn’t available.

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Fingers crossed for you good luck and have a fun trip. :thinking:You could always rent a U-haul and some bubble wrap for the Grand kids. Just wrap them up and you’re on your way. :crazy_face:

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More investigation required: have you considered renting from a regular new car dealer?

We have rented 12 or 15 passenger vans from both a new car dealer and a rent a wreck sort of place. Both experiences were overall fine.

I did discover that one reason for such a problem renting large vans is that only Ford makes them.

The two we rented were older with not everything working well. One over head ac vent was broken, so all the cold air came out of that vent. But mechanically they were sound.

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@OlafsDad- can’t wait to hear all about your trip!

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Day #1. Early start. Picked up by airport transportation service @ 4:30am. Arrived @ airport by 5:30 for a 7:30 flight. 8 of us flying down from PVD>MCO. DD15 got TSA pre so we let her do it. Made her feel independent. We could see her the whole time. Rest of us breezed through security. Love PVD vs. BOS for flying to MCO.

Remaining 4 of the group drove down a day early so we added another day to the rental home for them and it was nice not to have to wait til 4pm check in time to get into the house. Since we landed by 10am and was in the rental van by 11am and at the house by noon.

FYI, renting the van offsite (@ Airport Marriott) went smoothly and cost was $595 for 9 days for 12 passenger van. Same van renting onsite at MCO was over $1k. Significant savings and highly recommended. Less than a mile from the airport and an additional $8 uber/lyft to get there. Cool thing is i can return it directly to MCO at the end.

House is gorgeous. Expensive but gorgeous. Not Disney expensive mind you. (I dont mind sharing $5k for 9 nights.)
8 bedrooms (5 masters w/kings and 3 kid themed rooms, frozen, minion, & star wars)
5 bathrooms, 2 game rooms, lanai with screened in pool and hot tub, and a movie theater room. Appx 4,000sf. Gated community (Champions Gate) with clubhouse access to 2 more large pools, lazy river, splash pads, restaraunt, bar, gym, playground, etc… Comes to about $550 per night.

Anyway, we hung around and explored the house/property a bit, then hit up the superwalmart for groceries and supplies. Unloaded and went to “Hooters” of all places for dinner. (Dont ask, it is DD30 and her husbands favorite place for wings and we dont have one near us, + they offered to pay) wasnt bad but not my favorite.

Back to the house for a swim and some hot tub time and calling it a night. Tomorrows agenda calls for Animal Kingdom as our first park. I have 9:00am FoP fpps for 8 of us and NRJ for the other 4 who dont want to/cant ride FoP. So we are not rope dropping FoP. planning for an 8:45 arrival with a RD of EE for 8 and the other 4 heading to meet Mickey/Minnie @ adventurers outpost. Then Pandora> KS w/fpp> FoLK> Ittbab> KRR> Nemo then midday break back to the house. Then returning back to AK around 7 to let the littles spend some time in DinoLand and some free time for some of the adults.

It’s my 4yo grandaughters first trip so im anxious and excited to see Disney for the first time through her eyes.

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My Grandmother loved going too when we would go to Atlantic City.

Love the morning view here

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Golf course view. not sure what hole it is but im gonna play it before i leave.

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by the way, I’ll be wearing this very colorful shirt in AK today. If you see a 6’0" 250lb bald guy who looks like he’s part of the cast of “Finding Nemo the musical” be sure to say hi. I’ll be the one attempting to herd 11 sheep.

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Beautiful house! Have a great day! So fun having a kids first trip. Enjoy!

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heres my motley crew.

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I hope you are having a good time and also hope to see you on the 26th if possible.

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Have fun!

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1st park day in the books and lets say we can chalk one up for the good guys. Started a little shaky as we had some stragglers and didnt get out of the house til 8:10am. Was shooting for 7:45 but expecting 8:00am. Overall, I’ll take it. Arrived at AK dropoff area by 8:35am. (25 minute door to door commute from Champions Gate for those who are interested) BY THE WAY, I LOVE “OLD LAKE WILSON RD.” for commuting vs. I-4 or 27>192. Takes you in sort of a backway and avoids most traffic.

TIP: I used drop off lane to drop off the 11 passengers near the front gate and instructed them to head into park and gave them a meeting point. I parked van and met up with them. We took photopass pictures by the tree and were on bridge to Asia by 8:50am.

@9:00 RD 1/2 group headed to Everest and the other 1/2 to Adventurers Outpost for pictures with Mickey and Minnie. So my Granddaughters first Disney experience was to meet Mickey and Minnie.

We all met up at Adventurers outpost and then I introduced everyone to Pandora. Grandaughter, grandmother, great grandmother, and Godmother went to Navi w/ Fpp and the rest on Avatar w/fpp. So grandaughters first official ride @ Disney was Navi River Journey

Then off to a productive Safari. Saw lots of giraffe, elephants, rhinos and the male lion woke up and walked around a spell. By the time we were walking off the safari we were behind our TP by about 20 minutes. I filtered in a few 10 minute breaks throughout the day and set the speed to slow but in hindsight i should of went 20. Since the group consisted of so many first timers there were lots of stopping and gazing. Not a real issue but we had to scrap an attraction and move some things around.

Next was Kali River and we had a blast. It was hot out and it was just what everyone needed.

I got the worst of it.
Then back to Africa for Lion King Show and then back to the house for a midday break. Had planned to be back at the house by 2:00pm and it ended up being 2:30 when we pulled in. Perfect timing too as the weather opened up and tornado watches popped up as well. (I’ll update 2nd half of the day in the next post)

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Plan is going well!

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1st park day cont… So we left right before the skies opened up (literally) kind of scary as ive never been part of a tornado watch and tornado warning. Got back to the house and we had a nice family meal then some went swimming, others played in the games rooms, & some napped. It was nice to have the break and nicer considering the savings.

Around 7:00pm we headed back to AK. Great Grandma, Grandma, & Godmother stayed at the house and watched movies.

Was able to secure a SDFP for FoP during the midday break for my Bil and his family, (side note: after riding FoP in the morning my Bil says “That was amazing can we do it again?”, I said “yeah standby line is at 100 minutes, text me when your done and I’ll tell you where we are at”) needless to say he opted to stick with the plan. So they went to FoP and the rest of us headed back to KRR. (Grandaughters new favorite ride, shw did it 3x ). We all met back up in Asia. Bil and I took the 2 littles over to Dinoland while the rest rode Everest with some more SDFP.

Watched the tree awakenings then the group split up again. Some wanted to do Navi River and see Pandora at night while the other group went souvenier shopping. We closed down AK and left there about 10:30pm, grabbed some Chick-fil-A on the ride home, made it back to the house around 11:30 and did some eating and hanging by the pool.

Overall a very good day. Missed 2 things on the TP (Nemo the Musical and Its tough to be a bug) I was perfectly ok going away from the TP when needed and had great success with SDFP. Park wasnt overly crowded in the day nor was it sweltering hot for us northerners. Night time touring was great as the park had emptied substantially.

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:rofl: You are handling this big crew so well!

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None of them understand the process of fastpass. The fact i had 8 fastpasses for 9am for Flight of Passage so they didnt have to spend the time in the RD line meant nothing. Not that they weren’t appreciative, they definitely were. Its just they dont understand the process. Only a liner truly can appreciate it.

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Sound like a wonderful day :slight_smile:

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How fun! Thanks for taking us along with you!

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