I look forward to that update and I hope for all the best things for your wife and family. Disney will wait for you all.
I hope all works out wish a speedy recovery for you wife, thoughts and prayers are coming your way.
Ohhhhh, I was reading this whole thread and so excited for your trip!
But understand medical issues (been there myself…I missed so much fun in 2017 due to surgery! But it was well worth it).
Hoping to see your new dates, and follow along on your updates!
I’m sorry to hear that, hope the surgery goes well.
Thanks all. Surgery is coming up this Friday. Finally got a solid answer on the expiring tickets we purchased 3rd party via Visit Orlando. Thought thos info may come in handy to someone down the line…
Dear Mr. Jones
Again, I am sorry you are unable to visit as planned. Our records indicate your tickets expire January 14, 2019. Although we are not able to extend your expiration date, I would be happy to review your tickets once they’ve expired. If they are still unused, I will make arrangements to provide you with nine (9) complimentary 5-Day Magic Your Way® Base Tickets you may use on a future visit. Please know, complimentary tickets cannot be upgraded or applied toward a package to meet eligibility requirements.
Thank you for taking the time to contact us.
Kind regards,
Guest Experience Services
Walt Disney World Resort
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Surgery went as well as expected. She came home a week after surgery and is recovering nicely in tje comforts of home. No rehab. We want to say thank you to everyone who wished us well and kept us in their prayers. It meant a lot to us.
She’s already talking about rescheduling the trip. Which is a good sign. We lucked out on the tickets as Disney said they will reissue new tickets if and when ours expire. And despite not opting for trip insurance we got the rental company to apply a generous portion of the non- refundable deposit we made towards a future date. So in the end we only lost about $200. What a blessing.
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Havnt been around for a spell but was feeling a little bluesie today as this was the day we were to be starting our epic trip. Havnt updated in a spell so i thought id throw in a couple notables.
First of all, wifey is doing well. We go for 2nd part of surgery in about 6 weeks if everything continues to go well. Still cant make any solid plans to rebook until after 2nd surgery and recovery.
Although Disney emailed me and said when we are ready to rebook they will issue new " complimentary" tickets for all 9 of us, im very concerned with the new ticket structure and that our tickets expire in Jan. 2019. Im hoping just providing the email they sent me will be enough when it comes time to rebook. Im sure i will be subject to any price increases and im ok with that. Im just weary that its gonna be a hassle.
I cant say enough good things about Magical Vacation Homes. (Not MVT) but rather the agency from whom we booked our vacation rental home. They originally agreed to refund half our deposit, which they didnt have to do. And instead they stepped up to the plate and refunded our total deposit in full. I emailed them when i didnt see the partial credit they originally agreed to and they apologized and said they would refund the entire amount instead. (appx $450) I highly recommend them and they’ve earned my future business.
Didnt realize i had so many van rentals booked. lol. I had about 10 reservations. To and from different airports and offsites? Both for the trip and the 2 legs back and forth from our home. I hadnt booked airline tix yet so i wasnt sure which departute and arrival airports i was flying in and out of. So i booked all scenarios. Haha. All ressies were without down payment but i received all the confirmation emails a few days ago and cancelled them all.
Finally, as for airfare, i had been tracking all flights to and from. I was getting updates daily via “google flights” and i noticed the tickets never went sky high. I had anticipated the closer i got the tix would increase. And although thats what did happen, as of 2 days ago i could still book a 1 way non stop ticket for about $130 from the Boston area and return flight about the same. The lowest i encountered was about $100 and that was about 2 months out. Tix increased to about as high as $170 about 2 weeks ago but then began to drop last week. I had been tracking for months trying to figure out the best time to buy. It looks like at 2 months out was my best bet but if i had booked early or even waited till about 30 days out it wouldnt have been that significant of a difference. Maybe $20-$30 for each ticket.
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Glad to hear you had a good experience with the rental home refund. I hope your wife’s second surgery has a speedy recovery and soon you will be able to start planning your new vacation.
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Thank you so much. We are very optimistic.
Glad to hear all is going well, hope the next surgery goes smoothly.
Thanks very much for your update. Very glad to hear that your wife is doing well and best wishes for 2nd surgery and recovery.
Your planning posts helped me structure my own trip planning - I’m going in May 2019 with a group of 12. We just booked airfare last night for the 8 of us that are flying, the other 4 are driving. I will do a post summarizing my trip planning in case it can benefit others as yours benefited me 
.
Hello again. Its been a while. Just wanted to update this thread. Wifes surgery went well. We had a minor scare as infection set in again but it was agressively and quickly treated. Its been over 2 months now and on last visit the Dr. gave the thumbs up. He also gave the ok to fly in a few months. So the party of 9 trip is back on…except now its a party of “12” ( one BiL backed out but we gained another BiL, Sil, and their 2 children).
So i got right to work in rebooking. But this time i have a larger group and much less time to pull things together. After re-reading this thread i was surprised that a few of you actually said you benefited from my posts/updates. So im going to keep this thread alive and continue my updates.
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Newest update: We booked a house, the 15 passenger van, airline tix for 8 of the 12, grabbed a few ADR’s, and purchased 4 additional park tickets for the 4 new guests.
The House:
We were going to pick the same house as we chose for the Oct trip we had to cancel. However, the same house in June was nearly $200 more per night vs. what we would have paid in Oct. It had 8 bedrooms, pool, lanai, game room, movie theater room, in champions gate community was $275 per night in Oct. but $450 a night in June. (Different seasons = different rates, i get it) We needed the space and amount of bedrooms to accomodate everyone comfortably. I kept searching and came to the conclusion that $450 was the going rate for June and unless we wanted to downsize space and ammenities thats what we were going to pay.
So before booking the same house. I did a ton more searching and came up with what i can only describe as “The” perfect house for us. Its also in Champions Gate community, same distance to the main clubhouse, but more private area and on the golf course with golf course views. It also has 8 bedrooms with 5 masters with king size beds (exactly what we needed) and 3 kid themed bedrooms. (A princess room, a star wars room, and a minions room complete with bunk beds and a slide from top bunks). 2 gaming areas ( 1 in the garage with pool, air hockey, 2 PS4 setups with large screens, and a sitting area) the 2nd is upstairs with seating area, 2 more PS4 setups, and a shuffle board table. Theres also a ping pong table out on the lanai. The movie theater room is amazing with new stadium style leather seating. The only drawback was the dining area seats 8 with 4 additional seats at the kitchen island vs. the other house which had seating for 10 at the same table and 4 at the island. But ill live with that.
The main selling point was the house is newer. Built in Oct of 2018. So i know the pictures are accurate and will have little wear and tear which is important to us. Clean is a priority for us.
Pricing was $440 per night but with taxes, service and cleaning fees the total came to appx. $4,500 for 8 nights or ( $560 per night) seems steep but vs. just a 3 bedroom at a DVC resort like Saratoga Springs would have run about $700 a night and we’d be bunking together and sleeping on pullouts, it was far more affordable to rent the home. The other option was renting 3-4 value or moderate rooms and again it was going to be equal or more than the house.
I sent pictures of the home to everyone and they were just floored at how beautiful it was. Everyone is at a 10 on the excitement meter now. The only other drawback to offsite vs. the obvious of ( 60 day fpp, transportation, emh, etc…) was the cancellation policy. Again, things can and do happen, as evident of our last cancellation. Disneys cancellation policy is much more flexible and forgiving. Despite what already happened to us last trip we are not purchasing trip insurance. After reading what is covered and what is not it just doesnt make sense to us. Others may have different opinions. So if he have to cancel we would lose 1/2 the cost. I say a little prayer all the time that we dont have to cancel this trip.
I’ll add more updates to the van rental, park tix, airfare, ADR’s, etc…on another post. For now, its time to go to work to help pay for some of this trip. Lol.
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We are a party of 13 and we are also staying at a house in Champions Gate. So much cheaper than staying on site, and the themed rooms in all the houses looked amazing. I had a hard time choosing. I finally decided on one with Finding Nemo, and Frozen.
When are you going in June? We will be there from the 26th - 30th.
@shastacynettelightfoot
They are all so beautiful arent they? I have 2 in my group (the matriarch’s of the group) who will be spending more time in the house than with the group. (Not Disney people) So the house and resort ammenities is basically going to be their vacation. And i know if they are happy, then everyone is happy. (To catch a phrase…“Happy wife=Happy life”)
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Our dates are 6/18 - 6/26. We will just miss you.
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Park Tickets:
We had 8 sets of 5 day base tickets for the original crew that had an expiration date of Jan. 2019. I had purchased them November 2017 on Black Friday as Visit Orlando had a great deal at the time via their website. Since our original trip was Oct 2018 the expiration date did not concern me. When we had to cancel it became a big concern. I emailed WDW and explained the situation. Took awhile but i finally got a response. CM stated she couldnt do anything until they expired. Once they expired, if unused, she would credit me with "complimentary tickets"to replace the expired ones. She said they had one restriction and that the tickets could not be upgraded. A few days before they were set to expire i got nervous and screenshotted each ticket and who it was assigned to. I was worried they would disappear and i would have no proof they ever existed. I also emailed the same CM and included a copy of our previous conversations to ask if there was anything else i needed to do. About 4-5 days went by and i hadnt heard anything… Then shortly after i got an email from the same CM and she recalled the conversation. She emailed me the new tickets with instructions how to link them via MDE. Easy Peazy. Now I just needed 4 more sets of tickets.
I checked around for prices on 4 more tix just about every day and everywhere to boot. Kept checking the TP ticket calculator to see who had best pricing. Nothing really stood out. I wanted to match the 5 day base tickets the rest of us already had but figured 4 day tix would work as well as there are 4 in the group of 12 that dont want to be in the parks that much anyway. 4 days is enough for them. So i could buy 4 day tickets and assign them to that group. I could assign the other 8 the 5 day tix. So i kept procrastinating until i began to read many posts on the forum about ticket prices and how surprised they were they hadnt increased yet. I was beginning to think it was time so i told the wife we need to get the other tickets soon. She said we have plenty of time, the trips not til June. I showed her some of posts and she dismissed them as speculation. I went back to the Visit Orlando website and they were having a flash sale on 4 day base tix so i grabbed them that same night. I wasnt going to tell my wife about the purchase as we had just had the conversation about waiting a bit. The very next day Disney announced their ticket increase. I couldnt resist, i took a screen shot and texted it to her. She replied “i should of listened to you”… I replied " im glad i didnt listen to you. I bought them yesterday :)"… Saved about $100 in total.
Ive used Visit Orlando twice now to purchase park tickets and each time theyve been the cheapest and ive saved a decent amount of $$$. The only drawback is they dont email you the tickets. You can pick them up in person at their location in Orlando or you can have them shipped to you. The cost for 2 day shipping is $14.99 but they send you the actual hard tickets. Another drawback is because of the high denomination, someone needs to be there to sign for them. More of an inconvenience rather than a drawback.
All in all, i got the 12 tickets linked via MDE and ready to make fast passes.
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Update on ADR’s
I had originally planned a character ADR for each park day.
AK= Tusker House @ 10:45am. (Love this time as we can experience both breakfast and lunch) Booked as 2 seperate reservations of 6 people. Couldnt get exact times but have the 2 reservations within 20 minutes of one another.
EP= Garden Grill PPO @ 8:15. ( will net us good breakfast, characters, and a jump on the crowds for Soarin) Booked as 2 seperate reservations of 6 again. 6@ 8:15 and 6@ 8:20 i believe.
MK= Originally had Crystal Palace in mind but opted for EMM w/ breakfast + a late lunch at BoG. (Much more costly for a group of 12 but this was “THE” splurge)
No issues booking EMM using my android phone through the website. Couldnt book it using the app. As for availability… Didnt seem to be an issue even 60 days out.
I initially only booked EMM for 6 people as i posted a poll question to see who was interested and i didnt get many responses . So i got tickets for me, my wife, and the 4 kids and assumed the remaining 6 adults would simply enjoy Main St and the welcome show and join us after RD. Then the other 6 adults changed their minds and i was able to secure another 6 EMM tix no problem.
As for BoG, i was able to get a 1:40pm lunch ressie for a party of 12. Didnt have to split that one.
HS = breakfast @ H&V. This was the one i was most excited for ( for my grandaughter and the Disney Jr. characters) but had a heck of a time trying to coordinate it with RD’ing TSL. In the end i was able to grab 2 reservations of 6 ( one at 10:15 & the other at 9:45)
In the end we decided to drop the Tusker House and Hollywood & Vine reservations. And just keep the Garden Grill @ EP and the EMM+ BoG @ MK.
We just couldnt make the times work with the touring plan. Being it will be June and extremely hot, we put the emphasis on touring from park open to 12-1pm, followed by a long break back at the house, then back to the parks after 6-7pm. Also, having to split the parties into 2 groups of 6 and having the 20-30 minutes between the 2 reservations didnt help either.
We did decide to add a ressie on our departure day. We chose 'Ohana breakfast @ 11:45am. We check out of the house at 11am and our flight doesnt leave until 8pm so we will have a full afternoon to resort hop amd what better way to start it off than with the Polynesian. I realize 'Ohana doesnt get alot of love around here but its never let us down. Always a great breakfast and character interactions.
Edited to add: booked 'Ohana as a group of 12. No need to split up the group.
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10 days left until we leave and figured its time for an update.
12 passenger van update.
Prices are just insane. More than double the cost from last October. And thats if you can find one. Maybe its Summer surge pricing or the fact theres more demand for a 12 passenger van. I had about 7 different reservations reserved at 1 point and now im down to 2. The first is a good price @ $575 for 9 days through Hertz. Only downfall is i have to pick it up offsite at the airport Marriott down the street. No big deal. However, ive been reading up and been warned not be surprised if they dont have that class of vehicle available when i arrive. Im prepared to put up a stink but also prepared with a 2nd reservation if things dont work out. The 2nd van is through priceline via AVIS and is onsite @ MCO. The only problem is its $400 more for the week. Yikes!!! $975.
I did have a backup 12 passenger van reservation @ MCO for $750 through Alamo but made the mistake of trying to modify it online. Never, Never, do that. All i was trying to do was change the drop off and pick up times as our flights had been slightly altered due to the 737 Max groundings. Wasnt adding more time. It was the same duration. Picking up slightly earlier and dropping off slightly earlier. (Same days just different times) once modified the price went up insanely high so i decided to try and modify it back. No go!! So i thought id cancel it since i had other backups. Wrong move again. After cancelling i tried to rebook and it said no 12 passenger vans availlable. In fact, all other sites suddenly had zero availability. What a mess!!! I do wish we just went with 2 minivans instead but the wife insisted she wants everyone together. Ugggg!
2 weeks out from the trip and i struggle to find a site that offers a 12 passenger van. And the few who have them are asking $1,100-$1,800. I thought id have luck securing a better onsite (MCO) deal. But even checking almost daily for months it seems theres none to be had.
Im really hoping i can snag an uber as soon as we depart the plane, head to the Marriott, pick up the van for $575, and head back to MCO to grab the family and the bags and be on our way. Something just tells me it wont go that smoothly. We’ll see.
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