Helpful Traveling Tips for Disney World or Future Vacations #1

As I was on this vacation I kept thinking about the many ways I could help out other families wanting to go to Disney World. Sometimes planning trips can become overwhelming and one big hassle which might deter families from even trying to go on them. 

First Set of Tips: Money Saving, Budge Friendly Tips

My family is small (2 adults and 2 children; one of which is under the age of 1) and NOT rich by any means but we wanted to make this trip memorable and less stressful on our little budget. So this is what we found to make the trip more affordable.

1. Search for deals. Like I said in a prior blog post, there is no way we would have gone on this trip if we hadn’t found such a great sounding deal. Now, our deal sort of blew up in our faces but there are good, legitimate travel sites out there that give great deals. I would even check Disney World’s website to see what kind of specials they are offering.  But, as I have found out, check the legitamacy of the travel site first before you book. Read costumer reviews on websites like BBB.org, consumeraffairs.com, and tripadvisor.com. 

2. Before you book your hotel, make sure they have transportation options for both the airport and the Disney World parks. If you plan on just visiting Disney parks during your stay in Orlando there is no need to rent a car. If you book with a Disney Resort (which just means that the hotel is on Disney property and doesn’t always mean it’s a Disney “themed” hotel) most of them have free transportation to the parks via busses. Some of them have airport shuttles but most you need to pay for transportation. We suggest the town car service we used, Prime Transportation. When we did our research it was actually cheaper than area airport shuttles. And nicer too. They even provided car seats for our kids at no extra charge as well as one free stop before we were dropped off at the hotel. 

3. With the town car service we got a free stop at a local grocery store where we bought multiple snack and drink items to have with us at the parks. Park food prices are outrageous even at the “street vendors” so doing some grocery shopping ahead of time really saved us money. We even brought ziplock bags and would sneak extra donuts and breads from our breakfast buffet into the bags to have at the park. With all of this we never bought lunch. We only bought dinners and even then we only bought 2 entrees. There was always enough food on both entrees to feed the 4 of us. 

4. Take a refillable water bottle. We took a Nalgene bottle as well as a Powerade bottle and filled them with water and ice before we left each morning. Once they were empty we just refilled them either in the bathrooms or the drinking fountains. Never had to pay for drinks. The water isn’t icy cold refreshing or the best tasting but it’s free!

5. If you didn’t get a deal on park hopper passes, then just buy regular daily tickets. There is enough in each park to keep you busy for a full day. There is no need to pay the extra money to park hop when they have enough for you to do each day. If you end early then either go to the hotel and play in the pool or head to Downtown Disney which is free and has fun shopping and food and some free street entertainment. Plus, to park hop between some of the parks is kind of a hassell and takes more time that it’s really worth. 

6. I know that it might be a hassle but bring your own stroller. We brought a double umbrella stroller which was actually really annoying but it was the best thing we brought with us. It costs $15.00 a day for a single stroller and $31.00 per day for a double stroller to rent from Disney World. Plus, you have to give them a credit card number every time for a $100 refundable deposit. Save yourself a boat load of cash by bringing the stroller with you. It doesn’t cost a thing to put it on a plane with you it’s just an extra thing to hassle with. 

7. Some families can afford to buy all the souvenirs they and their kids want, but not us. We told our daughter that we'd keep a list of all the things she wanted to buy and on our last day of our trip she could choose one thing off the list and we would buy it. So all week long when she saw something she wanted we'd just say, "we'll put it on the list!" She forgot most of the toys or trinkets she initially wanted which made the list short and the toy decision easy. She was so happy at the end of the week for the one toy, it didn't matter that she didn't get all of them. 

I'm sure there are more tips I could give but these are the ones that immediately came to mind. If you have any helpful budget friendly tips that others could benefit from, please post a comment!

Do Not Use Bookit.com For your Travels: Very Untrustworthy

For my first blog piece about our trip to Orlando I thought I would get the nasty and serious issue out of the way so that then we can focus on all the good stuff after. I'm telling you about this because I don't want this to happen to any other family. We did everything we could to make this trip go smoothly and Bookit.com is just not a company to trust with such an important matter.  Sit down for this good read cause It’s going to be a long one.

We would not have gone on this trip if we had not been emailed such a wonderful sounding deal from bookit.com through Travelzoo.com. The deal was a Disney Resort hotel price of $60.00 a night if booked through bookit.com with a free room upgrade and free breakfast buffet every morning as well as if we bought 3 days worth of park hopper passes (which means we could jump around all 4 Disney parks: Magic Kingdom, Epcot, Animal Kingdom, and Hollywood Studios) then we would get 4 days of park hopper passes for free. We would be literally saving thousands of dollars! We had played with the idea before we found this offer but had decided it would be too costly and this fell into our laps and we just couldn’t turn it down, so we booked on March 31, 2010. We got a confirmation email from bookit.com with an ID number and everything, at first, seemed perfect.

2 weeks before our trip I called bookit.com to add an extra night’s stay at the hotel onto our itinerary. While going through the motions of adding that night, I asked the customer service rep. how we would receive our park hopper passes since our itinerary did not explain this. She said, “you haven’t recieved them in the mail? That’s odd. And you booked back on March 31st?” I said yes and asked what were we suppose to do if we did not recieve them before we left. She then informed me that all I had to do was take our voucher to the resort and show them to a representative and they would give us new passes.

2 days later I called bookit.com again to ask about how we made sure we got the free room upgrade and then proceeded to tell that representative what the first rep. had told us about getting our park hopper passes but I didn’t know where I could find  the “voucher”  I needed to show them at the resort. She then walked me through the website to my itinerary page, which I already had, and told me that all I had to do was show them my itinerary page and that that was my voucher and they would give me the tickets with that documentation.

The DAY we arrived I called bookit.com AGAIN and told the 3rd rep. what I had already been told by to other reps and asked AGAIN if that was right and if I could hold off and start my park hopper passes the following day. She said yes, and that all I needed to do is go to Will Call at any Disney park and they could issue us new passes.

The next day I dressed my 4 year-old daughter in her Cinderella dress and crown that her grandparents had given to her for her birthday for this exact reason (to wear to Disney World) and we setting out to the Magic Kingdom all ready and set for the day WITH our itinerary page. We waited in line at Will Call and then explained to the Disney rep the situation and handed her our itinerary. 30 minutes later she hands it back to me after several phone calls to her supervisor and other employees and informed me that she does not have tickets for us. That bookit.com buys a lotted amount of tickets and that they were responsible for getting them to us. None have been reserved for us through bookit.com. She suggested I go to Guest Relations and see if there is anything they could do for us.

While riding the monorail over to the actual park and guest relations I decided to call bookit.com and advise them on what was going on. After I had fully informed the bookit.com rep of EVERYTHING that had happened up to that point he then tells me, “Well, you were given incorrect information. If we sent you tickets already, we can’t buy or send you new tickets. We can’t just send out multiple tickets out for each customer cause you can’t cancel tickets that have already been sent.” I again told him that I was acting on information given to me by bookit.com’s own representatives. He then put me on hold to find out what he could do to help me. At this point I was standing in line at Guest Relations.

A half hour later he informs me that they have checked with FedEx and the passes, for some reason, were deemed undeliverable to our house and that they were sitting in a FedEx office in my hometown of Rock Springs and that the only thing they could do for me was get the passes sent to our hotel as soon as possible, but seeing as that it was Saturday the earliest we could get our passes were Tuesday morning. I then told him that this was an unacceptable resolution because 3 prior conversations with bookit.com reps had ended in advising me to go to Disney World to fix it and now that I was there, standing outside of the Magic Kingdom with my daughter excited and dressed like Cinderella, I should have resolved this in Rock Springs with a simple phone call to the local FedEx office. If he couldn’t find a way to get us in to the Magic Kingdom that day then he needed to find someone who could.

After telling me he was going to transfer me to his supervisor the line went dead. He then called me back and apologized and transfer me again only to have the line to ring a couple of times and then the phone call was dropped again. At this point I was at a Guest Relations booth and talking to a Disney rep when he called back again, but I did not pick up. As soon as I was done talk to the Disney rep I called back and requested to talk to the supervisor which I was then told she was at lunch. That made me EXTREMELY mad because as me and my family were stranded outside of the Magic Kingdom my issue was not pressing enough to resolve before she went to lunch.

It took multiple phone calls and 4 hours later to finally get the supervisor on the phone who reiterated that there was nothing she could do for me accept get my original passes sent to our hotel and even went as far as telling me that this all started because we entered the wrong address which made them undeliverable. I then informed her that the address was correct, I don’t know why they couldn’t deliver them and that that was all beside the point because I had called twice before coming to find out what I needed to do to get the passes and if at any point they would have done their job and found out the problem when I called I would have had no problems and we wouldn’t be having this conversation.

I then informed her that we were not going to wait around in the hotel for three days waiting for the tickets and that any Disney passes we bought during our wait time bookit.com would reimburse us because in no way was this disaster my fault. She then said she could not agree to this and that she could put in a request but in no way guarantee that bookit.com would refund any money.

Now, this is about 30 minutes into our conversation and at no point yet has she apologized for anything. I again tell her this is unacceptable because bookit.com has literally ruined this vacation, it’s been a waste of money and time, which we don’t have either of, and that the only way we could salvage this trip was to double pay for tickets we’ve already bought, not right. Who was going to tell my 4 year-old Cinderella that her mom did everything she could to make this trip a wonderful one but in the end she couldn’t meet Cinderella.

At this point the supervisor started to apologize. Which I thanked her for because at no point had bookit.com even acknowledged that there was any wrong doing on their part and quite frankly I felt ignored and neglected for a good portion of the day when we were having immediate issues. She then said she would do everything on her part to make sure that the reimbursement request would be submitted in our favor and that I should hold on to all our receipts.

At that point there was nothing else she or I could do to immediately resolve the issue. They weren’t going to buys us new tickets and I wasn’t going to waste our trip or disappoint my daughter. We called the next day and received the fax number AND address to send in our receipts for review.

We just got back Saturday night and all of us have been incredibly sick since and just got around to feeling better and faxing in the receipts today. we put on the fax that if they did not respond within 24 hours that we will be reporting them to the Better Business Bureau. I will definitely update you on this matter as it unfolds.

Florida Update

Hello All!

Me and my family are back from our Florida trip. I am happy to be home but at the same time we had a very fun time at Disney World and we all miss it.

I have so many things to share about this trip that I think would help not only future trips to Disney World but easy traveling trips that can be used at any time.  All of my tips and stories will be slowly popping up on this blog as I have time to write them but I am hoping I can have them all on here by the end of the week. So stay tuned and I hope that the info I put up on here will help in any future travels!

Stacie

And Then Mama Got REALLY Mad

Kids are so weird.  Of course the little ones are – a few months ago, they hid potatoes all over, and judging by the increasingly peculiar smell of our house, we didn’t find them all.  I’ve come to more or less expect such behavior from them.

Not from my older daughters, though.  They are solid, dependable, really good kids.  I can, 99% of the time, count on them to behave in a reasonable, upright fashion.  Well, maybe 95%.

HOWEVER.  Yesterday morning I discovered, via means I wish I could remember but can’t because I’m always a little foggy until about 8am, that my dear older daughters were not eating their lunches.

Shocking, isn’t it?  Hey, I may sneak Symphony bars and even the occasional Mountain Dew, but I expect my kids to eat three nutritionally balanced meals each day.  I lovingly pack such lunches before school, and their lunch boxes generally come home empty.  It turns out it’s pretty easy to dump the yogurt, carrot sticks and oranges in the garbage before they leave the lunch room. 

“Dora” yogurt is their favorite, but it’s babyish.  (You really should try it if you haven’t.  Yummy.)  Carrot sticks take too long to chew. Oranges take too long to peel, even the prohibitively expensive clementines I buy.  “We might as well be throwing money in the garbage,” I said in exasperation bordering on anger.  “You’re growing girls and you need good food!”

How did my daughters take my reproofs?  They freaked out.

Kira was absolutely furious and began ranting that I was saying they were going to get fat from eating bad food.  Kira does not, and never has had, an extra ounce of flesh on her.  Nor have I ever made my weight, or anybody else’s, a big deal.

Lizzy accused me of not loving her anymore.  Said I must want her to leave home.  “If I didn’t love you I wouldn’t care if you ate healthy food or not, dear.”  She looked momentarily as if she thought that was reasonable, but still left for school near tears.

If anything, they came home that afternoon even angrier than before.

I’ll spare you the ugly details, but more discussion, (what I thought to be) ridiculous overreactions, and eventually, outrageous accusations, door slamming and sobbing.

And surprisingly, that doesn’t happen very often in our five-daughter household.

Now, I am a bit of a soft touch when it comes to discipline.  I’m not a pushover, but I dislike big drama.  This works very well for my marriage, but sometimes the kids get away with more than they should.

Not last night, though.  With my husband glowering behind me and echoing my sentiments, I told them, loudly, angrily, firmly, and with the meanest mommy face I can muster, that their behavior was unacceptable and would stop immediately.   That was it; no more arguments.  Not a peep.

I would like to think I was a bit scary.

I went off to bathe Scarlett and then get Hallie and Sophia to bed.  By then I had cooled down, mostly.

Coming down the hall into the kitchen, I was met with an amazing sight:  Kira and Lizzy were packing their own lunches for the next day. Happily, proudly, packing healthy lunches and it was all their own idea.

They have been delightful all day today, as well.

I’m still trying to make sense of it, and this is what I’ve figured out so far: 

I think it’s good that I don’t yell often, because when I need to it’s more effective.

I think I should have turned the lunch-making over to the girls a long time ago.  They clearly do know how to pack a good lunch, and I’ve never really liked doing it, anyway.

I think, despite occasionally taking leave of their senses, they’re good kids.

I think that even when they’re all raised, I’m going to be mystified by about half of what happened during their childhoods.

Traveling Tips, Please!

I feel bad because Stephanie keeps writing these beautiful posts that really point out what a wonderful writer she is, and I am posting another plea for help.

My family will be traveling to Disney World in a couple of weeks and although our first child is a seasoned traveler, our youngest who is almost 1 is not. The flight will be about 4 hours or longer and I haven't got the slightest idea on how to entertain my babe for that long.

Please tell me that someone out there can give me tips to help me not just survive the plane ride with both my kids but to make it enjoyable and seemingly go by quickly.

PLEASE!

I swear that I have been working on a wonderful post for this blog and I will post it hopefully tomorrow, but while you wait for that can you give me some helpful ideas?