September/October 2013 check in

[WanderlustNZ]

Originally Posted by alicia1506

and i'm thinking of changing our itinerary yet again.

In what way? Have you convinced the family to visit WDW?

[alicia1506]

lol no, that will be just the 2 of us in 2014 for wdw.

we had our dates booked in. sept 20 - oct 7 to facilitate annual leave allowances by 2 of our travellers. just a short 17 day trip... dates are fully locked in and cannot be changed due to annual leave policies etc.

i am thinking of changing our eastern cruise to a western cruise due to our desired itinerary not being offered after 2013.. plus still including the requisite # of days at dlr and universal.

it would make it easier to travel to wdw instead of dlr, keeping the whole trip on the east coast, but wdw doesn't have cars land and our additional travellers are very, very keen to go to dlr instead of wdw. so... lots of planning and shuffling etc to be done

[Caroline NZ]

Our trip is all planned out and has been for some time. All accomodation for the 29 nights now booked, and some even prepaid ( San Diego, Phoenix, Grand Canyon, Las Vegas, Sequoia, Yosemite, Monterey, Pismo Beach, Universal & Anaheim ). And in the last week I have put all the USD we will need onto a Visa prepaid travel card.

[alicia1506]

go caroline!!

my prob is that while i am the trip planner extraordinaire for our vacations, i am booking for 4 adults who have ideas and thoughts and needs and wants of their own and want a say in what they spend their money on... my struggle is making all of these diverse opinions fit with the logistics of moving us all around and ensuring we get a nice balanced trip with no one feeling like 'their stuff' didn't get enough time or attention... it's exhausting, i tell you. also, they are only depositing money into my account each week, right up until several weeks before we go, so it will be a while before they have accumulated enough for me to 'pay' for various accomodations etc.

i can't wait for our 2014 vacation where it's just me & carlo and i can do all the deciding and so forth myself...that will be bliss.

[Caroline NZ]

I really feel for you Alicia, it must be sooo hard trying to accomodate everyone.

Now that all accomodation is locked in I am moving on to reseaching what we are going to see and do throughout the trip.

[WanderlustNZ]

Originally Posted by alicia1506

lol no, that will be just the 2 of us in 2014 for wdw.

we had our dates booked in. sept 20 - oct 7 to facilitate annual leave allowances by 2 of our travellers. just a short 17 day trip... dates are fully locked in and cannot be changed due to annual leave policies etc.

i am thinking of changing our eastern cruise to a western cruise due to our desired itinerary not being offered after 2013.. plus still including the requisite # of days at dlr and universal.

it would make it easier to travel to wdw instead of dlr, keeping the whole trip on the east coast, but wdw doesn't have cars land and our additional travellers are very, very keen to go to dlr instead of wdw. so... lots of planning and shuffling etc to be done

Oh that's a shame. We won't get to meet up for a drink on our Eastern cruise. I can understand though why you'd want to swap. You're clearly more keen on the Western Itinerary, so you should 'make hay while the sun is shining', so to speak, and optimize the time you have on that side of the world.

I sympathise with you having to accommodate so many desires and wishes. The problem with being an obsessive planner (like myself) is that we like having control over every decision.

Good luck with your continued planning :-)

[WanderlustNZ]

Originally Posted by Caroline NZ

Our trip is all planned out and has been for some time. All accomodation for the 29 nights now booked, and some even prepaid ( San Diego, Phoenix, Grand Canyon, Las Vegas, Sequoia, Yosemite, Monterey, Pismo Beach, Universal & Anaheim ). And in the last week I have put all the USD we will need onto a Visa prepaid travel card.

Isn't it a great feeling. :-)
With the exception of my LAX stopovers, I've booked and paid for all of my hotels. I've also paid for my Universal tickets and transfers. My next goals are to pay off the cruise and buy WDW tickets.
The NZ dollar has just been so strong lately, I want to book everything as fast as possible. Unfortunately, my much more practical (aka sensible) DH has been pushing lately for a few home renovations (we want to tidy the house up and put it on the market), so the holiday budget will need to be put on hold for a month or two.

Caroline, is it a post shop travel card you're using? I'm trying to decide which prepaid travel card to go with. At the moment I'm thinking I'll use the Air NZ one, but it's a big job getting my head around all the fees etc.

[5ofus]

Wow Caroline, you are SO organized. I really need to find some motivation, but I don't really want to book accom and car until our flights are booked. Should I be looking at doing that stuff now? Are car hire and hotels easy to change dates on? W need three ca seats s ha might limit our options re ca hire....

[Jade+3]

Some of you are so organised. I am not booking anything else until I have flights.

5ofus, it is always a problem being a family of 5. I have started researching where we are going to stay then will keep an eye out for specials once flights are booked. I mainly use Expedia for hotels and they usually cant be changed. Car hire is usually easy to change without penalty but sometimes the rates change. DH still has nightmares about the trip we took 3 car seats with us.

[PrincessInOz]

Originally Posted by Jade+3

Some of you are so organised. I am not booking anything else until I have flights.

5ofus, it is always a problem being a family of 5. I have started researching where we are going to stay then will keep an eye out for specials once flights are booked. I mainly use Expedia for hotels and they usually cant be changed. Car hire is usually easy to change without penalty but sometimes the rates change. DH still has nightmares about the trip we took 3 car seats with us.

Jade - Not to worry. I am the same.

[Caroline NZ]

Yes I have used the NZ Post Loaded for Travel Card Wanderlust ( even though we don't bank with them, we have used the card on past trips and found it easy to use with minimal fees).

Alot of car hire and hotels are easy to change right up to just before the trip. I make bookings that can be cancelled without penalty ( and that includes Expedia as long as you pick the option that allows free cancellations), and then keep checking to see if better prices come up. I have already made the car hire booking twice ( cancelled the first one, when the price became slightly cheaper). Plus I changed my mind on one of the Expedia bookings, got my credit card refunded in full , and them booked another hotel.

We don't know until the last minute whether we will be on a flight or not, so I go ahead and book everything else and cross my fingers that things work out :-)

[alicia1506]

wanderlust -- we haven't made any firm decisions one way or the other yet, just looking at options.

we have still got our eastern cruise booked but i did email my TA about what our options are for changing if we decide to go down that route.

to be honest, i'm exploring every which way i can think of to get us on a western caribbean cruise in 2014 that coincides with a trip to wdw for star wars weekend that also is doing the itinerary we want... so far, not having much luck unless we stay at wdw for 2 weeks or do a week long stay in nyc in between cruise and wdw... i can make it happen, it just means jiggling some things around

ugh. i have so many spreadsheets and colour coded calendars and what-not all over the place, trying to make things fit the way i need them to... i want a great trip where we see/do all the things we want, but it also needs to flow logically

ahh, the life of a compulsive trip planner

[areweindisneyyet]

Oh Spreadsheets. Hope a western cruise option comes together for you.

[KiwiMouseGirl]

Originally Posted by WanderlustNZ

Isn't it a great feeling. :-)
With the exception of my LAX stopovers, I've booked and paid for all of my hotels. I've also paid for my Universal tickets and transfers. My next goals are to pay off the cruise and buy WDW tickets.
The NZ dollar has just been so strong lately, I want to book everything as fast as possible. Unfortunately, my much more practical (aka sensible) DH has been pushing lately for a few home renovations (we want to tidy the house up and put it on the market), so the holiday budget will need to be put on hold for a month or two.

Caroline, is it a post shop travel card you're using? I'm trying to decide which prepaid travel card to go with. At the moment I'm thinking I'll use the Air NZ one, but it's a big job getting my head around all the fees etc.

I would make sure you have the Air New Zealand travel card sorted well and truley before your trip. I applied for mine 2 months before we were due to leave and if I remember correctly I had to ring them twice and visit a branch before I recieved it. Then you have to go through address verification, which I did. I then went to load my money on the week before we left to find that my address verification had not yet cleared. After walking back and forth and back and forth from Air New Zealand to the bank I decided to put it into the too hard basket and got a bank travel card. I believe it was called "Travelex" but can't be sure. I made sure I notified the bank that I was going over seas "obviously...haha" and had no problems what so ever with it That is most likely what I will be using on our next trip.

[WanderlustNZ]

Originally Posted by KiwiMouseGirl

I would make sure you have the Air New Zealand travel card sorted well and truley before your trip. I applied for mine 2 months before we were due to leave and if I remember correctly I had to ring them twice and visit a branch before I recieved it. Then you have to go through address verification, which I did. I then went to load my money on the week before we left to find that my address verification had not yet cleared. After walking back and forth and back and forth from Air New Zealand to the bank I decided to put it into the too hard basket and got a bank travel card. I believe it was called "Travelex" but can't be sure. I made sure I notified the bank that I was going over seas "obviously...haha" and had no problems what so ever with it That is most likely what I will be using on our next trip.

Thanks for the heads up. I already have the card. They sent it to me when I applied for frequent flyer points. I just need to go into an Air NZ Holidays store to get it addressed verified as it was too much of a rigmarole to do it online. They certainly don't make it easy. I will have to make it a job for the next few weeks.