Quackers4Disney
Earning My Ears
- Joined
- Oct 11, 2010
3 Families, 2 Grandparents, and a Niece: A Disney World Christmas Vacation 2010
So how many are going on our little vacation? I knew you would ask...17 people total. Yep, I know what you are thinking...group discount, but in all honesty it is a large family that has a great time traveling together.
To summarize our vacation in numbers: 10 days of vacation, 2 grandparents, 6 parents, 9 Children ages 21-9, 17 airline tickets on 2 different flights, 17 6-day park tickets, a 15 passenger van, 3 condos, and 4 hotel rooms on Disney property. I know I’m leaving something out...oh yeah...5 dining reservations.
Welcome to our Pre-trip report. I hope this post might help those with a large family that may want to travel to Disney World during the holiday. I will highlight little tricks we have learned along the way and the funny things that have happened, as well.
Trip planning began in the summer 2009 after our first Disney trip. After arriving home the first emails and Facebook discussions were, “Can we do this for Christmas?” and “We want to fly next time!”. The summer trip was amazing, 15 people in 3 vans from Oklahoma to Florida. We stopped for pictures in every state, hundreds of potty breaks and dipped our toes in the Gulf and the Atlantic. Four children lost at Magic Kingdom and many new family stories, like celebrating my brother-in-love’s birthday with Cinderella, Belle, Snow White, Mary Poppins and Aurora (Sleeping Beauty).
For most of our family this was our first trip to Disney. We read the books, pre-planned, but there was still a large learning curve. So sit back and enjoy our funny adventures and advice.
Pre-Planning
When can you go?.... When will you go! Where will we stay?
With a large amount of people traveling together, “When” is the most important step. This determines plane ticket fare, how many days of park tickets, etc. Try to begin this step at least 12 months in advance. If you wait, expect to increase your pre-planning effort 10% per month. Also, it is the hardest thing to nail down. We had several family conference calls, emails and meetings, just to narrow things down. I’ve tried to capture the best of our family negotiations and waffling, accented by my mother-in-love’s requests.
Plan 1: Condo space = Vacation dates
We planned on finding condo space with my mother-in-love’s timeshare and base the vacation around that. Bonnet Creek had 3 2-bedroom condos available from the 17th of December thru the 23rd. The points fit our budget available through Wyndham and the resort is practically on Disney Property. We booked them and then planned for everyone to arrive by December 18th and have one day for each park. Wow this step was so easy. Everyone agreed. Everyone checked with work schedules. This trip was going to be a breeze, I’m so glad we started early. Then the email came, “Does anyone need to be anywhere for Christmas? Since we are all together anyway, why don’t we stay?”
Plan 2: Staying for Christmas
Wow, staying for Christmas. As a collective group we mulled it over agreed that mother-in-love knows best and started looking for a place to stay. Were the condos available to extend the trip and was it in our points budget? Nope. Should we try to stay at a hotel and how many rooms would we need? Then the email came, “Why don’t we stay on Disney property?”
Plan 2.1: Staying for Christmas on Disney Property
My sister-in-in love “Di” made a wonderful spreadsheet (and gets an MVP award) showing room rates around the resorts and we discussed what level of parks we could afford. A few questions you may need to investigate with a large group are:
How many people per room? What are the sizes of the beds? What extras would you like to have on the property? Does the property have events that can accommodate a large party? Does anyone in your party have special needs such as quick access to buses and elevators if they cannot walk for long periods of time? Counter service available for quick meals? Explore all of your needs first. It will help you narrow down your resorts to a handful quickly.
In the end we based our decision on the Value of the resort and not the type. The Port Orleans is listed as a moderate resort, but had a lot of extras going for it. It had boat access to Downtown Disney. It had shorter bus lines. The Riverside rooms allowed for 5 people per room. The resort has inexpensive things for kids of all ages like cane pole fishing and s’mores sing-along campfire. So we booked 4 nights and prayed for discount codes. We will get to discount codes, website discount rumors and watching your mail in a future post...
Time off requests =Vacation Dates
Now that the vacation dates are semi-solid December 17th thru the 27th (Not checking your email too closely for a few weeks helps.). We can start to formally ask for time off. 2 members of the family had issues. One is a teacher and cannot leave on the morning of the 17th due to school and one member has no replacement.
NOTE: The majority always rules. Be prepared, as in our case, to collectively bully bosses or schedules to conform.
In the end, the teacher and her family will be flying at night and the other family member is still unreplaceable, but was able to get the time off. We were all looking forward to sending emails and confronting employers, but I guess we can do that pre-planning the next vacation.
Next we will cover Airlines, Discounts and Disney park tickets...
Until next post...
Pamela
So how many are going on our little vacation? I knew you would ask...17 people total. Yep, I know what you are thinking...group discount, but in all honesty it is a large family that has a great time traveling together.
To summarize our vacation in numbers: 10 days of vacation, 2 grandparents, 6 parents, 9 Children ages 21-9, 17 airline tickets on 2 different flights, 17 6-day park tickets, a 15 passenger van, 3 condos, and 4 hotel rooms on Disney property. I know I’m leaving something out...oh yeah...5 dining reservations.
Welcome to our Pre-trip report. I hope this post might help those with a large family that may want to travel to Disney World during the holiday. I will highlight little tricks we have learned along the way and the funny things that have happened, as well.
Trip planning began in the summer 2009 after our first Disney trip. After arriving home the first emails and Facebook discussions were, “Can we do this for Christmas?” and “We want to fly next time!”. The summer trip was amazing, 15 people in 3 vans from Oklahoma to Florida. We stopped for pictures in every state, hundreds of potty breaks and dipped our toes in the Gulf and the Atlantic. Four children lost at Magic Kingdom and many new family stories, like celebrating my brother-in-love’s birthday with Cinderella, Belle, Snow White, Mary Poppins and Aurora (Sleeping Beauty).
For most of our family this was our first trip to Disney. We read the books, pre-planned, but there was still a large learning curve. So sit back and enjoy our funny adventures and advice.
Pre-Planning
When can you go?.... When will you go! Where will we stay?
With a large amount of people traveling together, “When” is the most important step. This determines plane ticket fare, how many days of park tickets, etc. Try to begin this step at least 12 months in advance. If you wait, expect to increase your pre-planning effort 10% per month. Also, it is the hardest thing to nail down. We had several family conference calls, emails and meetings, just to narrow things down. I’ve tried to capture the best of our family negotiations and waffling, accented by my mother-in-love’s requests.
Plan 1: Condo space = Vacation dates
We planned on finding condo space with my mother-in-love’s timeshare and base the vacation around that. Bonnet Creek had 3 2-bedroom condos available from the 17th of December thru the 23rd. The points fit our budget available through Wyndham and the resort is practically on Disney Property. We booked them and then planned for everyone to arrive by December 18th and have one day for each park. Wow this step was so easy. Everyone agreed. Everyone checked with work schedules. This trip was going to be a breeze, I’m so glad we started early. Then the email came, “Does anyone need to be anywhere for Christmas? Since we are all together anyway, why don’t we stay?”
Plan 2: Staying for Christmas
Wow, staying for Christmas. As a collective group we mulled it over agreed that mother-in-love knows best and started looking for a place to stay. Were the condos available to extend the trip and was it in our points budget? Nope. Should we try to stay at a hotel and how many rooms would we need? Then the email came, “Why don’t we stay on Disney property?”
Plan 2.1: Staying for Christmas on Disney Property
My sister-in-in love “Di” made a wonderful spreadsheet (and gets an MVP award) showing room rates around the resorts and we discussed what level of parks we could afford. A few questions you may need to investigate with a large group are:
How many people per room? What are the sizes of the beds? What extras would you like to have on the property? Does the property have events that can accommodate a large party? Does anyone in your party have special needs such as quick access to buses and elevators if they cannot walk for long periods of time? Counter service available for quick meals? Explore all of your needs first. It will help you narrow down your resorts to a handful quickly.
In the end we based our decision on the Value of the resort and not the type. The Port Orleans is listed as a moderate resort, but had a lot of extras going for it. It had boat access to Downtown Disney. It had shorter bus lines. The Riverside rooms allowed for 5 people per room. The resort has inexpensive things for kids of all ages like cane pole fishing and s’mores sing-along campfire. So we booked 4 nights and prayed for discount codes. We will get to discount codes, website discount rumors and watching your mail in a future post...
Time off requests =Vacation Dates
Now that the vacation dates are semi-solid December 17th thru the 27th (Not checking your email too closely for a few weeks helps.). We can start to formally ask for time off. 2 members of the family had issues. One is a teacher and cannot leave on the morning of the 17th due to school and one member has no replacement.
NOTE: The majority always rules. Be prepared, as in our case, to collectively bully bosses or schedules to conform.
In the end, the teacher and her family will be flying at night and the other family member is still unreplaceable, but was able to get the time off. We were all looking forward to sending emails and confronting employers, but I guess we can do that pre-planning the next vacation.
Next we will cover Airlines, Discounts and Disney park tickets...
Until next post...
Pamela
