Mackenzie Click-Mickelson
Chugging along the path of life
- Joined
- Oct 23, 2015
Chapter 3: Planning for the trip Part 3
On 3/31/17 I received in the mail I received a trip booklet!!
This was a personalized and customized based on my resort vacation booklet in the mail and it had my ADR dates, FPs and vacation start date on the back page. It was a little late for the important dates on the last page considering my ADR start date was a few weeks ago but I did get the e-mail for my ADR date when it was actually time.
Also on 3/31/17 we booked a lower fare when SWA had a sale going on. The downside to booking with the Companion Pass is that in order to do a rebook for a lower fare you have to first cancel the Companion’s plane ticket, rebooked the other passenger(s) ticket for the lower fare then re-add the Companion’s ticket. I admit it’s a bit nerve-racking doing that. Anyways the lower fare was 16,710 points or the equivalent of $595.80 round trip for 2 people (or $297.90 per person). Because we booked with points the difference in points was refunded immediately back to Aaron’s account.
On 4/2/17 we found a better deal through Costco(.com) since we are Costco members. If you book through Costcotravel(.com) as a Costco member your additional driver fee is waived (for one person I believe) for companies that would charge it. We booked an intermediate car through Avis for $197.99 again no pre-payment made. Aaron is an Avis Preferred member which allows for expedited process. Typically if all works out you receive an e-mail with your spot number and you just go to the car. You can also decide against the car you’ve been given and pick from a specified row that has additional options. If for some reason you don’t get an e-mail with your spot number your name should be up on a board where the cars are located and that should list your spot number.
On 4/24/2017 after Room Only discounts had been released I was able to rebook us via my My Disney Experience account to upgrade from Standard to Preferred room category. This saved us $83.53. The new total was now $1,042.41 (including deposit already made). I kept trying to actually get the Standard Room rate with the discount but it was always Unavailable. That was totally ok it was just that it would have saved us even more money lol. We already were ok with spending what the Rack Rate was (as previously mentioned).
On 6/12/17 I changed our Mama Melrose ADR time from 6:10pm to 4:40 pm. I was thinking it would be better to not rush our ADR and was figuring on getting some rides in before attempting to see Fantasmic!
I had decided to make a binder of our plans and keep things together. Here is the cover of my trip binder: