Flight departs at 6:00pm after cruise (PC and MCO)

[cruisehopeful]

My departing flight has been moved to 6:00pm. I'm looking for ideas of what to do that day. We won't have a car. It's in early August. It's just 2 adults. Things I have thought of:
*Rent a room at the Hyatt MCO for the day (sounds terribly boring)
*Rent a car and go to Cape Canaveral (not interested at all, but at least it's a way to kill time)
*Go to Disney Springs and deal with the luggage all day ( not excited about the luggage)
*See if I can buy lounge passes for an airport lounge
*Stay an extra night (I have plenty of DVC points to do it) and take advantage of the free water park day and fly home in the morning instead. This sounds potentially good, except that I will likely be very anxious to get home.

Are those all possible? Anything else I haven't thought of?

 

[readyplayer]

As I understand, Airport lounge passes are only good for 2 hours before your flight plus you can't get through security more than 3 hours before your flight. As for going to Disney Springs, you can store your luggage with "Hold My Luggage" which is on the ground floor of Terminal B next to the rental car kiosks. No reservations needed and costs $10/bag.

 

[Skippyboo]

You could rent a car and go to Cocoa Beach

 

[princesscinderella]

I would vote Cape Canaveral if you plan to leave at 6:00pm, we have been there a couple times and its very neat to see, especially the conditions of the early manned space capsules. There are some outside areas to walk through to get to the different museum areas, but you would be able to be mostly in air conditioning spaces. If you do want to stay the extra night, I love the DVC stay and waterpark day idea too (I think this is what I'd choose)

 

[Disturbia]

I would vote Cape Canaveral if you plan to leave at 6:00pm, we have been there a couple times and its very neat to see, especially the conditions of the early manned space capsules. There are some outside areas to walk through to get to the different museum areas, but you would be able to be mostly in air conditioning spaces. If you do want to stay the extra night, I love the DVC stay and waterpark day idea too (I think this is what I'd choose)

I vote for staying a night at one of the resorts and using the free waterpark perk. Waterparks do close at 5 pm and most likely it will be Blizzard beach.

If you do decide to go to a resort you do have to book transportation to WDW and then WDW to the airport (picks up 4 hours before flight). Also you need to get off the ship by 8 am (eat at the buffet if you have second dining) as they’ve changed resort bus pickup to 9 am only.

 

[RedHead0186]

As I understand, Airport lounge passes are only good for 2 hours before your flight plus you can't get through security more than 3 hours before your flight. As for going to Disney Springs, you can store your luggage with "Hold My Luggage" which is on the ground floor of Terminal B next to the rental car kiosks. No reservations needed and costs $10/bag.

You can definitely go through security earlier than that. I went through security just about 4 hours before my flight last Saturday. I know this because I had to wait until 4 hours before to check my bag, then went straight to security (my friend had an earlier flight otherwise I would not have gotten to the airport that early, lol).

Also, lounges will let you in more than two hours before your flight. Last Saturday I got to the Admiral's Club 3.5 hours before my flight and got in no problem. They may limit it during busier times, but it's definitely more than 2 hours before.

 

[We’reAllMadHere]

I would vote for DVC + water park and call it a bonus vacation day. But I would be in absolutely no hurry to get back home.

 

[jcarwash]

Post cruise, when we've had time before an MCO flight, our routine has usually been to:
1. Go to Disney Springs.
2. Also go to the Disney Character Warehouse at the Orlando Vineland outlets (the one closer to WDW).
3. And if we had a 6pm flight, we'd go to Publix to get subs for dinner. (There's a Publix near the Vineland outlets, for example.)

 

[3 Hobbits 2 Disney]

If you expect you will be anxious to get home, I would go low impact. Get a day room at the Hyatt and spend the time at the pool - it is quite lovely. You can enjoy lunch at one of the restaurants and then calmly saunter to check in and depart.

If you weren’t anxious, I would vote for a day at DVC and leave the next day. I hate late flights in summer because of the risk of thunderstorms/weather mucking up travel.

 

[Erica1016]

Honestly, we'd just go to the airport. We'd stay on the ship as late as they'd let us and head to the airport. There's plenty of space to hang out before you have to go through security. Since we'll have been off the internet for the cruise, we often have lots of stuff we want to catch up with. Reading emails, watching a game we've missed (if it's basketball season), reading what we've missed on the DisBoards, seeing what people posted in our Facebook group during the cruise, etc. Sometimes calling our parents to check in. We've spent time going through the pictures we took on the trip...all kinds of things to keep us occupied and kill time. Maybe grab some lunch? DH likes to get in a lot of walking, so he'll walk all over the place there. Lots of people watching. It's not the most exciting day, but to me, the time goes by rather quickly. The other things all sounds like fun, but to me sound like I'd be spending more money than what those few hours of entertainment would be.

 

[RedHead0186]

Honestly, we'd just go to the airport. We'd stay on the ship as late as they'd let us and head to the airport. There's plenty of space to hang out before you have to go through security.

A word of caution: it may seem like MCO has plenty of space pre-security, but that can fill up. Last Saturday I had to wait about 1.5 hours before I was able to check my bag (and then go through security), and it was nuts. There was no place to sit anywhere-not in any of the chairs/couches/benches, nor at the food court. Groups of people were sitting on the floor in some of the carpeted areas because there were no seats. After roaming around for about 20 minutes (lugging my heavy suitcase, to boot!) I found a spot-only because I was a single person and someone else had just gotten up.

I have no idea why it was so busy-pre security that day at MCO, unless it was just a ton of people like me who had gotten off cruise ships and had later flights so couldn't check their bags yet. I had always thought it would be easy to grab a spot somewhere pre-security and found out the hard way that's not always true.

 

[cruisehopeful]

If you expect you will be anxious to get home, I would go low impact. Get a day room at the Hyatt and spend the time at the pool - it is quite lovely. You can enjoy lunch at one of the restaurants and then calmly saunter to check in and depart.

If you weren’t anxious, I would vote for a day at DVC and leave the next day. I hate late flights in summer because of the risk of thunderstorms/weather mucking up travel.

I'm actually leaning more towards the additional night since flights can be delayed for so many reasons. Even though I am going back in time (going to the West coast), I'm thinking I'll be tired and grumpy when I get home. I hardly ever fly, but when I do, more often than not, there's a delay.

I am flying in 2 days before the cruise. I might switch it to the day before and then add the day after. I have plenty of time to decide, but I need to get the resort booked. At this moment, I have lots of options for the resort - almost too many to decide.

 

[Disturbia]

Do remember to take your MBs if going into the parks.

Also, spirit airlines wouldn’t allow us to drop bags more than 3 hours earlier, we were the last stop so Mears dropped us early. There was barely any room to stand. It was so crowded.

 

[NAB]

Honestly, we'd just go to the airport. We'd stay on the ship as late as they'd let us and head to the airport. There's plenty of space to hang out before you have to go through security. Since we'll have been off the internet for the cruise, we often have lots of stuff we want to catch up with. Reading emails, watching a game we've missed (if it's basketball season), reading what we've missed on the DisBoards, seeing what people posted in our Facebook group during the cruise, etc. Sometimes calling our parents to check in. We've spent time going through the pictures we took on the trip...all kinds of things to keep us occupied and kill time. Maybe grab some lunch? DH likes to get in a lot of walking, so he'll walk all over the place there. Lots of people watching. It's not the most exciting day, but to me, the time goes by rather quickly. The other things all sounds like fun, but to me sound like I'd be spending more money than what those few hours of entertainment would be.

This is what we do too. Heck we have had fights at 9 pm and still wait it out at the airport.

We are usually tired and find one of those big chairs . One of us will wander go in the shops others will save our chairs. Go through security a couple hours before because there isn’t much on the gate side.

 

[sjuncfan]

We had a similar situation December '23, but we were cruising out of Fort Lauderdale. The best flight option (pricewise) was at 8 pm. We decided to fly out at 8 pm the next day and booked a night at the Marriott. So we basically got two extra days of vacation.

This coming summer I think we are going to fly home the next day and spend one night at a Disney resort to do the waterpark deal.

 

[jimmymc]

You could also rent a car and go anywhere else in Orlando. Eat a nice lunch, check out a mall, walk around downtown Celebration, or go to Disney Springs.

 

[Stormypetrel]

What options do you have for flights the next day— is there an early morning flight? I get wanting to get home ASAP but honestly I’d rather take an early morning flight the next day that’s a lot more likely to be on time than a 6pm flight that’s at a prime time for delays, between evening storms and just the cumulative impact of delays over the course of the day. Dealing with this myself for my Alaska cruise this summer — seems like your choices when flying to the opposite coast are either at the beginning or the end of the day, with nothing in between! Especially if it is cost neutral for you, if there is a more ideal time the following day I think that is what I would choose.

 

[cruisehopeful]

What options do you have for flights the next day— is there an early morning flight? I get wanting to get home ASAP but honestly I’d rather take an early morning flight the next day that’s a lot more likely to be on time than a 6pm flight that’s at a prime time for delays, between evening storms and just the cumulative impact of delays over the course of the day. Dealing with this myself for my Alaska cruise this summer — seems like your choices when flying to the opposite coast are either at the beginning or the end of the day, with nothing in between! Especially if it is cost neutral for you, if there is a more ideal time the following day I think that is what I would choose.

For direct flights, I can fly around 8:30am or 6:00pm. I could book a layover, but it ends up being a whole day of flying and doesn't help me get home earlier. I haven't taken a full vacation (aside from weekends) in 6+ years. Because of that, I am not worried about spending a little more money. I'm mostly thinking of what is easiest and what would be fun.

At this point, after really thinking about what everyone has suggested and how I expect to feel after the cruise and at that time of year (humidity), I went ahead and booked Old Key West for that night. Even if it turns out that I don't want to go to the water park, there's a lot of stuff we can do between all of the resorts and Disney Springs. If for whatever reason we want to stay in the room (tired, too hot, sick, etc), we'll have a huge room with hopefully, plenty to do right at the resort.

 

[LKeith2016]

We did something similar a couple years ago when we had a late flight - we used points to book a studio at animal kingdom. We spent the day at the pool, had some time to use the room to clean up and then still took the ~6pm flight home. So in the end we just used the room for a few hours but I thought it was a great use of points to have somewhere to go.
I have a picture of our kids in the pool by 10am and our room was ready before lunch which was a bonus.

 

[mmouse37]

I would rent a car at the port and either visit Coco Beach or if that sounds boring take the car to Disney Springs and have lunch, do some shopping and then head back to the airport. This is what we always do. The rental car is a perfect place to keep the luggage.

MJ