We are always looking to save money when visiting Walt Disney World. One of the primary expenses to consider when planning your trip is lodging. Any money saved on lodging can be directed to other expenses or set aside to upgrade your lodging on a future trip. Here are various options for getting your lodging costs down:
Of course, the highs of being on the cruise always come crashing down on Disembarkation day. We decided to carry our bags off the ship with express walk off, but still enjoy breakfast. We left our room and headed towards Animators Palette, which is where we had dinner the night before. Since we had late dinner, our breakfast was at a reasonable time.
The travel day for our Disney Dream cruise finally arrived! We had decided to leave really early so that we could join our friends at the airport. We could easily kill time in the Admirals Club lounge at Reagan National Airport. We were going to get the girls from school around noon, then leave for the airport at 12:30, which should get us there at 1:00 pm. The flight didn’t leave until 3:00 pm, so we should have plenty of time to get lunch as well.
One of our favorite travel tools is TripIt. TripIt is a web site (with associated mobile apps) that gathers details of your travel, including hotel reservations, airline tickets, cruise itineraries, rental cars, and other travel information. TripIt then presents you with a comprehensive itinerary in a simplified format that allows you to easily view the information. (Note: some information on these screen shots is hidden, so they may look a little strange)
You will also receive Honors Gold status for as long as you have the card. If you spend $40,000 per year on the card, you will also receive Diamond status. The loyalty rewards benefits for Honors are described on the Honors website.
One of our favorite hotel credit cards is the IHG Rewards Club Select Credit Card from Chase, which is affiliated with the InterContinental Hotel Group (IHG) family of hotels including Holiday Inn, Crowne Plaza, Candlewood Suites, and other hotel brands. If you do a lot of paid travel with stays at IHG properties, you can really enhance your paid and free stays with this card. The card is currently issued as a MasterCard, with a $49 annual fee (the fee for which is currently waived for the first year).
During our recent 7 Night Eastern Caribbean Star Wars Day At Sea cruise on the Disney Fantasy, we decided to try Disney Cruise Line’s Onboard Airline Check-in. This is a program that Disney Cruise Line has that allows you to receive your boarding pass and check your luggage for your return flight home while onboard the ship.
Disney cruises are one of our favorite ways to vacation. One of the few issues we have experienced while on the ship (and travel in general) is how to keep all of our electronic devices charged up. As a family of four, we have a multitude of cell phones, iPads, and Kindles that need a recharge. We used to travel with a bag full of wall chargers and cables that went everywhere. This was a real problem once we boarded the cruise ship, since there are a limited number of wall plugs available.
January 13, 2017 finally arrived and it was time to head off for our Star Wars Cruise! Our plan was to pick the kids up from school, let them get changed, then head off to the airport. Once we had the house squared away, a friend drove us from our house to Reagan National Airport. We arrived at the airport really early (as we always do), around 5 PM. We dropped our bags off with American Airlines and headed through security. Our experience with TSA Security is usually fantastic thanks to having TSA PreCheck! Everyone has TSA PreCheck in our family except our youngest daughter (who now has Global Entry).
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