Since we decided to activate our annual passes for a quick weekend trip in the summer, we decided to book a fall trip as well.  We planned to travel during a long school weekend in early November.  The girls had an early release on a Friday, plus the next Monday and Tuesday off from school.  If we could get down there on Friday, we could have four days in the parks!

Flight

Booking the flight portion of this trip turned out to be the easiest portion of the trip.  American Airlines had flights at the saver level on that Thursday.  The flight left from Dulles and went to Charlotte.  We would have to change planes for another flight to Orlando.  It was a bit of a long flight (as opposed to direct), but it was free.  The main problem was that if we wanted to use this itinerary, the girls would miss two half days of school.  We discussed it and decided that it wasn’t a huge amount of time away from school.  We booked the flights going down.

In order to get the flight coming back, we looked for one way flights coming back from Orlando to the Washington area.  We found a direct flight from Orlando to Reagan National, leaving at 9:00 pm and arriving at 11:10 pm.  The cost was just $84 a person.  We booked that flight at well.  We would end up with five full days in the parks, Friday through Tuesday (we would likely arrive too late on Thursday evening to visit one of the parks).

Lodging

Since we were completely out of hotel points, we considered staying onsite for this visit.  Normally we stay offsite with points to cover the rooms (or make them less expensive) but need to get a rental car.   Staying onsite would require us to pay for a room, but we could use Disney transportation and avoid the expense of renting a car.  I thought finding a room onsite would be really easy, just get a room at Pop Century.  We like staying there, it is relatively cheap and its always available. 

You could have knocked me over after I put in the first search for rooms.  There were NO rooms available at the value resorts.  In fact, the only rooms available were very expensive Disney Vacation Club rooms, starting at $500 a night.  There were suites available at the Art of Animation for $350 a night.  At first, I couldn’t believe I was reading the information correctly.  I thought for sure I had entered the dates incorrectly.

I changed the search dates to eliminate the first night, figuring we could stay at the airport Hyatt since we would be arriving late.  We could then take Magical Express early the next morning and start our vacation.  Using this method, I did manage to find a room at the Art of Animation in the Little Mermaid section.  I reserved the room and paid one night deposit.  I could always cancel the room and get my deposit back if I d canceled at least five nights before we arrived. 

After my initial search, I turned to one of our favorite lodging sources, renting Disney Vacation Club (DVC) points.  I placed a call to a friend that is a DVC owner to see if she could check availability for DVC studios before I attempted to rent them.  She let me know that it was a race weekend (Disney Wine and Dine Half Marathon) and that was why I couldn’t find anything.  She did a quick scan and also couldn’t find anything.  That sealed that end of the search.

I checked again on the Disney World web site and finally found a room!  It was even offered at a discount.  The room was at All Star Movies, which is a location we’ve stayed at before.  We really like the theme at this resort, even if I don’t particularly like the two double beds (I prefer queen beds).  The price for the room was $650, which isn’t horrible, especially considering we wouldn’t need a rental car.  I immediately booked this room and canceled the room at Art of Animation.    We had to pay for one night’s deposit.  I intended to pay for the rest of the room using Disney Gift Cards, purchased at a discount, of course!

After confirming that our room was set, I went back to our room reservation and added Magical Express ground transportation.  I had to put in the airline flight information, but that was pretty straightforward.  There is no charge for the free shuttle service.

Since we normally use a rental car to go offsite and get snacks and drinks, we would have to resort to other means to do that.  We planned to bring water bottles to the parks and refill them or to take an Uber for a quick trip to a local Target. We would just take Disney transportation around the parks, with an occasional taxi or Uber thrown in if we wanted to get somewhere in a hurry.

After booking the travel portion, we waited to book FastPasses.  As Disney Annual Pass holders, we normally only get 30 days in advance to book our tickets.  Since we would be staying onsite this time, we get a full 60 days to plan our FastPasses.  Once our window was open, we booked our FastPasses, including snagging some for Flight of Passage!

After we got our FastPasses, it was time to sit back and wait for our travel day to arrive!

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