Planning | Travel | Animal Kingdom | Epcot | Magic Kingdom | Hollywood Studios | Summary
We usually take a family trip each summer. For various reasons this past summer, we hadn’t planned anything and the days were beginning to wear on us. So, with less than 7 days notice, we decided to plan a trip to Walt Disney World at the end of August 2017 for a long weekend. Here is how we did it!
Flights
We knew we weren’t going to get to Orlando for a long weekend by driving, since that requires a good twelve hour drive each way. Airline ticket prices for the next weekend (leaving on Friday, returning on Monday) were running around $340 per person. We looked at some alternate airports, but the price was approximately the same. I feel that’s a bit too much for a quick weekend getaway. I checked American Airlines to see if I could use points, but there were no awards available at the saver level. We didn’t have enough Chase Ultimate Reward points to transfer to United Airlines to get flights with United either, despite having the United MileagePlus Explorer card.
A quick scan of Southwest Airlines gave us more hope. The flights were about the same price, but the points necessary to book the flights weren’t too bad. For about 15,000 Southwest points each, we could fly round trip from Reagan National Airport to Orlando Airport. I had almost enough Chase Ultimate Reward points to transfer to Southwest for the flights. I purchased another 2,000 Southwest points for $75 in order to get the required number of points. That gave us enough points for four round trip tickets. We would have to leave Reagan Airport early in the morning (6:05 am), but we would land early on Friday and get a full day in the parks.
Since Southwest Airlines allows each passenger to bring two checked bags, we decided to pack one bag full of snacks for the parks so we wouldn’t have to make a side trip to a local store upon arriving in Orlando. We also decided to bring empty water bottles to fill in the park so we wouldn’t have to pick up a case of water.
Tickets
I looked at several options for park tickets. I started with four day park tickets, but the price for four tickets were going to be $1250, which was really high. Disney has a special where you can get four days, four park tickets as well, but that price was high a well. We looked at maybe doing two days worth of tickets and filling in the remaining time at Disney Springs. The price for those tickets was $800. That’s a bit much for a quick weekend getaway to Disney World.
If you will recall, we purchased annual pass certificates this summer, but were going to wait to activate them until December because we were thinking about a Halloween trip next fall. We finally decided to activate them for the weekend trip and just do something else instead next fall. So, the ultimate cost of the tickets was shifting our annual passes up four months from the time we’d originally planned to use them.
Lodging
Our choice here was fairly simple. The only hotel points that I had available were 27,000 Hyatt points. A quick scan of the Orlando area revealed a Hyatt Place near the Orlando Convention Center for 8,000 points a night with availability for all three nights of our trip. We booked the room, despite the fact that it was further from the parks than we would like. I did spend some time looking at the costs for staying on property, but the cheapest rooms were going for $490 for the three nights, including tax. In order to keep the costs of this last minute trip down, we decided to go with the free Hyatt room.
Rental Car
Since we were staying offsite, we needed transportation between the airport and the hotel, as well as transportation to the parks. I hopped over to our favorite car rental site, costcotravel.com, to check on rental car prices. We eventually settled on a standard sized car instead of a full sized car. We did this for two reasons. First, we knew we wouldn’t have much luggage since it was a short trip and second, it was significantly cheaper than a full sized car. The cost for the rental was $170.
Fast Passes
Once the travel logistics were confirmed, we logged onto the My Disney Experience website to book Fast Passes. The only three Fast Passes we couldn’t get were Flights of Passage, Na’vi River Journey, and Seven Dwarfs Mine Train. We have been on the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train many times, so our main concern here was trying to get one of the two new Pandora rides at Animal Kingdom. We decided we would just try to get to Animal Kingdom as early as possible and get in the standby line if it wasn’t too long. We were able to get the rest of the Fast Passes that we wanted without any trouble.
Plan
Our plan was to arrive early Friday morning, around 8 am, at the Orlando Airport. We would grab our rental car and be at Animal Kingdom around 9 am. We were planning a full day in Animal Kingdom. On Saturday we would be at Epcot, then move on to Magic Kingdom on Sunday. We needed to leave for the airport around noon on Monday, so we decided to do Hollywood Studios that day since we would only have a few hours.
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