The morning of disembarkation is usually very sad. Everyone plans their flights so they can leave the ship and head directly to the airport, giving themselves an hour or so of cushion to make their flights. We planned our flights so we had as much time in San Juan today as possible. We got up at 7 am to finish packing the stateroom and then we took our bags with us to Tiana’s for breakfast.
We had checked out of our room at the All-Star Movies resort in the morning before we headed off to the parks. We didn’t quite know what to do with our bags though. We could have checked them through to the airlines, but didn’t want to do that because the last time we did it with the cruise line, we got charged for our bags despite having the Citi AAdvantage Executive World Elite Mastercard (it gives us one free bag per person). We decided instead to leave our bags with Bell Services and pick them up when boarding the Magical Express to the airport.
After leaving our bags, we headed to the parks. Our flight was supposed to leave at 9:00 pm, so we had a resort return time of 5:30 pm for the 6:00 pm Magical Express to the airport. However, we were done with the parks around 3:30 pm and decided to return to the resort. Once we arrived, we retrieved our bags and asked Bell Services about the chance to get on an earlier Magical Express bus to the airport. They said we could ask the bus driver and see if there was space.
Once the bus arrived, we asked the bus driver about taking the earlier bus. He had to load everyone that was scheduled for the bus first, but could see if there was space once all the passengers with reservations had gotten on. There ended up being enough extra seats for us, so we hoped on and headed to the airport. Once we arrived at the airport, we checked in for our American Airlines flight and dropped off our bags. Our first stop was for dinner in the food court. The food court in the Orlando Airport has a variety of choices. We each grabbed something we liked and settled in to eat.
About the time we were done, TripIt started to notify us of a delay on our flight home. It looked like it was going to be delayed about 30 minutes. We decided to go through security to enjoy the Admirals Club that recently opened since we have free access with the AAdvantage Executive Mastercard. We got to the club but noticed that it was closing at 8:30 pm. We asked while checking in if they were still going to close at that time, since they tend to stay open later when American Airlines flights are delayed. They said they would stay open until about 9:00 pm. We grabbed some drinks and used the wifi for a while until it was time to board.
The flight home was uneventful. We arrived at Reagan National Airport, gathered our luggage, and headed home. The trip was a nice way to spend our school break.
While the trip was fun, I don’t think we will be staying at a Value resort for a while. I really didn’t enjoy the double beds. I also didn’t really enjoy waiting for the buses. The only park I like taking the bus to is the Magic Kingdom since it lets you avoid the entire Monorail or Ferry Boat transportation. Staying on property without a car also restricts the places we can eat since we are limited to the ones on Disney property unless we are willing to take a cab or an Uber. Most likely we will only do it if we have a rental car or get a free dining plan.
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).
Since we had arrived at the airport so early, we decided to head to the Admirals Club Lounge, which we have access to thanks to our Citi AAdvantage Executive World Elite MasterCard. The card has a steep fee, but we always stop in the Admirals Club Lounges when we travel. We also take advantage of the free checked bags we received when fly on American Airlines. The Global Entry fee of $100 for our youngest daughter was also paid for with a credit from the Card.
The Admirals Club lounge at Reagan National was extremely crowded on this evening, but we managed to find some seats and settle in for a while. The kids each did the homework they were assigned for the 3 days of school they would miss the next week. We all got some light snacks and drinks and waited around. We had a celebrity sighting when I noticed Richard Kerr of Travel Hacking 101 in the lounge.
As the time got closer for our flight, we headed out of the lounge and down towards our gate. We grabbed dinner and sat to wait until boarding was called. The flight went off without a hitch: it boarded on time, the flight was fine with no issues, and we landed in Orlando in about 2 hours.
Once we landed in Orlando, we had to take the mini monorail from the gates to get to the main terminal, where we could collect our luggage. We then headed back upstairs to the Hyatt Regency. The Hyatt Regency is located right next to the Security Checkpoint for Gates 70-129. The lobby/check in for the hotel is actually located on the fourth floor, so we went there with our luggage.
We had booked this room using one of the two free nights from our Chase Hyatt card signup bonus, so there was no charge for the room. We were greeted warmly by the hotel staff and checked in quickly. Because the elevators were a bit busy, the gentleman who checked us in was kind enough to take us up to our room on the sixth floor in the service elevator so we wouldn’t have to wait. The room was comfortable and had plenty of space, especially considering were were only going to be in it for about 10 hours. At this point, it was about 11 PM at night and we wanted to be up and headed to the Disney Cruise Line Ground Transportation no later than 9 AM.
We woke up the next morning early! It was time to go and get on the cruise! The Hyatt Regency offers a program where you can spend the night before a cruise at the hotel and they will send your bags in the morning to the ship. You received a letter from them and tell them you want to participate in the program. You then put the Disney Cruise Line luggage tags on your bags and leave them in the room. The hotel will gather your bags and deliver them to the Disney Cruise Line luggage transfer people. We decided against doing this and just handled our bags ourselves.
We walked out of the hotel and had a seat on a nearby bench. I went to grab us a quick breakfast and coffee at the nearby Starbucks. Here is a great tip that Nancy learned from an airport worker. If you are looking at the Hyatt Regency, there is a Starbucks on the left. However, don’t go to that Starbucks if it has a long line. Instead, go down the steps to the left of the store. There is a smaller Starbucks down the stairs that is rarely busy. We never had a wait going to that Starbucks and the upstairs one had a line that was at least 20 minutes long. After a quick breakfast, we headed towards the B side of the airport (if you are looking at the Hyatt Regency, it is towards the right). We headed down the stairs and towards Magical Express.
On the left hand side, you will see the Disney Cruise Line Luggage service. We went outside and the luggage handlers scanned the luggage tags, took our luggage, and loaded it into the truck. We then headed back inside and got into the line for the Disney Cruise Line transportation.
Once we got to the front of the line, they checked our cruise documentation, verified our passports, and sent us forward . We were then assigned onto the next available bus. We waited a bit until the bus was fully loaded, and then we were off to Port Canaveral. The trip took about 45 minutes and most of that time was filled with various videos that played. Some were advertisements for Disney Cruise Line and some were just cartoons to keep the kids entertained. There was a bathroom on the bus in case anyone needed it for all the Starbucks coffee that they’d consumed.
After about 45 minutes, we got our first view of the Disney Fantasy. The excitement levels started to build. The bus pulled into the port terminal and we were allowed to get off once the driver had retrieved people’s hand carried luggage from under the bus. We were then directed into the terminal building so we could then pass through the security line. This consist of passing your bags through an x-ray machine and walking through a metal detector.
We then headed to the check in line for the cruise. While waiting in the line, we got a health survey form that asked if anyone in our group had fever or diarrhea within the past 72 hours. We filled the form out and turned it in when we approached the counter. A cast member looked at our cruise documentation, scanned our passports, and then issued us our Key To The World Cards and our gold lanyards for being Gold Castaway Club Members.
We decided not to even bother checking for a stateroom upgrade on this cruise. We thought there might be a chance at moving to a concierge room, but with another cruise coming up, we were already spending a good amount of money. We grabbed a Navigator and settled in until our boarding group was called. Because we had an early port arrival time of 10:30 AM, we were in the second boarding group.
After a short wait (around 11:40 AM), they started calling the boarding numbers. We scanned our Key to the World card and were soon headed towards the ship!
Planning | Travel | Boarding | Sea | Sea | Tortola | St. Thomas | Star Wars Day | Castaway Cay | Go Home
Our 7 Night Eastern Caribbean Star Wars Day At Sea cruise on the Disney Fantasy didn’t start out as one of our normal cruises. As we discussed in our post about planning an off season cruise, we had originally planned to book our standard spring break cruise for 2017, but finances got in the way. We instead picked a different destination for spring break, and in October 2015 we booked what we thought would be a standard 7 night Eastern Caribbean cruise on the Fantasy. In January 2016, Disney announced new Star Wars Day At Sea cruises for 7 night sailings on the Disney Fantasy — and in March 2016, we received notification that our cruise had been switched to the Star Wars theme. Interestingly, the price of the cruise almost immediately went up by 50%. We weren’t upset that it got changed, but I probably never would have booked it for that price, even with the Star Wars addition.
Once we got our cruise booked, we booked a night at the Hyatt Regency in the Orlando Airport by using one of the two free nights Nancy had received when she signed up for the Chase Hyatt Credit Card. We secured a room with two queen beds for no cost. This would allow us to fly in the day before our cruise, stay one night at the airport, and then go downstairs and take the Disney Cruise Line ground transportation to the ship. We always make sure to fly the night before the cruise just in case there are problems or weather. We can always drive down if we have to or get a flight early the next day. The drive down would be pretty bad, about 14 hours and we would have to do it overnight, but it would be better than missing the boat.
We had to wait until late Feburary 2015 to actually book flights since the flight schedule doesn’t open until 330 days before. Since the girls were already going to miss three days of school for this cruise, we needed the flights to leave after the school day was over. This really limited our selection, especially if we wanted to use airline miles to get free flights. After looking over several airlines and their schedules, we bought one way tickets on American Airlines down to Orlando for $172 each. We specifically picked flights that would allow us to get to the airport well after school was over. The flight would leave Reagan National Airport at 8 PM and we would land in Orlando at 10 PM, thus giving us time to get our luggage and get some sleep before heading to the ship.
We weren’t nearly as concerned about the return flights, so we spent some time looking for flights that we could get for free using airline miles that we had accumulated. Eventually, we settled on a flight from United Airlines that would leave Orlando at 4 PM the day we returned and land at Dulles around 6 PM. We live almost exactly between the two airports, so leaving from one and returning to the other is something we have done to make the flights cheaper or get the times we want. We arranged to have a friend drop us off at Reagan and we planned to get a cab home from Dulles. The logistics around the return trip would require us to stay at the airport almost all day, but I thought we would be able to enjoy the American Airlines Admiral Clubs Lounge, since we have access with our Citibank AAdvantage Executive World Elite Mastercard. Unfortunately, I wasn’t too smart about verifying that there is actually an Admiral Club at the Orlando Airport (oops).
As our departure date drew near, we reached out to our travel agent to make some requests. We wanted to make sure that we requested a four person table. We have always made this request because we like dining together as a family without the expectation of making small talk with people we don’t know. I know lots of families enjoy meeting new people on cruises, but we use our dinner to talk about our day and plan the next day. Disney has always honored our request. We also made sure we were on the late dinner seating. We had always done first seating until our Spring Break 2016 cruise when we switched to get our favorite server. Everyone liked it much better as it gave us more time to see stuff and we didn’t have to hurry as much once we got back on the ship from port calls.
We logged in at midnight 105 days out from our sail date to book our excursions. We were looking for a Cabana on Castaway Cay, but they were all gone by the time we could book one. We instead decided to try some new activities, including Parasailing and the Stingray Adventure. For Tortola, we knew we wanted to go to a beach, so we settled on an island tour with a lunch at Fusion Beach. We decided on the St. John’s on your own tour for our stop in St. Thomas. Between the Star Wars Day at Sea and the excursions we had booked, we thought it would be a great cruise.
Eventually, this little beauty showed up in the mail:
All we had to do now was to wait until mid January!
Planning | Travel | Boarding | Sea | Sea | Tortola | St. Thomas | Star Wars Day | Castaway Cay | Go Home
Planning 1 | Planning 2 | Planning 3 | Travel | Disneyland (Day 1 – Day 2 – Day 3 – Day 4) | Arrival | Surfing | Aulani | Excursion | Hyatt
We woke up really early the next morning since our United flight was at 8 AM from Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) to Honolulu. We had about an hour drive from the hotel to the airport and I hate (like, really, really hate) being late. We got up at 4 AM, got ready, and headed to the airport around 4:30 AM. We arrived with no problem and dropped the rental car off at Enterprise. We then took the shuttle bus to the terminal. It didn’t take very much time checking in since we used the First Class check in line with TSA Precheck. Even though we were flying on United, we looked for an American Admirals Club Lounge since we have a Citibank AAdvantage Executive card that gives us Admirals Club access. We grabbed a quick bite to eat, then headed to our gate.
The flight boarded without any issues. The girls got the two seats in front of us. While not as nice as the seats we had on the previous flight, they were very comfortable. The flight crew was super nice to us and especially nice to the girls. Everybody got something to drink as well as breakfast.
We received entertainment tablets that were loaded with movies for the flight. We all watched a few movies and finished our breakfast. After about five and a half hours into the flight (it was a long flight), the island of Oahu came into view. We had apparently approached the island from the western side. We quickly figured out where we were and could easily pick out Disney’s Aulani resort! It was amazing to see it from the air. The other resorts near Aulani were also visible. As we flew in towards the airport, it was also pretty easy to see Pearl Harbor, where we would have an excursion later in the trip. We could see the Arizona Memorial as well as the USS Missouri.
The Honolulu airport is open air, which is interesting. The parts near the aircraft are closed off, probably so you don’t have to hear the jets, but the walkways that connect the terminal are open. They also have a beautiful garden in the middle of the airport. The shops along the way to the baggage claim also quickly got us in the mood for an island vacation.
We grabbed our bags and picked up our rental car. We spent a little bit of time getting setup (sun screen, putting away our electronics, getting destination into the GPS) and headed out towards Diamond Head. We had grabbed some bottles of water at the airport just for this hike. We had read that it could be a bit hot and there are no water fountains at the top of the hike, since you are hiking up the rim of a crater. We arrived a little after noon. There is an entrance fee if you decide to park in the middle of the crater. You can park outside and walk in, but we decided against it since we had been up for a while and had not eaten lunch yet. There is limited parking inside the crater, so we had to wait a few minutes for a spot to open, but the convenience made it worth the wait.
The entrance to the crater is great. You actually drive into the center of the crater through a tunnel that was carved through the crater wall.
We looked at the Visitor Center for a few minutes and decided that we would do the hike, then eat once we came back down. There was a food truck in the parking lot, so we thought that would be a unique thing to try. After using the restrooms, we headed up the mountain.
The hike was not hard, but it did take a while. I found this great online brochure which describes the path in awesome detail. If you are going to go, definitely look at this to get an idea of what it will be like. I wish I had seen it before the hike just so I would have known the path. We always seemed to be “almost there”. We got to the top after 45-60 minutes. The views are really great. I have a fear of heights, so while the geological aspects of the height were great (an interest of mine), the heights were not for me. Nancy has no problem with heights, so she happily marched around taking tons of pictures.
After climbing back down, we headed over to the food truck for some lunch. I don’t know if it was because of the climb or what, but the hamburgers and shaved ice from the food truck were delicious! Best burger I’ve had in a long, long time!
After taking a few more pictures, we left Diamond Head and went towards Waikiki to check into our hotel. We would be staying at the Hilton Hawaiian Village Waikiki Beach Resort. I booked this hotel using two free Hilton weekend certificates we received from signing up for a Citi Hilton HHonors Reserve credit card. I figured as a Hilton Diamond HHonors member (the highest in their loyalty membership), we would get treated well there.
The Hilton Hawaiian Village is a resort made up of a few high rise towers set right on the Waikiki beach. You really can’t get a much better location if you want beach access. We dropped our car off with the valet and went to check in. We did get to skip the long check in line to use the Diamond check in, which was shorter. We were given an upgraded room with an Ocean view in one of the back towers. As we headed to our room, we noticed a large number of pools and fantastic lush grounds around the resort. The room itself wasn’t anything out of the ordinary, but the view was great!
We spent some time walking around the resort and eventually headed out for dinner. Here is where we made a critical mistake. We didn’t have reservations, in Waikiki, on a Saturday night. We must have tried four places before we realized that we weren’t going to get seated for hours. It was already late and we were all tired from the morning flight. We decided to head back to the hotel. Luckily, there was a Benihana in the resort that offered quick take out service. We ordered up a few meals and took them back to the room. While we ate, we made reservations for every other night we were going to be in Waikiki so we wouldn’t repeat the experience.
The next day, we spent the entire day at the resort. We spent the morning at the pool and the afternoon on the beach. We ended up renting an umbrella and beach chairs to stay out of the sun during our day on the beach. Unfortunately, the girls didn’t stay under the umbrella. Despite putting sunscreen on multiple times, they managed to get a little burned. We ended up buying rash guards for them to keep them from getting more burned — especially given the surprise we had in store for July 4!
The Hilton Hawaiian Village Waikiki Beach Resort is huge. There are multiple pools, some we never did manage to find. The resort is right on the beach as well. There are a large number of restaurants (including Starbucks) on the resort property as well as two ABC Stores. If you are from the mainland United States, you may be familiar with ABC Stores as liquor stores — but Hawaiian ABC Stores are different. They have everything you would find in a convenience store, but also a large variety of prepared foods that you can grab and take to the beach, a large selection of beer/wine/liquor, and a variety of souvenir items. There is also a wedding chapel at the resort (we saw multiple brides walking around and watched part of a wedding ceremony).
Despite having a lot of amenities and beautiful scenery, we felt the resort was a bit impersonal. Everything (and I mean everything) was an additional charge at this resort. I don’t know what the parking looked like as we valeted the car as soon as we arrived and didn’t see it again until we left the resort two days later.
We arrived at this resort on a Saturday, spent all of Sunday here, and then departed on Monday morning. We were headed towards Aulani, but had a surprise for the girls.