Monday, June 11, 2007

How To Plan Your Big Vacation


Last year we went to Padre Island and Sea World and other attractions in San Antonio. I enjoyed Padre, but not so much all the walking at Sea World. So we decided to do something more relaxing this year.....Disney World.

Yeah, I know.

Disney World (WDW) now has four main theme parks as well as a couple water parks. They also have hotel resorts right on the property so we had a lot of planning and decision making to do.

STEP ONE-Book Vacation

Research. I checked all the prices for tickets at the parks, hotels, flights, food, etc. This would cost a medium fortune. I don't think we can do this.

Then I went to the Disney site and checked out some of their vacation packages. I was able to book 5 days, All Star Sports Disney resort, Park Hopper tickets, Disney Dining Plan and airline tickets for all four of us for a small fortune, so I booked it.

We're going to Disney World!

STEP TWO-Rebook Vacation

My wife was reading one night and looked at me and asked the magic question, "When is Gay Days at Disney?"

Well, there are 365 days a year. It just so happens that Gay Days at Disney was during the exact same days we would be there. I don't care if gay people go to Disney. I don't even care if they have Gay Days. But I don't need to explain to my 8 and 11 year old sons all the stuff in these pictures. [Warning: Explicit Photos]

So we decided to move the vacation to one week later. So I called the Disney travel agent and said I needed to move the vacation. She asked why. When I told her (very nicely) she got upset and acted like I was a bigot. She then hung up on me. I called a second time and got an even more belligerent agent. She told me that gay people were just another ethnic group. I asked her what country they were from and she hung up on me too.

Finally, after the third call I was able to change my vacation dates. The agent then told me that it would only raise the price of our vacation by $3000. The price was the same except for the flights so I spent an hour and a half trying different flight combinations, we were able to pull it off for $400 more although now we are losing almost a full day due to a later flight on departure day and an earlier flight on our return day. But....

....we're going to Disney World!!!


STEP THREE - Plan and Pack

The hardest part of this whole vacation was figuring out what everybody in the family wanted to do and how to get it all in and figuring out what to pack. Have you flown lately? Geeez!

The best thing I found was the intercot website. If Disney's website was half as informative it would be wonderful. No Disney vacationer can afford not to utilize intercot!

Finally...we're going to Disney World!

1 comment:

Ashford said...

Where is your sense of adventure? Explaining Gay Days had so much potential...