The Road to Disney World: Part One |
The dictionary defines the word “Anticipation” as a ‘pleasurable expectation’ and to say that our household has been locked onto this particular definition of the word in planning a February trip to Disney World in Florida is a ‘Magic Kingdom’ size understatement! The only problem in this whole process is that only my wife and I (39 & 41 years of age respectively) are the ones running around like 6-year olds on Christmas eve while our two children – 8 year-old Emmy and 6 year-old Sammy don’t have a clue. Let me explain.
After watching friends make the mighty trip south for years and hearing nothing but stories of fun, fun, fun upon their return, we decided it was our turn to trek to the Land of Mickey! And we are going to do it as a big Christmas day surprise for the kids.
Now it all started with a visit to the Disney website. www.disney.ca is the Canadian arm of the company and it is a great place to begin. You can mouse around the site at home and get rates for hotels, park tickets and a million other options. You can also get a glimpse of the rooms, theme parks, and rides. It is mostly stills which is great unless you want a little more visual detail and that is supplied by going to www.disney.com and clicking on the appropriate links. Once there, you can look at an endless supply of easily downloaded streaming video examples of the rides, resorts and even testimonials from people who have enjoyed the park.
The
best part was the ability to plug in all the particulars about your travel needs
and have the site give you a quote within seconds. We found our way around and
decided to book a room at the Pop Century Resort for 7 days in February. We
had heard a lot of great things about all of the resorts but we were looking
for an affordable rate and a real “Disney” feel. Pop Century is the newest “value”
resort and while it doesn’t offer some of the bells and whistles the other resorts
are known for, it has what our family will need; we plan to spend a great deal
of time at the parks. The ability to book online was available to us but we
felt more comfortable calling the phone number provided on the website to book
our week. And besides, I wanted to really see how friendly these Disney people
are and this would be a good first step. 
I picked up the phone and dialed the number provided on their web site. After pressing a few numbers in response to voice prompting, I was put on hold briefly while I waited for a Disney Travel Consultant. Within two minutes I had a Disney agent on the phone and he was very pleasantly guiding me through the booking process. He made some suggestions on how to add a few more perks to my trip (higher end room, etc) but did so in a very non-forceful way. We did pay an extra 10 dollars a night to make sure our room is closer to the elevators, shuttle pick up, etc. Friends had recommended this to us and said that it did make a difference over a full week at the park.
We
got four 5-day “Park Hopper” passes so we could visit all of the parks at anytime.
Again, we were told this is the best way to go by everyone we know. There are
a number of options for park passes – something to fit everyone’s schedule -
it all depends on how much time you have to spend at the park. You could easily
spend a month at Disney World and still have trouble seeing everything they
have to offer. For us, we had a one-week window in February so the 5-day pass
was perfect.
Our next step was getting there. Two options are present here – Drive or Fly. Since option number one conjured up images of driving through snowstorms while listening to the same DVD’s playing over and over behind me, we thought flying would be our best bet.
Now
booking a flight can be a little overwhelming as well. There are a million web-sites
and carriers and a million ways to go. We could have flown out of Buffalo or
Hamilton as suggested by some friends but decided that making Toronto our point
of departure was a better idea for one obvious reason. It was closer to our
home so that if weather became a factor in our drive we were safe to make it
to Toronto as opposed to driving into a snow belt region like the Hamilton and/or
Buffalo region.
After exhaustive searching of various airline websites, I found a lot of great deals on flights to Orlando but most of them had a catch – connecting flights en route and on the way back. Even though it was going to maybe cost us a few hundred dollars more, we thought it was worth it given the fact that hanging out an airport for an hour or two with a 6 & 8 year old while waiting for another flight could easily turn our holiday into an appearance on a talk show.
Okay – our resort room is booked, our flight is booked and now the planning of the big surprise on Christmas Day can start.
