Yes, I was just at Walt Disney World in September. How is it I managed a Solo return trip less than three months later? Well, it goes a little something like this:
While in the process of trying to track down why my Rapid Rewards credits on Southwest Airlines hadn’t updated after our September trip, I discovered that I had earned a free ticket. Not only had I earned a free ticket, but that ticket was going to expire (something to do with the AirTran merger and the merger of the frequent flyer programs). I had been hearing discussion of the WDW Today Reunion for weeks already while listening to the WDW Today podcast. So I mentioned – really mostly jokingly – that maybe I could use my free ticket to go to Reunion. My wonderful wife immediately said, “Sure. That sounds like a great idea.”
Once I’d picked my jaw up off of the floor, I immediately started making the arrangements to attend Reunion. This was to be an economy trip, but was also an opportunity to collect new experiences/ideas/photos and build friendships and contacts in the Disney online-community. While there was plenty of room for fun, this was a business trip.
New experience #1 was booking myself at Pop Century, so I’d have the Value Resort category covered (at least until Art of Animation is completed). I’d planned on taking tons of resort pictures, and trying to get shots of AoA in-progress, but that didn’t happen. New experience #2 was purchasing a Park Hopper ticket. It was really a necessity, due to the way events for Reunion were scheduled. But it really did open my eyes to the value in Park Hopping. The original plan was for new experience #3 to be not renting a car and relying solely on Disney transportation. That fell by the wayside when I forgot to pass my travel information on to Disney’s Magical Express. Oops. I didn’t even realize it until the day before I was scheduled to leave. I did end up with a great deal on a car rental, booking a Dollar Car Rental Wild Car through Hotwire.com for $14/day (it ended up being a Ford Edge crossover).
In subsequent posts, I’ll get into the details of a looooong travel day, great Reunion experiences, the pros and cons of solo travel at Walt Disney World, and more!
Can’t wait for more Aaron!
I would love to have the opportunity to go to Reunion. It looks like it would be a lot of fun.
I used to be on the “Disney transportation only” bandwagon, but we drove to the parks some on our last trip and it really was much easier with a stroller.
I’ve always used Park Hoppers and love them. We actually went to EPCOT one day for an unplanned lunch. We were in MK that morning and DW said she wanted the nachos from the Mexico CS for lunch. We hopped on the monorail and spent maybe an hour in EPCOT before heading back to the resort. To me, the flexibility and ability to do things like that make it a worthwhile investment.
I can go either way on the park hoppers. I love the freedom they offer. On the other hand, with good advanced planning, you can save a lot of money by forgoing them.
Looking forward to the rest of the report!