If you are the holiday planner in your house, you will know that when a plan gets to the stage we are now at, things are very delicately balanced. By now, the ADRs are done and it’s coming up to FastPass time so things are pretty much close to the stage where nothing can be changed. It is called the laminated stage!
Changing so much as a meal can have knock on effects that can take days of work to accommodate, so the last you want at this stage is any sort of fly in the ointment. Literally moments after posting last week’s blog, telling you all how busy we were and how much we were looking forward to some R&R I had some bad news.There was an issue with our flights. Again, if you are the planner you will know that the flight booking is the cornerstone of any trip. It is typically the first thing in the bag and everything else hangs off it. So the news was not welcome.
For reasons I won’t trouble you with, to avoid this being a very long post, our flights were no longer going to be available. On hearing the news I felt a bit sick. The whole trip was in jeopardy and with the dollar rate in the toilet I was very fearful that trying to book any new flights now would be impossible without a return to my career as a gigolo.
Virgin, as ever, were showing prices that only Branson himself can afford so the next stop was Thomas Cook. I found direct flights with them for a price not too far from the ones we had previously. There was only one problem…..they were on different dates!!
You can only imagine the carnage this can bring to the plan! It was only a day later but the cascade effect was enormous. I had to book the flights anyway to secure them and the trip and then start to pick up the pieces. To complicate matters, Mum & Dad are of course staying in different hotels to us for half of the trip so I had four lots of reservations to sort out plus the car hire. Safe to say I had a very busy few hours contacting folks, fettling things online and in the case of the car, being shafted by having to re-book it at today’s rates which pretty much doubled the fee. Then of course there was some fiddling with ADRs to realign them with the new dates.
The end result is that we now have four days at Universal and five at WDW either side of our week at Siesta Key Beach. I cannot say I am unhappy at the extra day at Disney. That part of the plan was always looking very busy so that helps. Of course, with dollar rate moves, amendment fees and all sorts of skulduggery the trip costs have risen but at this stage, with all the hassle and faff it has involved so far I just don’t care. Just get me on the bloody plane already.
With all that sorted earlier in the week, I read a few articles that the coming week may see some Brexit news that will make the pound crash even further. Apparently with a declaration that a Hard Brexit is inevitable the pound may dip a lot more. It’s fine though, as that will stop all these immigrants from coming here and ruining staffing our NHS. (Bit of politics!).
With that in mind it made sense to get the park tickets sorted before that currency volatility puts the prices up. I have no idea if that will happen but I found a price I was OK with, so I bought us 7 day ultimates with free memory maker for less than the 5 day Magic Your Way things would have been. I’ll be securing the Universal tickets shortly too. If it’s going to be 1 pound to 1 dollar by the time we go I want to reduce the impact of that as much as possible!!
As if that wasn’t enough hassle, being a glutton for punishment, I thought I’d just run a comparison of our Royal Pacific booking through Trivago to see if we were paying too much. We were. I found the same room for £250 less with Netflights, so having free cancellation with Hotels.com, I did that and re-booked it, also getting £70 cashback through Top Cash Back. This is a full-time job at times, but the rewards for the slog are out there.
Phew, I’m tired just telling you about it. Somewhere among all of that I have done a busy week’s work, including working two evenings (OK one was dinner with a supplier, but that’s still work right?) and a gig on Friday with Mustard. Safe to say the neglected DIY projects remain thus and I am looking and feeling more tired than a tired thing.
Still, at least the holiday is sorted!!
Till the next time…..
Mkingdon's Blog 
What a nightmare…but at least you are sorted now. I’m curious to know what you think of the TC flights. I bagged flights with them for 2018 at a really good price for 3 adults and 1 child at the end of July but sadly couldn’t finalise them as they wanted the full price now and I wasn’t prepared to nor was able to pay the three grand, a year and a half in advance…especially as TC has been a bit iffy over the past 12 months. Anyway…looking forward to hearing all about your laminated itinery in the very near future 😀
We’ve used them a couple of times Carol and it’s all been fine. Pretty much on par with Virgin, good IFE and I’d say the food was better. Anyone getting me there direct for a price I like is fine with me 😏
Virgin/delta did the same to us a couple of years ago but they are obliged to give you equal or better flights? Did they hve nothing else available?
It was a hiccup with the agent rather than the airline tbh. Couldn’t be helped but it was troublesome.
Good job you are a seasoned planner, this would have been hell for a lesser person. Well done for sorting it all out just need to remember which day you are flying on 🙂