Little Background Pre-Trip Info
I read all your wonderful suggestions and tips while planning our vacation to Orlando during the past 6 months. I want to start this post with a big THANK YOU to every member of this forum as I´m positive our trip would not have been as well planned without your help.
Now a bit of background information. My parents married 32 years ago and spent their honeymoon in WDW so they have really fond memories from that time. I am their oldest son and I have a brother and a sister. Once we were old enough our parents decided it would be great to visit WDW one more time so we visited in 1997, MK 25th year anniversary. I was 18 yrs old, brother was 16 and sister 13 (you can do the math and find out our ages now, LOL) we had a really great time but we didn´t have enough time or planning help to visit SW, US/IOA. So that was something we had always in the back of our minds and finally the opportunity showed up, as my sister, mom and myself are BIG HP fans so there was no discussion about when we should go, 2010 was set in our minds and always kept looking for WWOHP opening date. Spring 2010 was announced so we knew we had to start planning things with time. That´s when I found this wonderful forum and alongside my sister started planning a trip that would allow us to enjoy a well deserved and long due family vacation. Everything was going perfect until March when my dad got sick; the trip was on hold and we had 3 months of doctors helping to control his problem (Nothing serious, he´s ok now).
After this scare we finally decided that we would be travelling July 12th to Miami and then we would go to Orlando from the 18th until the 24th via the Universal HP Offsite Package.
So, did we travel the 12th? Will we ever make this trip?
You guessed it! We couldn´t travel the 12th, why you say? I got sick, LOL. We were leaving Monday afternoon but during the weekend I wasn´t feeling too well but didn´t think too much of it, but that day I just felt awful and my brother (he´s a Doctor) told me I shouldn´t travel and he sent me some blood tests and an endoscopy (I have a hiatal hernia) to check on things. Everybody was really sad that day and now we had to reschedule everything, airline tickets, travel package and our health care insurance for the trip.
As it was high season do to summer, the airline told us that we had to pay a 600 dollar difference for each ticket and a 250 dollar fine each for not making the trip!!! Now, even if we had that money I wouldn´t pay that much of a difference. So they told us we had to find a ticket online with a similar price and we only had to pay the 250x4 for not travelling on the scheduled date unless the manager allowed 2 of us to be exonerated of pay by proving my illness. I returned home with the news and proceeded to call Universal in order to change our Travel Package, we looked on the airline´s site and found tickets where available starting the second week of august so we took a chance and told Universal to book us from August 13th to the 22nd, YES! We added 3 extra nights to the package which provided us with a calmer itinerary to visit the parks and some extra Orlando sites and shows. Universal had no problem with us changing the days of our package but told me to wait on the phone because they had to call the Hotel (Hilton grand Vacation Suites at SW, more on them later) and see if they would charge us anything as we called 48 hrs before our reservation was due. Fortunately they didn´t charge us anything.
Now it was time to return to the airline company with all my exam results (after 1 week) and see if they could not charge us the 250x4. The lady at the counter was really understanding but told us she had to talk to the manager and see what she decided, she took my exams and 10 minutes later returned with the news. We had to pay . absolutely nothing! but if we couldn´t make the new dates she wouldn´t help us no matter what. So the good news kept coming! At the end we extended our vacation package days by 3 nights, didn´t have to pay any fines and only had to pay 40 dollars total for ticket price difference, not a bad deal at all!
Next: We arrive to Miami and finally reach Orlando (Pics will start from this point on)
I read all your wonderful suggestions and tips while planning our vacation to Orlando during the past 6 months. I want to start this post with a big THANK YOU to every member of this forum as I´m positive our trip would not have been as well planned without your help.
Now a bit of background information. My parents married 32 years ago and spent their honeymoon in WDW so they have really fond memories from that time. I am their oldest son and I have a brother and a sister. Once we were old enough our parents decided it would be great to visit WDW one more time so we visited in 1997, MK 25th year anniversary. I was 18 yrs old, brother was 16 and sister 13 (you can do the math and find out our ages now, LOL) we had a really great time but we didn´t have enough time or planning help to visit SW, US/IOA. So that was something we had always in the back of our minds and finally the opportunity showed up, as my sister, mom and myself are BIG HP fans so there was no discussion about when we should go, 2010 was set in our minds and always kept looking for WWOHP opening date. Spring 2010 was announced so we knew we had to start planning things with time. That´s when I found this wonderful forum and alongside my sister started planning a trip that would allow us to enjoy a well deserved and long due family vacation. Everything was going perfect until March when my dad got sick; the trip was on hold and we had 3 months of doctors helping to control his problem (Nothing serious, he´s ok now).
After this scare we finally decided that we would be travelling July 12th to Miami and then we would go to Orlando from the 18th until the 24th via the Universal HP Offsite Package.
So, did we travel the 12th? Will we ever make this trip?
You guessed it! We couldn´t travel the 12th, why you say? I got sick, LOL. We were leaving Monday afternoon but during the weekend I wasn´t feeling too well but didn´t think too much of it, but that day I just felt awful and my brother (he´s a Doctor) told me I shouldn´t travel and he sent me some blood tests and an endoscopy (I have a hiatal hernia) to check on things. Everybody was really sad that day and now we had to reschedule everything, airline tickets, travel package and our health care insurance for the trip.
As it was high season do to summer, the airline told us that we had to pay a 600 dollar difference for each ticket and a 250 dollar fine each for not making the trip!!! Now, even if we had that money I wouldn´t pay that much of a difference. So they told us we had to find a ticket online with a similar price and we only had to pay the 250x4 for not travelling on the scheduled date unless the manager allowed 2 of us to be exonerated of pay by proving my illness. I returned home with the news and proceeded to call Universal in order to change our Travel Package, we looked on the airline´s site and found tickets where available starting the second week of august so we took a chance and told Universal to book us from August 13th to the 22nd, YES! We added 3 extra nights to the package which provided us with a calmer itinerary to visit the parks and some extra Orlando sites and shows. Universal had no problem with us changing the days of our package but told me to wait on the phone because they had to call the Hotel (Hilton grand Vacation Suites at SW, more on them later) and see if they would charge us anything as we called 48 hrs before our reservation was due. Fortunately they didn´t charge us anything.
Now it was time to return to the airline company with all my exam results (after 1 week) and see if they could not charge us the 250x4. The lady at the counter was really understanding but told us she had to talk to the manager and see what she decided, she took my exams and 10 minutes later returned with the news. We had to pay . absolutely nothing! but if we couldn´t make the new dates she wouldn´t help us no matter what. So the good news kept coming! At the end we extended our vacation package days by 3 nights, didn´t have to pay any fines and only had to pay 40 dollars total for ticket price difference, not a bad deal at all!
Next: We arrive to Miami and finally reach Orlando (Pics will start from this point on)