Honeymoon at WDW last week of Sept 2013

I won't be going then next year because I'm hoping to take a holiday Disney Cruise. What are your travel dates? You might hit opening weekend for Food & Wine Festival.

Paul,

My fiance and I will be honeymooning in Disney World the first week of June next year for 8 days. We will also be staying at a honeymoon suite in Wilderness Lodge. If you want and remember, I can give you a trip update and more info about Wilderness Lodge and their honeymoon suites after our trip. Not sure what you have planned so far. Some things we are doing are taking a carriage ride at Port Orleans Riverside, getting massages, watching Wishes hopefully from hammock at Polynesian resort, and since the first day we will be there is also my fiance's birthday; I am surprising her with a dinner at Victoria and Albert's.

Nick to our Disney family and congratulations on your upcoming wedding.

Hi Paul,

We are about to make our ADRs. Not sure what restaurants you have planned. V&A is supposed to be an out of this world experience. We are going to the parks 5 days and Blizzard Beach. Where else were you thinking of making Dining ADRs? I made my reservations directly through Disney. If you tell them for instance you are a AAA member they would automatically give you the discount for AAA. Are you booking the whole package (Magic Your Way + Dining Package) through AAA. Was not sure whether AAA would save a lot of money booking the package using AAA. I am going to look into it. From what I know, there are 4 honeymoon suites at Wilderness Lodge; and they all pretty much have the same view.

Thanks Pirate Girl

Guy just remember, booking through a travel agent, you cannot make any changes on the fly directly with Disney. If you have any problems also, you have to go through your travel agent to get them solved. Disney cannot make any changes to your itinerary. We heard about alot of horror story's about trips through travel agents lately.

Don't want to scare you, but booking directly through Disney has always seemed to be the best option.

Sorry if you consider this NEGATIVE doom&gloom as you put it, but it is one of the drawbacks of working with a TA when dealing with Disney. Disney only deals with ONE person on a booking and in the case of a TA, it is that TA. As far as Disney is concerned you do not exist until you get there and register at the resort. It happened to me on my first (and last) case of booking through a TA.

All the honeymoon suites are one price. When we go to Disney World next June; California Grill will still be closed for refurbishment. Hopefully, it is open when you go. Thanks for the tip on the honeymoon suite views.

I was one of the ones recently complaining about using a TA. I didn't go through AAA and nothing got "screwed up" per se, I just found it annoying that if I wanted to call and check on something or add something to my reservation or switch something, I had to go through my TA. I couldn't just call Disney directly and have it solved. For me, who likes to be hands on, it was just a pain in the butt. Everything had to go through my TA, including my Mickey Mail which my TA held for sometime before I eventually called her to check on it and see if she had received it. Mr Hub wasn't trying to scare you or spout "doom and gloom", he was just trying to point out some of the downfalls of not going directly through Disney if you still have the option to change. I have no expreience with AAA TAs, but if you like having the TA take care of anything and having one point of contact to go through then you should be fine.

I so learned that the hard way this year. Though not through AAA.

We've done it both ways. All of our trips in the 90's were done through TA's, and our trip in May was booked through CAA (Canadian equivalent/partner of AAA). In October, I did everything myself. Either way, we have never had any problems. Depending on where you live, and your phone plans, going through a TA can actually be a good thing, since Disney does not have a 1-800 number. Calling to add room requests or tweak reservations can add up, plus you will probably spend considerable time on hold listening to "It's a Small World". (I did in September, and was practically suicidal by the time I finally got a CM! ).

If you don't want to worry about anything, TA's are fine if they are knowledgeable and organized. Unless CAA offers a fantastic discount or bonus gift again (we got a fabulous Lion King film cell for our May trip), I will probably book future trips myself. I'm a bit of a control freak, so I like being able to pick up a phone and deal directly with reservations, etc.

I hope your honeymoon is fabulous, with lots of pixie dust and magical memories.

Paul, I wasn't negative doom & glooming AAA, just giving some friendly advise regarding travel agents in general. We have always booked Disney directly and never had a problem, and have always been able to get the best discounts doing it that way. Also several people on the board have experienced problems lately from booking through TA's and they have had some headaches because to solve the problems they had to contact the travel agents and have them contact Disney. You can't do it directly becuase you didn't make the reservations, your TA did. They have policies and they stick to them. I truly hope everything goes well for you.

Hello Paul!

Congrats! We honeymooned there over labor day in 2011! It was so much fun. We stayed at Animal Kingdom Lodge. If you have time, you should hit up Animal Kingdom park. I don't know if this was discussed yet, so sorry if it has. Anywho, a lady saw us with our wedding ears, which an employee gave to us for free when we visited the first shop in Magic Kingdom! So nice! When the cast member saw us wearing our wedding ears at Animal Kingdom, we were chosen to be the grand marshals for the Mickey's Jammin' Jungle parade that day! It was so much fun!

Definitely take advantage of the parks extra magic hours. We were able to do this each day, and it was definitely worth it!

I was so glad to take advantage of the disney dining plan too! I feel like we definitely got our money's worth!

Unfortunately, we weren't there long, so we didn't get much time to just relax poolside with drinks, so if you have time, definitely do that! Our pool was open 24/7 as well, which was really nice!

Use the concierge too! They were so nice and helpful! We ate a delicious dinner at the nice Mexican restaurant in Epcot per their suggestion! Oh, and with Epcot, definitely sample some of the delicious drinks!

Have fun!
Andrea

Oh awesome! That sounds like lots of fun!

We went to downtown Disney and went to Planet Hollywood to eat. We also went to lots of shops and such in Downtown! That was fun, but super crowded! I know it's still at Disney, but we enjoyed "drinking around the world" at Epcot. It was really hot, so we only did half of the countries, but it was fun!

We did go to the Wizarding World of HP at universal too, which was fun!

Paul: Your honeymoon sounds awesome! I don't have any tips since I'm planning mine right now too: we're going the first week in May (4 days at Disney, four day cruise). And I AM booking mine through a travel agent (not AAA, but a different agency)--I know lots of people like the hands-on abilities you get from booking them independently, but since this is the first trip I've planned I definitely wanted the help (and discounts!). It's been great so far!

Congratulations!

We will be in WDW in early october to do our wedding planning session, originally we were going to get married at this time now its late feb in the world

Make ADRs, splurge and do some back stage stuff, enjoy your trip. You may want to consider a honeymoon photo shoot at the castle or epcot .

That's so cool that you had an engaged picture there! What a cool picture that will be for your honeymoon too then!

Aww! I love the idea of having the 2 pics!!

From my personal experience, CAA (Canadian AAA) did a great job for me booking 5 previous Disney vacations. Although, I did find that CAA/AAA deals were not better than Disney's promotions. Make sure to check Disney's website because sometimes I'd go in and tell my TA that a better deal is available and she'd call Disney and get the newest promotion applied to my package.

Other than that, I've always had a great experience with CAA. I hope they work out well for you too!
(P.S. I've booked my next trip directly through Disney now that I am such an expert so I'm excited to see if there's a difference in the experience).

Hey Paul, how comes your cousin didn't get you discount on the hotel room? My friend works as a CM and get get around 40% off for us for later this year. Much better than the 15% from AAA

Have a great honeymoon