Our upcoming fall trip has been a long time coming. My husband and I were in Disney World in the fall of 2010, 2011, and 2012. Due to a number of unplanned home improvements, we were unable to go in fall of 2013. We pretty much started planning this trip in late summer of 2013. We knew we wanted to do a bigger trip in honor of our 10th anniversary but we still had to be somewhat frugal. In the Summer of 2013 I signed up for Chase Air Tran Visa Card and got two free round trip tickets. I was thrilled. Of course it would be months until the flight schedules were open for October 2014 so other than saving money and imagining what the Seven Dwarves Mine Train would be like, there wasn't much we could do.
Finally in March of 2014, Air Tran opened up their flights through October. I knew we had to make our reservations quickly otherwise all the good reward flights would be gone. The Air Tran options weren't that great, but thankfully we could transfer the reward flights to Southwest and were able to book better flights with them. Then we called our friend who is a Disney Vacation Planner and booked our room at Pop Century. We were really hoping to stay at a moderate resort, but with our budget we realistically could only stay at a moderate if we got free dining. So for the time we were happy. We just had to wait until we were 180 days out to book our ADR's and hope that free dining would eventually get offered.
As Beauty and the Beast is my favorite, eating dinner at Be Our Guest was on our MUST DO list for our upcoming trip. The night before our 180 days out, I set my computer up to the Disney website, had my resort reservation info out, and had my credit card and phone ready. I set my alarm to 4:45 am so I could be ready to make reservations when they opened at 5:00 (central time). As soon as my alarm went off, I was out of bed. Once it hit 5am I was searching for reservations and I got it. On the last night of our trip I got a dinner reservation at Be Our Guest. I was ecstatic. Since I was online I went ahead and made a couple other reservations as well. I was really feeling like our trip was coming together. We just had to wait and see if free dining was offered.
About a week or two later our Disney Vacation Planner friend called to say she got word that free dining would be announced in the next day or two. Fabulous! We couldn't wait. When it finally was announced I just about cried (and not out of joy). The 9 days of our planned trip were within the two week window of October that the dining plan wasn't being offered. After a bit of investigating, I found out that there were no change fees for our airline flights so we could move our trip to a week later and get the free dining. Well, here's the next problem. Our trip was originally planned for the 3rd week of October, to move it to get the free dining we would go from October 27 to November 4th and the airline did not have November flights yet. I called and just changed our flight down to Orlando but I would have to wait to change our return trip until the flight schedule for November was opened.
Then we called our vacation planner to switch our week and book us at Coronado Springs. Unfortunately, with the change of trip dates, all the reservations I previously made were unusable, bye bye Be Our Guest. And with our new dates we were already at about 178 days to our trip and I was sure that B.O.G. would be booked. As soon as our planner got our resort reservation changed, I called Disney Dining. Again, I asked for a B.O.G. reservation for the last day of our trip. The woman there said that she wasn't sure if she would have anything, but she would try. So I held my breath and she came back and said she had a 7:30pm available. Awesome!!!! Then I rescheduled all our other reservations as well. Now I just had to wait for the flight schedule to be released so I could reschedule our return flight.
About two weeks later the flight schedule opened up and I was able to change our return flights. I have to say all the people I talked to at Southwest were extremely friendly and helpful. They were just about as nice and perky as the cast members at Disney. After all the anxiety and changes to our plan, I definitely need this vacation. It seems like it was a ton of craziness but we got free flights and free food so it was worth it. Plus, I get to eat at Be Our Guest! I can't wait.
...southwest has always been real easy to work with for me !!
