Travel Planning Mistakes

Oh, darn! Are you sure you made a mistake Kristen?

The only travel planning mistake we made was our first time we went to Disney. We always drive the 16 hours and the first year we decided to just drive until we were tired and then find a hotel to stay in overnight. Well, we drove 10 hours and it was pouring rain, the wind was crazy and when we turned on the radio we found they had declared Florida a state of emergency with the storms and flooding. Every hotel I called and town we stopped in - all the hotels were sold out. We kept driving and driving and at 2am we found a hotel. Woke up and discovered we were only 2 hours away from Orlando, which was a nice surprise!

Now we always book a hotel for the way down!

Take lots of pics of the Disneyland Hotel. It looks beautiful!

This year when we went we thought my daughters airfaire was still free cause she's two. It wasn't till we were trying to get through security that we found out she needed a ticket... Luckily there was still room on the flight and we were able to talk them into honoring our original tickets prices

Well... it was last year... lol

But for this upcoming trip... we forgot to book on our 11th month. All of the 2 bedroom studios were taken on our last day so we were put on a waiting list. Till then we just went to a 2 one bedrooms. Luckily... a couple days later they got us back on track.

We made a similar mistake some years back on a non-Disney trip. Hubby booked our flight a day later than he should have. We couldn't just go a day later because we had tickets to a baseball game the day our flight was actually booked. So we had to fork over some extra bucks to bump our arrival day ahead one day.

I didn't make the mistake my mom did.

When I was younger I flew to Houston a lot to visit my cousins. One time I was there for like 2 weeks and I called my mom to confirm what day I was supposed to fly home. She told me the wrong day. I was a whole day late to the airport. Luckily there was room on that flight and southwest didn't charge me anything. This was years and years ago though.

Not sure if it counts as a mistake or just a misunderstanding, but...

(Bear with me for a brief story for the set-up.) I was living in London, England. Then-boyfriend was living in the States and came over to visit me. We had plans to take the "Chunnel" (the train that goes under the English Channel from London to Paris) and spend two days in Paris during his visit.

His flying to visit was an expensive trip (at the time we were two grad-schoool age students) and we had figured into the budget the Paris part. It was tight, but thankfully, with two student IDs we could make it work.

He arrives at my place in London. Great reunion after being apart for six months. That night we are on the phone buying the train tickets and - wait, what? Uh-oh!

His student ID was not going to be honored because he JUST graduated (3 weeks prior) and they would not accept it. Furthermore, mine could not be honored because I did not have my sticker yet for summer session. So --- two FULL FARE ADULT tickets. Suddenly, this romantic, much-anticipated side-trip of his visit just could not be afforded.

Travel lesson learned: Check that fine print! Twice!

So as not to leave you in a cliffhanger: I was in minor tears in the corner of my flat. He was determined to get us to Paris and decided that it's only money and "five years from now we won't miss it." After going back and forth about it, we made the totally irresponsible decision to put it on the credit card and figure out how to pay for it later. (Problem solved... sort of.)

Little did I know THEN, that from HIS perspective we HAD to get to Paris, no matter what. How was I to know he had a diamond ring in his suitcase, a plan to get to the Eiffel Tower with me, and a little question to ask me? And yeah, years later, we've never missed that extra money and his parents loaned him the money to pay it off once they heard that his plan almost fell apart over a few hundred dollars. So, there's always a way to make it work out.

- Dreams

Wonderful story DisDreams, so glad it all worked out for you.

What a beautiful story DisneyDreams!

Last year my husband thought it would take longer to drive to WDW from Myrtle Beach than it actually did. So we arrived at Coronado Springs at 8pm they day before we were scheduled to check-in. Luckily they had a room available and we were able to stay in that room for the rest of our 7day/ 6night vacation. The only bad thing was my husband paid for the room for the extra night and actually found out what the rooms costs. Normally I pay for our Disney Vacations out of my share of our money and he doesn't know what I spend because it doesn't affect him.