Picking A Hotel Is Harder Than I Thought

The initial plan of our epic trip was to stay at the Port Orleans French Quarter hotel on the grounds of Walt Disney World.  We selected this hotel because we figured it had all of the amenities we wanted, it was a price we were happy with, and the location seemed OK.  Then, we started having a few doubts. Well maybe not doubts, more like second thoughts.  We decided that we would spend one night re-evaluating our hotel to see if we weren't missing out on something.

We first decided to check out hotels in our price range.  The best hotel in our range that wasn't in Port Orleans seemed to be the Caribbean Beach Resort.  We looked at the photos of the rooms as well as how easy it would be to get to the parks, and frankly it didn't really pay out.  First of all the rooms seem to be very bright, sure that might appeal to some people, but we're people that like a nice dark place to sleep.  Overly colourful rooms don't really suit our style.  The transportation was even more perplexing to us (we'll get into that issue in a later blog), but needless to say although it appears to be really in the heart of the action, it doesn't seem to be that easy to get to any of the parks.

We then gave some thought towards the idea of going up or down in hotel quality.  The value resorts scared us a little.  They seem like the perfect place to bring a family full of kids for a good time, but we have no kids, and would be happy not to have a million kids screaming around our rooms every night.  So we thought we'd look to upgrade.  There were several choice that looked great, although not all of them seem to be equal.  Many seem to be lacking in some amenities that I would expect each room to have, like refrigerators.  Other resorts don't seem to have many of the transportation options to get you into the parks as quickly as possible.  The final straw for most of these higher end resorts is the price, we found that some of the higher priced resorts could cost as much as 1200 dollars more.

So after a night of investigating, we're back to square one, our choice is still the Port Orleans French Quarter. Allison would just like to ad, that she thinks it's really cool that you can take a boat to Downtown Disney directly from our resort.

Internet Starting Point

The internet was the first research point for this trip.  Naturally the official Disney site was the first stop.  The official Disney site has its advantages and disadvantages.  It's full of information and appears to be up to date.  It has great photos of every park, attraction, and hotel.  It also offers the best interactive map of the parks available.

The downside of the official site is the lack of neutrality and it can be a little difficult to navigate.  When you want to decide which meal plan is most economical for your trip, you're pretty much out of luck.

Unofficial sites while not as organized as the official site, tend to highlight some of problems that you may encounter, and they tend to suggest plans, hotels, and itineraries that might work for you.  The problem, as I mentioned before is the organisation.  You'll often have a hard time finding specific information that you want without searching out many different websites.

In the future we'll highlight several sites that helped us make our choices.

Our Basic Trip Overview

Our plan for this epic trip is simple; we start in Ottawa Ontario, drive to Florida along the east coast, have a spectacular time in the Magic Kingdom, and then return to Ottawa by driving through the Midwest.  This will allow us to visit some family we have in the USA and get over the novelty of being in the USA before we hit Disney World.

Getting over the novelty of a country can make travel to a particular location much more enjoyable.  A countries novelty is that overwhelming newness that comes over you the minute you cross a border.  When all of the food, customs, and regular every day things in that country are new to you.  By spending a few days in the USA before the Disney part of the trip we'll be more impressed by the things that are exclusively Disney, and not just the new American things.

Once in Disney, our plan is to spend eight days and seven nights soaking up the fun.  Our budget is for a midrange hotel on the property.  We've both stayed at and enjoyed Port Orleans in the past, so that's our first choice.  We have a few things we want to do, but for the most part we just want to have an epic time.

The Epic Idea

In April of 2015 Allison and Chris will have been married for 10 years.  Chris and Allison are two people that love to travel, and see the world.  Together they've been swimming with dolphins in New Zealand, gazed up at the Northern Lights on a frozen lake, adventured to temples in Japan, and explored ruins in Greece, just to name a few.

While Chris doesn't mind a few planned ideas when he travels, Allison's preferred method of travel is to just land in a place and wing it.  Over their years of traveling together, they've found that sometimes they can wing it, and sometimes planning is in order.  So what does a couple of travelers want to do to celebrate their first giant milestone of an anniversary?  Visit the happiest place on earth!

The choice on this trip is to do some pre-planning, in fact the choice is to pre-plan this trip like no other trip before.  Both Chris and Allison have realized that planning a Disney World vacation might be fun.  The internet, DVDs, books, and travel agents, all have great information about what to do, what to avoid, and how to enjoy the visit.

So that's what this blog is going to be all about, the planning, the fun, and eventually the most Epic DisneyWorld trip ever.