Dining at Disney - the results (Part 1)

Today was a bit of an adventure in the Art of Adjusting Plans!

It started off with my poor pupper, Cleo, waking me up before my alarm with the sounds of her being very sick. Over an hour later, she had finally managed to keep down some food and water and went back to sleep. Meanwhile, I was awake and had several hours before I had to do anything else, so I started to make sure I was prepared and ready to make dining reservations for Disneyland Paris on Monday.

For those not "in the know", WDW is quite strict about when you can make your dining reservations. It's 60 days before your trip, at 6:00am Eastern Time on the dot. No if, ands or buts. I have now, almost a dozen times, played the game of being up and online, ready to roll with my preferred list of dates/times/restaurants; because in that world if you don't snatch up the coveted spots by 6:09am, they're gone.

So, I sat with my list of 5 restaurants the family agreed we want to try. (We get 4 that are included/already paid for by the Meal Plan, but I can't figure out if one of them accepts the plan or not, so we have 5 to "make sure".)  I sort them out based on where they are located, and what I think we might like to do and when we might be hungry. I come up with this list:

1. "Downtown" Try for July 1st, dinner time. Leave enough time to get back to the park for fireworks around 9pm (maybe 11pm?? Don't know - park hours aren't posted yet)
2. Auberge de Cendrillon (maybe no meal plan accepted!?) - try for dinner on July 4th then dinner on July 2nd, then lunch on July 2nd
3. Captain Jack's  - try for Lunch on July 2nd
4. Annette's Diner - dinner on July 2nd, or 4th if Auberge doesn't work out
5. Walt's - If Auberge is not on dining plan, use this for lunch on July 4th, or a backup plan if something above doesn't work out

Great! I have a plan! Now I just need to know WHEN to get up Monday morning (our "60 days" milestone date)...

Again, with WDW you can "Google" this question and get 100 bloggers, websites and forums that tell you to be online at 6am or call at 7am to make your dining reservations. Now...go ahead and try to find this info for DLP. Go on, I'll wait.  Maybe your Google-foo is better than mine, but after *multiple* attempts, I could not find a single data point to help me. Even my amazing Travel Agent didn't know, nor did any of her fellow TAs. 😲 This morning, I tried again. I got a hit in the results that wasn't the answer, but led me to the Disboards (a horrible place I don't normally like to frequent...they're very judgey there...), and then some threads about people making reservations for Disneyland. It took a lot of threshing through chaf of posts from Disneyland in California, or posts from 2015 or 2019. I stumbled upon a thread of people who made reservations in THIS actual month. They were mostly complaining about the cost of sitting on hold when calling an International number, and then in the comments were the "suggestions" to use the app/website. And someone said they made reservations last week for their trip in July. I'm like...wait, what?

 I found one other post that validated this - another person who had managed to get reservations for dining at 62+ days before their vacation. So, just to see what the heck was going on, I pulled up the website. Not a single "Book Dining" button to be seen anywhere. 😞 It was time for more coffee. While I was waiting, I pulled up the Disneyland Paris mobile app (because many people said it was better than the website for more detailed information), and just randomly decided to check on the "Food" button. And then, in just a few clicks, I suddenly had reservations for Auberge!! 😮 

I had grabbed the first thing I found that looked close to my list above (lunch on July 2nd), because there were no dinner options. I checked other dates, and ya - looks like this place doesn't even open for dinner! Or else, all tables are already booked. Ok, so fine. Decided to finish my coffee and go figure out what else I could book. Discovered that the K-cup had exploded and I had cup of grounds, so I dumped that and started a new cup brewing. While that was wrapping up, I got reservations for dinner at Captain Jack's on the same date. 🙌

I put cream and sugar in my coffee, and sat down again, and started looking for the other 3 restaurants. Walt's and Annette's did not even appear on the list of places, and Downtown showed no availability for any dates we're there. :( After a bit more digging, it seems that Annette's is in the Disney Village, where no restaurants take advance reservations, and Walt's has been "sporadic" on the app, but can be booked by calling.

Credit: The Awkward Yeti

So, now our list looks completely different than my plans... 

1. Arrival day - go to Annette's after checking into the hotel. This let's us wing it on timing.
2. Auberge - lunch on day 2
3. Captain Jack's - dinner on day 2
4. The other two...I'm just gonna keep checking the app for a while, and when I get desperate, try calling.  🤷
   

Packing and Weather

 Packing for a 3-week trip is giving me no small amount of anxiety. I've actually been "worrying" about this topic for months now, and I still don't have any solutions.

I have read so many suggestions to pack only in carry-ons, to avoid lost luggage, or delays at the airport while waiting for bags. Great in theory, except that our airline only allows the *tiniest* of carry-ons. No luggage-sized bags...just something purse/laptop/small backpack sized. So, even if we just take our "carry-on sized luggage", we will have to check them anyway.

Okay, so that means any size bag is fine, right? Well, nope...

First, Trafalgar has a maximum allowed size for their tour.

Second, we will have at least 3 times in this trip where we will have to walk a mile or so with said baggage...possibly over cobblestone sidewalks?

So maybe the large suitcases are too big for this, and we should try to get everything into the 4 carryons we have. But will everything fit?  This is the question of my nightmares.

On a "typical" trip to Disney, where the weather is warm so we pack small things like shorts and t-shirts, we take the 1 giant suitcase, plus two carry-on sized bags for the girls and one backpack for our electronics, ID and meds that we take on the plane with us. This has worked for 10-day trips, and includes a small fan for the bedroom, and room for souvenirs to come home.

I'm hoping to convince my husband to leave the fan at home...but this might be a deal-breaker. He really doesn't sleep well - like, at all - without one. I will also be drastically reducing the normal toiletries we take (although we do need to remember to pack facecloths - apparently those are not provided in European hotels!), and plan to buy some items there on our first day.

The other factor is weather...if it's chilly, we need to pack bulkier items like pants and sweaters that we don't normally take to Florida. So I have been stalking the weather pages (yes, already!) and trying out various pieces of my wardrobe in "similar" temperatures we are having here. I don't want anyone in our group to be miserable because they're cold! 

And let's talk rain...is it just me, or does it seem like it's always raining in Europe!?! Do I care if I look like a complete dork in a rain poncho as long as I'm dry? What about waterproof shoes? Do we take just raincoats (which, by the way, is something neither of our children own) or umbrellas (more compact, but then we have to hold them)? 

And lastly, there's the option of doing laundry or not. Do we try to pack for double-the-longest-we've-ever-done-before, or do we just plan to find a laundromat in one of the towns we stop at in Scotland? Doing laundry wastes time on vacation and I truly abhor the idea. If it's necessary, though, then I'll suck it up. I just cannot decide if it's "necessary".

In the time since starting and finishing this post, I've decided to bite the bullet and buy 2 new "medium" suitcases (in the 24-26" range). Bigger than carry-on but smaller than the giant suitcase we normally take. I think this will give us more room, as a family, and each person can push/pull one bag wherever we need to go.  Once I get these into my home, I'm going to do a trial-packing-run to see how much we can fit. Then I can make the decision on the laundry/no-laundry call, and hopefully sleep again without visions of my family in filthy clothes in front of the Louvre. 

Drivers and details

Well, we're under 2 months to go, now, and I'm trying to get a few things off the "To Do" list while I can still take my time to do so. I'm anticipating that the last 3 weeks before we leave will be a flurry of activity, so anything I can complete before then, I will!

It's Easter Sunday, and we have no plans at all today. In fact, it's almost 5pm and I'm still in my PJs...a VERY rare thing for me to do!! Sitting on the couch and being "lazy" let me do some research into drivers, though, so here's what I found:

Working on getting home: 

While we could take public transportation from our hotel to the airport, on our last day, at oh-dark-thirty am, with all our luggage...this actually sounds incredibly stressful and entirely not how I'd like to spend our time. Therefore, I'm seeking out a more comfortable, less stressful ride...taxi, or private driver.

There is a shuttle that Disney provides to the airport, but it doesn't start running until 9am or so. We need to be at the airport several hours earlier than that, so we need to arrange another way to get there. I reached out to a few companies that I learned about from a "Paris Travel Tips" Facebook group, and was shocked to get 2 replies already!

I have the details in my Trello board, and will wait for a couple more replies before making my decision. One hiccup I found is that one of the companies doesn't even make reservations this far in advance, but I got a sample quote for next month as a starting point. Another potential issue is that many places use regular sedan-sized cars, which cannot hold all of us. We'll have to pay a bit more for a van/SUV style car.

Paperwork stuff:

I also dug out the passports, and while I was sitting here, entered the info into the Trafalgar website and on the United app. I was expecting one or the other to also need our Covid vaccination records, but as of today none of the countries we are visiting requires these anymore. I'll have to keep checking in on that, in case something changes...but for now, we're good.

As of today, returning home to the USA will require us all to get a Covid test the day before we come home. If any of us test positive, we'll be stuck in France for an extra 10 days I believe. I am still desperately hoping this requirement will be lifted, but just in case, I am also making sure our trip insurance would cover expenses of staying in France for another 2 weeks. :(

And on the topic of insurance, our AAA Travel Agent STILL hasn't gotten back to me with our new quote and insurance info. (The policy we bought in 2020 is not valid anymore, because we moved the dates of the trip - perhaps obviously to most readers of this page).  We cannot finish our check-in with Trafalgar until we have this info. I emailed her (second time) today to ask the status on that. If I don't hear back by Tuesday, I'll have to start getting annoying. 

Thank goodness our Disney Travel Agent isn't so hard to work with!! She's amazing...through and through. :)  (Let me know if you want her name - she does all things Disney!)

T-minus-70 days

 Oh, right - Disney dining reservations!

That was the thought I had last night when doing something else completely unrelated...and saw a reminder that in less than 4 weeks, we will be able to make dining reservations for our Disneyland Paris stay.

I am *very* familiar with the dining options, meal plan, and layout of WDW in Florida, and would already know exactly what my family would want to book. DLP, however? Um...yeah, I got nuthin. 

So, tonight the family gathered around the laptop (cast to the TV) and browsed the dining options. Luckily(?) there are far fewer to choose from, so we didn't get totally overwhelmed by choices!  We picked our top 4 that we'd like to try, and now it's just a matter of figuring out what dates and times we need.

In related news, our final payment went in for the Disney reservation, so that makes the whole trip now paid-in-full.

Back to other transportation stuff:

One thing I have read over and over again is: if you book anything through a 3rd party (tour group, travel agent, points portal, etc) make sure you contact the place/airline directly and confirm they got the reservation. So, today I reached out to United and got our confirmation details for our flights, and picked our seat assignments. They informed me that the tickets have not yet been secured by Trafalgar. I also noticed that our names on the reservations are all written with our First and Middle names smashed together into one long first name. 😲 Yeah, that's gonna be a problem. If names on reservations do not match our passports and NEXUS cards, we aren't getting anywhere...

I already called our AAA Travel Agent yesterday, but time to give her another ping, it seems.

Getting around - allwheres!

 There are just SO MANY details to work out on this trip! Sometimes I'm excited and sometimes I'm just overwhelmed...

Last night it occurred to me that I hadn't checked out what parking was available at Newark airport. When I looked for "long term" parking for 20 days, I 'bout had a heart attack. $600??? Yikes!

Then I checked out a couple of companies we've used before for rides to the Philly airport, and those quotes came in around $500 each, too.

Even Lyft would be over $300 (estimated - maybe more!)

So....I used my "Phone a Friend", and secured us a ride to the airport on our departure day.  Coming home, we'll grab a cab or something, but I'm much more comfortable paying that fee just one way.

Now we just have to figure out how to get

1. from Heathrow to Park Palace
2. from Park Palace to King's Cross station
3. from London to Disneyland Paris (done - taking the Eurostar through the chunnel!)
4. from the train station to our hotel in Disneyland Paris
5. from that hotel to the Charles DeGaulle airport
6. and around in the cities we want to explore - London, Edinburgh and Paris

Surrrreee...no problem! 😟pass the rum...

Thoughts on "Day 0"

 Because of *waves hands vaguely* stuff...we will have a full day in and around London, England before our formal tour group meets up. By "full day", what I mean is that we'll be landing at Heathrow airport around 7am, after being on the plane for 7 hours, overnight, and our bodies will think it is 2am.

Everything I have been told about recovering from jetlag is that one should act in the "new" timezone as if it were your "old" timezone. Meaning that we should stay up all day, try to keep active, and do not sleep until after dinner sometime.

So the goal is to find some stuff to do on this Day 0 that will keep us active, but not be too strenuous, and then go back to the hotel at the airport for a good night's sleep. 

Our Wish List

The kids don't have much on their wish lists. I realize that this is my dream trip, not theirs, but they do really want to experience a new country and see "cool stuff". This is a good thing because it means that they have no idea what there IS to see, so if we miss something, they won't even realize it. SA just wants to see "lots of castles" and Liverpool. Ok, that I can manage. (Liverpool is on the Trafalgar Tour we are taking - part of the reason we booked it.) 

I, on the other hand, have a rather long list of things I want to see in London. I strongly suspect I won't get to see them all, but I'm going to try!  The list includes:

• "Big Ben" (part of the Trafalgar Tour)
• Windsor Castle
• Tower of London
• Parliment buildings (Trafalgar)
• Changing of the guards
• Buckingham Palace (Trafalgar)
• St. Paul's Cathedral
• eat at a cafe along the Thames
• "just wander" the streets and take in the local culture

As you can see, there are more than a few things that are on my list that are not part of the formal tour, however, Day 1 and Day 2 of the tour both include "free time" to take in the sights of London. However, without a detailed itinerary yet, I don't know how MUCH free time, or when. So, this is what I'm factoring in when planning our Day 0.

At first, I thought about just doing a Hop On Hop Off  (or HOHO) bus tour.  London actually has 2 of them, there's so much to see. I figured this might be a nice way to get our bearings, see some stuff (even if it's just driving by), but not exhaust ourselves.  One of the stops on this tour is the Tower of London, so I thought we might even get off and do that tour before getting back on and going "home".

Well, then I tried to put together the logistics of the day. We need to start with getting through immigration/customs, finding our hotel, getting there with all our luggage, determining if we'll get an early check-in or not, and depending on that answer - dropping the luggage somewhere, possibly getting changed...or not...and THEN we can look for transportation to go wherever we're going. 

So I was thinking ...11am-ish?...that should be when we're done with all the above. Of course, if things go as well as some people online say, it could be 9am. If it goes even worse than "average" it could be 1pm. So we shall be as flexible as possible...but then I went to a Facebook group with helpful people who live in/travel to London a lot and proposed my idea...and got a lot of constructive feedback. The best tip of all, however, was that the Windsor castle is MUCH closer to the airport than I thought (yeah - first lesson learned: look at a damn map when planning out this crap), and includes a castle, cathedral, and little town to explore...meaning we can take as long or as short a time as we need or have energy for. 

I still haven't bought our timed entry tickets. I'm just worried that if I buy them for noon, we'll have 3 hours to kill before going. If I buy them for 11am, we'll be delayed and not be able to get there til 2. Blarg! What a dilemma! And so, as of writing this, I am stuck in this "fear of making a decision" mode. So if you actually have read this far, please PLEASE leave me a comment and let me know what you think YOU would do in this scenario? (I promise I will NOT blame you if I make the same decision and it goes wrong! LOL) I am learning that listening to others helps me learn about myself. I really want to know.