Sadly this trip has caused so much stress that I don't know how any of us adults are going to enjoy themselves. I could try to rant but... *siiiiiiiiiiigh* I totally GET why "Tantrums at Disney" are a thing because we've had so many already and we haven't even put on mouse ears!
I don't even know if I can explain it all without sounding like a whiny North American with First World Problems. Here goes!
Okay so this was intended as a family reunion meet-up sort of gathering in the state of Florida, because most of my family are:
1) too poor to travel and don't have the credit to debt themselves more
2)unable to obtain passports for various reasons and ...
3) my grandmother is in her 80's with leukemia and "nobody's sure how long she's got". Last time we scheduled a huge trip to the States for family, she backed out claiming health- but we all know it was because even 40 years after the divorce, she wouldn't be in the same room as her ex-husband.
4) we had gut-churning, sickening amounts of Reward Points that would be expiring on Dec 31, 2016. we had to book a trip or lose 13 years of collecting them. More on this later!
5) We had a gut-churning, sickening amounts of Avion points (points just for air travel, includes all insurances, concierge services, never expires, no blackout dates)
So I started planning a trip in which we could drive around and visit family all over the state and Disney wasn't even involved and we could go to the beach and blah blah blah normal vacation. Turns out my grandparents had sold their houses in FL AND their house in GA and nobody told me. And apparently my mom's senior citizen trailer park is super strict to the point of not even letting visitors into the park. So then it was, "Find a hotel because you can't stay with family". Okay. So the outset price on the trip just doubled.
Then mom tells me, "you know that's my busiest season so I'll be working the whole time so please just plan a birthday vacation for the little one." and I'm like.... oh great, now I have to rent a car. And know all the toll roads to use, have exact change, and deal with aggressive road raged drivers with GUNS? I HATE Florida, I used to live there and it sucked. And everytime I visit, it's worse. No offense to Floridians...
I didn't want to drive... we can't spend our living moments scheduling Uber pickups, AUGH! Okay where in Florida can we vacation safely as a family? DISNEY! we can stay on-resort and be all-inclusive! And other family members can just come to the parks when they can, if they can, right? And we can have a birthday party at Disney! Princesses!
Fast forward a week. Mom is now telling me that Grandmom won't even come down to FL because she wants to be close to her leukemia clinic in Nashville TN. THAT.IS.THE.REASON.FOR.THE.FLORIDA.YOU.STUPID.MORONS.I.JUST......
Thankfully when my husband threw the
Epic Man Tantrum, everyone got some sense into their head.
Then it turns out that very few of my family are actually able to travel or afford Disney because okay, yes, the last time I went was in 2001 but seriously, when did tickets become INSANE? Just getting into the MK for one day, is over $100! WHAAAAAAAAAAAAA WHOA WOW NO. This plan is getting seriously out of hand but now the
Epic Man Tantrum happened and We.Are.Having.This.Vacation. Think "National Lampoon" movies, because that's what we are practically dealing with. So maybe I can book something on Disney property that doesn't require theme park admission?????
Mom says she will light a fire to get family to understand we are NOT returning to the USA for the next FIVE YEARS - if you want to meet our child before she hits puberty, you need to figure out how to drive to Orlando.
Supposedly this Reward Company has "inclusive Disney packages" - but the phone operator tells us, "No, you just go online and decide what you want, then you call us back and we apply your Rewards Points." So we pick out what we want. My husband starts bugging the Rewards Company - who are backlogged with all the customers who are desperate to redeem points before expiration. Phone calls are 4 hours on hold at the absolute minimum. Finally after 2 weeks he "books" an appointment where the Specialist will call us back in ANOTHER 2 weeks. Meanwhile we watch all the resort options that we wanted ....dwindle away and sell out on the Disney website.
The Reward Company keeps assuring me that we will get what we want.
Meanwhile I find out that booking a space at a resort for a party is also NOT happening due to availability and budget. Also ordering a cake at Disney that would be suitable for the party started at $80, plus you have to stay on top of the pastry chefs to ensure that they understand you REALLY want the cake, because apparently 30% of the time, Cast Members screw up and forget your cake despite that you are pre-charged for it. And no characters can be on the cake due to concerns about them not being on-model! WHAAAAAAAAAAA if you order a Disney cake it should come with Mickey as a default standard OMG WUT.
Okay. Birthday party out the window. Delivered or picked up cake now out the window. Originally had 20 family members RSVP, now we are down to 3 - US. JUST US.
Rewards Company misses their appointment call-back. I had taken a whole day off work to deal with watching the small person while husband dealt with (what we thought) travel reservations. There was
Epic Man Tantrum: the Revenge when they called back..... while we were taking the kid to school. They called during the ONLY 20 minutes we were out of the house. Somehow through some miracle the Rewards Company managed to get ahold of us. However... they had a much different story than any of the other 15 people my husband had spoken to!!!!!
"No, we at rewards Company don't do "packages", our Partners do! And no, you don't pick out what you want and call us. You should have called us; we tell you what we offer."
Rewards Company now offers us a basic, standard, more boring package full of limitations and restrictions that is actually MORE expensive than going directly through Disney. "But you're redeeming those soon-to-expire points, right? It'd be worse to lose them and pay anything out of pocket, wouldn't it? Right? Except we forgot to tell you, the points ratio we list on the website has nothing to do with what our Partners offer - those are special prices at the time of your booking! Just for you! No, if want to talk to your wife about this, you'll lose the booking, you need to tell us NOW! Soooooo we can give you $3300 off the $6800 that the package would "cost" - that's only $3500 that you have to pay. What, no, we didn't say that you wouldn't be paying out of pocket!" Yes, I realize this is a complete and utter 180 from what they just said about costs. Now we start arguing with Rewards Company that we do NOT need the Partner Airfare - we have Avion points, they are much better than whatever Reward Company can offer. Package without airfare suddenly turns into only $1300 off the $6800.
Audience, keep in mind that this "package" cannot be accessed by the general public, so the value isn't actually valid - I wouldn't be booking THROUGH anyone third-party if I was booking direct through Disney. The price we have sitting in our shopping cart at Go DisneyWorld is actually $5500 flat-out.
Now we finally have Rewards Company book our package Their Way because obviously, all the options we wanted - the resort we wanted, the room type, the room size... it's all radically downgraded. We had to pay massively out of pocket. and what do we read in the newspaper headline the following Monday???? That the federal government had heard from The People and they said it was illegal for these points to expire now! Anyone who hadn't had their redemptions go through yet was granted a reprieve! Except... you can guess that doesn't include us!
Naturally the
Viking-level Epic Man Tantrum was to ensue over the minor detail that he has friends on Facebook who live in Florida; who, when they found out about our trip, were happy to let us AirBnB their place and borrow their car, if we had only *said* something...
At least we have managed to get three family members with actual purchased tickets now. The latest from Grandmom is that she was able to switch her timeshare week to the last three days of our being in Florida. And she isn't going to the parks. And this means it's a mostly-wasted park pass that day as we will have to leave Disney to go to her timeshare.
Massive amounts of cookies if you made it through all that! GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH
*beats a pinata into a flat shape*
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