A Disney Parks Around the World Journey: The Inception

Read about how the trip turned out on the trip report here.

It’s been a bit since we posted on our blog, but we have received a bunch of requests to do some blog articles about our upcoming Disney around the world trip so just like The Eagles we are getting the band back together one last time. This will not be a live blog, but will be a variety of articles about the logistics and planning along with a “dead” blog, if that’s even a term, where we post what we did after the fact likely in a live blog type fashion.

For those interested solely in the planning aspect, you can click here.

We’ve been asked many times how we spawned the idea for this trip. We had previously heard of the 115,000 USD Adventures by Disney trip that was a 23 night around the world Disney extravaganza via a private 757, but due to the cost it was something we had never seriously considered. Apparently, given it only had 3 total completed trips ever, 1 in 2023 and 2 in 2024, and no further trips planned for the future, the vast majority of people also never seriously considered it. This trip was initially advertised in 2022, and discussed on many blogs, including our personal favorite, Disney Tourist Blog.

We had already scheduled a scaled down version back in August of 2019 before the Adventures by Disney extravaganza ever came to fruition. Initially we had planned a trip to all the Asia Disney Parks during Spring Break of 2020. Our airfare, hotels, tours, and park tickets were booked and paid for and we were just waiting to go until God decided that would just be too much fun.

We had the joy of cancelling our travel plans in January of 2020 before most people had even heard of Covid 19.

Unfortunately, due to circumstances beyond our control, such as Kendall getting run over by a car in 2022 in Zimbabwe, we had to further delay our plans to do this trip.

That is the story of a lifetime that if you haven’t read about it, you can read about it here as it would take way too long to describe the insanity of what happened. If you know any Hollywood screenwriters, we definitely feel it’s at a minimum worthy of becoming a Lifetime movie.

So What Exactly Happened?

Now two and half arduous years later, Kendall has finally recovered enough that we felt comfortable enough to try and plan this trip again.

Over the last 14 years, we have accumulated a large number of points and miles, and decided it was time to finally start using them and what better way to burn some miles than going to Asia. So in January of 2023, I began to search for award availability so I could use my miles to get to Asia. Given the short length of the trip and distance we planned to traverse, it was my hope to book in business class to help ease the fatigue and jet lag.

For those who do not play the points and miles game, award availability for business class flights can be very scarce, so you need to start far in advance of your trip. This is even more so true when you are planning a trip around a holiday season, and it gets even more difficult if you are looking for more than 1-2 people. Given we had planned to go Christmas Break of 2024 and needed 3 seats to a very popular destination with minimal date flexibility, we were shooting for the moon to find a flight that would work. Also, when booking award seats you also very rarely go out of your home airport and often have to reposition to another city in the US to get to your flight.

After searching a plethora of frequent flyer programs and different departures cities, I was finally able to find a reasonable redemption in business class on Air France. The flight left out Miami and had a 10 hour layover in Paris, and then continued onto Shanghai for 261,250 miles and $1260 in fees which for business class is a very good deal to get to Asia. The cash price for that one way flight at the time of booking would have been a monstrous $59,293 dollars.

(Note: Pic below priced for 4 passengers)

Given the insane cash cost, being able to use our miles for the trip definitely made something previously not feasible, now feasible. Also adding to the excitement was that we were flying in Air France’s newest business class cabin, that had the pods with doors on them. These are rating by many AV enthusiasts as the best business class seat on a European Carrier. The bulkhead row was even available on one flight which has even a larger amount of space than a normal business class seat.

The next biggest logistical hurdle was how to get back to the US in business class from Tokyo, which was our final stop in Asia. Unfortunately, the number of award seats in business class seats from Japan is very very low, and despite extensive award searching I was unable to find any award seats. However, I did learn about a low cost subsidiary of Japan Airlines named Zipair. They offer a very stripped down business class product for a significant discount. The pricing history for the previous year for a NRT-LAX flight in business class for that time of year was around $750 USD which is an absolute bargain for business class and not much more than just standard economy on many carriers. Most carriers for this time of year would charge about $4000 dollars for a single seat in business class, so the potential to pay just $750 a seat definitely felt like a bargain.

Zipair releases their seats for December typically in late July, so given it was just January, I would have to wait for them to open bookings. While not as cheap as booking with points and miles, a business class seat for $750 is a pretty decent deal for that long of a flight. This gave us an economical and comfortable way to get back from Asia.

So now our flight path to get to and from Asia was taking us to Miami, Paris, and Los Angeles. I then realized that the cities we were flying through just happened to have or in the case of Miami, be very close to all the other Disney parks. A light bulb went off in my brain, and I told Kendall, “We’re pretty much flying near or by every Disney Park. Why don’t we just do them all?” Kendall, being one to always go along with my crazy plans, she responded, “Sure!” Thus the general premise of the trip was born. We still needed to book the interAsia flights, and our flights to and from our home in eastern Kentucky, but the two biggest logistical hurdles of the trip we had figured out.

As I stated earlier, we had previously heard of the Adventures by Disney around the world trip, but at a price tag of 115,000 USD, per person, that was just a LITTLE out of budget.

Also, unlike the $115,000 USD Adventures by Disney trip, our trip would have lie flat seats, so we can actually sleep comfortably on the plane. It blows my mind that for $115,000 dollars, the seats on the ABD trip only recline and do not lie flat, like they have on most international long haul flights. The ability to lie flat and sleep is the #1 appeal to most people for booking a business class seat, and to pay $115,000 dollars and not have a lie flat seat is just mind boggling to me.

Also, when I looked into the ABD trip, the time was disproportionately spent in the US parks, which I thought was odd, as the main incentive for the market for that trip would likely be people who want to spend time at Disneyland Paris and the Asia parks.

The trip despite its 23 night length only spends three nights in Tokyo, two nights in Hong Kong, and two nights in Shanghai. It also added on two nights at the Taj Mahal and one night at Pyramids in Cairo which could have been used to spend more time in the Asia parks. They also added 2 nights to go to San Francisco to see the Walt Disney Family Museum and to stay at Skywalker Ranch. I am not sure why the trip planners chose to only spend a total of 7 nights between Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Tokyo, but upon planning our trip I would definitely to devote more time toward the Asia parks as those are the only ones we had not been to many times before.

I am betting the stops were likely logical points to refuel the 757, as it is not a true long haul aircraft, and they decided to combine the refueling stops with a landmark. Regardless, now that we had the idea and a flight schedule to get to Shanghai, and how to get back to the US, it was time to plan the rest of flights to Orlando, Paris, Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Tokyo, during Christmas break, the busiest time of the year for travel, and attempt to do it with points and miles.

I’ve planned many logistically complex vacations before, including many WDW vacations, multi week domestic and international road trips, and European city tours, but planning for 12 Disney Parks during Christmas break was daunting even for me.

Just planning a trip to Disney World requires an intense amount of research and this trip will take not only Disney World’s quirks into account but the other 8 parks in the world as well. Bring it on!

Read about the planning here.

Read about how the trip turned out via the trip report here.