A Disney Parks Around the World Journey: The Planning Part I

Read about the inception of the trip here.

Read about how the trip turned out on the semi-live blog here.

Of note, this was written about 5 days pre-trip, so we have no idea how good or bad these plans are gonna turn out, and some plans will likely change just based on last second audibles. Everything can crumble faster than a Chips Ahoy cookie dumped in milk as our as planes get delayed, aircraft swaps occur, and bad weather sets in.

We’ve traveled enough to know that man plans and God laughs. Let’s just hope he doesn’t laugh while Kendall is being run over by a White Toyota Landcruiser this time. We can only hope. Given its Christmas time, I guess he could use a reindeer instead.

I hope to have time to retrospectively review each portion of the trip in terms of what worked and what didn’t for future planners after the trip is done. There will be full price transparency as well as I know that anyone thinking of doing a similar trip will be very interested in the overall cost. In researching for this trip, there are only a very limited number of people that have ever done this, many of whom did the Adventures by Disney trip. There are even less that planned it independently that have posted on a blog, facebook group, reddit or forum. From what I can find, we’re the only family to do this with a child, during Christmas break, and primarily using points and miles for the airfare portion of the trip.

So now that the idea was planted, and we had our flight to Shanghai booked, it was time for this little seed of an idea to either grow into a beautiful rose with some thorns, or an all out briar patch. The biggest hurdle for planning would be keeping the cost down for the flights using either points and miles or finding cheap airfare during the holiday travel season. The second biggest hurdles was fitting this all in primarily during Christmas Break to limit the amount of time our daughter would miss from school.

We live in a small rural town in eastern Kentucky, and as such access to large airports with affordable direct flights is very difficult. That being said, we have the Huntington-Tri State Airport (HTS), a small two gate airport, 25 minutes from our house that operates two daily flights on American Airlines to Charlotte, NC.

The vast majority of time using this airport is a no go, as the AA flights are extremely cost prohibitive, especially when buying for a family. However, it also has Allegiant flights to Sanford, FL which is a small airport an hour away from WDW. This makes it very easy for us to hop a flight straight to Disney World when we want to go. In terms of planning, at the BARE minimum we had to leave on December 20th so we at least had Dec. 21st to do all 4 WDW parks in one day since our initial flight from Miami to Paris was on Sunday, Dec. 22rd at 10:35PM.

As you can see below, Dec. 20th is not an option.

So Dec. 19th was the winning date by default. Thankfully, it was a midday flight, so our daughter could go to school a half day, and only miss the Friday before Christmas break. That day is typically reserved for holiday movies and games so we didn’t exactly feel awful having her miss one full day. A little known fact about Allegiant, but you can save $22 dollars per flight segment per person by buying your ticket at the airport. The flight cost was originally $468, but we saved $22 dollars a ticket by buying at the tickets at the airport, for a total of $402 including our carry on luggage.

Yes, you read that right. We are team carry-on, and will do a 19 day around the world trip with only carry ons. The logistics of packing for such a trip with only a carry on and backpack per person, will be covered at a later date by Kendall.

A huge bonus of going to Orlando is that’s where my parents retired so to help with cost, they will traditionally pick us up from the airport. We also stay with them 99 percent of the time to cut cost so it is exceedingly rare for us to stay on property. However, since this is bucket list trip, we decided that we were going to stay on property at every resort. In our previous iteration of this trip in 2020, we had booked off property at all the Asian parks to save on cost. This time we were going to do a total 180 and try and stay at the flagship or “Disneyland” hotel at every resort.

For WDW, that meant staying at the Grand Floridian if possible. However, in an effort to try and save some money, we decided to rent Disney Vacation Club (DVC) points for the domestic portions of our trip. For Disney World we used David’s Vacation Club Rentals.

Unfortunately, there were not any Grand Floridian rooms left, however, we were able to book at Disney’s Polynesian Villas in a Standard View Deluxe Studio.  Being a monorail hotel, we felt this was pretty close to our goal of a flagship or “Disneyland” hotel. Given it is the absolute busiest time of the year for Disney World, it would have cost a monstrous $3840 for 3 nights if we had booked with cash, but by renting DVC points we booked the room for $1638. A savings of a $2202.

We debated doing two park days, the 20th and 21st, doing two parks a day, but we’ve always wanted to do all 4 parks in one day. Since this is a Disney parks bucket list trip we also decided to start knocking off items on that Disney bucket list and doing four parks in one day was one of them. So we decided we’d make the 20th a rest day in preparation for the marathon of four parks in one day on the 21st.

Given we are actually staying at the Polynesian, it just made sense to book Ohana for breakfast that morning, especially given Lucy loves Stitch. In another check the bucket list box move, we decided to book the Hoop Dee Doo Revue for 4:00 PM that day as well, as we have never seen it. To prep for our four park gauntlet the next day, we also originally planned to call it an early night so we could be well rested.

In the most fortunate of circumstances, my plans were abruptly changed when Notre Dame made the college football playoffs this year, and were slotted at an 8:00 PM kickoff time against Indiana University. I will say I am eternally grateful to the football Gods for giving Notre Dame the Friday evening game as if they played on Saturday, our park day, there was just no way I would be able to watch it.

So rather than a nice relaxing evening cuddling in bed at a reasonable time, I will instead be out watching the game somewhere most likely sweating bullets. Kendall and Lucy are not exactly football fans, and that’s putting it mildly, and will as such be tucked in bed snug as a bug in a rug, long before I am done yelling at a TV somewhere.

Win or lose, December 21st will be our attempt to do the four parks in one day challenge. We plan to start at Animal Kingdom, and then move on to Hollywood Studios. We will then go to EPCOT and end at Magic Kingdom. Doing this much park hopping during the Christmas season is definitely not ideal. However, being massive Disney fans, we have always dreamed of doing a VIP tour, or getting a “plaid” as Disney fans call it.

As is everything at Disney, they are incredibly cost prohibitive, charging anywhere from $450-$900/hour with a maximum of 10 people, with a 7 hour minimum. For the Christmas season, it’s of course the max cost of $900/hour, or $6300 total plus tip which is way more than we’re willing to spend especially given we only have 3 people. As I am always trying to find a way to cut cost, I did discover a Disney VIP Tour Share Facebook group, where people can join together to share the cost of a VIP tour. As of this writing, we were able to form a group of 9 people to split the cost to make it a marginally more palatable $700/person total. We will do Animal Kingdom on our own and part of Hollywood Studios and join up with our VIP tour at Hollywood Studios and then hop over to Epcot and then end our day at Magic Kingdom with Happily Ever After.

Under standard circumstances, we NEVER would have joined a VIP tour, but we’ve been skimping on our Disney trips for years, never buying any extras, souvenirs, photo pass, genie +, face paint, or upcharged experiences, and doing minimal dining and snacks. We only stayed on property if it was a paid business expense. So we decided for this trip, we were going to do ALL the things for once. We were going to now become the “Yes” family. YOLO, we decided to completely go all out for this trip as tomorrow is NOT guaranteed. As they say, “You can’t take it with you.”

Assuming we survive our four parks day, the next day, December 22nd we needed to get to Miami. Our options were fly, drive or take the new Brightline train that goes to Miami. My first instinct was to check if there were any reasonable mile redemptions for a flight. I managed to find some award space on Flying Blue which is the Air France/KLM frequent flyer program. There were flights from Orlando for only 5,000 miles plus $16 in fees for a total of 15,000 miles and $48 in fees for three people for the short flight to MIA. I had some Flying Blue miles already sitting in the account from when we had to reprice some flights earlier this year so I figured might as well use them.

After booking the flight, we found that it was just 4,900 Delta Skymiles per person to upgrade to business class. I have an incredibly hard time using my Delta Skymiles for anything, and typically would not use them for such a short flight, but in keeping with the theme of this trip, we said “Why not?” So we used the miles for the upgrade. This flight would normally have been $822 in business for 3 people, but was just 29,700 and $48 in fees, so not a bad use of miles. To further keep the cost down, my parents are our personal uber since they live in Orlando, so our cost to get to and from airports is thankfully zero.

The next part of the trip is without a doubt the single most stressful part logistically. Our flight leaves Miami at 10:35PM and lands at 1:20PM Paris time. The flight to Shanghai leaves at 11:30PM Paris time giving us only 10 hours to go to the two Paris parks, Disneyland Paris and Walt Disney Studios Park. We have been to Disneyland Paris previously in 2018, so we were ok with just a very quick visit to those parks.

We just needed enough time to get there, take a picture, ride at least one ride per park and have a snack at each park. This was an arbitrary rule we made up as a requirement to say we had actually visited a park.

From my research, the most efficient way to get to Disneyland Paris is the high speed train. From the airport to Disneyland Paris via the TGV, the high speed train, is just a 10 minutes ride.

The TGV only runs once an hour around the time we arrive, so if just miss it, it will be another hour till the next one. If we took a car it takes 45-60 minutes based on traffic so taking a taxi or car service does not speed things up any, and is about the same price. There is also significantly more variability due to traffic.

Unfortunately, there is just no great way to plan for this part of the trip, as we are at the complete mercy of when our plane lands and how long immigration is. Anyone that has flown through Charles De Gaulle International airport knows that it is a complete crap shoot as to how long immigration is. It could be 10 minutes or it could be an hour and it’s total luck. Because we are flying business class we at least do get to disembark the plane first, and there is a priority line at immigration for business class, but even with these advantages, Charles De Gaulle is still a nightmare.

Helping at least ease some of the anxiety is that it arrives early or on time 79% of the time over the last 60 days. However, a 10 percent cancellation rate is definitely not ideal…. Fortunately, unless hell is freezing over, snow will at least not be a factor when departing from MIA.

With a ton of luck we’ll have up to a maximum of 6 hours at Disneyland Paris. More realistically, it will likely be between 4-5 hours, which is still ample time to go between the two parks and accomplish our mission. We’ll buy the Premier Access, which is the international version of the Lightning Lanes, for whatever ride seems feasible given the limited time we have.

Our priority at Walt Disney Studios Paris is Avengers Assemble: Flight Force which is a retheme of Rock n Roller coaster. We loved the Crush coaster the last time we were there, but want to try something new as this was still Aerosmith themed in 2018.

For Disneyland Paris we want to hit up Phantom Manor. We missed this the last time, as our kids struggled with Haunted Mansion previously, so we decided to wait till they were older before we do another iteration it .

We’d like to get back to the airport by 8:30 PM – 9:00 PM to give us some time to go to the lounge, get a quick shower, some food and then get to our gate. If we can survive this portion of the trip in theory the rest of the trip should be significantly easier given we have at least a couple nights at each destination and not just a layover.

To be continued in Part II here.

Read about how the trip turned out on the semi-live blog here.