A Disney Parks Around the World Journey: Day 5 – Lemonade

“When life gives you lemons…”

Despite going to bed at 4:30AM I still woke up at 7:00AM for a whopping 2.5 hours of sleep. Not sure why I was up so early but it was likely due to the tornado of anxiety that just hit our plans. The issue is that unlike an overbooking, bad weather, or other mechanically related reasons that one may miss a flight this was a refusal due to their system flagging us as requiring a visa. Due to this the airline was no help at all and it lied on us and our resources to fix the problem they caused.

So the only option Air France gave me was to either cancel the flight and get our points, taxes and fees back, or try and fly on the 24th which we can easily run into the same issue unless we cough up a visa. I eventually came up with a variety of viable options that didn’t totally break the bank but it wasn’t easy given it was a last second booking DURING the holiday travel season. The options we had on the table were as such:

• Wait till the 24th and hope we can find a way to get a Chinese Visa. We could fly to DC today and back on the 24th in time for our flight to France. We have to hope the Chinese embassy can grant us a visa in time for us to get back to MIA for our flight. We will lose 2 days in Shanghai, but still do all 12 parks. This is moderately risky as there is zero guarantee the embassy will grant a visa in time for us to make the flight on the 24th.
• Do nothing and wait till the 24th in hopes there is a Christmas miracle and Air France gets their act together and actually realize that what we are doing is totally allowed. We would arrive in Shanghai 2 days late, but still have two more days in Shanghai. Issue is if we get the same supervisor in France when they call we are totally screwed. This is basically the highest risk, highest reward option.
• Fly business class to London on Virgin Atlantic for 270,000 miles and $606 in fees and then buy a flight on Vueling for $504 to Paris. We would spend 3 nights in Paris staying on Disney property, essentially swapping Shanghai for Paris. We’d visit Disneyland Paris for 3 days and then book Air France for 309,000 miles plus $908 in fees on the 27th, landing the night of the 28th in Hong Kong. This was the original date of our arrival to Hong Kong, and thus would meet up with our original itinerary. We unfortunately would cut Shanghai out in this scenario only going to 11 out of 12 parks, falling short of our dream of doing all 12 parks in one trip. It also unfortunately leaves us with only 7 nights in Asia instead of the original 11 nights making for a very fast stint on the opposite side of the world. Only doing 11/12 parks would be somewhat devastating, but this is by far the safest option and gives us the most control of our future.
• Kill the vacation altogether and go home with our head tucked between our legs. Unfortunately, travel insurance does not cover airline stupidity so if we did this any thing nonrefundable at this point would just be a loss. The ONLY upside to this option is I would likely go to the Sugar Bowl to watch Notre Dame play Georgia. GO IRISH!

Ultimately, we decided to kill the dream of doing all 12 parks and took Shanghai off the table. We chose to fly to London to Paris to Hong Kong. It was a really tough reality to accept, but we all decided we should at least complete the rest of the trip and cut the gangrenous limb off. The concept of leaving our fate in the hands Air France was just not something we could tolerate as we had lost all faith in them. It just goes to show you, you can play the game perfectly, follow all the rules and still lose. These are entirely first world problems, but it still doesn’t take the sting out. Something is better than nothing, and I felt totally confident that there should be ZERO visa issues for the remaining parts of our itinerary.

This would have cost us as significant amount out of pocket but thankfully we’ve stashed up a large amount of miles over the years so we can afford to burn some. The Virgin Atlantic segment alone would have been $8,408 dollars per person, so well over $25,000 for three passengers.

The Paris to Hong Kong segment on Air France was only marginally better and would have cost $14,070 for three passengers. I definitely did not have an extra $39,000 dollars just sitting around so thank goodness for our points and miles to help bail us out here.

I then proceed to start to rebuild an itinerary from now, December 23rd till Dec 28th for when we get to Hong Kong. I try and book the Disneyland Hotel in Paris for the 24th till the 27th, but apparently there is a rule there that for security reasons you can’t book a room unless it’s more than 30 hours from check in. So unfortunately our first night in Paris we will have to stay off property, as we aren’t allowed to book the 24th. I start looking at other hotel and Airbnb options. I find a pretty nice apartment on Booking.com just 10 minutes away from Disneyland Paris for just $134 dollars and reserve it. It was brand new with ZERO reviews when we booked it, so a small risk but it looked really nice and was in a great location so we thought we’d give it a shot.

One of my favorite benefits of being a Titanium Bonvoy member is the 4:00PM late checkout and it definitely came in real handy today given our flight wasn’t till 9:25PM. Lucy and I went to the gym for a short bit, but otherwise we just chilled in the hotel room for the day. We stayed as long as we could and left our room at 4:00 PM on the dot and catch the airport shuttle.

I checked in online prior to leaving so we already have a boarding pass which after yesterdays debacle was a huge wave of relieve.

While we already had a boarding pass, we still needed to check in with Virgin Atlantic for a passport check. On the way to the check in desk we stopped by the Air France check in desk as they were next to each other to see if they’d at least give me a free seat assignment on our newly booked Air France flight I had for my troubles. Nope. They said they could not waive the seat assignment fee which in business class for CDG-HKG flight would be nearly $500 dollars. I don’t need to pick my seats that bad, but if you get the bulkhead row on the aircraft we are on, there is a larger footwell. We go to security and this time they DO have our TSA precheck on our boarding pass. Not much of a decision of which line to pick today as they both have no line unlike yesterday where the TSA precheck was LONGER than the regular line.

The security line was soooo slow moving today. Not sure what exactly was going on as there did not seem to be any issues, but it took 15 minutes to get through security and it didn’t even have a line.

We finally finish up at security and head to the Delta Sky Club which is the main Skyteam lounge in MIA and since we were flying international business class with Virgin it gives us access. We were supposed to have been relaxing here last night, so there was a little bitter taste in my mouth about being here 24 hours later.

This lounge had recently been expanded in the last couple months so it feels pretty spacious. Overall, this lounge was pretty nice, and definitely a step up in comparison to the The Club at MCO that we were at yesterday. It’s no flagship lounge, but it’s definitely a decent outlying lounge for Delta. We chose some seats and settled in for the next couple of hours.

I walk around and look at the food options. They are pretty plentiful, but I’m still not very hungry due to stress of last 24 hours. In theory there should be no issues tonight and I’m slowly getting my appetite back so I decide to get some food.

I ended up picking up some honey bourbon chicken, plantains, and tofu jambalaya, and Kendall and I sit at the bar for a bit reflecting on the death of our quest to do all 12 parks on one vacation.

We all leave the lounge about an hour before our flight to get to the gate in time for boarding. Lucy always gets excited when we fly business as this is her chance to be one of the first on the plane which in turn makes us make sure we are at the gate early. We very rarely fly business class so it’s a real treat for her, as otherwise I am way too cheap to pay for priority boarding, seat selection, or any of those other paid perks and upgrades so we are always some high numbered zone in the rear of the plane and the last to board.

We board our plane, an A330-900, on time.

This is one of Virgin Atlantic’s newest planes and it has the new Upper Class suites, Virgin’s latest business class product. I’ve always wanted to fly Virgin Upper Class but typically it’s ungodly cost prohibitive, and even when using miles the taxes and fees are so crazy high in that the cost is still very high. We really lucked out on this last second booking in that the taxes were not absurdly high, albeit it was more miles than we would have liked.

Lucy get’s even more excited when the business class pod has a door on it and these do. Given this was a last second booking we didn’t exactly have much choice of seats as we took the last 3 seats in business class. We were assigned seats 8A, 8D, 8G at the rear of the cabin. The cabin is bathed in a magenta glow to give it an almost night club kinda vibe. It made for a very soothing cabin.

Once we boarded we were served sparkling wine, orange juice or a gin cocktail. I personally am not a gin fan but it wasn’t actually half bad.

I’ve tried business class on a number of carriers and I’d probably have to say this was my second favorite seat out of all of them, second only to Qatar. They handed out PJs which isn’t super common in business class these days, but we are sadly out of my size so I took the next size up.

Any business class seat is typically spacious, but they are definitely not all created equal. This felt pretty spacious to me but I’m not exactly the biggest person so it’s tough for me to evaluate a seat based on size, but it was definitely comfy enough. It came with the standard amenities you’d expect like headphones, amenity kit, screen, adjustable seat and a menu.

At 9:20PM we push off from the gate and take off on time. Shortly after take off they come around with some “crisps”, a British term for chips and shortly after brought a round of drinks.

Of note they had some higher end liquors like Grey Goose and Woodford Reserve which was a nice touch as some carriers pay less attention to the quality of alcohol served. I will say they definitely had a very attentive drink service. A lot of people like business class for the improved food service. I personally could care less. As you continue to read through this blog, you’ll fast discover my family are not fancy eaters.

They start the dinner service and I order the duck prosciutto, if that’s how you spell it, for an appetizer. I was not a fan.

I then chose the roast chicken for dinner. A nice and easily pronounceable item, which was also much more to my taste.

It was good and I ate most of it. Kendall chose the porcini mushroom ravioli and was not a fan and barely had any bites. Typically the more complex the name, the less likely we are to eat it. Why can’t they just serve chicken nuggets? Lucy just ate bread. I remember being a kid on an airplane and struggling to find food worth eating, so I can totally understand that and in no way fault her.

The dessert was also easily pronounceable. It was a nice and simple chocolate and salted caramel tower. It also tasted nice and simple and I enjoyed it as well.

Lucy tuckers out shortly after dinner as she is totally dead.

But Kendall and I decide to go and have a drink in the lounge on the plane. We were exhausted, but we’ve never been on a plane with a lounge before so we felt obligated to go try it out.

It’s been a looong last 24 hours, filled with anxiety, stress, and disappointments so after dinner I put down my seat, put the mattress pad on my seat, change into the provided PJs, and fall fast asleep.

Day 5, December 23nd, 2024 Step Count – 4,017 Steps

Total Step Count – 77,864

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Read about the previous day here.