Son muchos temas, y yo simplemente no tuve tiempo de traerlos a la bombilla. Pero here's hoping it'll change. At least I can say that estos meses e estado planeando como celebrar este año de casado entre otras cosas. Making vacations is a serious business, so hoy estoy por decirles como estoy haciendolo.
Lamentablemente y happymente logramos come up with an accord me and my wife. Iremos a Disney (my first time in that place) en Septiembre.
For now we have el carro, el vuelo, el hotel, los tickets, el 'schedule', las cosas que hay que comprar (bills...) confirmado. It was a pain doing all of the planning.
So, yo como soy una persona que le gusta ayudar (lol) voy a postear aqui what we've done up till today.
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| Photo by JetBlue Captain Ian Duncan jetblue.com |
So we found the dates and reserved from the jetblue.com site. Just the flights. Nos salio a $120 aprox cada ticket para Septiembre de Puerto Rico a Orlando y $122 los tickets de regreso 5 dias later.
Now, the good thing we found out was that I could buy the tickets through the jetblue site with "Bill me later" or as of August 10th, "Paypal credit". That meant we could buy the tickets and not pay a dime until 6 months later. We had the money, but why not just keep it and then just schedule to pay it a month later? It's a great deal since we can use that money to cover the security deposit for the rental or hotel.
This was just a light to my eyes moment; los hoteles cobran un deposito de seguridad y los car rentals también ponen un hold donde no puedes usar ese dinero hasta 2 semanas después.
So we paid with bill me later and got 6 months to actually pay. We got our tickets, confirmation number, etc. All for around $450 which was scheduled to be paid 5 months from that date to avoid interests. Which meant we had the money for the security deposits and wouldn't really be affected by the hold.
Next was the hotel and car rental. We did a big search on google through google hotel finder but we couldn't really find a good deal from there. Trip adviser had some nice tips but not many hotels that satisfied our needs.
We wanted a not expensive but not a motel place to sleep and the entries we were receiving were just pretty high for the dates we were going.
After using google for a bit we stumbled upon the bookit.com travel people. Nos pusimos un poco nerviosos porque los precios eran extremadamente cheap. I mean.. 49 bucks a night? en un hotel con desayuno, parking gratis y shuttles a Disney (no solo el sitio esta a 10 minutos del ticket center). Bookit had a great way of customizing the search results and it was just great for us. The prices were amazing too.
So we went over to buy the hotel reservation and to our surprise they could prepare a custom package for our reservation. They had the option of including car rental and park tickets to the order for discounted prices.
It seemed too good to be true so before checking out I searched for reviews and there were a lot of negativity but there was a lot more positive entries which was enough for me.
I checked the comparison of the ticket prices. Universal studios tickets were the average cost, bookit just didn't include the taxes in their calculation so it appeared to be cheaper. Sea world were the same price. Disney had an interesting promotion "Buy 3 day ticket with park hopper and receive 2 extra days free" buying two tickets the deal summed up to around 680 dollars. Not bad right? Well I did the calculations and when you add up the taxes and service fees it goes up to 722 the same amount you would pay on the Disney site for a 5 day park hopper ticket.
It wasn't bad though since well... tendríamos todo en 1 solo sitio en vez de estar comprando todo por separado. Besides, we could scream at someone specific if something goes wrong instead of having to go through multiple people. So, we went with the Disney deal, got a Budget rent a car prepaid reservation and the hotel; our 7 days Orlando/Disney vacations summed up to around 1200 dollars.
Initially we were charged for the Disney tickets the same day, and the rest of the costs followed. We had our itinerary and started to read the fine print.Here's were it gets interesting. We had a few hiccups that explained the complains the site had.
Our budget rent a car reservation wasn't confirmed. I had to write an email for them to write it in into the itinerary (I then contacted budget through another email to confirm the reservation was done and they confirmed back).
The Disney tickets were "will call" which meant we will receive a reference number on my email, a number different from the one in the itinerary. It took 4 days to arrive. The Disney will call ticket is a pdf file with the amount of tickets, a bar code on top and side and the number assigned to them.
Some people were trying to use the voucher number on the itinerary to get into the park, when in reality it's the separate email that gives you access. So if you follow us into bookit.com for your next Disney trip make sure to contact them if you haven't received your Disney confirmation on a separate email in 4 days.
So, we had the car confirmed, the park with a valid 12 digit code (that can be linked to a fastpass+ thing on the site to re-confirm the validity of the tickets), and 3 rooms reserved under the same confirmation number for the hotel (which means they didn't really reserve a specific room, we'll get a random room once we get to the hotel).
Until last week I thought everything was right and dandy, pero había algo interesante con el rental. If you don't have a credit card (not a debit visa/master card) the rental company will have to check your credit score to give you the car. Ouch. I don't have a credit card, because I didn't really need it. I had half of my credit being used for other loans so it kinda made me nervous that I could get stuck in the airport.
This was only told to me After I paid for the rental. I'm ok, as long as I get my car though so I went on and filled some secured credit card requests to instead of having to "lend" the rental company I would just put the security deposit into a secured credit line and avoid the hazzle.
Today I'm waiting for the credit card confirmations, if I can't get these I'll probably have to deal with the credit check and possible option of being stranded on the Orlando airport.
The service in bookit? was great and they do provide great customer support IF you have time so if you use them and see something odd in your itinerary write them an email or call them. Always confirm the things you bought through them. The hotel, the car, the tickets or flight (since they sell flights tickets too).
Remember to double check the rental, Avis and Budget are the same company so expect the same validations (credit check if you don't have a credit card). Hartz was a bit expensive but you could reserve from jetblue.com along with your flight which means you could put it up on your bill me later (or paypal credit) account and pay it 6 months later.
I sent an email to budget asking what the credit score limit is to get a rental approved and they replied that they wouldn't know. They did offer information as to which bureau they query. Budget rent-a-car does a credit score check against your equifax score.
According to creditcards.com most of the rent a car credit score checks require minimum 525 equifax score to allow you a rental with a debit card. I have a score of a bit over 600 so it 'should' allow me to pick up the car without any issues BUT I'm still waiting for the secured credit card confirmation to feel less pressured.
The hotel we took is Royale Parc Suites in Orlando. Mixed reviews tell me it's an average hotel so expect updates once we arrive. The best thing about it is that it's so greatly located it's crazy (it even has a flea market walking distance from the place).
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| Royale Parc Suites Orlando |
Let's see how it goes. Hopefully we'll arrive on the 31st to the airport and everything will be smooth. After doing so many confirmations the only thing that bothers me is the rental, but we'll see.
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