Category: Newbies (& those who don’t travel often)

You’re Going To WDW For The First Time – How Do You Even Start To Plan?! Here Are Some Tips

With over 20,000,000 visitors in 2017 alone, Walt Disney World (WDW) is the undisputed leader in theme park attendance. It’s a huge complex, with four major theme parks, over 140 restaurants, over twenty five hotels, three 18-hole golf courses, two full-sized water parks, a miniature golf course, a shopping district, special events galore, and dozens of other options packed into a resort that encompasses nearly 25,000 acres or just shy 40 square miles.

For those who visit WDW on a regular or even semi-regular basis, they learn how to negotiate everything that the resort has to offer. But for newbies who have never been before, or who haven’t gone in decades, planning their WDW vacation can be a daunting and even overwhelming task.

Here are some things to make things easier and hopefully give you the lay of the land…

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Understanding Hotel Taxes, Resort Fees & Deposits For Incidentals

When you find a hotel rate, especially in the United States, you will rarely, if ever pay just that amount. Just like when you purchase an item in the U.S., unless it says that tax is included, chances are good that you’ll have to pay tax on top of the advertised price; that’s just how we charge for things in the U.S. The same goes for hotels. Unless an advertised price explicitly says that taxes & fees are included, you can bet that something(s) is/are going to be added on to make your final price. And in recent years, some hotels have added on something sneaky called a “resort fee,” too. Plus you often have to put down a deposit for incidentals. But let’s start at the very beginning (a very good place to start):

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What You Get If You Sign Up For These Hotel Programs

Miles and points are two ways to improve the way you travel and getting a healthy balance of hotel points is a major part of that. Even if you don’t go out of your way to collect hotel points through other means, just getting points for the stays you pay for can eventually earn you enough for a night or two off on a future stay. That’s money you can use for something else on your trip.

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We used our Starwood points for a room at the Great Northern Hotel in London – it’s just outside King’s Cross Station

Nothing in the miles and points world is free and keeping these points active does require work to make sure the points you have don’t expire.  However using a website like AwardWallet can help you keep track of all of your points and miles accounts.

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What To Do When An Airline Breaks Something In Your Luggage

I went to New York with a friend not long ago, just for a couple of days, to see a bunch of Broadway shows. We were only going to be out of town from Tuesday to Friday morning, for about 70 hours total, so we were able to get away with just using carry-on luggage, thereby saving us the time of having to pick up our luggage from baggage claim, as well as the worry of them losing our bags or breaking something in them.

Since I grew up in Brooklyn and Staten Island, whenever I’m in Manhattan, the times when we’re not in shows are generally dedicated to food – either the yummy things, like Continue reading “What To Do When An Airline Breaks Something In Your Luggage”

Free Disney Cruises! Free Airline Flights! (And Other Travel Hoaxes)

Hoaxes and scams. If you’re on Facebook, you know you’ve seen then. You can win two free tickets on Southwest Airlines! Or on Delta Airlines! Or on JetBlue! Or you can get a free Disney Cruise! Or a free Celebrity Cruise! Or a free Princess Cruise! Or you can win an all-expenses-paid vacation! Or an RV! All you have to do is like this page! Or share this page! Or send it to 13 of your closest friends! Or reply to this message with any number between 1 and 100!

 

Hoaxes have been around for about as long as people have been buying and selling things. Whether it was a traveling salesman hawking a mysterious liquid guaranteed to stop everything that ailed you to a Nigerian woman who said she lost her husband,
needed a small loan, and would pay you tenfold after her inheritance comes in, scams have been preying on the hopeful, the kind-hearted and the naive for centuries. Nowadays the hoaxes have become more high-tech, received via email, robocalls and Facebook, but they’re still all the same – give something to someone (money, contact info, shares, likes & replies) and receive nothing in return. Here’s a quick explanation from consumeraffairs.com of why scammers do this:

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