July 16, 2012

Vacation Planning

So first, an update with Swagbucks...I emailed them back to respectfully ask that they reactivate my account, since I never had multiple accounts.  I was told, no we are not going to do that.  I emailed them back again, asking to know what they used as a basis to show that I had multiple accounts, and surprise surprise I didn't receive a response back.
So. I went to the Better Business Bureau and filed a complaint.  I am waiting to hear what their response is there.  Apparently there are quite a few complaints that are exactly the same as mine.  If they reinstate after this complaint, I will cash out any SBs there, and never use it again.

Now, on to the fun stuff.  I started to plan for the vacation in January.  We have already booked the cruise and our flights.  We are flying into Tampa but we will fly back from Orlando.
We know that we need hotels for Tampa and Orlando, that I have started to 'think' about, but we haven't decided on anything yet.  We know we need to rent a car for Tampa and for Orlando, but we can't decide on which rental agency to use.  About the only thing money-wise that I have actually looked at and nearly fainted from were the tickets to Disney World and Universal.  I looked at Disney through AAA since we are members, but they only have discounted tickets for 3 days.  I think J's work may get discounted tickets for it, so I will have him look.  If we do have to buy directly from Disney, it's $89/day so $178 for both of us.
Universal does have 1 day tickets through AAA and they are $123/day but that gets you both parks.  Total for both of us $246.

Total for both days for both of us....$424. And that doesn't include taxes!
I had started a budget of $3000 for spending money and fun for the cruise and extra days.  I'm thinking I'm going to have to UP that budget significantly.

Here I thought I was doing good with the budget I had started, and here I was most likely WRONG. But, I'm glad I'm doing this 6 months from when we are supposed to leave, so it is NOT a surprise and we don't have to put out the credit cards to cover something we weren't expecting.  If we have money remaining after the vacation, great! Goes into a vacation surplus or into savings.
Better to be over prepared than under prepared methinks :)

Have you ever had a vacation where you either under or over budgeted for?

1 comment:

jpkittie said...

good for you for checking into all of this so much ahead of time... it will certainly help you out in being prepared!!!