[Disnyfan83]

Well, this trip seemed doomed from the start, so I don't know why I'm sooo sad. We just wanted a quick getaway for President's day. First, Our son didn't want to go, and was just being an all around pain of a teenager. He, of course, came around, and the kids decided that they wanted to go to Universal since we have never been there on all our many treks to Florida. They wanted to stay at the Hard Rock so we could get front of the line access. well, when I called Universal, they didn't have a room at ANY of their resorts! YIKES! Talk about busy! I then called AAA to see if they could do anything for me. With them I booked two nights at PC and two nights at Hard Rock, plus purchased 4 2-day universal tickets for a grand total of $1440 which seemed a little high to me. When I asked the agent to give me a breakdown as to what each thing cost, she said she couldn't at this time, but would go over everything once all my paper work came in. So I bit the bullet and gave her my credit card number. That was Monday...since then, we've had a teeny tiny storm that came through and iced the roads a bit. Our school system closed down for both Thursday AND Friday, and now they have taken our two days around President's day as the makeup days!! Since my son is a junior in High School, it's just not a good thing to take him out of school for two days for "fun." So when I tried to cancel the rooms (Knowing I would have to eat the park tickets), the travel agent said "Sorry, you shouldn't have declined the insurance!" This surprised me because we never even talked about insurance! Well, we went around and around for quite a while 'til I finaly gave up, and told her that I would come in and get all the paper work from her and just take a major loss on the trip. She just called me back and said she could get most my money back and just be charged a trip cancelation fee. Well, this was a $200 lesson in why I have ALWAYS made all my own trip arrangements and don't use a travel agent.
Yikes - this is really long! Sorry about that - I just really needed to vent! Oh well, hopefully I'll get to WDW this year. Don't worry, I'll keep trying!
I guess I need to turn off my ticker - SIGH!

[Cavey]

Oh, I'm so sorry. I can't believe your school system has the freedom to change the calendar like that! In Illinois, we have a set last day of school. Snow days can extend that up to one week. If we have more than a week of snow days (very rare), it is taken out of spring break days. But everyone knows this, and would know of the snow days months in advance.

I can't believe they can change it so quickly. Send a bill to the school district for the cancelled trip. I'd be amused to see how they'd react.

[dznygrl]

Oh Disnyfan83, what a bummer!! I'm glad you were able to get most of your money back...if you hadn't been able to get any of it back, that would have just been WRONG.

P.S. I don't mind listening to your venting at all! If you ever need to let it all out, we have a special thread especially for venting!! Feel free to join us any time.
http://www.disneycentral.com/forum/s...ad.php?t=14867

[Disneyfever]

So sorry to hear that you had to cancel your trip (and were charged for it!). That is SO disappointing. I'll admit, I would have been very tempted to just take the kids out of school for the two days. My husband feels like you do though, and he does not like the kids to miss school for any reason. But I feel like hey, what will they remember more in 5 years, a few days of school or an awesome trip? Our school system does the same thing though, if we miss too many days for bad weather, they will cut into the holidays. But a lot of kids in our school go on trips during regular school days, they just make up the work.

I can't believe they charged you $200 to cancel the trip!!! Well, you will feel better when you can start planning your next trip. That will give you something to look forward to.

[Disnyfan83]

thanks for the support guys! Unfortunately, the Friday and Monday of President's weekend were our official "snow make up days", but who knew we would have used them up so quickly! We only have one more snow make up day (April), so we better not get anymore bad weather!!

[Jen]

I'm so sorry to hear about this!

We're lucky here. We have 11 snow days built right into our school calendar (two of them were used while we were in WDW last week) and any left over days just means the kids get out of school earlier than planned. My kids start school earlier thought, in August, but they're always out of school no later than the first week in June.

Maybe you can sell your universal tickets on ebay? This way you don't have to lose that money as well.

Jen

[MJD]

Disny fan,

Sometimes a family get away and some quality time together is a definite must. How many days total would he miss? Would missing them be that detrimental? That is a big hit. I'm sure you're not the only ones in that predicament. Is Presidents week their winter vacation week? Sorry for the disappointment.

[Disnyfan83]

We still have a Spring break week around Easter. We are taking a cruise (not on Disney!) with my husband's side of the family. There will be eleven of us from age eight to eighty three!! So we still will have a nice vacation. The quickie trip to Disney was really more for me than the whole family. I get VERY morose when I don't get down to WDW - and you know what they say - "When Momma aint happy, nobody's happy!"

[woohoo]

I think you should have left the kids home with a sitter (you never can trust a teenage in an empty house - I know - I had some awesome parties) and go without them- they did not want to go anyhow right?

[DisneyTeacher]

I am sorry about your trip, this just means you need to start planning another WDW trip now. I know I feel better with the dates set and a plan in action, even if it is a little far off.