My first EVER blog

As you can see from the title, I have never plunged into the depths of blogdom before.  I’ve always thought of blogs as being a self indulgent thing, and never considered that I would be one to do that.  But the other day, I had finished reading Lisa’s very good blog from her trip and thought, what the heck.  So I contacted Greg and here I am!  I won’t be fastidious or regular with this, just when the urge takes me.

In this one I’d like to cover our recent disappointment of having to cancel our Tokyo trip.  It was really self inflicted through a very poor planning decision, but nonetheless, it had to happen.  I plan to write a IMHO about my opinion of the impact of the financial crisis on travel from Australia, so this is more about us personally.

You see when we booked the trip the dollar was 105 yen.  We had planned to land at Osaka, spend a night look around then catch the train to Tokyo.  8 nights we had booked at the Palm & Fountain and then 4 nights at the majestic Disneyland Hotel.  After a train trip back to Osaka we had 3 more nights booked at the hotel right at Universal City for another few days looking around Osaka, Kyoto and also Universal before flying home.

At 105yen this turned out to be a decent holiday and good value considering our plans.  Once we booked it all, we then planned to buy the currency closer to christmas and then have everything set for our Jan 9 departure. 

Once the crisis hit and the dollar plummeted, I watched it and even at 90ish yen I still was confident that all would be OK and that it would level out shortly.  It shot through 80 and 70 quicker than I could react, and well that’s where are today, currently around 61 yen.  At 70yen, I was still prepared to stretch and go, but it never got back.

If it was only spending money that was impacted, it wasn’t so bad.  But when I made all the bookings, they would not allow me to pay in advance.  Booking direct with Hotels, that is reasonably common practice.  But that meant that the entire budget had to be taken with me, which is what caused the problem.  Perhaps I should have booked through a Travel Agent.  In hindsight, maybe, but I did speak with a couple at the time, and they offered me very little in the way of knowledge, support or confidence.  If you want something done properly …

So here we are!  2 days from xmas, and facing 2009 without visiting a Disney Park.  This is not ideal as we’re itching like anything.  January 20th 2006 was our last step inside a Disney park.  And our next now is not planned until December 2010.  But in the meantime, we have our good friends at DUD to help us through this tough time and the planning has started in earnest for that next trip.  I will be making better decisions for that one for sure.

Tokyo is not lost.  We are prepared to make a reactionary decision to go, if an opportunity presents itself that will be too good to refuse, so we have not taken it off the radar.  But for now though it’s soyanara to Tokyo 2009 for us.

Now that I’ve blabbered enough in my first self indulgent foray into the cyber world of journal making, I’ll finish up by wishing all of you in DUD land, your families and beyond a wonderful xmas and fun filled 2009 wherever you find yourself in the world!

Anthony