PHS Clipper Band Disney 2020 8/28/19 Presentation
Agenda • Marching Band Items • Trip Dates • Airline Update • Hotel Update • Performance Update • Theme Parks • Trip Cost • Chaperones • Truck Drivers • Fundraising Opportunities • Trip Questions
Marching Band Items • Uniform Fittings (many volunteers needed) • Shoe & Glove Orders (extended deadline 9/7) • Band Jacket Orders (extended deadline 9/7) • Band Merchandise (order deadline 9/7) • Fall Clipper Crew (game day & contest volunteers & chaperones)
Trip Dates • Our trip is scheduled for Sunday, April 26th through Sunday, May 3rd or Monday May 4th. • There is the possibility of 1 missed school day, post vacation on 5/4. This will depend entirely on the quote for the return flight.
Jet Blue Info. • Our outbound flight has been booked for Sunday 4/26. We depart Boston @ 5:05pm and arrive Orlando @ 8:23pm. The flight is non-stop and all 110 booked seats are on the same plane. • We will meet at PHS at 1:00pm on Sunday 4/26 to check-in. We will start loading school busses at 1:30 with the goal to be departing no later than 2pm, arriving and unloading at Logan Airport for 3pm. There will be NO CHECKED BAGS • Jet Blue has yet to publish their flight schedule beyond 4/28 so our return flight is not yet booked. I expect that to happen in the next few weeks. Once booked, I will send out that notification via email.
Hotel Information • I am waiting for the Jet Blue return flight information to be finalized before securing a hotel quote and making a subsequent reservation. • We have stayed at the Courtyard Marriott in Lake Buena Vista for the previous 4 band trips. We are very familiar with this property and it has served our needs well. • I am also exploring the 2 new Universal Orlando Hotels as a possible new destination. They are the Endless Summer Resort & Dockside Inn. Both of these properties represent a change from our previous trips and have the added benefit of being located on Universal Studios property. • My primary goal is to keep the trip costs as reasonable as possible. The final cost of the Jet Blue return flight and the quotes I receive from the Hotels will be the determining factors. Stay Tuned! • Student rooms will be a quad occupancy. Students should start to think about a best buddy who they would feel comfortable sharing a bed with as I don’t want anyone sleeping on the floor or in the tub. Chaperones & staff rooms will be double occupancy.
Performance Update • While in Orlando, the Marching Band will be marching in a parade down Main Street in the Magic Kingdom. The exact date & time will not be made available to us until 6-8 weeks prior to our departure. • The Concert Band & Colorguard will have the opportunity to participate in educational performance-based workshops with Disney clinicians. • As a result of Spring construction in the parks, Festival Disney dates have been reduced and will not be an option after April 17/18 (well before our arrival). Sadly, there are no other in-the-park Festivals in Disney or Universal that are available to us. • Instead of going to a local school, somewhere in the Orlando area and performing for a smaller festival with no audience, we will instead ask Disney to schedule 1 or possibly 2 Concert Band performances in the parks. We did this on the first 2 trips prior to Festival Disney. It was a great experience to be performing for a live audience in the parks. Like the parade, any Concert Band performance times will not be made available to us until 6-8 weeks prior to our departure.
Theme Park Update • We will be obtaining 3-day park-hopper passes for Disney and 2-day park-hopper passes for Universal Studios. • Everyone in the whole group will travel to the same park. Once there, students can either stay or park-hop as long as it is done with their entire chaperone group. • Students will have the opportunity to book Fast Passes prior to the trip, once we have the tickets in hand. We will provide assistance to anyone unfamiliar with this. • Depending on our return date, we may add another day at one of the parks (cost & schedule permitting).
Trip Cost • The cost for this trip has not yet been finalized. I am unable to do that until the two most expensive pieces (air & hotel) get locked into place. • The most recent per-student cost (before any fundraising) are as follows: 2012 - $1325, 2016 - $1475 • I am trying to keep the pre-fundraising, student cost as close to $1500 as possible. Once I have that amount finalized, I will send out a formalized payment schedule. • Starting 10/1/19 ending through 4/1/20, I am suggesting that everyone should plan on making a deposit of $200 each month to your student’s Disney account here at PHS. That deposit can be cash or check (made out to PHS) or the equivalent of individual fundraising money. Any money turned in should be in a clearly labeled envelope and handed to either Mr. Gagnon or Mr. Cirillo. • Any group donations or group fundraising amounts will be deducted from the final payment, working backwards. You will receive notification in late February/early March.
Chaperones • We will be taking approximately 85 students on the trip and I am looking for 10 adult chaperones (not including instructional staff). For rooming purposes, pairing is important. • Chaperones will be assigned a group of 8-10 students for the entire trip. In addition to morning & evening room checks and bus attendance, chaperones will be responsible for managing/overseeing/staying in contact with their groups while in the parks and at restaurants. In addition, chaperones will aid in the disbursement of the daily meal per- diems so that the students do not have to worry about carrying/loosing lots of money. • Student groups do not need to remain in-tact while in the parks as long as no one is alone. Students must have at least 1 park buddy with a cell phone. Regular check-in times in person or via text can be established by the group chaperone. No one is allowed to leave a park unless it is with the entire group, accompanied by a chaperone. • I will be sending out an email this Labor Day weekend with a link for interested chaperones to sign-up. • There will be a slight reduction in cost for chaperones. I cannot give exact figures until my final quotes come in. In the past, this reduction has ranged anywhere between 10-25%.
Truck Drivers • We will be sending our equipment, uniforms and luggage down ahead of the flight in a rented box truck. • All luggage will need to be dropped off (tentatively) Thursday 4/23 evening for screening & loading. • Thank you to those of you who had volunteered to drive the equipment truck. I have commitments from Matt Tobey & Matt Bogart to drive the equipment truck down & back. Matt Tobey (PHS Staff) is a certified EMT and will be in charge of all the student medications while on the trip. Driving them down means they will not need to be gone through by TSA. Matt Bogart is a parent of a PHS Band Junior and has been driving equipment for the Marching Band for two years & counting.
Fundraising Opportunities • There are 2 types of fundraising: group & individual. • Group fundraising means that the whole group participates in the activity, the funds raised get put into the band general fund, and then split evenly amongst the students/chaperones & staff in the form of a discount, which is subtracted from the final payment. A perfect example would be a parade that we do in another town for compensation. • Individual fundraising is when the student chooses to participate in an activity like the program book or the gift card raffle. The amount of money a student raises is based on how much time & effort that they want to put in. In the past, students have paid for their entire trip with fundraising. • The program book fundraiser starts Labor Day weekend and runs through November. Students sell ad space to local businesses to be displayed in a printed program to be passed out at concerts as well as displayed on the projection screen prior to each concert. Forms are available this evening for anyone who would like to take advantage of the long weekend to start selling. I will be forwarding the links for online information and online submission via email Thursday evening. • I have set up a shared Google doc that has over 700 business listings of ads that were purchased over the last decade. You can see the business name and the type/size of the ad and the year that it was taken out. I am asking that anyone who participates this fundraiser to please keep the shared document updated. If we want the business communities support, we cannot inundate them with multiple students on different days asking for the same thing. There are plenty of contacts to go around. Look at the list before you go out, place you name in the column signifying that you are going to make contact, then update the status when necessary. Stay away from contacting businesses who have already been signed-up for. • The Gift Card raffle starts in early October and runs through early December. Gift cards in $10-$25 increments are donated by each student in the High School & Middle School Band & Choir to create a winner-take-all gift card raffle prize. Students then can choose to sell raffle tickets with a portion of the sales going to their individual accounts. The raffle is drawn at the All-City Holiday Concert.
Trip Questions?
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