We were lucky to catch up with Dan & Leslie Lowry recently and have shared our conversation below.

Dan & Leslie, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.

The last decade has been transformative in many ways, going from two professionals with advanced degrees to quitting our jobs, moving across the country to be next to Disney World and Universal, building a business together, and focusing heavily on content creation through our platforms as podcasters and vloggers. There have been many forks in the road and travel industry impacts in recent years that shaped our journey, but we would not change where we are now for the world.

In 2012, we decided to take our family of four (we have two sons, Aidan (16) and Jennings (11)) to Walt Disney World for the first time. We thought that this might be the only time we would get to make the pilgrimage from Tulsa to Orlando, so we told ourselves we needed to pack everything in. Little did we know that we would fall in love with the memories that we made and start down a path toward living two miles away from Cinderella Castle.

After several years of taking Disney vacations, Leslie decided to start a side hustle selling them in April 2015 as a travel agent working independently under another host agency. The same year, we starting our YouTube channel, WorthMelting4, in order to share our travels with family that could not experience the magic with us. The growth was slow and neither of us had plans of leaving our full-time careers, Dan in Project/Facility Management and Leslie in Nursing Education. In fact, when we started our podcast, Addicted to the Mouse, in April 2017, we weren’t fully committed on sticking with it or being consistent with episodes.

Through the years, our love of travel kept growing. By the time COVID shut the industry down in March 2020, Leslie’s part-time travel agent business was taking off, we had sold our house, cut our expenses by half, and had tentative plans to take a gap year and travel the world beginning in 2021. We wanted to grow our content creation even more during that year circumventing the globe and start our own travel agency after we returned. And then came the ultimate pivot.

After two solid weeks of discussion about all of the amazing achievements or horrible failures we could experience if we followed our dreams, we came to one conclusion. Even though the travel industry was in crisis, we never wanted to live our lives always wondering what might have been. We gave our jobs 14 months notice, started Fantastical Vacations, began looking for houses in Orlando, and doubled down on our content creation. Fast forward nearly two years later and it was the best decision of our lives.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

We are the owners of Fantastical Vacations, a concierge travel agency specializing in Disney, Universal, cruise lines, and all-inclusive vacations. When they first reach out, many of our clients don’t realize that using a travel advisor is completely free to them because all suppliers we partner with include a built-in commission in the cost of the trip, whether they use a travel agent or not. These vacations continue to get increasingly complex to plan, especially to theme parks. Things like knowing how to plan a park day, which dining reservations are the best to get, what shows are “must-see,” what times of year are best to go, how to skip the long lines for rides, and so much more only come with continually traveling to and in these destinations.

We are best known as the hosts of the podcast Addicted to the Mouse, published every Sunday and Wednesday evening. On the show, we focus primarily on Disney content and our travel adventures. We also publish two videos every week on WorthMelting4, our YouTube Channel. We post a Disney Dining Review every Thursday and a vlog every Sunday, which range from experiences in parks to advice about our journey moving to Orlando.

We are most proud of the team we have built with Fantastical Vacations. All FV travel advisors are experts in the destinations they represent, but more than that – they share our core values. The culture of our team is what drives us and we expect everyone that represents our brand to be the best advocate for their client, making sure their vacations are perfectly suited to them. We even continually look for discounts to be able to apply after a vacation is booked up until day of check-in.

Can you tell us the story behind how you met your business partner?

Many of our friends and colleagues ask us what it’s like living and working full-time with our spouse. While it might seem like a lot, we have the best time creating fresh new content, building a business from scratch, and growing our team together.

We actually knew of each other in High School, but didn’t start dating until college. We dated for over three years before getting married and starting our lives. For the first 18 years of our marriage, we had careers in completely different industries before launching our travel agency together in the fall of 2020.

Can you tell us about what’s worked well for you in terms of growing your clientele?

Growth is dependent on two things: reach and value. Reach revolves around an organization’s ability to get their content and marketing in front of new potential clients. Value comes as a result of what you do with that content once a new potential client consumes it. In today’s oversaturated markets, we are all constantly sold to, all the time. If your only goal with marketing is to get a sale, it comes across as such and is a major turn off.

We grow our reach primarily through two mediums – podcasts and videos. We give our best tips and tricks to all of these destinations so that listeners and viewers (all of whom are potential clients) get real value from giving us their time. We are honest and strive to be authentic and real. Who we are online is who we are in real life. By doing this, we find that we can build trust with potential clients that translates into long-lasting relationships with them when they do reach out to book their next magical vacation.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://fantasticalvacations.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/addictedtothemouse/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FantasticalVacations
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/WorthMelting4
• Other: https://addictedtothemouse.com/ https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/addicted-to-the-mouse-disney-podcast-disney-world/id1211525783?ls=1&mt=2