All the guide books and web sites have mountains of information. It can become your full time job for weeks if you let it. Before you jump right in, I found half of my work was done my simply identifying the following:
1. The age of your kids?
- Many of the signature rides require that children be a minimum of 48”. I saw lots of tears as little children were turned away from “Space Mountain”.
- Some of the theme parks are quite big and require a lot of walking, can your child cope?
- Disney theme park tickets have an option for visiting multiple parks in one day. This may be appealing to families with older children.
- Fireworks and night time entertainment occur approximately 8-10pm.
2. The length of your stay
- How many parks and how much ground do you want to cover? Interestingly, we saw that our kids became somewhat desensitized after about 4 days in the theme parks.
- Is it important to have some down time with your kids, a pool day perhaps?
3. What time of year do you want to visit?
- Disney has very economical packages for off-peak times
- Do you want to incorporate a major Holiday in your visit ie Xmas/Halloween?
- Would you be willing to take your kids out of school?
- Certain times of year may be to cool to visit some of the water parks
- Peak times in Disney can mean 30-60 minute (or more) wait times for some of the main attractions. (For those of you familiar with the “Fast Pass”, this can certainly reduce wait times but some theme parks like EPCOT only permit one fast pass in a 2 hour period)
4. Budget
- All Disney properties are great. I generally found however, that the deluxe properties were closer to the theme parks and were much closer to other hotels, which gave a much greater selection for evening dining. Disney is “BIG” and unless you plan to eat at your resort every day, you will find you will need to bus to other dining locations or eat in the theme parks. Having said all of that when you are considering where to stay remember you don’t spend very much time in your room!
5. “To Package or not to package, that is the question"…
Prior to this Disney Vacation the mention of a “package” would send me running in the opposite direction. As I began my research however, I discovered a whole new world. A Disney package includes the following:
- Additional theme park hours, not available to those not staying at a Disney property.
- Free transfers to and from the airport on ‘Disney’s Magical Express Bus”, as well as luggage pick up and drop off at your hotel.
- Optional meal plan – 1 breakfast or lunch, 1 snack and 1 sit down dinner per person every day. Dining in Disney can be pricey so this is definitely worth investigating. I estimate that it works out to about $100-$125 per day per family on the plan, and if you desire you can combine 2 sit down meals and dine at one of the “Signature” restaurants in one of the Deluxe Disney properties. Our dinner bill typically cost $125-150.00 before the occasional adult beverage, and it’s one way to wean your kids off ice cream and hot fudge sauce.
When you have a good handle on these questions dive into Disney.com, there is really nothing you can’t find on that site. I used it quite a bit to look at theme park maps and plan my days in each park, as well as hotel locations, Disney dining, top attractions etc. Do yourself a favor and have the free Disney DVD sent to you, it really is fun!
If you wish to contact Disney direct note that as part of their reservation process you will be required to give a mountain of information. Your name, address, kids names, ages etc. Don’t get discouraged or fearful of a future influx of Disney mail (I confess I was leery) as Disney is simply building you a profile so that you don’t have to go through this every time you call with an inquiry ( which speaking from experience can be many times)! In addition to that you will find that the “Disney Experience” is carried over to the booking process, as their staff is unbelievably helpful, pleasant and interested in making sure your “Dreams really do come true”.
There are also tons of guide books available which give quite a bit of detail on each of the attractions in all of the parks, right down to a plan of what attraction and in what order you should do them, if you want to conquer them all in 1 day or 2.
When it comes right down to it though, my biggest and most valuable resource was that of my friends, family and colleagues. Who doesn’t know someone who has been to Disney and loved it!
In the end our Holiday package consisted of:
- 5 night stay at a Moderate Hotel (Caribbean Beach)
- 5 day park passes (Non Park Hopper) – the cost of additional days after 3 is nominal and I wanted to give us maximum flexibility.
- Dining package – the deal of the century.
- Complimentary transfers to and from the Airport and to all parks/hotels/restaurants on the Disney property.
Total Cost excluding flights and incidentals was $2000.
Whoops, our cost was actually $2200.00. As you know, we chose to go to Disney on Halloween, which meant we needed a separate ticket to get into the Magic Kingdom for “Mickey’s not so Scary Halloween Party” and what a “partay” it was!
It was undoubtedly the highlight of our vacation!
Stay tuned next weekend for glimpses into my and my husband’s second childhood and the best Halloween ever…