- We went during the off-season in the middle of January. We were taking a 5-day trip (a quick trip saves you money, too!), so the kids only missed a little bit of school. The crowds are much smaller, it’s not hot in Florida during that time of year (saves on you having to drink a ton of bottled water), and the best thing—we got round-trip air tickets for $100 each. We have a family of five; we had two free tickets, so our whole family flew for $300 round trip. We couldn’t drive it for that. It was totally worth it to going during school because of the smaller crowds, more pleasant weather and CHEAP airfare (bought directly from the carrier’s site—we’ve found that to be cheaper, too)! Plus, there was a 70 degree difference between home & Orlando!
- Make Disney World your only stop. If you stay on the resort (we stayed at the cheapest—All-Star Musical—plenty nice), they will give you free transportation to/from the airport and that saves you the cost of a rental car. That makes up for any cost increase of staying at the resort. And they give you free transportation anywhere in the resort! And you get extra hours in the park if you stay at the resort. And the headache & time it saves you! Our kids were totally cool with only seeing Disney World. They had only been to grandparents before, so this trip was huge!
- Use the Disney Dining Plan. It saves you up to 30% on some of the best food! The price of the dining is included in the cost of your package (like a cruise), and it allowed us to save tons of time of having to run back to our room to eat. Our meals included an appetizer, entrée & dessert. It was a lot of food! You are allotted so many meals during your stay. Since we checked in at night, we missed a meal. The plan allows you to combine meals to have a very nice meal at one of their upscale restaurants. We did that with our missed meal and got to eat in Cinderella’s castle during the fireworks at Cinderella’s Castle. We never could have eaten there paying full price! I must say the Disney Restaurants certainly added to the magic of the whole Disney experience. And that was my biggest surprise about Disney World. Planning note: Make your reservations at the restaurants when you book your trip.
- Don’t park hop. It was cheaper for us to pick a park each day and stay there all day. That way, we didn’t waste time (remember our trip was short) on the bus going to park to park, and we were able to experience more because of it. We opened ‘em up, and we shut ‘em down!
A few extra notes about our Disney tips: This was a once-in-a-lifetime trip for us. There are a lot of other places we want to go before our kids leave home, so we approached this vacation from that vantage point. So because we’ve gone once and not once every year like some, these tips could easily be trumped by a more experience Disney traveler. And because of our business, we can’t be gone long, so these tips may or may not apply for longer trips. Also, our kids were old enough that they can keep up now—they were 7, 9 & 11 at the time. We put their sneakers on, and off we went full-speed, and we didn’t have to deal with naps. So our tips may not apply with younger children. For example, our pedometer clocked 10 miles the day we visited Epcot. Talk about shin splints! But Disney truly was a magical experience, and maybe because we may only get to go that one time with our kids, I think we appreciated it all the more.
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