For a first timer planning a Disney vacation, the options can be overwhelming and often times, the budget can, as well. This week we asked our experienced Parenting Panel: What would you do to plan a first-time trip: Book a package deal or piece together your vacation plans on your own?
MousePlanet columnist Chris Barry, his wife Diane, 11-year-old Samantha, and twin 8-year-olds, Casey and Alex, live on Long Island and are all major Disney and Walt Disney World fans. Chris writes:
I really have two answers to this question. I think you could go either way, depending on whom I’m giving the advice to.
For pure ease and peace of mind, I would tell certain first-timers to deal with Disney directly or find a Disney-experienced travel agent. The first time we went as a family, it was my wife and me and our 4-year-old daughter. We dealt strictly with Disney. They booked us a package at Disney’s Caribbean Beach, including Park Hopper tickets for four days. There were a few perks offered to us at the time for booking through Disney. Some are still offered today. Others have gone away. We received our free luggage tags, which we still have. If memory serves me, we had a choice of a free poster or a free Leave a Legacy tile on the Leave a Legacy Sculpture just inside Epcot’s entrance. We kept saying we were going to go get our Legacy photo taken, but never did; thus, the free poster still in the tube in my basement.
At the time, there was no Disney Dining Plan. We did make a bunch of Priority Seatings, as they were called back then. All in all, dealing with Disney was easy and it was the perfect way for us to relax and let Disney handle everything. So, I would highly recommend buying a package through Disney for your first trip or dealing with a travel agent that is considered a “Disney Travel Expert.” You can tell them your needs and they will put together a great package for you. Obviously dealing with a travel agent will get you much more personal attention, and you can then have that agent as your point person for any questions or problems that arise.
Keep in mind though that you can probably get a better deal piecing together your own trip. If cost is the biggest decision-maker for you, then I would recommend booking a room-only reservation through Disney or through a travel agent and then adding on your park tickets and extras. If you’re not so concerned with meals, then skip the Disney Dining Plan altogether, make a few Advanced Dining Reservations (ADRs) and eat at quick-service locations when you’re hungry. We never use the Disney Dining Plan. We always make ADRs for our favorite places, but our main concern is never meals. Neither are things like the water parks or Disney Quest. Paying for things up front that we might or might not use doesn't seem to make any sense. So piecing things together this way has always worked well for us.
Keep an eye out for Disney’s special offers. If you don’t pay attention to all of Disney’s announcements, like most of us here do, then be sure to ask Disney or your travel agent if they are offering any special deals. That first trip we took was the only full-price trip we have ever taken. We’ve taken full advantage of many different special offers such as booking a certain number of nights and getting a night or two free and most recently we’ve been doing very well with room-only reservations being offered at 30 percent, 35 percent, and, even, 40 percent off normal rates. This has allowed us to stay in deluxe resorts like Disney's Polynesian Resort, Disney's Yacht Club Resort and Disney's Wilderness Lodge.
As the years went by and one of us became more and more Disney obsessed…that would be me…it became much easier to piece a trip together. We knew what we liked and what we didn’t like. We knew where we wanted to stay. We can handle most of the navigating now.
If it’s your first time and you don’t know much about a place as vast as the Walt Disney World Resort, it’s important to either find out as much as you can through sites like this one, or take the easy road and let Disney or a Disney Travel Expert guide you to the perfect package. Once you get hooked, and you probably will, you can then do what a lot of us do and enjoy taking all the different magical pieces of the puzzle and piecing them all together on your own.
Mary Kraemer is an avid Disney fan and travel consultant with CruisingCo/MouseEarVacations who loves to travel with her husband and children to Disney destinations as often as possible! Mary writes
I think this question was written just for me…since I work with first-time visitors to the Disneyland Resort and Walt Disney World Resort all the time. And, once upon a time, I was a first time visitor…I can remember how much of an ordeal it was to plan a Disney trip on either coast.
First timers have to consider the amount of time and patience involved to research a Disney trip, price every component, and then have faith that they’ve gotten it right, at the best price.
My answer is two-fold: Work with an authorized Disney vacation planner who can give you all the benefits of their experience and expertise, and book a package to keep everything as simple as possible.
Packages come in all sizes, and can be as simple as hotel accommodations and park tickets (I often book just this combination) or packages can include dining, admission, and transportation to other area attractions, air travel, transfer service, and insurance.
The more components you add, the more difficult it becomes to do it a la carte; a package is a simpler way to go.
Planning travel to WDW is vastly more complex than a Disneyland trip.
Disneyland is a smaller destination, and the choice between onsite and offsite hotels does not have the same meaning as it does for Walt Disney World. Even so, picking an offsite hotel can be daunting because of the variety of options and quality, and knowing where a hotel is located (even when it’s advertised as “walking distance” to Disneyland) is really important. I swear that Anaheim has the largest blocks of any place I’ve ever visited, and they seem to magically enlarge at the end of a long day at the parks.
WDW is approximately twice the size of Manhattan and has so many onsite resort options that it is quickly overwhelming to decide which is the best choice for your vacation. And with four theme parks, and so much going on all the time, that sense of being overwhelmed by choices and options can expand exponentially. Let someone who knows the destination help you through the process so you can make the most of your time.
At WDW, there’s a complimentary service called Magical Express that will take you (and your luggage) from the Orlando airport to your resort hotel. Once you’re onsite, you can use the complimentary bus service to get everywhere you want to go.
If you are interested in going to other area attractions, it’s certainly possible, but it’s easier to go to some than others (Universal Orlando offers single-day tickets with free transfers from WDW resort hotels, for example, but SeaWorld or Legoland do not)
Disneyland does not have complimentary transfers from the area airports, and even just knowing the preferred airport is important. It’s not uncommon for people to be surprised (and not necessarily in a good way) that LAX is so far away from Disneyland compared with John Wayne/Orange County Airport.
There are plenty of local area attractions in the Los Angeles area, and Disneyland offers not only admission but also transportation options to places like Universal Studios, Legoland, SeaWorld, the San Diego Zoo, etc. These components can all be added as part of a package.
Dining is an important component of a vacation, more so at WDW than at Disneyland by the sheer number of restaurant choices available to guests. Just making dining reservations can leave a WDW first-timer bewildered, because not only do you need to decide where you want to eat, but that decision also hinges on what you plan to do that day as well as the type of park tickets you purchase. For example, if you make dining reservations to have breakfast with the princesses at Cinderella’s Royal Table, you will need park admission to the Magic Kingdom. If you were planning on visiting Epcot that day and only have a single-park per day admission ticket, suddenly, your plans for the day won’t work.
Making dining reservations is another important aspect of trip planning for WDW because some popular restaurants book quickly, and without planning a reservation, you will be disappointed to not get a table during your vacation.
Here’s another key component to vacation planning: When to go? For many people, their choices are limited by school calendars, and influenced by marketing. It’s true that Disney resorts are gorgeous during the holidays, but the week between Christmas and New Years is also very crowded. It’s amazing how this aspect doesn’t occur to many first timers. It makes me sad when I hear people say that they didn’t have a good time because it was so crowded and they were miserable…a little knowledge and planning could have avoided that result!
I’ve touched on some of the major issues for Disney first timers…at least to the resorts…planning for a first Disney Cruise Line vacation provides its own set of challenges but I’ve already over-extended my word count.
Chris, also known as GusMan, is always planning his next family trip to the Walt Disney World Resort and loves to help others plan their trips, as well sharing his experiences. Chris writes:
Before my family and I vacationed regularly at the Walt Disney World Resort, our vacations were very local and were usually no more than an overnight stay somewhere. They were very easy to plan and if something went wrong, we were still close to home. The first time we decided to travel to Florida, we took a year to plan the trip and we were still making certain changes a month before our scheduled arrival. Skip ahead a decade later, and I think we spend more time helping others plan their WDW vacations than our own.
To someone embarking on their first trip to WDW, I can certainly relate to the anxiety that you feel when you sit down and try to make sense of all the options and opportunities you have before you. At the same time, it is nothing to worry about if you break it down into separate pieces from a time and budget perspective.
Regardless of how you book the trip, I think it is wise to split your planning into four different categories even before you pick up the phone to make the first reservation. This little bit of preparation will help you help your travel agent provide the best trip possible:
- Dates of your trip: These should be as solid as possible as changes can get costly. You need to determine how many days you would like to tour. Keep in mind that your first day and last day might include travel, which could take away many hours at the parks.
- Mode of transportation: There are pros and cons to each method along with related costs. Traveling by car might take longer, but it could be cheaper and you might have more flexibility. Flying may be less stressful, but much more costly and you are at the mercy of flight changes and airport delays.
- Lodging: How much of your budget are you dedicating to this category? With all the choices Disney has to offer, you should consider how much time you will be spending at the resort vs how much time you plan on spending at the parks.
- Dining: We all have to eat. At Walt Disney World, there are more choices than you can imagine. The big question here is related to if you want to use the Disney Dining Plan.
After breaking out the different categories and their related budgets, you need to decide if packaging these items into one giant itinerary is going to be your best bet. From my experience, putting a trip into a package has the possibility of saving a good amount of money. This is especially the case if Disney offers free dining or some other discount that requires the purchase of a room and ticket package. Using a Disney Visa card can also yield special financing, but only with a package. The issue here is what you gain in discounts and ease of booking, you might lose in flexibility. As an example using the dining plan: If you don’t think you would use it to its fullest potential, you may not realize its full savings potential.
Booking items separately can give you the greatest flexibility, but it may take some additional coordination. You can custom tailor your stay to combine different hotel stays, gaining flexibility with your dining options, or possibly saving money through only paying for what you know you will do. I find that the more a person visits WDW, the more often that custom-building your trip is more advantageous. This is because repeat guests tend to change the way they vacation and include more resort time and other time away from the parks.
What is best for you? The nice part is that regardless if you go through Disney directly or your favorite travel agent, they will help break down the costs for each itinerary possible. For your first trip, choosing a package can take a lot of guesswork out of the mix. It is a good way to experience Disney without a lot of wondering if you made the right decision. As you become a repeat guest, you may find yourself wanting the flexibility through a la carte planning.
It's your turn—keep the discussion flowing!
Visit the Parenting in the Parks forum on our MousePad discussion board, and share your opinions about this topic or many others, or send your suggestions via e-mail. Reader-submitted tips might be used in a future article, and you might be selected to participate in an upcoming panel discussion!
