2008 reservations??

[Britt7]

Does anyone have an info on 2008 rates. Planning a trip to WDW in January but have not been able to see about rates. I have seen where some people already have trips booked in 2008. Also any tips/suggestions for booking a package. What is a "preferred" room and how do you get one? I am new to all this but am really excited.

 

[mickeyluv'r]

Does anyone have an info on 2008 rates. Planning a trip to WDW in January but have not been able to see about rates. I have seen where some people already have trips booked in 2008. Also any tips/suggestions for booking a package. What is a "preferred" room and how do you get one? I am new to all this but am really excited.

The official rates have not been released to date. You cannot yet boopk online. you can book via phone, but the rates you get are not guarenteed (actually, they are NEVER guarenteed, but we all book at Disney anyhow, and trust that they won't change them on us.)

It used to be that booking a package didn't really save anything, in fact they were often worse than booking items individually. This past year Disney made the pricing more inline. With a few exceptions. None of us really knows waht Disney is going to do next year, but it will almost certainly involve a price increase of some type, you can be certain.
It is almost never a good deal to book your airfare through WDW. The terms are lousy anyhow.
"Preferred" room usually refers to the room's location. For example most of the moderate resorts are REALLY spread out. Most have a lake in the middle, so getting from your room to the food court might eb a healthy ten miute walk. Add to that walking time to the bus stop, pool, lobby, convenenience store. When you start plannig your day all that walking really adds up. Let's say you go to breakfast at your resort. You buy the refillable mugs (may be refilled with soda or coffe for the length of your resort stay). Great idea, but now you have a choice: tote them all day, or walk back you your room to drop them off. If you decide to drop them off at your resort room, it could take you fifteen minutes to do so - just in walking time. Easliy longer since we all know that when we go back to the room we always find somethign else to do...A preferred room is usually more like a five minute walk for the average walker.

The down side to preffered location is that sometimes they are noisier than rooms that are farther out. Look at the layout of the value resorts. The preferred rooms are in the buildings nearest the food court, and close to the pool, but if there are people in the pool, you may hear them from your room, especially whe nyou consider the echo factor of the layout of the buildings. I mena, I've never really had a problem with rooms being all that loud at Disney, but if you're a light sleeper you might. No matter where your room is located, you may well end up with noisy neighbors.
More than once, I've been woken up by little kids jumping and screaming, "We're going to DISNEY WORLD today!" You can't exactly open your door and yell at them...

Another term Disney uses in regards to rooms and locations is the view: like water view, deluxe ppol view, and standard view (=parking lot, but lots of times you can't really see parking lot, just trees from your window)

Getting as preferred room is just a matter of asking for one, if they are available for your booking dates. If you look at Disney's webpage online you'll get an idea of the price difference, just put in 2007 dates to look.