4 Adults,6 kids-ADVICE PLEASE!

[Bricket]

We have two families wanting to take a Disney vacation together.

Family #1
Two Adults, One 11yr old
Budget $2000 (not counting extra spending money)

Family #2
Two adults, one 16yr old boy, a 13yr old girl, 7 yr old boy, 4yr old girl, 3yr old girl.
Budget $1500 (not counting extra spending money)

We want to stay together (we think?) and on Disney property. Where should we stay? Please advise soon because we plan on leaving on the 17th of this month!!

 

[Mama Who]

Um... 7 people on a budget of $1500? This will be a very short trip, right? Or is Family 1 intending to use their larger budget to help offset costs for Family 2?

 

[Bricket]

Very short trip, yes. 17-21.

WE'RE POOR FOLKS! lol

 

[Bricket]

And yes, we're going to help them out.

Family 2 is military---is there a discount available?

 

[momto2inKC]

What are you looking for? Hotel only? Park tickets, meal plan? I don't believe you'll be able to get any specials since you're wanting to arrive next week, most have to be booked by a cut off date. The 1st family would be doable for that budget I would think, but that 2nd one is going to require 2 rooms, which will eat up most of your budget if you stay onsite.

 

[mrsklamc]

I would (and have) stayed off property in a house with a group that size. Maybe hit the DVC rental board?

 

[momto2inKC]

Family #1 could stay at AS, preferred room (all that's available), 5 day base tix, and QS dining for $1,8XX (can't remember the exact dollar amount). No dining plan was right under $1500.

 

[Mama Who]

Okay...

All Star Sports

Family 1
Standard room, 3 day non-hopper base tickets at All Star Sports
5/17 - 5/19
$1024.13

Family 2
2 standard rooms, same tickets
Rm A) 1 adult, 2 teens
$1024.11
Rm B) 1 Adult, 3 kids
$1214.83

Total: $3263.07

That's 3 days, 2 nights. For the remaining $200, load coolers with groceries and eat all meals in the room or pack in lunches.

I cannot see another way to work this and it involves pooling the resources. Family 2 cannot afford 7 people at Disney on-site at this time with that budget unless someone else has much better sources than I do.

 

[momto2inKC]

I would (and have) stayed off property in a house with a group that size. Maybe hit the DVC rental board?

Great idea..they could *possibly find a last minute deal with an owner trying to fill an empty house for the week.

 

[Shagley]

And yes, we're going to help them out.

Family 2 is military---is there a discount available?

Yes, there are military discounts available for both tickets and resort rooms. I am not military so I don't know any specifics, but here is the information on the a link to some information on the military discounts...

http://bookwdw.reservations.disney....me=Promo&promotionCode=fy11military#important

They may also want to check in to staying at Shades of Green Resort...

http://www.shadesofgreen.org/mayspecial.htm

 

[momto2inKC]

If you all were willing to stay off property, Seralago has a 2 room unit that is coming up for $343 total for 4 nights for the family with 2 adults, 5 kids.
We have stayed here before, it's a descent hotel just minutes from the park.
Since they're military they might look into any specials on tickets. I've heard of them but don't know anything about those tickets since we're not military.

 

[tosha27]

Disney’s Armed Forces Salute
Walt Disney World has a special program effective October 24, 2010 and running through September 30, 2012 for members of the United States armed services, their dependents and guests. This post discusses the program and is broken into three major sections: Eligibility, Entitlements, and Procedures for participating.

Eligibility and Definitions

A service member has a current active duty, including active reserve, or retired ID card from the Air Force, Army, Coast Guard, Marine Corp, or Navy. This includes disabled veterans whose ID Card indicates DAVPRM.

A dependent is the spouse or other relative of a service member who has an ID card (DD Form 1173) which shows the service member as the sponsor.

A guest is any person not a dependent accompanying the service member.

Not eligible on their own are persons who would normally have access to military bases and/or Shades of Green (SoG) such as DoD Civilians, NAF, USPHS and veterans who are not retirees. This list may include others. People who fall into this category may, however, be dependents or guests.

Tickets and Entitlements

A service member may purchase up to 12 “4-Day Disney’s Armed Forces Salute Ticket” during the promotion, but not more than six at one time. At the time of purchase the service member must choose between three possibilities. There is no Base ticket available. Each ticket is either a four-day Park Hopper or it is a four day non-hopper with four Water Parks and Fun entries. Either of these tickets is $138. A ticket with both hopping and WPF&M is available for $165. These may be used by dependents or guests. The name of each dependent and/or guest will be recorded in ATS, tied to the service member’s name, and will be printed on the ticket. The price is the same no matter the age of the user. As normal, people under age 3 do not require tickets.

All Tickets will expire Midnight, Sunday, September 30, 2012, even if all entries have not been used. After the tickets are initially issued, it is $27 (plus tax) to add WPF&M to a Hopper or to add Hopping to a ticket with WPF&M. The normal 14 day rules concerning expiration and upgrade do not apply. However, no additional days may be added and the ticket may not have the No Expire option added.

The Tickets may be upgraded to Annual Passes, Premium APs, Disney Premier Pass, Florida Resident Seasonal Passes, or Florida Resident Weekday Select Passes (with proper Florida ID). The normal 14 day upgrade period does not apply. However, there will not be “price bridging”; this means that the value of the ticket will be what was paid for it ($138 or $165) and not the current gate price of an equivalent MYW ticket. If the ticket is upgraded to an annual product the expiration date will be one year from the date of first use of the Ticket.

As an exception, if the immediate family has more than five dependents, additional Tickets may be purchased, but not to exceed the number of dependents. If the immediate family has more than five dependents tickets may not be purchased for guests.

If the service member is not available the spouse or unremarried widow may purchase and/or activate up to five Tickets for family and guests (including the spouse) so without the service member present a maximum of five tickets may be purchased. The special large family rule above applies. This purchase will not prevent the service member from receiving their ticket at a later date, but this will make the service member ineligible to purchase any additional tickets. Note that the Dependent ID Card (DD Form 1173) must show a relationship of either "Spouse" or "Unremarried Widow" to be able to activate the tickets. No other relationship can purchase tickets or have previously purchased tickets activated.

Disney has added (on June 8, 2011) to the internal rules: "Guests may participate in this offer as often as they wish as long as no more than six (6) tickets are sold in each transaction." But it still limits activation by a spouse to five tickets; to activate six tickets the service member must be present.

Block Out Dates

The following remaining dates are blocked out for use of these tickets: Magic Kingdom Park Only - April 1 through April 12, 2012, July 4, 2012


Procedures and Purchasing

There are three sources available. Two of these sources are Shades of Green or many (but not all) MWR/ITT offices. These are not “live” tickets but must be activated. The advantage to purchasing these is that sales tax is not collected on the Tickets.

The third source is Walt Disney World Park Ticket Offices (including TTC) and Guest Relations Offices (including DTD). Sales tax will be collected on any sales of Tickets or upgrades. Note that these cannot be purchased at any Resort Lobby Concierge or online.

Certain information from the service member’s ID will be entered into ATS (Name, Birth Date, base where assigned and e-mail address) and the names of all Ticket holders will also be entered and tied to the service member. If the tickets were prepurchased (MWR/ITT or SoG) the person will get the same card back. If these are new tickets, the tickets will be printed by ATS.

Once activated the tickets may be used at any turnstile. Finger scans will be used. In the event a ticket becomes demagnetized they can be reissued just as any other ticket.

If you have unused non-promotional tickets and wish to have them applied to the purchase of Tickets, this may be done provided the value of the unused tickets is equal to or less than the value of the tickets being purchased or upgraded. You cannot use a GAD ticket to upgrade to an Armed Forces Salute ticket.

Please be aware that there are some self-imposed restrictions at some military locations and information sites. The information posted above are Disney's rules. And since tickets have to be activated at WDW by Disney Cast Members, these rules do apply.

For example, at some military locations they will only sell tickets once; rather than buying three tickets once time and three later. Also some military locations will sell six tickets to a spouse, but at WDW six tickets will be activated only if the service member is physically present.

 

[Bricket]

I'm so in shock right now!
My husband called and talked to Disney and we got an awesome quote for Contempo villas!

More than our budget, of course, but I'm in shock at how cheap this quote is! The military discount really helped!


Too bad we probably won't be able to swing it though.


I was thinking Boardwalk villas maybe??

 

[Interpol]

Have you inquired about Shades of Green?

 

[vicki_c]

I'm so in shock right now!
My husband called and talked to Disney and we got an awesome quote for Contempo villas!

More than our budget, of course, but I'm in shock at how cheap this quote is! The military discount really helped!


Too bad we probably won't be able to swing it though.


I was thinking Boardwalk villas maybe??

The Villas are all going to be generally the same price range, AFAIK. Boardwalk might be a bit cheaper than BLT (it's called Bay Lake Tower Villas, not Contemporary Villas).

 

[Marionnette]

I'm so in shock right now!
My husband called and talked to Disney and we got an awesome quote for Contempo villas!

More than our budget, of course, but I'm in shock at how cheap this quote is! The military discount really helped!


Too bad we probably won't be able to swing it though.


I was thinking Boardwalk villas maybe??

There may not be any rooms at the BWV under the military salute. You might want to call and find out for sure but if Bay Lake is out of your price range, the BWV will probably also be out of range.

The budget for family #2 is painfully tight and even with the military salute tickets, they can't afford this trip. Those tickets alone would cost $966 for the family. That doesn't leave enough for transportation, food and accommodations. Even if they were to get 1-day, non-hopping tickets, they would have less than $1K to spend on those necessities for the 4 nights you plan to be there.

I just don't see how it can be done.

 

[McKinneyMouse]

We have two families wanting to take a Disney vacation together.

QUOTE]

Try David's Vacation Club Rentals, it's a points broker so it mitigates the risk factor for renting points. Example, if you checked in on the 17th and checked out on the 21st for the Tree house villas at SSR resort sleeps 9 you would need 168 points. Each point costs 13.00, but check it out you do NOT pay the 12.75% tax on a hotel room this way because it's a rental. So this puts you at $2184 if they have availability for the 4 nights. Then buy the military price tickets, this is the cheapest I have ever seen. This way you can use Disney transportation but you will NOT be able to do the dining plan, which on this budget you could not afford anyhow. But some the reading I have done shows that you can take small coolers with your own food into the parks. You can get water from the water fountains in your own containers and ice from any food vendor location in the parks. And this way you could cook in your room to save money. Take what you need for food if you can. So maybe it could be done or maybe you could stay just 3 nights and still do 3 days in the parks. Best of luck to you!

 

[Marionnette]

We have two families wanting to take a Disney vacation together.

Try David's Vacation Club Rentals, it's a points broker so it mitigates the risk factor for renting points. Example, if you checked in on the 17th and checked out on the 21st for the Tree house villas at SSR resort sleeps 9 you would need 168 points. Each point costs 13.00, but check it out you do NOT pay the 12.75% tax on a hotel room this way because it's a rental. So this puts you at $2184 if they have availability for the 4 nights. Then buy the military price tickets, this is the cheapest I have ever seen. This way you can use Disney transportation but you will NOT be able to do the dining plan, which on this budget you could not afford anyhow. But some the reading I have done shows that you can take small coolers with your own food into the parks. You can get water from the water fountains in your own containers and ice from any food vendor location in the parks. And this way you could cook in your room to save money. Take what you need for food if you can. So maybe it could be done or maybe you could stay just 3 nights and still do 3 days in the parks. Best of luck to you!

I'm always amused when people make the suggestion that someone, who cannot afford even a value resort, should explore renting DVC points.

First of all, it's not cheaper than staying in a value resort. At 45 pts per night on the weekend in May and at $13/pt, you're talking $585 for a single night. Even dividing that by two families leaves each one paying $292 per night. An undiscounted standard view room at an Allstar resort would run $127 + tax per weekend night.

Then you would have to find a DVC member with points to rent. It takes time to find someone and work out the details with them. The OP wants to be in Disney on the 17th. Today is the 10th. It's a lot to get done in a week but not impossible.

And that's assuming that you could even get a Treehouse Villa...which you can't. There are not any available for the OP's weekend. In fact, you would have a hard time finding any availability at a DVC resort other than SSR and certainly not a Grand Villa.

 

[McKinneyMouse]

I'm always amused when people make the suggestion that someone, who cannot afford even a value resort, should explore renting DVC points.

First of all, it's not cheaper than staying in a value resort. At 45 pts per night on the weekend in May and at $13/pt, you're talking $585 for a single night. Even dividing that by two families leaves each one paying $292 per night. An undiscounted standard view room at an Allstar resort would run $127 + tax per weekend night.

Then you would have to find a DVC member with points to rent. It takes time to find someone and work out the details with them. The OP wants to be in Disney on the 17th. Today is the 10th. It's a lot to get done in a week but not impossible.

And that's assuming that you could even get a Treehouse Villa...which you can't. There are not any available for the OP's weekend. In fact, you would have a hard time finding any availability at a DVC resort other than SSR and certainly not a Grand Villa.

Yes my count was indeed off. I counted 9 people--and availability would certainly be a huge issue this close to the date, but you never know when people get desperate to unload soon to expire points-- which is 168 points for 4 nights using a broker site calculator at 13.00 per point. But they have 10 and I don't know if the wee-est of ones count or not. If they do, then you are most certainly right because they would need 384 points for the sleeps 12 grand villa. One other thing I didn't think about was camping at the camp ground. I don't like to camp so I always forget about this. Could they maybe do that?

 

[pigletto]

I'm always amused when people make the suggestion that someone, who cannot afford even a value resort, should explore renting DVC points.

First of all, it's not cheaper than staying in a value resort. At 45 pts per night on the weekend in May and at $13/pt, you're talking $585 for a single night. Even dividing that by two families leaves each one paying $292 per night. An undiscounted standard view room at an Allstar resort would run $127 + tax per weekend night.

Then you would have to find a DVC member with points to rent. It takes time to find someone and work out the details with them. The OP wants to be in Disney on the 17th. Today is the 10th. It's a lot to get done in a week but not impossible.

And that's assuming that you could even get a Treehouse Villa...which you can't. There are not any available for the OP's weekend. In fact, you would have a hard time finding any availability at a DVC resort other than SSR and certainly not a Grand Villa.

This.
We've rented points three times now. It is an excellent way to stay at a deluxe/dvc resort for much less than rack rate. But it is absolutely not a bargain basement price.
Renting points for a studio for us has generally worked out to cost us what it would cost to stay at a mod for the same time period. The amount needed for point rental will fluctuate depending on the time of year as well. So there may be cheaper times to go than the weeks we have gone. And a private rental will usually cost a bit less per point than a service like David's.
But in the end, it's a great way to stay at a deluxe/dvc resort for much less than rack rates. It is still significantly MORE than staying at a value.

I'm not picking on the person who posted this advice as it is a common suggestion I see here. I just feel the need to clear it up because it's not really an option if someone is looking to spend very very little for accommodations.
I think it still worked out to around 180 a night for our last trip for a studio that only accommodates four people.