ala carte or DCL ressies?

[jimmiej]

Do most of you book your entire land/sea package through DCL travel or do you just book the cruise & then do your own flight, resort, etc.? What are your suggestions? Passporter authors suggest the latter. I'm inclined to go along with that but wonder about the ease of letting Disney do it all.

DW & I booked a Disneyland trip through Disney Travel earlier this year but cancelled the air due to bad flight times. We saved several hundred dollars booking our own flights. I want to get to WDW on day 1 early enough to do something. Can I cancel that part if I don't like the flight times? What does that do to my transfers?

Thanks for any help.

 

[musicgirl]

Hi, we've done the land/sea. We booked the resort, cruise and transfers through Disney. It was very nice to have this all done with them. This includes the tickets to the park. I do believe that you can book the resort separately for less money.

Air-do not book with Disney. It is way above what you can get. Also, you don't have any choice in times and whether there are stops. Someone, else might have more info on this.

What you need to do is look up the parts separately.

How much for the transfers? If you have 2 people, I believe it's cheaper to do DCL buses. One thing that people take in consideration is how early they want to get to the port. When we did it staying at POR, we didn't arrive until 1:30pm with the DCL buses. This year we stayed near the port and arrived around 11:30. We felt like we had so much more time before the safety drill. If you book the land/sea package, you can decline the transfers if you want, just tell them when you book. Otherwise, they automatically will include this in your price.

How much for the tickets to WDW? Do you need everything included in that price? We loved being able to go to everything-typhoon lagoon, blizzard beach, disney quest whenever we wanted. Disney quest was great because we had alot of rain!

Which resort? Not all resorts can be booked as the land/sea, such as the value resorts. We had a great time our first trip
at the All-sports. Also, if you do not book one that is a part of a land/sea package and are using the DCL transfers-the bus does not pick up at that resort. Therefore, you would have to arrange to go somewhere that they pick-up.

I don't know about waiting for the flight schedule (through Disney) and canceling it if you don't like the times. I don't know if you can or are charged a cancellation fee. I think that you don't find out the times until right before the cruise.

Good luck and have fun!

 

[kmc33]

I agree that I would not book the air through DCL. As far as the land/sea goes, I started out with the intention of booking the components separately. But, for our particular dates (last April, before Easter but still spring break time-- capacity sailing) the cruise only price was so high that it was only $100 more to book the package! Hard to believe, in fact the agent had them recheck it a couple of times because he was surprised. He said that the explanation he got was that after DCL books a certain percentage of rooms on the ship at cruise only rates, they change the pricing to promote packages to be bought. I guess it worked for us... obviously I could not book 3 nights hotel and park passes for $100, so I took the land/sea package. I think this is the exception, but it goes to show that it is worth it to check out the cruise only and land/sea package. We ended up going a day early and actually stayed 4 nights at WDW and 4 nights on the Wonder. So, I booked the air myself and also a towncar service.

Otherwise, if you are the type that likes things packaged together then that is another reason to book the land/sea. It was convenient. If you are trying to get the best price, then from what I have read, booking separately is usually cheaper, but there are exceptions as was the case for us.

Hope this helps!