We just got back from a wonderful trip to Disney World last week (first time for our three children, 15, 13 and six). We were not able to afford to stay in one of the resorts--not in our budget and although I looked into reservations in one of the "Value Resorts", the booking info told me we would need two rooms for five people. So, booked Comfort Suites Maingate East with a continental breakfast through Orlando.com. It was clean, near the parks and we loaded up on breakfast every morning and headed out with our fanny packs full of snacks and then ate dinner off-site on 192 at one of the many restaurants except for the night we splurged and ate at Le Chefs de France which was wonderful. Before we left, I bought a small backpack and roomy fanny packs for each child. Every morning we filled them with crackers, beef jerky, Payday snack-sized candy bars, granola bars, Starburst, fruit roll-up's, gum, sunflower seeds and trail mix we had bought at Walmart before we left. The backpack could fit our cameras, two water bottles and little DD's jacket every day and wasn't too heavy or burdensome to carry. We also bought the 87 cent rain poncho's pre-trip which we did end up using one afternoon and we checked the weather forecasts before we left and made sure we had both long- and short-sleeved shirts, shorts and jeans, lightweight jackets, the dollar gloves (which we also used the last morning at AK) and sweat shirts, all of which we wore since the week started out warm and sunny, rained mid-afternoon mid-week and then turned cold and sunny. We had also joined AAA shortly before our trip since my van is getting older and I was afraid of a possible break-down or an accident. This gave us a discount on parkhopper tickets and also Diamond, near-the-front parking privileges. Since, as they say, time is money, I had also researched the various rides, shows and attractions and their locations in the parks and pretty much knew what we didn't want to miss and mapped our way around based on these choices. We didn't see and do absolutely everything but we did get to do the main rides and show and still had time for browsing through the gift shops and used the FP system as wisely as we could. Just thought I would pass on these tips that I used and found helpful from this and other sites. We are already looking ahead to another Disney trip.
Jody
Jody
