Congrats to your daughter!!!! What Nationals company? What's her dance school? Are you competing in any regionals here in New Jersey?
I wish our dance school would go to a National competition - we only do regionals here in NJ even though most of the dances are asked to go to Nationals. My 13 yo has been doing solos now for 3 years and always has either High Gold or 1st Place Gold.
The thread that was linked has great ideas.
We did go to WDW to dance there through Disney Music Days in 2008 and are going back next year.
Here's some of the tips I remember from then - some of the parents in 2008 actually drove down
to save on money, we flew from JFK since we got a good fare from there. You may also check out going out of Philadelphia or Allentown for fare since for some of the fares are cheaper but they do include more layovers but to save $$ I would layover.
Foodwise - we had breakfast in the room and some lunches in the room and spend most of our money on dinners. The parents that drove actually brought down some of our groceries (& liquor
) and costumes. About 10 parents had groceries delivered to their room.
Also, check into booking the hotel independently from the dance school/Nationals company block. We found out that it was actually cheaper when we did it that way, then when we checked in we just requested to be near the other families that had booked through the dance school.