extra cost not staying on property?

[pixxi]

We always have stayed on property and are used to the perks. Our family of 6 gets costly and when there is free dining I don't mind paying for AOA but without so not worth the cost for us. What would be my extra costs staying off property?

-tolls
-parking
-not getting EMH
-van rental (anyone know about how much for 9 days)
-gas

 

[100AcreWood]

Even with free dining, staying offsite is cheaper for us. However, we eat 90% of our meals as counter service anyway. We believe the table service meals are a waste of valuable park time .

• I never paid for any tolls once I was in the area (we drive, not fly)
• Parking is $20 per day
• I avoid EMH anyway because they draw too many crowds
• You can get good deals through warehouse club on rentals but we always have our car so I'll defer to others
• Gas doesn't really add up if you rent a place within 10-15 minutes to the parks

We have rented 3 bedroom condos in Windsor Hills for the last two visits. 10 minutes from most of the parks, 15 at the most. It's surrounded by restaurants and a super target just down the street. Our first condo cost $535 for the week and one for 2015 was $495. There was a lot more budget left for extras. The condos have living rooms, a full kitchen, two bathrooms, washer/dryer and a great pool. The condos are slightly Disney themed but the pool is not.

Good luck planning!

 

[Lucky'sMom]

Even though I do love the onsite resorts in theory, the reality for my family of 7 is that staying off-site is WAY MORE enjoyable. We have stayed in both villas and rental homes, and my family would be so upset if we went back to staying in hotel rooms. There are so many gorgeous, huge pool homes that are so close to Disney. On our last trip, we rented a 5 bedroom, 5 bathroom home with a pool and spa for approx. $200/night, peak summer season, and...it took us only 6 minutes to get from our driveway to the DHS parking lot! (Windsor Hills). You can get homes a little further away for even less. It is just so nice to spread out when we come back for afternoon breaks and bedtime. Having the pool right there at the house has been such a bonus. We still eat onsite at Disney as much as we want, enjoying many table service and counter service meals. But it is really nice to have a few dinners back in the house, simple meals like tacos or spaghetti. Once you try vacation homes, you won't go back to onsite! As a previous poster mentioned, it is actually better to avoid the park that has extra magic hours. The other parks will be much less crowded, so that's not a perk in our experience. Even at $20/day parking, we are only paying $220 a night for our vacation home...what size room would that get you onsite in July? Not even a moderate, probably.

 

[Burnedout]

Our Priceline van was $17 a day.

 

[wolf29]

We (only 3 of us) have done both on and off-site. We always rent a car (around $12 a day full size from Priceline). Besides the costs mentioned, there are usually resort fees/parking fees at the off-property resort. There is also the additional commute time involved, especially if you take a break in the afternoon. For us, the biggest cost is not in dollars, but rather the immersive feeling of staying on-property that makes the cost of staying on property totally worth the expense.

 

[dyna]

We did both over the yrs on an off property. We always drove 1000 miles each way often on our Harleys. Wait on the Harley we stayed onsite.
By driving down I was able to fry up hamburger freeze it in baggies for 1 meal pack it cooler with some ice DID not open cooler till we arrived. Had another cooler for drinks along the drive. I took manwich an buns For a couple of meals that I had bought frozen veggies for also in cooler with meat. Fried up sausage patties froze them made waffles an froze them quick breakfast before going to parks. Made my own spaghetti sauce froze that cooked my spaghetti so all I had to do was heat an eat. Saved a lot of money by hauling my own food an time too since it was all pretty much heat an eat.
We usually did eat some meals out offsite but not all the time.

If you or someone in your group is an AP holder free parking an now that the weekday pass includes parking it all the better but it does have black out dates during the busiest times of the year when I myself don't care to go anyway.

 

[Burnedout]

If you are going during a slower time, I just bought skyauction resort certificates for $245 for a week. With a $100 upgrade we have a two bedroom condo at silver lake (just outside of animal kingdom area) for May

 

[Happyinwonerland]

We always stay off site. The only "extra" fee was $20/day to park, but we drive our own car down. If you rent a cad, you're looking at another $20/day. So $40/day compared to however much more a similar room onsite would cost. We usually get a 3 bedroom condo or townhouse for $100/night or less.

We save money on food and eat healthier because we run to public and buy healthy, easy to prep food. Fruits, salads, pre-made meals from their deli.

I think you will be pleasantly surprised at how enjoyable and offsite stay is. Reading these boards, people make it seem as though you'll be miserable unless you stay at an overpriced, cramped disney hotel, and that has not been my experience. We like having space and privacy. And it only takes us 10-15 min to the parking lot of Mk.

 

[alopez926]

We rented a Windsor Hills Villa (6 beds 4 bath) for our recent trip for $180 per night. This was our first time offsite. Very nice and so convenient. We had our own heated pool and jacuzzi, which were fab. Some of the extra costs that might come with renting a villa are $30 per day to heat the pool and jacuzzi (if you are going from Nov to March, they suggest pool heat), cleaning fee of $130, and a $50 fee to use the barbeque grill. Our owner asked for a $300 refundable deposit, but some owners ask that you buy a liability policy to cover damager for around $75. We flew so it was a little harder to bring things from home like dish soap, hand soap, laundry detergent, body wash, toilet paper, trash bags so we had to buy some of those once we got there which added a little extra expense. All in all, it was still far cheaper than renting 4 rooms at the Pop Century, and we had so much space. I missed the convenience of the buses and DME, and booking FP+ at 60 days, but for our party size (8) the tradeoffs were worth it.

 

[Gumbo4x4]

We (only 3 of us) have done both on and off-site. We always rent a car (around $12 a day full size from Priceline). Besides the costs mentioned, there are usually resort fees/parking fees at the off-property resort. There is also the additional commute time involved, especially if you take a break in the afternoon. For us, the biggest cost is not in dollars, but rather the immersive feeling of staying on-property that makes the cost of staying on property totally worth the expense.

Additional commute time really depends on a ton of factors, not the least of which is the location of your off-site hotel/resort/house obviously. In our (admittedly limited) experience, we could get from Tropical Palms Resort to any park or water park in 15 minutes or less - save for MK with the TTC requirements. Best day, we walked out the front door of the cabin and shut the car off in the EPCOT parking lot exactly 8 minutes later. At many Disney resorts, you're looking at 8 minutes just to walk from your room to the bus stop, then there's the wait for the bus (possibly not even getting on the first one due to capacity), and then the actual bus ride. So if anything, we felt we SAVED travel time by NOT staying on property.

But, had we chosen our location without first consulting a map, it could have been a LOT different.

 

[fostrmom2mny]

I'll admit to this now! I am an onsite snob. I went this summer for an off site vacation and my family agreed that we lost some of our Disney Mojo! I will not, not stay on property again. Yes, it costs more in , but for me I paid more in the loss of some of the magic I look forward to. That's just me, I know others have different experiances.

 

[damskipi13]

What would be my extra costs staying off property?

-tolls
-parking
-not getting EMH
-van rental (anyone know about how much for 9 days)
-gas

- I think there is one toll from the airport to the park area, maybe $2-$3. Don't remember any others. None in the vicinity of Disney.
- parking cost is already answered
- As others have said, we avoid the EMH park anyway to beat the crowds, so this is not an issue for us. Crowd calendars pretty much always recommend avoiding EMH parks.
- We've never rented a van because we prefer having 2 cars for our group (usually 7 people). This allows some people to go back for an afternoon nap while others can stay at the park, or people who are tired can leave before the fireworks, etc. Works well for us. Much better gas mileage too.
- Obviously this will depend on what vehicles you get and how long you are there, but many of the offsites people stay at are very close to the parks so not much gas is used. We used more on the one way trip from the airport than we did going to/from the parks every day. Maybe 1/2 a tank total on a mid-sized car?

Like others have mentioned, you might end up with some expenses you wouldn't onsite such as buying soap. This is totally up to you, though. Every place I've been to has had soap, but it's often bar soap and I prefer liquid. But overall, you will end up saving tons of money even compared to getting free dining.

Besides the costs mentioned, there are usually resort fees/parking fees at the off-property resort.

I've never had resort fees or parking fees offsite. YMMV.

Additional commute time really depends on a ton of factors, not the least of which is the location of your off-site hotel/resort/house obviously...At many Disney resorts, you're looking at 8 minutes just to walk from your room to the bus stop, then there's the wait for the bus (possibly not even getting on the first one due to capacity), and then the actual bus ride. So if anything, we felt we SAVED travel time by NOT staying on property.

Agreed! Our last offsite location was walking distance to Downtown Disney, not that I could get anybody to walk it. But from walking out of the hotel room to parking the car was only 4 minutes. 6 during traffic. No park took more than 15 min to get to except MK with the TTC annoyance, but that was maybe 25 min? Still not bad.

 

[ICF]

We've stayed many times in the condos/townhomes at Windsor Hills and highly recommend it.

There are no resort fees / parking fees -- a nice community pool and free movie theatre on site.

In the townhomes, you also get your own private small pool to use. We love the 3 BR option -- full kitchen, family room -- and typically costs us about $550-$600 for 7 nights. Paying to park at the parks sucks -- but that $20 is more than made up for by just eating one meal a day at "home".

You are 5 mins from AK....10 at most to Epcot or MGM. MK takes longer due to the fun of the T&T center.

People talk of the on - site magic -- but many of these condos are decorated top to bottom with Disney pictures, ice cubes, salt shakers, kids dishes and the like -- and I doubt I'd find much magic trying to spend a week with 4 people in a hotel room.

 

[DnA2010]

We've only been to WDW once (other than a couple of single days post cruises) and hope to make it back in the coming years. We were a group consisting of My mom, my DH and I, and my sis and BIL- I was pretty new to planning disney trips so never even considered onsite- we rented a condo in Crestwynd Bay which was about 10 minute or so drive (it seems to be next to Windsor Hills) - it cost us $80/night (I think the cleaning fee was $75) - 3 bedrooms, 2 big baths, washer/dryer etc. Worked great for us. We had a rental car as we also did US/IOA, Busch Gardens, and Discovery Cove.
The condo being easily paid for by my mom allowed us to take a longer trip and do more.

So we would have paid for parking, car, tolls.

Perhaps if the next trip is just DD, DH and I- we may consider onsite, but if it's the extended group, I can see us getting a bigger place again

 

[leebee]

Vehicle rental- I think the most I've ever paid to rent a vehicle from MCO is about $175 a week, including taxes. I've been lucky enough to rent minvans for as little as $110 a week on National's Emerald Aisle (but make sure to reserve what you'll need... midsize works for the 3 of us and we'll take a bigger car if available, but it'd stink to gamble and reserve midsize when needing seat belts for six passengers, only to discover that there are no minivans/suvs available on the EA when arriving at MCO). There are many ways to find and stack coupons and codes to reduce the cost of renting a vehicle. Mousesavers.com has a great tutorial on how to do this, as well as links to many discount coupons and codes. Another good place to get great vehicle prices is carrentalsavers.com. Lately, this site has had better prices than anything I could come up with stacking codes and coupons. Remember that you should NOT have to put down a credit card number to reserve a rental vehicle- unless it's a pre-pay rate (which I'd never do!); if a place asks for my CC#, I don't bother to continue with the transaction (Hertz sometimes asks for this). Make the best reservation you can find, then keep searching. Rental rates sometimes change hourly! Reserve the best deal you can find for the vehicle you need, then keep looking. If you find a better deal, book it right when you see it- DON"T WAIT- then cancel the more expensive reservation... and continue to search. Sometimes we'll do this until about 3 days before we travel, then use priceline to see if we can get an even-better price.

Tolls- It's maybe $3 each way from MCO to the Disney area. Certainly not a budget-buster. Be sure to bring a whole bunch of quarters with you, as some of the toll booths are NOT manned and will take correct change only; I think I've only run into this once but was happy to have the correct coins to pay the toll.
Parking- $20 a day, no way to get around this unless someone has an annual pass.
Gas- It's maybe 20 miles each way from MCO to WDW area, so if you figure 50 miles round trip, that'd be generous. My old minivan (2005) gets 17mpg, so there's three gallons. Driving to the parks each day is minimal, even if you do a mid-day break. I don't think we ever use more than about a half-tank of gas at WDW.
Resort/parking fees- I have NEVER stayed at a hotel or villa/condo rental in the WDW area that had a resort fee or a parking fee. Just read the fine print before making the reservation; they'll tell you if there's any kind of a daily fee or surcharge.
EMH- We've never made it to a rope drop, much less early EMH, so we don't miss them. We DO love staying in a park for really late EMH- nothing like MK at 2am- but we'll give that up if it saves us several HUNDRED dollars!

As others have said, people will tell you that your vacation will be lacking if you don't stay onsite, but really, that's not true.

 

[figmentfan423]

We stay off site to save money and have a longer vacation not to mention not being on top of each other. Our last trip was 10 park days and 2 for rest and shopping. That trip would have easily been cut in 1/2 had we stayed on site in a value. we got a 3br condo in Emerald Isle for 100 a night mid June and our next trip it will be only a couple of dollars more a night.