Getting to the World on the cheap

[SuperDan523]

DW and I are planning a September trip for our first anniversary, and we're trying to keep the costs as reasonable as possible this time around. We're looking at September 17-24, but we're willing to wiggle the time a few days earlier depending on what option works best for transportation. I just wanted to run my ideas by all of you to see if we're following the most cost-effective path. as well as get a few opinions on some remaining questions I have.

1) Getting There

We're from the north side of Chicago, right under O'Hare Airport. I've been watching flight prices and I don't really like what I see. The flight times offered aren't the greatest, and the prices have gone nowhere but up in the last month or two since I've been watching them. One particular itinerary on American has some promise, and going with their Choice Esssential fare bumps the fare up a little but saves even more on baggage fees.

Option two is driving. Neither of our cars are in the greatest shape so we'd need to borrow or rent to drive. Gas would probably be less than $350 for the round trip if prices hold out and we're looking at 18 hours each way. It all depends on how cheaply I could get a hold of a car I guess.

Option three is Mega Bus. If we jump on the bus fares the second they go on sale, this could be the cheapest overall option. The only problem is the itinerary would necessitate either shortening our trip or both of us missing work on Sat the 14th and me missing work on Sunday the 15th in addition to the time off we've already planned for. I also have a question about getting to WDW from the Megabus. The Megabus drops off in Orlando at Lynx Central Station. I know there are Lynx busses that come through Pop, and I know there is an express bus from Lynx Central to DTD West Side, but the Lynx website is a little confusing. Is the 300 DTD Direct only available once per direction per day? Are there any other routes that go more regularly from Lynx Central Station to WDW? I know I've seen Lynx busses come through Pop multiple times per day. What other transportation options are there from Lynx Central to Pop at 9 pm?

2) Free Dining Isn't Free

There is a FD promo available as usual for September, but we're planning on seeing how we do on Room Discount and dining OOP rather than purchasing a plan. I'm just waiting to see if an AP discount is released for that period (would hope to hear that within the next week or so based on last year). The question we have on dining is would TiW be worth it to us for one 8-day trip. We typically don't do a ton of alcohol (maybe a few Lapu Lapus when we go to 'Ohana except we can't find an ADR at 'Ohana which is another story) so I'm not sure if we'd make back the $100 cost in discounts. There are a few dining options that offer AP discounts, but they're so hit and miss that I don't want to rely on them other than maybe the Pop food court.

3) Accommodations

As I mentioned above, we're planning on staying at Pop. Two out of the three All Stars resorts are cheaper, but DW doesn't like that they sometimes share a bus on non-peak times. I would love to upgrade to a mod and stay at POFQ (ok I'd really love to upgrade to a Deluxe and stay at Poly or BC but that's definitely out of price range) but the price I'm getting there using the general public Room Only deal is still a bit out of reach. Does anyone think the AP deal (if one is released) will be significantly better? Or should I just plan on sticking with Pop?

4) Always make your ADRs even if you haven't booked yet if its FD time

I didn't take my own advice above, and many of our favorite TS ADRs are booked up. Does anyone have any luck getting last minute ADRs as the cancellation window hits? On the other hand, I'm hoping to maybe hit a few signature TS spots this time around. Usually if we hit up a signature or a show we would pay OOP even if we were on the plan because we didn't want to blow two TS credits. I'm hoping the signatures still have some openings. I've been wanting to do Le Cellier.

That's all I have for now. I look forward to hearing some advice and opinions.

 

[teller80]

From what I saw Megabus doesn't travel directly from Chicago to Orlando, you would have to transfer buses. Am I seeing that correctly?

 

[teller80]

Greyhound is $230 round trip. Personally, I wouldn't want to do it, travel time is like 26 hours.

If you rent a car, were you going to drive straight through or get a hotel? If you planned a hotel, then travel time on Greyhound isn't bad.

 

[SuperDan523]

From what I saw Megabus doesn't travel directly from Chicago to Orlando, you would have to transfer buses. Am I seeing that correctly?

That is correct. We would have to go Chicago to Atlanta then Atlanta to New Orleans. We'd be looking at four "legs" round trip, so if we got each leg at $1 plus the 50 cent processing fee the total round trip for two would be $12. Those prices aren't available for long, but it should still come up cheap.

 

[SuperDan523]

Greyhound is $230 round trip. Personally, I wouldn't want to do it, travel time is like 26 hours.

If you rent a car, were you going to drive straight through or get a hotel? If you planned a hotel, then travel time on Greyhound isn't bad.

Chances are we'd drive straight through, maybe getting a cheap motel just outside of Orlando the night before check-in and the night after checkout.

 

[teller80]

Megabus does not go from Chicago to Atlanta.

 

[Marionnette]

1) Getting There

I've been watching flight prices and I don't really like what I see. The flight times offered aren't the greatest, and the prices have gone nowhere but up

Use Bing.com's travel portal or Kayak.com to check fare predictors. They're the best way to determine if there's a possibility of the prices coming back down.

Option two is driving. Neither of our cars are in the greatest shape so we'd need to borrow or rent to drive. Gas would probably be less than $350 for the round trip if prices hold out and we're looking at 18 hours each way. It all depends on how cheaply I could get a hold of a car I guess.

You'd have to be pretty close to whomever you borrowed a car from. I don't think that I would lend out any of my vehicles so that someone could put that kind of mileage on it! Start checking rental car websites and make a reservation...not the kind that you pay up front for, the kind that you can cancel/modify at will. Then keep checking. Make sure that you will be able to take the vehicle out of state and that it has unlimited mileage. You don't want to be dinged for either of those.

Option three is Mega Bus. If we jump on the bus fares the second they go on sale, this could be the cheapest overall option.

Cheapest, yes. Also the most time-consuming and exhausting. Like you said, it will shorten your stay to drive or take the Megabus. At some point, you have to take your valuable vacation hours into consideration when making cost-saving choices.

ETA: I just saw in another one of your posts (Dumbo for sale) that you are expecting a little one. There is no way in hell that I would ride a Megabus or drive straight through for 18 hours if were pregnant! Please tell us that you are only in the TTC stages and not already on the nest!

2) Free Dining Isn't Free

There is a FD promo available as usual for September, but we're planning on seeing how we do on Room Discount and dining OOP rather than purchasing a plan.

If it's just two adults, you're probably not going to make out very well with free dining at a Value Resort. You will only get free QS dining unless you pay to upgrade to TS. That would still be cheaper than paying rack rate for a Moderate Resort and getting the DDP for free but still pretty pricey. The TiW card would get you a discount at the POP food court and at the TS locations but there will be an automatic 18% gratuity on the pre-discount total. In order to break even (assuming that you would have tipped 18% or more anyway), you would have to spend $500 on food.

The question arises: Are you a current AP holder or are you just considering the APs for possible room discounts and the ability to purchase the TiW? You might want to crunch those numbers a bit. 8-day MYW base tickets would certainly be cheaper, by about $300 apiece! Last year's AP discounts for those dates were in the 25%-35% range vs. 5%-30% for the general public. You just need to make sure that you're comparing apples to apples. There is a discussion about the AP rates for Sept 2012 here:
http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?t=2940701&page=10
You'll note that there was not that big of a difference between the general public rate and the AP rate for Value Resorts.

3) Accommodations

As I mentioned above, we're planning on staying at Pop. Two out of the three All Stars resorts are cheaper, but DW doesn't like that they sometimes share a bus on non-peak times.... Does anyone think the AP deal (if one is released) will be significantly better?

If you drive to Orlando instead of flying or taking the bus, then the resort bus situation will be of no consequence. You can skip the buses and drive wherever you wish.

As for the AP deals, my guess is that it will be as disappointing as it was last year.

4) Always make your ADRs even if you haven't booked yet if its FD time

I didn't take my own advice above, and many of our favorite TS ADRs are booked up. Does anyone have any luck getting last minute ADRs as the cancellation window hits?... I'm hoping the signatures still have some openings. I've been wanting to do Le Cellier.

Not everyone cancels their ADRs when they cancel their trips. Some people just move their vacation plans to offsite and retain their ADRs. My advice is to book whatever you can at this point and then keep checking for cancellations. Le Cellier is still a very hard-to-get ADR even though they have gone to 2 TS credits for both lunch and dinner.

 

[roadtrippin2wdw]

We are traveling to the World in Sept., too, from 45 min. outside of Chicago We drive straight through and it usually costs us about $400 for gas round trip. My parents are flying there from Ohare and meeting us and their roundtrip tickets were $376 (for both). We got the plane tickets about 2 weeks ago. If you can get the plane tickets in that range and would like to only spend a few hours traveling versus a whole day....I'd go with the plane! Have a great anniversary trip!

 

[khaoskat]

Ok, by Disney, your POP stay is approximately $717.00 (w/o tickets).

You could explore the option of renting points to stay in the Deluxe/DVC resorts.

For example:

AKV Value room is 69 points; OKW and Boardwalk are 76 points for your stay.

Points can be rented from anywhere from $10 to $14 per point...so for AKV you would spend minimum of $690 to $966. For OKW/BW you would pay $760 to $1064. Sometimes you can even luck out (if room is available) and get points for as low as $8/pt.

Nor sure if we are able to mention various places to check, so I will just say PM for places other than the board here to check for rental.

 

[Marionnette]

Ok, by Disney, your POP stay is approximately $717.00 (w/o tickets).

You could explore the option of renting points to stay in the Deluxe/DVC resorts.

For example:

AKV Value room is 69 points; OKW and Boardwalk are 76 points for your stay.

Points can be rented from anywhere from $10 to $14 per point...so for AKV you would spend minimum of $690 to $966. For OKW/BW you would pay $760 to $1064. Sometimes you can even luck out (if room is available) and get points for as low as $8/pt.

Nor sure if we are able to mention various places to check, so I will just say PM for places other than the board here to check for rental.

AKV Value studios are not going to be available for this September. There aren't that many of them and they were snagged by AKV owners at the 11-month mark. No one renting their points out is going to be willing to waitlist for one.

The same pretty much goes for BWV Std. View Studios. They require very few points per night in comparison to other DVC resorts. The resort is small and there are no dedicated studios, which means that when a 2-bedroom villa is booked, it takes a studio out of inventory. There would be almost zero chance of availability in September.

There's an outside chance that there will still be availability at OKW but more than likely the only resort that will have the entire week available would be SSR because it's so big. That would cost 90 points for a studio and the going rate at dvcrequest.com is $14/pt. That would be $1260 while a room at POP with the current discount would run the OP just over $700.

 

[McDISer]

Did you look up flights out of Milwaukee, they have direct flights with Air.tran and Southwest. hen you could use Magical Express.

If you don't want to park in Milwaukee, there is a bus that runs between O'hare and Mitchell Airport.

Disney just released some discounts for late Sept. 15% 0ff Value, 25% off moderates.

 

[SuperDan523]

Use Bing.com's travel portal or Kayak.com to check fare predictors. They're the best way to determine if there's a possibility of the prices coming back down.

I relied on Kayak's predictor on the 25th. It said fares would probably go down, so I waited. They went up. Now they are saying to expect them to go up. Past experience has shown that nonstops to Orlando don't usually drop much this late in the game.

You'd have to be pretty close to whomever you borrowed a car from. I don't think that I would lend out any of my vehicles so that someone could put that kind of mileage on it! Start checking rental car websites and make a reservation...not the kind that you pay up front for, the kind that you can cancel/modify at will. Then keep checking. Make sure that you will be able to take the vehicle out of state and that it has unlimited mileage. You don't want to be dinged for either of those.

My father is already allowing us to borrow his 2010 Taurus for another vacation, he'd probably let us borrow it again for September. But only if my wife asks, because she's far cuter than I am.

I checked Hertz with pick-up at the O'Hare airport location, unlimited mileage, and using my AAA discount. That quote was more expensive than any but one of the airlines I priced. My wife has looked via Priceline and found some much better deals, but once gas is figured in, we're not sure the savings are enough to offset the extra time.

Cheapest, yes. Also the most time-consuming and exhausting. Like you said, it will shorten your stay to drive or take the Megabus. At some point, you have to take your valuable vacation hours into consideration when making cost-saving choices.

ETA: I just saw in another one of your posts (Dumbo for sale) that you are expecting a little one. There is no way in hell that I would ride a Megabus or drive straight through for 18 hours if were pregnant! Please tell us that you are only in the TTC stages and not already on the nest!

Unfortunately, we lost the child somewhere halfway through the 9th week. I wouldn't have even suggested the MegaBus if she were going to be at 20 weeks at the time of the trip, which she would have been, and it really only came to us as an idea because some other members of my family took a MegaBus trip a few weeks ago. She wouldn't have minded driving if the price difference were great enough even if she were pregnant--her family always drove no matter what the circumstance when she was growing up and she's the type to get stressed over "unnecessary" expenses. We would probably have added in more frequent rest stops and probably a hotel stop midway if she were still pregnant.

The time is a big factor though. We'd both be adding two days of paid time off if we didn't shorten our time in Disney. My missed hours alone would be more than the difference between gas and flying. Could we shorten our time in Disney? Sure, we probably could. The highest overall crowd level on Josh's calendar the entire time we plan on being there is a 4, so we don't really need 8 days, but really, who ever wants to spend less time in Disney?

If it's just two adults, you're probably not going to make out very well with free dining at a Value Resort. You will only get free QS dining unless you pay to upgrade to TS. That would still be cheaper than paying rack rate for a Moderate Resort and getting the DDP for free but still pretty pricey. The TiW card would get you a discount at the POP food court and at the TS locations but there will be an automatic 18% gratuity on the pre-discount total. In order to break even (assuming that you would have tipped 18% or more anyway), you would have to spend $500 on food.

If we went with the DDP we would have paid for the upgrade. I made a pretty fabulous spreadsheet listing the cost difference between Free Dining and RO Discount but purchasing the DDP for several room types at several resorts. I think the only one where I'd have saved money doing free dining vs purchasing the DDP was standard rooms at All Star Music. Standard rooms at CBR might have been one that was better with FD as well but Pop, the other moderates I priced, and all of the deluxes I priced were all cheaper with the RO discount. We got the idea to try to dine OOP though since she rarely would eat the desserts at CS locations, we didn't use all of our snacks even the time we went during F&W, and as we priced out random meals using the prices listed on AllEars we had trouble coming up with any day worth of meals that was even close to $59.

The automatic tip with TiW isn't a big deal as I'd tip at least that in almost all situations anyway. I'm just concerned there if the 20% off of 7 or 8 TS bills with just two of us would add up to cover the $100 buy-in. We can't be sure we'll get in another trip within the next rolling calendar year, so if we buy in, we'd want to see some return on the investment. Maybe I'll throw together another spreadsheet with a week's worth of mock meals and see what we might expect to save.

The question arises: Are you a current AP holder or are you just considering the APs for possible room discounts and the ability to purchase the TiW? You might want to crunch those numbers a bit. 8-day MYW base tickets would certainly be cheaper, by about $300 apiece! Last year's AP discounts for those dates were in the 25%-35% range vs. 5%-30% for the general public. You just need to make sure that you're comparing apples to apples. There is a discussion about the AP rates for Sept 2012 here:
http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?t=2940701&page=10
You'll note that there was not that big of a difference between the general public rate and the AP rate for Value Resorts.

We are both AP holders, expiring Halloween of this year. Bought the APs on our honeymoon last October and some glitch in the system made them expire a year from the day we bought them rather than the first day we used the 9-day PH tickets on our MYW package. (Guest Relations guy at MK double-checked it in the system to see if the system really had them expiring the last day of our stay instead of our first, then told us congratulations and consider it a wedding present.)

If you drive to Orlando instead of flying or taking the bus, then the resort bus situation will be of no consequence. You can skip the buses and drive wherever you wish.

True that. Normally even if we do drive we only really take the car for DTD and anything we might need to do off-site. Both the AP and the fact that we'd be onsite guests would get us free parking though, so I guess its always an option. Hopefully the busses won't be too bad with it being a low season though. I do rather like the convenience of a car-free vacation.

As for the AP deals, my guess is that it will be as disappointing as it was last year.

I figure it can't be any worse than the general public deal that is out, which is a price I'm ok with.

Not everyone cancels their ADRs when they cancel their trips. Some people just move their vacation plans to offsite and retain their ADRs. My advice is to book whatever you can at this point and then keep checking for cancellations. Le Cellier is still a very hard-to-get ADR even though they have gone to 2 TS credits for both lunch and dinner.

I'll probably make a handful of ADRs tonight or tomorrow then check with the concierge at the resort a few times during the trip to see what has opened up. I figured BOG would be sold out, but missing out on 'Ohana was a bit of a punch in the head.

We are traveling to the World in Sept., too, from 45 min. outside of Chicago We drive straight through and it usually costs us about $400 for gas round trip. My parents are flying there from Ohare and meeting us and their roundtrip tickets were $376 (for both). We got the plane tickets about 2 weeks ago. If you can get the plane tickets in that range and would like to only spend a few hours traveling versus a whole day....I'd go with the plane! Have a great anniversary trip!

I totally agree. I'm all about the convenience, and I've been finding that while airfare is kind of high right now, it still doesn't feel worth the time and trouble.

I just discovered that I can actually book airfare through our rewards points system at my work, and after our next payout posts to my account I could pay for the flight and the room with my rewards points if I wanted to. I don't know that I necessarily want to use four years of points earned on one vacation, but the flights I wanted for about half of my current points balance is a pretty good deal IMO. Gotta see what the wifey says.

Did you look up flights out of Milwaukee, they have direct flights with Air.tran and Southwest. hen you could use Magical Express.

If you don't want to park in Milwaukee, there is a bus that runs between O'hare and Mitchell Airport.

I've priced Southwest out of Midway. Before the discount code they had out expired Thursday night it would have been $176 cheaper. Now it's more like $18 cheaper without that discount, which isn't worth us either needing to pay for parking at Midway or find someone to drive us there at 5 am on a school/work day (most of DW's family is in the education business in some form or another). I didn't look into Milwaukee but I'll give it a poke in a little bit.

Disney just released some discounts for late Sept. 15% 0ff Value, 25% off moderates.

I've been pricing via that deal already. Hopefully they release an AP deal better than that, but if not, its still a worthy deal.

 

[Patience]

How much would you save by driving or taking the bus? If it didn't save me at least 300 or 400 hundred dollars, I'd fly.

We live 9-10 hours away from WDW and we drove there on all of our previous trips. Southwest Airlines came to our city in June and I was able to get round trip, nonstop airfare for $129 each for the three of us so we booked it for our upcoming trip in September. It's saving us 20 hours in the car. Driving would have saved us about $200 after factoring in both gas and food while on the road but spending the extra $200 is worth it to us to not have to be in a car for so long, especially since our six year old doesn't enjoy long car trips.