studiojmm
Mouseketeer
- Joined
- Mar 10, 2017
- Messages
- 187
I'm planning a surprise Christmas Party visit + a few days for my daughter (11) so I can't ask her to weigh in on decisions.
Trying to decide between All-Stars (currently a split stay between Sports and Movies due to availability, but will watch for an opportunity to consolidate) and a budget offsite hotel (with breakfast included!). Offsite stay assumes we Uber/Lyft to and from the parks and airport and will end up costing very close to the same as All-Stars. On-site means bus because the room rate is higher and I'm not going to Uber/Lyft on top of that.
Biggest deciding factor: How essential is the 60-day window from about December 3-8 given that we will want to do Flight of Passage and Toy Story Land? (We will not be doing Frozen)
Further background:
We don't expect to spend a lot of time at the resort. When we do Disney, we go hard - rope drop to closing most days - in one park per day. (Honest to goodness this pace is driven by the kid. I'm always making the case for going back to the room and resting up mid-day but she does't want to miss a Disney minute. I only convinced her to do that once last time.) We will probably do one late-start day after the Christmas party.
Last time we went, we stayed at Pop Century. She (then 10) LOVED, LOVED, LOVED the theming. She would have preferred AoA, which we visited to check out the them and took the drawing class a couple times, but she understands the price differential.
The time before that, we stayed offsite. That time we discovered that this kid (then 9) could go from rope drop to park closing and THEN go for a swim in the pool while I soaked in the hot tub.
The other considerations are pool access (Disney resorts have very limited pool hours compared to off site, so we didn't get a lot of use out of the pool on park days last time) and
food (fridge/microwave). We wouldn't eat at the resort much, if at all. We are vegetarians and saw very little at the Pop food court that appealed. We usually carry a whole bunch of healthy snacks to the park, eat one nice meal out per day, and supplement with whims and treats from there. We bring food from home and/or visit a grocery story/have groceries delivered to do this. We would either eat breakfast at our off-site resort or pack on-the-go breakfasts if we were staying onsite. (On-the-go would probably be a step up nutritionally from what the kid is willing to eat at the average continental breakfast). I was happy enough with the room fridge at Pop and food-court microwave. Most offsite resorts offer a room microwave and the one we are considering also does breakfast, so that's a plus.
Finally, Pop Warner? How much will we care? We've been to CA Adventure and Disneyland on Grad Night days and were not bothered (though I had a really entertaining trip down Grizzly River Run with some very squeally middle-school age girls - they kind of made the ride for me - and we had some similarly entertaining Radiator Springs Racers rides too.)
Thoughts?
We probably aren't going to keep up this annual visit thing forever . . . .
Thanks.
Trying to decide between All-Stars (currently a split stay between Sports and Movies due to availability, but will watch for an opportunity to consolidate) and a budget offsite hotel (with breakfast included!). Offsite stay assumes we Uber/Lyft to and from the parks and airport and will end up costing very close to the same as All-Stars. On-site means bus because the room rate is higher and I'm not going to Uber/Lyft on top of that.
Biggest deciding factor: How essential is the 60-day window from about December 3-8 given that we will want to do Flight of Passage and Toy Story Land? (We will not be doing Frozen)
Further background:
We don't expect to spend a lot of time at the resort. When we do Disney, we go hard - rope drop to closing most days - in one park per day. (Honest to goodness this pace is driven by the kid. I'm always making the case for going back to the room and resting up mid-day but she does't want to miss a Disney minute. I only convinced her to do that once last time.) We will probably do one late-start day after the Christmas party.
Last time we went, we stayed at Pop Century. She (then 10) LOVED, LOVED, LOVED the theming. She would have preferred AoA, which we visited to check out the them and took the drawing class a couple times, but she understands the price differential.
The time before that, we stayed offsite. That time we discovered that this kid (then 9) could go from rope drop to park closing and THEN go for a swim in the pool while I soaked in the hot tub.
The other considerations are pool access (Disney resorts have very limited pool hours compared to off site, so we didn't get a lot of use out of the pool on park days last time) and
food (fridge/microwave). We wouldn't eat at the resort much, if at all. We are vegetarians and saw very little at the Pop food court that appealed. We usually carry a whole bunch of healthy snacks to the park, eat one nice meal out per day, and supplement with whims and treats from there. We bring food from home and/or visit a grocery story/have groceries delivered to do this. We would either eat breakfast at our off-site resort or pack on-the-go breakfasts if we were staying onsite. (On-the-go would probably be a step up nutritionally from what the kid is willing to eat at the average continental breakfast). I was happy enough with the room fridge at Pop and food-court microwave. Most offsite resorts offer a room microwave and the one we are considering also does breakfast, so that's a plus.
Finally, Pop Warner? How much will we care? We've been to CA Adventure and Disneyland on Grad Night days and were not bothered (though I had a really entertaining trip down Grizzly River Run with some very squeally middle-school age girls - they kind of made the ride for me - and we had some similarly entertaining Radiator Springs Racers rides too.)
Thoughts?
We probably aren't going to keep up this annual visit thing forever . . . .
Thanks.
