HELP! My Large Family wants to do DISNEY

[MomofEIGHT]

I am NEW to these boards, actually, I remember using them back in 2000 when my teens were so young and I saved a small fortune using the budget board (can't believe it's still here!) . We have not been to WDW since. I have 8 kids and a hubby who want to finally try and go. I'm not pregnant or nursing so it's the YEAR for us, but we would only do it debt free. SO we need HELP budgeting and planning. I'm scouring the boards and they are immensely helpful cost / benefits of driving straight through or staying in two hotel rooms with ten people?? We will have four drivers, want to either rent a 15 passenger, or drive our two older cars. Not sure what to do. Driving from houston. Any tips or links to other threads would be so helpful. I would LOVE to go for an extended time, like 10-14 days but it would probably be impossible. My family has not had any type of a vacation in years. With college age kids, we would probably go Dec 14th and stay through Christmas. Am I just CRAZY??? The older kids want to pitch in to help pay for it. Everyone knows how to cook so we would cook in the condo and bring snacks. I'm nervous, but think I just need to GO FOR IT.

 

[worm761]

With that many I would either rent a condo offsite or rent DVC if you want onsite. Bonnet Creek gets great reviews on this site though I have never stayed offsite. There is a board a few boards up about staying offsite.

The only driving advice I have is Pensacola, FL is about your halfway mark. It is 8 hours from here. And we are about 8 hours from Houston too.

I would suggest breakfast in the room. Take snacks. Dinners in the room. Then you only have to pay for lunches. Unless you decide to also take lunches with you.

Sign up for the Mousesavers newsletter and use her link for cheaper tickets. It comes out on the 15th every month.

 

[Marionnette]

I am NEW to these boards, actually, I remember using them back in 2000 when my teens were so young and I saved a small fortune using the budget board (can't believe it's still here!) . We have not been to WDW since. I have 8 kids and a hubby who want to finally try and go. I'm not pregnant or nursing so it's the YEAR for us, but we would only do it debt free. SO we need HELP budgeting and planning. I'm scouring the boards and they are immensely helpful cost / benefits of driving straight through or staying in two hotel rooms with ten people?? We will have four drivers, want to either rent a 15 passenger, or drive our two older cars. Not sure what to do. Driving from houston. Any tips or links to other threads would be so helpful. I would LOVE to go for an extended time, like 10-14 days but it would probably be impossible. My family has not had any type of a vacation in years. With college age kids, we would probably go Dec 14th and stay through Christmas. Am I just CRAZY??? The older kids want to pitch in to help pay for it. Everyone knows how to cook so we would cook in the condo and bring snacks. I'm nervous, but think I just need to GO FOR IT.

With a family the size of yours, I would recommend getting a vacation home instead of a condo. You will have more space and will be more comfortable. There are plenty of rentals on HomeAway and VRBO. Many have game rooms, screened-in pools, BBQ areas, and media rooms. They can be a vacation unto themselves.

I would not recommend two cars. That's twice the cost of parking (currently $15/day). You would also have to think about what you would do if one of those cars were to have engine trouble on the way. You wouldn't have room to put everyone in the second car and the vacation could be ruined if you have to wait for the bad car to be repaired. If a rental vehicle has problems, the agency provides you with a substitute and you're on your way! The only drawback would be the cost of adding any drivers under the age of 25. That can be very expensive.

I doubt that there will be YES classes at that time in December. So getting YES tickets for the younger kids probably won't be an option. It's a safe bet that ticket prices will rise at least once between now and then. My advice would be to purchase tickets as you can afford to buy them and stash them away as if they were actual cash. With ticket prices rising faster than the rate of inflation or the rate of return on a simple savings account, it's the only way to hedge against rising costs. However, like you said, it's going to take a leap of faith that you will definitely get to Disney. You have to make sure that you will not regret spending that money on tickets when <insert major appliance repair, car problem or family illness here> happens.

Other than that, my advice is to save, save, save. Get the children involved. Cut corners where you can without living like paupers. Set intermediate goals (ie. by Sept, we want to have enough saved to cover the vacation home rental, we want to be able to put a ticket to Disney in everyone's stocking at Christmas, the cost of the rental van plus gas and tolls will be X and we want that covered by April, etc.) Good luck!

 

[cndij]

I would recommend trying to get a little further than halfway the first day, maybe to like Tallahassee, and when your second day is shorter you don't arrive so exhausted. I have checked before for a room big enough for a group, at say Residence Inn with 2 bedrooms, but it usually is more than 2 rooms cost. Your best bet might be to use Priceline to get 2 rooms with 2 double beds. There are tons of houses and condos offsite that will fit your party, some even with a private pool. We rented through VRBO one time, and got a 4BR house with private pool and game room, for about $700 a week. If you have any timeshare exchange availability, the Imperial Palms by Marriott (on the Marriott World Center Property) is a 3BR unit that sleeps 10. We have exchanged into that property for an upcoming trip next month. Since you're driving, you might want to look at pre-cooking some of your meals and bringing the stuff with you frozen if you have room, I plan to do that for several of our meals, so I don't spend so much time cooking on this trip. Also if you do rent a big passenger van, remember there is only so much room for luggage for 10 people. This upcoming trip, we are taking our Expedition, but renting a small trailer from Uhaul for luggage and coolers. Last time we had a turtle top luggage carrier and it was terrible, made the truck hard to handle, burned more gas etc. The 4 X 8 trailer is running us $150 for 9 days.

As far as groceries go, I always try to bring basic spices and condiments, especially things I have a stockpile of through couponing, as a matter of fact, I have already started my box for next months trip. Right now trying to weigh out bringing or buying other things there, since there are both Costco and Sams Club in Orlando as well as Aldis. I have started a list of what to bring, and what I need to buy on arrival.

 

[khaoskat]

If you want the experience of staying on property, then look into renting DVC points. You wouldn't be able to start trying to get a rental till about 11 months out, to 7 months out for a room.

You can keep an eye out for good deals, we were able to get $10/pt for our rental.

Then you wouldn't have to worry about parking, or part of the party wanting to go or part stay home a bit late...

 

[MSSANDRA]

Do you have to work around public school too, or just college? The early part of your December trip might be regular season, but the Christmas part will be peak and everything higher. If it is just college, consider going as soon as they get out in May. Much cheaper rates and lower crowds than Christmas.

 

[ckmommy]

We have not stayed off site, but we are from Houston and have a large (not as big as yours) family of 7.

It is 15.5 hours to WDW from Cypress. We have done the drive so often that I can name mile markers and landmarks! To save money, i would drive it straight through. It is not that difficult and will save money on hotel rooms. I would probably rent a van though. You can easily make sandwiches and bring snacks so the cost for food on the way down and back will not be much.

A thought would be to get 2 rooms (this is what we do) at POR (Port Orleans Resort) in the Alligator Bayou section. They each sleep five. If you go in early Dec, you might luck out and get free dining. Which is a big savings!!! You will have not out of pocket costs for food--but, you will have to buy the hotel and tickets at the same time.

It would probably be the most cost effective to do a house and make your own meals though. You are allowed ti bring your own food into the park.

Not sure if this will help!! Good luck and have fun planning!

 

[SandrA9810]

I would check out renting DVC points on one of the other boards here. It can drastically reduce the cost of 3 bedroom villas. Other than that, you're looking at two rooms, and probably in tight quarters.

When looking off property, be careful of the "15 MINS TO DISNEY!!!" Yeah, it's 15 minutes to property line, another 10 to get to the MK parking lot, and probably 20 minutes to get through the gates. Never underestimate how much time it takes to get into the parks from the Disney property line. Use google maps to see the actual distance and add 20-30 minutes getting through the gates from the parking lot.

If your family is outdoorsy and adventurous, you could look at Fort Wilderness. It is beautifully decorated during the holidays and still has a bit of that slowed down feeling even during packed times of the year. You can also sleep up to ten on a campsite, and the extra person fee is much lower than the resorts. Crockpot meals and grilling are very common at the campgrounds. You just have to bring your own kitchen (sort of). There is a camping board on here as well that have lots of tips on how to do it. And probably the cheapest per night option.

If you're planning on staying through Christmas, and want to be in the parks on Christmas, I would suggest staying on property. Onsite guests get slightly higher priority entering the parks than those coming in from off property locations. Christmas and New Years, the parks do close due to capacity limits.

The other benefit to staying onsite, is allowing the older kids the ability to tour on their own without the use of a vehicle. Every one can go off in their own direction and have a way to get back to the hotel.

 

[Lilliputian]

I have 5 children and have driven from Dallas on our past several trips, so we're not too far apart. I totally get timing trips when you're not pregnant.

With our big family, we really like staying offsite in a pool home. You'll have a hard time finding a condo big enough for your whole family, and it probably won't be much cheaper than a 4 or 5 bedroom home. I would look on VRBO for a house in Windsor Hills, Windsor Palms, Indian Ridge, or one of the other nearby subdivisions. It really doesn't take long at all to get to the parks from those subdivisions. MK is a little bit of a pain, but the others are all fine. Trying to rent a 3 bedroom DVC villa would be next to impossible and a lot of money to do it over Christmas.

We love to do longer trips, especially since we spend so much time in the car (always with a baby and a toddler!) getting there. Generally, you can get a better price on a vacation home when you stay longer, but that isn't going to apply over Christmas. No one will reduce the rate for those dates. Can you go at any other time?

Cooking meals will save a lot of money. You can even pre-make some things and take them frozen so that you don't have to take time away from your vacation to cook. Then you can do really easy meals for the ones you do have to prepare while you're there, like bottled BBQ sauce over chicken or beans and hot dogs.

You definitely can do it, but it will take some planning and some calculating to see which way is cheapest. We always see other big families when we're there.

 

[OhMari]

I am going to give you a different scenario. there are 10 of you, so that is only 5 in each room. You could do the new family suites in the new Value rooms at the Art of Animation. They have room for six in each room, with a small kitchen.

It would save on parking at the parks. 2 vehicles would be $30 a day x15=450. I got a pin code for free dining into December. You could call and see if a pin code was attached to your name. This would take care of food. Otherwise you could eat breakfast in your rooms, eat lunch and share meals, counter service restaurants serve very large portions. If you don't do the dining plan, free or paid for, don't be afraid of going off sight, there are restaurants within 5 minutes outside of the grounds. The Golden Corral is a great bargain of $10 a person for a Buffet vs. a Disney Buffet that runs close to $30 a person.

A new Publix just got built on the outside of Celebration, which is very easy to get too for groceries. It took my dh 5 minutes one evening to get there from our Disney hotel, get his Diet Dew, run in the store and 5 minutes back. The road system is very easy to navigate now from back in 2000 when you were there last time. We were there in 2000 for the first time and I remember road construction was a nitemare.

Happy planning, we like to say on the DIS that planning is half as much fun as actually being at WDW.

 

[Deb & Bill]

If you are talking about Dec 2013, you are much too late to rent a DVC grand villa (that sleeps twelve). You needed to do that last January.

I would not rent a 15 passenger van because of the tripping problems that they have. I know we had to get rid of all our 15 passenger vans at the hospital I used to work at because of the tipping problems (center of gravity). Until we got rid of a van, we had to leave the back seat entirely empty. No luggage, no staff, no patients.

What kind of rooms you get depends on the ages of your kids.

 

[gillenkl]

Would you consider camping at Fort Wilderness?

 

[atwmommy]

We are renting a five bedroom house nearby with a pool for 700 a week. Most cost effective for my larger family giving us space to relax and not be on top of each other. We also get to see other parts of FL this way.

 

[disneymomoftwins]

We are renting a five bedroom house nearby with a pool for 700 a week. Most cost effective for my larger family giving us space to relax and not be on top of each other. We also get to see other parts of FL this way.

Do you mind me asking where you are renting. We need a five bedroom house and I have looked at so many my head is spinning!!!

 

[LovesTimone]

Here are my thoughts;

You haven't been in since 2000, that's 13 years and a lot has changed, this might be the last family vacation for a while, once the kiddos get out of college and start making their own families. I would want to stay in the magic, for us you just can't beat it, the theming and magic that each resort has to offer. Using the buses so that you can all ride together, or if someone needs to run back to the resort for something it just a ride away. While there are vacation homes that are close to the parks, its still a drive to and from. My family prefers that extra time in the parks. Staying on site, also gives you extra magic hours, and a better chance of getting into the parks on day they could stop guest entry due to capacity.

I would suggest POR - they have rooms that sleep 5 - 2 full / they might have been redone to queen -beds, and a pull down, I suggest this as you said your not pregnant, so I am assuming that you still have smaller children that would be comfortable in the pull down. You can ask for room that has the door in-between, so that you still would have access to everyone. This way you would have 2 full bathroom, with 4 sinks, 2 TV's and the curtains will help with dressing and privacy for everyone. Another reason I suggest this resort is that you can use the pool and food court at POFQ, and they also have a boat that runs to DTD, which is nice ride. Also there is no charge for parking at the resorts, or if you want to take your car to the parks, no charge.

As far as renting a van, I would not, I would use my own cars, and any money that you would use to rent the van could go into oil changes, tires,and such for your own car, that way you are using your money for you and not the rental. Also this gives everyone a chance to ride with someone else and by switching cars. I would try to drive as far as Lake City, the hotel rooms there are a lot less expense than in Tallahassee.

I would try to get in and out before Christmas as this is the most expensive time of year. Also look for the free dinning offer, this way you can do some character meals, and other table service dining, after all Mom and Dad should get to enjoy someone waiting on them too. Also if you can swing it and if you do get free dinning, see what the cost to upgrade would be to DDXDP, it might be well worth it for your large family, The cost of dinning rise's quite a bit during peak times of the year. You might not be back for a long time so I would go for it. Also you would have everything paid upfront that's a wonderful feeling, and my for my DH it's a plus, so he can relax and knows that everyone can get what they want, and not worry about price.


As far as extra cash for your trip, there are lots of ways to make extra money, saving change, garage sales, plato's closet they pay cash for your clothes on the spot (more for teenagers), consignment shop, and Baby Consignment shops. Couponing for everything, Dog walking, Babysitting. I have a friend that buys a Disney Gift Card when she goes to the grocery store every week, She use's her saving form coupons for the cards.

GO for it, Have a wonderful and magical time

 

[Jedimom]

1. A condo, like you said, or 4-5 BR house offsite will definitely save you money over anything onsite. More importantly, having the space will save your sanity.

2. Take your own two vehicles. It'll save you over renting a 10-passenger. You'll have to pay double the parking, sure. But, when some of the little ones get tired and cranky and want to go back to the condo/house, and some of the older ones want to stay longer at the parks, you all can split up without any problems. Worth it!

3. Please reconsider the timing of your trip? It is the busiest and most crowded time of the year. I'd be a shame to plunk down all that money and have a rotten vacation. I went with just myself and four kids, during a non-busy time of the year (end of Jan-beg of Feb) and it was tough for me some days with the crowd levels. I can't imagine trying to keep a group of 10 together and happy. When do your kids go back to college? Around here, they start back mid-January. The first part of January might be a better choice -- lower crowds.

 

[pocomom]

Vacation home ! For a family your size vacation home is the way to go! Most have pools so you can have a down day or two just hanging around the house. I found many 4 and 5 bedrooms when I looked and we stayed in a 4 bedroom with pool and loved it! 2-3 kids in a room and you all will still have open living space vs. hotel or condos.
I would drive, stay in a vacation home, cook in the home as much as possible (even premade food or take out will be cheaper than eating in disney) but stick to easy to prepare, or assemble foods, so it still feels like a vacation to you. I also pack from home, if we have the room in the vehicle, things like salt and pepper, spices, things that are expensive to buy and you won't use all of.
I know some people don't want to go grocery shopping on vacation, but after a couple of days in the car with my kids, I LOVE getting out to the store for an hour by myself and I normally go the first night in, so we are all ready for the parks the first morning. Even if you want to have the restaurant experience just having breakfast in your house, and some snacks will save you a small fortune.
Nice thing about a vacation home too is you don't all have to go to the parks everyday. I stayed home with two of mine when they were under the weather, while dh, and then grandma took the oldest to the parks.
The other thing is a vacation home will have a laundry room. Lifesaver! I would also have the kids earn their own spending money before they go and make a strict budget with them about what you pay for. How exciting! Have fun planning!

 

[atwmommy]

Do you mind me asking where you are renting. We need a five bedroom house and I have looked at so many my head is spinning!!!

VBRO # 69674. I'll give you a review when we get back!

 

[parkwoodtech]

We actually have 6 kids and we also have in-laws that go. Last year for 1 week staying in a house we managed to go to Disney for 4 days and Sea World for 1 day. This year we are going to FL for 14 days. We rent a house with 4 bedrooms and a pull out couch. This year we will have 12 people staying. Our house costs $800+/- a week. It is fully furnished and stocked with a full kitchen full of dishes, etc. There is a game room with air hockey, pool table and an LCD TV for the kids to play in as well as a pool. We drive down from NC (12 hr's) and drive back. The house is less than 10 minutes from the front gate.

 

[horseshowmom]

We are renting a five bedroom house nearby with a pool for 700 a week. Most cost effective for my larger family giving us space to relax and not be on top of each other. We also get to see other parts of FL this way.

Do you mind me asking where you are renting. We need a five bedroom house and I have looked at so many my head is spinning!!!

We rented a house in Sunset Lakes that was 5BR/3BA (I think, been a couple of years). We had it for Christmas week for $100 a night. It was very nice, had a gameroom, and was backed up to a lake for fishing. Feel free to PM me, and I'll send you the owner's contact info. He also has a house in Emerald Lakes. These are only about 5 or 10 minutes from AK.


OP, I would seriously consider Wyndham Bonnet Creek. We've stayed there a couple of times and loved it. They have 4BR/4BA units that would work nicely for you with a full kitchen and a washer/dryer. Go over to the Orlando Hotels and Attractions board, and they have several options you can go through to get very reduced rates (I used eBay). The units are very, very nice, and there are lots of onsite activities for everybody.

Regarding the timeframe, I don't think it's crazy at all. Just make your touring plans carefully. I've used Tourguide Mike for that timeframe and had no problems at all. My husband even asked why we always seemed to be where the crowds weren't?