Need advice

[xwrench]

Disney 1st timer.
Looking to visit disneyworld, week of thanksgiving, will have two 12 year olds, our son and one of his cousins, my wife and my self. The reason for a November visit is hopefully the weather is a little cooler, and a little less crowded. Other suggestions and experiences welcomed. Are packages the way to go for a Mon-Thurs visit?
Thanks

Marty and Angie

 

[Bob P]

to the DIS!

Well, you're on target for 50% of your goals! November weather is indeed cooler than the summer. In fact, plug your dates in herer for some weather history:
http://www.wunderground.com/tripplanner/index.asp


But.... Thanksgiving week is pretty darn crowded.

 

[xwrench]

A lot of people with the same idea, most schools are usually closed for that week. We should probably consider before or after Thanksgiving week

 

[dbenlee]

Thanksgiving week is normally very crowded. We were there last year the week before Thanksgiving and the crowd level was low until the Saturday before Thanksgiving. If possible, I would recommend the week before Thanksgiving week. It is normally cooler this time of year also, but go prepared for warm and cool weather. The days can still get up into the 80's and the nights can drop into the low 50's. When we were there last year, there was a freak cold front that made it down that far and the nights dropped into the low 30's. Other than that just have a good time!!

 

[xwrench]

Thanks Ben and Bob. Looks like the week before or the week after Thanksgiving.

As far as accomodations, friends have told us to buy some sort of package that has lodging, food and access to different areas of the park.

Our desires is to be very close to the park, have access to the areas the boys will enjoy. We will be driving form Louisville, Ky thus we will have a car, but prefer to be within walking distance or shuttle. Your thoughts.

 

[dbenlee]

Staying on site, you will have Disney transportation and will not need your car unless you choose to use it, or want to save time (such as going from resort to resort for dinner or going off site).

Using Disney's website, you can get package deals that include hotel and park tickets and dinning plan. You can also use a travel agent such as Small World Vacations or Dreams Unlimited or any number of others. Both Small World and Dreams are Disney travel agents and both are pretty good. We used Small World Vacations for our first trip and our agent (Sandy) was very helpful with suggestions and ideas.

We have never stayed off site, but there are plenty of hotels that are close to Disney that would only have you driving a few minutes to the parks. The down side of that is you will have to pay parking each day. We prefer to stay on site and use Disney transportation to get to the parks each day.

Another recommendation I would make is to get a guide book as soon as possible. You can probably find them at the local library, but they might not have the latest edition and the way things change at Disney you would do better getting the latest edition. We bought ours so that we had it to refer to when ever a question came up. There are several good ones out there, but we prefer is The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World 2007. It is thick and can look intimidating, but they try to cover every thing people would need to now and it has a lot of really good information. And searching these boards you can find a lot of threads that may already have answers to many of your questions. The good thing about guide books is that they answer questions you might not have known to ask.

Sorry I got so wordy, if you have other questions I'll be glad to try to help all I can.