new with questions

[mom2togirls]

Im not sure if this is the correct board or not but I was wondering peole opinions on the below questions. We will be taking our first trip to WDW October 2009

1. Book it as a package or book everything seperate. I have to save the money to go and im awful with saving. In the long rund should I do a package or everything seperate. A huge chunk of our expense will be the airfare from Cali to Fl

2. meal plan or no mealplan. We are a family of 4 our kids will be 10 and 5

3. Should I book something right when the new rates come out or wait and see if there are discounts later?

Any tips/advice would be great. thanks

 

[hvivona]

If you plan on staying on property, you will always save money by booking a package. As far as the meal plan goes, honestly its different for every family. We use the meal plan and its great for us. It does take an aweful lot of planning to make it worth it though. If planning is not for you or you like quick service meals ok, then maybe the plan isn't for you. And you still have a lot of time to plan/book your trip. If you're not going til '09 I'd hold off on booking and see if some discounts come up.

 

[fall08CP]

1) I would call Disney and have them price it out for you both ways. Sometimes they'll have discounts that aren't advertised online. You don't even have to commit to anything on the phone. However, the first time we called the prices were pretty low. We called them again a week later to book and the price had gone up. So maybe it's best to book early and then re-book later if it gets cheaper?
2) We loved the meal plan, but it's not for everyone. Check out the Dining Board for reviews on it.
3) I kind of answered on the first one.

 

[mom2togirls]

thank you both

 

[CanadianGuy]

You might get more answers to this over on the Resorts & Booking Board and I'm going to move this over there ...

Thanks!

Knox

 

[jmclester]

Package vs seperate all depends on what you want to do. Also depends on the age of your children (isn't 9 the cut off between child and adult? i.e, you have 3 adults and one child for the sake of purchasing tickets). My fam only visits the parks so we do not need the water park options. We eat a lot of counter service so the meal plan has never made sense to me. Personally I have never found a package that would have saved me any money.

I would agree to price it out both ways. AAA is a good investment too and I suspect they will price the options both ways for you too.

Whatever you do, stay on property and take advantage of the free shuttle from the airport!!

 

[LilGMom]

Im not sure if this is the correct board or not but I was wondering peole opinions on the below questions. We will be taking our first trip to WDW October 2009

1. Book it as a package or book everything seperate. I have to save the money to go and im awful with saving. In the long run should I do a package or everything seperate. A huge chunk of our expense will be the airfare from Cali to Fl

2. meal plan or no mealplan. We are a family of 4 our kids will be 10 and 5

3. Should I book something right when the new rates come out or wait and see if there are discounts later?

Any tips/advice would be great. thanks

1. Sometimes you can save money booking as a package and other times booking seperately. If you book a package the deposit required is different than if you book rooms and tickets seperately and there are different cancellation policies too - something to consider. If you are bad about saving open an account at your bank that you put X number of dollars in each week/every other week to use for your vacation. And like a pp said sometimes joining AAA can pay for itself with a resort discount.

2. DDP or no DDP, that is the question. DDP can take some planning to make sure that you use all of your credits. With your oldest being 10 he/she will count as an adult so you need to figure out if he/she will eat $38 worth of food each day or if they'd be happier ordering off the kids' menu. For my family the DDP with the 2008 changes isn't a money saver.

3. If you have dates that are set in stone (so to speak) book now and then continue to check back to see if there are any discounts that can be applied.