Opinions Please

[superwy]

I received a discount pin (so lucky!) and booked a trip for October 30 - November 4. I decided to splurge and book a Garden CL at Beach Club, thinking we'd enjoy having breakfast available and afternoon cocktails while we relax. Now I am reviewing our expenses and trying to make some decisions. If we booked a standard room at BC instead, we'd save about $500, or close to the cost of the dining plan for all of us. We liked the dining plan last time, but I felt a little constrained by the ADRs. Currently we have one for 1900 Park Faire to celebrate our daughter's 5th birthday and one for the Yachtsman (just DH and I, kids to Sandcastle). We'd like to try T-Rex and I am not sure if this is on the plan. Also debating whether to do our typical park hoppers or just basic tickets and go to the Halloween party. Any thoughts?

Just as a side-note, we'll be heading to Universal for two nights at the end of our trip to check it out as we've never been.

Thanks for the help.

Kim

 

[KELLY]

We stuck with the 40% discount instead of the free dining for this reason. My kids want to eat at rainforest and t-rex neither are on the dining plan. The other 2 TS meals we want to eat are. But we are there for 10 days and that is alot of adr's.

But we are also staying at AKL instead of POP.

 

[disneymagicgirl]

I was also considering CL, but decided against it. We drive, so we can bring stuff to make drinks. We always bring oatmeal, granola bars, bananas for breakfast anyways. I already made all my ADRs. Basically, I do not think CL would get me much for the $600 extra it would cost.
I also considered hoppers. We will add it when we get there if we decide to hop. I don't think we will end up hopping. Never do.
The Halloween party is lots of fun!

 

[kirbygump]

I also splurged on the BC GV CL room when I got the 40% PIN. We are still doing DDP and going with non-hopper tix. Today I actually added a day. My whole reason for the CL was a splurge, pure & simple. I will probably never get another PIN and going for the week, instead of 10 days allows me to go CL. I want the experience for the kids, I know they will love it. So if you can spend the money, I would say stick with what you got, but IKWYM when you start to go back over the numbers!!!

 

[jgallant]

I also splurged on the BC GV CL room when I got the 40% PIN. We are still doing DDP and going with non-hopper tix. Today I actually added a day. My whole reason for the CL was a splurge, pure & simple. I will probably never get another PIN and going for the week, instead of 10 days allows me to go CL. I want the experience for the kids, I know they will love it. So if you can spend the money, I would say stick with what you got, but IKWYM when you start to go back over the numbers!!!

This is exactly what we are doing. We have never stayed in CL, and we have a group of 9, so we are buying the DDP on one room only. We dropped the hoppers, to save us the extra $, and added a day to give us the extra ticket, way cheaper, we plan on relaxing and enjoying the Poly, stayed before and loved it, cannot imagine how we will love CL.

 

[superwy]

Thanks for all of your thoughts. I may make this one a very different vacation from past trips. We have always rented a car, visited one park in the morning, relaxed then went to another park in the afternoon. We've stayed on-site and off-site. This time, I might think about no car, using the transportation, not park hopping and spending some more time just relaxing. We can take a cab to Universal for the last two nights, save the parking there, then cab again to the airport. I am not sure if we'll love using the buses after the freedom of having a car, but with no place to go in a hurry and a slow time of year it might just be perfect. Lots of ways to make the budget look better or worse, depending on the day. Perhaps I should just leave it alone!!

Thanks again!