Quackers4Disney
Earning My Ears
- Joined
- Oct 11, 2010
- Messages
- 19
Welcome again to our little saga...also known as:
Part 1: 3 Families, 2 Grandparents, and a Niece: A Disney World Christmas Vacation 2010
http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?t=2573968
These posts help address planning for a large family vacation to Walt Disney World Resort ~ Florida. Enjoy!
Background of the story: So here is a little insight into my world outside of Disney. (Be careful you could get lost in there!) I am a LOVING wife and mother to 3 children (Boy, Girl, Boy). I work for a University in our state and get paid to be a creative geek. Yep, Im rocking the geek glasses and my husband loves them. My husband has an amazing mother (referred to as Mother-in-Love) that is just about game for anything. My mother-in-love comes up the ideas and we all work to achieve them. Along with the mother-in-love, my husband has 2 wonderful sisters and their assorted brood. In 2008, we suffered the loss of 2 family members that are dearly missed. It reminded us that family is very important and the time you have with them should never be wasted. This is how the first trip started! For the 2009 trip, we were 15 strong! We thought we had studied enough...were excited enough...and planned enough to take on Disney.
Here we are at our first park....First Picture:
Last Park....last picture:
Yes, this can happen to you! I have compiled some planning tricks that may not prevent this outcome, but you will sure enjoy the ride!
This year we are adding my father and my niece into the mix. My father has not been to Disney since before I was hatched. Literally! My mother was in her last trimester and Dad took my older brother on a boy weekend. Can you believe that! P.S. I would give away the year, but since I am younger than most of the adults on the trip, Ill keep that one to myself
According to my brother, it was my father dragging him around the park and not the other way around. I am so ready to show my Dad everything we loved on the first trip and for him to tell me everything that has changed. My niece has been to WDW, but only Magic Kingdom and Disney Studios. We are ready to show her what she was missing.
Now on with Part Two: Airlines, WDW Discounts and Disney park tickets..Oh My!!
Airlines are a tricky thing. You may know a friend who is a travel agent, but that may or may not give you the best deal. Expedia and Cheap Tickets never helped us either. The only thing that saved us loads on flights were the nimble fingers and blurry eyeballs willing to crawl around every airlines website looking for the deals. Look for smaller airlines that may fly from cities that are in a 4 hour driving distance from your home. If it is a direct flight, you are basically driving your layover and saving money in the end. We found (Thanks to my sister-in-love Di and my MVP) that Allegiant Air flies directly from Springfield, MO to Orlando (MCO). Average ticket was $89 each way and if you have a last minute addition and the flight is not full they sometimes have tickets as cheap as $20. It pays to take the time to look directly at the airline websites and all airports within your driving area. In flights alone, we saved $1700.
WDW Discounts. From the previous post you know that our mother-in-love chose to stay on park property after our condo space was up. We decided to stay at the Port Orleans ~ Riverside because of the wonderful reviews and feedback provided by the folks on the DisBoards. (Thank you!)
After we booked the rooms, we started looking for discounts. Discounts can come to you in many ways.
If you apply for a Disney Credit card or change to a Chase checking account with a Disney Debit you can begin receiving offers immediately.
If you have signed up for the Disney.com website and ordered park maps they send you offers through the mail. Postcards arrive with offer codes. These codes are alphanumeric and are sometimes are on the address label.
You can even call the Disney reservation line and they can look under your name and address to see if an offer is waiting for you.
In our case, Disney offered 25%-40% off the room rate from 12/21-12/24. By making a phone call we saved a $1000! So be persistent. Keep calling and checking your mailbox for post cards.
Also get a Grand gathering # (available for groups larger than 8). It does not cost a thing, but will allow you to link all of the rooms. So when your discount comes through only one family member can call and secure the savings for all.
Another WDW Discount you might consider is the Disney Photopass. With a large family it is really hard to take pictures because the one holding the camera is always missing. Even if you ask someone to take your picture, it is really hard to find a place in the crowd that everyone isnt cutting through. The Photopass photographers were amazing. And the magic shots make it worth it:
We pre-ordered the photopass again. Normally the photopass DVD is $149.95 after the parks. If you order ahead of time it is $99.95. With a large family you can split the cost and the digital pictures once they arrive. Another fun thing is the digital editing you can do to the photos before ordering the CDs. We added borders, cropped, stamped and had a great time. When you and the fam are done maligning each other, you use the pre-paid code and they send you the CD(s). In our case it was 3 CDs filled with pictures. No additional charges or fees. We could then post the pics, or print them at CVS.
Disney Tickets. Wow, who knew that little pieces of paper cause so many decisions? How many days for each park? Do we need to lock in a ticket price before they are raised in August? Do we want to park hop? Ask these questions to family members and your decision should be easy.
One piece of advice you need to know, if you are visiting parks with a group larger than 8..do not park hop. It is a waste of money. We purchased park hopper passes and used them once and ran to ride one ride before the park closed for the night.
Did this help you? I would love to hear your thoughts. We still need to cover my favorite planning sites and touring plans....ok and some other stuff too.
Part 1: 3 Families, 2 Grandparents, and a Niece: A Disney World Christmas Vacation 2010
http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?t=2573968
These posts help address planning for a large family vacation to Walt Disney World Resort ~ Florida. Enjoy!
Background of the story: So here is a little insight into my world outside of Disney. (Be careful you could get lost in there!) I am a LOVING wife and mother to 3 children (Boy, Girl, Boy). I work for a University in our state and get paid to be a creative geek. Yep, Im rocking the geek glasses and my husband loves them. My husband has an amazing mother (referred to as Mother-in-Love) that is just about game for anything. My mother-in-love comes up the ideas and we all work to achieve them. Along with the mother-in-love, my husband has 2 wonderful sisters and their assorted brood. In 2008, we suffered the loss of 2 family members that are dearly missed. It reminded us that family is very important and the time you have with them should never be wasted. This is how the first trip started! For the 2009 trip, we were 15 strong! We thought we had studied enough...were excited enough...and planned enough to take on Disney.
Here we are at our first park....First Picture:
Last Park....last picture:
Yes, this can happen to you! I have compiled some planning tricks that may not prevent this outcome, but you will sure enjoy the ride!
This year we are adding my father and my niece into the mix. My father has not been to Disney since before I was hatched. Literally! My mother was in her last trimester and Dad took my older brother on a boy weekend. Can you believe that! P.S. I would give away the year, but since I am younger than most of the adults on the trip, Ill keep that one to myself
According to my brother, it was my father dragging him around the park and not the other way around. I am so ready to show my Dad everything we loved on the first trip and for him to tell me everything that has changed. My niece has been to WDW, but only Magic Kingdom and Disney Studios. We are ready to show her what she was missing. Now on with Part Two: Airlines, WDW Discounts and Disney park tickets..Oh My!!
Airlines are a tricky thing. You may know a friend who is a travel agent, but that may or may not give you the best deal. Expedia and Cheap Tickets never helped us either. The only thing that saved us loads on flights were the nimble fingers and blurry eyeballs willing to crawl around every airlines website looking for the deals. Look for smaller airlines that may fly from cities that are in a 4 hour driving distance from your home. If it is a direct flight, you are basically driving your layover and saving money in the end. We found (Thanks to my sister-in-love Di and my MVP) that Allegiant Air flies directly from Springfield, MO to Orlando (MCO). Average ticket was $89 each way and if you have a last minute addition and the flight is not full they sometimes have tickets as cheap as $20. It pays to take the time to look directly at the airline websites and all airports within your driving area. In flights alone, we saved $1700.
WDW Discounts. From the previous post you know that our mother-in-love chose to stay on park property after our condo space was up. We decided to stay at the Port Orleans ~ Riverside because of the wonderful reviews and feedback provided by the folks on the DisBoards. (Thank you!)
After we booked the rooms, we started looking for discounts. Discounts can come to you in many ways.
If you apply for a Disney Credit card or change to a Chase checking account with a Disney Debit you can begin receiving offers immediately.
If you have signed up for the Disney.com website and ordered park maps they send you offers through the mail. Postcards arrive with offer codes. These codes are alphanumeric and are sometimes are on the address label.
You can even call the Disney reservation line and they can look under your name and address to see if an offer is waiting for you.
In our case, Disney offered 25%-40% off the room rate from 12/21-12/24. By making a phone call we saved a $1000! So be persistent. Keep calling and checking your mailbox for post cards.
Also get a Grand gathering # (available for groups larger than 8). It does not cost a thing, but will allow you to link all of the rooms. So when your discount comes through only one family member can call and secure the savings for all.
Another WDW Discount you might consider is the Disney Photopass. With a large family it is really hard to take pictures because the one holding the camera is always missing. Even if you ask someone to take your picture, it is really hard to find a place in the crowd that everyone isnt cutting through. The Photopass photographers were amazing. And the magic shots make it worth it:
We pre-ordered the photopass again. Normally the photopass DVD is $149.95 after the parks. If you order ahead of time it is $99.95. With a large family you can split the cost and the digital pictures once they arrive. Another fun thing is the digital editing you can do to the photos before ordering the CDs. We added borders, cropped, stamped and had a great time. When you and the fam are done maligning each other, you use the pre-paid code and they send you the CD(s). In our case it was 3 CDs filled with pictures. No additional charges or fees. We could then post the pics, or print them at CVS.
Disney Tickets. Wow, who knew that little pieces of paper cause so many decisions? How many days for each park? Do we need to lock in a ticket price before they are raised in August? Do we want to park hop? Ask these questions to family members and your decision should be easy.
One piece of advice you need to know, if you are visiting parks with a group larger than 8..do not park hop. It is a waste of money. We purchased park hopper passes and used them once and ran to ride one ride before the park closed for the night.
Did this help you? I would love to hear your thoughts. We still need to cover my favorite planning sites and touring plans....ok and some other stuff too.
