We've been to Disney 2x before but have always stayed onsite (Pop 2006 and AKL 2010), did the ME to get there and never ventured any farther than DTD. We've never been offsite at all.
My girls are in high school now and next year will be the last year for a real family vacation so they want to go to Florida again but want to experience "all the other stuff" Orlando has to offer like shopping, Seaworld, Harry Potter etc.
I am trying to decide how to do this. My first thought was to do 5 days at Disney onsite (maybe POR or POFQ) and then 4-5 days at Universal onsite and just get a cab between the two locations.
Or should I get a car rental and rent a house/condo for our entire stay?
Will I miss being on-site? How much more cost-effective will be it be to be in a condo?
I never thought I'd go to Orlando and not be fully immersed in the Disney "magic" but it sounds like there's a first time for everything but I'm just not sure.....
Any thoughts, ideas or suggestions would be appreciated.
I think that a lot of people have the same Orlando experience that you've had so far - Orlando=Disney, period. But there's a lot to see and do here (we're on our twentieth Orlando trip since 1997 right now).
I think that the obvious are the big non-Disney attraction like Universal/Islands of Adventure and SeaWorld but there are loads of other things, too. While we've always treasured our visits to the Disney parks we've had great time staying off property and seeking out new things to do.
But we've made a big effort to do at least one new thing every time we've been here - Atlantic beach visits, Gulf Coast beach visits, manatees at a state park, various nature tours via boat, museums, zoos, shopping beyond Disney, Busch Gardens, the old Cypress Gardens, old Florida attraction Silver Springs in Ocala, a music festival or two, downtown Orlando's Lake Eola area, a basketball game at the University of Central Florida, several major league baseball spring training games, visiting towns as diverse as Disney-esque Celebration, artsy Winter Park, old Florida St. Petersburg and eclectic Sarasota - and none (or at least little) of that would have been possible without a rental car and wouldn't have been likely to occur if we'd only stayed on property.
Oddly, this trip's new thing to do was purely Disney. Yesterday we drove to BoardWalk and visited BoardWalk Inn, Yacht Club, and Beach Club to see the terrific decorations (BoardWalk and Beach Club were great). Then we drove over to Wilderness Lodge for more of the same (the brilliant resort theming and the fantastic decorations made for an incredible visual experience) and then did the Magic Kingdom monorail resorts for more of the same (loved Grand Floridian, liked Polynesian, disappointed by Comtemporary).
And, of course, staying off site can mean more living space with amenities that you wouldn't necessarily have at a Disney hotel if you end up in a rental house or one of the area's numerous timeshare resorts. We like having more than just a place to sleep and find that we will spend less money on lodging by staying offsite but to do offsite best, for us, it means having a rental car (which we've done when staying onsite, too).
In my opinion, staying off property doesn't diminish the magic of Disney in the slightest as we weave Disney as a focal point through some of our Orlando trip traditions - BoardWalk is our first stop after leaving the airport and checking in at our resort, Downtown Disney is always on tap for several visits and, of course, the theme parks. That doesn't mean that staying off property is necessarily for everyone, or that it would be "better" for everyone but it's more than met our needs.
Dick Taylor
