Questions about Cars Land

[2princes'mom]

Hello fellow disers and DL fans. Dh and I are self professed DW fans and to be honest, we like to think of ourselves as "experts" and never thought we would consider our selves DL fans too, but here we are!

I was fortunate enough to go once as a child and a few times as a teenager/young adult but DH had never been. So when I gave him a choice of places to go for our anniversary this year, guess where he picked. We went just the two of us and had a BLAST. We decided then and there we would take the kids back but weren't sure when. Rewind to two days ago when we decide we just can't take it anymore and we have to plan a trip for the upcoming summer. However, we have a few questions that we are hoping you can help us with.

Does anyone know when Cars Land will be finished?

We are considering getting a Disney Visa. Can this make a difference in the hotel cost if we stay in a Disney hotel?

We booked through Southwest for our trip this last June and stayed at a the Fairfield across the street and loved it but we won't be flying this time so I want to try to find the best deal possible.

I'm sure I have a few more ?'s but I can't remember them right now. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Keurigirl]

I believe it is June 2012, but I could be wrong. And they could be wrong too, lol.

 

[skiingfast]

Carsland is firmly opening next summer. What month or week is still a question that leads to a lot of speculation. Go later in the summer if you want to see it.

Disney Visa won't get you a better hotel rate. But it does offer 6 months financing at 0%.

 

[HydroGuy]

Carsland is firmly opening next summer. What month or week is still a question that leads to a lot of speculation. Go later in the summer if you want to see it.

Disney Visa won't get you a better hotel rate. But it does offer 6 months financing at 0%.

Ski is right. Note it is fine to make plans to go earlier in the summer if those plans can be changed.

 

[Spassvogel]

Disney Visa won't get you a better hotel rate. But it does offer 6 months financing at 0%.

If you mean a Disney rewards Visa, you can save up your points and use them to defray costs of you trip. It's not automatic, you have to have them transferred to a rewards gift card or something (if I read that right).

My wife basically does all of our shopping/bills with the Disney Visa to get the points. On our last trip we used it to book the trip to DL.

I was also told that if you spend $50 in any Disney shop you get 10% off if you're using a rewards card.

 

[Eeee-va]

For hotels, if you loved the Fairfield Inn, then the "best deal" (as in, a nice place with the least sticker shock) will almost certainly be off-site. The very best prices for on-site hotels, after discount/PIN codes, seem to be well over $150/night, plus resort fees/taxes/etc. If you're going in summer after Carsland has opened, that's going to be peak season, so you'd probably be looking at $200+/night on-site. Lately it seems the prices for the Paradise Pier Hotel (the cheapest of the 3 on-site hotels) are often $250-$300/night if you don't happen to get a discount/PIN code (and the PIN codes seem hard to come by lately).

That's not to say it wouldn't be nice to stay on-site if you could swing it. Some people here very strongly prefer to stay on-site, and I think a few people wouldn't even go to the parks if they couldn't stay on-site! But for myself, I'd rather spend 4 nights off-site, than 1.5 (!) nights on-site for the same hotel price. (That's how the numbers are looking after Thanksgiving this year.)

Many of the off-site hotels are within walking distance of the parks (a few are closer to the front gates than the Paradise Pier or even the Disneyland hotel!).