3Aumillers said:
I didn't know where to post this so I hope this is an appropriate place for such a post in hopes of getting help from other October Disney Families ....
DH and I are taking our 3 year old (will turn 4 the week after Disney) daughter with us for her first ever Disney vacation. We know we are staying at All Star Movies (unless I can convince DH to switch to POP). We have stayed at both Movies and Sports in the past. I would prefer to go with POP simply because it's newer. Our other "to be decided" are: do we add the water park options and DQ options to our tickets as well as adding the dining option or do we just select one or the other. Not really sure that is a question that anybody can answer but us ... financially we need to go as inexpensive as possible YET not have to worry about every nickel and dime we are going to spend while we are there.
Any advice anyone would care to offer would be greatly appreciated.
TIA -- Sarah
One rec. Consider adding the dining plan or the plus pack each on their own seperate merits rather than chosing to add one or the other.
I won't presume to think that what works best for me will work best for you. But here's what I figured for me. It might help
I've got 9 nights and 8 days (the two bookend days being used for travel)
I chose the pop rather than Asmo because
1. Night stands lower. As soon as bonk your head was mentioned, I had to go pop instead. I'm a roller I'll hit my head every time on the higher ASMo
1a. I heard you get real mousekeeping soap rather than out of the dispensers. I don't want to feel I'm in the highschool locker room after Gym in my hotel room. LOL ok it isn't as bad or as important as I make it out to be.
2. The price is the same but the taxes and fee's aren't. The pop is slightly cheaper by about 10 bux over the length of the stay. Not all that much a differece but it's something.
3. From reviews and such pop has better food options.
4. Movies has woody and Buzz, but the rest of em, my son hasn't seen. And there are no guarantees what building we get. Plus the pop has a couple movie things too.
5. They have a pop jet fountain that My son really would love.
6. There's a lake there. Hopefully we get a lake view.
Thoughts on the plus pack.
We've never been down there. We are looking at 7 day tix, no hopper 14 day expiration. It's only 4 bux more expensive than 6 so what the hey. That's 7 days in the 4 parks. Rather than jump around and try to do every park, we'd like to liesurely cover all of the parks we do. We've a total of 8 down there. That leaves one day for water parks and such. It's $45 for the plus pack, A single day at the water park is cheaper. Because the water parks close early, maybe it might make sense to do DQ on the same day. If so, then the plus pack comes into play. But if we don't have one, we might just do minigolf (not part of plus pack) If we were going to try and fit Disneyquest, we'd have to do it at night after the water park and it leaves no slack time. So we are opting not to get the plus pack as we aren't even sure if we'll get to a water park. We'd like to, but you know how it goes. You always need more rest than you think with kids. And I'm not going to burn the candle at both ends, get us all iritable, and end up the subject of the Have you ever had a shock thread. So looking at everything, I think we'll have to scramble hard to be able to get full value out of the plus pack. And part of the reason I go to Disney (I've been to
Disneyland several trips, first to the world) Is specifically NOT to scramble. Heck, I do that every day here. Why would I do it on Vacation?
So if you add up the days That leaves IMO not enough time to get my value for the plus pack. If we get down there and we're way ahead of things the good thing about it is you can add those things on down there if you decide you need them.
On the dining plan.
Lots have recommended it cuz it can save big money. It's $35 a day. for a sit down or character, plus a counter, plus a snack.
The absolute Key is the sit downs. If you already plan to do them and you already plan to do them at night, every night, it can be an absolutley awesome deal. You can save $400 dollars or more. But if you don't already plan to do a bunch of sit downs, you can easily beat the $35 per day for the two meals plus a snack it gives you without worrying about economizing all the time.
When I initially thought I was going to get the meal plan, I in effect started deliberately looking for the sit downs to go to and seeing how much money I'd supposedly save. That's the totally wrong way to do it. I was altering my behavior to "chase savings." and actually adding sit downs, and changing others from bkfast and/or lunch to dinner rather than just see what I want and what I was likely to eat and then see if it saved me anything. The best way to do it is head over to allearsnet.com and look at the menus.
Plus, I don't want to have to deliberately chase $50 and above meals just so that I can make up for the 2 or 3 days at Epcot I'll be munching out at the food and wine festival going on during October and won't want dinner anyway and the 1 day on the fantasmic by using double dippers.
If you don't really care about a cost-benefit and price analysis on the subject just make your decision before hand. Splurge and go pick out the places to eat and get on the meal plan and really do it up, Or just economize a bit, maybe go for it once, and not do the plan and do counters, or even a sit down breakfast (some of the character breakfasts are well under $25 so you wouldn't be getting your meal plan value out of them)
The worst thing you can do, however, is do an a-la-carte sit down every evening and order $40 or $50 worth of food without the meal plan.
Hello All...we are going to wdw from Oct 29-Nov 4. We have a tower room in the Contemporary. I have bought our tkts for the MNSSHP for Oct 30 and I have PS for 5:25 at the LTT. I'm trying to decide which park to do the first day. We have an early flight and will be at the hotel at 8:00 am. That will be on Sat so I'm guessing MK probably not the best choce.
I will be celebrating my 31st BDay if we get to go during this time and I REALLY want to see the MNSSHP 
I am so excited about this whole trip. I have been dreaming of this since I was a little girl. I really think I'll have more fun than the kids !!!!
...even at Disney World! 
I'm thinking of trying to get into Cindy's lunch/dinner before the party. DD might like that. Escpecially if she dresses up like Aurora.
