Hellobee Boards

I am heading in March for my 15ish trip, but only my 2nd with LO (she will be 3). It's much different going with kids! But so incredibly special.

Favourite Places: I would love to stay in a deluxe on the monorail line (Polynesian!) but it's just not in the budget. We almost always stay at Caribbean Beach. I love the vibe and the price is right. Off site we like Reunion resort - awesome amnesties and gorgeous rooms.

As for a pass, we usually get a 6 or 7 day - after 4 days it's only an extra $10 for each day. So even if we only go to a park for a few hours or for the fireworks, it's not costing all that much more.

Add-Ons - We skip the hoppers now that we go with kids. I find it easier planning wise to pick a park and stick with it. We often take the Disney buses back mid day for a swim/nap.

This is our first year doing the dining plan and I think we are going to like it. I calculated that we will save about $150. It's nice having our meals paid before we go and we are doing more character meals than we usually do.

Favourite restaurants... so many!! I really like restaurants with great theming and entertainment for the kids. Biergarten, Ohana, Raglan Road, Sci-Fi Drive In, Sanaa are some of our absolute favourites.

One of my best tips is to get a breakfast reservation for Be Our Guest at MK before the park opens.. you can eat breakfast while everyone else is waiting to get in, then you can ride 7 dwarves mine train (crazy lines when park opens) before anyone gets there and after that you're right in the middle of Fantasyland with a heads start to your day. It's $ but a good value if you're on the dining plan.

Budget tips: Ha. You can ask for free ice waters at any of the quick service restaurants. Umm... we go the first week of March when it's a bit cheaper?

My Dds favourite attractions last year were Dumbo, People Mover, Safari, Boneyard, Turtle Talk, Barnstormer, the splash pad at Disney Springs, and meeting the princesses!

For naps she will either crash in the stroller and we stay at the park, but more often than not we like to head back to the resort ourselves and get a break. Mid day in the parks is the hottest and busiest time so it can be exhausting to stay park open-park close, especially multiple days in a row. It's our one main family vacation a year so we really like to keep it relaxing and low key.

One other thing, Rider Swap is the best thing ever !! For the rides DD is too short for, she stays with my parents and they go do something fun. DH and I ride first and get a swap pass from the attendant, so then my parents can ride some time again with no wait.

Oh, another budget tip: if doing a room only reservation, if you book your room through orbitz or cheaptickets, you can stack additional discount codes (usually 10-15%) on top of the disney rate. You just need to contact them a few days after it's booked to get the disney reservation # to link in my disney experience. And be careful to change the address that your magic bands send to, as it'll default to the company. Read the fine print, there's usually a fee if you cancel (I think it was $25 when I did it last year)

commenting to follow!

@Anagram: I like Akershus for princesses. It's at Epcot, cheaper than Cinderella's Castle (still $$ though). But you get 5 princesses at that meal which is awesome. 1900 Park Fare is also fun. It's at the Grand Floridian and has Cinderella. Prince Charming and the Stepsisters/Stepmother. It's hilarious.

I went once in August (teacher here, too.) it was HOT. But I am a wimpy Canadian. The nice part is a lot of queues are air conditioned or in the shade. Get the water park add on if you go in the summer, the water parks are very fun and a great way to cool off. Definitely stay on site so you can go back and forth to the parks easily and escape the hottest part of the day.

If you can go the last week of August they usually have free dining, which is obviously a great value!!

Once you have a rough outline planned of what you want to do, you can use this calculator to see if you will save $ on the dining plan or not. http://www.distripplanner.com

@Anagram: if you book through orbitz or cheaptickets (I think same parent company), they nearly always have a code that can be applied when making resort reservations. Right now it's cheers for cheaptickets. If I search for 4 nights in early June at aoa in a suite, it comes up with $407/night. Applying the discount code saves me $150 :).

@Anagram: oh, and then yes, I just purchased tickets separately through Disney. Certain ones you can buy in the disney store even. If you have a membership to BJs, you can buy disney gift cards for a slight discount ($4 or $6 off per $100) and use them to buy the park tickets to save a little more :).

Summer at Disney: take breaks midday! Bring fans with misters with you, and extra batteries. If using a stroller, bring a fan for than that can clip on. If using your own stroller, purchase a waterproof cover for it, as afternoon storms are common.

Hotels

I know everyone here is an uberfan of Art of Animation….but I’m going to be the go against as you get what you pay for, and there is a definite difference in quality in the hotels - - and also in the amenities at the resorts and of the quality of food at the resort hotels between the tiers. If you are picky about hotels, just be aware. If you are not; no big deal. We’ve stayed at some moderate and some deluxe and even my husband commented on the noticeable differences between. But I’ll also admit that I’m picky when it comes to hotels generally.

Restaurants

Reservations Required (or strongly suggested!)

Cinderella’s Castle is $$$$ but was amazing for dinner (it was $192 for 3 of us for dinner last month so give you a ballpark), but you have to prepay so it isn’t such a hard hit during the trip itself. The food is also actually very good quality and they serve champagne, which is nice.

Be Our Guest is fun; it’s a beautiful space for sure. Good quality food.

There is a good character breakfast at the Beach Club resort.

Akershus in Epcot for Princess meal (we did lunch and it was great – they actually have very good food!)

The Coral Reef Restaurant in Epcot is fun too. My LO really liked it (there is a huge aquarium for one whole wall of the restaurant).

Non-reservations:

Restaurant Marrakesh in Morocco in Epcot is good too. They have a belly dancer who had my LO come out onto the floor and showed LO (and I!) belly dancing moves. LO was *enthralled*.

Liberty Tree Tavern (Magic kingdom) is solid for lunch.

There is a good falafel stand at the Animal Kingdom (no idea of the name of it, but good falafel!)

Budget tips?

Does start saving early count? Seriously though, it’s just $$$$. There are ways to save money and some good websites dedicated to doing so, but it’s also just expensive. I personally like to pay for items I can in advance so that there are taken care of when I get there. It’s not so bad to prepay for some expensive stuff one item at a time, rather than get an extra $500 bill while you are there.

For toddlers – we took LO as a toddler and also as a 4 year old and her favorites have been Cinderella’s Castle for dinner, any character meal (hotel ones included, not just at the parks), character/princess meetings (you can fastpass these), the Frozen ride at Epcot (definitely FastPass!), Ariel’s ride, Mickey’s Philharmagic show (good for summer as it is A/C) and the 4D Pixar movies show at Epcot. Also of course the parades! My LO is extremely cautious and won’t do any sort of ride that “might be scary”, so she hasn’t done that many rides.

I like the Costco Travel packages the best. We've gone twice with our son and stayed at the Sheraton Vistana Villages. Airfare, car rental, park tickets and accommodation all for an extremely reasonable price PLUS you get Costco's customer service if anything goes wrong. We went when I was pregnant as well and we stayed in the All star resorts, which is probably similar to AoA. We had reservations at Beach Club but we had to change the trip and it wasn't available for our rescheduled time. Next trip, we're staying at the Poly.

Staying offsite you sacrifice some of the ability to book stuff ahead, but I don't go to Disney for the dining. I've eaten at all levels of places there and the food is not that great. I've heard Le Cellier in EPCOT is outrageous and fantastic but again, I live near NYC where I have access to pretty great food all of the time.

My husband is the kind of guy that can't handle crowds, so we look at crowd levels and try to use park planning stuff to plan our day. I think the best way to beat the heat is to schedule yourself for a lot of indoor activities, especially the shows. Those are nice and long and COOL!

I personally don't care that much about the Disney Magic, but I do understand that there is only a certain window of time when it's "cool" for kids, so I try to maximize that. We don't do park hopper, we do one park a day and that's really enough, at night we do Disney Springs a few nights. They have a Dinosaur themed restaurant with a dino dig, a lego store, ice cream, and even decent restaurants if you're interested. And since we go at like 5 pm, we always get a table.

I am also a big fan of the photo package, where any Disney photog takes your pictures. It's so worth it to me to have really good shots of all of us without a ton of people walking through.

@StrawberryBee: it seems like everyone is and I don't mean to pick on AOA - - I just think it's easy to assume all are the same, but I was really surprised by the food quality difference at the onsite restaurants between the level of resorts. That I did not expect! I do love the idea of themed rooms though, my LO would love the Ariel room!!

I'd love to stay at the Poly....but it's always been wayyyyyyyyyy too pricey when we've looked to go. Some day!

@yoursilverlining: I think a lot of people just like that it's newer lol. On one of the Disney boards a lot of people complain that for the price of the suites, you could go deluxe, or definitely moderate, which is true! I'd have a really hard time paying $400/night to stay at a value, no matter how great the theming.

I found a great way to save on deluxes, if you're flexible with dates. That's the only way the poly was even a possibility for us.

@Anagram: re dining - I believe that dining is free for under 3 at some of the character places (at least that is my memory - but would need to double check). Depending on the age of your youngest, she might be free.

@yoursilverlining: They do! at least they did in September. If your child is young enough to not require a child ticket (under 3), then you do not need to pay for them at buffets. I think it's not "official" in that there's no written wording anywhere, but that is their policy. DD was free to come in with us when we did Early Morning Magic (and eat from the buffet), and free at the Crystal Palace. I asked the server politely when we sat down at CP and told her I didn't mind paying for E, but she waved it off and said it was fine. E was allowed her own plate and drink.

Just remember to still book a dining reservation including the under three children -- they need it for fire code and may not let you be seated (even if it's an infant in a stroller) if your party size exceeds your reservation.