Post by littlemissmarla on Feb 9, 2016 21:38:28 GMT -5
So you want to go to Disney.. but you have either never been or have never been with kids, either situation is overwhelming! This thread will be dedicated to all things Disney. If you consider yourself a Disney fan, please feel free to chime in!
First and foremost if you are thinking about a trip you need to consider when you want to go.
Yearly Events that could impact crowd levels, though personally and from speaking with cast members there really is no longer a "down time."
January
February Princess Half Marathon
March Flower and Garden Festival
April Flower and Garden Festival, Star Wars Half Marathon
May Flower and Garden Festival
June Gay Days
July
August
September Food and Wine, Mickey's Not So scary Halloween Party
October Food and Wine, Mickey's Not So scary Halloween Party
November Food and Wine , Mickeys Very Merry Christmas Party, "Jersey Week"
December Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party, Pop Warner Week
Other things to consider are the southern schools that Track out, Brazilian tour groups that I believe have their summer break during our Winter/Spring.
Next up, Where do you want to stay.
Disney has 3 levels of resorts, Value, Moderate and Deluxe. The Deluxe resorts are of course gorgeous, the moderates are beautiful and the Value resorts are really fun and family friendly! When deciding on a hotel keep in mind that if you plan on spending most of the time in the parks you probably won't be at the room much.
You can check out allears.net/acc/faq_hot.htm for inside pics of the rooms and resorts. Sign up on disneyworld.com and they will typically send you offers in the mail. You can also sign up and call them up directly and ask if you have a "Pin Code" which is a discount code attached to your name, sometimes you have one and you don't even know!
Our personal favorite value is Pop Century!
There are buses that run throughout the day from each hotel to every park/water park/ Disney springs. Some hotels, depending on their distance offer the monorail or boats to get to the theme parks. If you choose to rent a car or drive, free parking to the theme parks is included with your on property hotel stay.
The cost of rooms depends on the type of view you are looking for which ranges from hotel to hotel, standard and pool view are the two main ones. You can also call up prior to your trip and request to put put on the ground floor or to be in a certain part of the hotel, there are no guarantees but they will always try to accommodate you.
Tomorrow I will go on to talk about tickets, fast passes and dining reservations!
Park Tickets
Park tickets can get a bit confusing because it's basically a "build your own" type of ticket for your vacation.
Base Ticket - This is a ticket that allows you entry into 1 park per day.
Example: You buy a 4 day base ticket and you can go into 1 park each day, you could do one day at AK (Animal Kingdom), one day at MK (Magic Kingdom), one day at Epcot and one day at HS (Hollywood Studios). You cannot do multiple parks in one day.
Base Ticket Plus park hopping - With this ticket you now have added the option to "park hop" so you could go to one park in the morning and a different park in the afternoon or if you are feeling really crazy you could go to all 4 in one day!
This costs an additional: $64 per ticket to add the park hopping to the base ticket. (worth it IMHO)
Water Park and More add on option - This is an add on to your ticket where you can use the water parks on Disney property. So if you add this to your base ticket, you could go to one water park a day for the amount of ticket days you have purchased. If you purchase 4 day tickets with the water park option you get 4 days to use at the water park. So in theory you could do one day at a park, one day at the water park, the next day back at the park and the following day at the water park. If you go to two water parks in one day that would be considered 2 uses of admission and you would only have 2 left. Base tickets go by days and the water park add on goes by admission.
This costs an additional $60 per ticket to add the water park and more option to the base ticket.
To add both the park hopping and water park and more option it costs $90 per ticket.
You can also make your ticket's non expiring for an additional fee if you think you are not going to use all your days.
There are two different prices for tickets
Guests 10+
Guests 3-9
Under 3 is free
I can't post all the ticket prices but if you head over to allears.net they have a great chart that breaks it down for you. Basically the thing to remember is once you get to a 3 day ticket, each additional day you add will start to cost less and less.
Example: a 3 day base ticket with park hopping costs $346.13, to make that a 4 day ticket it will cost $392.99 and to make it a 5 day it would cost $403.64.
Disney wants you to spend the maximum amount of time in the parks so echo additional day is cheaper.
If you are planning on staying more than 10 days an annual pass would be your best bet, we usually purchase an annual pass and go 2x a year to get out moneys worth.
There are discounts for FL residents, Military, DVC and AAA (only through AAA, not Disney).
If you are looking to do BOTH hotel and tickets than a package would be your best bet and you can get prices on the Disney website.
Fast Pass +
Ok, so FP+ is Disney's new way of pre-selecting your ride choices before you even get to the parks. There is a lot of debate on whether or not this is a good system but you really have to try it out for yourself in order to decide.
The old FP way was that once you got to a park you would take your ticket and go to a ride, insert your ticket into the machine and you would receive a printed paper that gave you a 1 hour time window to return to "walk on" the ride without having to wait standby. Occasionally you would still have to wait but the wait time is minimal compared to stand by, 10m vs 60+min for example. Once you used that FP you could go get another one and so on, but you would always have to wait for one to expire before you could get the next.
Now everything is done online PRIOR to your trip..60 days prior for those with tickets and staying at a disney hotel and 30 days prior for offsite and passholders..this also means you need to really sit down and plan your park days. Decide which parks you want to go and on what days and then you can select your FP. I would also recommend making dining selections before FP+ because the website will work around your dining reservations so they don't overlap.
SO, with FP+ you get 3 fast pass choices a day for ONE PARK. So even if you are getting a park hopper ticket and planning to go to two parks a day, you can still only select FPs for one park. Each park has a list of rides that the FP are available for (some may not be available because if it's a popular ride and a popular time a lot of people might have already grabbed a hold of the available FPs). In a couple of the parks they work on a Tiered FP system, so they will say:
Please select a FP for one of the following rides:
Splash Mountain
Space Mountain
Pirates of the Carribbean
Then they will prompt you to select another one from a different set of rides and then you do it a third time, they do this to prevent you from just selecting the headliners and they will throw in some other rides/shows that you can choose.
There are FP available for a lot of shows, character interactions and preferred viewing areas for fireworks.
Once you have used your 3 FPs you can then get more inside the parks in a designated location but as you can imagine trying to get FP the day of will be extremely limited.
You need to register your information on MyDisneyExperience which is connected to the Disney website as well as it is a mobile app that will help you keep track of the FPs, Dining ...ect.
Dining Reservations
I feel like a lot of people don't realize how Dining at Disney is such a big part of the experience, they have so many fantastic themed restaurants/signature dining and in order to get the best experiences or places you really want to eat at.. reservations begin opening up 180 days in advance of the date you are looking for, whether or not you are staying on property. Though if you are on property it's 180 + 10 days in advance.
There are different types of Dining in Disney..
Counter Service: located all over the parks, walk up.. order, wait for your food and select your own seats..clean up yourself
Sit Down: Full service Restaurants
Snack Carts: Located all over, usually no direct seating
All menus can be found at: allears.net/dining/menu
That will give you the up to date menus as well as pricing.
Some of our favorites!:
Coral Reef - you can dine under the sea
Chef Mickey's - Buffet style with Mickey and the Gang
Mama Melrose - Italian restaurant, but it's themed like an old Italian/mobster joint
Boma- Breakfast buffet is awesome and flavors are African inspired
Sci Fi Dine in Theater - American food, eating in actual cars while watching old horror movie clips
50's prime time diner - Home cooking in an old 50's looking home with very campy wait staff
Reservations can be made on the www.disneyworld.com website or through mydisneyexperience
Also, here is an example of how we schedule the trip. It's easiest for me to see what we are doing when I put it into a spreadsheet and see times, ect. 
First, I look up the park hours and put them in and then decide based off of the hours where we want to go.
If you are staying on property you can take advantage of Extra Magic Hours, this is when a park opens 1 hour early or stays open up to 3 hours late. During this time ONLY guests staying at a Disney hotel can enter the park/ride rides ect. During the evening EMHs non resort guests may still linger in the parks but they cannot get on rides.
In my schedule I put the Morning EMHs in orange and the evening in blue. We typically like to use those to our advantage and go to the parks with the exra magic hours. We go to a park in the morning, try to leave around 1 - back to the hotel for the pool/nap/relax and go back to the park for the evening around 6.
Magic Bands
Worn on the wrist, the colorful MagicBand is an all‐in-one device that connects all the vacation choices you make online with My Disney Experience.
You can use a MagicBand to enter a Disney Resort hotel room, buy food and merchandise, and enter Walt Disney World theme parks and water parks. Plus, the MagicBand provides FastPass+ access to all the experiences selected and serves as the connection to Disney's PhotoPass.
Because you can wear your MagicBand on your wrist, you do not have to rummage around in a bag or your pockets for your tickets or credit cards. The bands allow you to travel lighter throughout your vacation.
Magic Bands are waterproof, light weight and surprisingly comfortable. If you are staying on property and purchased tickets these will be mailed to you PRIOR to your trip.. don't forget them at home! You can also purchase them if you are not staying on property.
Magic Bands do have your name associated with them so don't be surprised if a cast member might greet you by your first name or if your name appears on a ride somewhere! All part of the Disney Magic!
WEBSITES YOU NEED TO VISIT!!!
www.disboards.com
-FANTASTIC online forum, any question you have has already been asked and answered!
www.allears.net
-Great resource for prices of everything, you can even look at the menus to all restaurants to get an idea if you want to eat there and $$
7.28.14
