I mentioned last week that we were looking into booking our Walt Disney World holiday, and yes, we are now booked up and excited! We will be going next summer and are booked to stay in one of the Disney World resorts.
As I have spent a fair bit of time researching this, I thought it would be helpful to put together a few reasons that we decided to book into a Disney hotel, rather than go for another hotel or a villa. On the surface, these look to be cheaper options, but there are several perks with staying in the resorts themselves that persuaded us that it would be the best way to go, especially as there are several special offers on at the moment.
Free Disney Dining Plan: This makes a big difference. We are staying in a Moderate hotel meaning that at the moment, free Disney Quick Dining is included with the price (at the moment as a special offer, and not for all dates). As we will spend the majority of our break in and around Disney, this makes sense for us as food can be very expensive and we also get drink refills which we’ll definitely make the most of in the heat.
Magic Hours in the park: Extra hours, such as being able to go in one hour before the parks open.
$200 Disney spend: This is a current special offer, where we receive a $200 gift card.
MagicBands inc. Memory Maker: The bands are our room keys, fast passes, dining credits, shopping and then the Memory Maker collects photos taken around the park which then get connected to my account using my MagicBand. Clever, eh?
Ease of Shopping: OK, this might come back and bite us as it might be too temptingly easy! If we want to buy anything in the parks, we can use our Magic Bands meaning we don’t need to carry money around and when we do buy, they can take our shopping directly to our room for us, meaning no need to carry it. This is the kind of service I could get used to!
60 Days Fast Pass access: With Disney World tickets, you can book your Fast Pass 30 days before visiting, but Disney World hotel guests get to do this 60 days before visiting, meaning that they get the pick of the best rides and times.
Complimentary parking: There’s a fee to park at Disney each day but it’s free to Disney guests, or rather than drive, there’s complimentary transport.
Now, I do not in any way profess to be an expert on this. I have been researching for two to three weeks, and what I have found is that there are a lot of experts out there! These are just the things that I have found work for us that I thought would be useful to share.
As we have not done all of this before, we decided to keep it as a full package rather than book each element of it ourselves. It means I have basically let the travel agent know everything we need, from airport parking, to car seats for our rental car to the attraction tickets, and it’s all been sorted and added to one bill. One fairly large bill, but at least it’s all in one place!
Our other research so far consists of popping a range of items in my Amazon basket ready to buy to take with us, such as ponchos, glow wands and Disney pins, watching lots of Disney vlogs, from tips to rides to the snacks we can have (I kid you not!) and reading plenty of blog posts about it. The research and planning are a lot of fun, I guess it’s all part of the experience. Plenty of notes are then going into my bullet journal Disney spreads so that I don’t forget it all!
I hope this was useful for those of you considering a trip to Disney World, and for those of you who know it all so well, hit me with your tips and dining recommendations!
How exciting ! I’ve been twice and always stayed off site in a villa but would love to experience the hotels. You will have an amazing time x
We are excited! x
ah well done, I’m glad you’ve booked it, you’re going to have an amazing time.
Ah, thank you. I’ll be reading plenty more of your posts now!!
Check out http://www.allears.net (a great database of everything Disney).
Hope you have a great time!
Brilliant, thank you!
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