If cost isn’t a big factor, sure stay on property. The resorts are great.
We however wanted to save money so wound up staying at Super 8 Kissimmee. It was a 10-15 min drive to any of the parks. IIRC it was about $60 per night through hotels.com. We also discovered Old Town Kissimmee which was an interesting but not fancy group of shops, attractions, and rides. We had lots of fun on the go-cart tracks, they were built like roller coaster tracks.
There’s a good software you can download that’s not very expensive that uses historical stats and everything and tells you how to organize your visit so you can hit the best rides at the best time.
I used it for a trip to DL and it was AWESOME! we got on everything super quickly and then went on all of our second choices…
here it is: http://www.ridemax.com/
(I don’t work for Ridemax or know any of their owners, I just liked the product)
Two more little bits -
Book a character breakfast. They don’t roam the park anymore and if you want to meet them, this is a good way to do it and:
great money-saving ideas
Thanks for all the recommendations! I think we’ve decided to go Labor Day weekend. My sister said that they went there Labor Day and it was pretty quiet. Plus you can get a free dining pass per person for the whole trip. Still trying to decide on lodging. It turns out the my entire family now wants to go - my sister, brother-in-law, mom, and of course me, my husband and the kids.
I do expect the trip to be pricey. Definitely not going to repeat this frequently, but we’ve still never been on a family vacation with our kids and we’d really like to.
This may be, but for a 5 year old the extra hour or two will not make a huge difference. I think we did about 7-8 hours the first day, then it just dropped from there. One day we ended up doing 2 hours or so. As I said, I’ve heard of people saying it takes a long time to get around the resort by bus.
They do roam around the park, maybe not all of them, but they do. We met the Fairy Godmother out and about last month. There are some places that a character stays, but you can find a lot of them in the park itself.
If you have a smart phone, check out some of the Disney apps.
I found a free one from Phunware called Undercover Tourist, which relies on people reporting what current wait times on rides are. So real time, right now I can see that Peter Pan’s Flight has a wait time of 25 minutes and that the Enchanted Tiki Room is closed.
JUst so you know free dining is usually a worse discount than getting the room-only discount and adding the dining plan.
ETA: so do the math (or PM me with your plans and I can hunt it down)
Labor Day is pretty quiet. All the kids are back in school or heading back to school.
Free Dining can be fun. Be sure to make reservations, and be aware that Free Dining is a lot of food! Probably more than you need. It has good value, but if you aren’t big eaters, look into a room only discount and pay cash for your meals.
If you are staying on property and can swing it financially, avoid the Value level hotels. The rooms are closet sized and the transportation is grouped by hotel so the Value hotels all share the same bus. The last time we went our bus to Port Orleans was often half full or less at peak times. The Value hotel bus was crammed to standing room only and still had queues that exteneed out of the round up and that was during one of the lowest attendance times of the year.
Also, if you can swing it, go in mid-January. After the Parks have ended thier X-mas/New years peak time. Great weather and very low attendance.
Another good time is the week before Thanksgiving–not many people take their kids out of school the week before a holiday week (effectively no wait for Space Mountain, and even the new Toy Story Mania ride had tolerable wait times). Disney Christmas stuff is all out, the Osbourne Family Lights at Hollywood Studios, the castle lighting at the Magic Kingdom, etc.
I was also able to catch the last day of the Epcot Food and Wine festival, though obviously that’s not a great priority with 5-year-olds.
I think the real selling point of the “magic hours” is that presumably the parks will be a little less crowded since only Disney resort guests will be there. I don’t think all the attractions are open though, so I don’t know if that really results in shorter lines or not.
The “magic hour” park is most likely more crowded for that day as, for the most part, once you hit a park you stay all day. This means that instead of being spread throughout most of the parks, the Disney guests are concentrated in that one park.
If your kids are big Disney buffs, try to reserve a ‘Keys to the Kingom’ backstage tour. As it turns out, the ground level of Magic Kingdom is actually the second floor. There is a whole honeycomb of tunnels and offices underground. The tour shows you all that and gives an excellent amount of general Disney history and trivia. Highly recommended.
Keys to the Kingdom also has a minimum age, I forget exactly what it is, but late teens at a minimum.
It is an awesome tour, though. The only minor gripe I had was bad luck–I took the tour on a day the Shuttle launched, and we had a great view from one of the parking lots, but we were prohibited from using a camera backstage.
Another fun thing for the kids to do that isn’t widely known is the trading of disney pins. Any guest can go up to a cast member and make a trade of one pin for another. The cast members enjoy this and so do the kids. If you PM me and are interested, I could send you several to get you started. This way you only have to purchase the lanyard. My father recently retired and he literally gave the kids hundreds of them. Many are duplicates.
Hey overlyverbose,
I co-author the Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World. Drop me a line. Happy to help.
Len
Double Wow!
Thank you, sir. I can’t tell you how much I’ve gotten out of the WDW book in particular, and the “unofficial guide to …” series in general.
miatachris, happy customer
I agree. Your books are invaluable.
If you’re going for Labor Day weekend, just be prepared for the heat.
I’ve lived here for about 20 years, and honestly, August and September are the hottest of the hot. It’s hot now, too–89 right now, and highs between 90 and 98 for the next week.
Lots of people avoid being in the parks in the afternoon and go back to the hotel for a swim or a nap, especially people with kids, and then go back out after 6 or so, when the sun isn’t quite as harsh.
Bit of a detour, seeing as that’s on the opposite side of the continent from where they’re headed.