Mrs. rainy and I are planning on taking the little rain drops to Disney next year. We had originally thought we’d stay at a hotel in the park, but we looked into rental rates for houses outside the park, and holy crap they are cheap, like $800-$1000 for a nice 5-bedroom for a week!
Some of these places are less than 10 miles from Disney, one advertising 4 miles from the gate. SO I’m looking for some opinions, your experiences staying in and out of the park. And also, how long does the trip in take? If I’m 5 miles away from the gate, how what is my timeline for doing something meaning ful in the park from the time I leave the rental house?
I’ve gone twice and once stayed out of the park at a Best Western and once in their system at a mid-class resort (Wilderness Lodge).
I recommend staying in the park. They’ve got shuttle service to the parks so your car stays put. Every day (back then at least) they’d open one park up an hour early just for their hotel guests so you can get an early start. Very nice system.
Downside - you’ll be eating in their parks every day - very expensive. Food costs were the surprise expense of that trip.
ETA: We bought a Birnbaum’s (sp?) for the parks - very good purchase.
We stayed at a Radisson just off the property when we went last. The cost was extremely reasonable (I want to say that for four people it was only $75/person for three nights). The drive was really short and it was close to plenty of cheap places to eat. Plus, the place was so nice that if we had just gone down and stayed at the hotel without ever going to Disney I still would have had a great time.
I believe the name was the Radisson Resort Orlando-Celebration. I can’t recommend it highly enough.
Add $11 a day for parking if you stay off site (free if you are onsite, but you’ll probably take the bus). If you are going when its REALLY BUSY, Disney will close the parks to offsite guests (shut down the parking lot first). Make sure your house is ten DRIVABLE miles from Disney - four miles as the crow flies is pretty useless - Disney itself is huge, so the front gate is still ten minutes from parking your car - and ten miles from there can be half an hour. Google maps is your friend.
(I’m an onsite snob, but on a budget offsite can’t be beat.
If you’re solely interested in seeing Disney World, then stay at the park. Easier to get around. It’s all pricey (food is a bit more than what you’d pay at other places), but you do get quality.
If you want to visit other Orlando attractions and not spend all your time at Disney World, then it might make more sense to stay elsewhere.
We’ve gone to Disney World every Christmas for the last 10 years and we’ve tried every combination of lodging from the luxury homes to hotel to in the park resort. Based on our experiences we always book the house now.
Not only is it cheaper per night, but you get other benefits like the private swimming pool/hot tub, 4+ bedrooms, kitchen saves money on food, much better privacy, etc. We personally like the Windsor Palms Resort which is only about 3 miles away and has a lot of homes that seem to be very well maintained and extremely well furnished.
That’s my take. The three miles aren’t that bad and you will save a ton of money and feel much more comfortable in the house, in our opinion.
I vote for inside the park. There is ready transportation to go anywhere in the Disney resort from your hotel - buses, monorail, and even boat. You don’t have to deal with traffic and parking so you can spend more quality time with the Mouse. An In-Park vacation isn’t all that unreasonable, and there are lots of packages available that include park-hopper passes and food.
I’ve stayed at Wilderness Lodge and highly recommend it. It’s family friendly yet still feels very luxurious while still being a moderately priced resort. Your Disney hotel is a part of your vacation memory, not just a place to sleep.
That’s the fundamental question, really, at least from my perspective. When I’ve gone in the past, with friends or with family when I was a teenager, it didn’t much matter where we stayed.
If your child is young, though - my daughter was 3 1/2 when we brought her to Disney World for the first time - staying at one of the onsite hotels (and at one of the three hotels on the monorail ring if you can afford it) is a huge blessing. The Contemporary Hotel can be reached from the gates of the Magic Kingdom on foot in less than 10 minutes. Even the more distant hotels are never more than 15-20 minutes travel time from door to door. With a young, probably sleep-deprived, overstimulated child, in the heat and with your own nerves fraying, the degree to which this convenience improves your trip is considerable.
How old are your little rain drops? If you have a hotel inside the park you get an extra hour of rides before the general admittance people arrive.
My dear brother who has went for the last four years has told me that hotel arrangements come out about the same in either scenario. Their kids are 13 and 11, so they can ride the big kid rides now. He did mention that once the car was parked at the hotel they had no reason to drive, so that has to be a plus.
How old are your little rain drops? If you have a hotel inside the park you get an extra hour of rides before the general admittance people arrive.
My dear brother who has went for the last four years has told me that hotel arrangements come out about the same in either scenario. Their kids are 13 and 11, so they can ride the big kid rides now. He did mention that once the car was parked at the hotel they had no reason to drive, so that has to be a plus.
It also depends on which Disney resort you’re staying at. Look at a map of the property.
If it’s the Polynesian, Wilderness Lodge, Grand Caribbean, or Contemporary then you just hop the monorail to the Magic Kingdom or Epcot.
Or if it’s the Dolphin, Boardwalk, Yacht Club then you can just walk over to Epcots back entrance.
However, some of the other hotels like All-Star resorts are a ways off and require you hop a bus to get around and you might as well stay somewhere like the Sheraton Safari, rent a car, eat at restaurants off property to save money.
Well the rain drops are 3 & 4, so the best we can expect is probably 6-7 hours before they need to crash for the rest of the day. (That would be an early start, a late nap, and he rest of the day to do low demand activities like just playing or watching a video, swimming, etc)
So in some ways, inside the park is attractive. But we will also be picking up the entire tab for both grandmothers, so some ways to save money are also very attractive. I suspect the grandmothers would be more comfortable in a house as well.
So when you stay in the park do you have to go through the gates every morning, or do you just go directly in?
Are you me? This is exactly what we just did in June. Including both grandmothers.
We stayed off site. The drive/parking aspect really wasn’t that big a deal. Like you our kids were yound enough that once we were done, we were done for the day. Going back for the evening hours wasn’t really an option. I liked having the car available. When the two grandmothers offered to watch the kids one night so the wife and I could have dinner and a movie out, we could just hop in the car and go. Likewise if we needed extra diapers, milk, or just something to drink for the evenings, we could just run out and pick something up. Not have to pay the extream prices in the lobby for the limited selection they had. I wish we had looked into a house, instead we started off with one suite, and quickly got a second one as we were too cramped. Having space so everyone can sort of spread out is a must in my opinion. For the Disney hotels, none of them would even let us book one room with the numbers we put in, it always forced us to try and book two rooms.
A couple of other tidbits of advice just because they’re fresh in my mind.
FastPass - figure out how to use it and it can be a life saver. What we would do was to get a fastpass for some ride…say the peter pan ride at magic kingdom. Then let the kids play at some of the other attractions, like minnie and mickie’s house, or the Winnie the Pooh playground…then when it was time for the fastpass window, before we’d get on the ride, we’d go grab a fastpass for something else. That gave us a second window for a ride. That way the kids could basically play until it was time for a ride, then almost walk right on. It takes a bit to get the hand of the system, but after that you’ll have a much better time at the parks.
You don’t mention if you have boys or girls, but if you have a girl that wants to eat with a princess, or a boy that want to eat with a pirate, book early. They no kidding reccomend reserving like 180 days out. Oh, and it’s expensive. Especially since everyone wants to go. And your kids can dress up to go, so either plan on buying and taking a costume, or consoling the little ones whey half the other kids are dressed up.
Disney Photo Pass - this is one that we sort of stumbled onto. You know all those annoying photographers they have all over the place wanting to take your picture and sell it to you for $20? Well they have this photopass card they’ll give you that you can keep and give to every other photographer to scan in. This keeps all the pictures of you together in their system. Now after you’re done with your visit, you can buy a DVD with all of the pictures on it for about $120 with a copywrite release that lets you re-print them however you want. So once we found that out, I had every damn photographer we came across take our picture. Volume is how you make out with this system. If you only have a couple of pictures taken, it’s not worth it…I think we ended up with like 60 after 3 days. That’s a much better deal. Plus you can edit them online to add in some disney characters and cute sayings and such, and they’ll include those edited pictures along with the originals on the DVD. While it didn’t take the place of all the pictures we took ourselves obviously, it was a great way to have our picture taken in front of all those iconic items with a high quality camera. Plus everyone could be in the picture then.
We went to Universal last year, and we stayed off site in a condo/timeshare that was basic but had a cool setting. It was a standard on-the-main-drag hotel-looking thing from the front side, but on the back side there were these wonderful old oaks and magnolias with spanish moss shading the shuffle board and pool and a private lake with paddle boats and fishing.
What I liked about it is that we were able to do breakfast and dinner however we liked (had a kitchen), and we limited our park time to mornings/evenings when the heat was only unbearable as opposed to christ-this-is-not-intended-for-humans scorching.
It also gave us a break from the hordes, which was welcome.
So I’d say offsite…it’s probably not that huge of a savings once you figure in parking and transport, but it gives you a bit more control, especially if your kids need to get away from the over-stimulation.
Still have to go through the gates like everyone else. You can skip the ticket booths since you’ll already have them in hand but you can do this anyway staying off-site with the multi-day park-hopper tickets.
We’ve done both. Stayed offsite (at a 5 bedroom house, shared with friends) 5 years ago, then onsite last year.
I think the costs wound up being roughly the same, all in all. Offsite, you have more amenities presumably - kitchen with fridge in particular, which would be very spendy if you got a room/suite with that onsite. Our house had a pool in the backyard, which was nice - we were there for 9 days, so we alternated between staying at home one day, park the next, etc. so we didn’t get burned out with the “have fun whether you like it or not” mode of thinking. And you’ve got more room to move around and get out of each others’ faces.
It took, say, half an hour to get to the park, park the car, and walk / shuttle to the actually entrance. Parking is not free, also - 10ish bucks, which does erase a bit of the difference in cost.
Breakfasts and most dinners were at the house - very simple stuff, obviously, so that was a considerable cost savings.
When we stayed onsite, it was because we were there for a shorter time and simply wanted to do parks all the time. Transportation to the parks, and between parks, was free from the resort. We also did meals through the Disney Dining Plan - which if you’re not going to cook, and do plan to eat onsite, can be a cost-effective way to go (the only frustrating thing was, my kids were just old enough that we had to spring for the adult food plan, but they didn’t eat that much food). Breakfasts were also at the room, we were in a moderate resort and had a small fridge in the room. It actually still took 20+ minutes to get to a park - we had to walk over to the bus stop (say, 3 minutes), then wait for the bus (5-10 minutes), then a 5-15 minute drive to whichever park we chose.
Once you’re at the hotel, there’s not all that much to do there, in general. Well, there are pools / playgrounds, of course, but most people don’t spend a huge amount of time at those. It can be a bit easier to pop back to the hotel for a midday nap / crowd break than if you’re staying offsite.
And if you’re onsite, each day, one park opens extra early and one other stays open extra late, just for resort guests. HOWEVER - as the Unofficial Guide (co-authored by a Doper) points out, those parks are often more crowded on those days; for example, when I wanted to ride Space Mountain when the Magic Kingdom was open late, I still had a half-hour wait when I wanted to ride it at something like midnight.
Disney is approximatley 50 square miles. Epcot is about five miles from the Magic Kingdom. The Disney resorts are scattered throughout the property. Entering any of the four theme parks or two waterparks involves going through a ticket turnstyle - but its more complicated than that.
Let’s say you are staying at the Boardwalk Inn, a Disney Deluxe hotel that will cost you $400 a night or so. You want to go to Epcot or the Studios. You can walk out of your resort, down a path by a lake, and through turnstyles into the park. If you want to go to the Animal Kingdom or the Magic Kingdom, you will get on a bus or drive - the bus will come every twenty minutes or so, you’ll be dropped off either at the bus drop off stop - or you’ll park. If you park, you’ll take a tram to the front gate and go through the turnstyles to the park (at the Magic Kingdom, its more complicated than THAT - the parking lot is a monorail or boat ride away from the turnstyles - but the trams to get you to the monorail are still in that really big parking lot.
Lets say you are staying at the All-Stars, a Disney Value resort that runs around $100 a night. You’ll take a bus anywhere you need to go - with the same sort of 20 minute wait and drop off system - or drive, park, tram, etc.
If you stay offsite, you need to drive to property (some offsite resorts do have buses, but their buses are low priority - they drop you off in the middle of no where, then you need to use Disney to get where you are going). Then you drive to the parking lot, park, tram, etc…
Onsite gives you the flexibility to head back to the resort for a nap - particularly with little peanuts (the Magic Kingdom resorts are WONDERFUL with little ones, but really pricey) - making it possible to split your days easily into morning and afternoon - its possible with offsite, but you need to be careful that you pick a home close enough to make the long walk to the front of the park, monorail to the parking lot, tram to your car, drive to your home, nap, drive back, tram to the monorail, back through the turnstyles (did I mention a security check - just a quick bag check) worthwhile.
If my kids were going to go to Disney once, and were three and four, I’d take them at six and seven. If you are planning on going back, take a shorter targeted trip to get in the preschool stuff and get out.
We’ve been twice, in November both times, and stayed onsite both times. Once at the All-Star Music hotel; once at the All-Star Movies hotel. The Movies hotel is at the end of a bus line, so we started driving after the first time we had to miss the first three or four overly-full busses. So if you stay onsite, try to pick a hotel that is at the front of the bus line.
Maybe that explains the hard time I’ve had focusing lately
Good advice on the PhotoPass, that sounds like a good deal. I don’t see us doing the dine with the pirates thing (little boys) as we had full-on pirate stuff going on this year on our regular beach trip – all Mom and Dad produced, but it included dress-up, ‘found’ treasure maps, and a buried treasure dig, just a few steps down the beach from where we were staying!
I think I’m leaning towards staying outside the park if you’ve stiull got to hassel with buses and turnstiles anyway.
Turnstiles, yes, but busses, less so if you’re staying at one of the parks that has direct transportation to Central Ticketing (i.e. the Magic Kingdom front gate.) These are the medium-to-upscale places that are directly on the monorail or, in the case of Wilderness Lodge, a ferry to Central Ticketing. When I stayed there with my mom and little sister, despite the fact I live in Orlando, I’d try to stay onsite if I were going there for 5 days again. The transportation is SO much easier than buying a parking ticket, driving in, walking to the park entrance/waiting on a tram, walking back out, then driving back to a hotel.
Note this only goes for Epcot and the Magic Kingdom, the parks that can be accessed outside the bus system. If you will spend a significant time at other parks or attractions the advantage is much less because you will have to wait for a bus. Once you’re on a bus, you’re golden (cause it takes you right to the park entrances and you don’t have to worry about parking,) but you can wait for a bus sometimes like others have said.
Oh, and the aforementioned hotels can be pricey. But as I said, so worth it. If it were a choice between staying offsite versus staying at Pop Century resort (a place that’s not close to anything and you have to take a bus anywhere,) I’d stay offsite.
I guess it also has to do with how “magical” the alternative transportation is for everyone involved. Riding a monorail and/or ferry is basically a ride to me so doesn’t count as wasting time on transportation as much as a bus would for the same amount of time.
