Long story short, several members of my extended family are discussing the option of a mass vacation to either Orlando or Anaheim for a Disney themed vacation. These are the relevant facts as they stand now:
Right now were looking at a large group of us with 8-10 adults and 12-15 kids (5-14 years old).
Several of the adults are pushing for a time somewhere in the first half of April in the theory that we may avoid some of the summer crowds and extreme heat. A few of them are complaining about pulling their kids out of school for that long and don’t believe it’s possible to avoid the crowds. Just go when you can, grit your teeth and cope.
We don’t even know which park we want to try. Travel time is roughly the same either way. Based on our minimal research so far Orlando has a better “Disney” experience but southern Cal has a much better range of activities and can be cheaper if a bit of common sense is used.
Primarily were wondering if there is any time of the year when the lines are less than interminable? Is there an “off season” and how/when can we take advantage of it? Which park would you suggest to us?
There are crowds and there are CROWDS. Frankly, April will not be significantly less crowded than early June or Late August - but less hot.
Do your research. Understand the parks, understand how lines works, which attractions get lines, which you usually don’t have to wait for.
Disneyworld is huge - four theme parks, two waterparks. Lots of on site hotels. Disneyland is very small relatively speaking - Disneyland and California adventure are easy to knock off in two or three days. Disney World really needs at least four - and probably six if you are all new to it. (WDW used to be 51 square miles - they sold some land though in the past decade). If you have a short period of time, I’d do Disneyland. If you can stay a week, I’d do Disneyworld.
With a big party, don’t stick together. You’ll all end up miserable. Meet for something each day, maybe a couple somethings. Like dinner. Or the first ride of the day. Or pool time. If you expect to move through the parks as a group, you’ll spend a lot of time waiting for Aunt Sue to wake up when everyone else wants to go (it takes her FOREVER to put her makeup on) and realize that little Jake really does need to use EVERY BATHROOM IN THE PARK. And that you spend hours waiting for the half the party that does thrill rides to do them, while the rest stand around.
Not sure where you plan on staying, but if it’s in your budget, it may be worth it to stay at a Disney property. Some of the hotels room keys (cards) are accepted as express passes for the rides, so you don’t need to wait in line. You have a special line that you get to go in that is a heckuva lot shorter, and moves a heckuva lot faster. Where most people are waiting for an hour or more, you can expect to wait 10 - 15 minutes tops. There are kiosks throughout the park that will give you an express pass, but they spit out a time or “reservation” for you. Sometimes that’s not always convenient.
For the kids, and if time is limited, Epcot can probably be skipped. It’s heavy on the “experience” of being in another country, but as far as rides and stuff, there’s not much there.
And if you plan on getting a night out without the kids (maybe the older kids can watch the younger ones for a night), you’ll find there’s plenty of nice places to get a drink and/or shop at Citywalk. There’s also a great movie theater there.
I cannot emphasize this enough. You will want to split up into like-minded-ish groups of 3-4 adults - the like-mindedness may be based around “likes scenic things” or “has a 6 year old” or “Loves thrill rides” or “hates thrill rides”, so you can combine in different ways over the course of the stay.
I don’t know WDW, but I know Disneyland, and I’d say get a minimum of 3 days - you need at least two just to experience everything in D’land proper, plus another day for Disney California Adventure. (Note: DCA is geared less toward tourists and small children - it’s got a few great features but is more subtle in its virtues than D’land. Also, they serve booze, which is AWESOME. )
April is a good time to go to the park - it won’t be HUGELY packed, and the weather will be very pleasant. If you’re lucky, it’ll be overcast and very slightly rainy in the morning, clearing up around noon - it’s a fairly common springtime weather pattern that generally means much less crowd, but it’ll still be fairly warm.
I think you’re confusing Disney and Universal here. Universal has express lines for people staying at Universal hotels.
Disney has FastPass, which just uses your park pass–it doesn’t matter if you stay on property or not.
What staying at a Disney property does give you is Extra Magic Hours–essentially one park will be open a little early or a little late every day, but you need to be staying at a Disney hotel to take advantage of them.
The Disney bus system is also awesome, at least as long as you’re just doing Disney stuff.
Note that if you’re wanting to do any of the big character dining events (Princess breakfasts, etc), then make your decision quickly, assuming you’re talking about April 2011, to be able to get reservations.
Judging by the 2011 blackout dates for Disney passholders, I would avoid the last two weeks and all weekends of April to best avoid the crowds. Those dates are blocked for the Southern California passholder level, presumably because D-land knows they will get PLENTY of people in the park without passholder attendance.
I grew up in the Midwest and vacationed at DisneyWorld every other year. We we moved to California and I first went to Disneyland, I was quite unimpressed. You could fit Disneyland on DisneyWorld’s parking lot. But, Dangerosa makes a very valid point–the smaller park will be easier to cover in just a few days. (Also, there was no DCA when we first moved here, so it is more impressive now.)
If anyone has very small children, be sure to take advantage of the infant centers…they be AWESOME.
Epcot was actually my favorite part when I was a kid. Then again I also enjoyed traipsing around St. Augustine with my mother. I was a very strange child.
Crap, you’re right. We really stopped going to the Disney parks and started to go to Islands of Adventure more when my daughters were old enough (tall enough) to ride rollercoasters.
I’m sorry but this is 100% WRONG. I have been going to Disneyland since it opened. When kids are out of school, the park is a zoo. When kids are in school, particularly a weekday the park is a pleasure to visit. Rainy days are the best, the park is empty (very few of those in April)
When my own kids were small, I used to take a day off right after labor day and take the kids to DL. What a joy that was.
Then one year my daughter wanted to go to DL ON HER BIRTHDAY. Late June, weekend. Easily twice the people in the park.
At most we’re going to have four days on site with maybe half a day on Saturday before we fly out. I can’t see any way we can get our gaggle through Disneyworld in that time. Southern Cal seems a better bet with 3-day park-hopper tickets all the way around. If there is still anything worth seeing for a fourth day then the interested party members can buy find their own way in. The rest of us can see what else is worth seeing in the area. I was pushing for Disneyland anyway.
Disneyland will in general be much less crowded in April than it will be in the summer. Easter is on April 24 next year, so the weeks before and after that will probably be close to ‘summer crowds’ because of school breaks. But if you go the first part of April I’d bet the park will be relatively empty. And midweek will be a lot less crowded than weekends.
We go to Orlando during January. We only go to the parks during the week, not on week-ends.
Lines aren’t bad, esp. with FastPASS for the more popular rides.
On the Epcot comment – Mission Space and Soarin’ are my wife’s favorite rides…
I’d recommend Disneyworld over Disneyland. There is much more variety and the overall ambience (separation from the “real world”) is more complete.
Stay on property–it allows your party to split up without worrying about meeting later at the car. When you factor in the reduced cost of rental cars, it can be quite economical.
Can I add a question–does anyone have experience with the dining plans? We’re heading south in February, two adults and a 4 year old. So excited, but we keep going back and forth on whether to pay for meals as we go or to buy the inclusive dining package.
The biggest positives about Disney World vs. Disneyland are that flights, rental cars and lodging can be really cheap in Orlando. I doubt you’ll all be able to find comparably cheap pricetags in southern California. And that can make a big difference to some families’ budgets.
In Orlando, there are a ton of activities to do – you certainly don’t have to go to Disney parks every day. In fact, I highly recommend that you don’t. For instance, if a group wants to head down to Cape Canaveral for a day, they can go on a day trip. If another group wants to go swim with the dolphins at Discovery Cove, they can do that. You certainly won’t run out of things to do.
For family reunions, I highly recommend villas, such as the Sheratons, Marriotts, and Hiltons. These timeshare properties are outstanding and much more reasonably priced than hotel room/villas on-site. You can rent up to 3 bdrms, and you’ll also get a full kitchen, laundry, free parking, free shuttle to the park, great pools, on-site restaurants – for a fraction of what you’d pay to stay on-property. Plus they have living rooms where everyone can congregate and discuss the plans for the day. The cheapest way is to rent directly from an owner at Redweek, VRBO or Tug2. No timeshare presentation is required. Or, if you collect hotel points, you can use points to stay for free at these villas.
The big advantages of staying on-property are the shuttle system and early admittance. If you have older teens who want to stay at the park later, they’ll be able to get to/from the hotel and between parks very easily. However, where we stayed (Old Key West), it’d take up to an hour to get from the park to our villa, so don’t romanticize its convenience. We ended up driving and parking vs. standing around and waiting for the shuttle. FYI, if you stay on-property, you get free parking at all the parks. (If you don’t, you have to pay $10 or so to park, but if you keep your receipt, you can park for free at the other parks on the same day.) There’s also a meal plan if you stay on-property, which some people like because it helps them budget. (I don’t personally like the meal plan because I like to eat at different area restaurants on occasion. It’s cheaper and the quality is better.)
Most sites recommend getting a Park Hopper pass for no more than the number of full days you’ll spend there. It’s usually cheaper to buy the passes a la carte vs. buying a Disney package which includes park admittance, because the Disney packages include admittance for every day you’re there, including check-in/check-out days.
The sites I liked best when planning my vacation were Mousesavers.com and Pete Werner’s Disney site.
OK, its true for WDW, where Spring Break crowds are as high as Late August or Early June, and higher over Easter (that’s the 2011 blackout) for any point in the summer except MAYBE the 4th.
(ETA: That’s why its LATE August or EARLY June. I don’t know when CA schools get out, but about half the country goes through mid-June, the other half starts Mid-August. Hence, Disney tends to be less busy early in June or late in August than once EVERYONE is off mid-Summer.)
We’ve done it, back when it included tips and an appetizer. We thought it was “too much food” - it wasn’t a good psychological match for us because we all felt we had to eat three courses (normally, we split dessert and skip appetizers." But it can save you money. Do get all your dining reservations before you go, table service meals are “use em or lose em” and there is nothing like discovering you can’t use your credits. I think its great if your kid is four and you want to do two or three character meals, those things have gotten very pricey.
The have a quick service plan now as well that we’ve never used. And a Deluxe plan that would probably make me gain twenty pounds over a week (I can’t take responsibility for myself).
We went to DisneyWorld the week after Thanksgiving this year, and stayed on property. I highly recommend it. From our hotel it was very easy to catch a bus or boat to The Magic Kingdom or the monorail transportation center. Parking is free at all the parks if you stay with Disney. There are several of the hotels you can walk to various of the parks from. And the level of service you get from the staff at the hotels is awesome - all kinds of little extras from organized kids activities around the pools to the occasional towel animal to wakeup calls from Minnie and Mickey. Staying in one of the Disney hotels can be just as much an important part of the experience as going to the parks.
We saw plenty of kids having fun at Epcot - they make an effort to make it kid-friendly - but it IS a LOT of walking, and it requires two days. Epcot is a good place for character meeting now and the princesses make regular appearances in their respective countries - Jasmine in Morocco, Belle in France, etc. And the World Showcase has its own new mascot, Duffy Bear, who also does the meet-and-greet thing. The Seas With Nemo and Friends is a not-to-be-missed kid’s destination.
I would also recommend The Unofficial Guide. I looked at a lot of the various guidebooks and things for this trip and this one’s the best and most detailed, hands down. Allears.net was also very helpful for trip planning and general info. While nice for the organizational features, the Passporter publications are not a ‘must have’ like the Unofficial Guide is. Skip the Passporter web site entirely.
We had the Deluxe plan on our recent trip. It is a lot of food, too much for most people. However, we bought it for the convenience and not expecting it to save us any money. I wanted to avoid charging anything back to the room and we operate without credit cards as much as possible; it was nice to be able to look at the menus and say, “I want this, this, and this” without having to worry that the steak was too expensive and the credit limit and all that. There are some tricks to using up points - the very nice restaurants require two points per diner, as does room service (even for pizza). Our last night we ordered room service to help burn some of our points and we were quite happy with both service and food. We didn’t use all our points, but I didn’t expect to and we were OK with that. It’s not for everyone, though. (I think if the weather had been warmer, we would have gone through more of our snack points getting sodas and such in the parks. But it was only in the 50s when we were there.)
For a 4 day stay, I think you’re better off at Disneyland. Disney World really needs about a week.
If you want to avoid crowds, March is probably better than April. Although the later in the Spring you go, the more likely you’ll be to catch the openining of the new Little Mermaid attraction at California Adventure.