I would generally agree with you. However depending on the purpose of your trip, and what else you’re doing, offsite CAN be a very good choice. House rentals are very affordable if you’ve got a biggish group: we shared a house with 2 other families for a total of about 160 a night. We were there not JUST for Disney, and in fact took “down” days to relax (we’d do a park one day, hang out at the house/pool the next…) - which made it more of a vacation and less of an Experience.
If you’re on-site, well, there may be days where you’re too damn tired to enjoy the park and just want a low-key day but you drag yourself to the park anyway because you’re Right There And Anything Else Would Be Wasteful. Or something
For an out-of-the-park hotel, I agree that the cost savings can be a wash. So you save 20 bucks a night… you spend 10 on parking and then there’s the hassle / time and you’ve got to trek to your car somewhere in another zip code at the end of the day and your feet hurt and the kids are crying and whoever thought this would be fun was an idiot. We stayed onsite the last time and could walk 5 minutes to a bus stop, wait maybe 10-15 minutes for a bus, 10-15 minutes ride on the bus, and at th end we were just steps from the front gate.
The meal plan - available only if you’re on-site - can be a big cost-savings. I gather it’s not quite as generous - but when we went in 2007, there was never a day where we didn’t come out at least a few dollars ahead of what we’d have spent if we’d paid retail. A couple of the sit-down meals would have been 40-50 dollars a head… and we paid about 39 dollars apiece for the daily plan. So add in the lunch/snacks we got and we got easily 60-70 dollars of food for that 39 bucks.
I can agree with what you are saying. Also, I really meant to say that if you do neither of the things I suggested (planning and going all-in) you’ll have a less than optimal experience. Just doing one or the other will improve the trip exponentially imo.
The meal plan is a huge deal for us, especailly since most of the restaurants and quick-serves give such huge portions. Half the time we share a single meal voucher for two people. The transportaion savings make a big difference in our budget as well. Disney picks us up at the airport (for free) and gives us free transportation for our entire stay, and drops us back at MCO when we are done. Tickets are a wash since we always get the park hopper for the entire length of stay.
We do down days too, but at the moderate and deluxe resorts there is more than enough to do and see. For a multiple family stay I can see some savings by renting a house. The multi-family Disney Villas are $$$$$.
As I think I said upthread, we own DVC (the Disney timeshare) so I definitely know about onsite. But when I’m in Orlando for business we stay offsite. There are some definite benefits to offsite - both staying and eating. I’ve had optimal experiences both onsite and offsite - they are just different optimal experiences.
For one thing, the food offsite is a lot better. Disney restaurants have gone drastically down hill in the past ten years while getting more expensive (or our tastes have improved - that is also possible). Another thing is that its easy to get a multi room unit offsite for significantly cheaper than you can get anything on property - and a vacation when your kids sleep in a different bedroom makes for a much better vacation for mommy and daddy.
Having grown up in California, I’ve been to Disneyland numerous times. The two times I went to the Magic Kingdom, the only thing my young mind could think of was “this place is just like Disneyland, without a Matterhorn, and everything is really far from everything else.”
Epcot, MGM, etc. are also nearby, which adds to the geographical appeal of TMK, but that’s a function of Orlando.
I guess my thought on Disneyworld is “It’s near other cool vacation stuff, but Disneyland is better.”
These are based off of late '90s era visits BTW. Also, Captain EO was one of the best 'fad" themes I can remember at Disney. The movie, soundtrack, even merchandising were all perfect.
Well, to sum up what my son said after our ill-fated trip there in 2007, “now we never have to go there again.”
Hot, lines, humid, forced fun – no thank you. The only part we all really enjoyed was the water park (oh, and the arcade at Downtown Disney). Epcot’s food wasn’t bad, though. The Magic Kingdom though…NO.
We stayed on-site which was convenient enough but a) the room was TINY and b) for a mid-priced hotel, it was what I would consider a low-quality room outside the hotel. My kids were in the room with us and one of them snores – it was a week with no quality sleep. My son was disappointed by the lack of thrilling rides and my daughter was too short for most of them.
Exactly.
It was not that crowded the day we were there, and we did have a plan of action. It was March, and I remember admiring daffodils. (Daffodils! In Orlando!)
Haunted Mansion was pretty cool.
But for me, after awhile, the manipulation palled.
I would like to be a fly on the wall at some of the Disney conference rooms where they plot and strategize over blueprints.
Kitten, I agree about the cheesy hidden speaker music and all that kind of stuff.
The funny fountains at Epcot are entertaining.
Still, Disney ultimately rubs me the wrong way.
(My feelings about Disney are complicated, though. I can’t stand what they did to Winnie-the-Pooh, but that really has nothing to do with the parks.)
It just occurred to me another thing nobody has mentioned yet: there’s fun stuff to do at the Disney parks even if you don’t like thrill rides.
The shows can be pretty darned good - Lion King (if that’s still playing) at Animal Kingdom. The evening water/light show at MGM.
The non-thrill rides (safari at Animal Kingdom, Soarin’ at EPCOT, lots of others).
The fountains with the water shooting all over.
The different countries at EPCOT.
etc. etc. etc.
I’ve got a 12 year old who LOATHES thrill rides like coasters. Some parks, there are basically those, and kiddy rides, and nothing much in between. When we went to Hershey most recently she rode: the chair swings. One other ride that involved spinning. And nothing else. All day.
I was bored silly trailing after her. If she’d brought a friend along, the friend would have been struggling to have any fun. I do NOT like taking my daughter to amusement parks.
This sums up the benefits of planning quite well. On our last visit, we met up with other family members who stayed at a different resort than us and did their own planning. It was a real battle trying to get them to either commit to dining reservations with us or at least make their own. They just could not understand why it was necessary to make reservations months out. We actually made our dining reservations before they had even committed to going on the trip at all, so they were really scrambling trying to find a decent place to eat when they finally tried to get reservations three weeks before the trip.
The same thing happened to us on our last visit. We wasted our Fastpasses on the Rock n’ Roller Coaster, then waited in line for over an hour to get on to Toy Story Mania (TSM). By the time we were able to get TSM Fastpasses at noon, the return time was 9:45 p.m.! We were lucky to get TSM Fastpasses at all–they ran out immediately after we got ours.
We’ll definitely be changing our DHS park itinerary next time we go.
I was surprised by the quality of the shows. I was prepared to be bored to tears at the Nemo show in Animal Kingdom, and ended up pretty impressed by it.
Animated sequences featuring characters from “Finding Nemo” are projected on scrims. Combined with sculpted background and foreground objects, this produces a 3-D effect.
There never was a “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” ride at Disneyland, although there was briefly a walk-through attraction featuring props from the movie. (The organ ended up in the Haunted Mansion.)
The Submarine Voyage did not have a Jules Verne theme. The “captain” was American for one thing, and the attraction featured mermaids and a goofy-looking sea serpent.
I have to say, we DID stay in a Disney resort, but we resolutely DID NOT research and plan. It’s a vacation. I’m not min/maxing it. We had a wonderful time and we both agreed that the go-with-the-flow thing was part of the pleasure for us. Lots of lovely surprises, including sitting and watching a totally ridiculous light show (on boats on the lagoon) from the beach of our resort, in the rain, with the Magical Kingdom fireworks in the background. The only thing we really advance planned was dinner at Victoria and Albert’s, but then we enjoyed it so much we canceled other evening plans to dine there a second time.
Going at a non-peak time probably helped with not having to plan. That and being willing to ride the coasters as single riders, thus skipping the lines. I think the longest we waited in any line was twenty minutes for the rather silly white water ride at Animal Kingdom.
Just getting up in the morning and doing something kinda fun, then swimming in the afternoon and having something kinda fun to do in the evening, followed by ridiculous tiki drinks and maybe more swimming before bed, without having to sweat the details in advance was the best part of the vacation for me. I agree with the earlier comment about staying in a resort making it like being on a cruise. It was easy to just go with the flow.
We went in 1985, when I was 14 and my brother was 10. I liked it, but more Epcot than Magic Kingdom, and more Discovery Island than Epcot. We spent more time on that tiny little island in the lagoon than we did in all of Epcot Center or the Magic Kingdom. “Look! That guy has macaws!”
We also did things in Greater Orlando that vacation, so it wasn’t all Disney. There was some kind of Wizard’s Funhouse or something that I remember.
I voted Meh, but the wife/husband/kids loved it, so whatever. We were there the week before US Thanksgiving. For me, the trip was successful because we did everything we wanted to do. I’d been there before, and obviously the parks aren’t necessarily designed to make me have fun so I was happy enough to push around strollers and keep track of the kids.
My kids though loved every freaking second of it. Be it the rides, meeting the characters and getting their autographs (my 4 year old son hitting on all the princesses was classic), watching the parades (I personally abhor parades, but what are you going to do), tracking down the penny press machines, or even riding the monorail, they can’t stop talking about any of it.
I give Disney credit - they run a smooth operation there. The cast members are all hyper friendly. The place is kept spotless. We were lucky in that the week we were there, the parks were (relatively) empty. We never waited more than 20 minutes for any activity we wanted to do any many times were able to hop right on to whatever attraction we were at. They also had their special Christmas themed events which were well done. Overall, the trip was pricey but they did provide special memories.
