Update 2022. There have been some new updates we discovered from our second trip to Disneyworld.
Whether it be adult or kids, there is a special place in your heart for the magical Walt Disney World. Kids have fond memory of it and remember them even after they grow up. A trip to Disney world is exciting and could be stressful. It certainly can get really expensive, fast. The key point is planning and knowing what to expect.
We started our planning about 1 year ago. Here is our Disney world guide from our own experience.
When to Visit
This is one of the crucial aspects of the planning as it can makes or breaks the whole magical experience. First, the crowd level. Disney world theme park is one of the most popular and visited theme park in the world. If you visit the park during holiday season, you can expect the park to be extremely crowded. Imagine waiting in line with young children for more than an hour for less than a 10 minutes ride, and do that again for every, single, ride. Not exaggerating.
Visiting Disney world during holidays also means more expensive air ticket and hotel reservation. And it sold out fast.
When is a good time to visit? When is the lowest crowd level? Undercover Tourist has a crowd calendar that projects the crowd level of different month and day. It is easy to use and it also provides recommendation for which park to visit.
Here is an example for the month of August. Most of the school summer holidays end in mid of August. According to the crowd calendar, the first two weeks are the worst, follow with lesser crowd in the fourth week and lowest toward the end of August.
For a lot of people, visiting the parks during the peak season maybe their only choice due to work and school. For folks who could be a little more flexible, if possible, visit when the crowd level is at the lowest. The important take away is, do plan ahead and know what to expect. Hopefully you will find the information in this post useful.
When to Visit
It is less crowded in the early morning. Most parks open around 9AM (be sure to check each park schedule). However, you want to be there at the gate before that. People has started lining up and being early allows you to get to more rides as the line is shorter. We were able to get on some popular rides fairly quickly in early morning. If you are taking hotel shuttle, usually their first hotel pick up is around 8AM so this fits in nicely.
Disney Ticket
Disney ticket is expensive. There are not many options to significantly reduce the ticket cost. Unless you are Florida resident, have a friend/family working for Disney, or military personnel/veterans, there are a limited discount available. Kid two years old and under is free.
There are a few websites that sell Disney tickets online and their prices could be slightly different:
Tickets at Work
Undercover Tourist
Walt Disney World
Compare the pricing options on each site to get the best ticket price that suit your needs most. The discount offer varies at different time of the year.
Here are few things to consider when selecting a ticket that best suits you.
- How many parks and which ones you want to visit (there are 4 theme parks and 2 water parks)
- Do you want to visit multiple parks (park hopping) on the same day? Generally is more expensive.
- Could you visit each park just once? There are lower price offers with limitation as to how many time you could visit each park.
In our case, we decided no park hopping and we only want to visit each park once. The cheapest option for us at the time of purchase was a discounted 4-park magic tickets (roughly $70 each park) purchased from Undercover Tourist. If you have American Express credit card, watch out for Amex offer that can add an additional discount. We were lucky to stack an Amex credit card offer for additional discount on our purchase.
FastPass
All Disney tickets come with Disney Fastpass. A Disney Fastpass allows you to reserve up to 3 fastpass selection. In general, the way the fastpass works is that you select an available time for an attraction, then you go to the fastpass lane of the reserved attraction at the selected time. Be advised that only certain attractions come with fastpass. You can start making fastpass selection as early as 30 days before you arrive at the park, or 60 days if you have a Walt Disney world resort reservation. With that said, plan and make your fastpass selection as early as you can for those popular rides or attractions before it become unavailable.
Keep in mind that after you completed all 3 fastpasses (it is used once you scan the ticket at the attraction), then you can choose an additional fastpass selection one at a time, and repeat. The key is that you have to finish all 3 before you can pick the next selection. You can do that with their in-park kiosk or online with your cell phone. At any time, you are also allowed to modify an unused fastpass for another available attraction. This is particularly useful during a low crowded season, where you are able to enjoy a ride without needing to use the fastpass and consequently modify a previously reserved unused fastpass for another ride at a later time, if available. We were able to use them strategically to get on most of the rides at Disney Magic Kingdom park.
Fastpass is the key to get you on to more rides and fast! Learn how to use it. How crucial? See the picture below. With Fastpass, we were able to get straight to the ride with minimal wait time, compared with an estimated wait time of 95 minutes for the standard line. And that's is during a crowd level of 5!
Accommodation
There are multiple lodging options. Airbnb, vacation rental or hotels. For hotels, you can choose either the Disney resort onsite or staying at the hotel offsite. Offsite generally is cheaper, but for some people, it is important for the onsite experience.
Since the Disney tickets are so expensive, we plan to spend as little as possible on hotels. To save money on hotel, plan ahead. I mean way ahead. Before making reservation, compare hotel rates on multiple booking sites as well as the hotel website itself. Check to see if there is any promotional offer for discount. There are credit cards offer with great reward points for hotel redemption. Decide which hotel and when would be the hotel stay (price varies) and find out how many points you need for the stays. Beware of resort fee charges. Some hotel charges a resort fee even with reservation booked with points.
We initially planned to use Starwood's Preferred Guest (SPG) loyalty points for our entire 5 nights stay at Walt Disney World Dolphin resort but ended up transferring the points to Marriott loyalty program to book a travel package of 5 free nights at Delta hotel by Marriott along with 55k United airline miles. Delta hotel doesn't charge any resort fee (compared to 5 nights resort fee of ~$140.65 at Dolphin resort) and provide free shuttle to Disney Epcot transportation center. We're lucky to receive free continental cold breakfast vouchers during our stay. Another plus is the locality of the hotel; there is a gas station conveniently located next to the hotel for quick grocery.
Flight
To minimize the cost of air ticket, again, plan ahead. There are periodically promotional airline offer for cheap tickets. Google flights or other airfares comparison site is useful to find the best deal. One of the cheap way to fly is to use loyalty program points. There are several credit card offer reward point/miles to redeem for air ticket. Southwest airline is by far one of our favorite for domestic flights. We used our Southwest rapid reward points for our flight to Orlando. Southwest is one of the few airlines that offers no change fee and two free check-in luggage. On top of that, the best airline perk is the Southwest companion pass that we took advantage of so our two kids tag along for almost free ($11.20 roundtrip TSA fees for each).
Meals
Food and drinks at Disney park could add up easily. We packed all of our snacks and plenty of waters. Disney has no problem for us to bring snacks in; in fact, snacks are okay on their website. To maximize our time at Disney, we had our lunch and dinner in the park. We also leveraged a recent Amex offer to purchase Disney gift cards that could be used for meals in the Disney world. Keep in mind, it is a good idea to purchase Disney gift card at store where your credit card earns higher bonus to get few more points from your purchase.
Local Transportation
There are a few options for transportation between the Orlando airport and our hotel. Uber and regular Taxi seem to be quite costly (>$65 one way trip). Another option is car rental. However, keep in mind that certain hotel charges for parking. You also have to pay for parking at Disney world theme parks. We found a cheaper shared shuttle through Chase ultimate reward portal, which cost around $25 / person round trip.
Many hotels located near Disney world provide free shuttle to Disney parks. With that said, we found that some of these hotel shuttles only run few times (~3 or 4) a day. Be sure to check the pick up time so you don't miss it. Disney world provides complimentary buses, boats and monorails to help visitor to get around different Disney parks, and their schedule is quite frequent. For that, we find car rental to be unnecessary at the Disney World.
Strollers
If you are travelling with young kids, it is likely that you would need strollers for them. The parks are huge and there will be a lot of walking. Disney park offers stroller rental with single stroller at $15 per day. There are discounts for multiple days rental. We suggest to save that money by taking your own strollers whenever possible. Disney crew members do a fantastic job in making sure that these large number of strollers are organized so it won't obstruct the roadway. Imagine all these strollers are all cluttered and you are trying to find yours. Good luck with that.
Hope you find this information useful. Drink plenty of water and take breaks when needed. Enjoy your trip and it will be a lot of fun. If you have any other good tips to share, please let us know in the comment below.
Check out our Disney world experience.
Disney World Experience
Disney Animal Kingdom Experience
Disney World Epcot Experience
Disney Hollywood Studios Experience
Disney World Magic Kingdom Experience
Disney Springs Orlando Florida
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