Now that I have had some time to rest and recuperate from what was arguably the most amazing and exhausting trip we have been on as a family, I am so excited to share all the details with you about our trip! We truly had the best time ever, and while we definitely didn’t penny pinch the entire trip, we did end up feeling we got our money’s worth.
I will be doing a full separate post all about being plus size at Disney World, coming later this week, but I wanted to get up our trip overview as quickly as possible. I know many of you are on the fence about a trip to Disney, and I want to give you my own perspective.
Let me preface this whole post by saying that I am not a Disney fanatic. I love the movies, but have never really considered myself a Disney person. In fact, I kind of moaned and groaned when my husband told me he really wanted to make this trip happen. “Why can’t we do Europe?” “What about a week in the Dominican Republic?” Pretty much any vacation OTHER than Disney was a higher priority for me. But I knew that it was kind of a now or never situation, as we are really hoping to add to our family. I didn’t want to do Disney with a big age gap, and kids unable to get on the same rides.
I ATE MY WORDS MULTIPLE TIMES, AND WE HAD THE BEST TRIP EVER
We traveled with some family, so in total had a group of four adults and three kids of similar ages.
WHERE WE STAYED
After a lot of back and forth, we decided to stay on property instead of doing something like an AirBnB or off property hotel. There are quite a few advantages to staying in a Disney World resort. I HIGHLY recommend, especially if it is your first time to the parks.
While the resorts on property may be a little more expensive, you are able to book fast passes 60 days in advance, which is a HUGE advantage. Transportation to and from the airport is free, as well as between all of the parks and Disney Springs. We didn’t even need to rent a car. You can also participate in the meal plan, which we did.
There are different levels of resorts to stay in, from “value” to “luxury”. We stayed at Art of Animation, which is a budget level hotel in a family suite. It was a one bedroom suite, with a kitchenette, two bathrooms and could have comfortable slept five or six. There were two pools, a restaurant, gift shop, and it was right on the Skyliner, DisneyWorld’s newest transportation method.
Despite Art of Animation being a value resort, it was SO clean and incredibly well maintained. There is a motel vibe going, so if you are looking for luxe accommodations, this probably isn’t the resort for you. But we absolutely loved it, and I would definitely stay there again. Especially for the price! My oldest and his cousin’s loved the themes, and we couldn’t have been happier in the family suite.
The one downside to our particular resort, is that it felt rather far from some of the destinations, particularly the Magic Kingdom. It is still super accessible, but if you plan to spend most of your time at MK, keep that in mind.
DISNEY TRANSPORTATION
Disney makes it so easy to get around the parks. There are busses, ferry boats, sky trams, and the monorail which are all free when you stay on property. It never took more than 20 minutes to get somewhere. We did grab an Uber a few times, just to get places a little quicker or at the end of a long day.
My favorite transportation was the new SkyLiner, an air tram type of situation that was both cool and terrifying. It goes way faster than you expect it to! It took us less than ten minutes to get from Hollywood Studios back to Art of Animation! You can board with strollers, wheelchairs, and can see the entire park while flying through the sky.
On the busses, there aren’t any car seats, even on the way from the airport. While it isn’t legally necessary, you may want one, especially for your very young kids.
OUR ITINERARY
We arrived to Orlando on Monday afternoon, and left early Saturday morning. I knew we were going to be busy, but I kind of underestimated how little down time there would be on this trip. If we were to do it again, we would book in for one or two more days (or a late Saturday night flight) to take a little pressure off.
There are four parks at DisneyWorld, and we only ended up hitting three – Magic Kingdom, Hollywood Studios, and Animal Kingdom. We considered doing Epcot on our fourth day, but we were just so tired. We decided to swap a day at Epcot for the Magic Kingdom Villains After Dark party – more on this later!
We had our itinerary planned out when we booked out hotel, and made sure to reserve our FastPasses right at the 60 day mark (you can book 30 days out if you are staying off property). This is one of the most annoying parts of DisneyWorld, to be honest. It takes a little bit of the fun out of it, when you are planning out which rides and what times you are going to ride. But get online at 7:00 am EST 60 days from your check in if you want any hope to ride the best rides with minimal wait times.
TO PARK HOP OR NOT… We didn’t do the park hopper option, and I am so glad we didn’t. Maybe if we had, we would have managed to hit up Epcot, but I think it just adds that much more pressure to DO ALL THE THINGS. Which you just can’t. And you have to be ok with that going in. Even if you are staying for seven nights. It ends up adding a significant cost to your park tickets, and I don’t think it is really a good use of time, personally.
We did leave the park each day in the early afternoon, either to eat lunch at Disney Springs, take a rest at the hotel, or cool off in the pool. This was THE SMARTEST thing we did, honestly. Highly suggest leaving if you have kids, even if only for two hours. There is so much stimulation at the park and absolutely no where to take a break. If you do Park Hop, you could obviously go to a different park in the evening. But it was nice to be recharged to go back in and experience the same park in the evening. It is a totally different vibe!
ALL THINGS FOOD
As I mentioned before, if you stay on property, you can participate in the Disney Dining Plan. We went with the standard plan, which included a Quick Service meal, a sit down meal, and two snacks per person per day. I won’t get into the full break down, as there are much more efficient posts about the dining plans out there than I could give you.
I will say, this was more than enough food for the three of us each day. We used every single credit, and purchased a few additional snacks, like breakfast pastries and coffee. It was so nice to have the majority of our food already paid for and not need to worry about each pretzel and ice cream My oldest wanted to eat.
Is it worth the cost?… That I can’t say for sure. We definitely didn’t take full advantage, so maybe it wasn’t for us. We didn’t have the included alcoholic beverage with each table service meal, and we accidentally “wasted” a few snack credits in the beginning on water bottles. I think you could easily take the dollar amount that you would spend on the meal plan and budget that in for food and snacks in the park, but the sticker shock over some meals might keep me from eating at some places. Like character breakfasts!
We had breakfast with Chef Mickey at the Contemporary resort, lunch at Paradiso 37 in Disney Springs, dinner at the Rainforest Cafe in Animal Kingdom, and lunch at Chef Art Smith’s Homecoming in Disney Springs. These all counted towards our dining plan as our sit down meals. I never would have paid the $50 per person for a breakfast buffet out of pocket. But because it was included in the dining plan, it didn’t seem like a big deal.
I will do a separate post on the bests of our Disney trip, including the best food, but I think next time, we would probably skip the dining plan for our family. Unless you are getting the most expensive menu and snack options every time, I think you would come out even or under just spending your own money.
VILLAINS AFTER DARK
If you are considering a Disney trip, I am going to really need you to listen up right here for this. THIS WAS THE BEST MONEY WE SPENT OUR ENTIRE TRIP. For our family, at least. Villains After Dark is a ticketed event that DisneyWorld hosts after the park officially closes. Only a select number of tickets are sold for each event, so it keeps crowds SUPER low.
I can’t lie. Our first day at Magic Kingdom was SO overwhelming. It was super hot, the day after President’s Day, and crowds were at a MAX. We were only able to wait in line for one ride – Pete Pan’s Flight, and do our three fast passes. By the time we were finished using our inital three passes, there weren’t ANY available for the rest of the day. That was it. It was kind of a bummer.
Thankfully, we decided to splurge for the Villains After Dark event! It allows you to enter the park around 6:00 pm and stay until midnight! The place totally empties out, and wait times drop to five or ten minutes. MAGICAL! My oldest was a total champ thanks to a two hour nap mid day and danced his way through the park until 12:30. You get free snacks and drinks, a special parade and show, and did I mention the little to no wait times?? If rides are your priority (and your kids can hang till midnight), I can’t recommend this enough.
Mileage with this event is going to vary drastically. The tickets are $145, which is more than a single park ticket for an entire day. The other half of our party didn’t feel this was worth it to them, because their kids weren’t really up for a late night of riding rides. But we had the best freaking time, and it was an awesome way to end out trip. We went out with a bang!
COST BREAKDOWN
Please don’t come at me with the cost of Disney, alright?? It is ESSSSPENSIVE. But I think we all know that already. We went during a mid peak time, not a true holiday, but a week when a lot of people are out of school for mid winter break/President’s Day. It was also the Disney Half Marathon the day we left. Prices vary drastically depending on what time of year you go.
We booked our trip about five months in advance, including our air fare, which I will leave out of the cost breakdown. This is everything we spent, NOT including souvenirs. The room and dining plan were paid for in advance of us going on the trip, which was SO nice.
WHAT WAS INCLUDED
- FAMILY SUITE IN VALUE HOTEL FOR FIVE NIGHTS – $3265.05
- THREE FULL DAY PARK TICKETS FOR FAMILY OF THREE ^
- DISNEY DINING PLAN FOR FAMILY OF THREE ^
- MEMORY MAKER ^
- VILLAINS AFTER DARK TICKETS FOR FAMILY OF THREE $463.29
- TRANSPORTATION – FREE, PLUS UBER COSTS – $34.65
- ADDITIONAL SNACKS, FOOD AND WATER SPENT AT THE PARK – $122.12
TOTAL COST, NOT INCLUDING AIRFARE
$3875.06
WORTH THE SPLURGE VS SKIP
This was one of the most asked questions. What was worth the splurge and what would we save on next time.
- MEMORY MAKER – This one is going to vary by what you do in Disney. If you want lots of character meets and are traveling with out friends or family, I 100% think this is worth it. We had family with us to snap pics in front of the castle, and we weren’t waiting in lines to see many characters. But I am still glad we bought it, because you end up with some fun videos of rides and the Darth Vader pics were worth it for Mr G.
- STAYING ON PROPERTY – I firmly believe that if you are going for your first time, it is SO worth it to stay on property. You get to take advantage of all of the magic and everything is just done so well. Disney nails every single detail.
- DISNEY DINING PLAN – As I said before, I think we would skip this next time. If you have older kids, it is probably beyond worth it, but with little kids, you end up wasting so many snack credits. And who wants to have a buzz while managing little kids in the busiest place ever? Not us. We would skip this next time!
- AN EXTRA NIGHT – Just book the extra day. Do yourself the favor and take a park break in the middle of your vacation and just lounge at the pool, take naps and hide from the crowds. I wish we had done this in the middle, because it would have made a world of difference.
- JUST RENT THE DAMN STROLLER – Don’t be like me. Rent the stroller from Kingdom Strollers. If you need it, you have it. If you don’t it holds your bags while you are in line for rides. It was unexpectedly hot, and the stroller made day time naps doable for our very big, very energetic almost six year old.
Hopefully this post was helpful for those of you who wanted to hear more about the logistics of our vacation! More to come about size inclusivity, best food and rides, and all my tips for doing Disney World for your first time!
