Booking Your Trip - Beginner Park Tips

UPDATE: 

This blog post has been updated. The new version can be found here.

Booking Your Stay:

Please note: This is a diary of suggested ideas from our own vacation experience. I have been to Walt Disney World 7 times, Disneyland 1 time, and Disneyland Paris 1 time. Things have changed over time and Disney Vacation planning is a constantly changing subject. What works for us may not work for you, so please take our suggestions and experiences with a grain of salt. We are constantly learning and growing.

When to book? Waiting For A Sale

So, you’ve got your dates in mind, you’ve saved up your airline miles (25,000 miles per person) and you’ve got your gift cards combined. You’re ready to book, but where do you start?

If you google “Walt Disney World Peak Attendance,” you’ll find charts showing the actual attendance in the parks last year and the projections for this year. We chose to go during the lowest attendance for two reasons. One - it’s less congested. Two - it’s less expensive.

That means the last week in August and the first week of September were our prime season. Sure, it’s hot in August, but we brought cooling towels for our necks and were able to wet them in ice water all over the park. We kept quite cool. We also brought a CamelBak, but we’ll go over staying cool in a future blog.

Back to the money saving. Make a DisneyWorld.com (or other park destination website) account and save your trip dates and package choices. Wait a few weeks and you’re bound to get a sale offer in your inbox that should save you $500-700. I waited until I had a deal in my inbox, then I called a Disney rep and spoke to him for ages about getting just the right deal for my family. We booked a few minutes later.

Stay in a Disney Parks hotel and you'll get Extra Magic Hours at one of the four parks EVERY day! It'll either be in the morning or at night, and the park will be open for one hour extra. There is a calendar to tell you which park it will be and when the extra hour will be. If there's a Disney After Hours event (Pixie Dust, Disney Villains After Dark, etc.) or other event happening where the parks are open until midnight (like H20 Glow Nights, Mickey's Not-So-Scary Halloween, and Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party), these are not included in Extra Magic Hours (a different park will be open for Extra Magic Hours instead) and they cost extra, to the tune of approximately $79-$129 per person.

Purchasing Extras:

 

Save With Meal Planning

 

Go with the meal plan! Even if it says 2 snacks and 2 Quick Service meals per day, this plan will save you a lot of money. We did look at the prices of meals in the park and the minimum we found was about $16 per person per meal with drink included. Here's why the Quick Service plan worked wonders for us:

We stayed 3 nights and purchased Park Hopper with 3 days of tickets. We had a total of 2 meals per person per day, and 2 snacks per person per day. That's 18 meals and 18 snack credits between the 3 of us.

We got in at 4pm on the first day, so we used 1 snack credit and 1 meal credit each. That brought us down to 15 meals and 15 snacks.

The second day in the park was a full day, but I booked us a character dining experience outside of our meal plan ($204 total on that bill). So, we used 2 meals (breakfast and dinner) and 2 snacks that day. That left us with 9 meal credits and 9 snack credits left for the next day.

On the third day, we used 2 of the meal credits (breakfast and dinner) and had 2 snacks each instead lunch. That left us with 3 meal credits and 0 snack credits left.

We used the remaining credits on the morning of our 4th day, and ate breakfast.

We managed to make a 3 day meal plan extend to a 4 day vacation that way. On our next trip, we'll probably go for the 3 meal a day plan. The full-dining service plan can also be used to book character meals. That might be nice, too!

Park Hopper and Park Hopper Plus

 

Park Hopper 

 

Park Hopper allows you to change parks at any time during your day, and go between Animal Kingdom, Epcot, Hollywood Studios and the Magic Kingdom. I highly recommend this option as you can be locked out of the park if it becomes full and you've gone back to your hotel (outside of a Disney property).

Park Hopper Plus

 

I did not opt for Park Hopper Plus, though my husband is desperate to check out the Disney Water Parks. My child hates getting her face wet, so it's kind of a waste for us. We have indoor water parks and attractions in Michigan, and I just didn't see the point in adding a few hundred dollars for a park we might or might not visit.

Memory Maker

 

You're going to be using your phone a lot, to navigate the park, for dinner reservations, and to use your Fast Passes. You're really not going to have the battery power to take a ton of photos unless you bring a back-up battery bank, and even then, we ran out. Memory Maker is great because the Disney Parks photographers are all over the place, dressed in khaki, and they're ready to take your photo wherever you want. They also wait until people taking selfies and other photos are OUT of your background before they'll take the photo. They even shoo them away! Fantastic, right? Get the PERFECT castle shot with Memory Maker, and get extras like Magical features and ride photos. They show up automatically in your digital account, and if a photo doesn't come through (the ride photos are user-generated content moderated by actual people, so give it some time) you can call and get through to someone in minutes and they'll fetch your photo for you. Just keep track of what time you went on the rides. You can find a list of which rides have cameras on the Walt Disney Parks website. I'd definitely recommend the photo package for anyone heading to Disney. It's just worth it, especially at character meets. They take tons of photos of you and your family, and then they scan your Magic Band and off they fly, right to your My Disney Experience App!

Trip Insurance

 

Worth it! If anything happens and you need to change the date of your stay there is no penalty if you bought the insurance package. This includes plane delays, personal problems, weather issues. You name it. It's totally worth the extra cash for the peace of mind if you're traveling from far away.

Disney Magical Express

 

MCO is the airport code you want for the right Orlando airport. This one has the FREE Disney Magical Express. You call the number and tell them your travel dates and hotel reservation code and then you can get from the airport to your hotel for free. They'll even move your luggage into the bus for you. The bus trip is anywhere from 30-60 minutes, and there's TVs with Disney Cartoons and more. Of course, you'll be looking out the window most of the time, enjoying the gates of the parks and seeing glimpses of the wonderful Disney properties. It's free and it's wonderful. I highly recommend this mode of transportation.

Speaking of transportation, give yourself a day to get there and a day to get back if you're coming from out of state. You'll need it with airport security checks and time spent waiting for services and in queues. Relax. It's a vacation! Don't get your undies in a twist about waiting in line. I was so worried about my daughter being bored in line, but then I remembered being a kid in those long disney queues and loving talking to everyone I met. She did the same thing. 

Your Magical Express tickets and luggage tags will arrive in the mail a few weeks before your trip.

Airfare

 

I'm not going to be able to tell you much about airfare because I'm using airline miles to pay for ours. I've covered this in a previous blog. I do know that you want to book your airfare first if you're not booking it in your Disney vacation package through their website. I actually had a Disney rep on the phone while I booked my flight, his name was Dennis and he was AWESOME, and he really helped me to figure out a corresponding hotel stay and get a good deal.

My Disney Experience App

 

Booking Fast Passes

 

You get 3 Fast Passes per park per day. You'll want to book your fast passes as soon as you can for the most popular attractions. This includes Snow White Mine Ride, Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, Peter Pan's Flight, Splash Mountain, Space Mountain, Pirates of the Caribbean, and The Jungle Cruise in The Magic Kingdom. It also includes Soarin', Test Track, and Mission Space in Epcot. Book The Navi River Journey, Avatar Flight of Passage, Kilimanjaro Safari, and Expedition Everest in the Animal Kingdom. I'm guessing this would mean all of the new Star Wars rides in Hollywood Studios, but I haven't been there (ever) so I'm unsure.

We had a TON of trouble booking our Fast Pass for Snow White's Mine Ride. I never saw it open up in the app, not once in 60 days. I'll elaborate more about that in a future blog about our parks experience. Just know this: If you get a SPECIAL pass for ANY reason, you can use it on any ride at any time. These special Fast Passes are given out when you've encountered a problem in the park, as compensation, and you can use them to jump the queue, basically. This was the only way we got into that ride and even with FastPass the wait time was still 40 minutes (projected, and really only 20 minutes).

Memory Maker Photos

 

Your Memory Maker photos will show up in the app, too.

Dinner and Event Reservations

 

You can book your dinner and event reservations through the app. You'll see your Parks itinerary there, with dinners, fast passes, and more.

Magic Bands

 

Your Disney Magic Band is purchased through the My Disney Experience app (and it's free if you don't get a character band, we opted for the $10 more and got some cute ones as they were on a promotion when characters became a new feature). They'll arrive in the mail for you and you'll be able to activate them when you get to the Orlando airport (or the hotel, if you're driving). You use your Magic Band to get into the Parks, to go on rides, to enter events, to charge anything to your room or Meal Plan, to get photos sent from your Memory Maker package, and to get in and out of your hotel room. You can also use it if a member of your party is lost. Find a Cast Member and ask for help and use your band to show them your latest activity and what you're trying to do.