Orlando/Disneyworld Thread (Part 3)

meer53

Wardy wrote: »

Hi we're going to Florida next October half term and the week before.

How busy is it then? We're probably going to spend more time in Universal, and are contemplating buying the fast passes to queue jump, but there seems little point if it's not that busy (and because there's 5 of us!)

any help would be appreciated:beer:

We were in Florida in August. At Universal the longest queue was for Despicable Me which was about 90 minutes. We queued as we never buy fast passes, i was disappointed with the ride really, very short and nowhere near as good as The Simpsons or Transformers. Queue for The Simpsons was about 45 minutes, Transformers was 50 minutes, but we used the Single Rider queue and never waited more than 10 minutes to get on. The Hulk queue was never more than 15 minutes, Spiderman was about 40 minutes.

The Harry Potter ride was 90 minutes too. Once was enough on that one ! It's very good, but i felt rather ill afterwards. I've never been in October but would imagine that August is one of the busiest times and we've never had an issue with queuing although i appreciate not everyone likes it. Depends how patient you are !

hunters

ptkloon wrote: »

Could somebody assist me please or give opinions? I'm planning on flying to Orlando to visit family. There will be 4 Adults (Parents and Grandparents of the kids) and 2 under 2 year olds. We live in Aberdeen and would like to book flights.
Would people suggest flying from Aberdeen airport (a short taxi ride away) via Frankfurt/Amsterdam/Paris or driving for nearly 3 hours and flying direct from Glasgow?

I can't decide what would be best!!

Have you looked at flying via Dublin? Border Control in Dublin so straight out the door at Orlando once you pick up your luggage.

abbie_

Hi everybody, I need help! Looking at going to Florida next year for two weeks. Will just be two adults, and we aren't too stuck on dates, just needs to be before September. It's my first time to Florida, my partner's 4th, but it'll be his first without his family. We won't be driving over there, so we're just a bit stuck on where to stay. We're thinking to stay in a Disney hotel so I get the experience of it, but then we're wondering if we'd find it a struggle to get to Universal/SeaWorld etc if we stayed at Disney. But then, if we stayed on International Drive, would we struggle to get to Disney without driving?
Also, what would everyone suggest as the best ticket option?

snit_girl

Wardy wrote: »

Hi we're going to Florida next October half term and the week before.

How busy is it then? We're probably going to spend more time in Universal, and are contemplating buying the fast passes to queue jump, but there seems little point if it's not that busy (and because there's 5 of us!)

any help would be appreciated:beer:

Hi, we've just got back from Florida on Sunday and although the parks were unusually busy (according to staff) the queues weren't too bad in universal. The worst were 50 mins for Despicable Me and 30 mins for Spiderman, though if you go early there was no queue. We still went on them 3 or 4 times each. Harry Potter was 20 mins, though that included 10 mins to walk through the castle, Simpsons was about 20 mins and everything else was 10 mins or just walk on.

You can buy the passes in the parks at any shop once you see the wait times but I don't think you'll need them to be honest.

snit_girl

abbie_ wrote: »

Hi everybody, I need help! Looking at going to Florida next year for two weeks. Will just be two adults, and we aren't too stuck on dates, just needs to be before September. It's my first time to Florida, my partner's 4th, but it'll be his first without his family. We won't be driving over there, so we're just a bit stuck on where to stay. We're thinking to stay in a Disney hotel so I get the experience of it, but then we're wondering if we'd find it a struggle to get to Universal/SeaWorld etc if we stayed at Disney. But then, if we stayed on International Drive, would we struggle to get to Disney without driving?
Also, what would everyone suggest as the best ticket option?

Hi, we're just back from staying on International Drive. This was our 8th time in Orlando but the first time in a hotel without free transfers to the parks. We used the local Lynx bus service and to be honest it was more hassle than it's worth. The hotel had transfers but they were $17.50 each, left at 11am and returned at 5pm so very expensive and no time in the parks.

The Lynx runs every 30 mins and is $2 each way, but you do have to change bus for Disney and Universal. We found that waiting on the next bus coming, even times it came and it was full so didn't let us on, took up a lot of time. It took around 2 hours each way to the parks where as a hotel transfer takes about 40 mins.

I love International Drive and if we find a hotel with transfers next time we will book it, but we're now considering a Disney hotel as we spent 7 days there anyway and we'd just get the Lynx bus when going to the malls and Universal.

Birdie85

abbie_ wrote: »

Hi everybody, I need help! Looking at going to Florida next year for two weeks. Will just be two adults, and we aren't too stuck on dates, just needs to be before September. It's my first time to Florida, my partner's 4th, but it'll be his first without his family. We won't be driving over there, so we're just a bit stuck on where to stay. We're thinking to stay in a Disney hotel so I get the experience of it, but then we're wondering if we'd find it a struggle to get to Universal/SeaWorld etc if we stayed at Disney. But then, if we stayed on International Drive, would we struggle to get to Disney without driving?
Also, what would everyone suggest as the best ticket option?

Depends what you want TBH. We've stayed on I-Drive and at Disney (no car both times) and both have pros and cons. I-Drive was in the middle of Universal and Disney, our hotel put on free shuttles to the parks so we didn't have to worry about getting there and back too much, but we were limited to their pick up times and if we wanted to stay late for fireworks etc we have to get a taxi back and we felt like we missed out on a lof of the Disney and Universal night life because of not wanting to be stranded. Staying on I-Drive was great for the restaurants there though as there was a load of choice and we'd just hop on the trolley to get to wherever we wanted.

Disney on the other hand, is quite consuming by design. We loved it though as we specifically wanted the Disney Experience but we did miss going out to our favourite I-Drive restaurants on an evening as we just couldn't be bothered with catching a bus or paying for a taxi for the sake of going out for dinner. It might have been different if we were staying nearer the entrance of WDW, but we were staying at the Animal Kingdom Lodge which is way out of the way so it'd cost $10 in a taxi before we'd even left the WDW area! We were hardly hard done by though, there are a lot of brilliant places to eat at Downtown Disney (where it's lovely to spend the evening) and at the hotels, and the transportation between them all is excellent, it's just more expensive overall than outside of WDW as you tend to pay a premium. As for getting to the other parks, we took taxis, think it cost us $50 to get to Universal from AKL, but we'd factored these costs in as we'd decided that even if we spent a couple of hundred dollars on taxis it'd still work out cheaper than renting a car.

As for tickets, there are loads and loads of posts on here about that, read back for the advice. Basically, the 14 day tickets for Disney and Universal (separate) are best value but you have to decide if you'll get the use of them. I've always used Floridatix for mine and they're excellent value (sign up to the newsletter for the 5% off weekends) and you get actual tickets, not vouchers.

sian123

i went to Disneyland Orlando, when i was a kid and it was the best holiday i ever had and one of my highlights of my childhood. You should go!

abbie_

snit_girl wrote: »

Hi, we're just back from staying on International Drive. This was our 8th time in Orlando but the first time in a hotel without free transfers to the parks. We used the local Lynx bus service and to be honest it was more hassle than it's worth. The hotel had transfers but they were $17.50 each, left at 11am and returned at 5pm so very expensive and no time in the parks.

The Lynx runs every 30 mins and is $2 each way, but you do have to change bus for Disney and Universal. We found that waiting on the next bus coming, even times it came and it was full so didn't let us on, took up a lot of time. It took around 2 hours each way to the parks where as a hotel transfer takes about 40 mins.

I love International Drive and if we find a hotel with transfers next time we will book it, but we're now considering a Disney hotel as we spent 7 days there anyway and we'd just get the Lynx bus when going to the malls and Universal.

See, a friend of mine mentioned that she found the Lynx buses awkward to use, so that was one thing that's been putting me off the idea. We were looking at hotels on I-Drive with transfers included, but again, the fact that we'll be stuck to a certain timeframe is a negative...I had to be dragged out of Disneyland Paris when we went there!

Birdie85 wrote: »

Depends what you want TBH. We've stayed on I-Drive and at Disney (no car both times) and both have pros and cons. I-Drive was in the middle of Universal and Disney, our hotel put on free shuttles to the parks so we didn't have to worry about getting there and back too much, but we were limited to their pick up times and if we wanted to stay late for fireworks etc we have to get a taxi back and we felt like we missed out on a lof of the Disney and Universal night life because of not wanting to be stranded. Staying on I-Drive was great for the restaurants there though as there was a load of choice and we'd just hop on the trolley to get to wherever we wanted.

Disney on the other hand, is quite consuming by design. We loved it though as we specifically wanted the Disney Experience but we did miss going out to our favourite I-Drive restaurants on an evening as we just couldn't be bothered with catching a bus or paying for a taxi for the sake of going out for dinner. It might have been different if we were staying nearer the entrance of WDW, but we were staying at the Animal Kingdom Lodge which is way out of the way so it'd cost $10 in a taxi before we'd even left the WDW area! We were hardly hard done by though, there are a lot of brilliant places to eat at Downtown Disney (where it's lovely to spend the evening) and at the hotels, and the transportation between them all is excellent, it's just more expensive overall than outside of WDW as you tend to pay a premium. As for getting to the other parks, we took taxis, think it cost us $50 to get to Universal from AKL, but we'd factored these costs in as we'd decided that even if we spent a couple of hundred dollars on taxis it'd still work out cheaper than renting a car.

As for tickets, there are loads and loads of posts on here about that, read back for the advice. Basically, the 14 day tickets for Disney and Universal (separate) are best value but you have to decide if you'll get the use of them. I've always used Floridatix for mine and they're excellent value (sign up to the newsletter for the 5% off weekends) and you get actual tickets, not vouchers.

See my partner loves a lot of the restaurants on I-Drive, so that's one reason we were thinking about staying there, but again, the fact that the hotel shuttles only run at certain times puts me off! I think what we might do is see how much it would be to spend one week at Disney and then one on I-Drive, doing Universal etc in the 2nd week....there's just far too much choice when it comes to booking Disney holidays!

Both of you, thanks for your help!

Birdie85

We've said that next time we're going to do a week in Disney and a week on I-Drive, best of both! If your budget stretches to it, look into staying at the Hard Rock Hotel for a night, you get early entry and express passes for the Universal parks on both the check in and check out days which makes it better value... and it's a fab hotel!

abbie_

We're going to visit the travel agents at the weekend and see what we can find... logically, it seems as though it should work out cheaper to do a week in each place, but whether it will or not is a different question!
Oh I know, been looking at the Hard Rock...it looks amazing!