Orlando/Disneyworld Thread (Part 3)

vivatifosi

Fojo wrote: »

Hoping to visit orlando for 2nd time In april with 13 & 15 year old. Thought about cheapish hotel for most of the time but splurging on a universal hotel for 3 days to get early entry/'fastpass' universal tickets. Any advice how I'd go about booking a 'dual hotel' option like this? Thanks I anticipation for any help

Fojo, try building your own vacation. Shop around for the best value on hotels and get your flights separately. Generally it is cheaper to fly indirectly or with a charter airline, but BA and Virgin can offer good prices on holidays and sometimes flight sales too. I'm not sure when Easter falls next year, but that will be a more expensive period as more people will travel from here due to school holiays - hence flights will be more expensive. Also the theme parks tend to be busier during this period too. If you really don't want to DIY, a good travel agent should be able to put something together for you.

Crispy_Ambulance

jaffacat wrote: »

Hi, we are looking to go in April or May for 17nights (to give us a few days breather in between), 2 A & 2 C - any advice welcomed.

- do the car hire companies issue car seats for kids?
- not sure whether to do I-drive or Kissimere area as I heard car parking at the parks is expensive?
- Is it best to book package or flight/acc sepearatley?
- when do the deals start ie: new year or dont they really for Orlando.

As I said, any help advice etc where to start greatfully received

Thanks lisa

Not an expert but I think building in a few days away from the parks is a really good idea. We had a couple of nights at the beach in the middle of our Orlando trip and really enjoyed having a slower pace and a chance to catch our breath!

No idea when deals start - https://www.thedibb.co.uk is always a good bet for information.

Car parking isn't cheap but it's still cheaper to stay in a non-disney hotel or villa and to pay for parking! We stayed on I-Drive but I'd look at Kissimee if we went again.

Have a great time!

vivatifosi

We were in Disneyworld last week and now we're back I wanted to give some feedback on Fastpass +

For people who aren't familiar with FP+, this is a new system that is currently being rolled out by Disney. It is available to people who will be staying at Disney resorts. People can book their Fastpasses in advance of going to the parks. Those who have already purchased their admission tickets can book their FP+ experiences before leaving the UK (providing the ticket can be linked to your booking). FP+ bookings can be made for up to three attractions per day.

We found that with FP+, there are three types of fastpass experience..

1) Those rides and attractions that have always been open for Fastpass guests (such as Soarin', Toy Story Midway Mania, Space Mountain). FP+ enables guests to book a fastpass to ride their favourite.

2) Rides and attractions that do not allow standard fastpasses but for which there can be long lines. We found that using a fastpass for Enchanted Tales with Belle a very good use for example.

3) Rides and attractions that do not allow standard fastpasses and which, in our opinion, you wouldn't need one unless the park was incredibly mobbed (such as Christmas Day, New Year, Easter, 4th July, Thanksgiving). This includes attractions such as the Teacups.

We focused our pre-booked FP+ experiences on the first two categories and found that it worked well for us. Please note that it is not possible, currently, to book two FP+ for the same ride or attraction, and it is not possible to park hop and book FP+ across different sites. This is our experience as of the end of last week, and as it is in the testing phase, may be subject to change.

Your admission media is now loaded - if you are a guest at a Disney resort - onto your wristband. If you pre-order these, you can choose a colour (blue, red, pink, etc); but if you turn up at the resort, then you will be issued with a standard grey wristband. We pre-ordered blue wristbands from the website which can be found here:
https://disneyworld.disney.go.com/plan/

You'll note that the website also mentions a My Disney Experience app. At the time of our visit, we could not download this to either of our devices as the site blocked us as we were not from America. We are aware that other British visitors were having a similar problem at the same time as us.

The magic band wristband is a clever little device. It means that Disney has you RFID chipped and can track your movements more effectively. The downside is that you cannot then put your magic band in the fastpass machine and get standard fastpasses. We were told that we didn't need to carry our room keycards (the magic bands also open your resort room doors) with us, however we found out by experimenting that we could still get standard fastpasses by using our room key, and that this allocation worked to standard fastpass rules. Ie, we could still have a FP+ booked in that time window, that would be ignored, but if we tried to book a fastpass while waiting for another, then it would not enable us to have one. I hope I've explained that clearly.

Problems that we encountered....

1. You have to link your parties wristbands together if you want to book fastpasses together. This can be done at the aforementioned website. Occasionally the system lost our links and we'd turn up for a FP+ experience and find only one of us was booked. Thankfully the castmembers were understanding and able to rectify.

2. If like us you have an annual pass. MAKE SURE THAT THIS IS UPLOADED TO YOUR WRISTBAND AND SWITCHED ON. DO THIS AT THE RESORT AND CHECK AGAIN AT THE PARK BEFORE IT OPENS FOR THE DAY. They messed up on this. Having arrived at the park (EPCOT) early enough to be the first ones in, by the time it was rectified, 13,000 people were in front of us. We were not happy campers. We had checked with the resort, twice, they got it wrong. So check with the resort and double check with the ticketing office at the park.

3. If you have an annual pass, make sure you also have a card backup. If you then stay off property at any time, you'll need this for your free parking. Getting into the park is an either or thing. So if you use your wristband, you will not then be able to use your card to get standard fastpasses. Again, this is early days so may be subject to change.

4. When you get to the park, to get through the gates with a wristband you scan your band and then your finger, same way, different machinery.

Overall, it was interesting, but we worry that we'll lose the ability to use standard fastpasses in the future. We can easily use 6+ fastpasses a day by starting early, so would feel somewhat restricted if at some point in the future it was down to 3. There are also teething problems with the technology. So keep your eyes and ears open for any changes. The Orlando Sentinel and numerous park blogs and forums are on top of this.

ETA: I should also have mentioned the impact that FP+ has on notoriously busy rides. The main one is Toy Story Midway Mania, probably also Soarin'. Here, the fastpasses have already been preallocated to a number of people so we noticed that the ones from the machines ran out far more quickly. This is something that people staying at a non-Disney resort should also bear in mind, and either get to the park early or be prepared for a wait in a non-Fastpass line for favourite rides. Personally I find the first of these options far more preferable, as by arriving early you can still get access to a number of fastpasses anyway. The impact on less popular fastpass + rides (such as Buzz Lightyear's Space Ranger Spin) was negligible.

As we left, Disney was experimenting (at EPCOT & DHS) with grading the fastpass + experiences. For example, at EPCOT, you could choose one from Spaceship Earth, Soarin' and Test Track; one from a second group that included Mission Space. Prior to this we were able to select our FP+ for any of the ride options, providing we didn't ride it twice or switch parks.

nzamcdza

Hi all - something sudden has just came up and I need to go to Orlando at the end of this week! I could leave Thur or Fri and come back Sun or Mon.

Just looking for any quick tips on how I could source the cheapest way to do this? Flights and hotel separate? A package deal?

And advice greatly appreciated because I can't really afford this at the minute but have to go!

Buzby

Try a travel agent with capacity on a charter to sell. Scheduled flights will not be at a discount.

KarenG

nzamcdza wrote: »

Hi all - something sudden has just came up and I need to go to Orlando at the end of this week! I could leave Thur or Fri and come back Sun or Mon.

Just looking for any quick tips on how I could source the cheapest way to do this? Flights and hotel separate? A package deal?

And advice greatly appreciated because I can't really afford this at the minute but have to go!

Good luck,

Buzby wrote: »

Try a travel agent with capacity on a charter to sell. Scheduled flights will not be at a discount.

I've got a horrible feeling that very very few charters fly to Orlando in the winter months any more. You could try Skyscanner or kayak, using flexible dates....?

Pennywise

Can anyone tell me if it's still possible to buy a 3 or 4 day ticket for Disney Florida? All the google searches come back with 7 or 14 day but we're only there for a few days and only want to do the three main parks (MK, Epcot and studios) so buying a 7/14 day ticket is a waste (and also far too expensive!).

KarenG

Pennywise wrote: »

Can anyone tell me if it's still possible to buy a 3 or 4 day ticket for Disney Florida? All the google searches come back with 7 or 14 day but we're only there for a few days and only want to do the three main parks (MK, Epcot and studios) so buying a 7/14 day ticket is a waste (and also far too expensive!).

Yes, you can buy them (on the gate) but that tends to be a super expensive way to do it. It's about $260 for 3 days and $280 for four (gets proportionately cheaper the more days you have). If you want to park hop or visit the water parks, that's extra.

clairey1208

Pennywise wrote: »

Can anyone tell me if it's still possible to buy a 3 or 4 day ticket for Disney Florida? All the google searches come back with 7 or 14 day but we're only there for a few days and only want to do the three main parks (MK, Epcot and studios) so buying a 7/14 day ticket is a waste (and also far too expensive!).

KarenG wrote: »

Yes, you can buy them (on the gate) but that tends to be a super expensive way to do it. It's about $260 for 3 days and $280 for four (gets proportionately cheaper the more days you have). If you want to park hop or visit the water parks, that's extra.

The tickets are called Magic Your Way & can also be bought in the UK from https://www.orlandoattractions.com/tickets/
4 days for $288 or 5 days for $291! once you get to the checkout you can choose to pay in either GBP or USD

Also don't forget about Animal Kingdom - the 4th Disney Park

OnePound

Hi, we are visiting WDW in Feb (only a week), can anyone advise if it's warm enough to do the two water parks? We have a 8 and 5 year old. The weather averages say about 16C for February which seems a little chilly for swimming.
Anyone been that time of year that could advise, I assume the water parks are not heated ( but don't know for sure).
Thanks