Orlando Florida/Disneyworld (Part 2) *CLOSED*

maemaesmummy

MissMoneypenny wrote: »

My sister works in a hospital in Australia and they have a family that returned from Disney, Florida (trip of a lifetime for them) and their boys have swine flu.

Edited to say I just googled and found this link about a case that could be the same family.

"Health Minister Nicola Roxon said a Melbourne primary school had been closed until next week and 51 students provided with anti-viral drugs after two brothers were Wednesday diagnosed with swine flu.

The boys, aged nine and 10, and their 12-year-old brother, tested positive for the (A)H1N1 virus after returning from a family holiday to Disneyland, in the United States, on May 12, she said."
http://www.winknews.com/features/health/45647167.html

Disneyland is California Disneyworld is Florida.. news report makes you think it refers to Californa and not Florida?

Red_Elle

Hope I'm posting in the right place here. Have taken the advice you give Mrposhman and am looking at booking everything myself. Been to Disney once before with Virgin, which was fine, but expensive.

The prices I've gathered so far for 14 nights (for 2 people) from 1st Sep 09 to 15th Sep 09 are (approx):

Hotel on i-drive - £800
Flights with Virgin x2 - £847
Universal flex plus x2 - £280
Disney 14 day pass x2 - £235
Car hire full ins - £300

I am terrified of flying, so would prefer to not have to stop (once I'm on, I'd rather just keep going), hence why I've chosen Virgin as they are direct and compared favourably with BA.

Looking at i-drive because there is so much variety in terms of restaurants. Stayed in LBV at Wyndham Spa last time and hotel rooms were pretty dire, so figure why spend so much.

I have a couple of questions which I'm hoping you more experienced people will be able to help with!

1) Should I book something now or wait for a last minute deal?
2) Obviously booking everything ourselves, the strength of the pound against the dollar is crucial. I know nothing about this sort of stuff - any predictions?
3) Are the dates on any hols that I don't know about and would it be cheaper a couple of weeks before or after?
4) Do we really need a car? Didn't have one last time. This time plan on going clothes shopping, food shopping, Kennedy, Busch etc. Am concerned not about the driving, but about finding places more than anything - are the parks easy to find?
5) Can anyone recommend places to stay on i-drive. Big fan of Trip Advisor, so always look at that, but personal recommendations are good.
6) Finally, if I took what I can get into a travel agent, are they likely to be able to match or beat what I have?
7) How much do people put aside for spending money? I know this will vary greatly, but just hearing from others will be useful.

Don't go away very often and my holiday there was years ago. BF's first time, so want to make it really special for him. He's never fancied Orlando, so want him to appreciate what I've been going on about.

For anyone interested in staying in a Disney hotel, booking directly with them is cheaper than Virgin for the same deal. Plus they do special things like let you bypass backage control and get your bags delivered right to your room from the airport.
It wasn't much more expensive to stay with them at Port Orleans and get the basic dining package.
However, I love Orlando for the white knuckle rides and prefer Busch and Universal to Disney, so wouldn't have been worth it for us.

Thanks for anyone's help and sorry for mammoth first post!!!:rotfl:

FloFlo

Elle have you heard of the dibb, its a British run forum all about Disney and Florida. I am sure you will get great advice on here too but on the dibb there are some real Florida experts who will give you great advice. https://www.thedibb.co.uk I'm Flo on there too.

jackieblack

Red_Elle wrote: »

Hope I'm posting in the right place here. Have taken the advice you give Mrposhman and am looking at booking everything myself. Been to Disney once before with Virgin, which was fine, but expensive.

The prices I've gathered so far for 14 nights (for 2 people) from 1st Sep 09 to 15th Sep 09 are (approx):

Hotel on i-drive - £800
Flights with Virgin x2 - £847
Universal flex plus x2 - £280
Disney 14 day pass x2 - £235
Car hire full ins - £300

I am terrified of flying, so would prefer to not have to stop (once I'm on, I'd rather just keep going), hence why I've chosen Virgin as they are direct and compared favourably with BA. I agree, don't know why people moan about Virgin - maybe we've been lucky, but they've always been fine for us.

Looking at i-drive because there is so much variety in terms of restaurants. Stayed in LBV at Wyndham Spa last time and hotel rooms were pretty dire, so figure why spend so much.

I have a couple of questions which I'm hoping you more experienced people will be able to help with!

1) Should I book something now or wait for a last minute deal? Depends whether you're willing to risk not being able to get exactly the holiday you want and if your dates etc are flexible.
2) Obviously booking everything ourselves, the strength of the pound against the dollar is crucial. I know nothing about this sort of stuff - any predictions? No-one can really predict this... all we can say is that the £ is strengthening at the moment.
3) Are the dates on any hols that I don't know about and would it be cheaper a couple of weeks before or after? Labour Day is Monday 7th September.
4) Do we really need a car? Didn't have one last time. This time plan on going clothes shopping, food shopping, Kennedy, Busch etc. Am concerned not about the driving, but about finding places more than anything - are the parks easy to find? Big debate about the need for a car regularly on here.... personally would not do Orlando without one, others never bother. For us the advantage of not hanging around for buses/shuttles etc is in the time we save, if you spend 15 minutes am and pm waiting for a bus, over two weeks that adds up to 7 hours (best part of a whole day!) wasted, but we like to get to the parks early (before opening) and at the end of a long day in the parks the last thing we want to do is hang around waiting for a bus!With a car you can take off for wherever you want to be when its convenient for you.
5) Can anyone recommend places to stay on i-drive. Big fan of Trip Advisor, so always look at that, but personal recommendations are good. Never stayed on I-Drive, sorry.
6) Finally, if I took what I can get into a travel agent, are they likely to be able to match or beat what I have? Got to be worth a try
7) How much do people put aside for spending money? I know this will vary greatly, but just hearing from others will be useful. You're right, it does vary hugely, I budget $50 per person a day for breakfast, evening meal and drinks/snacks (mainly bought at Wal-Mart/Publix etc and taken with us into parks).

Don't go away very often and my holiday there was years ago. BF's first time, so want to make it really special for him. He's never fancied Orlando, so want him to appreciate what I've been going on about.

For anyone interested in staying in a Disney hotel, booking directly with them is cheaper than Virgin for the same deal. Plus they do special things like let you bypass backage control and get your bags delivered right to your room from the airport.
It wasn't much more expensive to stay with them at Port Orleans and get the basic dining package.
However, I love Orlando for the white knuckle rides and prefer Busch and Universal to Disney, so wouldn't have been worth it for us.

Thanks for anyone's help and sorry for mammoth first post!!!:rotfl:

Hope some of that helps.

Red_Elle

Hi Flo - was just looking at that site strangely enough! Will register on there over the next couple of days I think and ask the questions.

Jackie - thanks so much for that. Also been researching the trend with the pound against the dollar. Will keep an eye on it, looks quite good at the moment. Have a PO credit card to use over there, but if it looks like the rate will be worse then, I'd prefer to buy some dollars beforehand.
With Labour day is that likely to mean Americans go for a few days holiday or is it just a one day thing, like a bank holiday here?

Would be fine for us to go just after that. Plus means we'll miss UK kids summer hols stragglers!

From reading a few threads i-drive doesn't seem overly popular. Maybe that's just the threads I've seen.

Thanks again guys.

nw_man

Red_Elle wrote: »

Hotel on i-drive - £800

Car hire full ins - £300

5) Can anyone recommend places to stay on i-drive.

Ok, sorry I edited your post.....

Hotel on I-drive £800 ? Which one ? It had better be a damn good one for that price !

Crowne Plaza Universal Boulevard is an excellent choice on I-drive ( well ok 2 mins off it )..... no need for a car really as the trolley and Lynx bus stops are very close. Coming out at £822 on travelrepublic.co.uk for your dates.

Of course if you want to get to Busch etc then the trolley isnt any good ! But if you are only going to use the car sporadically, then why go the expense ?

If your hotel is well placed on I-drive and has shuttles to the parks, you dont need a car.

FloFlo

Please don't mention labour day - now I'm teaching we can only go school hols and its a huuuggge price increase to go in Aug. We always used to time arriving just after labour day weekend, it goes really quiet and its my fave time, we have been there over the labour day weekend as well and it wasn't that busy.
We never have a car, always stay onsite at Disney and have also done a split stay where we did 12 nights at disney and 4 nights at the hard rock hotel in universal studios. if you can afford a night or two at a universal hotel then you still need to buy park tickets but can use your room key to get access to fastpass line for every ride - virtually no queueing at all - it was fantastic.

If you decide to stay onsite at disney there are some really good offers on with free dining for certain dates on disneyworld.co.uk.

You can get off site pretty easily using lynx buses or with a shuttle service like Mears who you phone direct from your hotel and will take you and bring you back from attrations off site for approx $14 return each.

Red_Elle

nw-man - starting to think that might be right about the car. We won't use it often. Found the shuttles fine last time. Thinking that £300 is a cost that isn't essential. There is free transport to Busch and can get transport to Kennedy or even just hire a car for the odd day.

That £800 was over labour day, so recalculated after Jackie mentioned it and changed dates to 14th - 28th Sep and big difference on price.

Can now get bed and breakfast at Hawthorn Suites for $790, which at the mo is around £488.

So without car (£300) and £488 instead of £800 for hotel, that's saved £612!

Flo - looked at staying at Disney, but didn't think it was worth it for us because we prefer universal, so wouldn't spend too long at all the Disney parks. Plus like the idea of staying at i-drive because of the variety of restaurants, the i-trolley and the Hawthorn Suites have a mini kitchen. So we could pack some food for during the day. The free option (through the Disney website) was for the basic service and don't want to live off pizza and burgers for 2 weeks (well I do, but I'm trying to be healthy!)

Might look at Hard Rock offers though.
Forgot about Mears - thanks for that.

sturll

Red_Elle wrote: »

nw-man - starting to think that might be right about the car. We won't use it often. Found the shuttles fine last time. Thinking that £300 is a cost that isn't essential. There is free transport to Busch and can get transport to Kennedy or even just hire a car for the odd day.

That £800 was over labour day, so recalculated after Jackie mentioned it and changed dates to 14th - 28th Sep and big difference on price.

Can now get bed and breakfast at Hawthorn Suites for $790, which at the mo is around £488.

So without car (£300) and £488 instead of £800 for hotel, that's saved £612!

Flo - looked at staying at Disney, but didn't think it was worth it for us because we prefer universal, so wouldn't spend too long at all the Disney parks. Plus like the idea of staying at i-drive because of the variety of restaurants, the i-trolley and the Hawthorn Suites have a mini kitchen. So we could pack some food for during the day. The free option (through the Disney website) was for the basic service and don't want to live off pizza and burgers for 2 weeks (well I do, but I'm trying to be healthy!)

Might look at Hard Rock offers though.
Forgot about Mears - thanks for that.

No one in their right mind who can drive would go to Orlando without a car.

Red_Elle

sturll wrote: »

No one in their right mind who can drive would go to Orlando without a car.

I did and I'm sure that plenty of others do. Perhaps for you it doesn't work, but the bus from the hotel went at the right times for us and we didn't have any urge to stay at the parks later than the buses left.

At £300 plus parking at the parks it's an expense that we can spare.