The Great 'Disney Cost Cutting' Hunt

Edinburghlass_2

symash wrote: »

i went to florida a couple of years ago, i booked it all seperate which saved us a fortune to start with.

but the site i got my tickets from is americanattractions.co.uk
i cant remember what i paid, but there was a considerable saving compared to the travel agents ridiculous prices. i know they have an offer now called the florida funpass its £297 and gets you into
Magic Kingdom Park
Epcot
Disney's Hollywood Studios
Disney´s Animal Kingdom Theme Park
Universal Studios
Universal´s Islands of Adventure
Wet´n Wild Orlando
SeaWorld Orlando
Aquatica
Busch Gardens, Tampa Bay
Pleasure Island in the Downtown Disney area
Disney´s Blizzard Beach Water Park
Disney´s Typhoon Lagoon Water Park
Disney´s Wide World of Sports Complex
DisneyQuest Indoor Interactive Park


absolute bargain in my opinion

The Fun Pass is the same price as buying a 14 Day Disney and the 14 day Orlando Flexiticket separately at £163 and £134 so you need to weigh up which parks you will visit over your 14 days and how often. However as I said previously if your travel agent is offering you a similar package then it is these two packages put together and will undoubtedly be cheaper bought elsewhere.

Edinburghlass_2

GentleGiant wrote: »

We are there for 3 weeks and are looking at the 21 day unlimited pass sold to UK residents. I think for a family of 4 it is around $1700 or so - not sure if this is the best value or not.

Problem is we do not really know how much time we will spend in Disney and the waterparks etc. So thought that covering all the days will allow us to be flexible when we arrive.

Average price buying a 21 day pass in UK before you leave is £179 so £716 for 4 roughly $1432 so I'd shop around a bit more if I was you. Personally I agree on buying the 21 day ticket if you are there for 3 weeks as there was many a time we just popped into a Disney park for a morning or an evening to watch the fireworks after spending the day elsewhere and its only £16 more than a 14 day ticket. Plus I like the flexibility of being able to park hop and have often been in 3 parks in the one day or going between Epcot and Magic Kingdom via the monorail.

If using the monorail don't forget to ask to sit up with the driver its a totally different view and best done through the day and at night time, especially if there are fireworks going off.

Dee67_2

The best way of knowing if you are dealing direct with a villa owner and not through an agent is if the website puts you in direct contact with the owner. We used villainorlando.net for our holiday in April and they were great - we booked the villa we liked on line and then dealt direct with the owners to make payment etc. There were lots of pictures of the villa which I liked as I wanted to see exactly what I would be getting for my money. We were not disappointed, the villa was gorgeous, 4 bed, two masters, loads of extras and only cost £1150 for 2 weeks.
Hope this helps:j




quote=d.ylan;11813355]Can anyone expand on good resources they've used to find good direct villa owners previously? There are a few sites I've seen but some of them seem a little sketchy, and I have to wonder if the charges increase through using one of these sites if they're working as agents (or not if that's not the case)?

Quite a few of your posts mention booking villas direct so any tips on that front are greatly received![/quote]

bunsmum

Can't remember who mentioned the esteemed Mike (the tour guide) but it's $22 very well spent - once you've done Disney his way, you'll never do it any other way! And they have forums over there, very friendly and helpful folks.

As for Disney, we've made numerous trips and here are some tips:

Booking your hotel - if you're spending a lot of time at WDW then consider staying on site, they have many different hotels and they start from around £50 a night per room, with discounts available (mousesavers is a good source, also consider getting an annual pass if you go more than once a year or your trips are 2-3 weeks or more). Free shuttles to the parks (busses, monorail, boats or even walking depending on where you stay). Excellent amenities, great security, clean, helpful staff. But beware, once you're onsite, you won't go back off ....

Hiring a car is all very well but don't forget fuel, insurance, travel time (the "20 mins from Disney" adverts you see mean 20 mins from the main gate, WDW is 47 square miles so add on at least another 20-30 minutes before you're in a park). And you always have to have a designated driver.

When packing, (if you can) pack your cases half full then condense them down for on the way back, when you'll be laden down with goodies!

Lots of cheap places to eat and American portions are enormous, usually we skip courses or share them, we never manage the full 3.

Make your plans long before you leave as to where you're eating, what you're doing. People can book their meals 180 days in advance and that's when the best stuff goes. Planning pays off, honest!!! This is not a holiday you can just hop on the plane, wander into a park and see what happens. Unless you don't want to do rides, shows or eat anything nice. LOL.

Annual Passes are worth considering - you can buy them over the phone and activate them there. You get discounts on your room (if onsite), some eating (you also qualify for the Disney Dining Experience Card, costs $60 (ish) and gets you 20% discount on food and drink in most restaurants). Well worth looking into if your trip is long or you make more than one in a 12 month period. You can park hop, and come and go as you please. They also give you discount at World of Disney (the world's largest Disney store, at DTD).

If you stay onsite at Disney you qualify for Magical Express - a free shuttle service from the airport to your resort, and back. Very nice coaches meet you at the airport and drop you at your resort's lobby.

avedajunkie

Have you thought about the Non-Expiration Tickets? We always purchase our tickets from the below site: -

http://www.officialticketcenter.com/

I can also back up the Military Discount. My brother is in the US Marines and his wife gets discount wherever she goes. The US are very patriotic and will support the forces & their families as much as posible. You can also get discounted hotel rooms, if you book direct with the hotels it usually asks if you are Military.

As to villas, we only ever stay in these. I can highly recommend a villa which we go to ever year. The villa is a luxury property. If you have holidayed before in the states, you will know that their standard of accommodation is far better than here, however, this property is far more luxurious than any other villa I have stayed in before in the US. You have to be careful that the Villa isn't old. The owners cannot do enough for you!!!

http://www.holiday-rentals.co.uk/p11206

Happy Holidaying :beer:

http://www.holiday-rentals.co.uk/p11206

moos_mum

I know this wont help if it's your first visit, and you are trying to pack in 14 solid days of parks, but if you think you might go again....(and you will!) try this.

We bought our Disney tickets from American Attractions here in the UK before our visit in November 2006. It was a 7 day Premium Ticket ticket, aimed only at the UK market which allows you to hop between parks on the same day and also includes 7 'fun' visits (ie to Disney Quest, Typhoon Lagoon, Blizzard Beach, Pleasure Island and Wide World of Sports) which expired 14 days after first use. This was about the same price as buying a 3 day hopper ticket on the gate. However, because we were only spending a week in Orlando and had visited any times before, we only used 3 days in the main parks and 1 day in the water park but we were still happy with this because we had paid no more than just paying on the gate and we had benefitted from hopping privileges.

However, as we rode the Monorail back from Magic Kingdom to the parking lot, we listened to a recorded announcement telling us that certain tickets can be extended to have no expiry, just call by the ticket desks at the turnsiles on the way out.

The first Cast Member we saw said he didnt think this was possible with tickets bought in the UK, but suggested we see Customer Services in Downtown Disney. As we were heading that way anyway, we did just that, and a very helpful lady gave us new tickets with the remaining 4 days in the main parks and 6 more fun visits for $55 each. These now have no expiry and will be valid for as long as I can muster the energy to raise my finger to the fingerprint scanner!

We have just returned from Orlando again, and used these tickets with no problems at all, and infact, still have days left which we will use on our NEXT visit.

I see that www.americanattractions.co.uk now mention this on their website,this is a recent addition as it wasnt there when we booked but we were glad we figured it out for ourselves.

This is my first post, so hope it makes sense, and can help someone else out!

Fiona_T_3

A few people warned us off this, but we were tired and jet-lagged on day one and so we stopped at a booth and booked an appointment. We had a free lunch and lots to drink for us and the kids, and they were entertained by some lovely nannies in a nursery environment with other kids. They had playstations so my son was delighted. We had a tour of some lovely apartments and then a VERY hard sell by a salesman. It was actually very interesting to watch him using all his training techniques e.g. 'Find common ground with your customer' - he'd got a friend who'd been to York once (we live in Oxford). We just kept repeating our agreed mantra: it's all lovely and we'd love one but we never buy anything without sleeping on it first. They kept telling us it was only available at this marvellous price for that day, and we kept saying that was a shame but we never broke our rule. They had another couple there who signed up and the whole place erupted into evangelical style 'Hallelujahs' with a fanfare over the tannoy. Brilliant. Eventually they let us go and get our half price tickets. We got four eight day passes for half price, and thought it was well worth it. However you'd have to have nothing better to do for half a day and be able to resist a very hard sell.

nej

Seaworld offer a day + a day free as standard, BUT for the SAME price you can get a "FunCard" which gives you unlimited admission until the end of the year. It's not exactly advertised on their site, but I've decided to be kind and post the link: http://www.seaworld.com/sitepage.aspx?PageID=231

Also, when we were booking our flights for August in January this year, the cheapest I could find on a direct flight was about £3000 for 2 adults 2 children. Flying indirect was cheaper but we didn't want to do that. In the end I discovered I could fly into Miami (with a 3-4 hour drive up) for £500 less, or fly to Atlanta (with a 7-hour drive down) for £800 less. So we booked to fly to Atlanta a day earlier, will stay in an airport hotel there for the night (about £50) and then drive down the next day for a pretty good saving, even taking the fuel and hotel into account.

And shop around for car hire. USRentACar were much cheaper for us than anyone else.

reddragons

Although not applicable to everyone, When purchasing your tickets for most of the major theme parks mention if you are in the Armed forces and you normally get a discount. This also applies to getting there with Virgin Holidays if you metion the Armed Forces when booking your holiday (have service number to hand) you get 10% discount (as opposed to booking on-line which is a 5% discount) although you have to be quite adamant with the call handling centre as it is foreign based and they are not always sure what you are saying. It took me 30 mins of haggling but I got £359 discount

jules_out_of_debt

Hi

We purchased our disney tickets online in the UK from Theme Park Tickets Direct UK last year. 21 day ultimate ticket was £169 adult and £146 child. We asked travel agent if they could beat it but they couldn't. However we got cheapest online price for Universal Studios and asked travel agent if they could beat that and they did, so it's worth spending a bit of time shopping around on the web and then before booking, check with your travel agent to see if they can beat it!

It's worth googling to see what you get, but make sure you check the company is legit as there are a few bogus ones out there.

PS, it's always worth paying with your credit card not your debit card if you buying things online as your credit card company probably provides you with some anti-fraud protection for purchases over £100.

Enjoy Florida! :beer:

Jules
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