Disney Florida- How much

[PuzzleMonkeyMum]

I'm planning on taking DS (who will be 9) to Disney next year. We have been to Disneyland Paris but I know this doesn't compare at all to Florida. My plan (at the minute!) is to book it all separately so flights, tickets, car and villa but I am not sure if booking a Disney hotel would be better. At the minute it will be me, dp and DS but my parents might come in which case it would definitely be a villa.

SO! Can anyone tell me roughly how much they spent? I know tickets are about £1500 for the 3 of us (this is just Disney, not including anywhere else), so I am thinking about £6000 in total (excluding spending money).

This is a massive purchase for me, I have never spent this much money before on anything but I am finishing my nurses training soon and when I was a skint single parent on the bones of my arse I always always always told myself when DS was older and things were better this I would take him to Disney. So I suppose my questions are:

1. How much did you spend in total?
2. Any tips/good pages to look
3. book it separate or as a package
4. hotel or villa
5. where's the best place to book a villa and 6) was it worth it?? all the money? Everyone I know who has ever been to Disney still talks about it as an adult

Thank you!

NB care hire prices in the US have rocketed. 2 weeks for the smallest car from Alamo at Orlando is about £700 for 2 weeks.

We have booked August 2022, for 2 weeks in a villa it came to around £8000 with ocean Florida. We have paid for the Disney tickets separately from this as I wanted to reserve my park dates already

We've done Florida 3 times since 2017. We've stayed in hotels & villas although have booked a hotel for our next stay this Oct 🤞

If you're doing mainly Disney, you can get villas/townhouses around lake Beuno vista or Kissimmee area. They're closest and saves an hour on the I4! Just be aware that parking is $25 per day. Always upgrade insurance if hiring a car - saved us a fortune when someone put a dent in our rental. If staying on international drive hotel - very easy access to the i-trolley and restaurants/shops. Again pick a hotel with shuttles or ubers are reasonable.

You can do a split stay with Disney/universal etc but Disney in my opinion is really overpriced with little on site benefits. We've always went with a package holiday although have friends who've booked everything separately. I prefer the protection of a package holiday. We've managed to book this Oct/Nov for £590pp with BA. Park tickets - wait for Black Friday sales and you get decent prices. We've always used Floridatix who are fantastic and can book tickets at £10pp deposit and pay the balance up. Sometimes you're cheaper getting combo tickets depending on the parks you want to visit. I'm sure attraction tickets direct also offer great prices and most ticket companies price match.

Thanks everyone. After speaking to DP we’re leaning towards a Disney hotel, is it with doing Disney and universal? Or is Disney enough?

The price for Disney flights/tickets/hotel is £5500 for 10 days in the school holidays next year. Which I don’t know whether that’s a good price or not?

We're looking at Disney in a few years time when the kids are a bit older (currently 7 & 4) as we plan on only going once due to the £££!

We've been scouring DIBB which is an absolute wealth of information and tips so I highly recommend looking at it: www.thedibb.co.uk/forums/