AIBU to think Disney and Universal Studios Florida tickets should be cheaper than £3,500 for - family of 5?!?!?!

[themueslicamel]

Just that, looking to get tickets for summer and wow, just wow, how much!

They must be cheaper somewhere, but where?

Anyone managed to find a cheaper alternative?

We got £375 per adult for 2019 tickets for 14 days but Disney only.
www.orlandoattractiontickets.co.uk
^^ this offers £655 per adult for Universal and Disney combo,

p.s. don’t get me started on the price of the Harry Potter stuff ..., eeek

TBH when I priced up a holiday to Disney world I managed to get it to 20k for 2 weeks for the 3 of us. I can dream

My sister goes once a year and manages to do it for under 5k for four of them, that includes everything.

Quartz- ain’t it annoying. Spain and every bloodywhere else is just as expensive, and I’m thinking, might as well go see Mickey!

If you are based in the UK we always wait for the "Free Disney Dining" deals to come round. These deals are for the UK market only (I believe) and depending on the resort you book, offer different levels of free food for your stay. You get the perks of staying onsite & normally this deal has a ticket bundle of 14 days for price of 7 (or 21 for price of 14). Also included is Memory Maker, so you pay no extra for ride or character photos. Last year they also offered a $200 gift card on top. We added Universal to the holiday as well, went with Florida Tix for the best deal. It sounds mad but getting the Universal 14 day Explorer pass for all 3 parks (again only available for the UK market I believe) was actually cheaper than a 3 day, 3 park pass on the door from Universal itself. In the end we only spent 3 days at Universal, one full day in each park so the money difference was negligible but we had the ability to repeat visit had we wished to. These tickets also allowed travel on the Hogwarts express, 1 day per park tickets wouldn't allow this.

When booking holidays like this there's always so much to consider, I only had to plan for 2 adults. Can't imagine the logistics of adding Children to the planning!

We got annual passes, they worked out at $10 each to cover next years holiday at universal. Disney is more expensive, the annual pass is only worth it if you’re doing 4 weeks there in 12 months.

Free dining isn’t only for uk people, it’s for everyone but different deals. It’s a bit of a con really. For restaurants you still have to tip 20% (mandatory - they will hunt you down if you don’t) and they inflate the room prices to cover it. It’s oftrn cheaper to just book room only with a cash back website offering 10%...

We did Disney and Universal in 2017 and to do that plus the other parks cost us (2 adults, 1 child] 12k all in for fights, villa and car hire.

As part of this we stayed one night at a universal hotel to get free express passes for 2 days which give you front of line passes. They weren’t worth it for us as we still queued loads and tbh we couldn’t wait to go back to the villa.

We’re going back in October and have booked on site Disney with free dining plan as mentioned above and have booked flIshtar separately and including spending money this time we are looking under 5 grand.

The big saving has been that we have just bought Disney tickets rather than anything else.

As others mentioned flights and hotels are not much more than Spain or similar now so we decided we’d go every few years but pick one set of parks to do each time to keep costs down.

I’d also say that last time we had tickets for 12 parks and in 2 weeks we just did a bit of all of them so next time we’re looking forward to enjoying more of each park.

Sobey what on earth were you doing to get it to 20k for 2 weeks for 3 of us.

6 of us go at Christmas via PE in Virgin Atlantic at the Beach Club and Loews Royal Pacific with tickets for both Disney and Universal and its not that!

I would personally just buy one or the other. We bought 14 day Disney tickets and then just a 2 day universal ticket. I was only really interested in Harry Potter at Universal.

@BumbleBeee69 it's about £250-500 for one night at Royal Pacific (depending on Dawson) which gets your group (rooms sleep up to 5) early entry and free Express Passes... Not that that's much use now of course, but wonder if you'd known that before?

Thanks all, keep it coming!

If it helps, we booked flights with Norwegian, and are flying into Miami first then driving up to a house we booked Independently via holiday lettings (trip advisor).

Certainly cheaper than Virgin etc

@MrsPinkCock

The UK Free dining is quite different to what the US are offered. They have extremely limited dates to book and only offered at certain resorts, this creates a massive scrabble and they dates / rooms sell out quite quickly. The last 2 years (at least) the Free Dining for the UK market have been for the entire year as long as booked in the offer window. We went on our honeymoon and to be honest I believe we made out like bandits with the dining plan, we got a quiet nice moderate resort which the price wasn't too bad at all . It also allowed us to not have to think about the food budget at all the whole trip. Tipping is only "required" at table service restaurant so if you get the Quick Service Free Dining you don't even have to think about it.

I agree, it's not for everyone but with the 'Free Dining' Bundle offered it's definitely a starting point for someone looking for 'cheaper' less hassle options. There's less moving parts for those wanting a less stressful trip.

I guess the big question is whether you need 2 full weeks doing parks? We go to Florida every year, but don't always go to Orlando, and if we do, we only do either Disney or Universal. Personally, 14 days of theme parks would be too much for me, 5 days is my limit (if that), including the water parks. There's so much more to Florida than just the theme parks (although they are fantastic too).

Compare them to the price of Alton Towers for a day and I don't think they're a bad deal at all. They work out as little at £19 a day at some points of the year - theme parks here are £45+.

That said, we're not doing Disney next time and just sticking to Universal. We'll do the big Disney holiday again the time after.

@Noidlet totally agree, bloody love the Dining Plan. Planning meals also adds to the excitement of the planning process for me too, and I love trying all the different cuisine available. Even the Quick Service options are good these days now they've moved away from burgers and chicken strips.

Agree with others though, staying on site with the dining plan is by far the best, can't wait to do that again.

If anyone’s looking at doing WDW free dining. The best value QS meals are at be our guest, for both breakfast and lunch. Isn’t QS for dinner though. Had breakfast there in October and it was amazing. It’s a bugger to get a reservation at though’

@Unihorn

I do love a good plan! Booking all the restaurants 180 days in advance was fun, trying to get the Be Our Guest ADR for a reasonable dinner time! I only relaxed after the first day in MK had gone smoothly as I knew I'd done an okay job!

@Noidlet it's the best isn't it, love my holiday spreadsheet! (My husband does not...)

@Unihorn

On our honeymoon my husband just turned up and had a good time. He tolerates the spreadsheets as long as I don't talk about them too much.

The second time we went he was a lot more involved with the planning stages and what we should / shouldn't do again.

@BumbleBeee69 it's about £250-500 for one night at Royal Pacific (depending on Dawson) which gets your group (rooms sleep up to 5) early entry and free Express Passes... Not that that's much use now of course, but wonder if you'd known that before?

Thank you, that’s great, we hadn’t realised this, but it was mentioned by the Universal guy for next time we return. We’re over here for a month and booked to drop into to Orlando last minute, in the build up to Christmas week,, next time we’ll plan way better, I might try the spreadsheet

I would join some of the Orlando groups on facebook for advice such as It's Orlando Time. There is also a group run by a lady called Dianne detailing where to find the best prices for park tickets. Her group is called Deewol's Orlando Park Tickets update. She may ask you a question to join as to what you think of price match policies. If so the answer is that price matching is bad, she feels the companies should offer decent prices without haggling. She is really good at providing advice.

@BumbleBeee69 can't beat a good spreadsheet! Hope you've still had a great time though.

(My original post was supposed to say 'depending on dates' by the way, not sure who Dawson is!)

hahaa I thought Fawson might be code hahaa, yes it’s been great, cooler than Boca Raton where we’re based, but still nice.

cripes, Dawson Dawson lol