Holiday quote triples

[MammaLex]

I want to do Disney in October, 2 adults and DS9. Trailfinders have a deal on their website for £3800 for 2 adults & 2 children. I rang and asked for a quote for the dates I want and he came back with £9,000. And was cagey about what that doesn't include.

We are only going to do this once, what should I realistically expect to pay?

Did you get the quote in writing so you can see what it includes? Presumably the cheaper one was for specific dates and airports?

The Star Wars bit opens 29th Aug, it's going to shoot prices up for a while I believe!

This is a 'how long is a piece of string' question. The only thing that is fixed with Disney is the price of the park tickets. All the other elements of your trip are things that you can control - i.e. using indirect flights, which can save a ton of money, direct ones always being at a premium in school holidays, accommodation, which you can easily reduce the cost of by not staying in a Disney hotel and SC somewhere nearby. The exact week that you choose to go will also have a massive impact on price. Check the US school holiday dates and cross reference them with the UK ones. Where both overlap you have huge demand and so prices will be higher and the parks will be busier.

If you really want to go in Oct, I would:

• figure out your budget;
• find out the cost of the park tickets (Floridatix website will show you this info);
• then shop around for the other elements you need, which is flight, accommodation and probably car hire.

We've been to Florida twice, did the Disney parks the first time, Universal parks the second time. We kept our costs down by flying indirect and staying in SC accommodation (there are TONS of apartments, villas, you name it within easy driving distance of the Disney parks - e.g. we found a lovely apartment in the Wyndham Bonnet Creek for about $100 a night for our first trip in Oct 2015).

We’ve booked for Disney this October and it is more expensive this year.

What does this price include ? Where is the accommodation ? This will allow us to see if it’s expensive for what you’ve been quoted.

It is a very expensive holiday at any time of the year.

We’re going later this year.

Got flights for £680 pp direct

Villa £2,600 for the two weeks

Car hire £574 x 2

Park tix £389 pp

The villa is split between 2 families so effectively half that cost.

One other thing about going in Oct - are you planning to be there for Halloween week? If so, that could account for much of the price difference. Halloween is HUGE in the US and there will be lots of special events on that week.

We spend 2,600 on a king room +250 for dining upgrade
We paid flights separately because we have air miles so was £1k
For 2 adult no child 10 nights

So just under 4K but didn't spend on food bar tips which was probs £150

Most ‘cheap’ packages are in term time I find. Which makes sense as like every industry it’s a supply/demand issue. School holiday = everyone wants to go!!!

If you’re going over October half term it’s probably the most expensive time you could go from a flight perspective. Availability on scheduled direct airlines (Virgin & BA) is a massive issue and that pushes cost up. Other indirect services fill up too and even charters in Oct half term. To keep price down you might be best looking at booking it ODR (out of date range) so for Oct 2020 although be careful to check if your price is guaranteed.

I booked through ocean Florida and found em really helpful online and on the phone. I ended up getting all the park tickets from them too after much shopping around. Your quote does seem expensive but it's a few years since we went and we went out of school hols

Also. We have booked it ourselves separately in the past but the flights this year were unbelievably expensive.

We phoned virgin holidays Purely out of interest and then got an amazing deal compared to what we were getting and flying direct from our local airport. Package holidays do sometimes work out better !

First off park tickets really are going to be around the £1200 (just for Disney)

Hotel/Villa accomodation - really depends on where you want to stay it. You can get decent accomodation from around £100 a night but closer to parks etc the price goes up. Hotels will be per room Villa per Villa - so the fact that you are 3 not 4 makes no difference price wise here

Flights direct I would be surprised if you could get anything much under £700 per person for that time - shop around for indirect and you might be able to bring that in for less

Then spending money etc

You can get amazing deals for Disney just by shopping around and booking at the right time. We usually find waiting it out and booking close to the time works but also just checking every couple of days, keep deleting your cookies from you computer.
We have just booked for June a few weeks ago and have paid less than £2000 for 2ad, 3ch. Flights and hotel for 3 weeks.
I wouldn't pay more than £400 a flight pp unless you are going summer hols or Easter hols. Cheapest over ever seen flights is about £275 so if you get abywhere bear that then book!
We always find booking packages with thomascook etc the cheapest way unless you want very specific dates

Trailfinders package advertised prices are always low season as they do very bespoke travel. I would highly recommend them, but maybe not for budget.

Packages can be expensive. If you don't mind spending the time and effort, you can arrange it yourself much more cheaply.

Holy crap on a cracker!! £9k for a holiday to Florida?!

Am I the only one gobsmacked by that?!

Companies frequently offer different prices for the same product online to those found in-store or by 'phone. Or it may be a very different package that is being offered at the online price.

If you’re happy with the online deal, why didn’t you just go ahead and book it?

Tawdry, that sounds about right I thi k ours was £10k bit that included deluxe Disney resort and deluxe dining so we could have knocked a bit of that

For flights, sign up for price alerts on skyscanner. Also check the flights yourself every day, at random times (and as a pp said, clear your cookies).

We're going in late August and I managed to save over 250 pp by doing the above, and got premium economy on the way back to boot (was still 250+ cheaper than regular economy!)

9k for 3 people is daylight robbery. We're going next easter for 2 weeks, 3 people for less than 4k - that includes park tickets and car hire.

October is hot season for Disney Florida though because of Halloween as well.

*Holy crap on a cracker!! £9k for a holiday to Florida?!

Am I the only one gobsmacked by that?!*

Sadly, not at all. Florida is an expensive holiday.

We went Easter 2017. I was a teacher at the time, so getting Sat-Sat return flights was bloody expensive. For four of us (2 ad 2 ch):

Flights £3000 (direct, never saw them cheaper than this for these dates)
Villa £1500
Park tickets £1400 (this just included Universal and Seaworld parks and we didn’t do any Disney)
Car hire £600

Our total for accommodation, tickets and transport was about £6,500 and that’s doing it very cheaply for those dates and with no Disney whatsoever. Add on Disney accommodation, Disney tickets, Disney catering and I can quite easily see the cost soaring.

The only way of doing Florida cheaply ‘with all the trimmings’ and with kids is to take them out of school for the entire holiday and go in September or January.

We use these guys if considering Disney:

www.mouseketrips.com/

But Florida in August! It's a humid swamp full of biting insects and sweat!

I'd pay quite a bit not to be there, although £9k is more than I can afford anyway. But for that I would want something amazing and beautiful. Not....Florida. In August.

I’m not surprised at the price. We went last two weeks of August last year (2 adults) and it cost us £6000 for two weeks on Disney property, flights, Disney dining plan, tickets & transfers. This didn’t include spending money or the extra £1000 we spent doing universal as well. We booked as soon as flights were available, it got steadily more expensive after that.

Have a look at a website called travel planners. They may be able to do something bespoke for you.