Orlando 1st timers

[footballfckers]

Shamelessly posting for traffic. Orlando is such a huge holiday and I want to get it right.

October 2023 10 days in The Grove Resort. And then 4 days in a universal hotel. No car hire.

This is my plan. Planning to use Tesco vouchers for the universal stay.

Kids will be 7&8. 2 adults.

Thoughts ? Advice? Etc all welcome!!

Hope you have a great time! Is there a reason for no hire car though? You can get so much more out of a Florida holiday with a car.

Join the fb group “it’s Orlando time” and read the forum on the website called The Dibb

You need a car. There's so much more to the area than parks so don't get bogged down in them especially if it's over the school holidays when it'll be hard going as it'll be so busy.

I think you’ll regret not having a rental vehicle.

People who don’t live here have no concept of how much a car is needed to get anywhere. Yes, you have shuttle buses to the parks from the resort but why fly all the way here and not see beyond the theme parks? At least go to different restaurants, get out to other places, etc.

@Owesel we were just planning on using the hotel shuttle and /or Uber and lyft. With the price of car hire and parking a tbr parks. We thought it didn't make much sense.

We have generally accepted that in 14 days we can't do everything. And I don't want to be trying to squeeZe in everything . 2 trips to each Disney park, a couple of water parks, universal, pool day and shopping day and I don't think there will be much time for anything else?!!

Have you booked a tier of universal hotel where you get express passes included? If not, definitely upgrade

you know you have to pre book park days at the moment?

@HermioneWeasley yes we are going to book one of the top three to get the express passes.

You will be really tired, it’s fabulous but tiring. We did two park days, then had a shopping or water park day.
If we had a shopping day we might go to a park in the evening for fireworks.

You don’t need a car in Orlando, rental prices are through the roof atm and Uber/Lyft is super easy and relatively inexpensive. We were there over Easter, hired a car for the second week and decided we won’t again unless travelling beyond Orlando. Traffic is getting busier every time we go and we never waited more than 5 minutes for an Uber.

i would recommend going to www.thedibb.Co.uk there isn’t a question on Florida that can’t be answered on that forum.

We used to head out to the parks early in the morning then, when it was too hot, at about 3pm we’d head back to our pool.

@wonderstuff this is what I am thinking. We can always add it later if the prices come down.

Just popping on to ask which hotel you can use clubcard vouchers for??

There’s loads of vloggers on YouTube - mummyoffourdoesdisney is a great one with kids.
dannydalimore, adamhattan, thekershawadventures - I’m going next month and found these so helpful! Disneyindetail too.

you’ll have an amazing time 😁

@AlasEarwacs you can transfer the vouchers to Hotels.com and then I think the hard rock is available

We found that in WDW Hollywood studios really only kept our little ones amused for a morning, the Toy Story bit is nice but only has 2 rides and ridiculous queues for the rollercoaster - which is fairly tame - not something I would queue for more than an hour for - although October will be much quieter than Easter.

I bought a subscription to Touring Plans - cost about $15 - they analyse the wait times in WDW and Universal and so can predict when is best to plan to ride and they have an app called Lines which we found gave much more accurate wait times than the parks (who the cynic in me thinks over estimate wait times to push their pay for passes - WDW particularly seems to over-estimate every queue). Their website lets you put together customisable plans for your park days - now that fast pass is no more that can be really useful. They also predict how busy the individual parks are which can help with planning what to do when. If you like an actual guide book they have one called Unofficial Guide to (they do WDW & Universal) super comprehensive and I really like that - buying the guide book gets you a discount on the website membership.

Best meals we had were The Boathouse, Blaze and Polite Pig all at Disney Springs. Millars Ale House on the 192 was really good and really reasonable.

Universal with the express pass was fantastic - you can walk from all the hotels to the parks and park hop with the Harry Potter train needs to be done both ways. If the kids are into HP then they will be in heaven - have a camera ready to capture their reaction going into Diagon Alley - we have a fantastic photo of our kids at a similar age with jaws dropped. Interactive wands are expensive - but I think worth it - super cool - and if you ever return they will replace if they stop working - ds had his 4 year old one 'mended' at the wand shop, no problems when we went back at Easter. Our kids dressed up to go to Wizarding World and were picked at Olivanders wand experience - it was super cute.

@wonderstuff thank you so much. Very helpful. They have just started getting into Harry Potter so I know they will love it! Thanks for all the tips!

@footballfckers no problem - have an amazing time. We just had our 4th 'once in a lifetime' trip and I'm missing Florida already.

It's been years since I was there and we didn't have a car. We visited several parks in Disney using the shuttle bus and then travelled by bus to the Epcot centre.

We also had a trip from the hotel to Miami, overnight stay, then flew to the Bahamas for a day before cruising back. Local taxi driver gave us a tour of the island then we sat in the beach for the afternoon.

The holiday was 14 days.