How the holy crap do normal people afford Disneyworld?!?

[BeanCalledPickle]

I promised the kids a trip to Disneyworld before the end of primary. They will be 10 and 8. I’m not adverse to missing a week or so of school. I can cope with about 10k. Started to have a look and am horrified! Flights from london at least 2.5k, probs more like 3k. Park tickets 2k for 7 days (only seems to offer me 14 days for price of 7). Non Disney hotel but still decent resort style hotel relatively local. Another 2k min but probs more like 3k. And then I assume about 250 quid a day spending money which is 3k for a just under two week holiday. So that’s 11k. That seems like a truly huge amount of money. I used to see threads saying you could do it for 7k. What am I missing??

Don’t forget a couple of grand for the car hire. I think it’s actually cheaper to Uber it everywhere.

We stayed at a lovely holiday resort called Bahama Bay. Cost us about £900 for two weeks. Only about twenty minutes from Disneyworld. Three bedrooms and use of all the pools and restaurant etc. They have their own Facebook page. There’s also another page called It’s Orlando Time which is full of brilliant advice.

That's what I would do. Have been to the Florida parks and to LA a couple of times. Los Angeles was tons better IMO.

That should say three bedroomed apartment.

We booked summer 2020 but rather than cancel we moved it to summer 2021 but payed £4k extra, then moved to Christmas 2021 but Dd had covid so never went. To move it to summer 2022 they wanted another £4,500 so it would have been £8,500 more than the original holiday. I’m hoping we’ll get there but dc might outgrow family holidays by then.

Sounds horrific...the cost and the experience....!!

when I went years ago we stayed at this place. Self contained apartments 2-3 bed with swimming pools. We did need a car, but I thought it was a good deal at the time

www.lbvorlandoresort.com

I suggested we went to Disney for my 40th. The kids wanted to go to Legoland instead. When I started to price it all up I was quite relieved.

Actually the first time we went we took taxi’s and there may have been a shuttle bus (with friends). Next time as a family we hired a car. I remember there was a target just up the road for get groceries and cheaper chain restaurants around.

The prices have gone up a ridiculous amount - we were originally supposed to go in October 2020 and have had to move it twice.

Now going October 2022 and it's costing us £4,000 more for the exact same holiday

Have a look at Airbnb. I preferred Disney as they had proper rides, I found universal was all that 3D tech. Harry Potter was very very good though, that’s the only reason I’d think about doing universal again. Disney you s a must just for Flight of the Banshee!

@PolitePlantPot Legoland uk??? That place is my idea of hell 🙈

I'm so relieved reading this that my two were never bothered about Disney.
I went for the day when backpacking round America aged 20. Cost about £25 to get in and £10 for food and drink. I still remember I had a baked sweet potato

What is it with Florida, I’ve known five families fly out there over the last two weeks and in the last 20 years only knew of two. Are they giving away flights or something?

When we went we booked flights with American Airlines and changed at Newark, was cheaper and not much hassle. We have been twice, last time we end we rented a townhouse on this resort and it was reasonable.
we paid about £500 Pw I’m 2015

terraverderesort.net/rentals/results

Prices have definitely gone up in the past few years. I went for 5 days but we didn't do parks every day, it was too expensive. A couple of the days we just hung around downtown Orlando as there's a lot to see.

Ha yes, but hell that costs a couple of hundred all in, rather than a few thousand (although actually I quite like it - we tend to stick to the shows and the water play and miniland and the stuff with no queues... I've never queued for more than 25 minutes for a ride and we only do the bigger rides right at the end of the day when it's much quieter)

Flights to Miami tend to be quite a lot cheaper we had a short stopover in Atlanta flew with virgin. Picked up the car from Miami and drove to Orlando it wasn't that long. We went to the florida keys and few days in Miami. My DH has an IHG credit card and we saved up the points and used them on hotel rooms. It was cheaper than we thought.

We did LA in August (didn't fancy the humidity of Florida then) - Disney (one day was enough) and Universal (several days) but be aware that they are very far apart and LA is HUGE. We spent a bit of time in Santa Monica/Hollywood/Griffith Observatory etc. Then we hired a car and drove up the coast - Malibu, Santa Barbara, Big Sur and Carmel/Santa Cruz before finishing up in San Francisco and flying back from there. It felt like we had seen a bit of California as well as the parks. We've done Disney Paris and Hong Kong when the DC were little but they were very different experiences to USA.

My DD hated Disney world she much preferred Busch gardens.

It does massively depend on when you want to go.

We're going 25th August this year for 16 nights stopping at Disney, doing a 3 night Disney cruise and flying with BA and for 2 adults and 2 kids it's costing £9.5k - if we went earlier in the summer hols it would add a good few thousand extra on. If you can take them out of school for the whole trip you'd save a ton. That comes down to personal preference though as I know some people don't like doing that 🙈

It's an awesome holiday though 🙂

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We spent 12k a few years back. No regrets, we saved up for a few years before going. We could have done it for far cheaper but we weren't planning on going back so went all out.

Have you thought about purchasing airmiles? It can make the most tremendous difference to the cost of flights?
Agree with getting a villa nearby with a rental car and looking for deals on park tickets.

We spent £10k for 2 weeks, about 5 years ago - several of us, in March. We booked flights, parks, car hire and villa accommodation separately. By the end of it, I felt I could have done a degree in tourism, due to the amount of research we did getting as many deals as possible.
We did Disney (all parks plus one of their water park), Universal, Busch Gardens, Kennedy Space Centre. We ate out every night but self-catered breakfast and half the lunches.

It was a once-in-lifetime thing for us. Our only regret was only going for 2 weeks not 3.