Disney World Orlando - How to book?

[WimbyAce]

We have been to Disney World once before back in 2011 when it was just me and my partner. I booked this all myself independently as we flew in from New York, stayed at a generic hotel in Florida and hired a car. We only visited Magic Kingdom, Universal and Busch Gardens so booked all tickets separately.
So my question now is if you were going to Disney World as a family of 4 with the intention of going to various Disney parks would you book as a package eg through Virgin/Disney or is it cheaper to book independently as I did before? Have had a quick look but seems q bamboozling with packages (also v expensive!)

We just did this in August had similar queries to you - it put me off booking for about a year as it seemed such a minefield 🤣 We booked through a travel agent called Charter Travel in the end. I found it really hard to get exactly what we wanted via Virgin or Tui etc, as we wanted a split stay between Disney and Universal (mainly to get express passes for Universal by staying at one of their hotels) but Charter were able to book exactly what we wanted but still with the ABTA/ATOL protection etc. There are other similar travel agents - if you are on FB I would suggest you join DisneyWorld Florida for Brits as lots of suggestions on there

Just realised as you mentioned flying in from New York you may not be uk based sorry!

We booked independently because that way we could get exactly what we wanted and it was cheaper.

DH noticed that flights to Orlando were particularly expensive and NY and Miami were cheaper so we flew into NY had a long weekend there and internal flights to Orlando. We drove down to Miami at the end and had a few days there too. We did it partly because of the cost but also because we had three weeks and thought the DC would like NY and Miami too.

Hotels were straight forward to book as were the theme park tickets. It wasn’t a complicated holiday to organise once we knew what we wanted to do.

I booked with Virgin Holidays but I spent hours and hours researching it all and wanted to stay at a specific hotel. I also liked being able to get on a boat, skyliner or bus to get to the 3 parks and enjoy the extended hours/fireworks.

I wanted to see what it was all about (I've never met anyone who hasn't loved their holiday there) but wasn't a massive Disney fan. Would I go again? Absolutely yes.

I booked Disney tickets through Virgin and was able to book restaurants ahead of time as I had the Disney hotel 'benefits'. Again, this was definitely worth it too.

Expensive but worth it.

Yeah sorry that may be a red herring! I am UK based. We did a split trip so New York first and then on to Orlando after a few days.