My wife and I just returned from a week vacation to Disney World in Orlando, Florida. It was a great trip. A lot of fun, but unfortunately not without its share of headaches as well.
This article is the first of three, describing our trip. This one is an overview of the trip, discussing the planning, dining plans and travel. Subsequent articles will discuss what we did there and about the restaurants we ate at.
Planning
We booked this trip nine months in advance. We booked our vacation in July 2017 for a 7-night stay from February 1-8, 2018. While this may seem excessive, it really isn't. Even this far in advance, not all of our preferences for our resort were available. We booked a room at Disney's Contemporary Resort. We got a room in the tower (the main A-frame building that the monorail runs through) facing Bay Lake. For 7 nights, plus an 8-day "Park Hopper" ticket (allowing admission to all four parks every day), plus the Deluxe Dining Plan, the total bill came to $7200. Plus airfare. This is not a cheap vacation, but we never intended it to be.
We chose the Contemporary Resort primarily because we wanted a hotel with monorail access to the parks. On a previous trip (in 2015), we stayed at the Wilderness Lodge, which we loved, but was a little inconvenient having to take bus transportation for most of our destinations. The Contemporary is the ultimate in convenience in this area, having the Magic Kingdom monorail go straight through the hotel. Just take an escalator to the platform and get on the train.
Dining Plans
The Deluxe Dining Plan is very nice. It isn't cheap, but you get a lot for the money. Every person in your group gets credits for three meals and two snacks for every night of your stay. All quick service restaurants and nearly all table service restaurants cost one meal credit, with a few high-end "signature" restaurants (including dinner shows) costing two.
For quick service meals and all breakfasts, the meal credit gets you one entree and one drink (or a buffet or family-style meal, depending on the restaurant). For lunch and dinner at table-service restaurants, it includes an appetizer, entree, dessert and one drink (or a buffet or family-style meal, as applicable.)
For us, there were only two downsides to the dining plan. One is that it does not include gratuities, so you still have to pay that. Many years ago, gratuities were included as a part of the plan, but not anymore. Nevertheless, it is still wonderful to be able to sit down at a meal that would have cost almost $200 and have to pay less than $40.
The other problem is that quick service restaurants (including the ones in the hotels), don't include a side dish. So you need to use a snack credit if you'd like a side of grits (for example) with your breakfast. But this is only a minor inconvenience, especially given the fact that we didn't run out of snack credits.
One very important thing to keep in mind is that the more popular restaurants and dinner shows may be completely booked up before you arrive. Especially those that involve character dining. When planning a trip, make your most important reservations well in advance of arrival, just to be sure. We were disappointed that we were never able to eat at Chef Mickey's even though it was in our hotel. They were booked solid, with no available breakfast reservations the entire length of our stay.
If you add up all the receipts, you may or may not save money with a dining plan. You can certainly eat for a lot less money if you need to, but for us, part of the magic is to be able to dine at high-end restaurants for most of our meals and it wouldn't have been as enjoyable seeing all the bills accumulate throughout our trip. With the dining plan, it's all pre-paid in advance and is no longer a concern.
I'll talk more about dining and restaurants in another article, since I have a lot to say on that subject.
Parks
As I mentioned, our package included admission to all four of the Disney theme parks (Magic Kingdom, Epcot, Animal Kingdom and Hollywood Studios). We spent every day in at least one park and visited Epcot on several evenings in order to have dinner at its many restaurants.
One pleasant surprise is that we were there during Epcot's International Festival of the Arts. As such, there were many unique exhibits that are not normally present including artists producing and selling original works, specialty food items at many quick service stands, and special stage performances.
I'll discuss our park visits in another article, since there's a lot to say there as well.
Magic Bands
One really great thing Disney has been using for several years now is the Magic Band. This is a plastic wristband with an RFID/NFC transceiver in it. The band identifies you and is used to access a wide variety of Disney services, including:
- It is the key to your hotel room. Tap your band to the sensor to unlock the door.
- It admits you to the parks. Tap the band and provide a fingerprint scan (presumably to prevent multiple people from trying to share a band) to enter the park (assuming your account hasn't used up its admissions, of course.)
- It is used to check in for FastPass entrances
- It is used (with a PIN code) to charge meals and snacks to your dining plan and to charge all purchases to your room account
- If you subscribe to the Memory Maker service, it is scanned by Disney photographers to add your photos to the account.
- Some rides will take your photo. The band identifies you to automatically add these photos to your Memory Maker account.
You receive your bands in advance of your trip. If you decide to do an on-line check-in to your hotel room, you can (if you arrive after check-in time) go straight to your room and bypass the front desk altogether!
The App
Disney is a very connected vacation destination. As such, there's an app for that. I strongly recommend installing the My Disney Experience app on your phone.
Using it, you can locate yourself anywhere on the Disney premises. It provides directions and travel times to all Disney locations. You can also use it to manage restaurant reservations and FastPass reservations, get information and times about every store, restaurant and attraction, track all purchases charged to your Magic Bands and preview all photos in your Memory Maker account.
You can also use it to check-in to your hotel room and get the room number once your room is available.
And since Disney has Wi-Fi in all their hotels and parks, it won't clobber your data plan either.
Travel
Another nice perk when you stay at a Disney resort is Disney's Magical Express. This is a free service that eliminates all of the transportation hassle after arriving in Orlando.
When booking your trip, you tell Disney what flights you will be arriving and departing on. A few weeks before your vacation, Disney sends special yellow-colored luggage tags. You attach these to your checked bags alongside the normal tag that the airline attaches. Upon arrival in Orlando, you ignore baggage claim and go straight to the "Magical Express" section of the airport where you board a bus that takes you to your hotel. Your bags are delivered to your hotel room a few hours later.
For the return trip, it's very similar. You get special tags for your luggage. If your airline requires you to pay a fee for checked bags, you phone a special number to pay that fee. On your departure day, you check your bag at a designated area in your hotel. They produce the airline luggage tags and provide your boarding passes. You then get on a bus to the airport and claim your bags when arriving at your home airport.
I was a bit nervous about Disney handling my bags (on my previous trips, I hand carried my bags from the airport to the bus), but it all worked perfectly. After checking into our hotel room, we went to the Magic Kingdom for a few hours. When we returned, to get ready for dinner, our bags were waiting for us in our room.
The only downside to the traveling had nothing to do with Disney. We booked our airline tickets through our credit card's travel service, in order to pay for them with bonus points. Unfortunately, we did not realize (until after the booking had completed and was non-refundable) that they had booked us in the Basic Economy class. This is a special extra-cheap (service, not just price) class. You sit in the regular Economy cabin, but you are not allowed any full-size carry-on bag (only what fits under the seat), and you can not reserve any seats (seating is assigned at check-in) and there is no guarantee that people traveling together will be able to sit together.
At the time we booked the tickets, we had never head of Basic Economy class, so we didn't think much of it until we looked more closely at the tickets and realized the restrictions. We won't be making that mistake again. We were not given the choice between Basic Economy and regular Economy when we booked our tickets. If our credit card doesn't offer a choice in the future, we will not be booking any future flights with them.
On the plus side, they didn't screw it up and since we were planning on checking our bags anyway, it wasn't terrible. Not being able to select seats, however, was massively unwelcome. We were able to sit together on or outbound flight, but not on the return flight.
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