 |
| My Children, at one of our Stops, "SOUTH OF THE BODER" South Carolina |
If you live on the East Coast, this blog should give you some wonderful ideas on how to enjoy a vacation to WDW with your family. My family and I live in Rhode Island, which is sandwiched between Massachusetts and Connecticut. Although there are great places for day trips and weekend getaways in the New England area...particularly New Hampshire and Vermont or even New York, it is a very short drive to Orlando! By very short, of course, I mean 22 hours. The best way to make this trip is two days of driving. Some other people may recommend you break it into three days, while others (like my insane sister and her family) will buckle down and forge through without stops. But on a recent road trip, my husband and I managed to do what might seem impossible to some: We drove to Florida with an 8 year old and an 18month old and it took us only 2 days. Here is how we did it, and how our vacation basically only costed us approximately $2000.00. Bear in mind, this was in 2009.
First and foremost, if you have never purchased one of the "Birnbaum's Guides" to planning a WDW vacation, DO SO! This one book has all the information needed to plan your own Disney Vacation. You will not need a professional Agent to do it for you. I will recommend though to use the internet!
Read the first 4 chapters, about choosing the proper tickets, resorts , time of year to travel, and mode of travel. These are your most important decisions. Here is a checklist you will need to consider as you plan your trip:
- What resort will you stay in and for how long?
- What time of year will you visit Disney and for how many days?
- What type of tickets will you need? Would your family like to visit only one park per day or would you like the freedom to move from park to park on any given day?
- Would you like to prepay for meals that can be included?
- What do you want to experience on your vacation? There are many extras and add-ons but they can be omitted without taking away from the quality of your trip.
So back to my particular trip. In 2009, we opted for a road trip! On past Disney vacations we relied on airflight to travel to Florida. Coming from RI, on a direct flight is both fast and affordable. Most people around here prefer to fly Southwest Airlines. We decided that our total time away from home would be 11 days. Three and half days total would be spent in commuting to and from Florida. One of my first considerations would be, "which days of the week do we want to actually be in the parks?" The reason to ask this question is that Saturdays and Sundays are larger crowds, no matter what time of year it is. We wanted to use most of our park time on Monday through Friday. One glitch in the plan was that we wanted to celebrate my daughter's 8th Birthday in the Park because Disney offers a special reward for birthdays in the park! Her Birthday would fall on our last day of the trip which was slightly awkward but it worked out! So because her birthday was a Saturday, it was very very crowded and the lines were long!
 |
| Ani at Minnie Mouse's House |
We got the added (FREE) benefit of visiting the parks during Christmastime when they are decorated for the holidays. WDW has a special event, a Christmas Party that you can purchase separate tickets for. We opted out of that event and never felt like we were missing out on the Christmas Spirit. If you go to WDW anytime between the week after Thanksgiving until the week before Christmas, you can benefit from VALUE SEASON rates at any Disney resort...HOWEVER, bear in mind that the parks are still busier than in a slower season so crowds are larger and lines are longer.
One of our favorite traditions in visiting WDW at ChristmasTime is having a family photo taken in front of every Christmas tree we could find. There are special trees at each of the Major Theme parks. In the picture above, we were at HollyWood Studios. Their tree was decorated with movie reels and other tv and movie memorabilia. We also planned our outfits so that we had a theme for the days we visited each park. See the next picture: we are dressed for visitng Animal Kingdom. I put everyone in browns and neutrals. Lex's shirt had Balou the bear from the Disney classic, Jungle Book.
Ok, so "Getting There"...that is a title from one of the Birnbaum's chapters. If you drive, like we did, I found it beneficial to plan meals and sleep ahead. We packed a cooler with juice, milk and breakfast and kept it in our minivan (not in the trunk) for easy reach. We left the house at 1am, loaded the kids with the intention of them falling back to sleep immediately. They had pillows, blankets, soft music and reclined seats. The one thing we did not anticipate was their excitement! They stayed awake until hour 4 of our drive! We drove straight through CT and NY and then stopped in Delaware briefly for a bathroom break before travelling for 4 hours on the New Jersey Turnpike. It was the Turnpike that finally put the kids to sleep. By 8am we were in morning rush hour traffic in Maryland. We pulled off for breakfast (COFFEE!!!) and Gas. We drove the rest of the day, stopping as needed. When we reached the famous "SOUTH OF THE BORDER" on the line of NC and SC, we stopped to explore and eat. We opted to continue driving, resulting in an ill-fated stop at a Days Inn. We decided then and there that we would stay at the SOB Motel on our way back North.
On our return trip we thoroughly enjoyed the stay at SOB Motel! There are many cute attractions and inexpensive souvenirs to be found at SOB. We discovered at WDW that many of the souvenirs we purchased were the same ones we could find there at SOB gift shops only at WDW parks, they costed 3 times as much! So if you want to bring home a souvenir, choose them at SOB.
So day one, we drove for nearly 17 hours. After a rest, we left SC and made the last 5 hours of driving, arriving to our Orlando destination at 1pm. We were an hour ahead of our Check-in but our hotel room was ready and we were able to settle in. On this trip we had opted to stay in the Value Resort, POP Century. We had value season rates that I secured at a discount. We paid $59 night! We needed a refrigerator because I had planned our food as a means to save us money. For an extra $10 per night, we had a refrigerator. Now, there is only one way to get a rate like that. Use the internet...wait for deals and strike when the dela is hot. You will not get a rate like this if you are using the meal add-on. These add-ons and specials work for some people, but make sure they are the right one for you. What was right for me was the lowest nightly rate, which I secured using www.hotels.com. You can however, get that rate occassionally using the Disney website too.
So we left Rhode Island at 1m on Saturday morning, and we checked-in at Pop Century Resort at 1pm on Sunday afternoon. We only had to incur the cost of one overnight motel stay and that costed us $65.oo after our AAA discount.
Because I knew we would visit the parks Monday through Saturday (7 days), and it is totally cost-efficient to add an 8th day...approximately $40 more altogether, We purchased
8-day park nonhoppers. It is fun to park-hop, but with an 18 month old in diapers and a stroller, hopping involves rushing around. It was going to be exhausting enough lugging the carriage and bags around (and it was!). So with our 8th day pass, we were able to visit Magic Kingdom that same night. We love to visit Magic Kingdom at night as our first stop of every trip: Another fun tradition. There is something extremely magical in doing that...especially at ChristmasTime!
This seems like the perfect pausing place. Enjoy the majesty of this beautiful sight. Tune in for my next blog for the second part of planning your WDW road trip!
No comments:
Post a Comment