Want to take the family next year (wifey & 7 yr old & 17 yr old) between July and September.

I imagine loads of Fisoers have been so any tips regarding accomodation (quiet villa with a pool would be nice), attractions and other stuff would be handy.

Budget for about £3,000

Thanks

Jim

I went with my parents when I was 11 (1980's)

We stayed in a Hotel a few mile away from Disney and that was fine, there was plenty of transport to Disney.

We thouroughly enjoyed it and I want to take my Wife and 3 yr old someday.

We went to Went'n'Wild, that was very good, but I'm not sure if it's still there.

Sorry I can't be of much more help - it was so long ago. But I'm sure you'll enjoy it - tell us how you get on.

P.S. - take plenty of sun hats etc - it's very hot that time of year

Try thinking about trebling your budget as £3,000 wouldn't even get you on a ride.

Or maybe downscale to Butlins Bognor

Have a look for Villa's in Kissimee. Most of them tend to be huge and they nearly all have a pool. Kissimee is a good location as well as Disney is a bit away from all the other attractions. You have the likes of Sea World and Universal Studios all in the vicinity of International Drive (one long road with all kinds of shops, restaurants, attractions etc).

Getting a villa in Kissimee won't put you within walking distance of any of the attractions but right in between Disney and 'the rest' and I am assuming you will hire a car as this is an absolute necessity.

I'm in my mid-30's and taking my 3 year old in a few months (will mainly do the animal themed parks as she is too young for the rollercoasters etc) and have been a few times and still love it!

Have fun!

I would also suggest trying to book the Villa and flights separately. You can normally get a good deal on fly-drive's now although as you are going during the kids summer holidays it could prove to be quite pricey.

When we went (6/7 years ago) we hired a villa in kissime, perfect location.

For Villa you can replace with the word mansion...massive places!

Pretty sure we went over £3k though

Cheers juckster - I've just scrolled down to see another thread about Disney which helps with some info. Wet 'n' wild is still in the brochure. I live in Leeds so it'll be Manchester I reckon. My son's mate went 3 weeks ago to avoid the school holiday surcharge - his family is super rich so it would have been at least £3,000 each

Thanks for the heads up

Looks like I might need to budget for a bit more

Kissimee mansion & car hire - cool

Booking stuff separately vs bundles - I'll have to spend a bit of time on this one.

Wow - they have a Legoland (opens Oct) that'll save a trip down south

If you register for "QUIDCO" you can get 10% discount on your Disney Passes which still means you need to find another £8,000 for the rest of your holiday unless your talking the Caravan of course.

My mate goes for 3 weeks in 2 weeks time 8 of them.

Staying at Saratoga Springs in his timeshare.


My brother-in'law has had a house/mansion whatever you wanna call it in Kisimee for about 20 years. I only went to Florida once and to be perfectly honest zzzzzzzzzzzz

Rather have two good european holidays for the price. It's basically one long queue imo but i promised my children i would take them and did 9 years ago. They were at a good age to be able to go on all the rides 12 + 13.
Stayed at Disney hotel Caribbean Beach. and the time of the year your going its too humid for my liking and rains every other day, then is 90 degrees when it stops, walking round in a fishermans mac all the time kinell.l

Jim - the stuff below I sent a few months ago to a mate who was planning on getting married in Florida and had never been before. Not re-tested the links , but hopefully of some help

For best info , go to http://www.thedibb.co.uk/ , which is a Uk board / forum where you will get loads of good info.
Try also getting a guide book such as "the brit guide to orlando" or " the unofficial guide to disney / florida" which you should be able to get cheaply at amazon. Invaluable, in particular for "planning" your days to find out which days to go to which park , and what order to do the rides / attractions in - gets you much more riding and much less queuing.

Also , if you can go sept , out of school , go for it - cos a) much cheaper , b) less crowded c) prob less rain !



Some links that might be useful

Tickets - I bought from https://www.orlandoattractions.com/tickets/ - got real tickets , not vouchers and their rates seemed very competitive. The things to look out for on tickets for me is whether you get real tickets or not ( they do) , whether they charge for using credit cards or not ( they don't ). They also allowed me to pay by amex , which I had set up to take advantage of their "5% cashback offer" http://www.americanexpress.com/campaign ... wapply.cgi They also allow you to pay in $ or £ , so their prices charnge depending on exchange rate so you could buy when exchange rate is good ( their £ price will be low)
Just be careful who you go with , and when you pay / when you get your tickets , jut in case they go bust - seemingky a few have recently.

Paying for stuff in America - I set up a fairfx card at http://www.fairfx.com/
Its a debit card , that you add to whenever you want , but you get whatever exchange rate applies that day , so you can save your spending money as the year progresses , or can add more money on when the dollar rate is good. You can then top-up when in resort so no risk or carrying English cash. And the rates are GREAT compared to say travel agents. Just beware though some people on the DIBB seem to think that the money may not be safe if fairfx went bust

Car hire - I used http://www.carhire3000.com/ - great rates , and QUIDCO too ( will explain later what that is !)

The dibb pointed me at this http://www.windsorhillsluxuryvilla.com not sure if this is part of the one you had talked about but at the rate from 19th august 2012 , cost woul be ( at current really good fairfx rate - $220 *14 nights / 1.5625 ( dollar rate ) * 1.13 ( to inc 13% sales tax) = £2227 ( excludes pool heating) for a 6 bed villa at windsor hills - would be more in July or earlier in August - but may be able to negotiate on rate if go though the dibb.

Try www.netflights.com for flights

If you want to look at tesco clubcard saving , check out www.paidtoshop.co.uk and http://www.tesco.com/clubcard/deals/bro ... 4294967232

If you are buying for others , try booking though www.quidco.com to get "cashback" on loads of things such as holidays / car hire / insurance etc

For holiday insurance I used http://www.travelinsuranceweb.com/ which I also got cashback from quidco and also had a discount code - will try to find it again if I can if youa re interested - i have a claim with them at the mo , so will let you know if they are good at paying out !!

Hope some of that is a help

i looked at going with my 2, decided they were a bit too wee just now and it was just a bit too expensive, was talking about £2.5k for flights alone.

there is a thread somewhere (I'll edit it in)

fellow fisoer brightwater has a villa over there that's pretty stunning. - http://www.brightwatervilla.co.uk/index.html


edit - here's the link the the questions/answers/advice I got. - orlando-disneyland-t82642.html

Once again thanks for all the info guys. This is going to take some planning.

Wow buryboy I hope your mate was grateful for all your hard work - he must bring back some duty free / mickey mouse ears for you

It's a once in a lifetime trip for the family so I'm not too fussed about the cost (we both work in decent jobs). Can't say I love Americana but sure I can cope (Dead Kennedy's on the i-pod for the long queues)

Back to the fantasy rain - glad I booked a day off work

Hi Jim

"Planning" is exactly the right word.

If you've never been before , the whole family will love it , but even more so if it is planned properly.

You have to be careful it doesn't turn into some kind of army exercise , but going at a quieter time of year is SO much better - as for some the queues spoil it all - but whenever you go , deffo check out the best order to do the rides in ( basically all the big rides first but even then there is a "scientific" best order) cos if you do what your seven year old wants first , you'll find the queues for the big rides get huge and you won't get through all you hoped.
( eg in Universal, spiderman was 5mins very early in the day at Xmas , 3 HOURS later in day !)

Glad to see that cost is not such an issue , it is likely to cost more than double your £3k in school holidays

I went for 3 weeks and stayed in kisimme, very nice hotel for the price.. paid £1200 for two of us flights and accomodation + Breakfast in 2006


It was http://www.thepalmshotelandvillas.com/ Its pretty basic, not much to do but it has two pools.. I spent a good while researching for a decent place within our budget and thats what we came up with reviews on trip advisor are ok http://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Hotel_Revi ... orida.html

Only complaint was we had ants in our room but they gave us a free upgrade to a villa which was massive kitchen living room etc

There were two or three shuttle buses to disney and its the last stop on the the pickup so only takes 5 mins so ideally located but nothing in close proximity. A good 20minute walk to the supermarket and stakehouse but they let us borrow their trolly

Attraction wise, your 17 year old will appriciate bush gardens and universal alot more than disney itself. Disneys great but aimed at a younger age group for obvious reasons so your 7 year old will love it.

How long are you going for?

3 weeks. Two doing the theme parks etc and a few days chilling on a beach somewhere

Fortunately my brother in law has a mate who has his own travel company. He goes to the states alot so he's checking it out for me (which is nice)

I'll post the info when he gets back to me.

This is, quite possibly, the most valuable piece of advice you'll ever get regarding Disney World. If you are willing to follow the guidelines (and they are tough, up very early, criss cross the park, stick to a plan), you will never wait more than a few minutes in any line in any park. You will save, as a conservative average, at least 3 to 8 hours standing in queues.

As I said, it's not for everyone, but we follow it and are done with everything we want to do soon after lunch every time we've gone.

Hi Jim,

I had forgotten about this original post and since you made it I actually went down to Florida for a couple of weeks and have a few other tips.

Since I last went there are a few other things to consider.

With regards to the theme parks (Disney in particular) it's worthwhile remembering that the more days you spend there the cheaper it is. For instance, we only wanted to do 2 of the Disney parks and this ended up costing is about $80 per person per day but should you do 5 or 6 days at Disney (easy to do if you want to see everything) this can drastically reduce to about $30-40 per day.

I'm probably not explaining this point very well but in a nutshell if you get a weekly ticket it can save you a huge amount compared to getting indiviudual daily tickets.

The other thing I wanted to point out is about the beach part of the holiday. Whenever I have gone before we have done a fly-drive and visited different parts of Florida for the second week, St. Pete's beach, Sarasota, Miami, The keys etc and this year, on a recommendation we went to Anna Maria Island. I have to say that this place is absolutely stunning and very relaxing and somewhere I would go back to whenever I go back.

We turned up in our car and went into the real estate office and said that we had a budget of $500 for the week and they gave us keys to a few chalets that we went and had a look round and we ended up with the place in the photo below. It was out of season in the start of October and quite a quiet period so we were able to get it for a little over $500 for the week and we were over the road from the beach. I can't recommend Anna Maria Island enough!

http://www.annamariaresorts.com/castnetter.htm

I hope some of this might help.

An acquaintance recently asked for some advice about Disney and here was my response:

I have been to Disney (with kids) several times and am willing to answer just about any question you have. But here’s some of my “best” advice:

There's a book called the Unofficial Guide to Disney, and if you can live with what they ask you to do, could have a huge impact on your visit. It is a plan on how to visit and move through the parks, but it requires that you to be up very early and follow a very strict plan on what order to ride the rides. If this doesn't sound like hell to you (it does to most people), you will save at least a couple hours of standing in line, and maybe several hours if the parks are busy. We use it every time, and although my 17 year old hates getting up, he at least does appreciate the fact that we've never waited more than 20 minutes in a line at Disney, when many will wait an hour or more PER RIDE. Even if you don't follow the plan, I'd still suggest reading the book. It will give you a lot of great hints (especially pay attention to the Dumbo ride stuff if you have young children, as this will introduce you to the "fast loading versus slow loading" concept at the park, and convince you to either get up early to ride Dumbo or ensure your children never even see the ride ). You should also understand fast-passes as well as you can before you go, because to not use them to their fullest is just about the biggest sin you can commit at Disney.

If you can, stay on Disney property. It's more expensive, but it gives you an "easy option" of taking a break in the middle of the day to go back and rest, nap & swim. This is especially good with young kids, and kids often comment that the pools are their favorite part of the trip (this was advice we read in the book many years ago and was both amused and saddened when our kids said the very same thing).

Because we go back from time to time, we buy tickets that never expire and allow us to "hop" from park to park during the day. These are very expensive, but in 10 years of going, we have just recently bought only our 2nd set of tickets. One of the benefits of hopper passes is that you (or another adult or two) can jump over to Epcot for a beer if things are getting too stressful. It would also allow you, if you wish, to spend the day at one park but watch the fireworks at another (contrary to popular belief, the Magic Kingdom does not have the best fireworks – we like the show at the Studios the best).

Don't fall for the "cheap" tickets you'll see everywhere, unless you really want to spend half a day listening to a time-share pitch. If you're going to be there more than a couple days, look into buying season passes. They may still be more expensive (I don’t know – but it is for FL residents), but living outside King's Island, it only takes us 2 visits to get our money back on our season passes.

The Animal Kingdom is the one park that you won’t miss going to, and if you decide to go to several parks, “save the best for last”. That way the kids aren’t too disappointed (taking kids to Epcot, for example, after having been to the Magic Kingdom or the Studios will likely disappoint them).

Buy (or bring) an autograph book for each kid and plan some character “meet & greets”. If your kids grew up “Disney”, this will be especially entertaining for them (and is one of the cheapest forms of entertainment you’ll find).

If this is your first trip and like me, you grew up going to Cedar Point, prepare yourself for a very different experience. Cedar Point is a “thrills” park, while Disney is an “amusement” park. Other than maybe the Rock & Roll Roller Coaster at the Studios, nothing at Disney will touch the roller coasters at Cedar Point. It’s just not that kind of place (and as I mentioned before, no beer is sold ANYWHERE inside the Magic Kingdom).

My favorite thrill rides at Disney (both at the Studios) are Tower of Terror and Rock & Roll Roller Coaster. I like Tower of Terror, my kids like Rock & Roll better.

Don’t be put off by rides like Winnie the Pooh & Peter Pan at Magic Kingdom, these are visually some of the coolest rides in the park (and yes, go ahead and ride “Small World”, but I wouldn’t wait in line too long for it).

If you have been before, let me know and I’ll share a couple tips for “veterans”. For example, in the ride Winnie the Pooh, there’s a picture on the wall showing a toad handing Rabbit a piece of paper. You’ll likely never notice it unless you are looking for it, but it’s actually depicting the ride changing from “Mr. Toad’s Wild Adventure” to the Winnie the Pooh ride (the paper is the “deed” to the ride). Disney is filled with stuff like this if you know where to look.

You’re going to spend a lot of money on this trip, so the more prepared you are, the more value you’ll get for your dollars. ENJOY.

If you can afford it, go and see La Nouba.
Might be a bit pricey to take young kids (who won't fully appreciate it).
Don't have kids, so maybe I'm doing kids a disservice.

I'd also recommend discovery cove.
Again a bit pricey; but you pay got the privilege of being in a park with a finite amount of visitors. All food and drink is free (but in reality your too busy to exploit it).