Details and Options – Revision 1, Part 2 of 4

Florida Transportation

Disney provides free transportation to-and-from the airport and Disney's resorts, called Magical Express. This is done on buses with comfortable padded seats, television monitors, and a bathroom. On the way to our resort, a video will be played about the Walt Disney World Resort. For those who decline to go on the cruise with us, Magical Express will also return them to the airport for free.

While staying at the resort, we will be eligible to use Disney's transportation system between the resorts and parks at no additional cost. This includes using Disney's monorail system, ferryboats, and buses.

Disney charges a premium for cruise transfers. It is much less expensive (and much more convenient) to hire luxury vans to transport us to the cruise ship and back to the airport. This also has the advantage of allowing us to board the ship several hours earlier. The cost for this service will be approximately $40 per person, versus Disney's approximately $80 per person.

Disney World Tickets:

The difference in price between 3-day tickets and 10-day tickets is about $25, so length of stay will have almost no effect on the price of tickets. The one thing to consider is getting "Park Hopper" tickets, which allow you to visit more than one park each day. The itinerary that I'm planning will have us visiting only one park per day; visiting more than one park is unnecessary with solid planning, plus it eats up valuable time. In addition, Park Hopper tickets cost about 20% more.

Dining:

Each of us will be eligible for the Disney Dining Plan, which costs US$39 per adult (ages 10+) and US$11 per child per night stayed. The dining plan works by giving each person 1 token for a table-service meal, 1 token for a counter-service meal, and 1 snack token per night stayed (most things under $4 in the parks is considered a snack for this purpose).

If the dining plan is to be purchased at all, it must be for every guest staying in any given room, for every night of the stay. This does not mean that one has to use (or can only use) the dining plan to buy snacks or meals. As well, if a group of people went to dinner together, some could use dining plan tokens, and some could pay out-of-pocket.

For a family of 5, the dining plan costs a lot of money, but it is certainly less expensive than paying for each meal out-of-pocket. The most economical option is to buy groceries and prepare meals, but it's also extremely inconvenient to go back-and-forth from the parks several times a day (and especially while at Disney, time is money). However, it may be worthwhile to buy only lunch from counter-service restaurants in the parks, and buy groceries to prepare dinners and to bring snacks into the parks. This would almost definitely require a villa with a full kitchen (at significant expense; information on villas at the resort is coming in part 3), unless you were to stick to microwave dinners and non-perishables, but would still require more time and effort (in addition to having to pay for groceries).

In my opinion, the dining plan is worth the money and time saved, especially while on vacation. Eating at Disney isn't cheap, but if you can afford the dining plan, I believe it is the best value in time and money. The savings from using the dining plan are significant, and the freedom to order whatever you want on the menu is worth something by itself.

It is also possible to use 2 table-service tokens for a meal at one of Disney's Signature restaurants, which offer top-quality service and gourmet food. This would be really nice to do for at least one dinner at Disney. Even better, we wouldn't have to make up for using that extra token; because we'll likely eat lunch at the airport on our first day, we'll have an extra counter-service token that could be used for dinner. Note that room-service is available, but also requires the use of 2 table-service tokens when using the dining plan.