THE Disney Experience

[tassaj]

Hi everyone, only discovered this excellent site this morning when looking for something just like it !

Cutting to the chase, with the $ strong and strengthening, airfares cheap cheap cheap, I am now looking at taking my rather large family (5 kids - 15 down to 9) to the US over the Sep / Oct school hols. I am working through the logistics however Orlando and especially WDW is the main reason for the trip. This is in no way my first Disney adventure (WDW 1983, 1986, 1993, 1999, DL 1987 & EuroD 2000) however the first with all my kids suitably aged to enjoy and remember, and let's not beat around the bush here, Orlando is THE Disney experience.

So, while I troll through people's posts, has anyone has any luck with renting any of those McMansions that seem to be everywhere around Orlando, esp Kissimmee, leased from the UK. We stayed in what can only be described as a an upmarket Trailer Park near Kissimmee in 1999 when we lived in the US. It was fine as we were the only guests and had the pool etc to ourselves as it was late October, it has since been demolished and McMansions built. I am however playing with the idea of staying onsite but ..... $ are a consideration of course as is the ease of getting over to Universal, the cape etc.

Interested in anyone thoughts and great to be in the midsts of like minded people.

Cheers

[sandie]

There are some nice ones. Although we have not stayed in one I have visited friends in a few. try these ones:

http://www.allstarvacationhomes.com/

I think if it was me and 5 kids I would want one with a pool! They look very nice to me!

Plus if you wanted time on site you could stay in a family suite at the all stars.


Sandie

[KeithS]

Hi everyone, only discovered this excellent site this morning when looking for something just like it !

Welcome indeed - It is great to have all these new happy Disney people around here!

I see that Sandie has already responded to your query - she is definitely our resident WDW expert here

And remember - if you live in Sydney, our club has regular meetings which you are more than welcome to come along too where you can meet some very experienced WDW travellers.

And hey - it has been nearly ten years since your last trip, so we are definitely keen to get you sorted and on a plane! hehe.

[tassaj]

Hi Sandie and Keith,

Thanks so much for your respective replies. I will continue to look and work on this and keep everyone in the loop.

Not in Sydney unfortunately, Canberra but not that far away.

Cheerio

Stephen

[ColinA]

I won't be of much help, last 10 years only stayed on Disney property. Maybe you could get a couple of rooms at Pop Century or Allstars, put yourselves in 1 room and all the kids in the other, win win on both sides, or maybe 3 rooms. No need for your own bus to get them anywhere, just use the Disney ones.

[tassaj]

Thanks Colin,

Yeah I agree, onsite is very very cool. I stayed at the Contemporary back in '83 on my first visit. Didn't realise how good it was until much later. In fact that was the first time I had ever seen Disney Channel, I came back home and told everyone.."you know that they have a Disney TV Channel at Disney World !". Ha, imagine that. Enjoyed your recent posts by the way. Cheers.

[KeithS]

Yeah I agree, onsite is very very cool.

Heyya Stephen.

Anthony, another of our members is over there at the moment. He split his time between on-site and off-site, staying at Universal before heading to Disney. It may be worth seeking his advice when he returns soon about his experiences.

When I went in 2006, we stayed on-site and only did Disney - they have it well set up to get you into WDW and keep you there! Next time we go, we'll probably share our time between on-site and off-site (probably Universal) like Anthony did, and perhaps hire a car to drive out to NASA etc.

[sandie]

If you are going to do Universal you really should stay there! The front of the line passes are awesome.

Although when something new opens like Harry Potter that attraction is usually excluded from the passes. I hope its included in December when we are there although I understand why they do it - after bypassing the same people in queue 4 times when we rode Spiderman 4 times in a row with no wait !!!!! Ithink they wanted to kill us!

I have booked our first 10 nights at Universal's Portofino Resort including 14 day access to both Universal Parks, Seaworld, Aquatica and Wet and Wild and it was $3200 Australian. I think thats great value for a 5 star hotel.

If it was me with such a large group I would go for the family suites at All Stars though.

Sandie

[tassaj]

Hi everyone,

Well, we have just returned from our Disney Experience and everything went very well. We did stay off-park in a house in Kissimmee and while this did mean a 20 minute car ride each way to the parks, we did have a 4 bedroom house with pool and full kitchen for about $US100/night. Check out VRBO if you are interested. We were in the parks the last week of Sept and first week of Oct and the crowds were very low. By getting there at opening, we walked onto most things for the first couple of hours. The biggest queue we had was for Toy Story Mania in DHS (brilliant !) but this was only 30mins. We used the Unofficial Guide to DisneyWorld handbook and I highly recommend this as it gives you a great plan to attack each park so there are no arguments AND it will give you crowd estimates for each park for the days you are planning so you can arrange around these as well. We also did 2 days at Universal and that really was long enough. Harry Potter is as brilliant as everyone has written however it WAS busy. We were there at opening and the crowd launched for that area like a wave. Apart from HP, the rest of Universal parks were very empty and we completed Universal Studios easily within a day. Just to complete this tome, we flew Air Canada from Sydney routed through Vancouver and Toronto. This is a long way there leaving Sydney about 10am and arriving at Orlando about midnight but it was quite reasonably priced and you avoid US carriers AND LAX !!! AC aircraft are quite new and have an extensive entertainment system. If you have any specific questions I would be happy to answer these. Thanks again for all the tips in the planning stages. Cheers Stephen

[churros]

Welcome home! $100/n for everything you got was fantastic!

We need a trip report - we live vicariously in between our own trips!

[ColinA]

Great, glad you all had a good time. Going via Vancouver is unusual, haven't heard of that way before. How did the now grown kids enjoy the Disney experience.

[tassaj]

All the kids really enjoyed the Disney extravaganza. Our 16yr old had memory glimpses of her first time so this was a terrific trip down memory lane for her. For all the others it was a new experience.

Yes the Vancouver routing is a bit different and quite frankly a bit longer as there is a 4 hour stopover in Toronto waiting for the Orlando flight. Both Vancouver and Toronto are pleasant enough airports to while away a couple of hours though. The US Immigration official quizzed us a bit on our routing choice as he thought is a bit odd also, once I said to him that once you are buying 7 tickets, you look for the cheapest option regardless of routing, he seemed to agree with that. Our flight home was delayed 11 hours in Vancouver due to the aircraft sucking a bird into one of the engines upon landing. Air Canada really looked after everyone though with hotels, taxis and meals so it wasn't too bad.

There was a fair bot of building work going on at the Magic Kingdom around the area where the 20,000 Leagues under the Sea lagoon used to be, anyone have any ideas what is the plan for that location ?

[ColinA]

There was a fair bot of building work going on at the Magic Kingdom around the area where the 20,000 Leagues under the Sea lagoon used to be, anyone have any ideas what is the plan for that location ?

See Sandie's Thread, might explain some of the work.

http://www.dudisneyana.info/forum/viewt ... =10&t=1920