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monday, /o\ || disney world, \o/
I’m not sure how or why it’s already Monday, but here we are…
On the plus side, I did manage to finish up that post-Star Trek Beyond Kirk/Pike sequel I’d been playing with (see my previous post), but the rest (ie, the mundane part) of my weekend to-do list is sadly un-lined-through. Priorities, yeah?
So, a couple of people have asked for my Disney World planning strategies, and since I’m in the middle of planning out a trip with my brother & s-i-l for next spring break, I thought I’d do it in a series of semi-real time posts.
For this trip, the lodgings are the first thing I took care of because there’s going to be 7 of us for at least part of the week, and since BrotherB has never actually been to WDW (and his wife, K, has only been once, tacked on to the end of a business trip) we wanted to stay on-property and I wanted the widest selection of options.
With 7 of us, we pretty much needed 3 rooms (I can put my 5 into a Deluxe room for a short visit, but for anything longer, we start tripping over each other and the joy of vacation rapidly evaporates.) Disney has 4 categories of resorts – Value, Moderate, Deluxe, Villas (cheapest to most expensive.) Depending on when you go and what kind of a discount they’re offering, you can get a Value room for ~100USD/night. They’re fine—a little on the small side, but you get all the perks of staying on-property no matter how much you’re paying per night.
Now, BrotherB is not the fuzziest of Disney fans (K almost fell over when he suggested they could join us for our usual WDW spring break trip) so we eliminated half the offerings in the Value category just by virtue of their décor (All Star Movies and Art of Animation, both of which are super-fun if you love Disney animation, but not so much if that makes you flinch.) And then, sadly, Spring Break is not one of those times where the rooms are going for less than a hundred bucks a night, so by the time I get 2 rooms, I’m looking at more than 300USD for what is essentially a Holiday Inn Express.
So, yep, that means I skip right over the Moderates and Deluxes (because I’m still going to need 2 rooms just for my family and, *koff*, let’s just say the prices rise quickly from that 300USD I just quoted) and go straight for a 2-BR villa at one of the Vacation Club resorts (aka, DVC.) B&K get the master bedroom, D&I get a bed in the 2nd BR and then assorted boys get other beds and fold-down couches. Plus, there’s a full kitchen for B’s crazy breakfast smoothies (he’s so on the green smoothie train, ugh) and whatever else we decide not to eat out.
And yeah, I know: I see you looking at those rates and thinking I have totally lost my mind (and all ability to do math), but the reason I’m going for one of these is because I’m going through a 3rd party broker and ‘renting’ the points from a DVC member. This is still not cheap, but it becomes a LOT more doable.
Okay, so crash course on how Disney runs the DVC, which is basically a time-share. Instead of getting the same week per year, people can buy a set number of points, like, say 300, and then they get to use that number of points each year. (Or they can bank this year’s points for next year, or borrow from next year.) Then each room in each DVC resort costs X points per night, where X varies depending on the time of year and what night of the week it is (ie, going in the middle of the week in January is going to cost few points than going over the Fourth of July weekend.) I have never been able to make the DVC buy-in costs make sense for us (and trust me, I have crunched those numbers every which way, because you know I love me some Disney World when the regular world is gray and boring), but renting them is a little bit easier to work with. There’s also extra shenanigans with who can book where when, but the salient points are that 11 months is the farthest in advance that a room can be booked (by people who bought points at that specific resort) and then at 7 months anyone who has DVC points can book at any DVC resort.
Back to the main narrative flow: The broker I use is DVCRentalStore.com. The other big DVC broker is David’s. Lots of people use and recommend them and I have nothing against them, but it just worked out that DVCRS.com got me my first point rental stay and everything worked out so easily that I’ve never gone anywhere else.
DVCRS.com pays DVC members (ie, people who own part of the time-share) $Y per point, and then they charge me $Y+~$2 per point. This works out farrrrrr more cheaply than what’s shown on the Disney reservation page.
Of course, it gets a little more complicated because some resorts are more popular than others and cost more points, plus that $Y+$2 gets bumped up to ($Y+2)+$2(ish) for the popular resorts, all of which means Too Many Dollars for me (and BrotherB who, remember, isn’t even a fan of WDW, he’s just determined that we not drift apart with both parents gone. It’s an astonishing display of sentimentality from him; I hate to totally gouge him for it.)
So, generally, the three cheapest DVC resorts are Old Key West, Saratoga Springs, and Kidani Village at the Animal Kingdom Lodge—which, not so coincidentally, are the resorts that are the least conveniently located to a park. (The rest of them are either walking distance and/or on a monorail/direct boat service.) They do have their pluses, though. OKW is the original DVC and the rooms are huge, way bigger than the other resorts. Saratoga Springs is walking distance to Disney Springs, which is very handy, especially when you have a party that isn’t all Parks!GO! like we do. And then Kidani Village comes with its own savanna, ie, giraffes outside your window with your morning caffeine, which is hard to beat.
We ended up with a tie between Kidani Village and Saratoga Springs, so I put in for KV because SS is a huge resort and almost always has availability if we couldn’t get anything at KV. The Animal Kingdom Lodge is way over on the western edge of WDW, totally inconvenient to everything, but hey, giraffes. And zebras. (And several of the best restaurants on property.) I had the request in at about 9 months out and thought I might have been too slow because the broker didn’t have anything available, but once we ticked over to the 7 month mark, when anyone who has DVC points to rent can make a reservation, we got a hit, so in the middle of DragonCon craziness (seriously, I was crossing Peachtree Street with 500 other geeks) we managed to get our deposits in and We Are Going, \o/.
Next up: watch me figure out what days we’ll be in which park so I can stay up until midnight and get our restaurant reservations at the 180 days-before-vacation mark (which is the earliest you can make dining reservations and trust me, there are places where this is necessary.) You know I take my food seriously so this can sometimes require spreadsheets and live interactions with whomever else is going as I try to decide things like whether it’s better to eat early at Monsieur Paul or later at Le Cellier and risk missing the fireworks. (I also realize that this is pretty much the definition of Not A Problem, that we are enormously fortunate to be able to do this, but at the same time, there is a lot of money being spent and I want to make the most of it.)
Helpful links:
DVC Rental Store
MouseSavers (tracks all kinds of discounts and promotions, on- and off-property)
TouringPlans.com's hotel comparisons + views from on-property resort rooms
On the plus side, I did manage to finish up that post-Star Trek Beyond Kirk/Pike sequel I’d been playing with (see my previous post), but the rest (ie, the mundane part) of my weekend to-do list is sadly un-lined-through. Priorities, yeah?
So, a couple of people have asked for my Disney World planning strategies, and since I’m in the middle of planning out a trip with my brother & s-i-l for next spring break, I thought I’d do it in a series of semi-real time posts.
For this trip, the lodgings are the first thing I took care of because there’s going to be 7 of us for at least part of the week, and since BrotherB has never actually been to WDW (and his wife, K, has only been once, tacked on to the end of a business trip) we wanted to stay on-property and I wanted the widest selection of options.
With 7 of us, we pretty much needed 3 rooms (I can put my 5 into a Deluxe room for a short visit, but for anything longer, we start tripping over each other and the joy of vacation rapidly evaporates.) Disney has 4 categories of resorts – Value, Moderate, Deluxe, Villas (cheapest to most expensive.) Depending on when you go and what kind of a discount they’re offering, you can get a Value room for ~100USD/night. They’re fine—a little on the small side, but you get all the perks of staying on-property no matter how much you’re paying per night.
Now, BrotherB is not the fuzziest of Disney fans (K almost fell over when he suggested they could join us for our usual WDW spring break trip) so we eliminated half the offerings in the Value category just by virtue of their décor (All Star Movies and Art of Animation, both of which are super-fun if you love Disney animation, but not so much if that makes you flinch.) And then, sadly, Spring Break is not one of those times where the rooms are going for less than a hundred bucks a night, so by the time I get 2 rooms, I’m looking at more than 300USD for what is essentially a Holiday Inn Express.
So, yep, that means I skip right over the Moderates and Deluxes (because I’m still going to need 2 rooms just for my family and, *koff*, let’s just say the prices rise quickly from that 300USD I just quoted) and go straight for a 2-BR villa at one of the Vacation Club resorts (aka, DVC.) B&K get the master bedroom, D&I get a bed in the 2nd BR and then assorted boys get other beds and fold-down couches. Plus, there’s a full kitchen for B’s crazy breakfast smoothies (he’s so on the green smoothie train, ugh) and whatever else we decide not to eat out.
And yeah, I know: I see you looking at those rates and thinking I have totally lost my mind (and all ability to do math), but the reason I’m going for one of these is because I’m going through a 3rd party broker and ‘renting’ the points from a DVC member. This is still not cheap, but it becomes a LOT more doable.
Okay, so crash course on how Disney runs the DVC, which is basically a time-share. Instead of getting the same week per year, people can buy a set number of points, like, say 300, and then they get to use that number of points each year. (Or they can bank this year’s points for next year, or borrow from next year.) Then each room in each DVC resort costs X points per night, where X varies depending on the time of year and what night of the week it is (ie, going in the middle of the week in January is going to cost few points than going over the Fourth of July weekend.) I have never been able to make the DVC buy-in costs make sense for us (and trust me, I have crunched those numbers every which way, because you know I love me some Disney World when the regular world is gray and boring), but renting them is a little bit easier to work with. There’s also extra shenanigans with who can book where when, but the salient points are that 11 months is the farthest in advance that a room can be booked (by people who bought points at that specific resort) and then at 7 months anyone who has DVC points can book at any DVC resort.
Back to the main narrative flow: The broker I use is DVCRentalStore.com. The other big DVC broker is David’s. Lots of people use and recommend them and I have nothing against them, but it just worked out that DVCRS.com got me my first point rental stay and everything worked out so easily that I’ve never gone anywhere else.
DVCRS.com pays DVC members (ie, people who own part of the time-share) $Y per point, and then they charge me $Y+~$2 per point. This works out farrrrrr more cheaply than what’s shown on the Disney reservation page.
Of course, it gets a little more complicated because some resorts are more popular than others and cost more points, plus that $Y+$2 gets bumped up to ($Y+2)+$2(ish) for the popular resorts, all of which means Too Many Dollars for me (and BrotherB who, remember, isn’t even a fan of WDW, he’s just determined that we not drift apart with both parents gone. It’s an astonishing display of sentimentality from him; I hate to totally gouge him for it.)
So, generally, the three cheapest DVC resorts are Old Key West, Saratoga Springs, and Kidani Village at the Animal Kingdom Lodge—which, not so coincidentally, are the resorts that are the least conveniently located to a park. (The rest of them are either walking distance and/or on a monorail/direct boat service.) They do have their pluses, though. OKW is the original DVC and the rooms are huge, way bigger than the other resorts. Saratoga Springs is walking distance to Disney Springs, which is very handy, especially when you have a party that isn’t all Parks!GO! like we do. And then Kidani Village comes with its own savanna, ie, giraffes outside your window with your morning caffeine, which is hard to beat.
We ended up with a tie between Kidani Village and Saratoga Springs, so I put in for KV because SS is a huge resort and almost always has availability if we couldn’t get anything at KV. The Animal Kingdom Lodge is way over on the western edge of WDW, totally inconvenient to everything, but hey, giraffes. And zebras. (And several of the best restaurants on property.) I had the request in at about 9 months out and thought I might have been too slow because the broker didn’t have anything available, but once we ticked over to the 7 month mark, when anyone who has DVC points to rent can make a reservation, we got a hit, so in the middle of DragonCon craziness (seriously, I was crossing Peachtree Street with 500 other geeks) we managed to get our deposits in and We Are Going, \o/.
Next up: watch me figure out what days we’ll be in which park so I can stay up until midnight and get our restaurant reservations at the 180 days-before-vacation mark (which is the earliest you can make dining reservations and trust me, there are places where this is necessary.) You know I take my food seriously so this can sometimes require spreadsheets and live interactions with whomever else is going as I try to decide things like whether it’s better to eat early at Monsieur Paul or later at Le Cellier and risk missing the fireworks. (I also realize that this is pretty much the definition of Not A Problem, that we are enormously fortunate to be able to do this, but at the same time, there is a lot of money being spent and I want to make the most of it.)
Helpful links:
DVC Rental Store
MouseSavers (tracks all kinds of discounts and promotions, on- and off-property)
TouringPlans.com's hotel comparisons + views from on-property resort rooms
no subject
I say all that to say, I admire your methodology, and one of these days, I will study this post when I visit WDW again. *g*
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But I should add the Here's What You Should Do If You're Not Crazy Like Me section, just to not scare people off. 😉
Like, if you & I were going in a couple of weeks, I'd go for a room at the Contemporary (thus giving you your 10 min to rides) or possibly the Beach Club (10 min to the Food & Wine Festival) & I might, depending on your level of Princess Acceptance, start looking for reservations at the castle. We could make the rest of it up as we went.
no subject
BrotherB who, remember, isn’t even a fan of WDW, he’s just determined that we not drift apart with both parents gone. It’s an astonishing display of sentimentality from him; I hate to totally gouge him for it.
Awwwwwww, yes, and also LOL. :)
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I'm hitting up Wine and Food and MK for a few days with my cousin's family in November and the fact that I have to worry about getting fastpasses 30 days out is giving me hives. I'll probably end up missing the date and just standing in line.
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But I think the only rides I’d really want to hit at the 30 day mark are Frozen and 7DMT – last year we were down in late October for F&W & ended up spending an unplanned day at Hollywood Studios and I was booking Fastpasses on the boatride from the Yacht/Beach Club (for 5 or 6 ppl.) I never got Toy Story, but I picked up ToT & Star Tours, & then we did single-rider for RnR & the lines weren’t bad for everything else. (And D is categorically opposed to ‘wasting’ a FP on TSMM b/c he can’t believe people wait in line for that.) Even if you don’t go at rope drop, Toy Story and Soarin’ have the extra track/theater now, so they’re not as bad as they used to be.
I almost never do the dining plan—the numbers don’t crunch for us. I sometimes do it if I’m putting all 5 of us into a Deluxe room during the free dining promotions (and I already know I can get the ADRs for the high-end restaurants/character dining), but even then, everybody has to be on board with staying in the one room and no bitching about fancy restaurants. (The payoff is, of course, watching three teenage boys lay waste to the California Grill menu w/o flinching.) Otherwise, it’s usually cheaper to do the 30% room-only discount they run at the same time. This year I have an annual pass, so I’m grabbing a Tables in Wonderland card which usually works out better for our crew.
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Do you think it'd be worth looking into DVc rental for a just me stay? Always seems like it'd be too dang expensive.
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But on the single-disney fan front, I am getting an annual pass this year, so I’m available for random trips (the rest of my schedule pending, of course.) I think I might go down for the Romance Writers of America conference next July (it’s at the Swolphin.) Cross all fingers/toes/etc, I am pushing to have finished an actual novel by then.
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Would love to be able to Disney with you! What's the date range for your AP? I'm already socking away money for an AP for myself. Had them off and on for years. Someday I'd like to upgrade to the two park crazy premiere pass. Girl's got to have dreams,
You have no idea... My face when I read novel. Would you like my money now or later? Amazing!!!
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I'm activating my AP at the end of Oct for our F&W trip. I'll get that one, NYE, spring break and RWA off of it, plus whatever else I can drop in.
I will definitely be talking once I finish up the novel--I'm about halfway through the draft and will be just self-pubbing on Amazon/Kindle Unlimited. I'm tricking my brain into doing it by pretending it's just a fic AU, which is no stress, right?
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