Well at long last we have booked our holiday in Orlando for 2020! It’s been a very entertaining game of “chicken” with several airlines as to who would blink first… and lots of decision making for us.
The key thing for us is to try and get the holiday we want for the best price possible. Which is what you all should do, even if you have a good budget to work with, you still want a good value holiday. It’s no good trying to skimp and save on things that are really important to you as you’ll end up still spending a load of cash on a holiday that doesn’t really fit your vision of a dream holiday in Orlando. Here’s our thought process, vision and ultimately booked holiday in the hope that it will inspire you or help you to make your own decisions about what’s important to you.
Our first dilemma was which way to go in regards of accommodation, do we opt for a villa or a town house, or condo, or do we the hotel route? If we do go for a hotel, do we go “off site” “on site connected to a theme park” or a “good neighbour” or “partner” hotel. We always thought booking holidays was fun and easy?? Hahaha.
So best we start with hotels. The 3 main types in the Orlando area are ‘on site’ which means a Disney or Universal hotel based in or next to the parks, a good neighbour, or partner hotel, which are as they sound, close to the theme parks and connected with them in some way, or the general hotels which are based mostly around the 192 and International Drive. The on site hotels are good if you want to be fully immersed in the magic of everything. The accommodation in these resorts has got a lot better over the last few years with WDW and Universal both stepping up to change peoples comfort levels. The rooms at the Disney ‘value’ resorts were basic at best, beds, wardrobes showers and maybe a coffee maker and A/C. But now you tend to get a lot more for the money, you even get fridges as standard. We can remember when you had to rent fridges! The one downside is if you have a family of 4 these rooms can be a little cramped, but as we say all you need is somewhere to drop the suitcases and take a shower as with an Orlando holiday you won’t be in the rooms very much anyway! These hotels have free transportation to every resort to every park, you can book your fastpass+ 60 days in advance and you can take advantage of the early park entrance – extra magic hours in the Disney resorts, and the Universal ones are right in the middle of the action and have a more “resort” feel to them and are pretty impressive.
Check out WDW websites for a full list of the value, mid-range and deluxe resorts. There can be some good deals on, extra days free, free Disney Dining plans, or look at Universal Orlando’s website for the full range of new resorts that have arrived at Universal – they have really upped their game in the last few years.
Disney good neighbour and partner hotels are ones that normally belong to a chain and are linked with Disney or on Disney property. The benefits of these are you usually get a slightly larger room for the money than a Disney resort, and you get some or all of the perks associated with staying in a Disney hotel. These benefits vary so you should check out what they offer for the price, and its normal for them to offer free shuttles to and from the parks and the various other benefits. When they are a partner hotel of WDW you get an added bonus of booking Fastpass+ 60 days in advance of travel, full use of the Disney transportation system and Extra Magic Hours. Such a great way to start the day by simply wandering down to the lobby, grab a coffee to go and hopping on a shuttle to the parks! A bit of a Brucie bonus if you ask us.
The Universal equivalent of these are Bonus Benefits hotels. They offer discounts of food, drinks and beverages throughout the Universal resorts and possibly shuttle services. Worth checking out.
Most resort hotels normally charge for parking and it’s normally around $15 per night for a moderate or value hotel, and $25ish for the higher end affairs. The way you can offset the parking charges is to use as much free Disney or shuttle transportation as possible. Use the buses, monorail and now the Skyliner (certain hotels on Disney property) and this will save you quite a lot over the duration of your holiday, as the parking at WDW and Universal parks is around $25 per day. So if you are only pay for the hotel parking you are up on the deal! With the extra magic hours and Fastpass booking – winning!
The other chain hotels are abundant in the area. All down the 192, the I-4 and International Drive you can’t throw churro without hitting a Rosen Inn or a Doubletree Inn. These are great for couples and small families. Cheaper than the resort and partner hotels and they offer loads of incentives to stay, such as ‘free transportation’ (normally you tip the driver each way). These are great and useful but they normally don’t run as often as the Disney transportation system buses. They do the normal buffet breakfasts etc and are ideally located to take advantage of the new and improved road network in the area. The downside of these is you cannot book your Disney fastpass+ 60 days out, but the rooms are normally quite well appointed, showers A/C, fridges etc. But you are looking to stay in the area and be quite close to the action these will be perfect for you.
We looked at all 3 versions of hotels and villas, and also condos and townhouses. The downside for us this year is as Mr Oh Orlando has to take his holidays in the main 2 shutdown weeks in the summer, the price of villas and townhouses was getting pretty expensive for those weeks for just two of us. We do love a villa, but as we are going during such a busy period, and also a time when the Orlando afternoon showers are in full swing, we thought we might be better suited to be close to the action and take advantage of some of the benefits of a resort hotel. SO we decided on staying at a ‘partner’ hotel in none other than Disney Springs. The Holiday Inn at Disney Springs to be exact. This hotel has a commanding view of the Magic Kingdom and ideal as a base for our coming adventures! We’ve gone for a King room with a ‘Disney’ view. All the rooms come with a fridge, microwave and loads of power points/usb sockets, along with a sofa. To say we are excited is an understatement.
One of the the main reasons for booking us here is its a great base for us, and we love love love Disney Springs. Because of the time of year we are going we will be ‘park hopping’ like a pair of crazy fools. So, if we are based at Disney Springs we can hop on a bus to wherever, run round like mad , then hop on a bus, the monorail/Skyliner or a boat (yes boats, WDW is linked via inland waterways and lagoons). The Extra Magic park hours will be a real boon for us as well, imagine trying to get into Blackspire Outpost (Star Wars land) in the main weeks?? At least this way we can pop along and take the Millennium Falcon for a spin around the Galaxy and be done for breakfast! The other plus to staying here (Disney Springs) is the abundance of shops and bars and restaurants situated around the small lagoon, and the hotel is within walking distance, so that’s a real bonus. We are so looking forward to visiting Disney Springs again and are very much looking forward to our hotel stay at the Holiday Inn which has some excellent reviews.
So – hotel booked, we are on to the flights! This is where it gets tricky for us. We are usually pretty easy to sort out, travelling outside of peak times and so we generally book Virgin Atlantic flights out of Manchester direct to Orlando International and we book a car separately with Dollar or Alamo or Budget as these tend to be cheapest. Of course this year things are different, peak UK holiday times mean a massive price hike on flight prices compared with what we usually pay. With so little wiggle room (we have to travel on a Saturday) we couldn’t even shop around for a midweek flight to try and save ourselves some cash. So we started our investigations. We bounced around from British Airways, to Virgin Atlantic and TUi’s Dreamliner. So BA to start with – decent prices, downside for us starting point was Gatwick, but if you want to save a little cash the BA flight from Gatwick to Tampa will save you a lot of money. The travel time to Orlando from Tampa is about an hour and fifteen minutes as opposed to 20-40 minutes from Orlando International Airport to the resort areas but its an easy drive, pretty much on one road, the I4. We almost opted for that. We looked at the Dreamliner with TUi, also a good option for you if you have a bit of flexibility. It was a decent price but as we have to fly on a Saturday Doncaster was our starting point as that’s the only Saturday flight to Orlando. The TUi flights fly into Orlando Sanford f – a very easy airport to get through and out of as its so small, great easy journey into the resort areas too so definitely worth a look and you should get yourselves a good price. They also fly from lots of UK airports – Birmingham, East Midlands etc so you should be able to find a good starting point into Orlando Sanford, a superbly efficient airport to get in and out of.
The Virgin Atlantic prices, when first released, looked pretty high – way too high for us, and priced at a figure we were not prepared to pay. So we watched and waited and re-thought our options and eventually went back to a firm we have used previously to see if they could help. Dial-a-Flight to the rescue! We spoke to a lovely chap called Glen, and explained our dilemma. He looked at both the BA and Virgin Atlantic flights and all starting/finishing points, for us to see what he could get them for. After a few emails and discussions, and us telling Glen what we were prepared to pay -tadaaaaaaa! Sorted! Glen managed to get us the Virgin Atlantic flights we wanted, out of Manchester, on the Saturday we need for a price we were very happy with. In fact we actually booked a fly-drive option, so we got an excellent price for the two flights and a car. Very happy indeed thanks to Glen at Dial-a-Flight. So if you can’t find what you’re looking for, at a price you want to pay, or if you just fancy letting someone else do the legwork rather than you leaping out of bed every day watching flights like a deranged flight price ninja, then please do give Glen Blackburn a call at Dial-a-Flight, his number is 01732 592920. He will be most helpful we are sure and the paperwork was all sorted super speedily and he has even booked excellent seats for us so we can highly recommend Dial-a-Flight and Glen.
So, hotel booked, perks noted, flights and car booked (very happy indeed) just park tickets to go. We have used various ticket companies before, Attraction Tickets Direct, FloridaTix and Orlando Attraction Tickets. As we have said previously, all offer perks and incentives, their prices are pretty similar and they sometimes let you pay current year’s prices for the following year’s tickets. We also researched booking direct with Disney and Universal for their tickets, and they are pretty competitive with the UK ticket companies, but the difference is having everything all booked through the same company. The UK ticket companies all offer multi-park tickets that cover Universal, Disney, water parks and various other theme parks and attractions so you can very easily see what the total cost is of all the theme parks you want to cover. For us this year Orlando Attraction Tickets got our business- they offer a Disney/Universal “Switch” ticket which covered the parks we wanted and was £20 cheaper per person for next year than anyone else we could find. £20 is £20! £40 saved on booking is £40 more to spend on goodies when we get there! Another advantage with Orlando Attraction Tickets is you can reserve your tickets for a small deposit – very small in fact £10 per person – with the balance due next year before we go. So job done! All sorted.
So that’s our holiday plans – Virgin Atlantic Flight and Dollar car hire booked through Dial-a-Flight, a Disney partner hotel – Holiday Inn at Disney Springs and theme park tickets with Orlando Attraction Tickets. All sorted and now we are on the countdown! A long countdown – yes – but a countdown none the less and we couldn’t be more excited.
See you in 2020 Orlando.
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