How to Book a Disney World Vacation and Save Money!
Going to Disney World has never been easier! Let me show you how to book a Disney World vacation hassle-free and save some money!
We love going to Disney World! First of all, fewer crowds. Second of all, bigger parks. And there are ponds everywhere! It’s such a fun experience and although you do have to worry about the weather a little more in Orlando than you do in California, we are loving Disney World more and more lately. I’ve heard from some friends though that booking their trip has felt daunting! We live in Utah and making the flight to Orlando, renting a car, buying tickets, figuring out food, it all just seems like a lot for some people! And it totally is! I’m here to show you all of the resources available to you in order to help you book your Disney World vacation so much easier!
This post is all about how to book a Disney World vacation!
How to Book a Disney World Vacation
Let me clue you into a little secret. It’s all about the bundle. If you bundle your tickets or your car rental with your hotel, you can save so much money! Let me give you an example! For a recent trip to Disney World that we took with our 3-year-old son, we saved $770.38 using the Costco Bundle! If you can bundle, do it!
So let’s talk about the best places to use to book a Disney World vacation and all of the bundle options available!
Flights to Orlando
We have flown to Florida on JetBlue, Delta, and Southwest to name a few. By far, we have enjoyed our flights on Delta. From our experience, Delta has had the best nonstop flights from the East Coast at the most convenient times of the day. If you’ve got the Delta credit card, you can get everyone on your reservation’s first bag checked for free (up to 8 people) which makes flying with them a little more convenient. If you’re interested in signing up for a card (which I highly recommend!) they have an amazing sign-up bonus!
Southwest was nice because our bags are always free with them. However, the downside was that there were no nonstop flights from Utah. If you can get yourself a nonstop flight to Orlando from your nearest airport or don’t mind layovers, I highly recommend them! Although, just keep an eye on them because they have had some problems with canceled flights recently.
JetBlue was nice as well but we typically only see redeye flights for them for reasonable prices. If you don’t mind those, then go for it! We’ve done it before with a 1-year-old and it was doable for sure as long as you prepare for it. Check out that blog post here!
7 BEST TIPS FOR A RED EYE FLIGHT WITH A 1 YEAR OLD
I’m sure other airlines are just as good to fly on to Orlando as well! I’ve seen some Spirit flights that are reasonably priced and at good times as well!
Transportation in Orlando
Alright, let’s talk transportation! There are basically two ways to go about this. Use rideshare or rent a car. Let’s talk about the benefits of each!
RideShare
The Orlando airport is about 30 minutes away from Disney World. If you are staying at a Disney World resort hotel and don’t want to worry about renting a car, you can get an Uber or Lyft to take you from the Orlando airport to your hotel and back. Once at the resort, you will be able to get to each park and Disney Springs by using the complimentary buses and/or Skyliners. They are super convenient!
If you’re not staying at a Disney World resort hotel and your hotel doesn’t offer transportation to the park, you can also use Uber or Lyft to get you to the park each morning and evening! The average cost is about $10-$15 a trip for those rides. So for rides to all 4 parks, it would be around $120.
Renting a Car
If you want to rent a car, there are some great car rentals that are available right in the airport. Enterprise and Alamo are definitely the ones I would recommend. They have the best customer service and the cars feel safe.Â
The cost to park at Disney parks is about $25 a day. So if you’re going to all four parks on separate days, you will spend $100 on parking. Plus the cost to rent a car. It does add up.
You also want to check to see if your hotel has parking fees. The good news is that Disney World resort hotels no longer have parking fees! So if you are staying there, you won’t need to worry about that.
Renting a car can be nice but if you are just doing Disney World, I would recommend trying to use ridesharing or Disney-provided transportation. The benefits of renting a car come when you are wanting to venture outside of the Disney properties! If you are wanting to take a beach day or visit some of the sites, renting a car is a great option!
Hotels in Orlando
Booking a vacation to Disney World wouldn’t be complete without your hotel!
Disney World Resorts
There are several different Disney properties that you can stay on if you want to have the Disney experience. Which I would highly recommend doing at least once! Disney World Resort hotels range from around $200 a night to upwards of $1,000 a night. Some properties also have suites if you want more space. Here is a breakdown of the different types of resorts you can stay at on Disney property!
The difference really ranges in room sizes, views, dining and entertainment options, and transportation to the parks. The higher you go, the more convenient everything is going to be. For example, the Boardwalk is right outside of EPCOT. So that’s nice!
Value Resorts
- Disney’s Pop Century Resort
- Disney’s Art of Animation
- Disney’s All-Star Movies Resort
- Disney’s All-Star Music Resort
- Disney’s All-Star Sports Resort
Moderate Resorts
- Disney’s Caribbean Beach Resort
- Disney’s Port Orleans Resort – French Quarter
- Disney’s Port Orleans Resort – Riverside
- Disney’s Coronado Springs Resort
- The Cabins at Disney’s Fort Wilderness Resort
Deluxe Resorts
- Disney’s Boardwalk Inn
- Disney’s Contemporary Resort
- Disney’s Animal Kingdom Lodge
- Disney’s Beach Club Resort
- Disney’s Grand Floridian Resort
- Disney’s Polynesian Village Resort
- Disney’s Yacht Club Resort
Deluxe Villas
- Animal Kingdom Lodge Villas
- Bay Lake Tower at Disney’s Contemporary Resort
- Boulder Ridge Villas at Disney’s Wilderness Lodge
- Disney’s Beach Club Villas
- Disney’s BoardWalk Villas
- Copper Creek Villas and Cabins at Disney’s Wilderness Lodge
- The Villas at Disney’s Grand Floridian Resort & Spa
- Disney’s Old Key West Resort
- Disney’s Polynesian Villas & Bungalows
- Disney’s Riviera Resort
- Disney’s Saratoga Springs Resort & Spa
- Treehouse Villas
- Fort Wilderness Resort & Campground
We stayed at the Pop Century Resort with Disney and loved it. The vibe was so fun and the complimentary park transportation was amazing. We’ve also heard amazing things about the Boardwalk Inn and Villas and the Caribbean Resort.
Offsite Hotels
We have also stayed offsite and one of our favorites has been the Sheraton by Marriott. We were able to get a suite that gave us extra space to get comfortable. and have been very impressed as well with them. With our bundle, we were able to get free hotel parking which was nice! Click on the picture below to check out the hotel!
Disney World Park Tickets
We’ve got you to Orlando, now for the fun part. Let’s get you into Disney World! If you are bundling your trip, you are more likely to get some sort of discount on your tickets. On our Disney World Trip, we were able to save $200 on our tickets by bundling them with our hotel and car rental rather than by buying them directly through Disney.
But wait, what do all of the options mean when buying my tickets? Disney World tickets are not nearly as simple as Disneyland tickets. With Disneyland, you’ve got a park hopper and 1 park-per-day ticket. And there are only two parks. With Disney World, you’ve got 1 park-per-day ticket, park hopper, park hopper plus, and water park and sports options. And then you have 4 parks on top of all of that! Don’t worry, I’m here for you.Â
Before jumping into the options, you probably want to ask yourself how many days you want to be there. The most common is 4 or 5. That gives you enough time to go to each park and have an extra day to do the water parks if you want.
We’ve also heard on good authority that using the Park Hopper tickets and using the Disney Genie Plus option is such a great way to experience the parks. You can do the parks in 2 days and then explore other parts (or parks) in Orlando during a week’s trip. Since Disney Genie Plus can range from $15-$30 per day, per person, and park hopper tickets are about $50-$70 more than a regular ticket, you could save yourself about $40-$50 per person doing it this way! (These are rough estimates though because Disney tickets fluctuate so much depending on demand and the parks you are going to though, so don’t quote me!)
Let’s walk through all of the ticket options!
1 park per day
1 park per day tickets are probably the easiest to understand! You get to go to 1 park each day of your Disney trip. Don’t forget that since 2020, you need to make a park reservation for the park you want to go to. During busy times, reservations will run out for the parks you want to go to, so do this as soon as you can!
Park Hopper Option
The Disney World park hopper ticket allows you to go to a different park at 2:00 pm. You will need a reservation for your first park, but you won’t need one for your second park. However, if the park is full, you may not be able to go to your second park, so keep an eye on that. If you drive a car and park in the parking lot, your parking pass will be valid at the second park you go to, so you don’t need to worry about having to pay two parking fees!
Water Park and Sports Option
The Water Park and Sports ticket at Disney World allows you to have a certain number of passes to the water parks and sports parks that Disney owns. Here is a list of your options!
- Disney’s Blizzard Beach Water Park
- Disney’s Oak Trail Golf Course – FootGolf
- Disney’s Oak Trail Golf Course
- Disney’s Fantasia Gardens Miniature Golf Course (before 4 pm)
- Disney’s Winter Summerland Miniature Golf Course (before 4 pm)
- ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex (currently unavailable)
- Disney’s Typhoon Lagoon Water Park (currently unavailable)
When you purchase this option, you will get the number of visits equaling the number of days you purchased. So if you bought a 5-day ticket, you get 5 visits to any of the available options above. If you choose this option, you may want to add a couple of days up to maybe even doubling the days of your park ticket and have enough to do!
Park Hopper Plus Option
The last option is the Park Hopper Plus Option. This option combines the Park Hopper Disney World ticket and the Water Park and Sports Options. So you get to hop from one park to another AND you can have passes to the sports and water parks equal to the number of days you bought for your Disney ticket. It’s the best of both worlds!
How to Bundle Your Trip
Ok, so we talked about all of the things you need, now let’s talk about how to book it all! We’ve used and trusted two sites completely with our Disney World trips. We haven’t had any problems with our reservations when booking them so we would highly recommend them! And bonus, we’ve also gotten some pretty good deals with each of these sites!
Get Away Today
Hotel + Park Tickets
If you just want to bundle your hotel and park tickets, I really recommend Get Away Today. They have amazing deals when booking your trip, especially for Disney Resort properties. For Disney World, you just submit a quote request for the dates you want to go and the number of people, and they will send you several different Disney World resort options with park tickets included. They will book everything for you and keep an eye on price changes to make sure you are getting the best deal!
Costco Travel
Hotel + Park Tickets + Flights + Car Rental
Costco Travel has become a recent favorite way to book Disney trips because you can bundle a car rental and even flights with it. Costco usually has some pretty great deals on Disney World resort properties and even nearby hotels so there is a good variety to choose from. Some of them come with perks too! We’ve gotten free hotel parking and Costco gift cards from some of the hotels we have stayed at which has been nice!
To book with Costco, you do have to be a Costco member. Or I guess you can always get a Costco member to book the trip for you!
There you have it! That is how you book a Disney World vacation to get good deals! I’ve said it before, and I will say it again, if you can bundle things, you will get some great deals! Enjoy and leave a comment if you have any questions!
