Time Frame

If you are thinking about heading to Disney World in the future, I would suggest you begin planning no less than 8 months in advance. Depending on the amount of free time you have to devote to the task, you may want to give yourself a little more time than that. There are two reasons for this. One: accommodations book up in advance, especially at the Disney Hotels when there are special offers. Two: You have to make dining reservations six months in advance of your trip.  It's not impossible to book on shorter notice, but it is more difficult. I started at 389 days out for planning our first trip.

Before you dive in, you may want to go ahead and create a My Disney Experience account. Whether you choose to stay on-site or off-site, you will need it in order to make dining reservations and manage FastPass+. There's an app that can be put on your smart phone or tablet, or you can use the website. It will keep track of all your reservations, and has lots of helpful information. Then, order a copy of the Disney Vacationing Planning DVD. It's a lot of fun to watch, and builds a lot of excitement.

Of course the first thing you are going to want to do is figure out the time of year that will be the best fit for your family. For that, I recommend doing two things: Checking a crowd calendar, and looking at the price categories for the Disney hotels. Different times of year have different pricing.

The best crowd calendar I've found is on Touringplans.com. They require a subscription to their site in order to view their calendar. If you are positive that you are going to be going to Disney in the next year, I would highly recommend buying the subscription if you are the kind of person who wants to plan how you tour the parks in a more in-depth manner. The touring plan tool can be a great asset if a more rigorous schedule is your thing. Even if it isn't, there are benefits to having a subscription. Touring Plans has a lot of good resources. They have put a lot of work into gathering and analysing years worth of data to compile the most accurate crowd calendar and touring plans available. They even have an app that you can use to see actual real-time waits in line for rides and attractions. This can be a great tool once you are in the parks and want to know if it's worth your time to go to the other side of the park for a ride, or if it can wait. They also have menus and prices for restaurants, which is a great tool for planning (can be found free elsewhere) and for while you are in the parks.

Easywdw.com also has a really good calendar. This calendar is even a little more in-depth as to the information it provides, and is completely free to use on their website. The information on the calendar is based on data collected over the last several years. The calendar features a section on weather, which is based on historical data for the last 15 years. The calendar also features park hours and special entertainment times that are based on the hours schedule for past years, or on already announced times. It also lists any rides, restaurants, or attractions that are closed for refurbishment. Last but not least, it includes a price section that relates to room prices at the Disney hotels. Oh, one more thing... It flat-out tells you the best week to visit for each month. Honestly the only advantage Touring Plans has over Easywdw, is the apps for your phone and the actual touring plans if that's your thing.

You already have a little bit of an idea about pricing seasons if you looked at easywdw.com. This part gets a little more in-depth, because you need to have a bit of an idea of what kind of money you want to spend. Disney hotels are divided into price categories with amenity levels: Value Resorts, Moderate Resorts, and Deluxe Resorts. Off-site hotels and vacation homes tend to run the same types of pricing seasons as the Disney resorts, but have lower rates.

allears.net gives a great breakdown of the hotels in each of Disney's price categories. They provide fact sheets for each of the hotels that includes types of accommodations, amenities and a broad spectrum for the rates in each of the pricing seasons.

Mousesavers.com gives a more broken down time frame for what times of year fall into which price season for each hotel, including showing the rate for each room type during that time.

So, if you look at the crowd calendar on easywdw.com and decide that the best time for your trip is July 12-18, then visit allears.net and decide that the Value Resort Art of Animation is the resort that would be the best fit, you head over to Mousesavers.com and click on the Art of Animation link and scroll down until you get to the July 3- August 15 date range and you will see that a Little Mermaid Room runs $183 a night during the week and $214 a night for weekend nights. So you're looking at $1,343 for a week at that particular hotel. If your family is larger than 4 people, you would need one of the family suites which for that time frame run $413 for weeknight and $472 for weekends. So, $3,009 for the week. You could do 2 of the standard rooms for cheaper, but that would put parents in separate rooms if your kids are too young to be trusted alone at night in a hotel room. If your party has more than 2 adults, this option would be more appealing. If you have more than 6 guests, the single room options get very expensive. A 2 bedroom villa at Old Key West resort is $721 a night for the above time frame.

If you have a larger family and want to stay on-site, you might want to look for a lower price season for your trip, unless multiple rooms are an option or you aren't burdened by a tighter budget.