***Currently under construction. Please be patient while we build!***
I've decided I want to share some of the knowledge I've learned from planning a Disney World vacation with anybody who might care to read it.
I've decided I want to share some of the knowledge I've learned from planning a Disney World vacation with anybody who might care to read it.
First off, my story...
Disney World has been a dream destination for me since the first time I saw an advertisement in the mid 80s. Being of single digit age at the time, the idea never occurred to me that you could travel to a place like that. I thought you went to places that were near your house. We didn't live near Disney World, so in my head it wasn't an option. Had it occurred to me, and I had asked my parents to take me, I think there's a huge possibility we would have gone.
20 years later, I was a wife and mother to a small boy when Disney Dreams started filling my head. It was probably brought on by thoughts of things I wanted my son to experience that I never experienced myself. Disney World was always that thing that never happened that I lusted after as a kid. Don't get me wrong, I had an amazing childhood full of things that a lot of people will never experience. My dad was in the Army and I have lived in several states and even lived in Germany for several years. I've been to Neuschwanstein Castle, which Cinderella's Castle was modeled after. I just never made it to Cinderella's castle, and I didn't want my son to look back at his childhood and have that missing part.
At that point in time, the internet was still blooming into the fount of information that it is today. I don't even know if Disney World had a website at that point. I had to call a phone number in order to get the Disney World vacation planning guide and VHS tape. After reviewing those materials, my heart sank at realizing that a Disney vacation just wasn't in the cards for us. The price was just too much for us to manage.
Five years (and two more kids) later, I was having a conversation with an online acquaintance who had just booked a Disney vacation, and I found out that Disney runs all kind of specials during the year. Not only that, but she told me that prices are significantly different during different pricing "seasons" throughout the year.
This prompted me to do some searching, just to see what I could find out on the subject. At first I was a little down trodden. Yes, Disney does offer some pretty good deals at various times of the year at their hotels, but having a school age child narrowed down our time possibilities to times when there are no special offers available. I wasn't quite deterred yet though. I was convinced that there was a way to make this work.
My obsessive searching led me to a site (I wish I could remember which one, so I could credit them.) that had a section concerning larger families and the lack of really good options for large families at Disney hotels. We are a family of six, when my mom who we share a home with is included into our five, so I had already noticed this and decided to investigate this subject a little further. The website suggested that larger families look into rental homes in Kissimmee in order to save some money instead of staying on-site at a Disney hotel. Rental homes. Okay. That's a whole new kettle of fish, isn't it?
A couple days and a lot of searching and researching later, I had some numbers. Cost of tickets + Cost of rental house + estimated food cost + incidentals = HOLY CRAP! This is doable! I sat my mother and husband down and presented them with my findings. They had no idea what I had been doing, so this totally came from left field. At first they were kind of taken aback and finding out I had been not just entertaining this idea but seriously pursuing it without ever having said a thing to either of them. They were also amazed when they heard my estimated total for this venture. They agreed to it, and our journey began.
