Hotels: Islands

I’m not the expert you need for some of your questions, but I can speak to the benefits of staying onsite. You are provided free transportation between the parks and your hotel. Also ask about Magical Express — a bus will take you from the airport to your hotel (and back to the airport when your trip is over) for free. You can also have your luggage delivered straight to your room without having to get it from baggage claim….a HUGE time saver.

Any purchases can be delivered to your room so they are waiting when you return at night and don’t have to carry it around. And the dining plan can put pre-paid meals on your resort ID (this is your room key, park admission, and food pass all in one). For around $35/day/person you can have lunch, dinner, and a snack…even dinners that would cost up to $50 normally (but be sure to make dining reservations in advance for nicer restaurants, and be aware that some, such as a meal inside Cinderella’s Castle or getting a large pizza at your hotel will cost two dinner credits).

It is also possible to authorize your resort ID to be linked to a credit card and have purchases charged when you present the resort ID, so you don’t have to carry cash or credit cards. Very handy at the water parks!

I stayed off-property once (never again), and had to listen to a half-hour timeshare presentation every morning to get on the “free” shuttle the hotel provided, and the shuttles back to the hotel would leave so early that I had to cut my days short. Disney transportation won’t leave you behind.

Have a great time!

The Caribbean Beach Resort is beautiful, you can get free transportation from and back to the airport and all your transportation from the hotel to the parks is free.

You will have to purchase entrance tickets for each day you plan on going to a park, these tickets cover the rides.

The week you plan to go is a busy one, pre-arrange your sit down meals at 1-407WDWDine, or you will have a difficult time finding places to eat.

hey that’s the hotel i stayed at the last time i went. it’s a great hotel, and it has a pretty nice pool. and most of the rides if not all of them are free cuz thats what ur paying for when u buy the park tickets. as to the travel agent question, I think online is better cuz i know our travel agent didn’t save us any money, but she took the stress off us cuz all we had to do was pack our bags and show up at the airport, but i think it’s cheaper to book online. hmm… benefits for staying at disney… oh u should have watched travel channel saturday, it was on pretty much all day. but some pretty nice benefits are those after hours bracelets. some parks open early or stay open late and have a person handing out bracelets, but only people staying in the disney resorts can get them. and you can use the disney shuttle to get from the airport to the park so u don’t have to rent a car. and there are usually things the hotels have that u can only use if ur staying there. like the pools for example, so if u don’t want to go to the crowded water park, then u can go to the less crowded hotel pool. oh and make sure you look for the disney characters wherever u go. disney sells these autograph books and the disney characters will sign them while they’re out in the park. but they’re never all together in the same place at the same time, usually they show up at the most random times.

ok personally i would either book it online directly from disney or i would go to somewhere like AAA.
i’d at least look at disney world’s website to compare prices from expedia cuz i’m pretty sure that expedia won’t be any cheaper cuz disney doesn’t give discounts to places to pass on to you.
disney really doesn’t do discounts period.
here is the website you can customize everything from:
hotel
ticket options
flight
and free transportation from the airport to the hotel and back to the airport as well.
and there is free transpotation from you hotel to all over disney world so there is no need to rent a car while staying on disney property.

also the caribbean beach hotel is quite nice. you can look at all of the hotels on the disney website as well .
personally i love the pop century restort.

also the time you have chosen to go dec. 20th – 27th is super super busy at disney world. i’m going from dec. 27th – jan 2nd and dec 31st new years eve is reported to be the busiest day of the entire yoear.
but basically the busiest possible time to go would be from dec 21st- jan 1st. so just concider the crowds when you are going will be extremely high.

also if you plan to go dec 20th you really need to book your trip like NOW.
i booked my trip on july 11th and we weren’t going to get the hotel we wanted but while we were deciding which other hotel to choose the hotel we wanted became availabel cuz someone cancelled their trip.
so if you want to get the hotel you want and everything you really need to book it like TODAY DON’T WAIT ANY LONGER. THE HOTEL YOU WANT MAY ALREADY BE BOOKED.
and you have to consider that with the time your going being the peak time to go the price of the hotels are at their highest rates.
normally the pop century resort is $82 per night but while we are going we will be paying $129 per night.

and i’m not sure what you mean when you ask if you stay at a disney hotel are the rides free?

no they aren’t free.
you have to buy tickets to get into the parks.
a one day base ticket will cost you $75 per person but after that the price per ticket is much cheaper. so plan to spend around $215 per person for a for day park ticket.
you can also add options like a park hopper whcih lets you go to what ever parks you want all in one day. so if you got a 4 day park hopper ticket you could start out at magic kingdom then go to say epcot all in the same day. then say day 2 you went to animal kingdom in the moring then back to magic kingdom for the rest of the day.
its great to avoid crowds go make sure that you can go to the parks more than once so if you don’t have enough time to do everyting in one day then the next day you can finish up that park and start at another one.
personally i don’t get the park hopper option just cuz it costs that much extra.
instead this is what we do.
2 days magic kingdom
2 days epcot
1 day hollywood studios
0 days animal kingdom cuz we don’t care for that park
1 day pool day where we hang out at the hotel and swim and then go to downtown disney and shop and eat.

you can also get a water park and more option.
you get admissions to the water parks for each day ticket you bought. and so example you could go to hollywood studios and a water park all in the same day. or you could just go to one water park all day. or you could go to 2 water parks on the same day. so if you bought a 5 day park ticket then you would have a 5 day water park ticket as well.
also with that option you get 1 admission to disney quest which is a huge arcade at downtown disney. with all kinds of games and simulators.
i never get this option either cuz i don’t have that much time to spend at the water parks and disney quest. i am more about going to the theme parks.

the benifits that you get by staying on disney property are.
-extra magic hours. you get to depending on what day eith get in 1 hour early before the general pulic to what ever park has magic hours in the morning or stay up to 3 hours later at the park than the general public does at whatever parks have magic hours at night that day.
-free transportation from the airport to your hotel and back again
-free transportation from you hotel to everywhere in disney world.
-things you buy in the parks can be delievered to your room for free
-you don’t have to claim your luggage at the ariport if you take advantage of the free transport bus. you simply put disney luggage tags on it and then the disney people will find it and they have a list of who is staying where so that the luggage will go to the correct hotle and they will put it in your room for you.
-dining option.

which i would def look into .
its only available to guests that stay on disney property.
it costs $38 per day for adults and $11 per day for kids 3-9 years old.
you get
1table service meal per day
1snack per day
1quick service meal per day.
plus i recoomend bringing breakfast from home such as a box of cerial and then buying a refillable muy from you hotel for $12 and you can fill it over and over at your hotel for the duration of your stay.
this way your meal plan is more effective.
this is what i do with the dining plan:
breakfast- cerial from home with milk poured over it that i go with my refillable mug then fill the mug with juice, hot chocolate what ever to drink with my cerial.
lunch-eith a table servic meal or a quick service meal
snack-botlle of pop or water or chocolate milk, ice cream, hot pretzel, chips, what ever.
dinner-what ever meal i didn’t use for lunch.
it works out great and you’ll never be hungry.

hope i helped.
have fun!

We used Custom Mouse Plans and they were great! I highly recommend them, especially during such a busy time. You will get so much more out of your trip if you use their service. They will even make your dining reservations for you! I would contact them soon if you want to get the most out of the service.