We booked our summer vacation to Disney World!
Our daughter has really been seeking some thrills and our last road trip went so well.
We started by saying what are we gonna do for vacation this year, since last year we didn’t do a big family vacay like we have done in years past. In 2017 we went to PR, in ’18 to Florida also to WDW, ’19 we did California & Las Vegas road trip. But with the circumstances in 2020, we stayed local, hit the coast and also baby Lainey, my niece, was due in July and we typically travel in June. So fast forward to Bela our thirteen year old says she wants to do something fun theme park wise, and so we thought why not? So long as her grades go well it would be good for her to get back out into the world before returning to school later this year.
I started looking into vacation packages and theme parks, and found a really good deal on a Universal Orlando Resort package. It didn’t really take much to convince everyone and so we booked it. Five days, Four nights with park tickets for all three of us, (our son doesnt need an admission ticket under three years old) for a very affordable $1430 with tax included. Now if you know me, I’m all about the deals. Deals, deals, deals. I won’t book anything I can’t cancel unless I’m convinced I’m getting the best deal I can. So I’ll break down the costs for you.
The most expensive part of this whole thing is the admission tickets. They’re four day park to park tickets, which Is certainly one of the more expensive options, but ill get into why we chose this pass in a bit. So each of those four day tickets costs about $345 per person (for all four days). So for $345 we are getting access to all three Universal Orlando Parks, Island of Adventures, Universal Orlando, and Volcano Bay water park for four pre selected dates. So some quick math, $1,035 for all the admission tickets. My overall total if you recall was $1430 (including taxes) so for the remains $395 pays for our room and taxes on everything for four nights, averaging less than $99 a night taxes included. Some of the perks to staying on property is we are able to enter the Wizarding World of Harry Potter one hour before the park opens, and there’s also complimentary transportation from the resort to the park, so you don’t have to pay for parking at the park. You do however pay for parking at the resort if you are bringing your own vehicle. Overall this is a very good deal on a budget travel for a family of three about $476/ person including taxes.
We also were flirting with the idea of Walt Disney World, but had some reservations at first. I wasn’t that sure about the rides and such for my son Teddy. He’s two and I was really thinking there would be a height requirement for most of the rides but upon further research we actually found lots for him to be able to do. So we began thinking that we definitely wanted to go for at least one day. Then I started to really dive into some YouTube videos from some of our favorite bloggers and got really really excited for it. We ultimately decided to purchase two day tickets to round out our week. I’ll breakdown the costs and stuff here and let me tell y’all, it was a little steep.
The long list of rides that we discovered Teddy could ride and would probably enjoy is mostly at Magic Kingdom. So thats where we booked our first reservation for. To just name a few, Dumbo’s flying Elephants, Tommorowland Speedway (to my surprise), Buzz Lightyear Alien something or another, the People Mover, which has only very recently opened back up. Upon some closer examination, he actually measures out a little taller than I anticipated so even though most of these have no height requirements, he is in fact tall enough to ride a few more that do have a height req. We also want to make sure he was able to visit the Animal Kingdom because we love animals and I think he will be very excited on the safari ride where you’re able to get up close to a lot of them. This is what ultimately led us to additionally add park hopper options, and the second day. It’s just too hard to see a lot of Disney World in one day. In fact, you could stay a week and not see everything you wanted to see. So naturally we opted to add on. I also am personally excited to see Spaceship Earth at night, which is at Epcot, and Toy Story Land is at Hollywood Studios, and although Teddy isn’t tall enough to ride, it’s his favorite Disney story so we can’t not walk through and visit it.
The process; I purchased the tickets right in the app. In order to get into the park, you actually need two things. The first is an admission ticket. Sounds normal right? Secondly, you need a “Park Reservation.” You basically, need to reserve a place in the park for the specific day and park that you choose. No longer can you simply purchase an admission ticket and get into the park. Weird concept I know, but it’s so that the capacity can stay at the restricted limit. If you have a four day ticket, but aren’t planning on visiting four consecutive days, someone else needs to be able to enter the park. So two things needed to enter Walt Disney World, a park ticket AND a park reservation.
The cost: the cost of a base ticket starts at $109, as you book into the summer months the ticket prices fluctuate some during peak. So our base tickets each go down slightly when you book consecutive days in some instances. But ours were about $130/day. The park hopper option was an additional $75 per ticket. So each ticket per person came put to $335 each person for two days with park hoppers. Grand total of $1067 after taxes. For comparison reasons of cost, we also paid just over $1000 for four day passes at Universal Orlando. We still need a hotel reservations or two nights around Disney World, since we check out of Universal Orlando after four nights.
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