Planning your Disney World Trip - Booking Fastpasses/Ordering Groceries

Hello, hello! Today is one of the last installments of my tips for planning your Disney World trip! I really hope this is helping someone out there, if not, it's good for my memory to write it down and I'll use it for our next trip, ha

*Booking your Fastpass+*

Timeframe: 30-60 days out

The time you can book all your fastpass+ all depends if you are staying on Disney property or not. If you are staying on Disney property, wherever that might be, you get to book them 60 days in advance. If you are staying off property then it is 30 days in advance. I'm going to focus on staying on Disney property.

Again, like the dining, that is 60 days out from the first day of your trip.  So you need to get a calendar out and mark down the day that your able to start booking your Fastpasses.

You will do all your fastpass+ booking through the My Disney Experience website or app - I do recommend making your fastpass+ reservations on the website vs the app and also from a desktop and not your phone, it just makes it easier and I found a few glitches using the app so I didn't want to risk it.

Fastpass+ are like gold - and each person with a park ticket gets 3 per day (that you can book in advance - once you are there and use all 3, you can book more)

You will want to go back to your notes of the attractions/entertainment for each park and the things you really want to see.  It's also a good idea to know what has the longest wait times because obviously that is where you'll want to use your fastpass+

Check out this article on how fastpass+ works and it also provides a link to each park to show you what the hottest attractions to fastpass+ are.

In my opinion, you want to book all your fastpass+  for the afternoon, when the park is the busiest.  If you arrive to the park at rope drop (a term that means when the park opens) you should be able to hit lots of rides, even some of the popular ones with very minimal wait.

What we did was - arrive to the park at rope drop - hit as many attractions or entertainment as we could, eat lunch (usually early around 11ish) then headed back to our hotel to relax, swim, or nap. We went back to the park in the afternoon and that is when our fastpass+  were booked for.

Let me tell you how nice it is to show up at the park around 3 or 4pm when it is SO busy and be able to walk right on some of the most popular rides!

Once we finished all our fastpass+ we would either just walk around and take it all in or do some of the rides that are never a big wait (the carousel or teacups at Magic Kingdom are always good time fillers) - our original plan was to stay for fireworks at Epcot and Magic Kingdom and then see the Fantasmic show at Hollywood Studios - so our afternoon fastpass+ and other stuff would hold us over until it was time for that....but as it goes with having small children our plans didn't work out like we I planned and we only saw the fireworks one time at Magic Kingdom. *sigh*

Here are more links to help you understand how Fastplass+ works

https://disneyworld.disney.go.com/help/fast-pass-plus/

http://mousehints.com/my-magic-plus/fastpass-plus/

http://wdwprepschool.com/how-to-get-difficult-fastpass-reservations/





*Ordering Groceries*

Timeframe: 2-3 weeks before leaving

If you are lucky enough to be staying on Disney property then you are entitled to an awesome grocery service! How nice would it be to order groceries before your trip and have them at your resort the day you get there? Well I'll tell you how nice....very nice. 

By ordering groceries ahead of our trip, it helped me plan out our breakfasts (one less thing to worry about as you're trying to get up and out to the parks in the morning), it helped me to have snacks available for my kids to eat throughout the day (so we aren't paying major $$$ at the parks) and it helped to have a quick dinner or snack back in our room.

We spent about $100 in groceries but I know that it saved us hundreds at the parks.  Of course we still had snacks here and there and ate out, but there were a couple nights we went back to our room and made pizza for dinner then went back to the park.

So how does this magic service work? Head over to GardenGrocer.com to see all about it.  It is pretty self explanatory and there is even a list to see if they will deliver to your resort (if you are staying anywhere on Disney property it should deliver but definitely check)


You can find the other installments of this series below:

Part 1 - here

 Part 2 - here

Part 3 - here

Planning your Disney Trip - Booking Airfare

I'm back with more tips on planning your Disney trip! If you're anything like me, you want to go to Disney World without breaking the bank - and that is exactly what we did.

You can see my first post on choosing where to stay here.

Back to today's post:

*Booking Airfare*

Timeframe: 1 - 1/2 years out from your trip

Let me explain that timeframe a little further.

We knew 2 years in advance that we wanted to go to Disney World in 2015. We also knew right away that we were not the type to drive 18+ hours with 3 small children to Disneyworld. I did of course love the saving money part but it was just not going to happen.  We knew airfare would take up a huge chunk of our budget so we thought outside the box.

*If you're not a super big planner like us, this may not work for you.

For everyday/monthly purchases, we always use credit and pay it off the following month.  We always use Discover because they have a good rewards program but in order to get enough for plane tickets we knew we needed to open a new card with some kind of enrollment perks

Enter the Chase Sapphire Card -

We switched everything over to this card and within several months we had enough to book 4 plane tickets with only having to pay $150 out of our own pocket!! That is pretty freaking amazing if you ask me.

Of course we got so many points because we were new cardmembers and they offer thousands of points for just opening your card, then if you spend so much in 3 statements you get enough bonus points to basically pay for a flight. Then if you add another person to the account you get another huge bonus.  So we took advantage of every bonus possible, then just used it as normal and like I mentioned above, had enough to pay for almost 4 round trip plane tickets.


If you are considering flying and wanting to save money, I totally recommend opening this card. There is a yearly fee however, but we closed ours before that came into effect (the first year is waived)

**This can be used towards any trip, obviously not just going to Disney World.


Again, if you missed my first post on Where to Stay, you can check it out here

Planning your Disney World Trip - Where to Stay

It's been months since our Disney World trip but I still think about it constantly.  It was the best vacation I've ever been on (next to our honeymoon) and we all can't wait to go back.

(if you're interested, you can read all about our trip here, here and here)

I figured to get my Disney fix (since our next trip isn't until next year) I would share some some Disney planning tips.

We did our entire Disney World trip for $4500 and I am going to show you exactly how that happened over this series.

I will be breaking my planning tips down into sections so I don't overwhelm you, because trust me when I say, booking/planning a trip to Disney is ALOT.

*Chose where to stay*

Timeframe: 7-11 months out

Disneyworld has many different options on where to stay - they can be broken down as follows:

• Deluxe Villas
• Deluxe Resort Hotels
• Moderate Resort Hotels
• Value Resort Hotels
• Campgrounds

We stayed in a deluxe villa at Animal Kingdom Lodge - Kidani.  However, we did not book through Disney.com like most people do.  We booked using a service called DVC Request which saved us thousands! That is what I'll be talking about and sharing with you today.






My sister in law told me about DVC Request years ago after she used them to book her Disney stay. I hung on to the information for a couple of years until we were ready to book our trip.

DVC Request is a company where you rent deluxe villas from Disney Vacation Club members for a fraction of the price than booking directly with Disney.

You can check out the website for DVC Request here and read all about it.  They are a very trusted company that has been in business for over 10 years and most importantly, I personally used their services so the advice I'm giving is first hand knowledge.

When booking through DVC Request, you are only renting deluxe villas.  Of course there are TONS of other places to stay that fall into those other categories, but if you want to stay at an awesome resort with great amenities plus have tons of space in your room, then a deluxe villa is where it's at.

Deluxe villas come in a few different options - there are studios, 1 bedrooms, 2 bedrooms, 3 bedrooms, and some even offer bungalows.

We knew we wanted a deluxe villa because we have very small children who needed a place to sleep while also giving the hubby and I a place to hang out once they were in bed.  We chose a 2 bedroom and that meant that the baby had her own room to sleep in her pack n play plus a bed for myself or my hubby and the kids had their own room with 2 beds for them and the parent who wasn't sleeping with the baby. On top of that it had a separate family room area + a full kitchen.

Yes, that is ALOT of space, but trust me when I say for the 5 of us it was the perfect amount! We spent lots of time in our room (which people said we wouldn't) and it was nice we weren't in everyone's way and it made our stay SO much more comfortable.  

Back to booking through DVC Request.  If you are using them, I do suggest booking your room anywhere from 7-11 months in advance to make sure you get what you want.  Their rooms book very quickly!

First you should choose where you want to stay. You can view the deluxe resorts they offer here

DVC works on a points system - right now it is $14 per point to rent.  There are some stipulations with staying at more desired resorts where they add 2 more dollars per point if you are booking between the 7-11 month window - making it $16 per point.

Here's a breakdown of what I just mentioned:

A "Home Resort Booking Premium" of $2.00 per point has been added to the total cost reflected below, for any reservation date that is requested more than 7 months in advance of the current date at the following selected resorts:

• Bay Lake Tower At Disney's Contemporary Resort
• Disney's Beach Club Villas
• Disney's Boardwalk Villas
• The Villas At Disney's Wilderness Lodge
• The Villas at Disney's Grand Floridian Hotel
• The Villas at Disney's Grand Californian Hotel
• Disney's Aulani Resort and Spa
• Disney's Polynesian Villas and Bungalows

Let's take a look at how their website works to break down the cost.  

You would go to the cost calculator and plug your dates in (I chose to show you 5 nights because that's what we did)

You can choose to view the cost in either dollar amount or point amount, I always look at dollar amount because duh, that's how you're paying. 

As you can see there are many room types - value, standard, savannah, club, etc. We stayed in a 2 bedroom, Standard view at Animal Kingdom so let's go over that one- it is $2450 for 5 nights that comes out to $490 a night, but if you wanted to save even more money, the 1 bedroom is only $392 and if you don't have a baby, a 1 bedroom would work perfect.  Heck, even a studio could work!

Now, let's look at the cost of booking a deluxe villa through the Disney website at Animal Kingdom.

Do you see the difference!? Crazy, right!? So for a 2 bedroom standard view you are paying $991 a night! That is almost $5,000 compared to the $2400 booking through DVC Request!  And a 1 bedroom standard, $611 per night compared to $392 from DVC.  Oh and Disney's rates exclude tax - DVC's price is what you see. These are amazing savings!

If you can swing it, a deluxe villa is the way to go. You get the amazing perks of staying on Disney property while having tons of space to actually enjoy your room.

The room was definitely our biggest expense for the entire trip but so worth it!

I'll be back next to show you how we got almost all our airfare for free! 

**UPDATE**

To see the rest of this series, see below

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Tips & Tricks