Think It's To Late To Book a Spur of The Moment Trip To Disneyworld During April Break?

Just got the desire! Think any flights/hotels have availability? How much do you think it would cost for a family of three to stay at a moderate hotel with flight, food and spending $? Where do I begin? Would a travel agent be my best bet with 6 weeks to spare?

Thanks

Message edited 2/22/2012 9:50:41 PM.

Re: Think It's To Late To Book a Spur of The Moment Trip To Disneyworld During April Break?

I can't look it up know but you are definitely looking at about 4-5K. Figure hotel and tickets and dining plan will run between 3-4k. Then airfare is $200-400pp depending on the airline, deals out etc.

You definitely can plan a trip in that little time - but you might not get your 1st choice hotel/view or restaurants or dining times. But you can definitely still have a good time.

If you think you might need it I would go with a disney expert TA. Let them plan it for you since you are going last minute. You can certainly do it yourself but if you are doing it last minute they might be able to make better suggestions.

I was going to try and price out for you to get you a better idea but the disney reservation system is down today for updating and will be back up later today.

Re: Think It's To Late To Book a Spur of The Moment Trip To Disneyworld During April Break?

Re: Think It's To Late To Book a Spur of The Moment Trip To Disneyworld During April Break?

Bump, anyone else?

Also, can anyone recommend a great, reputable travel agent in Suffolk County? Is it worth it? What kind of $ do you pay them?

TIA

Re: Think It's To Late To Book a Spur of The Moment Trip To Disneyworld During April Break?

Lie and say she's 2 haha I did saved me money since she didn't need a ticket to get in. They don't check and use your word. I even said it was her bday weekend and she got lots of cool special stuff and a button.

I took the dining deluxe. We are eaters. It gave us 3 sit down options per day. Since she eats free at buffets but would have to pay for a kids meal, if we ate a sit down with a kids meal we used a credit for her then let her eat off our plates later at a buffet. They give you 3 sit downs per day with 2 snacks and a souviner mug. So per day means when I arrived mid afternoon i had 3 meals for that day but only half a day left and when I left mid morning on the last day we still had 2 full meals left (so we had breakfast)

I paid $2100 for the hotel/food/tickets only at Port Orleans French Quarter (moderate). My airfare was a lil different since I only paid for oneway the other side was free (miles). I was also NOT peak season tho.

I say $4k oughta do ya

ETA: on my last day I took my 11 unused snack credits and got 11 boxed candies to take home (chocolate covered peanuts, jelly bean types, fish, etc)

Message edited 2/23/2012 4:28:52 PM.

Re: Think It's To Late To Book a Spur of The Moment Trip To Disneyworld During April Break?

It's not too late, but you will be paying out the wazoo. The airline tickets alone will probably be $500 each. It's insane to fly to FL during school holidays. Good luck!

Re: Think It's To Late To Book a Spur of The Moment Trip To Disneyworld During April Break?

Okay right now the website is still down you might have to wait until tomorrow or later tonight.

Okay the AKL is great and is the same price range as Wilderness lodge. They are the 2 cheapest of the deluxes.

The contemporary will run you a lot more than AKL or WL because it is on the monorail so they are the more expensive hotels. The garden wing is the cheapest of the Contemporary.

I haven't personally worked with her because I book all my own trips - but Kim from Mouse Tales Travel on here seems to be very knowledgable.

There are some agencies I see mentioned on Disboards - but I know nothing about any of them so I cannot make any personal recommendations. You just want to make sure whoever you go with is a disney certified travel expert. Just DON"T go with AAA they have NO idea what they are doing if you need them to help you and you aren't just looking for their discount.

It might be helpful to have a TA because I just looked over on Southwest and they are pretty much totally booked up. For example going down on April 7th - there is only one flight available and it is $326 and requires 1 stop, coming home there were several flights but most were early morning. The other days going down only 1 or 2 were available but were in the $300 ONE way pp and many required 2 stops which is ridiculous. You might have better success going out of JFK or LGA where there will be more airlines flying out and therefore more seats to work with. I checked out Kayak.com and the flights there are around mid $300 pp - but they are bad times (like leaving NY at 7pm and coming back early morning) - additionally the best priced ones have you leaving from JFK and returning to LGA. This is when it might be helpful to have a TA to help you find better fares or at least a schedule that you can live with.

If you can't fly in until night time - one option would be to stay at the airport or a lessor hotel the 1st night then go to disney early the next morning or check into your main hotel the next morning. If you can do it - if there are only early morning flights out - you could stay at the airport your last night (so you get a full day at WDW) then fly out a day later - we did this once - we had a 3 pm flight and delta changed us to a 750 am flight - we had them push the flight to the day after we were scheduled to return and then spent the night at the hyatt that is actually IN the MCO airport.

The WDW website still says that they are under construction but it says it will be open this afternoon so not sure when it will come back up. Until then I can't price out any trips to give you an idea -

To give you a rough idea though - figure Dining plan is about $53.54 per night for adults - and $16.02 per night for children 3-9. So for 4 nights you would be looking at $123.10 per night - or $492.40.

Tickets: Just a base non hopper 4 day ticket if you buy it separate would be $258.80 per adult and child is $238.56. Then if you want a hopper $58 pp to add the hopper for the time you are there - so a little over $300 per adult and just under $300 for your DC (children under 3 are free).

Hotel: For Port Orleans Riverside (Moderate resort) cheapest room that week runs $234 a night and the most expensive is $294.

AKL cheapest room that week is $430- to give you an idea (that is a standard view room).

The week you are going is VERY expensive - unfortunately disney can run you more than 1K difference to go during a busy peak holiday time than it will to say go last week in August.

Since I can't price it all out on their site (there are no public discounts that week as it is a peak holiday season) the above would give you an estimate of the cost - I think when they put it together as a package it does run slightly more (since they throw in extras) but you can't get the dining plan if you don't book a package - so it depends on what you want to do.

BTW you might want to see if you can book your ADRs now - because if you can't get what you want or can only get the cheapest places then maybe it might not be worth it to get the dining plan and just pay OOP. Something to think about. I'm not sure if their ADR system is up now or not I think it is being upgraded as well but you don't have to be booked to go ahead and make your ADRs.

Re: Think It's To Late To Book a Spur of The Moment Trip To Disneyworld During April Break?

I think you can definitely do it, with some help from a good TA.

From what I saw when I last looked for a client (yesterday), there are still rooms available for that week, but it's limited, and there are no discounts since it is Easter week.

I'd be happy to pull the info for you BUT the Disney reservations site is down until "sometime this afternoon". Even if you were to call Disney directly, you wouldn't be able to get a quote. Crazy right?

You don't necessarily need to work with a travel agent who lives near you. I personally work with primarily families from LI and Queens, but also Canada, North Carolina, etc.

You don't have to pay a travel agent anything. What most people don't realize is that whether you book through Disney or through a travel agent, you're still paying a travel agent's fee. It's built into the cost of your vacation. If you book through Disney, you get a reservation and that's about it. if you book through a Travel Agent (and I recommend from my experience on both sides that you only use a Disney Specialist), you get your booking plus suggestions on the best rooms and requests, restaurant and tour reservations. I do detailed itineraries, but not everyone does. Also, this probably won't apply to this trip, but for future reference, a good agent will also check DAILY for any new discounts that come out, check them against the price you are paying and automatically make the change.

There's really no good reason NOT to use a TA, if he or she is a good one, which is why I always say no matter who you book with, make sure it's a Disney specialist. It should be someone who has Disney experience, has gone through the College of Disney Knowledge, and preferably and agency that is an "Authorized Disney Vacation Planner."

Let me know if you have any more questions!

Re: Think It's To Late To Book a Spur of The Moment Trip To Disneyworld During April Break?

Re: Think It's To Late To Book a Spur of The Moment Trip To Disneyworld During April Break?

Is DD over 3? I know you said 3 year old, but some people round up.


ETA: I want to just say DO IT!

I just booked a Disney Cruise on Tuesday. When does it Sail? In 9 days!

Anything's possible!

Message edited 2/23/2012 5:10:31 PM.