Tickets and Dining

Since our annual passes expired and we opted to go with Free Dining, it's kind of obvious where this post is going to go, but let's talk about it anyway.

Let's take it a step further. How do you decide how long to take a Walt Disney World Vacation for? 3 days? 4 days? A week? Longer?

The answer could be different for each family.  Let's talk about first time visitors. Personally I think 6 or 7 nights is a good time for first time visitors. This gives you the chance to take your time with each park and not feel rushed. The number one complaint I used to hear before becoming a travel agent was, I need a Vacation from my Vacation!  My goal with my clients is to make sure they come back rested and that they had a magical time.  Just doing 3 or 4 nights will barely give you the right amount of time to see each park.

Wait what? You don't wan to visit each park? That's preposterous!!!  All joking aside, and I'll touch on this more later, there really is something for everyone regardless of your family makeup. Young kids, older kids, no kids...each park has a little something that appeals to everyone.

For us, we visit quite often and have gotten our routine down. We know where we like to spend the most amount of time. This trip was a little different as we weren't only traveling with my dad, but with our beautiful baby girl who will only be 5 months old.  We needed enough time to take our time but still see all of our favorite attractions. PLUS we needed to squeeze in time to spend a day at Cape Canaveral for my Dad.   In the end we decided one week would be perfect, or rather 7 nights.

Did you know that once you reach 4-day tickets, each additional day is just $8.52!  What a steal!!  We have opted to go for 6 day park hopper tickets as our first night we are doing something special (more to come later!)  and we will have to leave for the airport on our last day around 1 p.m.  We like the flexibility in a park hopper pass but it's not a necessity if you chose to forgo it.

As for the dining, whether it's free or not, we ALWAYS opt for the Plus Dining package.  On our last trip to Disney in February we skipped it and experimented with purchasing food on our own. I was SHOCKED at how much we spent and we only did on table service restaurant.  A good estimate when you are calculating if it's a good option for your family  is, $11-$13 per adult for counter service and close to $40 per adult for table service.  A great way to look at the situation is a typical character meal could cost almost $30 for a child where as the Plus Dining is only $15.02 per night...and you would get  counter service and a snack in addition!!!

There will be more posts later about which restaurants we chose but choosing the Dining Plan was a no brainer for us!!