Asking everyone's indulgence, of course, I thought I would continue this trip report by skipping forward to our August, 2012 trip to Disney. I haven't kept spectacular records of this trip so much of it will be pieced together by memory with the aid of photos.
As August's trip approached Tom suddenly realized that I had overspent our vacation budget for 2012. We paid for my parents to join us for Marathon Weekend in January (at the Grand Floridian, no less). Then we went to Vero Beach for Spring Beach. And we took our first
Disney Cruise. Suddenly the annual August trip seemed an extravagance.
I usually try to book airfare as soon as JetBlue releases the dates so our flights to Florida had been paid in full. They were non-refundable and it would have cost quite a lot of money to try to move the flights to 2013. At the risk of losing $1500 in airfare (or more!), Tom told me we could go if, and only if, I could substantially slash the budget.
We had booked a bounce-back offer at Beach Club to stay in a deluxe club level room. In retrospect this was probably a bad plan in the first place. As we re-learned on the cruise, my kids really need 2 separate rooms. Zachary talks himself to sleep at night which greatly annoys the other two. And he wakes up obscenely early in the morning which is also tough on the non-morning people. When the kids are a bit older I think the deluxe club level room will be perfect but if we were going to book a bounce-back offer, it should have been a villa. Or 2 connecting rooms.
Even with a bounce-back offer, staying in one of the more expensive rooms at BC was clearly a budget-buster. I looked into other options on Disney property - regular BC room, POR, OKW, etc. None of these options really fit all of our needs. After much research on the DIS, we contacted one of the people who rents out Wyndham Bonnet Creek villas. For about $800 we could get a 2 bedroom villa for a week. I had read good things about WBC and the price was right so we booked it. I must say that the couple who rented us the villa were beyond wonderful and I would consider doing it again. The other advantage to the villa was having a full kitchen so we could save some money on food (did I mention budget cuts???).
I canceled our date-night dinner at Flying Fish (chef's table - broke my heart to cancel) and slashed a few other sit-down meals. We planned breakfast in the villa daily and we'd bring snacks and water with us to the parks. We switched our Teppan Edo ADR to a reservation at Benihana (located at DTD Hilton) which was better and cheaper. We didn't eliminate dining out but we chose to be selective.
I then had to research rental cars and we finally found a decent deal at Alamo using the AP discount. Minivan rentals in Orlando are far from cheap but this was an acceptable deal. I'm honestly not sure but we may have paid more to have a rental car (including gas costs, etc.) than we paid for our villa!!!
With all that done I had the a-ok with Tom to proceed with our trip.
Amanda
I think that's why the beach club works so well for us! We love being able to walk to epcot for dinner every night-so relaxing to just stroll home at the end of the evening. 
I always have a moment of feeling guilty allowing my youngest his DS at the dinner table at night but I figure if he's happy everyone is happy and as its only allowed on holiday he knows that it's a treat that wont happen at home 
At least you have learnt what you would do differently to make it work for you in the future 
Sounds like you made the best of it though and at least you were all fed and ready to go 
