Is the price right or can I do Better??

[Helopoh]

Ok, this morning I went onto the Disney.com website and priced a Vacation for June 10 - 20th 2002 at the Pop Century with the Resort Magic and Vacation Protection. The price totaled 2461.22 Is this too much or is this an ok price. I want to book for this date but I also want to get a good deal. I see the codes for the fall packages and the 49.00 ASM rates should I wait to book or should I book now. I am not going to book with Disney.com but I wanted an Idea of how much I can afford. Does this make sense??? I just want to be able to go next year and not wait til 2004 like we were going too. Thanks in Advance..Denise

 

[Stepherella]

I went through WDW travel, to set up my trip and got a similar price. It seemed like a good deal to me at the time. Then I started reading these boards and seeing other people getting better deals. I tried calling the WDW travel to see if I qualified for any of these deals and they always said no. I finally cancelled my package after paying $ 1500 of it. I lost the $60 of travel insurance, but didn't care because I set up everything separately and ended up saving about $600!. I got basically the same deal only cheaper. I am going in September and am very excited. I got ASMO for $49 per night. Roundtrip tickets from Portland, OR for $269 (including all taxes), and bought discounted 6 day hopper passes from ticketmania.com. I would suggest just keeping an eye out on these boards for specials around your time of travel and looking at Mousesavers.com for deals. It seems to be much cheaper to buy things separately than a package deal!

 

[Meagansmom]

I agree! We have always checked the difference between the package deals and pricing out separately.
Everytime it is a big difference in the prices. We now book everything as needed. We save an average of $700.00 on each vacation.

 

[mikimaus]

Packages are always more expensive. It always pays to do each thing separately. Not only do you save big $ but you learn about the possiblities and are much better informed when you get there. You'll have a better idea of what you want to do and what is available.

 

[Dizzy-Disney4]

I too had a package that was mostly paid for that I canceled losing the $60 for trip insurance. I rebooked everything separately and saved about $350.00. That's $350.00 to use once we get there.

 

[sherry7]

Definitely book it yourself, and use the discount codes on www.mousesavers.com
Here's a comparison to what I would have spent by using the Disney website, and what I actually spent doing it by myself:

Disney website:
$2942.88 for 9 nights at All Stars for 2 adults and 12 year old child (costs the same as an adult), includes round trip airfare from Pittsburgh, sub-compact rental car, vacation protection insurance, and length of stay Park Hopper passes.

By myself:
$2518.04 for 9 nights at All Stars ($49 a night using code from mousesavers site), round trip airfare from Pittsburgh, full size rental car (instead of sub compact), 5 day Park Hopper Plus tickets, Universal Studio 2 day passes, and Sea World tickets. Vacation protection insurance is basically almost not needed, since you can cancel with CRO up to 5 days prior to the trip. If you want though, you can purchase travel insurance from alot of independent places.

If I had got the package through the Disney website, and then purchased my Univeral Studios and Sea World tickets, we would have ended up spending $3360.06 and alot of the length of stay passes would have just been wasted since we do want to go offsite for 3 days. So, our total savings were $842.02. Not bad for a couple of hours of work at the computer.

 

[Humpbacks1962]

I agree, those packages are a rip off. The only good thing is that you can cancel them once you reserve them. You can get your amount in full depending on how soon you cancel them.

I bought two of those before I realized I was giving away over $400.00 to the travel agency. Those agents sell a few of those packages and then could travel to Disney for free, courtesy of our pockets!

Check out the codes you are interested in and then call Disney directly, to ensure that they cover the dates you will be visiting the parks. Make the reservations through them. Check out the airlines' websites and buy your tickets directly from them as well. You can even choose your seat all by yourself, at the moment of purchase!

Forget about the flex features. If you want any, you can pay for it once you get there and still save a bundle. Oh, it may take you a few hours longer to square off your plans, but I promise you'll save several hundreds of dollars in money you won't just give away to anyone else.

Wanda

 

[AKLhoneymooner]

Definitely do it all yourself.

I went two years ago with a friend in mid-March. We each spent $600 total, including airfare, stayed at ASMo 3 nights, 4 days. We did the cheapest of everything, only one sitdown meal the whole time, but we had a blast.

This time, I priced my honeymoon online and got a quote for 4 nights, 5 days of approx $2,000 plus food for CBR or CSR.

Instead, I found airfare for $200 apiece on ATA, and as a wedding present from longtime WDW CMs we got $125 a night AKL savannah view and free park passes. Even with a nice sitdown meal every night and Cirque tickets, the whole thing will run us about $1,500.

 

[Eyorefan36]

After reading everyone say about booking your package yourself~I feel so dumb!! We booked thru Dreams Unlimited for 8 days/7 nights with the Resort Magic package and we are staying at the ASMo with 2 connecting rooms (2 adults, 3 children)-we are paying about $4600.00 including airfare from PA~did I pay waaaay too much??? This is our first time to WDW so I am a major novice!!! We leave June 15 so it's pretty much too late to do anything about it now. (I am so excited about going that even if I did pay too much, I will still have a huge grin on my face that week !

 

[Doctor P]

I'm sorry, but I think there is potential misinformation that is upsetting people here. Yes, it is indeed true that you can generally do a little better putting your trip elements together yourself rather than buying the package directly through Disney. However, the degree of your savings and your ability to save are very, very, very dependent upon the season in which you are traveling. I am a very careful shopper and check out my options for purchases very thoroughly. When we went to Disney at Christmas time two years ago we bought the Resort Magic package. The package was a fair deal; we did not get ripped off, but we could have saved approximately $20 per person for the 8 day package by doing it ourselves or through another vendor. The great deals on Mousesaver (and they are mostly really good deals!) and from the other vendors are usually not available or the savings are much, much smaller in the busier seasons. Airfare is a dice roll--I waited and waited on airfare till much later than I normally would when we went to Florida this past February and saved over $150 per person ($220 rt to Tampa including taxes and fees) and the airfares dropped $40 more for about a two hour period before our trip but we could not meet the requirements to switch our tickets.

I guess my point is that there are some good deals out there, and you should research them well, but sometimes the Disney price is pretty close to the best you will do depending on season, hotel, and whether you are in a high priority market.

 

[Humpbacks1962]

I agree with checking out the cost by yourself, but look at what happened to me: I booked through Dreams as well, was charged over $1,400 for our package in the end. Well, good thing we can cancel packages early because I did not regret doing that. I found out my dates were covered by the CVZ discount and, booking directly with Disney ended up saving well over $500.00, including air fares, tickets and hotel! Now that was money I did not want to give away to anyone.

I have a hard time believing that any package would come close to the expenses of booking on your own, because the savings can be amazing when you just spend a couple of hours doing your research. But just check penny for penny how much it would cost you to pay for any flex features you'd be interested in, booking and travel expenses and how willing you are to overpay any residual amounts.

Wanda

 

[BetsyAnn]

Ok let me say right up front - I hate to have to deal with the details of my vacation for very long - Do details for work -
This is what I do -
I check on the price on Disneysite with various packages and such, I have the DC card - check their price for days I want to go. Look at what the going rate is for room, tickets and such, then I have a price in my mind that I think is a good price. Then I turn it over to my travel agent - found on a website - and let them do the work. I have found the Travel Agent does better than what I found and almost always does better than the price I have in my mind. Then it is a done deal. If i feel I have gotten a good price then I have and I stop worring about better prices. I wuld drive my self crazy and that's not what my vacation is for! LOL
Just my 2 cents

 

[Eyorefan36]

Dr. P~
Thanks for the reassurance-I have learned so much from these boards! Because this is our first trip I was unsure of all the in's and out's of booking a Disney vacation. Our agent has been great and I thought she did a pretty good job of getting us what we wanted. I do know that next time (and there will certainly be a lot more next times ) I will check everything for myself first! Thanks to all of you for your input!

 

[Tuffcookie]

I think they hook you on those packages when you've never been to WDW before. Once you've been and you know what you're interested in seeing and doing it's much better to pay for everything separate.

TC