Length of trip vs distance from Orlando

[wilbret]

I see a lot of people talking about stays greater than 1 week. That does make me curious.
For those that take 10 day + trips to Disney/Orlando, do you take any other vacations during the year?
How far away from Orlando do you live?

 

[StageTek]

I take 10 day + trips to Disney. I take other vacations during the year.
I live 2,525 miles from Orlando

 

[Chami]

We took an 11 day trip. Two of those days were mostly travel. We live about 3,000 miles away, so a longer trip makes more sense to us. This was our first vacation in years.

 

[Wild4Walt]

We did an 11 night trip in 2018 and drove down - added 2 days each direction for driving ( and 1 overnight hotel each way ) so the whole trip was 13 nights long.

We live 1200 miles away.

 

[AngelDisney]

I take one trip each year and it’s usually 3 weeks. In the past 2 trips to Orlando, we spent 4 days at Universal, 7 days on a Disney cruise and 10 days at WDW. We are from Toronto. For the upcoming trip in December, it’s shorter with 8 days at WDW and 3 days on the Disney Dream because I want to take my mom to travel within Canada. Due to pre-existing conditions, it’s expensive for her to travel out of country with medical insurance. We are planing to visit Ottawa and Montreal in July. But now I am not sure if we are able to do that this summer due to coronavirus. Last summer we went to Japan and Hong Kong for about 4 weeks. So our trips are mostly 3-4 weeks.

 

[Mom24Princesses]

We live 6 hours away. With APs most trips are 4-5 days. But we just did 7 (3/7-13) and we have 12 nights booked for September. (We were there 7/19, 9/19, 10/19 and 7 night cruise, 11/19, 1/20 and the trip we just had. Since July we’ve spent 25 nights in Orlando and a 7 night cruise. We planned to go in May. We will go as soon as it reopens and at least once more before Sept trip. I have the first week in December booked as well.

 

[Nebraska_Disney]

We are in the Midwest and we usually do 7-9 nights, with a travel day on each end. Did do a few 10 night trips in the past. Our reasoning is we go every other year and the ticket price difference from 5 days to 10 days is peanuts compared to more frequent trips. Not being rushed, doing water parks, etc is also a bonus. We rarely get to do other vacations other than weekend trips a few hours from home. I travel extensively for my job and we have 2 very active kids, lessening opportunities

 

[StageTek]

How about you, wilbret?

What is your standard WDW trip? Do you take other vacations?
How far away from Orlando do you live?

 

[wilbret]

Thanks for the replies. If I lived thousands of miles away, week + trips would make sense to me, too. We just live a few hours up I-75, and we try to work around school breaks for trips, so most trips are really just Thursday night to Tuesday type trips. We have done the full week + weekends trips in the past, but it seems to get harder every year, as kids get older and busier.

I don't get nearly as many PTO days in my current job as the last one, so I leverage the heck out of long weekends and work travel bolt-ons when possible.
When we take "long" family vacations, we tend to do break it in to 2 parts. Our family will arrive 2-3 days early, and just enjoy time for us. The grandparents, brothers, etc, whoever it is, arrive later and we have the larger group.

We tend to get down there in February, March or April, August, October, Nov or Dec. One trip is usually a full week with grandparents. The others are typically Thursday-Monday or Tuesday trips.
We head to Apalachicola for a weekend in May, then to the beach with the other side of the family in June or July.
We try to get one last trip somewhere before school starts back, could be anywhere. This year we are going to the Polynesian!

I guess the bottom line is we take mostly bite-size trips.

 

[tguz]

We usually take a 7 night Disney vacation but take 2 weeks off of work. We live 1,200 miles away from Disney. That is our only main vacation but we take long weekends away several times during the year.

 

[TinkFan74]

We go once a year in May for 12 to 15 nights, we live 3300 miles away. For the rest of the year I try to visit at least five new countries a year, it may not happen this year.

 

[wilbret]

We go once a year in May for 12 to 15 nights, we live 3300 miles away. For the rest of the year I try to visit at least five new countries a year, it may not happen this year.

Maybe you can get to Epcot, and at least pretend to visit 5 countries, lol.

 

[maccagerl]

I am from Boston, about a 3 hour flight to WDW.
I take a few long trips, anywhere from 10-14 days, and several shorter trips of 4-6 days.
I am a recently retired nurse. When I was working I did 12 hr shifts and had a lot of flexibility with my work schedule.
I just cancelled my April/May trips and I am really feeling it!

 

[TinkFan74]

Maybe you can get to Epcot, and at least pretend to visit 5 countries, lol.

We canceled WDW this year and have rebooked at Aulani. I have hit three new countries this year, but two of those were in Europe when everything started to go crazy. I spent the entire time away trying to get home before the borders closed earlier this month. I am holding out hope that things get back to normal by the end of summer. I have also had to cancel a trip to Italy in July. But these are first world problems, I am lucky to have a job and a safe place to stay.

 

[Aug2020distrip]

We live in Canada so if we make the trip, we have always gone for 2 weeks. Out of those 14 days, 5 are Disney and 2 are Universal. Then we just find other stuff to do like a beach day, Kennedy Center, etc.
It’s an every 5-10 year sort of trip since we do like exploring other places as well.

 

[Stratman50th]

We used to go at least once a year, sometimes twice a year. We did that from 1989 through 2016. We lived about 900 miles away and always drove. We were on property from Saturday through Saturday and had a travel day on each end. So I guess that would be 9 to 10 days each trip.
I live about 30 minutes from the gate now and we just do short staycations at Fort Wilderness of about 4 nights to 6 nights. Have only done that a couple of times since we've lived here.

 

[agamble]

We are in Central California (5-6 hours from Disneyland). We have a timeshare we can trade with RCI, so for us the two biggest expenses are theme park tickets and airfare. When I decided I wanted to take the family to Florida for WDW I knew we needed a minimum of two weeks to justify the travel expense.

 

[wilbret]

We canceled WDW this year and have rebooked at Aulani. I have hit three new countries this year, but two of those were in Europe when everything started to go crazy. I spent the entire time away trying to get home before the borders closed earlier this month. I am holding out hope that things get back to normal by the end of summer. I have also had to cancel a trip to Italy in July. But these are first world problems, I am lucky to have a job and a safe place to stay.

We did Aulani last year. You will love it.

 

[biochemgirl]

We're about 2500 miles away and I prefer longer trips (7+ nights) but sometimes come for just 3 or 4 nights to attend an event like MM or last year VIPassholder night.

 

[shaycamp21]

We live in Canada just outside of Toronto. I find that when we go to WDW it is less busy and rushed if we go for longer than a week. Ten days is perfect as we can enjoy the parks (including water parks) resorts and Disney Springs and just have some down time. We do other vacations as well and often they are longer 2-3 weeks (Europe, Hawaii) sometimes combined with a cruise. This summer we had planned 9 nights at Disney with 4 nights of a beach stay in July but sadly with the state of the world right now it's looking more and more like we are going to have to cancel. We were planning on Costa Rica too but it's all so up in the air right now.