Just back from a fun 3-night weekend at WDW (june 1-4) and just wanted to share the following tips/info for any other people going to WDW on a budget. I appreciated everyone's help here in planning my trip, and hope this might help someone else.
1) Use USAIR's flexible airfare finder feature on their website. We paid only $82 round-trip from Boston for our tix using that method. Flights were non-stop and great.
2) If you only stay for a weekend, we think it's a MUST to stay onsite, and it's cheap too! We stayed onsite at the AllStars Music (VERY clean and well-cared-for, by the way) using the discount codes mentioned here. We paid about $60 a night and definitely felt that staying onsite was the way to go. Disney bus transportation to/from the parks to Allstars was VERY efficient for us -- even coming back at night, we never faced more than a 10-minute wait. It appeared that many of the fancier hotels had much longer waits for buses. In addition, as a weekend visitor, the HUGE advantage of on-site hotels is that you can buy what's called a "length of stay" park-hopper pass. Even though we stayed for 3 nights, we were able to buy a pass for only the 2 days that we went to the parks (on the phone they tried to sell us a 4-day pass, but you can definitely buy just a 2-day when you arrive.) If you stay outside Disney, you would have to buy either the 4-day Park Hopper, or buy individual park passes. Having the park hopper pass was GREAT because we checked out at least 2 different parks a day.
3) Early Entrance is awesome! Even on Saturday, when the Magic Kingdom was VERY crowded with visiting Gay Day participants, we were able to do all the major attractions by about 11am -- no wait at space mountain, haunted house, buzz lightyear, VERY little waits at thunder mountain railroad, splash mountain, etc. All in the same morning, we also did Fantasyland -- Peter Pan, Winnie the Pooh, Small World, etc. Even though the crowds got HUGE later, the morning was pleasant, cool, and lines were blessedly short. By the way, only FantasyLand and TomorrowLand are open during EE days. At Disney-MGM, we had a similar experience -- we rode Rock and Roller Coaster twice with ZERO wait, right at opening, as well as Tower of Terror, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, etc.
4) FAST PASS is great! It works best in the morning hours though, as in the afternoon they sometimes run out of passes. We couldn't believe how many people missed out on using this -- we walked right through 40-minute lines.
5) Even on a short weekend trip, it makes sense to nap in the afternoon! As I said earlier, with EE you can finish off the major rides earlier, then have lunch and go take a nap in the hot afternoon hours. Then in the evening, you can feel alive and rejuvenated. Naps-- they're not just for kids!!!
1) Use USAIR's flexible airfare finder feature on their website. We paid only $82 round-trip from Boston for our tix using that method. Flights were non-stop and great.
2) If you only stay for a weekend, we think it's a MUST to stay onsite, and it's cheap too! We stayed onsite at the AllStars Music (VERY clean and well-cared-for, by the way) using the discount codes mentioned here. We paid about $60 a night and definitely felt that staying onsite was the way to go. Disney bus transportation to/from the parks to Allstars was VERY efficient for us -- even coming back at night, we never faced more than a 10-minute wait. It appeared that many of the fancier hotels had much longer waits for buses. In addition, as a weekend visitor, the HUGE advantage of on-site hotels is that you can buy what's called a "length of stay" park-hopper pass. Even though we stayed for 3 nights, we were able to buy a pass for only the 2 days that we went to the parks (on the phone they tried to sell us a 4-day pass, but you can definitely buy just a 2-day when you arrive.) If you stay outside Disney, you would have to buy either the 4-day Park Hopper, or buy individual park passes. Having the park hopper pass was GREAT because we checked out at least 2 different parks a day.
3) Early Entrance is awesome! Even on Saturday, when the Magic Kingdom was VERY crowded with visiting Gay Day participants, we were able to do all the major attractions by about 11am -- no wait at space mountain, haunted house, buzz lightyear, VERY little waits at thunder mountain railroad, splash mountain, etc. All in the same morning, we also did Fantasyland -- Peter Pan, Winnie the Pooh, Small World, etc. Even though the crowds got HUGE later, the morning was pleasant, cool, and lines were blessedly short. By the way, only FantasyLand and TomorrowLand are open during EE days. At Disney-MGM, we had a similar experience -- we rode Rock and Roller Coaster twice with ZERO wait, right at opening, as well as Tower of Terror, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, etc.
4) FAST PASS is great! It works best in the morning hours though, as in the afternoon they sometimes run out of passes. We couldn't believe how many people missed out on using this -- we walked right through 40-minute lines.
5) Even on a short weekend trip, it makes sense to nap in the afternoon! As I said earlier, with EE you can finish off the major rides earlier, then have lunch and go take a nap in the hot afternoon hours. Then in the evening, you can feel alive and rejuvenated. Naps-- they're not just for kids!!!
