Help planning - arrival expertise!

[brian2000boston]

Hello everyone. I am looking for some advice on our arrival at Disney. So to make a long story short, we have booked to arrive on our bounce back Saturday, September 26, 2009.

My question is this. This past trip we had to get up at 3am to make our early flight to get there and stretch the most out of our trip. This came with obvious downsides. We were exhausted the first couple days from this on top of the Disney exhaustion from running all day and not having time to rest with our trip being a quick 5 days in length.

What we were thinking about doing was leaving Friday, September 25. Maybe we would work part of the day and then go to the airport and take a late afternoon flight or early evening flight and then arrive in Orlando. This would be nice because then we can get to bed at a normal time and wake up in Disney for a regular day or transfer to Disney in the morning without getting up super early and already being down there.

Has anyone else done this? If so, did you find it better to just get to the hotel the night before? Or should we get a hotel at the airport or surrounding areas and then transfer? We will not upgrade our park tickets.

Any other thoughts or opinions are greatly appreciated. Thank you everyone.

[blondeinbrandon]

I would get another night at the same Disney resort. This way you can use Magical Express (if that's the plan). Also you can truely relax and not think about packing up in the morning and getting to the Disney resort. Personally I hate switching hotels, I like to arrive and unpack and not think about packing til we are heading home. Also a lot of the airport hotels are as much or more than Disney for the night.
Anyway enjoy!!!

[danicafan]

I would book your trip beginning September 25 and plan on arriving late in the day/evening. We always plan our trip so we arrive in the evening and just go to the hotel and unwind and then start fresh the next day! You can pick however many park day tickets you want it doesn't have to correspond with the number of nights you are staying. This year we already have tickets to cover all but one day so we are staying 7 night but just have a 1 day park ticket on our reservation. Don't make two different reservations one for room only and then one for your rest of stay with dining because you will most likely have to change rooms (this happened to us in December 2006) We booked a room only for the first night and had our package start the next day (it was quite an ordeal to have to change rooms with 2 little children).

[vicster]

We've booked so we arrive at our resort early to mid afternoon. With the dining plan you get the # of nites booked and with the MMY package it costs us less than $5.00 (for two of us) for an extra park day. We just use that day to do some things at a park and have dinner at one of the parks. If you got the free dining it's not costing you that much more for an extra park day.

[mouseketeer mom]

Oh yes, we've done this a few times. Last year, we kept the kids in for almost a full day of school to avoid an absence, and had a 4pm flight to Orlando. It was about 8:30pm when we were settled in our room. The downside was, we were not initially happy with our room choice, and there were slim pickings for this later arrival. The upside was, no getting up at the crack of dawn to make a flight. We were sticking to our normal routine. Even tho we got to bed on the later side of normal on our arrival day, it still worked out better for all of us. Another downside of this was Magical Express knocked on our door really late, we were all in bed already. You could always ask them to hold your luggage until the AM tho, if this would be a problem. All and all, I would do this again!

[thumperbug]

We've done it both ways...earliest flight going and going the night before.

I prefer the night before because you get some sleep, unpack and get a nice fresh start the next morning.

When we are short on vacation points we will take the first flight out on day of travel. When we get to the hotel, we check in, and usually grab something to eat and head out to a park.

Then late in the day we'll take a rest and usually head back out to a park with EMH or just call it a day.

[JenniferS.]

We ended up doing this because our airline changed our non-stop flight to a flight w/ 1 stop. We ended up going down Sept 3rd, only checking in at 11:00 pm with 3 tired kids. We were so lucky to be upgraded at the Contemporary to a tower room!!! So, for us it definatley paid off!!!

[spoiledraf]

Heres my plan. Arrive mid afternoon Monday, ME to a value for the night. I go to BC to check in a little early and meet the rest of the family at MK with all the tickets. Disney transfers everything to our 2 BR villa when we go back for a mid-day break. Others have mentioned an extra night in the same room but for an extra $600, I'll transfer!

After the last day, we return to a value resort, transfer back, hit DTD for some shopping, and get a good nights sleep before flying out Sunday.

Staying off site is an option and we do that when wedrive but you can't use ME off site. That adds $150 to our party for trans to hotel A, and more for taxi to hotel B. Confused?? Me too!

[BrerGnat]

You can always get a really late flight into Orlando, and then stay in that Hyatt hotel INSIDE the airport! It's not that expensive (about $100 per night) and that way, all you have to do is get your bags and then check in, go to sleep, and then wake up and off you go to Disney, rested and ready to go to the parks. You can check in, drop your bags off and hit the parks.

I'm not sure how this would work if you wanted to use DME, but if you were going to rent a car or use a towncar/taxi, it would be a good option.

If you arrive very late, it makes more sense to NOT spend a lot of money on a Disney hotel for just that first night anyway.

[Beast_fanatic]

You can always get a really late flight into Orlando, and then stay in that Hyatt hotel INSIDE the airport! It's not that expensive (about $100 per night) and that way, all you have to do is get your bags and then check in, go to sleep, and then wake up and off you go to Disney, rested and ready to go to the parks. You can check in, drop your bags off and hit the parks.

I'm not sure how this would work if you wanted to use DME, but if you were going to rent a car or use a towncar/taxi, it would be a good option.

If you arrive very late, it makes more sense to NOT spend a lot of money on a Disney hotel for just that first night anyway.

You could still use DME in this circumstance.

[teambricker04]

You can always get a really late flight into Orlando, and then stay in that Hyatt hotel INSIDE the airport! It's not that expensive (about $100 per night) and that way, all you have to do is get your bags and then check in, go to sleep, and then wake up and off you go to Disney, rested and ready to go to the parks. You can check in, drop your bags off and hit the parks.

I'm not sure how this would work if you wanted to use DME, but if you were going to rent a car or use a towncar/taxi, it would be a good option.

If you arrive very late, it makes more sense to NOT spend a lot of money on a Disney hotel for just that first night anyway.

This what we are doing on our next trip in January for the marathon. We get in late so we figured it would be easiest to stay right at the airport. We were going to use DME the next morning, but we are renting a car since we are staying at FW in order to save my DH's running legs :)

I think if you get in early evening you should try to make it WDW, but if you get in late and want to get some sleep, stay at the airport. Plus, sometimes when you add on it can be hard to get a room at the same hotel.

[brian2000boston]

Thanks for all the great feedback. I went ahead and added the night for $160. I figured what the heck, that for the room plus another round of free dining for the three of us actually trims the price down with the value. I hope we made the right choice, now we are up to 10 days! :mickey: