Family Christmas Vacation

[Kplaster]

I need advice for a 20 person family vacation. My family normally goes just the 4 the week prior to christmas and get the free dining and less crowds etc. However, with this large of a group and so many kids we are not going to go until christmas day and stay the week after. So I have a few questions. Are dining plans ever offered the first week of the year? What is the best resort price wise to stay at with this many? Is there group rates or is it better to just do by family? This is for Christmas 2014. Please let me know if you have any advise or suggestions.

[buzznwoodysmom]

Dining plans are always offered, just not for "free". The time period between Christmas and New Years free dining is pretty much out of the question. As a matter of fact any discounts at all will most likely be hard to come by.

Disney will not give you a group discount just because you have extended family of 20 going. We have a group of 24 going and each family booked their room separately, but we did have all our reservations linked. We didn't get any special discounts because of our group size. We went with the discount that was out for that time period, in our case free dining.

As far as resorts, it really just depends on what you are looking for. For a Christmas vacation I would always go with Wilderness Lodge. If you have any families of 5 with young kids Port Orleans Riverside is the least expensive option that will allow all 5 in the same room. Art of Animation has family suites that will sleep 6. We are staying at Riverside because we had a few families of 5 and this was by far the cheapest option for them.

Advise and suggestions? Make sure to book your ADRs as far out as possible. It took a lot of work to get the places we wanted. Most places I had to call the restaurant directly, leave a message and wait for a call back. In some cases when they called back they could not take us so I'd have to call the next place on the list. It took me 2 full weeks before I had all 7 of our meals nailed down, and I started calling as soon as our 180 days opened up.

Good luck and have fun!

[faline]

If you are going to be there the week between Christmas and New Year's, you need to be aware that this is one of the busiest weeks of the year. It may be more difficult than usual to book dining for such a large group at this time of the year. Be aware, Disney may tell you that there is no guarantee your entire party will be seated together even when you are able to book the same restaurant at the same time.

When traveling with a large group, you will likely have a wide range of ages and interests. Think about meeting up at certain points as a group and then splitting into smaller groups as ages and/or interests coincide. You might agree on a commong park. We'll go to Magic Kingdom on Monday. First, we'll have a group breakfast at Crystal Palace. From there, we'll break down into smaller groups and meet up at Be Our Guest at noon for lunch. After lunch, we'll break up again and meet at O'Hana's for dinner. Something along those lines.

This will take lots of planning. Someone will need to take the lead in trying to organize it all. Have you taken on this role?

I'm sure it can be lots of fun to travel with such a large group but it will also take patience, organization and flexibility. Good luck!!