How far in advance to book for Disney

[teatimefor2]

I love to travel, but Disney is a whole different experience. How far in advance should you book your trip? Where do you go to get information about where to stay in Disney?

Can you please recommend some good starting points for learning about Disney. Our kids will be six and four when we plan to go.

Thank you!

[wannabe]

World or land?

[curbsideprophet]

How far in advance could depend on what you want and when you are going.

For our trip last year we rented points and had a two bedroom at Bay Lake Tower. We booked in January for an Oct trip.

My mom, aunt and I have decided to take DD in Aug before she starts kindergarten. We just booked that this March. We are staying in a suite at Art Of Animation.

Do you have an idea of budget? If you are staying onsite Disney had different categories of resorts. Off site will get you more room for you money typically.

Will you have a car?

With kids that age I would consider staying near the Magic Kingdom if you can afford it.

There are website that have reviews and comparisons of the various on site options. Or you can just start by browsing Disney's site.

[curbsideprophet]

Apr 1, 2016 19:33:36 GMT -5 wannabe said:

World or land?

This is a good question. My response applies to WDW.

[teatimefor2]

Apr 1, 2016 19:33:36 GMT -5 wannabe said:

World or land?

Disney World in Florida.

We plan to have my parents come with us, so ideally a two bedroom suite. No camping.

[wannabe]

Mousesavers.com is a great resource and offers a ton of tips and tricks for planning and budgeting.

[Amy]

I'm a Disney TA - I tell my friends who are going to book with me to plan on doing it between 6-8 months out. You can make dining reservations 6 months out and the really popular places will book up at that point, so I suggest being booked by that point.

I'd start by looking at the different resort categories and deciding which price point you are comfortable with and then researching the specific hotels within that category.(value, moderate, deluxe)

[Amy]

Depending on your budget, you might compare getting 2 normal rooms vs a 2 bedroom suite.

[TamiTaylor]

I booked 10.5 months out.

[pinkpeony6210]

We've gone twice so far...one trip was booked 2 months in advance, and the second one was booked 4 months in advance. We just booked our trip for October, and I'm super excited to actually make reservations for dining at the 180-day mark. I guess it's just personal preference.

[lala]

The last few trips have all been 9-11 months out. Previously I had a few that were only a few months.

[ilikedonuts]

Apr 2, 2016 8:40:58 GMT -5 @trapeze said:

Apr 1, 2016 19:37:53 GMT -5 curbsideprophet said:

How far in advance could depend on what you want and when you are going.

For our trip last year we rented points and had a two bedroom at Bay Lake Tower. We booked in January for an Oct trip.

My mom, aunt and I have decided to take DD in Aug before she starts kindergarten. We just booked that this March. We are staying in a suite at Art Of Animation.

Do you have an idea of budget? If you are staying onsite Disney had different categories of resorts. Off site will get you more room for you money typically.

Will you have a car?

With kids that age I would consider staying near the Magic Kingdom if you can afford it.

There are website that have reviews and comparisons of the various on site options. Or you can just start by browsing Disney's site.

Do you mind sharing how much per night it cost to rent points for bay lake tower? We were thinking of doing this if it is cheaper than shades of Green, but it's $110 a night there

It definitely will be nowhere near that cheap. It's like $1700 renting points for a studio in September (I just picked a random month).

[lala]

Nothing will be cheaper than $110/night except a value during a promo. Renting dvc is only a deal if you're comparing to deluxe or sometimes mods.

[Deleted]

@trapeze we are booking a 2 bedroom suite through DVC rentals and it's $500ish a night at AKL (cheapest DVC rental location). I think it's low season too.

[curbsideprophet]

We used DVC rental store. Pretty sure they have an online calculator that will estimate the cost based on resort/time of year. However I agree with the others, I don't think anything is as cheap as $110 a night.

[teatimefor2]

Thank you all! We have a flexible budget, but I think want to be close to Magic Kingdom and have monorail access.

Since we plan to go in November 2018, we have time?. But I am going to start figuring out what we want and who is planning to come over the next six months.

[lala]

Apr 3, 2016 2:51:40 GMT -5 @trapeze said:

Sorry for hijacking your thread teatimefor2,
Thanks for the responses, we had a friend whose "home" DVC is BLT and she's said it could be cheaper. Shes going to sit down with us and crunch numbers so we decided to hold off booking SOG but I think we will go ahead and reserve at SOG to be safe.

If she's giving you the points at a greatly reduced cost; like just covering the maintenance fees, it might be.

[lala]

@trapeze, compared to the rate you'd pay through Disney it probably is cheap...but compared to that SOG price, it's not. I assume there's not cancellation fee for SOG, so just book it for now and see what happens.

[ilikedonuts]

Apr 3, 2016 14:01:29 GMT -5 @trapeze said:

Apr 3, 2016 6:00:26 GMT -5 lala said:

If she's giving you the points at a greatly reduced cost; like just covering the maintenance fees, it might be.

Unfortunately no, she was saying we could go through a company and its "real cheap". I know she and I have very different lifestyles, though, so cheap for me is probably not the same! What odd though is I told her how much SOG would be. I'm not going to wait for us to sync our calendars to figure this out....I'm just going to book bc I don't think she can come close.

Yeah she's crazy. I think you will be totally fine with SOG. My brother and his family always stay at SOG. They love the price and the location is awesome.