We had the most fabulous time at Disney World last week and I want to share some of Tech·mom·o·gy’s tips and tricks for taking full advantage of a Disney World trip.
We decided right away that the right way to do Disney for us was to stay on site and have a meal plan. While searching for some deals, we were steered towards Bridget at Pixie Vacations by a mutual friend. Pixie Vacations works for their clients for free and receive compensation directly from Disney making the choice to use them so much easier. Bridget was fantastic from beginning to end, she had no problem answering my endless questions and sending us custom quotes for each moderate resort we kept waffling back and forth on.
Another great benefit of working with a travel agent is they can keep an eye out for other deals, even after you’ve already put in your deposit. And did you know that Disney often has free dining plan deals for anyone that stays in one of their resorts around the fall and winter? I didn’t, so when Bridget told me that, I was thrilled. And after looking on my own, Bridget offered the best prices! So…
- Tip #1: Get a travel agent. I obviously highly recommend Bridget from Pixie Vacations! Email her at Bridget@pixievacations.com and tell her I sent you!
- Tip #2: Be flexible in your travel dates and keep an eye out for the free dining plan deals. I’ll go into more detail about the dining plans in Part 2, but believe me when I say this was a huge money saver for us.
- Tip #3: Fly Southwest. Southwest offers each passenger two free checked bags, a carry on, a personal item, and for parents, a car seat AND stroller. All for FREE. Babies under 2 fly free, over 2 there’s a discount on their seats. And all families with a child under 5 get to board directly after Group A so everyone can sit together. They rock! Plus, we flew from a Wednesday to Wednesday resulting in $200 savings over our original travel dates for $380!!! Round trip for the three of us (ok, technically 2…still awesome).
- Tip #4: Typically, moderate resorts’ rooms don’t differ too much from deluxe resorts in terms of size and layout. The price difference was really for location in some cases and the whole everything-is-included-in-one-huge-themed-building thing. It’s cool, but for this trip at least we were ok with the moderate Port Orleans French Quarter. Also, they had just refurbished the whole place so we were very, very happy with our room.
Being Tech·mom·o·gy, I have to have some tech advice in here. Enter the TripIt app. TripIt is a free travel organizer that makes all your reservations and plans easy to keep track of. Listed in order with all applicable information like confirmation or flight numbers, TripIt takes some of the initial stress out of planning.
- Tip #5: Go to the TripIt website and sign up. Once you do, you can forward all confirmation emails (make sure they are coming from the same email address you signed up with) to plans@tripit.com. Instantly (in my experience), you receive an email saying that all the information was successfully entered. Super easy. We had our airline flight numbers and all times, scheduled check in and out of our hotel and all dining reservations listed in order within the app. And a plus for me was that TripIt offers calendar integration, so everything was imported to my Google calendar and therefore automatically on my phone.
I was not compensated in any way for this article from any of the above mentioned companies. All opinions are 100% my own.
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