The Millers in Motion Podcast
The Millers in Motion Podcast
Join Ryan and Lauren Miller as they take you beyond the world of RVing to explore all things travel! Whether it’s road trips, flights, cruises, or the hidden gems of small towns and big cities, the Millers bring you along for the ride. In each episode, we’ll dive into our latest adventures, share insider tips, discuss travel challenges, and meet fascinating people along the way. Whether you're an experienced traveler, a weekend wanderer, or just looking for inspiration for your next trip, we’ve got stories and insights that will inspire your journey. Let’s keep those wheels rolling—wherever the road, sky, or sea might take us!
The Millers in Motion Podcast
EP24 - Mastering the Magic: Budget-Friendly Disney World Adventures and Insider Tips
Welcome to the RV Shenanigans Podcast from Millers in Motion, where we embark on adventures and share tales from life on the road. Join us as we explore the joys and challenges of RV living and discover the beauty of traveling this amazing country.
Episode Title:
EP24 - Mastering the Magic: Budget-Friendly Disney World Adventures and Insider Tips
Episode Description:
Ever wondered how to craft the ultimate Disney World adventure without spending a fortune or missing out on any of the magic? Pack your mouse ears and join us as we unpack the secrets to navigating Disney's enchanting realm. From childhood memories to honeymoon bliss, we share personal tales and pro-tips that will elevate your Disney experience—from selecting the perfect resort category to leveraging the intricate network of Disney transportation, all while keeping your budget in check.
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Thank you for joining us on the RV Shenanigans Podcast. Until next time, happy trails and safe travels!
Welcome back to the RV Shenanigans podcast brought to you by Liquified.
Speaker 2:I'm Lauren, this is Ryan, and together we are Millers in Motion. We had a ranch in Texas that we sold, and now we are enjoying new adventures in our Alliance Valor.
Speaker 1:And last week we talked all things the Fort and if you don't know what the Fort is, that's Disney's Fort Wilderness Resort, one of the most popular campgrounds in all of America, one of the nicest ones too. And we alluded to a lot of things talking about Walt Disney World, that if you were going to go stay at the Fort and also do Disney, you probably should know.
Speaker 2:There's a lot of information to cover, so we tried to separate it out a little bit for you guys.
Speaker 1:So these two weeks are just Disney weeks. We've always had a love for Disney a little bit. I grew up going to the parks ever since I was a little kid and we would go every year or two kind of a situation with my family. So I've got a lot of fond memories of going to the parks. Your memories are a little more recent than mine.
Speaker 2:I did not. My first time to Disney World was actually our honeymoon. Yes, you can honeymoon at Disney World, and it was a blast. Well, and.
Speaker 1:I think that's a big misconception of Disney is it's only meant for, like toddler to early tween aged kids, and the reality of it is is that it's just a fun place to go. Now, I get it, not everybody's in the theme parks, and that portion of it we do completely understand. But if you're worried about the kids, there are ways to do Disney that are more adult-themed, and we had an absolute blast when we did our honeymoon and then we went back about five years after that and we actually took our family. So my parents went, we went, your parents went and your little sister, amy, went.
Speaker 2:And so that time we really geared it more towards her experience and less our experience, and so we kind of got to have several different versions of Disney. So hopefully we can speak to those.
Speaker 1:And when we recently stayed at Disney's Fort Wilderness for our little 20 hour, got to Orlando early situation Again. If you want to learn more about that, you can listen to the Fort Wilderness podcast. But when we got there so early we didn't want to pay the prices to get into the parks, and so there's ways of doing Disney on the cheap, and we'll get into all of that here in just a little bit, but before we do, let's take a quick break and a word from our sponsors. What's the worst part about RVing? It's the black tank. No one likes to have to deal with a stinky or messy black tank. Let the team over at Liquified RV Black Tank Management help you out.
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Speaker 1:To learn more about Liquified RV Black Tank Treatment, you can visit liquifiedrvcom. Do us a favor. Please support the brands that support us, because they enable us to be able to bring you the podcast and the regular videos To purchase Liquified Black Tank Treatment, please see the link down below. Welcome back and a big thanks to our sponsors Disney World.
Speaker 2:They're not our sponsors. For clarification, we would take it.
Speaker 1:Absolutely so. When we talked about Disney's Fort Williams, we talked about getting there via your RV and getting through the Orlando area and all that, and we are going to take a similar format to when we normally do destinations. There's just a whole other layer of stuff with Disney and I think one of the most important things to know is that when you talk about going to Disney, it's not just booking your hotel, booking your RV site if that's what you're going to do booking your airfare or your drive, scheduling your drive. There's a whole other layer of stuff.
Speaker 2:And it's kind of one of those situations you don't know what you don't know, and then you get there and you start to figure this out. So learn by our mistakes.
Speaker 1:Well, not only our mistakes, but you have a friend, lindsay, who they went for the first time about five or 10 years ago now, when they started having kids, and she went down that rabbit hole pretty hard.
Speaker 2:And there are so many right, it can get overwhelming for sure.
Speaker 1:Youtube channels, kind of talking about it. One of our favorites and he's kind of slowly become a friend of ours, we had him out at the RV show when we were in Tampa is the Tim tracker is the name of the channel? Um, they do Disney theme park content. Um, and he daily vlogs. They do Disney theme park content and he daily vlogs, which is insane because we do one video and one podcast a week and my brain wants to explode.
Speaker 2:And they do the whole Orlando area, but you'll see a heavy Disney influence.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they're just big into the theme parks. That's what they started doing. They've been doing it for over 12 years now, so if you are looking for more of an incredible deep dive, definitely check out their channel. We will put it in the show notes below as well. As far as Disney itself, I wish it was just as easy as booking a few things and showing up, but unfortunately there's windows for booking things and then there's a whole other layer of timing and other stuff that goes into it. So we're going to start from the 30,000-foot view and work down kind of like a funnel. So what is walt disney world as a whole? You?
Speaker 2:want to take a crack at that. That's the world's most difficult question. So it's all encompassing, right, disney world as a whole. There's theme parks, there are high-end restaurants and there's outside of, like the theme parks, there's still shows and amusement and things. There are spas. So to me it's an all-encompassing. It's not an all-inclusive resort by any means, but you can find the amenities of those types of things somewhere on the grounds.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they call it. The Disney bubble is officially the term that has affectionately been appropriated by the fans of it, and so, once you're inside the bubble, not only does Disney not want you to leave, because that means you're spending money for them, but it is this kind of elevated service. The customer service has always been massively over the top compared to other theme park style resorts. It's not going to be over the top compared to, like you know, an exclusive, really high-end hotel or like yachting experience, but as far as a massive amount of people, I do feel like they go above and beyond. Everything is always clean. It's not like sorry, six Flags, but it's not like running down to Six Flags, it's just not the same thing.
Speaker 2:Right, and so the staff or the cast members, I guess you could say are always very polite and very helpful. Like you said, it's very clean and they go out of their way to make sure that it's seamless for you, so you don't see a bunch of service members performing tasks in front of the guests.
Speaker 1:So just a few kind of notes to know is Walt Disney World is officially an entertainment resort by definition. It's located in Bay Lake, which is Disney's own city. It's serviced by the Reedy Creek Municipal District, which is Disney's own municipal district because it's so large. They have their own police department, they have their own fire department, all of those city services.
Speaker 2:This sounds like the mafia. Yeah, well, it kind of was A little bit.
Speaker 1:It's located on Lake Buena Vista, which is a throwback to where Disney came from originally in California. Lake Buena Vista was the road that Disney's corporate office is on. It's actually in two counties and three other cities. It also encompasses the city of Winter Garden, kissimmee and the greater Orlando area, and it is a part of Orange and Oskola maybe I said that right counties. It is comprised of 25,000 acres, or 39 square miles.
Speaker 2:It's a lot of land.
Speaker 1:It is a lot of land and they don't, I believe my understanding is, for the parks, resorts and everything. They only use about 29 to 32% of it somewhere in that ballpark. So right around 30% of it's actually developed and used for something and it originally opened in October of 1971. So they just recently celebrated their 50th anniversary last year, the year before, something like that. So that's kind of the overview. It is comprised of form form it's comprised of form?
Speaker 1:comprised of four theme parks, two water parks, a lot of resorts and so many I stopped counting um one big campground, uh and a I don't know the best way to shopping and entertainment district is probably the easiest way to say that I agree with that it's supported by its own transportation system, and the nearest airport if you're going to fly in is mco or orlando international airport, where there are transportation options from the airport down to disney, where you don't have to rent a car, even though we we uber is what we do.
Speaker 1:They used to have something called the magical express and it was magical well, it was great because they would take your bags from the airport to your resort, so you never had to touch your check bags, um till you got on again. This is assuming you're flying in and not driving in, and you wouldn't have to mess with any of it. So it was really cool. But, uh, and during the covid cut downs and all that stuff, it's just something that never returned, unfortunately and it was.
Speaker 2:It was a bus. Yeah, it was a bus system.
Speaker 1:So there were loops. You're going to hear that term a lot with Disney, so you'd be on a loop with different hotels that were in that area, and so the downside to it was you would potentially have you'd be the last stop of like seven, so that would be the only downside to it, but for the most part it was actually a lot. It was really cool as far as how um it worked.
Speaker 2:Because it was free, it was included with your hotel right and they would like play music and things when you were driving and it was. Everybody was so excited. It was a good time. Yeah, we did it on our honeymoon. Not my favorite ride, but I liked it yeah, we did it on our honeymoon.
Speaker 1:I don't remember if we did it. Uh, when we got there with the families. Yeah, um, we more than likely did um. I'd flown into it a couple of times because if I was going to go to a p, there was a pga show in town. I typically always stay that disney because it got me far enough away in one of those why not?
Speaker 2:situations I was gonna say sure, how did that magically work out?
Speaker 1:I don't know how it worked out, but, um, so I know like they stopped doing it. So I've come in to the resort now a couple of different ways and then the last time we were there, we obviously had the RV, so we drove, because that's how RVs work. Okay, so booking it. There are three different categories of hotels, technically four, if you count the campground. Obviously we're an RV channel, so we've done a whole deep dive into Fort Wilderness. There are cabins there. Obviously we're an rv channel, so we've done a whole deep dive into fort wilderness. There are cabins there. We didn't talk very deep about the cabins, but you would book those just like an rv site, except it's a cabin, um, and you can rent golf carts and do all the same things you did in the fort wilderness uh podcast.
Speaker 2:We talked about the other resorts, though, so and this is a topic you won't hear me chime in much on, because I did not do this. You did.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I've booked all of our Disney stuff.
Speaker 2:Thank you, and so Lauren's never done any of that.
Speaker 1:There's three different categories of hotels. There's value, moderate and deluxe, and they're exactly what they sound like. Value is their lowest priced options, and there's a handful of those. Moderate would be kind of that middle of the road. And then deluxe is going to be your premium offering. So the biggest difference is your values are going to be more motel style, and if you don't know what that means, it means your door is going to be to the exterior, so you're going to walk around.
Speaker 1:Some of these can get really, really big as far as their size, and so your location inside of it helps affect, of affect your, depending on how you travel. If you know you're not going to be in the hotel room much, and maybe it's just a couple, and you're there for the parks. I mean, listen, you can get one of these rooms for around 180, 190 dollars a night, which is cheap for Disney, by the way, and so you can get into those and, and if you're not going to be there very much, great, they are a little bit smaller. The food offerings are less, and so it's more of a food court style when you get there, but again, it's one of those if you're not going to eat at the resort. If you don't plan on being there very often, then why spend more?
Speaker 1:kind of a situation and just for clarification, this does include some forms of transportation like the bus system so all resorts have you can get to transportation, to all disney things one way or another right so now, now, disney offers a bunch of different transportation, and we'll talk a little bit more about that in depth, but the value of resorts is going to be primarily bus, and there are a couple that also use what's called a Skyliner, which is a gondola system.
Speaker 2:But your hotel fee will not include your park tickets or food necessarily.
Speaker 1:So just for clarification for anybody who's completely never been Right, and again we're going to talk about those after we get through hotels. So, um, in the moderate category. Oh, one other thing on the the uh value. The value resorts have a more simplistic theming to them. Uh think Disney characters plastered on wall. That's really where it kind of ends and so it's.
Speaker 1:It is themed, they are nice, they are clean. That goes without saying on a lot of the different hotels, no matter what you're, what you're doing. But the theming is going to be like one of the resorts is called art of animation, so you can imagine it's a bunch of the animated characters around. One's called pop century. It's the disney characters themed to different centuries, that kind of thing.
Speaker 1:And so when you move up to the moderate resorts again, these resorts are potentially just as big but they have more direct theming to certain things, like a perfect example would be Disney's Caribbean Beach.
Speaker 1:So there's not, there's going to be characters around, but it's a little less and it's just themed to more of like a Caribbean resort and the different areas of the hotels are themed to different islands in the Caribbean, like Aruba or the Bahamas, so on and so forth. So when you get to those, again, bus is still going to be the primary mode of transportation, but there are more other modes of sudden, and then typically, you're still going to have that food court style food setup, but you're also going to have a handful of sit-down restaurants in addition to so the offerings kind of expand. They're also typically in slightly better locations, so when you do have to get on a bus for transportation, you're not going quite as far. Keeping in mind, the parks are pretty spaced out, and so inevitably there's going to be a park that's further away, and so they also have resort areas, which we'll get into in a second as well. Deluxe is exactly what it sounds like. These are the premium ones.
Speaker 2:The expensive ones. Yes, you read that correctly.
Speaker 1:Yep. So this is going to include things like Disney's Polynesian, the Contemporary, the Grand Floridian, which is kind of their top of the line At least they are the most proud of it as per price. It's also going to include other resorts, like where we did our, but both of our stays now with you is the Disney's beach club, which is part of the yacht and beach club boardwalk, so on and so forth, and so those are going to be more of your traditional resort style hotels. All the rooms are interior. The moderates, by the way, are a little bounce back and forth, depending on which one. Newer ones have been designed more like hotels, older ones were designed more like motels. Again, some of these were developed prior to the 80s, and so you got to remember that hotels were just different back then.
Speaker 2:So you gave a price point on the value of resorts.
Speaker 1:Do you have a price point for the deluxe so the moderates let's go there first is the biggest span. It's the widest berth, if you may, because there's some moderates that are just as expensive as the deluxe hotels and can get up to six or seven hundred dollars a night and as cheap as about 250 a night. Again, please understand, disney used uses dynamic pricing. It really is dependent on when you're going, the time of the week you're going, how many other people are there. So if you are curious, just double check on your own. The deluxe resorts can start anywhere around $500 and range upwards of and I'm talking standard rooms, not suites. By the way, the Grand Floridian can get up to $1,300, $1,400 a night for a room during peak season, per night, per night, not including, like Lauren said, any tickets, food options, any of those things.
Speaker 1:And with the deluxe resorts typically you're also getting a higher food service, which also costs more. So just keep in mind the other thing about a deluxe resort you're not getting that food court style offering at all. You're going to get what's called a quick service, which is more like a marketplace style thing, which is walk up, grab a sandwich, walk away. Sometimes they're hot, sometimes they're not. I'll use the Beach Club as an example, since we've stayed there a couple of times, it has a walk up marketplace where you can grab quick things for breakfast a bowl of cereal, a banana, a muffin, maybe like a croissant sandwich kind of a thing. That's about it. And then same thing for lunch. I think they had hot paninis as was the only hot offering, but they also have a breakfast buffet with characters and then a regular buffet and then a regular breakfast restaurant, so you have more sit down kind of elevated service stuff.
Speaker 1:So some of this depends on how you want your vacation to feel. Again, if you're going to go to the parks and eat, don't worry about all this. Get a moderate or a value. If you're going to utilize the resort and the hotel a lot more and come back for breaks and you just want to relax and go at your own speed, then maybe you consider a deluxe kind of a thing. But yeah, that's the hotels.
Speaker 1:In a nutshell and there's a lot that goes into that. We're going to talk a little bit about transportation, because that's the next thing closest to the hotels Transportation. There's a lot of it at disney which is good.
Speaker 2:You know, in a matter of ways, right and I will say disney transportation.
Speaker 1:I'm only talking about internal disney transportation itself. So obviously there is the default you can drive your car and park where you want. Now you cannot just go park at a hotel unless you have a reservation at that hotel. They they have limited space. So, like, if you have a and when I say reservation, obviously a hotel reservation but if you wanted to go eat, like, let's say, at the Polynesian at Ohana, if you have a dining reservation, you're allowed to park there for the duration of that. But they ask you when you're done to move it because, again, they don't have all the parking in the world and people will just park there for the parks if they could. So you do have to have some sort of reservation at the hotels to be parking there. If not, you park at what's called the ticketed transportation center, which is also the main parking for magic kingdom, which is the primary park, and you can then use their transportation to get wherever you want to go. So what comprises dis transportation? Go for it.
Speaker 2:I'd say most commonly is the buses. You know, the buses go everywhere. They go with the ticket and transportation. They go to the theme parks, they go to the hotels all over and they also go to Disney Springs right. They do, which is kind of the shopping and dining, like you said, area. So that's probably the most common because it hits so many different places.
Speaker 1:Well, it's the most versatile, for Disney too, so they can reallocate buses where they need to. So it's the least what I'm going to say magical, because it's a bus. There's only so fancy they can make a bus at the end of the day.
Speaker 2:And you got to pay attention to your routes. It's not that each bus goes to each place.
Speaker 1:There are different routes, just like anywhere else and Disney does a good job of making sure you get on the right one, but if you are not paying attention, you can end up in a spot you don't want to end up. Well, not that you don't. It's not like going to the south side of Dallas. You're not going to South Chicago by any means, but you're just going to have to work to get back to where you wanted to go.
Speaker 2:You can be on that bus for a hot minute.
Speaker 1:Pretty much, but okay. Another form of transportation that's the second most popular at Disney or utilized would be boats. There are all kinds of boats. There's ferries if you're at the ticket and transportation like big, massive ferries, and then there's little, what they call friendship boats that work over on the Epcot side of things, and then they have the regular boats that transport some people from some of the hotels and resorts to the parks and different areas, as well, and then Ryan's favorite ride as a kid Monorail.
Speaker 1:So Disney's Monorail came online pretty quickly after the opening. It's known as the highway in the sky. So there is a monorail system. In fact there's affectionately known as the monorail loop. So it does connect the front of Magic kingdom, the polynesian, the grand floridian and the contemporary. It actually goes through the contemporary hotel um and it also connects to disney's ticket and transportation center. So if you are just general parking coming in for the day, you can actually get to the parks via a ferry or the monorail, and then on a really busy day they'll also have buses running back and forth when those two things get a little bit over capacity. And then there's the newest form of transportation.
Speaker 2:And I didn't know what he was talking about when he said this the first time.
Speaker 1:In the podcast or prior to no whenever we're actually on grounds. You've never been on it still.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So it's called Disney Skyliner, think like a ski resort gondola is the best way to put it, and that's exactly what it is, but they've installed different lines that go across the park, so they're trying to supplement areas where you had to take a bus. You didn't have a choice, but they were trying to give an alternative mode of transportation. Again, it seems like there's a lot of different transportation offerings, but you got to remember too, a lot of people visit Disney World, and so they're trying to spread people out do you have any more?
Speaker 2:because I can think of one that you were telling me about that we did.
Speaker 1:We haven't used I didn't know if you were going to mention it the minivans oh well, I was going to get to it as a paid option well, there you go yeah, so there are also the minivans, so we'll talk about those at the very end, that that is a paid option, just as a heads up, but going into it, like Lauren said, we already kind of dove into the buses enough. But when you start talking about the monorail, there's a lot of different things you can do around it. We actually shot a video while we were in Fort Wilderness where we did what was called a monorail crawl, where you just, instead of going to the parks and spending the ticket prices which, trust me, we'll get there too we just hopped on the monitor and went from hotel to hotel, wandered around, had a drink, had an appetizer, had a soft serve, a little Dole Whip Well, at least I did, you didn't for some reason but that kind of stuff, and so that in itself can be a whole day or two.
Speaker 2:It took us hours to do that. Really it took us hours to do that. Really it did, and that was a lot of fun. I'd recommend that, yeah it, it's.
Speaker 1:it's just one of those things that people go there and they assume it's just the parks, and it's so much more than that. Um, moving on to the skyliner, which is the most unknown thing. So the skyliner has three different lines and they connect um epcot and they also connect Hollywood Studios to some of the hotels. So the monorail will connect you to Epcot as well. You can go to the Ticket and Transportation Center. I guess I should have gone there when I was doing monorail. Sorry, but there is a second line. It's called the monorail or it's called the loop to Epcot. So essentially you could take that closed loop around the Magic Kingdom Resort area and then, at the Ticket and Transportation Center, you can transfer to a monorail that takes you to the entrance of Epcot and then comes back. That's all it does.
Speaker 1:Epcot is unique. It has two entrances and exits. It has the main one, which is right by the Big Golf Ball, and then you've got the International Gateway entrance, which is where the Epcot Resort area is. That's also where the Skyliner station is, so you can hop on the Skyliner there and it connects Riviera and then Caribbean beach. Caribbean beach is a Skyliner hub.
Speaker 1:All of our phones just made noise, which means our firefly wordle group is at it. So, um, at Caribbean beach you can transfer and then you can get onto the Epcot loop or, I'm sorry, you can get onto the Studios loop, hollywood Studios, and that will also connect you to Nope. That's it, just goes to Hollywood Studios. The other loop takes you to Art of Animation and Disney's Pop Century, which are the only two value resorts that have alternate modes versus bus, that have alternate modes versus bus. So it moves pretty quickly. To be completely honest with you, it's the flow of that thing. It works, as long as it's working correctly, and it's kind of fun because it's a different mode of transportation. You can see parts of the resorts that you maybe wouldn't have gotten to see.
Speaker 2:um, Maybe next time we'll have to do a Skyliner loop.
Speaker 1:So there's Skyliner crawls now too, because there's different hotels on that loop that people are starting to do things at so comment below if you want to join us. As well. So, unless you're listening to this and then email us, the second one, or the last mode of transportation that's unpaid, that's not a bus, would be the boat system.
Speaker 2:Again, the boats are boats, it's exactly what you think a boat would be.
Speaker 1:Yep, there's different loops for that as well. So, like if you're staying at Disney's Fort Wilderness again, we're an RV podcast, so we bring it back to that a lot If you're at Fort Wilderness, you're going to be in a loop with the Wilderness Lodge as well as Magic Kingdom. So to get to the Magic Kingdom you wouldn't actually take a bus. You'd go down to the settlement and take a boat around the Epcot Resort area. Boats connect the back or international gateway entrance to Epcot to MGM Studios. Oh, it's not MGM Studios anymore.
Speaker 2:There's my throwback Party foul.
Speaker 1:To Hollywood Studios, and they also connect the Yacht and Beach Club boardwalk. And then there's a couple of resorts we didn't mention that are considered deluxe. They're not owned by Disney, they just leased the land, and that's the Swan and the Dolphin, which are owned and operated by the Hyatt Group, and so they connect that as well, and then the studio. So there's really a way to get everywhere you want.
Speaker 2:There is. Allow yourself a little bit more time than you think, yes, um, that that's kind of a kicker that we didn't anticipate when we did.
Speaker 1:Did it last time, right it it's. You do have to wait on something. Sometimes, if you just get there and miss it, you might have to wait 10 or 15 minutes. You know, I've never had a bad transportation experience I've just had long ones, that's right and so, and it's. It's one of those places that I would say that, if you're going to Disney, pack your patient pants, no matter if you're going as an adult or with kids, because it is a lot of people.
Speaker 1:If crowds aren't your thing, disney might not be your thing, because there are a lot of them, and that's true.
Speaker 2:My dad was not a big crowds person and he still had a wonderful time at Disney.
Speaker 1:He did, but he definitely had to. We had to do Disney a little differently so that he could take his breaks.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:Which, to be honest, growing up, we would go to the parks pretty early in the morning, stay till kind of early to mid-afternoon and then we'd go back to the hotel and take a break, go swimming in the pool, just get away from the big crowds and go back to the resort crowds, which can still be busy but nowhere near as busy as the parks crowds, and go back to the resort crowds, which can still be busy but nowhere near as busy as the parks, and then we would go back in the evenings for dinner, fireworks, that kind of stuff, and then call it a night after that. So magical magical.
Speaker 1:With magical being said, we might as well talk about the parks. That's why most people come to these things. It is this natural extension in your vacation to go from the hotels or campground to the parks. So Disney is comprised of four theme parks, two water parks. The water parks are water parks. I don't know what to tell you. I've actually never been to either of them.
Speaker 1:I don't go there for the water parks, but that's Disney's Typhoon Lagoon and Blizzard Beach In the winter, one's closed In the spring, the other's closed for cleanups and all that kind of stuff. If you've been to the water parks, we'd love to hear your experience, because we've never been, so we're not going to talk about them. The main parks so you've got Disney's Magic Kingdom, which is the main park. Cinderella's Castle it's the most resembling Disneyland in Anaheim and then the I'm going in order of how they came online. Then you have Epcot, which stands for Experimental Prototype, community of Tomorrow.
Speaker 1:It was meant to be a city when Walt designed it. He passed before they ever started construction. It morphed into what it is now, which is really more of a futuristic kind of World's Fair feel with World Showcase. It's unique in the sense that there's the front of the park and the back of the park, so it's two very different feeling areas in one park, and the front being more of that kind of what's coming up in the future kind of. And they've redone it recently as well. And so now it's world of celebration, which is like their middle area, where they have a lot of festivals at epcot as well. Um, they have world like test track. Is there, uh, the new guardians of the galaxy roller coaster? Is there that kind of stuff? And then you have World Showcase, which is in the back, which is more like think pavilions of countries over the top. They actually employ people from those countries to work there, where you can taste food, drinks and experience different things from those areas.
Speaker 2:And that was one of my favorite parts actually of our Disney trip.
Speaker 1:Epcot's one of those places for me that you can just wander around and look at stuff and you don't have to go do anything. There's stuff to do, don't get me wrong, but you can. We liked ending a lot of our days in epcot because it had a ton of restaurants and the most diverse accounting of restaurants, at least in one place, at disney, and it was just. The fireworks were always really cool there. For us, we like staying because we like ending our days there a lot. We would do park hopper options, which we'll briefly talk about in tickets, and we would end our days there, and then we also like to stay. The Otten Beach Club is at the back entrance. You can literally walk into Epcot from there and you can. It's part of the Epcot resort area and so that's why we like ending there. We don't have to go very far to get back to our hotel. We don't have to get on a bus or anything else, we can just walk.
Speaker 1:So after Epcot you move into what started off as MGM Studios, which is now Disney's Hollywood Studios, which was built more along the theming of be in the movies, that kind of thing. It was a working studio for an extended period of time. Somewhere in the early 2000s they stopped using it as a working studio as the park needed to expand and most of those jobs went back into California from Florida. They actually did a couple of animated movies from that studio Hercules was actually done there, I think, that kind of stuff. Now, with all that being said, it is now home of some of the bigger expansion lands because it had the most room for expansion.
Speaker 1:This is where you're going to find Hollywood Tower of Terror, the ride. This is also where the infamous Star Wars land or Galaxy's Edge is, which is the largest single themed land expansion in Disney history is, uh, it's almost the size of the rest of the park um, all themed towards star wars stuff. So it's like you're going off planet and you're kind of stepping into that world, uh, where you can drive the millennium falcon, which was a if you're a nerd, a big big thing, sorry, not sorry and then kind of again just stepping into some of the world of movie making and then from there you go to animal kingdom, which is the newest one.
Speaker 2:It's probably my actual favorite park yeah, I would say it's my favorite park too, like I enjoyed the world showcase as far as epcot went.
Speaker 1:But as far as parks go, yeah, I I liked animal kingdom so it's the largest park by far, but because a lot of it is animal services. Um, because they are a working zoo, they are part of all of those conservatory places, everything. They've started their own stuff and so they do a lot of stuff for animal research. But they have one of the rides is like an African trek, where you actually drive through and they've actually created non-fenced barriers so you look across and you see all these animals Like they're together. They're really not, but it's a really cool park. This is also where the Avatar Land is, because they kind of somehow Thought that would be part of that park. I'm not really sure how. It's unique.
Speaker 1:This park does not have fireworks in any capacity Because of the animals. They also close the earliest. They typically close anywhere from five to seven o'clock. Most the parks will stay open, especially during prime season. During the summer. They'll still open until 10 or 11 o'clock at night. Not animal kingdom, because they do it, it's for them. It's more about the animal safety and security and they don't want a bunch of loud noises while those animals are winding down for the day. So they close quite a bit earlier. So they also open earlier than the rest of the parks because of that, because typically the animals are going as soon as the sun comes up. So, um, that's the parks that I'm aware of. Now, there's one special place that's not the parks, it's called disney springs. It is that entertainment shopping district I was talking about.
Speaker 2:And this is my third favorite park.
Speaker 1:Which is not a park. The beauty of this is it is free Now. With that being said, there's a lot of food offerings. I would say, if you're staying at a value resort, this is probably where you're going to go for dinner more times than not. If you want a nicer dinner or more of a sit down style dinner, All right, controversial topic.
Speaker 2:I think these are some of my favorite restaurants.
Speaker 1:I agree so a lot of times too at Disney Springs. It's the one area where they allow outside vendors. So Disney doesn't allow. They're very strict on what people associate with Disney and Disney Springs is the one place where they allow outside. There's plenty of Disney-themed restaurants here as well that Disney actually owns and operates. Specifically, one of our favorites is actually owned by Disney. That's Raglan Road. So that's a Disney restaurant. But then you're going to have a lot of other things like Wine Bar George STK, which is a steakhouse. Those are all. There's multiples of those restaurants. Other places there's a new one called Summer House, there's another one in California, and so that's kind of the uniqueness of Disney Springs. It's kind of more of a melting pot.
Speaker 1:They have a lot of evening activities as well. So they bring live bands in, they bring all kinds of stuff in and there's a lot of shopping there as well. You are going to have World of Disney, which is the largest Disney merchandise store.
Speaker 2:But then you're going to have a lot of other things too. Think of it as an outdoor mall and particularly pay attention to the Ghirardelli shop and the cookie shop.
Speaker 1:The cookie shop. Oh, shoot, what's the name of the cookie shop? I forgot.
Speaker 2:I forgot the name of the cookie shop too.
Speaker 1:Giordano's Nope, that's pizza, that's pizza.
Speaker 2:Anyways, the cookie shop Gordano's. Nope, that's pizza. Anyways the cookie shop gideon's.
Speaker 1:There we go leave it to ryan not to actually forget the name of it. So gideon's is there? Yep, which is a half pound cookie of magicalness some of my favorite attractions the food, but it is, I will say, some of the best food on properties there. Dis Disney can be reserved with their food, and I say that in terms of they're trying to appeal to a lot of different people and so to make something spicy. They want to taste spicy and not be spicy.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:Which, if you want something that spicy we love spice doesn't sit as well, and it's just that same thing.
Speaker 1:Like they again, they have to be a little bit careful because there are so many different cultures and types of people that visit the parks that they do have to, unfortunately, play kind of neutral. You're most likely to find what you're looking for at Disney Springs because those places don't care as much. They don't mind taking those risks because it's not Disney essentially, and so they will. If you're going to go to a Mexican food place, you're going to find spicier foods there versus, like a Mexican food place in the park somewhere.
Speaker 2:So, and don't take that as a knock to the food at Disney. It just take it as, like, understand your expectation. Right, there is still very good food. Um, it's just sometimes the flavor profile you're looking for. Potentially, if you've experienced legitimate food like that, it just may be a little bit less than what you're thinking, but the food is still very good and there are still a lot of options at Disney.
Speaker 1:There are and, with that being said, let's start tying some of this stuff all together to kind of help complete a vacation. All right, so a few things that you have options for you obviously can purchase while you're purchasing your hotel stays, whether you use a travel agent or you direct book directly through Disney uh or the campground website, which the campground website works a little differently than the rest of the bookings because you have a larger booking window. There you can book quite a few more days out in advance. Versus Disney's Uh, they only updated every year or so around.
Speaker 2:June.
Speaker 1:Um. So when things come online, you definitely want to jump on it Disney. So when things come online, you definitely want to jump on it. Disney is one of those typical places that the biggest question we get is when is the cheapest time to book as soon as possible? The cheapest time is the earliest time with Disney because of dynamic pricing. As you get closer and people book, you start to see prices fluctuate and go up from there. So it is one of those situations where, if you know you're going to go, you know you want to go at certain dates, find out when the earliest you can book is and if it's already available, it's right then and get it booked. The nice thing about that is they only require a $200 deposit and it's refundable up to a week before your vacation. Now that $200, you're not going to necessarily get back, but it will roll into a credit and you can use it on a future vacation or whatever else that you can do through Disney World's website.
Speaker 2:Ticket prices to the parks. Oh, this is where it hurts. You thought the hotel prices hurt.
Speaker 1:I will tell you, when I said hotel prices, that was not a package deal, that was just the hotel. So we're going to talk about ticket prices. The same Know that if you start putting stuff together, it does make the individual things a little bit cheaper. So you can package or bundle things together through the Disney website and you can book a hotel in conjunction with your tickets and you get a discount on both a little bit because you're doing the whole thing. This is not that. This is worst case scenario. So individual ticket prices. Now, this again is dynamic pricing. So we're going to talk about the averages. The average ticket price for Magic Kingdom it's the most expensive park is $159 for an adult.
Speaker 2:Per person per day.
Speaker 1:Per person per day, no park offer option, nothing else along those lines. The rest of the parks it's well. So for Hollywood Studios and Epcot it's $149. And then it's $129 for Animal Kingdom. So again, those can go up and they can come down. That is an average.
Speaker 1:If you are curious about the exact dates, there is a ticket finder you can do through their website that's just waldisneyworldcom, and you can find out the actual prices of the day you're going to be there. And I definitely would say if you are booking a campground or a hotel stay, put your tickets together, because it can lower the ticket prices up to. If you do a eight day ticket with a hotel stay, it can lower it down as low as about 50 bucks a day. So you can definitely save some money by putting it together. So I would, I would look at, obviously, the more you do, the cheaper your per day price gets. The less you do, the higher your per day price is going to be. That's kind of common with anywhere you go. So just know that.
Speaker 1:Again, you don't need a ticketed price to see Disney Springs or to use any of the transportation. So there are plenty of people that go and never go to the parks, because there is quite a bit to do without that. There are some other ticket options you can add. And there are some other ticket options you can add. You have a park hopper option. It can be up to $50 or $60, sorry per person per day.
Speaker 2:And that simply means you can go to more than one park in a day.
Speaker 1:Now, at the time that we're recording this, you are required to make a reservation at the earliest point. Now this is all about to change, so I'm going to say what it is and what it's about to be and then we'll reminisce on what it used to be. So you have to make a park reservation. This is something that started during COVID and just never went away. It's about to go away, but it hasn't yet. So at the time of recording, you make a park reservation. After two o'clock, you're welcome to visit any of the parks that qualify on your ticket. So sometimes that's water park, sometimes it's not. It just depends on the type of ticket you bought. But if you add a park hop or option, whatever's valid on your ticket is valid across the board at 2 o'clock. Now here, in literally like a month, that's all going to change, where you no longer have to make a park reservation, unless you're an annual pass holder, and you can park hop whenever you want. It doesn't matter anymore, which is how it used to be, which is nice.
Speaker 1:It was nice, it really was Because sometimes you just want to go one ride and move on.
Speaker 2:Well, and sometimes we'd want to go to a restaurant.
Speaker 1:Yeah, for breakfast.
Speaker 2:In a certain park and then we'd want to actually go to the entertainment of a different park.
Speaker 1:Right, and again, for us we'd end in Epcot a lot and Epcot a lot, and so we typically somewhere in the afternoon, early evening, would go to Epcot and that's where we would kind of hang out for the rest of the night and walk around, eat, ride a ride or two, that kind of stuff. So that's theme park tickets. There is something called Disney Genie Plus. That is a whole massive, complicated thing in itself. I would tell you to understand that, because there used to be a system called fast passes, which was a way for you to kind of skip longer lines, not skipping a line completely, but essentially you can pay for a little bit of a priority access on some of the more popular rides. You can pay a daily fee for genie plus per day. It can range anywhere from 10 to $25 per person. Again, it's just depending on you. For two people that's not that bad, for six people that's a whole different ball game, and so it just depended on what you want to do. You can save some time and energy with it, it's just what you want to do.
Speaker 1:There is something called the advanced lightning lanes which is essentially pay as you go. So, like some of the more popular rides in the parks. We use Hollywood Studios as an example. That'd be Rise of the Resistance, which has been touted as the best theme park ride ever, because it's a series of like 15 different things and experiences. It's all based on Star Wars. That, typically, is the most expensive. Even if you have Disney Genie Plus, you still have to pay for that Lightning Lane because of its popularity, so that's an extra anywhere from $10 to $25 per person just for that one lightning lane.
Speaker 2:So, like you were saying at the beginning, we were trying to give you a bit of a big overview. So there are a lot of caveats and details that we didn't go into. There are a lot of ways to save money and to save time and things, but we won't try to bog you down with all of those and make this even more confusing.
Speaker 1:No, and that's where we're going to defer to Tim, because he is much, much better at that. He's made videos on all of those things. So again, check out his channel and then just search it.
Speaker 2:And he has a lot more experience than we do. Yeah, like he lives there.
Speaker 1:So he's there a lot. Now, that being said, you also have annual passes. If you're a Florida resident, there's a bunch of different ones and essentially the biggest difference is blackout dates. Um, if you are non Florida resident, there's only one and it's expensive. So it's about $1,500 a person for the year. I believe it's active the day you start it and then from there it just rolls for a year. Uh, we did the math. If you visit the parks at least 10 or 11 times, it's paid for yourself. So we said 12 is the magic number. If you think you're going to go more than 12 times in a year, worth it. If it's not, don't. You do receive discounts on some select hotels and campground stays during certain times, as well as discounts on food and merchandise and all that stuff. So if you're big into eating the food and the merchandise, definitely something you may want to look into if you're going to be there.
Speaker 1:Enough Dining Most of it is a la carte. There are Disney dining plans. They went away during COVID because it was really hard for them to get supplies for food, so they were closing certain restaurants because of certain reasons All the crap that went on with COVID. As far as supply chain issues. Disney was not immune to it, and so they did away with dining plans because they had to have a better idea of how to plan. They recently brought them back. There are a couple a quick service and a deluxe which is more of a sit down. Just know that, depending on your likeness of food, they may either work for you or not for you. Do your own math. Again, check out Tim's channel to see if that's something that would be relevant for you on your vacation.
Speaker 2:I remember on our honeymoon we had one of the dining plans and I actually say it was hard for us to use all of the food that was included I don't remember being hungry ever, ever, ever.
Speaker 1:And then at the end of it, we were like, oh my goodness, we have this many snacks we still need to use, and so we went and bought junk well, that's crispy treats and like oh my goodness how the dining plan works is you get so many credits for different types of meals, indoor snacks, and then you just it's a running total. When you check out you say I'm going to use it, they use it. You scan your magic band or your your key card, that thing, and then you, at the bottom of your receipt, you get your running totals. A lot of people like are very reserved using this at the beginning, and I don't understand why, because if you pay for it now versus later, at least you know you used it, or you run into the problem, like we were that way with snacks, just in case we didn't want to get hungry. We were so scared we were going to get hungry, which, on that plan, was a deluxe. We each got an appetizer, an entree and a dessert.
Speaker 1:Everywhere we went at a sit-down restaurant and, and that was how many was lunch and dinner so it was it's lunch and dinner the day you arrive, breakfast the day you depart, and all three every day, plus two snacks a day.
Speaker 2:That's a lot of food y'all.
Speaker 1:That is a lot of food. I honestly don't think we used them all.
Speaker 2:I don't think so either, but I did think that it was well worth the cost of it at the time and knowing there's two different ways you would actually want to do something like.
Speaker 1:This is one you like more of that all-inclusive style where you pay one price and you don't have to continuously shell out dollars as you go along. And then there's the I'd rather just do this on a budget side, and so there is the nice thing of not just having a running total, knowing that you don't have to necessarily pay for anything depending on what you do, cause there's like these half versions now, where you get one sit down meal and one quick service meal but no breakfast, kind of a thing which, honestly, is more up the alley of a reasonable amount of food. Because what we found was we would do one or two, like if we were there for a week, I think we would do one or two regular size breakfasts if we're staying in a hotel, if we're staying in the rv, we're cooking a little bit, just because that's cheaper right and I'd venture to say, if we're in the rv, I don't know that we would do a dining plan I wouldn't so no take that with a grain of salt because I'd probably do a few dinners.
Speaker 1:We also have met a lot of friends that not only frequent Disney but, like Tim is there, and so we would probably do dinner with them one night, that kind of a thing. Versus they might not want to go eat at the parks and so being able to cook at our house is kind of one of those things. Breakfast is one of those things.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean listen, Mickey waffles are awesome, but you can't eat mickey waffles every day. You're gonna have a heart attack, and so once or twice while you're there, going to have breakfast for a week is fine. The rest of the time, I'll be honest, we're not big breakfast people. I am more than you are. But even that, like I just want my coffee and then something to eat so we can have a bowl of cereal here or you know, make something quickly here and then go to the parks, kind of a thing, and now we're getting our own food. It ends up being a little healthier, to be honest with you at the end of the day and it's a little quicker.
Speaker 1:It can be. Yep. So with that you can go down the rabbit hole with dining, just like everything else at Disney. Do a little bit of research, it'll benefit you when you get there. Unfortunately, a lot of the hotels now and everything else uses what's called the my Disney Experience app. It used to be where you could just kind of show up like our honeymoon, unless there was some really sought-after hotel, you really didn't have to make a lot of reservations prior. We walked up to a lot. The only two or three we didn't walk up to was I booked a fireworks dinner our first night because it was the day after our wedding. So that was kind of a thing, even though I'm pretty sure someone slept through it After our wedding. So that was kind of a thing, even though I'm pretty sure someone slept through it. And then we wanted to eat. There's a restaurant inside Cinderella's Castle that you really wanted to try, and so those two things we booked prior to Everything else we just made a reservation while we were there or walked up the good old days.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you really should make a reservation now. Again, the bigger your party, the more you're going to want to do that. You can still get away with it a little bit as a couple, but if you have a family of four, just know you're going to struggle a little bit.
Speaker 2:I highly recommend the reservations, even for lunch sometimes.
Speaker 1:If you're going to go to a sit-down. Now, quick service is a whole different game. You can't make a reservation, but you can mobile order your food, which just kind of speeds the process up. Um, yeah, it's definitely one of those situations where, again, do a little bit of research, figure out what you want to do when you get there. Unfortunately, it's the days of winging, it are gone. Uh, I wish they weren't, cause I preferred that uh, get up and go. Which park do I want to go to? Which? Some of that's starting to come back, but then you still have to think about where your lunch reservation is, and do you want to start in that park or do you want to go somewhere else, kind of a thing. So, overall, am I missing anything from?
Speaker 2:we covered a lot of stuff I'm sure we're missing things, but nothing I can think of right now that's pertinent to this overview.
Speaker 1:Yeah, um, it's, disney is one of those things that it can be a blast and it can be a stressor, and so so it's definitely you have to like theme parks. I'm not going to say Disney necessarily because, yes, it's Disney, yes, there's characters. I'm not like you like the character interactions to a point. I don't. It's as much as I love Disney. The character thing's weird to me.
Speaker 2:It's awkward. I liked the characters. You like the rides more than I do, right, so it's just to each his own out there and like everything in life, it is what you make it, yep.
Speaker 1:I will say Disney World is just the largest one-site Disney park, but there are so many Disney they actually call them parks and experiences now. So you've got Disney World, disneyland, you've got international parks like in Paris and Hong Kong and Shanghai, plus the cruise line. There's so many different things you could do there at Disney. The one cool thing about it from an international perspective is that you can experience other cultures within what we call the Disney bubble and so kind of that. You kind of know what you're getting, but you can also get some of that other culture as well. And so I know visiting other parks is on my list because I think it's the only way I'm going to get you to Asia, because I think you trust that Disney thing.
Speaker 2:There's a good chance of that one.
Speaker 1:Whereas I know you're not as adventurous that. You just want to go to Tokyo because you want to go to Tokyo, whereas I'd love to see some of that stuff and the shrines and all of that. But I think if you do it, you can dabble and then book excursions with tour groups once you're there and get out and do stuff. So that's my life. Mission is to get her to other places.
Speaker 2:Really.
Speaker 1:So, with that being said, if you have any questions, feel free to reach out to this. If you're watching this on YouTube, obviously you can do that in the comments down below. If you are listening to this on your favorite podcast platform, you can reach out to us via the website, which is just millersinmotion or rvshenaniganscom. We also will have a couple of our blog posts that are about Disney. I'll link those in the show notes as well. They go into a little bit more detail on certain aspects of it. Also, we've taken some fun photos, so I know there's a photo album floating around on our website somewhere. We'll link all that down below, and then you can also comment on some of those things and ask questions that we can definitely respond to when we go into Disney.
Speaker 2:That's a good question.
Speaker 1:Thank you guys so much for listening, slash watching and we will see you guys next week, january. Next time we're in Florida. Seriously, when are you going to Disney?
Speaker 2:January Next time we're in Florida.
Speaker 1:Are we going to be in Florida in January?
Speaker 2:I don't know. I can at least put it off until then, wow.
