| Disney Vacation Plans |
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What is a Disney Vacation Plan? What types of plans are available? Is a Disney Vacation Plan good for me? Will a Disney Vacation Plan make my vacation better? Will a Disney Vacation Plan save me money? What is a Disney
Vacation Plan? In 2009 Disney offered the following packages:
For more information on these packages and what they include you can check out the Disney Travel Company Brochure. Is a Disney Vacation Plan good for me? Now that you know what the plans are, you have to decide if its for you and if so which one. Over the years I have experienced most of these plans (or variations of them) and if you plan accordingly they could work out really well for. The one advantage to doing such a plan is you know most of your costs up front and if you are ok with spending that money then you are worry free from the finance side. Or if you are like us, you treat it almost as a game/mission to see how you do compared to the plan cost. Some call this maximizing the plan/your money... I would recommend the all inclusive plans to anyone who wants to take full advantage of the recreational activities and dining options Disney has available. These plans are not good for people who want to spend most of their time in the theme parks, around the resort pool, or want an occasional good meal. The dining plans are a little more dicey to recommend and you really should do some homework and see how the dollars and cents work out before committing to one. The plans are cost effective only if you actually do these activities, otherwise you will end up paying for things you do not use and it will be cheaper for you to just pay as you go. Yes it is cheaper to stay onsite, buy a park hopper pass, eat hot dogs, hamburgers, and chicken sandwhichs for week, and ride the free ferryboat by the Magic Kingdom when you want to go boating, but this is not everyones idea of fun. Sure you say your not this kind of person and that you would always treat youself, but once you get down there and you have the choice of the $10 hot dog and drink vs. the $50 meal at the Yachtsman Steakhouse, which are you going to choose more times than not... sure many people are not this way, but a lot of people are.... Now with that being said if you are a first time visitor or traveling with small children you may want to look into other options. First time visitors will be spending most of their time in the theme parks seeing the attractions and entertainment Disney to offer. This is great and exactly what you should be doing. Parties with small children will also be spending a lot of time in the parks, at the hotel pools, or just resting. In order to take full advantage of these plans you end up spending less time in the theme parks touring attractions. For repeat visitors this is not a problem because you have already experienced the attractions and only want to see what' is new, your favorites, or something to fill in some time while you wait. Will a Disney Vacation Plan make my vacation better? This is really a matter of opinion and what you consider better. Having everything prepaid is both a blessing and a curse. Its great because you know how much you spent and that you do not need to take more money with you. Its also good because it will let you try new things because they are included. For example I would never pay the high cost of going parasailing, but since it was included in a plan I went. Or with dinning if your paying for it, you may not order an apatizer, entree, and desert from sit-down resturants every meal for every person. But on a plan you may... You will end up skipping meals, combining meals, eating counter service, and then for a treat go to a nice restaurant and order an entree and maybe a drink, but if its on the plan you go and order it all and are happy. The plans can be bad also. Knowing how much you spent, makes some people feel like they have to spend that much. Which means they will rush from activity to activity just to get reach their $$$ quota for the day. Also by doing an all inclusive plan to really take advantage of it you must plan out a good portion of your vacation ahead of time to really maximize its usage. Will a Disney
Vacation Plan save me money? On some plans you "do better" than on others. What I mean here is the actual cost is sometimes as much as 32% lower than if you did the same things a la carte, or sometimes it can be as low as 5%. Just to give you a feel for how the numbers work out, here is a quick example from my December 2000 trip(all numbers are taken from my spreadsheet and rounded to make it easier to follow, if your interested in exact numbers let me know). We stayed at the Yacht Club for 6 nights on the Deluxe Magic Plan (4 adults). Cost with MKC was about $6K. If you subtract out 6 nights hotel which would have been approx. $300 a night and subtract out the cost of your length of stay pass which would have been approx. $280 per person, you come up with a remaining balance of about $3K left for food and recreation. This comes out to about $115 per person per day to spend to break even. We ended up "spending" (if paid for al la carte) approx. $8k which was 31% over the amount the plan actually cost. Here is a summary of the dining stats for you. We averaged $27 for breakfast (usually ate at counter service just to save time). Lunch came in at $90. Dinners averaged $196 (high of $252 low of $150). On the recreation side of things we went golfing 3 times, fishing 3 times, 4 tours, biking once, boating once, and mini-golfing 3 times for a total value of just shy of $2,400. Also on this plan you got a pin per person and a Leave a Legacy Tile. You can see how things add up really quickly. If you have questions or want more detail on this just drop me a line.
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