Hi, I'm Pat and welcome to my blog, Life's A Trip!
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I love traveling, food and getting a great deal on anything - which is what this blog is about.
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I'll share not only my travel destinations including accommodations, dining hot spots, and top (and weird!) travel attractions with you - but how to make any trip more budget friendly.
before you go to disney
A trip to WDW requires a whole lot of planning so you want to start way ahead of time if you want your trip to go off without any hitches.
Not only that, this is how Disney should draw Mickey...
Disney will do their utmost to price gouge you on absolutely everything! With careful planning, you can keep more of your hard earned money in YOUR pockets!
tickets
Ordering your WDW tickets can be a rather complex affair due to all the different configurations of ticketing.
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A base ticket for a 1 day visit to the park currently runs $119 for a guest 10+ years of age.
Most days of the year are priced at $134 or higher; only 39 days are priced lower than this. Tickets are slightly discounted (typically $5 cheaper) for children ages 3-9.
But there are add on's you can add to your base ticket for an additional price, such as the Hopper Pass and the Hopper Plus Pass.
The Hopper Option allows Guests to visit more than one theme park per day. The Hopper Plus Option allows Guests to visit more than one theme park per day. Plus, enjoy a certain number of visits to a water park or other Walt Disney World sports-related fun.
Personally, I wouldn't purchase either option. If you plan your WDW visit right, there's plenty to see and do in one park without having to hop to another on the same day.
As for the waterparks under the Hopper Plus option, we'd planned to visit a waterpark but ran out of time to do so. So you're better off buying your waterpark tickets right at the waterparks themselves - provided the weather cooperates.
There's a separate ticket option for Florida residents and an annual ticket option.
What used to be called "Fastpass" and was free are now called Lightning Lane passes and aren't free. ​With the new Lightning Lane passes, skip the standby line and join a shorter line for select attractions and experiences instead. ​​
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It's best you just visit WDW Theme Park Tickets and carefully read through all of the different ticketing options before you purchase your tickets. You want to purchase your tickets before your trip.
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Your best option is to purchase your discounted WDW tickets here from Get Away Today. Be sure you read their entire page! In the past, this ticket agent would handle planning the frustrating parts of a WDW trip for you...like making dining reservations and other services that must be done before you go to the Disney parks.
WDW charges an arm and a leg for everything but breathing in their parks. I'm going to tell you the strategies my sister and I used to avoid being price gouged.
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Get yourself an insulated lunch bag and a water bottle WITH A FILTER.
(I was hospitalized the same day I returned home with a case of C Dif that I picked up while in the WDW parks.)
You want to book your accommodation reservations at a hotel that includes free help yourself breakfast.
What Barb and I would do is pack our lunch bags with foods from that 'free' breakfast and supplement our lunches with a couple items purchased from a mini mart in our hotel.
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We ate only TWO lunches at WDW and one cost us $50 for the two of us and I wouldn't have rated that food even mediocre.
Fifty bucks for a cold sandwich, a bag of chips and a medium soda is outlandish!
​The next thing you want to do is go to restaurants.com and Groupon to see if there are any coupons available for restaurants in Disney Springs or restaurants right outside the Disney Park gates.
For example, at restaurants.com I found $40 ccoupons on sale for $5 for restaurants in Disney Springs like House of Blues and Planet Hollywood and purchased a bunch of them. They paid for the bulk of our dinners that we ate at Disney Springs after the parks closed.
You also want to check out the websites of restaurants that have dining facilities right outside of the WDW park gates, like Rainforest Cafe for example. (Right outside the Animal Kingdom park gate) Sign up for free for their rewards program. Just for signing up, I got $50 that bought our lunch at Rainforest Cafe plus gave us priority seating.
You won't find any coupons for dining at restaurants inside the Disney parks because WDW is going to separate you from your hard earned money at every opportunity they get to do just that. Look for deals outside of the Disney parks that are dining, attractions or both.
For example, right now Groupon has a deal on the AMC DINE IN in Disney Springs - tickets for select showtimes starting at $8.50.
I have a Chase Disney VISA card that awards me Disney Dollars for purchases.
I'd piled up enough Disney Dollars to pay for our entire meal in Chefs de France, the most expensive restaurant within WDW. My only out-of-pocket expense for that dinner was the tip for the server.
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In the same vein, bring snacks with you if you have kids or will need some yourself. Trail mix is a good choice to keep energy levels up.
Barb and I did splurge on the infamous Dole Pineapple Whip since I'd never had one. But we paid $14 per Whip for a glass that was mostly whipped cream.
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Yes, it was good but not $14 apiece good.
Guests with disabilities
Luckily, I'd had the smarts to talk to one of the Disney bigwigs before making our trip. She asked me to phone her when I returned from WDW and give me her input. Boy, did that poor woman get an earful!
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However, she must have taken me seriously because they've since changed things up to be more accommodating to their disabled guests after I told
her everything that had happened to me. WDW was anything BUT friendly and helpful to their disabled guests. I told her I'd go to Universal if in Orlando again but never to WDW again.
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Their disability passes for those of us who had physical conditions that prevented us from waiting in long lines in the sun (I guess they don't realize many of us have mobility issues besides) were WDW's best kept secret.
Nowhere did they appear on the WDW website. I only found out about them by stumbling on a blog that mentioned them! This Disney exec clued me in to how to go about getting one, assuring me I would have no problem getting one but to phone her if I did run into any problems.
I don't mind providing proof of my disability...but I had to bring a letter from my doctor stating I was unable to wait in long lines and was disabled, I had to bring proof from SSI that I was receiving disability and there was a third form I had to bring that I can't remember at the moment.
You pick up these passes at the Visitor Centers located just past the entrance to the park.
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I presented all my proof of disability and told the kid manning the Visitor Center that I needed a disability pass. He replied "You don't need one of those. If they see you're on a mobility scooter, they'll know you're disabled."
I'm just not that stupid. I said "No, I'd like a disability pass please."
He continued to argue until I told him "Go pick up that phone over there, dial this number and ask for {Disney bigwig exec) and tell her Pat Jackson needs to speak with her to get this issue cleared up."
He gave me a pass without another word. And it's a good thing I was persistent because half of the Disney employees we encountered at the rides and what not didn't even know what to do when presented with the disability pass. I don't think most of them even knew Disney HAD disability passes! But we never waited in line for a single ride.
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Now I guess you don't have to present proof of disability to get a pass and they're no longer WDW's best kept secret. How to get a WDW diability pass. If you're going to need a disability pass then you need to get that all squared away before you even get to the park. The link above will tell you how to do that.
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MOBILITY SCOOTERS
I don't know if WDW has made the necessary changes to their mobility scooter problem for disabled guests or not. Their policy at the time I visited was $50 per day to rent a mobility scooter with a refundable deposit of between $20 and $100. You could not reserve a scooter ahead of your visit to the park. You had to cross your fingers and hope they had enough scooters to go around that you'd get one. Nor could you take your scooter from park to park. You had to go through the rental rigamarole at each different park all over again.
I got smart and we rented mobility scooters from Mobility Plus. $100 each for 10 day rental, they delivered the scooters to our hotel and picked them up when we were finished with them. Because we got 2 brand new scooters we briefly had a problem with one of them starting. Less than 5 minutes on the phone with Mobility Plus and he had us running again and the problem was fixed for the rest of our rental period. And yes, the Disney shuttles are equipped to take mobility scooters on board. Excellent service at a much greater savings than dealing with WDW, not to mention the frustration with Disney in dealing with their scooter issue.
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But I will digress and tell you the problem we had inside the Magic Kingdom. My sister wanted to show me one of the resort lodges on an island. However, the boat equipped to handle taking scooters on board would not arrive for another hour. So we asked the Disney employee at the boat dock if we could just park our scooters there for a few minutes while we went over to this island, we weren't going to be there long. She said only if we didn't leave anything valuable in them and we told her the only thing in the scooter baskets were our empty lunch bags. Sure NO PROBLEM! You can leave them parked here!
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This is what we came back to...
A Disney Security officer with a bomb sniffing K9 sniffing out our scooters. The Disney gal never bothered to inform the next Disney employee on shift anything about our scooters being parked there and as security paranoid as WDW is, the next gal on shift just decided we were domestic terrorists with bombs in our lunch bags, intent on nuking Mickey into oblivion.
A cop and a minister's wife. Yeah, we have bombs to nuke Mickey in our lunch bags. *EYE ROLL*
Luckily I hadn't cleaned out my purse before we left so I pulled out my badge and Sheriff's Dept. ID and showed it to the security guy. While letting him know the last Disney employee on shift had approved us leaving the scooters there and that all that was in them were 2 empty lunch bags. Nevermind the fact that you and your belongings are thoroughly searched at the park entrance gate. I was furious and yes, I let the Disney exec know about that incident as well. The entire incident was ridiculous.
Dining
WDW does offer guests a Disney Dining Plan but it involved a whole lot of hassle in my opinion - and of course, at top dollar. Note the Disney Dining Plan is only available to guests staying at the in-park WDW resorts! There are also other dining experiences that include fireworks shows or other entertainment.
You can read about the Disney Dining Plan here.
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Even if you're not going to add on the Disney Dining Plan you will have to make reservations at WDW restaurants that are sit down dining and have waitstaff. Which I discovered meant getting up at all hours of the day and night to do because all of the different restaurants have different times at which you can make reservations. However, if you purchase your admission ticket through Get Away Today I believe they'll still handle making your dining reservations for you.
accommodations
Your accommodations cost will chew up a good portion of your trip budget. Sure, it would be nice to stay at one of the resorts inside the WDW parks but it will cost you an arm and a leg to do so. What we did was find a Disney Associate hotel not five minutes from the parks.
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What a Disney Associate hotel means is that once a year a Disney representative comes to inspect that hotel to ensure it's up to Disney's standards. Being affiliated with Disney by being an Associate Hotel means the hotel can have Disney character meals (as ours did on Sunday mornings), they can have a Disney store within the hotel (as ours did) and other Disney perks not afforded hotels who aren't Associate hotels.
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We booked at the Buena Vista Palace, directly across the street from Disney Springs marketplace. This is where we usually went for our budget-friendly dinners after the parks closed.
Breakfast was included with our booking and a free shuttle picked us up right at the hotel to take us to the parks.
We were on the 8th floor of the tower and didn't go fancy at all since we'd only be sleeping in the room.
We got a regular guestroom with 2 queen beds that cost us each just a little over $100 a night.
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If you're going to book accommodations outside of the WDW parks, then look for a hotel that's a Disney affiliate.
Our room was very nice, it was clean and quiet. We saved ourselves a few bucks staying outside of the WDW parks themselves.
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And if you have kids, these Affiliate hotel's character breakfasts are a hell of a lot cheaper than one inside the WDW parks and the kids can still have their desired character breakfast.
plan your itinerary ahead of time
There are 4 WDW parks:
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Magic Kingdom
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Animal Kingdom
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Hollywood Studios
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Epcot
There are also two water parks: Typhoon Lagoon and Blizzard Beach,
In order to see and do everything you want to, plan two days in each park if you've never been to WDW before. WDW spans a total of 43 square miles or 25,000 acres total to give you some idea of the ground you'd be covering. So it's very helpful to have some kind of itinerary planned out ahead of time.
You can always make changes last minute if you need or want to and you won't waste valuable time discussing what should we see or do next with multiple people wanting to go in different directions.
The Magic Kingdom is divided into different sections:
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Main Street USA that leads to Cinderella's Castle
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Tomorrowland
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Mickey's Toontown Fair
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Fantasyland
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Liberty Square
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Frontierland
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​Adventureland
The monorail runs all around the park from section to section of the park and riding it is included in the price of your admission.
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What I would advise you to do is make a list of the most popular rides you want to ride, be there when the park opens and make a beeline for those rides before long lines form of visitors waiting to ride them. Disney has done away with the FastPass system so that's no longer an option to escape waiting in long lines.
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After you've ridden those rides, then just begin working your way around the park section by section, keeping your itinerary in mind so you don't miss anything you wanted to see and do.
when to go to disney world
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​1. Go During Off-Season
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2. Head Into the Park that Had Extra Magic Hours or a Special Ticketed Event The Previous Night ...
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3. Go During a Special Hard-Ticketed Event ...
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4. Go When the Crowd Calendars Show Low Levels ...
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5. Go When It’s Raining ...
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6. Go When the Park Opens/Closes ...
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7. Go During Extra Magic Hours ...
Now we get to the good part - Magic Kingdom's Rides & Attractions. These were my favorites since I can't possibly show you all of the rides and attractions. But here's a complete park walk through for you.
PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN - my #1 pick
The animatronics are fantastic. I could've easily done this swashbuckling adventure ride more than once. Step aboard a barge and get ready to journey back to a long-forgotten time when pirates ruled the high seas with this classic ride. The pirate ship ride takes you along a treacherous voyage through ransacked seaport towns, past the haunted Dead Man’s Cove, and amidst booming cannons between a Caribbean fort and a 12-gun galleon.
The only downside to Pirates was that the real live Johnny Depp wasn't there. (Although there is a figure of him that appears during the ride.)
No age or height requirements on this ride, great for kids of all ages.
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IT'S A SMALL WORLD
This is a really cute ride appropriate for all ages and heights, showcasing world cultures. The only drawback to this attraction is that you will have its theme song stuck in your head, looping over and over and over again all day!
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BIG THUNDER MOUNTAIN
Some call this the wildest ride at WDW but I didn't think it was wild at all. Big thunder Mountain reminds me of the old roller coasters from days of yore with a kind of mining theme to it.
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The ride is set in the 1850s-era Gold Rush ghost town of Tumbleweed. You will enter the abandoned mine shaft and willingly step aboard a train that has lost its marbles.
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The train speeds along rickety old tracks, catapults you through tunnels, swoops around turns, and drops into canyons. All the while, you will narrowly miss falling boulders and escape exploding dynamite.
Overall, the theming is fantastic, and this attraction really shines at night. It is a bumpy ride with some dark sections, but it’s one of those classic Disney World attractions that stands the test of time.
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JUNGLE CRUISE
The Jungle Cruise is a 10-minute boat tour of scenic riverways across Africa, Asia, and South America. Guests board a canopied steamer and set sail through some of the globe’s most treacherous waterways.
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Your boat cruises through South America’s lush, tropical foliage, passing by picturesque waterfalls. Then you encounter an abandoned camp along the banks of the African Congo and bathing elephants and angry hippos along the Nile. Keep alert because there’s a tribe of headhunters on the loose!
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The Jungle Cruise continues through Asia and down the Mekong River, where you’ll come into close contact with cobras, baboons, and other exotic creatures.
Nice relaxing ride but beware: the boat skippers have corny senses of humor.
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HAUNTED MANSION
Just what it says - a haunted mansion. Not scary at all but kind of cute and clever and suitable for little kids.
Located in Liberty Square, guests will climb aboard a Doom Buggy and embark on an eerie adventure through a maze of haunted chambers.
The Ghost Host serves as your private guide throughout the tour of this haunted estate. Here, you will encounter ghosts, ghouls, and supernatural phenomena as you skate by a conservatory of caskets, Madame Leota’s séance room of horrors, and a spooky graveyard of singing ghosts.
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TIANA'S BAYOU ADVENTURE
This is the ride that replaced Splash Mountain log flume ride. You do get the feeling of being in a bayou. This low-key, relaxing musical cruise concludes with an exciting surprise as you drop 5-stories down a waterfall! Be warned: riders can expect to get wet, especially those seated in the front of the ride. Lockers are available to store your personal items while you are on the ride.
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SPACE MOUNTAIN
Loved this roller coaster as you were in the dark much of the time so didn't know if you were up, down, sideways or what. Apparently a lot of visitors liked this coaster too - you can see how long the waiting line was!
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TRON LIGHTCYCLE RUN
The best coaster at the Magic Kingdom! It's the newest attraction at WDW.
Board your Lightcycle and be instantly launched into the Grid on this roller-coaster ride through the world of Disney’s TRON movies. Along the way, race a rival (digital) team to see which of you can pass through all the energy points first. Try not to get derezzed!
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The ride offers much more than typical Magic Kingdom roller coasters, thanks to high-resolution animated graphics that really make you feel like you’ve jumped straight into these popular films. In addition, part of the launch sequence is outdoors under a canopy; at night, it’s bathed in vibrant animated lights. For this reason, I suggest a nighttime ride if possible.
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CAROUSEL OF PROGRESS
Did this one surprise you? This exhibit was created totally by Walt himself and premiered at the 1964 World's Fair - where I saw it for the first time as a 9 year old.
I like it because it's a look back at where we've been and where we may be going. It's nostalgic and obviously it's stood the test of time as a WDW exhibit.
Magic Kingdom Dining
Liberty Tree Tavern
We celebrated my birthday with a meal at Liberty Tree Tavern. It really is a typical Thanksgiving meal and they hadn't yet done away with their ala carte menu, which was nice.
The food items were good to so-so. The service was good but the place rather noisy.
What I disliked was that one had to walk down the street from the Tavern to use a restroom.
I don't mind "authentic" within limits...but REALLY?!! A lack of restrooms in the establishment itself does not make things easy for disabled guests.
Liberty Tree Taverrn wouldn't rate a return visit in my personal opinion.
O'Hana polynesian restaurant
My #1 pick for the WDW best restaurant? Don't have to think twice about it - O'Hana at the Polynesian Resort. I'm so glad my sister insisted we go there!
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Everything about it was excellent - the food, the coconut races for the kids, the service and being able to watch them cook your food.
The dinner was all you can eat and included: Wood Fire-grilled Black Pepper-Mirin-Teriyaki Beef*, Peel-n-Eat Shrimp coated with 'Ohana Seasoning, Grilled Chicken with Guava-Pineapple Glaze, 'Ohana Noodles with Mirin-Teriyaki, Stir-fried Vegetables.
They'd bring big skewers of different meats to your table and carve the meat right onto your plate. Even the dishes containing the sides never went empty without being refilled.
The current pricing for this meal is $65 for adults, $42 for children aged 3-9. That's a bargain by WDW standards!
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We were so full we skipped the next activity we had planned and just rode the monorail around the park for awhile. LOL
I give O'Hana 5 out of 5 stars!
