Where to Stay?
Around the time that we were deciding when to go I found The Dibb and after lots of reading realised that this trip would require lots more planning and strategy required than for our 2005 trip. Our planning for that trip had pretty much involved one page of guide book which was a
busy day guide table and a couple of hours doing a list of what parks to do on what day. The main reason being that we knew if we didn’t have a plan to stick to then we would waste time trying to decide what to do when we got up each day.
When we have done our visits to Disneyland Paris we have stayed in either Cheyenne or Santa Fe. We have made use of the EMHs in Paris as well as the transportation. We have always just booked one of the value hotels our logic being that you get the perks of staying on site but there are only three of us so space isn’t too much of an issue and we are only in the room to seat and wash so no point spending any more.
My reading of the Dibb and a few other sources of info quickly made me realise that as well as the transportation and EMHs that there was a possibility of ‘free’ dining if staying on site and also the 60 day fast pass booking access which could both make a significant difference to our trip.
We also had to decide if we wanted to spend the whole of the trip in Orlando. My Sister has owned a house in Sarasota for about 10 years and until her children started school use to spend about half the year there. Now they spend most school holidays there. We have considered visiting in the past but with being restricted to school holiday times we have never seen cheap flights on dates that work and we also wanted to wait and do a big Florida holiday with all the parks for which their house is just too far away to use as a base. Now that we were defiantly going to be in Florida we need to decide if we were going to spend a few days at their house.
This is when my planning spreadsheet was started.
We spent lots of time discussing how many days we thought we wanted to spend at each park to be able to do as much as possible in them.
After LOTS and LOTS of going round in circles we decided that we did want to stay on-site at Disney and out of our planned 21 nights we would spend 12 nights there. After lots more reading we also decided that is Disney did offer ‘free’ dining for 2019 we would book a moderate hotel to get the free QSDP and if they didn’t we would book a value hotel.
Lots of decisions about where to stay for the rest of the trip we based largely on what offers Disney had for 2019 and how much it cost.
We had decided that this trip was going to be a bit of a blow out for us and whilst the budget if most definitely not unlimited we were willing to spend money to make the trip as good as it could be and if that meant spending a bit more for extra benefits that was ok.
We were looking at maybe booking a condo/townhouse for the rest of our trip and had a few ideas about where we might book. I had also, courtesy of The Dibb picked up the added benefits of staying in one of the three more expensive universal hotels but kept that idea up my sleeve until after we had our Disney stay booked.
As we were unsure exactly what we wanted to do for the rest of the trip we decided we were going to do a DIY trip and not book a package and to book the Disney hotel directly with Disney if they had the same offer as previous years.