Which Parks?

[Guest]

Hi all, I'm planning a trip with another family so our party will consist of 4 adults, 2 teen boys and a 11 year old girl. We are 100% going to buy tickets for seaworld with the discovery cove swimming package but struggling on the rest.

This will be our first trip so we have no idea about the parks but was thinking of getting the universal 14 pass then paying entry at the gates for a day or 2 at Disney.

What would people recommended? We would like parks with all the big rides etc. Thanks in advance 😉

[klr15]

What we did when we were deciding what parks to do was go on the park websites, look at the parks in holiday brochures and look at other people's pictures of them! This then showed us what appealed to us most and gave us an idea of what we wanted to do! We now want to do everything though so maybe it wasn't such a good idea!

[DFussy]

Hi. We are taking our 10 year old this summer, and we booked 14 days universal/sw/busch/aquatic - paid a deposit and paying them off a bit each month. The sw/busch/aquatic part was £100 each and inc free parking when we booked it. our daughter wanted to go to sw and loves animals so we are going to take a trip to busch. Our daughter is a big Harry Potter and thrill ride fan so universal is more for us than Disney but cant not go there at all as she hasn't been since a tot.

We are going to book 2 days Disney before we go, as you can either book it on the us Disney web site and get email ticket to be exchanged when you get there, or book with one of the ticket operators who sell day tickets such as orlando attractions - they will send us real ticket. the benefit of buying the ticket in adv is we will be able to book fastpasses for Disney days 30 days before we plan to visit. Booking through a ticket operator here puts a small premium on the Disney price, but we think it will be worth it not to have to waste time queing to swap our email ticket for a real one on site. Undercover Tourist also do 3 days I think.

We are also going to go to Kennedy - a launch is due whilst we are out there so going to try and squeeze a break at Cocoa Beach - as we think she is a good age to enjoy this.

Have a great trip.

[Nimbus]

I'm guessing that you are money and/or time limited? Because if you have the time and money I'd recommend going to all of the parks. That would include all 4 Disney parks, at least a day at each. There is something for everyone at all of them. My 14 year old daughter, for example, enjoys all of them, especially the Disney parks.

However, if you want to save money and you are all into big thrill rides then the Universal parks, Seaworld, and Busch Gardens would be a good choice. Leaving out Disney will save hundreds of pounds (two days at Disney will cost your party of 7 around £1200, more if you want park-hoppers) and their parks tends to have less thrill rides.

You'll notice though that visiting Disney for 2 days is not an order of magnitude cheaper than getting 14 day tickets (14 days = £2100 for the 7 of you). Unfortunately, it becomes progressively less cost-effective the less days you spend at Disney.

[Forkbeard]

If you're doing DC and SW, and you like thrill rides then purchase the DC Ultimate ticket that includes Busch Gardens as well as SW and Aquatica for 14 days.

SW and Aquatica come with DC tickets, and adding BG for 14 days adds around £20.

It's a bargain and that's the one we always get.

I personally think Disney cannot be missed, especially if you haven't been before, and you have an 11 year old with you

I love all the parks, but Disney has a special something that is just not present in the other parks in our opinion.

Of course it adds a lot of money to the cost as Nimbus says.