April 2020 - Planning

[TDC_DisneyDream]

Good afternoon.

We had a family holiday to WDW last August, and we all want to go back ASAP.

I'm in charge of the planning because I'm the 'group leader' :P

I'm looking at planning our trip in April 2020.
I've heard it's a great time of year to stay at WDW.

Obviously I'd love to be able to get the free dinning, but with Star Wars opening soon, I'm not getting my hopes up.
Which is understandable.

We all loved our time at the Caribbean Beach Resort, but I'd love to travel with Virgin Atlantic.

Does anyone have any advice when the best time is to book this to keep the price down as much as possible?

Is it actually a good time to visit WDW?

Any other advice would be appreciated.

TDC

[loves2plan]

What dates in April are you thinking of? If free dining is released, there are usually blackout dates of around 3 weeks around Easter weekend. Easter Sunday is 12th April next year so black out dates are likely to be a couple of weeks before plus a week after. We won't know until this April though when Disney release their offer, so I'd definitely wait until then before booking anything. You'll get some agents saying they'll honour the dining plan etc, but Virgin Holidays took early bookings last year and got in to all sorts of trouble and it wasn't a very pleasant experience for a lot of Dibbers.

How many of you are going? To keep the price down, you really need to avoid school holidays. Late April could be a good option, plus the weather is good then. Before and around Easter it will be very busy with the US Spring Break crowd and worldwide Easter holidays. We've been twice around Easter and did find it manageable, but that was before Star Wars opened, so who knows what impact that will have.

Caribbean Beach is lovely and we're going back there this October. At present, it's the cheapest moderate resort, along with Coronado Springs, but that could change for next year with all of the refurb work and the new Skyliner at CBR. Again, we won't really know until Disney release everything in April.

[angel_eyes]

We stayed mid-April 2017. We didn't onsite but in general terms, the weather started around 30 degrees C and reached high 30s by the time we left (although we told by the locals that it was unseasonably hot!). Crowd-wise, it was no busier that I would have expected for UK school holidays, although we made a deliberate effort to avoid the Disney parks over Easter weekend (went to SW and DC instead). With the help of FP+ we found the parks manageable overall for the time of year (albeit, this was just before Pandora opened). If you are restricted to term time holidays I expect it will always be busier, by comparison. I would visit again in April but only because I don't think I could face the full heat of the weather in August!

[TDC_DisneyDream]

We are aiming to go at the end of April. The last week of April.
There will be 5 of us in total, but I'm booking for me, my girlfriend and our son.
My girlfriends parents are booking separately.

We did this last August when we went and we had rooms next door to each other.

I would love to book it with Virgin.
We used Thomas Cook last time. I didn't have a problem with them, except it took them 3 months to remove the 'hire car' from our holiday.
3 months of explaining we will use the Disney buses was difficult for them to understand.

Is it best to book direct with Disney on their website or direct with Virgin?
I've always found cheaper prices direct with Disney..