I am so excited to share that we will be going to Walt Disney World this year!! This is a huge deal for us, as we have been visiting Disneyland Paris for the past couple of years, and have fallen in love with Disney all over again. The buzz of Paris gave us the need to want to visit WDW even more, and so last July, we booked it!!
If you follow my blog, you’ll know I love to talk Disney. So, it was even more exciting to know that I would be able to share our journey with you guys, from the booking, details of our adventure, and of course reviews of the restaurants and rides!
This is a brand new holiday adventure for us as a family of 5. Both myself and my husband used to visit Disney World as children, and we both visited Disneyland California as part of our honeymoon. So we are so excited to be able to visit the happiest place on earth all together for the first time.
We booked this holiday back in July 2018 – which seems forever ago! But there was several reasons why we did it. Firstly, because of the Disney offer that was available at the time. And secondly, it gave us plenty of time to save – 14 months to be exact. The offer that Disney had available at the time was as follows:
This was so appealing to us, especially with the low deposit too! When we booked, flights had not been released yet, so it was a bit of a risk to book, not knowing how much the flights would cost us. But thankfully, being part of an amazing Disney community, I got alerted when BA released their flights and they were at a fantastic price – phew!
This Disney offer isn’t on all the time, however I am led to believe that Disney are offering their free dining plan deal again beginning around the 11th April 2019. If booking direct isn’t your thing, there are plenty of other online companies that can support you with your booking, including all inclusive Disney world packages 2022. Orlando Vacation is just one of many, and offer loads of discounts, specials and customised plans on the many hotels that are located in Florida, including some great deals on theme park tickets!
With the offer, we booked 14 nights at the Port Orleans Riverside Resort, which is a moderate hotel and looks incredible! Situated near Disney Springs, this resort offers a calming and charming feel, with the River Sassagoula that runs through the resort. It has 6 pools, restaurant, counter service restaurant, shop, bar, fishing, boat rides to Disney springs, horse and carriage rides, bike hire – literally so much is on offer! There is even a daily schedule for families to take part in, such as a pool party every day and campfire gatherings where you can cook S’mores!
What also looks great about the location of this hotel is that it is a short boat ride to Disney Springs, where there is a huge array of shops, restaurants and soon to be open the ESPN centre!
Image by EDUARDO ROMERO from Pixabay
The Port Orleans Riverside resort is one of a few hotels that can accommodate 5 people in a room ,which again saved us money by not having to purchase two adjoining rooms. The layout of the room looks spacious, with two queen beds and then a pull down bed at the far end of the room. There is also space for a table and chairs, a vanity area and a bathroom. As we will be out of the room for most of the day, this absolutely works for us!
With the Disney deal we booked, we got offered a free Disney Dining plan. We every moderate resort booking, you get offered what is a Quick Service Dining plan. This includes 2 quick service meals per night of your stay including a drink (in QS restaurants) two snacks each and a refillable drink’s mug per person. For us, dining is a huge part of any holiday, especially at Disney. And I knew that we would want to dine at some of the table service restaurants. So, with that being said, we upgraded our plan to a Table service dining plan. This includes for each night of our stay
By upgrading means that we can dine pretty much anywhere without having to pay any extra, and opens up the door to experience character meals, Be Our Guest and many more exciting restaurants!
Disney snack – Ice-cream!
What is great about the plan is that you can dine where and when you wish over the course of the holiday. There is no restrictions in that you have to use up all your credits in one day. So in theory, if you wished to, you could use 15 snack credits in 1 day, and dine at 3 table service restaurants the next. I will go into more detail in a separate post on dining.
For info, it cost us £560 to upgrade our Disney dining plan.
Since July 2018, we have kept it a secret from the kids, but as it is getting closer and closer, the desire to tell them gets bigger and bigger. Last year for Disneyland Paris, we created a reveal box. So I am thinking of doing something similar for this Disney holiday. If anyone has any ideas, drop them below!
There will be plenty more Disney content over the next couple of months, so watch this space! I hope my post was helpful to anyone that is thinking of booking a Disney World holiday and offers a little insight into the Disney deals on offer!
Thanks for reading xxx
Hi and welcome to The Willow Tree. I’m Michelle, also known as Shel and I am a mama to three beautiful crazy kids – I have two handsome boys and a wild and wonderful girl.
I really wanted a concrete place to share my love for travel, in particular Disney and offer my readers a chance to gain some knowledge around what we love to do as a family of 5.
I share our family adventures which include days out, travel advice and tips, holiday reviews, restaurant visits and of course, our love for Disney, including Disneyland Paris and Walt Disney World.
Life is about creating memories, and here we are sharing them with you
xoxo
So exciting! It’s good to know about the 5 in a room too – not relevant for us but I know many families who ask about this. I also think that people assume it will be expensive to book the holiday through Disney direct, but it did actually work out cheaper for us!
Yes now we have 5 it is so important to know!! x