Disney - Onsite V Offsite Part 1
Benefits of staying onsite
1. Transportation
When you are staying in the Disney bubble, you have access to numerous methods of transportation around Walt Disney World. There are buses that run between the resorts and the parks and Disney Springs. These are regular, no more than 20 minutes wait, air conditioned, and even have USB ports under the seats! They take you directly to the park entrance. Another method is the new Skyliner – you can get this from Pop Century, Art of Animation, Caribbean Beach and the new Riviera resort. The Skyliner will take you from these resorts to Epcot and Hollywood Studios. The final method is the monorail – you can catch this from the Grand Floridian, the Polynesian, and the Contemporary.
2. Meal plans
If you are staying onsite, you have access to the dining plans. At certain times of the year these plans are included for free when you book hotel and park tickets. Otherwise you can buy the plans at any time. There are different variations of the plan from basic to deluxe. They can be used within the parks, even the water parks, and in a lot of restaurants in Disney Springs. These plans, if you can get them for free with your package, are worth their weight in gold – you will not go hungry, and you shouldn’t need to pay a cent for food whilst you are on the dining plan!
3. Memory Maker
If you book your accommodation and tickets together, you automatically receive the memory maker package. This is worth $200 and is worth having. Dotted around the parks are professional photographers with decent cameras, and they are there to take your photographs. They can even take special magic shots, where they ask you to make a face or stand a certain way, and they will insert something magical into the photo (which you won’t know about until you receive the photos on your phone shortly afterwards!)
4. Fastpass+ access at 60 days
Everybody who books Disney park tickets has access to the Fast Pass system. However, if you are staying on Disney Property you can book your fast passes at 60 days out instead of 30 days like everyone else.
5. Extra Magic Hours
Each day one of the parks has EMH either in the morning or the evening. It is a different park each day, and one day a park might open an extra hour before the normal opening time, and another day a park might stay open an extra 2 hours after it shuts to non-Disney guests, so you get to experience the park with fewer crowds and lower wait times.
6. Magic Bands
If you are staying on property you automatically receive a magic band. Anybody can purchase magic bands but if you are staying on property these are then used as your room key, you can charge purchases to it, Photopass photographers can scan it before taking photos for your Memory Maker, and it is your ticket to the parks, entry to the rides, meal credits etc.
7. Merchandise delivery
There are many gift shops located around the parks and it is easy to spend a lot of money and have plenty of bags to carry around with you! If you are staying on site you can make your purchases and then arrange for them to be delivered back to your hotel so you don’t have to carry them around all day!
8. Magical Express
This is the shuttle service that picks you up from the airport and takes you to your Disney resort, and then returns you at the end of your holiday. It is free, and each one only stops at a maximum of 3 resorts it doesn’t take long to get you there.
Cons
1. Cost – staying on Disney property is expensive!
2. Confined – if you are a family of 4, you might not all want to be in one room.
3. Large resorts – there are many Disney Resorts, most of them are large, with multiple bus stops. This means that if there are 4 bus stops at your resort and you are waiting at the last one, you might not get on the first bus that passes.
4. Addictive – yes, once you have stayed onsite, you won’t want to stay anywhere else!
Benefits of staying offsite
1. Cost – staying in a villa, or a hotel in a location not on Disney Property is always a cheaper way of staying in Orlando.
2. Self-cater – there are plenty of supermarkets in Orlando so if you are renting a villa, you can buy breakfast ingredients and even make packed lunches, as eating out in the parks can get expensive.
3. Independence – if you like to have your own transport, and go where you want when you want, then you can rent a hire car for the duration of your holiday.
4. Large family holidays – sometimes you don’t want to be all cooped up in a hotel room when you are a large family. If you rent a villa you can spread out and have your own rooms, you could even have your own private pool.
Cons
1. Cost – I know this is a benefit, but it is also a con, because once you have paid for the villa, you also need to factor in the following (which, once you’ve added this up, probably comes to the same price as staying onsite after all!)
• Cost of a hire car • Cost of parking in the parks ($25 PER DAY) • Cost of buying food • Cost of fuel
2. Location - most villas are around 20 – 30 minutes away from the Disney parks, so that is a lot of time NOT spent IN the parks. Do you really want to be leaving Magic Kingdom after the fireworks at 10pm with tired children, and then having to drive half an hour back to your villa?
3. Access to the park - if you are visiting the Magic Kingdom and you are driving, the car parks are located either a bus ride, monorail ride, or boat ride away from the actual park. So if it takes you half an hour to drive to MK, it will then take you another 20 – 30 minutes before you can even enter the park.
4. FastPass+ - staying offsite means you only have access to booking your fastpasses at 30 days, meaning you risk not being able to ride the most popular rides.
So to summarise, you need to do a lot of research to find the best option for you, factor in all of the above, because what you might initially think is the best option, might not necessarily be the best option for you in the long run. Having the convenience of staying in the Disney bubble is something that I would pay for over and over again, and having stayed both onsite and offsite (twice each), I wouldn’t want to go back to staying offsite again.