Walt Disney Wednesday (Resorts)

What do you know about Disney? More importantly, what DON’T you know? There’s more to Disney than meets the eye. And it’s constantly changing. Whether it be the prices, the rides or the shows. Disney doesn’t replay the same year twice. Every year it creates new experiences you never forget. All while putting together our vacation I stumbled across some INCREDIBLE resources that for me did more in explaining than any agent could have. We took the hands on approach as I said in last weeks post and dug deep into our MousekaTools! Today I’m going to highlight some of the key resources we used in order to guide us into booking our magical family vacation.

Where Are We Going To Stay?

This was the hardest thing for us to nail down. We agreed that we were staying on Disney’s property, but WHERE WERE WE GOING TO STAY!?! When my family and I started talking about our vacation about six months ago, we did what anyone would do. We went to YouTube! There’s so many videos that give really great tours and reviews about each of the resorts. We primarily let iThemePark & Disney Parks act as our personal tour guides. It was important for us to ‘walk the grounds’ before we booked our hotel. My boyfriend spent HOURS on YouTube exploring EVERY themed (Value) resort

We initially wanted to plan our stay at Disney’s Animal Kingdom Lodge. This is one of the most expensive themed resorts Disney has to offer, but for good reason. Who doesn’t want to wake up in the morning and have coffee on the balcony with zebras and giraffes? The atmosphere is very mature. The animals are a great perk, but aside from that it didn’t offer an experience our two year old daughter would really appreciate it; Mom and Dad would love it though. It creates this African oasis feel that’s so peaceful. Maybe we’ll stay here when we come to relax, when we’re stressing the parks as much.

Just a couple months ago we turned our attention to younger themed resort’s like The Art of Animation, All Star Resort and Century Pop. We want to stay somewhere where the grounds are inviting to younger children and alluring for the adults. I think for the majority of our process we were set on staying at The Art of Animation, but the reservations kept selling out and time was not on our side. It was important to nail down a vacation package at least four months before we go. It’s the newest of the themed resorts and honestly my hands down favorite. It’s newer, the character theming is more up to date and the food court is the highest rated out of all the themed resorts. But then we talked more and I think we just agreed that we probably won’t be spending much time at the resort anyways, so why not save money and maybe try a different themed resort?

We then turned our attention towards Disney’s All Star Movie Resort which seemed to hit a criteria we were researching. Child friendly landscaping; themed pools; themed buildings. I think for the most part when we called up Disney to book our vacation, this was where we planned on staying, but that changed. The Disney agent ended up booking us a SOLID package at a cheaper price at The Century Pop Resort. Similar to The Art of Animation, but older. I guess if we couldn’t do The Art of Animation, the little brother would do, right? Unlike the congestion of The All Star Resorts, this resort had a slightly higher rated food court and it’s OWN Magic Coach Bus to and from all the resorts; Art of Animation has it’s own bus as well. The landscaping and themed building is more involved too. Children will take to the themed buildings and landscape a little more. The All Star Resort shares the same bus with all four of the ASR Themes on the Ground; Sports, Music & Movies. Imagine how crowded that can get. We were sold!!