Wow, it’s been a long time since we last wrote a trip report. Things sure have changed. Let’s quickly discuss the big two changes in our lives and then get to the reporting.
First, we’re traveling just as Disney started to lift most of its remaining pandemic safety measures. The last full day of our trip was the first day at the parks with no mask requirement (still required on transportation to/from the parks). We missed an era, and I’ll say right off the bat that based on our experience, I’m not upset about that.
Second, we’re traveling with our infant, Zoe, now 10 months old. We were excited to introduce Zoe to Disney World, but more important we were excited to introduce Zoe to traveling. This trip included Zoe’s first flight and first hotel.
I’m not going to write much here about the choice to travel with an infant (who isn’t yet vaccine eligible) during this time. All I’ll say is we carefully considered the risks and the mitigators thereof and made the choice we made, just like we did from March 2020 to March 2021 and basically left the house once a week for a long outdoor walk.
This was our first trip seeing the new Cinderella Castle color scheme.
Booking This Trip
Booking this trip came in four parts—hotels, flights, tickets, and parks pass. We didn’t do advance dining reservations for Zoe’s first trip (I do wish we’d done a breakfast on departure day) or any of the limited other bookable experience (like “Capture Your Moment”). For a more general look at this topic, check out our “How Much Does a Trip to Disney World Cost?” post.
Hotels
We booked our hotels and tickets through Lauren Quirk of Travel With Character LLC. (Disclosure: Lauren’s concierge services, which include much more than just booking your trip, usually come with a fee. She has generously waived the fee for our trips, and while we haven’t yet utilized her full concierge services we look forward to reviewing them in the future.)
I had some pretty straightforward requirements for Zoe’s first Disney World trip. Zoe’s first Disney hotel would be a value resort—preferably Pop Century, since it has the Skyliner, and I like its rooms. We’d also stay at a hotel with a walking path to Magic Kingdom (Contemporary, Grand Floridian, Polynesian—though this path wound up closed during our trip) for part of the trip. This meant a split stay.
We remain huge fans of split stays. They’re a great way to maximize your transportation options and to see different hotels, particularly deluxe hotels, without completely breaking the bank.
A room at Pop Century
We wound up with three nights at Pop Century and two at Grand Floridian during a summer promo. The Pop rooms were booked as a package with the tickets, so at the moment it’s a lot to work to figure out how to split the cost, but I believe the Pop room cost somewhere around $585 for three nights (or $195 per night) with the promo somewhere around 25% off.
The two nights at Grand Floridian cost $1137 for two nights, or $569 per night. This was during the promo and was 30% off the rack rate of around $812 per night.
Overall, our hotels cost $1722 or $344 per night. Five nights at Pop Century would have cost around $975 ($747 cheaper than our stay). Five nights at Grand Floridian would have cost $2843 ($1121 more than our stay) and a piece of my soul.
Disney’s Grand Floridian Resort & Spa
Tickets
Next, there’s park tickets. We got five-day park hoppers ($1247 total for the two of us, Zoe didn’t need a ticket), but our plan was always to upgrade them to annual passes. (Note: We advocate buying Discount Disney World Tickets. I didn’t this time, for reasons I promise don’t apply to your trip.)
Emily got a refund of her Disney World annual pass during the pandemic, and I let my Disneyland/Disney World Premier Passport expire earlier this year. As a result, we were eligible for Disney’s annual pass “recovery” program to get new passes (which aren’t available to the public as of this writing).
The recovery program is really, really opaque. You have to call the AP line and get put on a list. Then within 30 days they call you back to confirm eligibility. We did get on the list and got the callback, but it went to voicemail. It was close enough to our trip that we figured we’d just go to the Disney Springs ticket office—whom we’d heard were experts in these things—because we didn’t just need to get APs, we needed to upgrade our park hoppers, and we just thought it might be best to deal with that in-person (it turned out to be true).
Reunited with my Disney World annual pass
Flights
As for flights, there was no really ideal time other than that we had to be home or at the hotel for bedtime. In any case, we knew Zoe’s nap schedule was going to be messed up by all the hubbub, so it’s not like we could plan perfectly around those.
We’ve long flown low-cost airlines (Spirit and Frontier, particularly). Frontier flies out of Terminal 5 at O’Hare which is a pain to get to, so I’m trying to avoid them. We knew we’d have more luggage this trip, which meant paying for at least one carry-on.
We’re used to flying just with personal items—backpacks that fit under our seats—for trips up to about a week. If you buy carry-ons for every traveler in your party, your “low cost” flights will usually cost as much as any other airline. But if you only need one carry-on, you might still save booking low-cost.
We decided to buy Zoe a seat and to bring the car seat. At 10 months old we had the option just to bring Zoe as a lap infant. Zoe has spent very limited time in the car seat because we don’t drive, but we decided having the whole row was best. As it turned out, Zoe was going through a “I will not sit in your lap for more than 10 seconds” phase when we traveled, so this wound up being the right call.
Checking to make sure the carry on meet’s Spirit requirements
I didn’t note other airline prices because I’m not used to having the make the final comparison with luggage costs, but we wound up spending:
$494 for the roundtrip flights ($165 per person)
$100 for the single roundtrip carry on
$120 for three roundtrip seat assignments
$714 total or $238 per person
This meant we’d be traveling with two adults, one infant, two personal items, one diaper bag, one carry on, and one car seat.
Our seat selection was D-E-F to MCO and A-B-C back to ORD. The reason for this is the views. The best chance at seeing Disney World when you’re coming from the north is if the approach takes you southbound west of the airport before making a u-turn back to the airport. During that southbound stretch on the righthand side of the plane (D-E-F) is your best chance to see Disney World (coming back north on the lefthand side you can see it, too, but it’s farther). And flying into O’Hare your best bet is A-B-C and an approach from the east. We wound up with neither of these views this trip, though.
Parks Pass Reservations
Finally (for us on this trip), there’s parks pass reservations. We had five days of reservations to make—arrival and four full days. The original plan was to skip the park on departure day (once we had our APs we added that day at Magic Kingdom since we would be coming from Grand Floridian).
Originally, I booked Epcot on arrival day, the idea being that I would go (for festival content) if I had time, but Emily and Zoe would just relax after Zoe’s first flight. Later, I decided to modify that to Magic Kingdom, figuring maybe Emily and Zoe would want to come along, in which case I wanted Magic Kingdom to be Zoe’s first park. Worst case would be they didn’t want to come, and I just had to stop at Magic Kingdom en route to Epcot.
Our first full day would be a leisurely day at Magic Kingdom. No pressure, just want to introduce Zoe to theme parks and us to theme parking with a baby,
Our second full day would be Hollywood Studios. This was our second full day at Pop Century, so we’d take the Skyliner over and back. We also could hop to Epcot if we wanted and still take the Skyliner home.
Our third full day was changing hotels, and I always book Animal Kingdom that day of split stays. No hotel has special transportation to Animal Kingdom—without your own car you’re taking the bus or you’re Ubering (or taking a Minnie Van, if those return). That being the case, it makes sense to visit it on a day when you’re changing hotels so you’re not “wasting” whatever transportation advantage your hotels give you.
Our final full day was our only full day at Grand Floridian, so we’d do Magic Kingdom since we can walk, boat, or monorail there.
Total Booking Cost
Our total cost for booking this Disney World trip came out to:
$1722 hotels, for five nights in Disney hotels
$714 flights, for three seats and one carry-on
$1247 tickets, five day park hoppers for two adults
for a grand total of $3683.