How to start planning your Disney Vacation for 2022

by The WDW Lists
Posted On June 28, 2021

How exciting! You’re planning your trip to Disney World! If you’ve started any research, your mind is probably spinning with all of the options available to customize your trip. Here’s a simplified overview of how you can frame out your vacation!

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Here’s how we’re going to tackle the basics of planning your trip:

When are you planning to go, and what is the make-up of your party?

How long do you plan on staying at Disney World?
What does your budget look like?
Where are you coming from?

Each one of these points will impact large chunks of your vacation planning in a different way, so we’re going to tackle them one by one to make everything more manageable!

When are you going, and who is going with you?

Do you have a specific time of year that you’re able to go, or are your dates flexible? Some parents are ok with their kids missing school, while some years kids have to be present for standardized testing or finals. Check everyone’s schedule before booking, (even though Disney has a notoriously flexible rescheduling policy!).

When booking your trip, you also need to make note of how many people are in the following age brackets: under 3 years old (to the day!), ages 3-9 years old (again- to the day!), and ages 10+ (including all adults). A 10 year old is considered a “Disney adult,” much to the chagrin of parents everywhere.

Kids aged 2 and under are free to enter the park and also free to dine from an adult’s plate at buffet locations (once they reopen!). If a child has a birthday on the trip, then the age at check-in is used to calculate the price of tickets, the price of dining, and the price of meal plans when available. The same rule also applies to aging into “Disney adulthood.”

How long do you plan on staying at Disney World?

We all wish we could stay at Disney for eternity, but alas, our pets and workplaces would start to get suspicious. Hopes and dreams aside, how long do you plan on staying? Unless you are unreasonably wealthy, this will most likely affect which hotel category to consider and how many park days you will get to enjoy.

In the largest nutshell you can imagine, we generally budget $100 per day, per person for park admission alone. In other words, as a family of four, we budget $400 per day for our family to enter a park. It should be noted that the longer you stay, the cheaper park tickets will be per day. That is, at the time of this article, a 5-day ticket in January drops to $478.80 for an adult and $459.88 per child, for a grand total of $1877.36. After the Florida magic tax (sales tax, tourism something, etc.), we’re bumped right back up to $1999.42. Because the hotel and food options are so flexible, it helps to start with ticket prices and work backwards.

Speaking of a place to rest your head, let’s look at a high-level view of hotel options. Disney offers three categories of accommodations: Value, Moderate, and Deluxe. Step into the largest nutshell with us again. Value accommodations range between $125 and $200. Moderate hotels range from $200 to $400, and Deluxe hotels range somewhere between $400 and a Toyota Corolla per night.

What does your budget look like?

There are certainly ways to save on each of the hotel categories, but we are just building out the framework of our vacation. It’s important to understand your budget before committing to dates and experiences.

Author break: After having many, many trips to Disney under our belt, I can assure you that the magic really happens inside the parks with your family. Yes, the hotels and the restaurants are magical, but it’s the time spent with family, discovering details that imagineering has tucked in every nook and cranny for us. The magic is watching your child light up when they finally see Mickey waving at them or listening to the swish of a princess dress. The folks at The Dis on YouTube (and just about every facet of the internet) describe ordinary things becoming extraordinary inside the park as “The Mickey Bar Effect.” That is, a Mickey Bar is a vanilla ice cream bar dipped in chocolate, which can be found at just about any grocery store or gas station. Once it becomes Mickey-shaped and savored from the curb of Main Street USA in view of the castle, it immediately becomes magical and perhaps the most delicious treat you’ve ever experienced.

With your remaining budget intact after the initial swipe for tickets, you can decide what hotel category would be best for your family. Some folks just want a place to shower and sleep at night, while others want to make a full day of lounging at the pool.

Determining your hotel can also work hand in hand with your dining choices. For example, you may upgrade yourself to a Moderate resort if you choose to order groceries to be delivered. A peanut butter sandwich packed for a picnic on the castle’s hub grass may be an adequate tradeoff for nicer digs!

If you want to eat at the restaurants at the hotels or within the parks, always check out restaurant pricing before booking a reservation. If ticket prices threw you for a loop, then you might be getting some sticker shock from the dining options in comparison to our hometown favorites. Don’t get me wrong- we loved our $200 brunch at Toppolino’s Terrace. The food was good, the service was adequate, and the characters were top notch!

On our “Disney Lite” trips, we pick just a couple of table service restaurants. Then we balance the rest of our meals with groceries, UberEats (get $20 off your first order!), snacks at the park, and quick service locations. My husband and I found a much better deal for our dollar, and neither of the kids seemed to notice or care. My daughter does, however, remember eating nachos in the room while watching Bluey. [See: cardboard box effect.]

Where are you coming from?

As you might expect, how far you’re travelling from home affects your transportation costs. We fly in from Houston for less than $1000, but if I lived in Georgia, you’d better believe I’d be trucking it down the interstate! You can check out our math on deciding to fly in this article. For us, we place value on the experience and time of flying, and TBH, our family is horrible at driving long distances.

If you choose to drive, you do need to factor in parking fees at the hotel, which range from $15 per night at a value hotel to $25 per night at a deluxe. It should be noted, however, that resort guests do not pay for standard parking at each of the parks if you choose to drive instead of taking the free internal Disney transportation.

Regardless of where you’re coming from, there are tons of benefits to both flying or driving. For us, flying allowed us to recapture a lot of time lost driving. BUT, it sure would have saved a ton to hop in the car to eat off site or hit the outlet mall for souvenirs.

There you have it! This is where you start planning your Disney vacation. Once you have some super basic decisions out of the way, you can either book online or reach out to a travel agent. [Disney travel agents are free to you, as their fees (commissions) are paid directly by Disney.] I love using a travel agent, but I always book my own travel.

We hope to provide more detailed information on each part of your trip in future articles, so let us know in the comments what you’d like to learn more about!

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