We decided that 2026 was going to be the year we booked Walt Disney World and Universal! This trip has been in the making since 2018, but life always got in the way.
Me, Troy and Kirst have been actively discussing when would be best to go and what we specifically wanted from the trip.
We looked at all avenues, onsite, offsite, Disney, Universal or villa. We all realistically wanted to stay onsite as it was our first trip and wanted to make full use of the facilities available. We knew we would be staying out for most of the day, so wasn’t too fussed on the accommodation, as long as it had a bed and shower.
The prices for 2026 were released in March, the planning begins! We agreed that we wanted to go August as we wanted to go to Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party (MNSSHP) and that starts Mid-august. We agreed on 7th August 2026 for 14 nights.
We looked at getting 2 rooms, one to house me Troy, Ellia and Layton. The second for Kirst, Rubi and Kirst’s youngest. None of this included any food as dining plans hadn’t been released yet.
Unfortunately, Kirst had to make the difficult decision to pull out from the trip due to personal reasons. We were devastated… but surely that means another trip?
As Kirst was no longer coming with us, we looked at moving the dates back slightly as we don’t mind the kids missing a few days of school. We settled on 20th August – 3rd September 2026. The price for just the room and tickets was £6960.
We have eagerly been awaiting the announcement that Disney Dining Plan (DDP) is coming back…… 29th April couldn’t come quick enough.
Me and Troy were like kids at Christmas… we woke up morning 29th April and got straight on to Walt Disney Travel Company and joined their virtual que…. I was 1365 in the que with a 37-minute wait, Troy joined a few minutes later 2015 in the que 52-minute wait. We both had this on our phone and even opened a tab on the laptop just in case too. That one was 1hr wait.
We wanted to see if it was more budget friendly to book 2 value resorts and pay the upgrade for DDP or staying at a moderate resort with the free DDP.
We’d got Capital playing in the background as Rubi was listening for the confirmed artists for Capital Summertime Ball – Benson Boone had already been announced so she was already happy!
I was finally able to access the Walt Disney Travel Company’s website!!! Troy said for me to look straight at the Family room, all 5 of us in one room. So, I put our dates in and all the details for the kids and the search began. Caribbean Beach was coming back at the cheapest, Brilliant! Let’s book that one… Error – no rooms available for that date. Oh okay, lets go back and change it to a different hotel. Error – your spot in the que has ended. Oh no! oh no! Quick f5 to see if the page refreshes. The trip comes back up… phew!!!!!
The next resort that had availability for a family of 5 was Port Orleans Riverside. Princess and the Frog theme. Rubi was ecstatic. We had a 5th sleeper room; it has 2 doubles and pull-down single bed. It looked cosy. We went through to the next stage where you add your park tickets, WDTC had an offer on for 14 days for the same price as 7 days saving us about £200. Then the moment we had been waiting for…. The DDP. As we were staying at a moderate resort our DDP was 2 quick service meals per person per day (including 1 non-alcoholic/alcoholic beverage) 1 snack credit per person per day and one refillable resort mug. All for FREE. We added this to our package and proceeded to checkout. We also get a free memory maker and 15% off at Disney store online.
I made sure everyone’s details were correct and pressed proceed to payment…. ERROR. This cannot be happening. The website was glitching. Again, I quickly pressed f5 and it took me back to the details page. By this point, Troy now had access to the site too and was looking at the 2-room value resort cost with us paying to upgrade our DDP. This total was coming out around £7800 for both rooms and food.
I was frantically trying to get the booking to confirm, the website was having none of it. I was almost crying. Troy went back to the search on his and amended the details to all 5 of us and managed to get through to the booking stage. He handed me the phone to make sure all names and DOBs were correct and pressed proceed to payment.
For all 5 of us to stay at Port Orleans Riverside with 14-day park tickets and the quick service dining plan it cost us a gran total of £6645!! This was amazing but hold on…. Two weeks ago, just for the room and tickets it was £6960. How have we managed to get 10 meals and 5 snacks per day on top of this and have a reduction! We somehow managed to reduce the cost by £315. Must be the magic!
We are officially BOOKED! We’re going to WALT DISNEY WORLD! Just Universal tickets, MNSSHP tickets and Flights to pay for now!
Let the planning begin!