[agtlmm]

Has anyone every priced together their own land/sea package?

For two adults in October for 4 land/3 sea, cat 12 it is $1828.96. Just the 3 day cruise is $1188.96. I looked at Caribbean Beach for the 4 days with a 4 day hopper pass and came up with $1292. That should be a total of $2480.

What I was hoping was to pair the cruise with the value resort for a lower cost. But even using the POP century I came up about $175 more than the 7 day package.

I am doing the numbers wrong or is there a huge discount for the land side?

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[InstImpres]

It really depends. It used to be cheaper to book separately but Disney has made it comparable or cheaper to book together most of the year depending on your situation.

Go and enjoy
Sandy

[Winkster]

I've got a similar problem.

We normally stay in WDW for 14-17 nights to make the trip from the UK worthwhile.

We're planning our next trip in May and I'd love to add a 3 day cruise on the end of 14 nights in WDW.

Trouble is, we always use Virgin Holidays and book a package with them including flights, hotel (POR), car hire and tickets for Disney, Universal, Sea World etc.

Unfortunately Virgin do not offer Disney cruises so I'd have to book this directly and then leave a few days without accomodation as part of our package deal with Virgin (to allow for the cruise).

The alternative is to book the flights with Virgin, the hotel, WDW tickets and cruise direct with Disney, car hire direct and then buy Universal and Sea World passes separately.

We can't do a Land and Sea Cruise though because they don't do a 14 night WDW and 3 night cruise option.

It's all very complicated isn't it!

[cmcclain]

There are some additional costs you need to consider when planning you own land/sea package versus buying it all through Disney or a Disney travel agent.

First, you will need to provide you own transportation to and from the port whereas with a Disney transportation is provided from either your resort or a designated park (used to AK).

Secondly, with a Disney package they move you luggage for so you only need to take a day bag on your cruise day.

One other thing to consider is that if you book with Disney you only check in once, that is when you check in at your resort (if doing land portion 1st which I highly recommend) you do not need to check in again on the boat. All of your info is stored on your Key to Kingdom card (room key) including credit card account info. This means you can just walk on the ship and start enjoying yourself.

These are some of the less the obvious costs to consider when comparing the two options. As for extending your stay in the park you can always book an additional stay at the resort of your choice and Disney will make move your luggage for you (if you stay at the same resort you do not have to re-check in but you probably will if you switch resorts).

[Winkster]

Thanks cmcclain - some great points there I hadn't even considered!

And you're right about transport. We normally rent a car but why bother paying for a car while we're on the cruise as it will just sit in a lot at the port? It makes no sense!

I guess it makes more sense to rent a car for the 14 nights we have at POR, give it back and then use Disney transport to the Port.

Having said, I now have a few more transport related questions that someone may be able to help me with:

Can you rent a car at the airport and either drop it back (or have it collected) at WDW? I know there's rental -places at WDW and that the rental company that Virgin use (Dollar) has an office in one of the hotels on Hotel Plaza Bvd so I guess that's an option too.

We'd fly back from MCO via Virgin Atlantic so I'm not sure if the usual options (Magical Express etc) would apply to us. Does anyone know if you can use the Magical Express with UK airlines (either from the airport to WDW or from the port to the Airport)?

Also, what happens if the times of the boat docking and our flight don't correspond? We won't really want to be sat at the airport twiddling our thumbs for hours until our flight leaves.

Suddenly it all sounds more complicated than I thought!

As you can tell, I'm pretty ignorant of such matters. We usually just hire a car and get everywhere under our own steam.

[InstImpres]

Alamo and National have offices on site at WDW. Thrifty and Budget can be dropped at the port. Disney transfers for the port are $69 per person roundtrip, so sometimes a car is more economical.

Magical Express is for anyone staying onsite at WDW, it does not apply to the port (without a charge)

[Winkster]

Thanks InstImpres - that's useful to know!

Maybe we'll hire a car at the airport and drop it at the port in that case.

It's grey, cold, damp weather here in the UK so I could really do with a cruise right now!

[dahuffy]

We rented a car from Budget and drove to Cocoa,dropped it at the Budget offices and rode thier free shuttle to the ship.