- It’s A Girl! by Dans Deals. Congratulations to Dan, his wife and their family!
- Delta Eliminates Free Checked Bags On Some Transatlantic Itineraries by One Mile At A Time. File this under things that were always going to happen. Still think legacy carries trying to compete with LCC’s is a losing proposition for them and they will only hurt their brand in the long time but it looks like they are committed to it.
- Am I the only one who thinks Disney World is overrated? by PFdigest. Again I don’t have kids so this is for the readers that do. Always good idea to read counterpoints to the conventional wisdom.
- Ebags policy: no more combining gift cards by Frequent Miler. Boo! Boo! Boo! Some reports of it still working online and more of it working by phone, but YMMV as always.
I was fairly anti-Disney and didn’t want to go for years – but finally broke down and took the kids. It was awesome and so much better than I expected. That said there is no way I would pay out of pocket for everything. A family of 4 staying onsite, with plane tickets and the food plan is literally about $10k! I used points for flights/hotels, had discounted tickets and didn’t spend a ton on food and spent close to $3k. I also would never go during peak times as that would totally ruin the trip. We went between tgiving and Christmas and it was great. So great we ended up going to HK Disney last year and I highly recommend that if your kids are under 12 and it’s low season.
Meh, they hate disney because they cheaped out and didn’t plan. Stay on property for extra magic hours and you can ride whatever you want for an hour with no lines. Use fastpast for everything else. My wife and I – no kids – got the chase disney card with no fee and $200 gift card each and then used arrival+ points and charged everything to the hotel and did 3 days in the parks and 2 nights in the hotel for close to free, which gave the extra hours on all 3 days and free parking. We rode every ride we wanted to, never waited in any lines and got awesome pictures in the exclusive area for chase disney cardholders. If you have to wait in line, then skip it cause there are much better things to do in life than that.
I think part of the reason they hated Disney was because you have to plan and you can’t cheap out. I get where both sides are coming from though.
We love Disney World as a family. It is insanely expensive and the crowds can be awful at times. It takes a ton of planning. If planned well it is great fun, but I can see that without planning or even knowing that so much planning is required could result in a very unpleasant experience. I also think staying on site is the only way to do it if Disney consists of all or the majority of your days in Florida. That does get expensive though. We do it “cheap” with free Airfare with Points and stay at moderate level resorts and still easily spend $5500 to $7500 per trip for 5 people for 10-12 days. If we were not frugal that number would easily be $10,000 to $13,000.
I find it interesting how some of the comments on the original post actually call people that enjoy it idiots and that they require a kick in the backside. They claimied there is so much more to the world to see than Disney! Well no crap, and my family goes and sees that too! We go to Hawaii, California, New Orleans, East coast, the Rockies, etc. Not sure why that comment was even made.
I think Disney is great, but not all people will be “wired” in a way to enjoy it. That is fine because if everyone liked it, the crowds would be even worse than they are!
I do not have kids either but I imagine Disney is not that fun (for most). Six Flags, which is cheaper with good rides and 30 min away from me, isn’t that fun b/c of the massive crowds. Best time I had at a park was when it was drizzling on a weekday and almost no one was there.