I was hiding under your porch because I love you - Dug, from "Up".

Hello again!  Jennie checking in to give everyone some information regarding our pending "lock in" date.

This time I want to give people some information regarding the WDW (Walt Disney World for those of you that aren't up with the lingo) Resort locations that Tan touched on a little in the last blog entry.  I also want your feedback on what you feel would be right for you and your family.

This does not constitute acceptable accommodation

In order to have our wedding at WDW we need to meet a number of certain criteria and while much of the criteria is based on our minimum spends and other requirements that don't really relate to our guests there is one aspect that can get slightly tricky if we don't get it right.  This part I'm referring to is what Disney call their "room block", where we have to create a request for Disney to block a number of nights from certain Disney Resort Hotels that are reserved specifically for people on our guest list.

It's extremely confusing even for us, but essentially what happens is Disney give us a list of their hotels that they're willing to reserve for our wedding guests.  These rooms will be sold on to our guests at a discounted rate (some of the discounts reaching up to 30% off per room, which is pretty nice!)  Another aspect that can get quite tricky is when we create the room block we must guarantee that 80% of the rooms we ask to be blocked will be sold.

So as you can imagine this can be quite daunting and tedious if we are left to simply "guess" how many of our guests are interested in staying within the WDW area.  We're hoping to remove some of that guess work with your help!  We can do this by passing on the information we have and allowing our guests to decide where would be best for them to stay and how many nights they think they will be staying within the Disney area.

Tan: I'm so confused!!  Help me, Jennie!!

I also want to take this time to go a little further in depth about why staying within the Disney area is so amazing, because for those that have never been to WDW it is quite an amazing place to be and an incredibly massive area!  To give you some idea of just how massive, the area itself covers 47sq miles (for those of you that live in Australia, 121sq kms) or 30 000 acres!  It's also quite a distance from WDW to any of the hotels in the area surrounding the park, so getting from any hotel outside the park to inside the park, you're going to be driving about an hour or so per day not including the time it's going to take you to park and the time it'll take you to get from your car to the front of the park!

This place is MASSIVE!!

This is the main reason Tan and I will never ever stay outside the park again, we did it once in 2007 and it was the worst thing we did on the entire 7 week trip!  It ate into our holiday and as you know, the one thing you seem to have a lack of on vacation is always time.

Want to avoid this?  Listen to our advice!!

No, really!  Trust us!  We've both pulled these faces when staying in non-Disney accommodation...

Tan: Hmm... There sure has been a lot of crying and tantrums embedded in this blog entry.  This is serious, people!

There are a few pros to staying within WDW:

• Distance - As I said earlier the distances you can take to travel to get to the WDW area alone without even getting to where you need to go inside the resort can be quite substantial.

Okay, maybe not THIS substantial!

• Transport - Reliable free transportation from all resort locations to any of the parks within the grounds including "Downtown Disney" and "Pleasure Island".
• Parking - If you're driving to all of the parks, you're required to pay for parking, so with the free transportation you can save money every single day you're looking to travel to a park.  If you do decide to drive to a park then parking is free to resort guests.

Paying for parking can be painful.  Maybe not this painful.

• Safe and clean - The peace of mind knowing you're going to be staying in a location that is clean and safe.  All Disney Resort locations have a standard they need to uphold.
• Disney Magic - Even the Disney resort have that feel of "Disney" about them, which you will not get staying outside the park.

It's magical, but not THAT magical

• Independence - Because it's so easy to travel around within the park, if one family member feels like returning to the room without feeling like a "burden" on the rest of the family, they can.
• No Need for Lockers - Because it's relatively quick to travel to and from the parks, you can leave your things in the room and return when you need to, eliminating the need for a locker in some cases and as a result cutting back costs.
• Extra Magic Hours - Disney only offer this to their resort guests, the park is open longer to people that stay at the resorts!  Oh yeah!

Extra Magic Hours - so you don't have to disguise yourself as a hedge to stay in the park...

• Shopping - When you stay onsite and feel like purchasing a gift or souvenir, Disney will deliver it to your hotel room free of charge without the need to get a locker or carry it around with you all day.
• Disney's Magical Express - If you decide to fly rather than drive to Orlando (a popular option among our guests traveling from outside of the American continents), Disney offer a pickup and drop off service for you and your bags from Orlando International Airport!  Really, if you didn't want to go anywhere other than WDW then there is no need for a car at all, saving you costs again in this area.
• Disney's Express check-in - Disney also offer a service within all of their resorts to "check-in" your luggage on the plane flight home as well as skipping the queues at the airport by organizing your boarding passes.. I swear they really do think of EVERYTHING!

I don't have to check in at the airport??  This makes me feel like dancing!!

• Room key - Your room key also doubles as your key to the world!.. of Disney.  Your room key not only gives you access to your room (duh..), it's also the only card you need to take with you.  With this card you can purchase anything from an expensive piece of artwork, to a banana or some sun block.  Just don't let the kids get their hands on it or your room bill might end up a little higher than you anticipated.
• Entertainment - Even at their resort locations there is no shortness of entertainment!  Sometimes it's worth just staying back at the hotel to enjoy your day at Disney!
• Child care - Disney is the king of family entertainment, so their child minding services are second to none.  Ensuring you have peace of mind when you leave your kids that they're going to enjoy themselves so much they're probably not going to want you to retrieve them.

Disney has child care - so you don't have to leave them in the car...

• Magic Your Way - You can tailor your resort stay package to include discounted tickets to any of the theme park locations around WDW.
• Wedding convenience - For those people intending to drink on the night of the wedding (or other nights for that matter) you can take the free Disney transport back to your hotel without having to designate a driver to take you back to your hotel.

Sorry, there's no paging service.  Or a bank of payphones.  Use the phone in your room.

Of course staying within WDW isn't for everyone either, so the cons:

• Cost - The cost is often much higher within the WDW area than staying off-site.  For the amount you pay inside WDW you can often get something better and larger off-site.

Not all of us can be as rich as this duck...

• Food - The cost of food is often much higher within the WDW area than it is off-site, plus it's much more difficult to find a resort that caters for people who wish to cook all their meals.
• Distance - The downside to staying within WDW means if you wish to travel to other parks like Sea World, Universal Studios or the Kennedy Space Center then it is quite a drive from the park to any of these locations.
• Access to shops - Again the driving distance to the malls and outlets can be quite some distance.
• Room key - If you don't watch what you put on your room key, you could be in for a nasty surprise at the end of the trip!
• Facilities - Many of the Disney resorts aren't apartment style and as such lack private kitchens and laundries.

So with all that extra knowledge you now have, lets get to the nuts and bolts of the resorts and pricing!  There are three different rates in which Disney classifies their resorts and there are a number of resorts that fall within each of these three rates.  It is recommended that we choose one from each of these resort rate categories (three in total).  We have an idea of what we think will be good, but we don't really want to lock it in until we hear from a few of our guests.

As I said earlier, as we are having our wedding at WDW, Disney are going to be offering a discounted rate to all of our guests that wish to stay at any of our selected resorts.  So these prices I will be quoting apply to a standard room unless otherwise stated and you won't find them available anywhere else.

The Deluxe Resorts:

• The Grand Floridian Resort and Spa - $342 per room, per night.*
• BoardWalk Inn - $256 per room, per night.
• Yacht Club Resort - $249 per room, per night.
• Beach Club Resort - $249 per room, per night.
• Contemporary Resort (Garden Wing Room) - $235 per room, per night.
• Polynesian Resort - $365 per room, per night.
• Animal Kingdom Lodge (Savanna View Room) - $309 per room, per night.
• Wilderness Lodge - $246 per room, per night.

The Moderate Resorts:

• Coronado Springs Resort - $154 per room, per night.
• Caribbean Beach Resort - $154 per room, per night.
• Port Orleans Resort: French Quarter - $154 per room, per night.
• Port Orleans Resort: Riverside - $154 per room, per night.*

The Value Resorts:

• All-Star Music Resort - $88 per room, per night.
• All-Star Movies Resort - $88 per room, per night.
• All-Star Sports Resort - $88 per room, per night.
• Pop Century Resort - $97 per room, per night.*

As you can see, Disney cater for all budgets.  I could be here forever giving you the pros and cons of each resort but as this blog post is already getting quite long winded I'll let everyone conduct their own research on each location.

Like I said earlier, Tan and I have tentatively decided on what might work best for everyone and the resorts we thought would be good come with a little asterisk next to them (one of these ==> * ).

The Grand Floridian Resort and Spa - The Disney Wedding Pavilion where the ceremony will hopefully be held is located at the Grand Floridian, so this choice is an ease of access for those that aren't wanting to travel too far on the day of the wedding may find this option appealing as it's only a short walk to the pavilion itself.  Tan and I will be staying here the night before the wedding and the night of the wedding.

The Grand Floridian

Port Orleans Resort: Riverside - We once stayed at Port Orleans Resort: French Quarter, it was a lovely and simple hotel, quiet and clean.  The 1:00 am laundry run nights next to the pool were a blast, but we always kind of regretted that we didn't stay at Riverside instead because you can catch a boat free of charge to Downtown Disney, which is awesome!

Port Orleans Riverside

Pop Century Resort - All the value resorts are much of a muchness, there really isn't much to them.  They can apparently be a little noisy because there are sooooo many kids, but otherwise they're fine during the evenings.  It was a tough decision for us on what would be best, in the end it came down to what seemed more appealing?

One of the buildings at Pop Century Resort.  There's many more Pop Culture icons around this place

Feel free to either post your thoughts here, or message either of us on facebook to share your thoughts on which resort will be best and perhaps give us a vague idea of how long you intend to spend at any of the WDW resorts, if any.

To kickstart your own research, here is a useful link: http://wdwprepschool.com/the-pros-and-cons-of-every-disney-world-resort/

Thanks again for reading, and hopefully soon I can get Tan to post something not so super-cereal and informative and more fun instead!