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DH wants to go all out for our 4 day trip in April..he has seen the platinum and premium pkg outline and wants to try. Is it worth it for that short of time? We have a 5 year old and a baby, so the in room care would be nice...but it just seems like alot for 4 days. I would appreciate input from anyone but especially someone who has done it! Thanks
We have considered this but don't think we would actually utilize all the extras so figured it was not worth it for us. If this is your first trip you will need the entire four days just to do all the parks and with a baby you will need to take things a bit slower. I think if you had more time it would be better. Hopefully someone who has actually done it will have more useful info for you. I just know that it was alot more money and we found it cheaper just to pay out of pocket for the couple of extra things we wanted to do.
The plan always sounds attractive to me until I get to the price! There is not way that my family would get our money's worth out of it...especially for only a four day trip. You' dreally have to use the ammenities which would take away from park time. We think for us, it would be cheaper to pay out of pocket for the things we would use and not feel so pressured to get our money worth out of the plan...it sure does sound good though!:mickey:
1) Premium and Platinum do not pay-off.
2) But, they can be convenient.
3) For both, you have to eat A LOT !
NOTE; To make Platinum worth it, you have to avoid going to the parks. The non-park activities are needed to make it cost-justifiable.
We have used the premium plan the last four times we have visited. But as others have mentioned, you have to use some of the activities to make it worth it. My wife lives for the fine dining, and we gain a few pounds every time we go. I, in turn, LOVE the fishing excursions and would have spent $800 on just those on our last trip, but since they are included, no charge. I go from 7-9 every day and am back to the room by 9:20 and off to breakfast after a quick shower. We have used the jet skis and the para-sailing and the tours are also included.
However, you have two little ones, who I am sure you are not going to let sit in the room with a stranger, albeit a Disney CM. I don't see you enjoying a lot of the amenities. If, like one of our trips when our kids were old enough to do things on their own, it might be more fun for you. I guess it depends on what you want to do in the World and how much time you will have. A lot of what is available to you, may not allow the children to participate.
We will probably always go with the premium plan. But we have done the parks enough that it gets a little boring waiting in lines to do the same thing over every year. The other opportunities for fun make the trip more enjoyable to us. We go four or five days in stead of a week to make up the difference in $$$. After adding up all we did, the fishing, best restaurants, Circe, boating, tours, special seating for fireworks (so you don't have to get a spot two hours in advance), did I mention the best resturants? Well you get the picture. Had we done all that and paid as we went, we would have spent over a $1000 dollars more. Good Luck!
Next visit, Oct 2009. 35th Wedding Anniversary.
We've booked the Platinum plan for our next trip and Magical Journeys are to be commended for trying their best to talk us out of it. Wendy you're the best ! LOL
Yes it is a lot of money and yes there are some things that we end up paying for that we will not use. For us, we usually go to an all inclusive in the islands so we love just paying the bill up front and not worrying about anything on the trip. This is how we justify the platinum plan too.
We have two kids (DS8 and DD2 - both will be a year older by the trip) and the included childcare is GREAT !! Also no worries about meal credits or OOP expenses in most cases. We will use the fireworks cruise, spa treatments and fishing trips too.
The other included feature is the trip planning, I submitted our desired schedule of ADR's, Special dinners, spa, fishing and even special celebrations and the Plantinum plan coordinator for our resorts takes care of all the reservations. Thank you Jeffery ! **I am also a wheelchair user so there are tons of little requests and need to make the trip more pleasant so since we're "high maintenance" we don't mind paying a little more to get things right.
I guess we justify it because we work VERY hard with DW working two jobs and I work FT plus run my own business that requires nationwide travel on my many of my "days off" so we take one big family vacation a year and we like to be spoiled.
Selfish and wasteful ??? Maybe...but we treasure the limited relaxed family time we have and don't want to nickel and dime it if we don't have to. So its work hard, save..and ENJOY !
Mahalo Plenty !
223 day..12 hours...12 minutes left to go ! :thumbsup:
RandyW