Planning a Trip to Walt Disney World in 2024? Here’s Our Best Resources!
For many of us, a new year means it’s time to plan a new vacation. If you’ve been considering planning a trip to Walt Disney World, this might be the year to do it. 2024 started on the right foot when multiple new vacation package discounts for Spring and Summer were released within the first few days of the year.
One of those new discounts included the return of “free dining,” a word we haven’t heard in years. Free dining isn’t necessarily the be-all and end-all vacation package. However, many guests like paying the full price for the hotel and having most of their dining included. If we balanced it out line by line, you’d probably do much better with the room-only discount. However, sometimes, the ease of taking care of everything ahead of time is worth not having to pull out your wallet at every meal, gulping as your money evaporates as quickly as the meal you just consumed.
So it’s good to think about these things ahead of time. Selecting your dates, deciding where to stay, and starting the conversation about dining is also essential. Where would you like to eat? Should you do a character meal? How many table service meals are ideal for your party? You’ll want hotel reservations made as soon as possible and a list of dining reservations to secure when your reservation window opens.
Note: We will be out of town for the next week and a half with limited internet access. When we return, we’ll have a fresh look at Disney’s Pop Century as we share the details of our latest stay.
With these thoughts in mind, we’ve put together some of our most important planning resources that have been updated for 2024.
Resort Information
Room-only reservations can be made up to 499 days in advance at Walt Disney World. Many guests like to secure their room type and place a deposit in the early stages of planning before discounts are released. Most travel agents will then apply those discounts to your package.
Our travel partner at Firefly Travels automatically checks for discounts and emails their customers the new total reflecting the savings. Regardless of who you use (or if booking yourself), you will want to secure any special promotions soon after they become available. It’s not uncommon for some of the room offers to be fulfilled entirely within the first 24 hours due to demand.
If you’re only in the beginning stages of research, we have a list of resorts at Walt Disney World. It will help you quickly locate more information on any resort. However, if you’re unsure where to stay, you’ll want to start with one of the following reviews.
For starters, our Disney World Hotel Reviews provide a brief overview of each resort at Disney. This will provide some guidance on where to start when researching hotels.
For those who have an idea of how much money they want to spend, you might start with our reviews based on the resort categories. Those with a tight budget will want to look over our guide to the best value resorts at Disney World. However, if budget isn’t one of your top concerns, you might start with our rankings for the best deluxe resorts at Disney. If you’re in the middle, read our guide to Disney’s moderate resorts.
Anyone needing larger units or more amenities might enjoy our list of Disney World Villas Resorts. These rooms range from deluxe studios to one, two, and three-bedroom grand villas. They are expensive but offer many convenient amenities while remaining on Disney property.
We also recommend checking the resort refurbishment schedule. We keep it updated to reflect what’s happening around the resorts. For example, you might not want to stay at a resort where the pool is closed for refurbishment during your vacation dates. If you plan to spend a few days at the pool, you might also like to review our list of the best pools at Disney World.
What are our favorite resort picks for 2024? For deluxe resorts, we’re going to recommend Disney’s Beach Club. This is our favorite resort, and we find minor faults with it. You can read more details in our review of the Beach Club.
As for moderate resorts, we’re changing things up this year and recommending Disney’s Caribbean Beach. We love this resort’s location, and the tropical grounds are gorgeous. Our recent review of Disney’s Caribbean Beach goes into more detail. For value resorts, I will have to stick with Pop Century again this year. We stayed at the resort about a month ago and felt it was an excellent value for the price point. We’ll have more details when we return.
Lastly, regarding resorts, this might be the year when you want to splurge on a club-level stay. It’s no secret that we enjoy the club level immensely. However, it is expensive and kind of like the dining plan–it’s not necessarily worth it unless you enjoy the convenience.
Last year, we stayed in the Chronos Club at Gran Destino Tower and enjoyed the Polynesian’s Kamehameha Club Level. These reviews include photos of the food and beverage services offered during our stay.
Dining Information
After deciding on a hotel, setting a few guidelines for dining is essential. When we go through the planning stages, we like to know how many times we’ll eat at a table service restaurant, character meals, and quick-service locations during our trip.
Years ago, we had a trip with sit-down meals almost every evening, which was too much. Now, we try to spread things out and think about our days realistically. It’s also important to allow plenty of time to see the major forms of entertainment in the parks at least once. You wouldn’t want to miss Happily Ever After at Magic Kingdom, Luminous at Epcot, or Fantasmic! at Hollywood Studios because of poor timing with a dining reservation.
We have a few guides to help you select restaurants.
- The Best Restaurants Disney Springs Ranked
- The Ultimate Guide to the Best Character Dining at Disney World
- Our List of the Best Breakfasts at Disney Resorts
- The Best Quick Service Restaurants at Disney’s Resorts
- The Disney World Signature Dining Guide
- The Complete List of Hotel Restaurants at Disney
What are our favorite restaurant picks for planning a Disney World vacation? That’s tough. This year, we’ll go with the Hollywood Brown Derby at Hollywood Studios for fine dining. It’s so good. Then, we’ll stick with Ale and Compass at the Yacht Club for our favorite table service. It’s hard to go wrong here, and we especially enjoy it for breakfast. Primo Piatto at Disney’s Riviera is hands down the best quick service at Walt Disney World.
Character Information
If you or someone in your group is interested in meeting characters, you’ll want to have an idea of who meets in each park, along with where and when. We update our character guides often and expect several changes in the first few months of the year. So there will likely be changes between now and your trip.
You might like to review our entire list of Disney World Characters. Or you can preview the entire guides for each park:
- Magic Kingdom Character Meet-and-Greets
- The List of Characters at Epcot
- Characters at Disney’s Hollywood Studios
- Characters at Disney’s Animal Kingdom
We love to meet characters in the park. But if you aren’t familiar, many of the characters have extended waits and only meet in limited windows of time. So it’s a good idea to pick a few meet-and-greets and schedule them into your day accordingly.
You do not want to promise a child that you’ll meet Moana before the day ends, only to find out her meet-and-greet ended at 4:00 p.m. Even worse, if that’s your only day in that park, you might not have another chance to meet her!
Final Thoughts
We hope this guide provided insight into planning your next Walt Disney World vacation. After securing the rooms and dining reservations, you can shift your focus to the parks and touring.
If you’re already at that stage, you might like to check out our Magic Kingdom Ride List. It covers the details for each ride at Magic Kingdom Park.
As noted above, we’ll be back soon with more resort coverage for 2024! If you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave them below!