Last Minute Disney World Trip Planning
When heading to Walt Disney World, many of us start planning trips months in advance. In fact, the average Walt Disney World vacationers spend 16 to 19 weeks planning their trips, usually no less than 5 months in advance. We’d hazard a guess that most serious Disney fans plan much further in advance than that.
However, sometimes there are last minute trip opportunities, which require a different type of planning. Namely, less planning. If taking a last minute trip, you can’t fixate on the optimal time to take your trip, don’t have six months to make ADRs, you don’t have weeks to iterate on your daily schedule and touring plans, and you don’t have the time to deliberate on pricing and to wait for a deal to emerge.
This might be especially true in 2019 with the first phase of Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge opening in August, followed by Rise of the Resistance at a later date. You might not want to start planning a trip until the second ride is open, or until you have an idea of what crowds will be like. In which case, you could potentially be planning a November trip in early September…
When it comes to last-minute Walt Disney World planning, you just have to pounce on what you can like a Homicidal Psycho Jungle Cat, and trust your instincts to make snap decisions when planning. Of course, there’s another resource you can use beyond your instincts: this blog post. Here, we’ll cover how you can take advantage of little to no planning to have a great trip. As you might find, sometimes less planning can be a bit liberating…
Let’s cover what you’ll have to get in order, what you can expect, and how you can make the most of a last minute trip.
Accommodations
This is where all of our last minute trip planning starts. Usually, it starts here because we found a great deal on accommodations (or airfare) for a certain date range and decide to book a last minute trip.
Other times, we start by looking at accommodations simply to see whether a potential trip will even be possible. Since all of our last minute trips are occasioned by desire rather than business, airfare and hotel prices are threshold inquiries for us. If we don’t like the airfare and hotel prices, we simply don’t take the trip.
Business travelers and others don’t have that luxury. Fortunately, Disney has a huge inventory of hotel rooms, many of which are often unfilled, so chances are there will at least be something available. That’s the good news. The other good news is that there are usually hotel discounts available for Disney-owned hotels.
The bad news is that every single hotel discount is for a range of dates and has a “book by” date attached to those dates. For example, if you were to plan a last minute trip on September 13 for a trip spanning September 28-30, there’s a good chance that the ‘book by’ date on your travel dates for a discount would’ve already passed.
Unfortunately, Expedia and Priceline usually can’t help you out. As we discuss in our Tips to Use Priceline Express Deals for Walt Disney World Hotels, this is an incredible way to score last-minute blind deals. If there’s no availability there for official or Disney Springs area resorts, you can always try the “normal” sides of Priceline and Expedia, too.
We prefer staying on property, so whenever we’ve been planning a last minute trip when no discounts were available, we simply stopped planning the trip. Of course, this won’t be an option for many of you. As much as we like staying on property, we have yet to find a single hotel that is “worth” Disney rack rate.
We have yet to find a single one that is worth 10% off rack rate. Determination of value here will vary from person to person, but if you are traveling at a time when no discounts are offered on Disney hotels, we strongly suggest that you look beyond Disney hotels.
By way of another example, if I search today for a hotel stay this weekend, not only would I be paying rack rate for whichever hotel I were to book, but no value resorts are even showing as available.
Even assuming I could book a value resort, I’d be looking at paying over $150 per night! This is during the cheapest season of the year. Can you imagine paying over $200 for a room in a value resort during the Christmas season?!
Airfare
Airfare fluctuates based upon market conditions. Since a seat on a flight is a perishable commodity, sometimes last minute airfare will be cheaper than airfare booked months in advance. However, this is not normally the case. Airlines are pretty good at anticipating demand, and price fares and schedule routes accordingly.
To avoid getting scorched on last minute airfare price, we recommend checking out ITA Software, which searches every airline (except Southwest) based on parameters you input. If the prices you get at first aren’t appealing, consider expanding your search to include Sanford Airport (instead of just MCO) or other airports near you besides your “home” airport. If ITA has too many options or is confusing, use Expedia’s airfare search engine for a more user-friendly search of the airlines.
If prices are still too insane, consider driving if that’s feasible.
Ground Transportation
If you’re going to be renting a car, the same services that work for booking a hotel at the last minute work for rental cars. There are also corporate codes for booking rental cars and discounts through Costco available. We don’t rent a car at Disney and most other places we go have good public transportation, so it’s rare for us to rent a car.
Our anecdotal experience has found the best last minute prices via Hotwire.com (look at their special value rates, listed first) and Costco, but your mileage may vary. If rental car prices are too expensive, just rely on Disney transportation. It can be a bit inefficient, but there are plenty of ways to get the most out of Disney transportation.
If you aren’t renting a car and are instead hoping to use Disney’s Magical Express for an on-site stay, don’t fret about those luggage tags. Call Disney’s Magical Express directly at 866-599-0951 and ask for them to be sent to you once you book your hotel. If you give Disney’s Magical Express about a week’s notice, chances are you can get your luggage tags.
We’ve had them send the tags to us via Express Mail (at no charge) in only a couple days. I wouldn’t recommend trusting them to find your bags without tags, but that’s an option, too, if you give them your baggage claim tickets. If you don’t have checked bags, there’s even less cause for concern.
You can simply walk up to the counter, have them look up your reservation, and have them print off Disney’s Magical Express passes for you. We’ve done this on numerous occasions for last minute trips, and it has never been an issue. Actually, it has proven faster than calling!
Dining
Dining is where Disney planners typically lose their cool when it comes to planning last minute trips. Many of you are probably used to making Advance Dining Reservations (ADRs) months in advance, and you’ve come to expect there to be no ADR availability a week before your trip.
Luckily, the days when many restaurants filled up months in advance is over. Options like Be Our Guest Restaurant still fill up far in advance, but even if you plan your ADRs a week in advance, most of the time you will have plenty of options. The notable exception to this is during the fall “Free Dining” promo period. Before impulsively booking a last minute “Free Dining” promotion, you definitely should check ADR availability.
As we discuss in our “Case for Sleeping on Advance Dining Reservations at Walt Disney World” post, last minute ADRs are usually no problem. In fact, when attempting to make ADRs for dinner tomorrow, I have over 60 options, which is pretty normal.
This includes some of our favorite restaurants inside and outside the parks: Tiffins, Skipper Canteen, Yachtsman Steakhouse, Jiko, and Hollywood Brown Derby all have availability! Only 12 restaurants don’t have availability, and while there are some good options on there (like California Grill and ‘Ohana) there’s nothing that doesn’t have a suitable “next best” alternative.
That is, unless you have kids who absolutely “must” eat in Cinderella Castle or with a favorite character. If that’s a deal-breaker, I can safely say you won’t be able to travel to Walt Disney World at the last minute as long as your kids are young. Everyone else should just be able to go with the flow, and pick another similar restaurant if their favorite is booked.
If ADRs are difficult to come by during your travel window, there are a few other options. You call the restaurant the day of or walk-up to the podium. This strategy is really underrated, we think. We have had a lot of success with this strategy even when there isn’t any availability online.
We’re a party of 2, so we’re more likely to have success with this than a party of 12, but it’s worth a shot for anyone to try if in a pinch. Last year, we even scored a same-day ADR for Be Our Guest Restaurant thanks to a cancellation, so it’s always worth checking. The worst they can say is “no.”
You can also eat at restaurants that don’t accept reservations: counter service restaurants! Counter service dining at Walt Disney World isn’t all burgers and hot dogs, and if you choose some of the more interesting restaurants and dishes, counter service dining can be a really fun experience, and significantly cheaper than table service dining. There’s also one table service restaurant, Beaches & Cream, that doesn’t accept ADRs.
A final option is to eat at restaurants in the out-of-the-way Disney hotels (like Old Key West, Saratoga Springs, or Animal Kingdom Lodge), Swan & Dolphin, Disney Springs, or even off-property. There are plenty of table service restaurants in the Orlando area and I highly doubt there’s any night of the year when all of them are completely booked.
Basically, doing a last minute trip from the perspective of dining just requires altering your expectations. There’s a good chance you won’t get into all of your favorite options, but there likely will be great alternatives. Give those a try instead!
Tickets
Walt Disney World has a ton of ticket options, and there are a variety of ways to save money on last minute tickets. What’s the right course of action for you really depends upon how long you’re visiting, whether you want to park hop, etc.
Simply knowing about the different options so you don’t purchase unnecessary add-ons and buying from the discount sellers with the best price on particular tickets can save you a lot of money, and significantly cut down on the cost of your park tickets. It’s pretty easy to do, especially since many guests (especially those families with small children) don’t truly need Park Hopper or other add-ons.
In our Tips for Saving Money on Walt Disney World Tickets post, we discuss which add-ons you should and should not get, how many days you might want tickets, and also compare prices (nothing beats that 7-day ticket, though).
Daily Itinerary
Some people chart out their entire Walt Disney World trips, spending months preparing the perfect spreadsheet to maximize their fun. Some people enjoy that, and there’s nothing wrong with having fun planning.
However, most last minute trips don’t allow this level of granular spread-sheet work. You can still have a strong 1-day itinerary for whichever park you’re visiting and do some advance planning, it’s just difficult to do high amounts of advance planning. Serious last minute advance planning will likely lead to stress.
I know it’s easier said than done, but our recommendation for daily itineraries for last minute trips is to simply “wing it.” Check out a crowd calendar if you want and make your ADRs based upon that, but otherwise, just go with the flow. Obviously, this isn’t for everyone, and some people hate the inefficiency it entails.
If you’re one of those people, you might want to give serious thought to whether a last minute trip is even “worth it” for you. If trying to get things squared away at the last minute and going to Walt Disney World without much of a plan is going to cause you anxiety, why even bother? Last minute traveling isn’t for everyone, and there’s nothing wrong with that.
We have found that this type of traveling is for us, and the level of planning we now do before trips (even those we do schedule a reasonable amount of time in advance) is next to none. We usually figure out where we’ll end our day based upon park closing time, as we always end our day at the park open latest.
Then, we book an ADR for a restaurant in that park or in a hotel near that park. Everything else is done on a whim. We aren’t overly concerned with the number of attractions we do in a given day, so we generally don’t worry about crowd levels in the parks.
We arrive early and use FastPass+ to avoid crowds, and those two things are usually sufficient for us to accomplish what we want. If there’s something that has a long line and no FastPass+ are available for it, we just skip it. Obviously, this strategy is not for everyone. We would have thought it unfathomable only a few years ago, but as we now visit Walt Disney World more often, the desire to “see it all” in a single trip has dissipated.
Beyond that, there’s not really much you need to know when planning a last minute trip. Last minute trips can be a lot of fun, and even if you typically start planning trips 18 months in advance, you can have a great time on a trip planned 18 days in advance (or less)! It’s all about your expectations and your willingness to go with the flow. Disney trips don’t require months of advance planning, and most last minute planning is actually pretty similar to early planning!
Planning a Walt Disney World trip? Learn about hotels on our Walt Disney World Hotels Reviews page. For where to eat, read our Walt Disney World Restaurant Reviews. To save money on tickets or determine which type to buy, read our Tips for Saving Money on Walt Disney World Tickets post. Our What to Pack for Disney Trips post takes a unique look at clever items to take. For what to do and when to do it, our Walt Disney World Ride Guides will help. For comprehensive advice, the best place to start is our Walt Disney World Trip Planning Guide for everything you need to know!
Your Thoughts
Do you agree or disagree with our advice for planning a last minute trip to Walt Disney World? Any hacks you use to save money on trips with little planning or advance notice? Any other recommendations? Any questions? Hearing your feedback about your experiences is both interesting to us and helpful to other readers, so please share your thoughts or questions below in the comments!
I’m in the midst of planning a last minute trip for the second week in February. I’m really overwhelmed with all of the resort options. I’d love to be on the monorail line with our 4 year old but the buses on our last trip weren’t too bad. Is it worth the splurge? Any other resorts you’d consider hidden gems?
This page has calmed me significantly.
Thanks
I signed up for airfarewatchdog in Spring of 2014 at your recommendation. Thanks to your tips and $44 airfare (on Southwest, so free luggage), we just returned from our first last-minute Disney vacation. It was great and I just wanted to say thanks! We wouldn’t have ever found that fare or taken a trip with less than a month planning if I didn’t read your blog.
Thank you so much for reporting back. Makes my day to read this type of comment! 🙂
Does Disney world allow pets inside?
In the parks? Not unless they serve a medical purpose. There is a kennel at Walt Disney World, though.
We have the advantage of being really last minute. Fortunately if we’re willing to face a 6 hour round trip drive, we don’t need a room. A couple of Saturdays ago, at 5pm we found ourselves headed to WDW. We got there at 8ish had dinner, did our favorite rides including Peter Pan, had dinner, saw the parade and fireworks and even ran into a friend. It was wonderful!
90% of my trips are “last minute”, sometimes set up only a week in advance. Since I am usually going “solo” that let’s me cut to the chase. Discount from my preferred airline and AP room discount were simultaneous so I can’t pass that up. I’ll be there in twelve days and grazing food from the Outdoor Kitchens returning to Flower and Garden Fest. I no longer make an ADR when traveling solo. Walking up to the podium scores my table service whims 99% of the time. Thanks for the great blog…will help me plan first trip to Disneyland Paris.
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I’ve been sitting here waiting on the snow and ice. I’m seriously thinking about hopping in the car and driving to Disney to get out of this yucky weather! My annual passes expired in November and we’re not renewing until May. I don’t know if it makes since to go. Plus, we may have school on Thursday (don’t’ know yet). Decisions, decisions…
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My boyfriend and I will be taking a trip there on saturday we decided this last week since my sister,her husband and kids are going and they’ve been planning for a year.So we said why not. Luckily my boyfriend works for the airlines so we have the luxury to jump on a plane and go. We were able to book last minute reservations at pop century thru travelocity for surprisingly cheap! Tickets for Disney however of course were still pricey since we’re only going 2 days park hopper and we got ticket to mickeys very merry xmas. We decided to do the unspeakable and cheat on mickey and heading to universal for 2 other days since tickets were incredibly cheaper.So we’re just now hoping the “winging it” plan works. Thanks for all the advice! I love your blog.
YUP! Totally underrated is the walk-up to the podium strategy… We as a party of 5 got to do same night dinner at Cinderella’s castle as a walk up when we were out there. What an amazing surprise that was, it’s always worth asking in person, you never know!
I fly free so I never plan months in advance, usually 2 weeks or so (sometimes days before). Even if the “book by” dates for AP rates on WDW resorts don’t show up on the website, you can still call the passholder line & get some great AP discounts, sometimes the full 30-35%. Didn’t work last week so I stayed at Swan on their AP discount for $214/night (plus $17 resort fee). I prefer not to stay at Swan & Dolphin but it’s the best non-Disney option for the price. My last fall back is the Hilton (or others) on Hotel Plaza Boulevard. Can be had really cheap but location is not best for me as I prefer Boardwalk Resort area. I fear that Fastpass + is gonna be a killer for me because of my last minute way of traveling to WDW.
I leave in 4 days, I do not have park tickets. Where do u recommend I get them? We are staying at wdw resort.
Thanks for your help.
Every site I’ve seen talks about buying discounted tickets from Undercovertourist . . . but if I’m going for 4 days . . . it seems Disney has the best deal . . . Am I wrong?
My husband and I are planning to take our teenage daughter to Disney for her Spring Break in two weeks. What days between 3/31 and 4/10 are best to visit Magic Kingdom, Epcot and Animal Kingdom? Her main goal is to visit every Disney princess. Thanks!!!
I am in love with your blog! I love all things Disney and you give a great insight into the many different areas of disney – brilliant! I worked in the Paris resort, if you check out my blog http://lifeunderthepinkblanket.blogspot.co.uk/, you’ll find out all about it! I hope it interests you! N x
Tom, I have an inquiry that is only somewhat related to this posting and is probably more relevant to an older posting of yours on WDW Discounts.
While I know you and Sarah are DVC members I also realize that you seem to take more trips to WDW than you likely have points to cover. Have you guys ever looked into renting DVC Points from a dealer? If so have you found that one service is better than the others?
I ask because I’ve been reading up on this recently and it seems like a great way to upgrade to a better room for substantially less than booking through Disney.
I would take so many short last minute trips- but two things hold me back: cost of an annual pass, and the impossibility of leaving the state without giving my church lots of advance notice (being a pastor is wonderful, but it means you have obligations 6 or 7 days a week for most of the year).
I will say what I love about this blog is you and Sarah are the same age as my wife and I and I think in somewhat of a similar economic bracket (although affording a full frame DSLR is not in the cards for me any time soon).
By the way- does needing a pet sitter hold you guys back? What does Yossarian do without you?
As far as work goes, my schedule is only dictated by court dates, mediation, and depositions, none of which are all that common. Most of what I do is brief/memorandum writing, and as long as I get those done one way or the other, it doesn’t matter *when* I’m at the office.
As for our pets, Sarah’s mom lives about 20 minutes away from us, and they stay with her when we travel.
Can’t beat having family around to pet sit. I’m sure spending time at Disney is very therapeutic after writing all that legalese!
First off, I love your blog!! Great info! I am actually planning a long weekend for April, with a longer trip planned for October! We will stay at Boardwalk in October, because we love the access to the World Showcase and MGM. For April, I have booked the Dolphin. We stayed there last August, on a last minute Anniversary trip, and were pleasantly surprised. Same great access, nice room, great amenities, and you can take Disney transportation everywhere, and all for a great price!!
We have been intending to stay at the Swan or Dolphin for the last two years, but it just has never worked out. We still really want to, though. Hopefully this is the year!!!
Almost all of our trips are last minute trips! I’ve had good luck getting same-day reservations. Last Friday, I made a reservation for BoG when I was on the bus to MK! 🙂
I’m very impressed on the Be Our Guest reservation. I was under the impression that it was booking months in advance. Good to know that we won’t have to wait until 2015 to finally eat dinner there! 🙂
I just got back last Friday from a 5 day trip that was planned only 2 weeks before. My brother had a time share at Marriott villas right outside Disney world. So free accommodation. Flight where great southwest. This was a solo trip first one every! Had a blast did not so hopper just bought 4 day pass at AAA and went with dining where ever I felt. It was slow time so I even went right on dumbo and magic carpet ride. Did single riders on test track, rock and roll coaster and my Everest. It by far was one I best experiences. If you know Disney like I do it was no problem. Did some pin trading and just soaking atmosphere. No stress!!
The great thing about last minute trips where one aspect of the trip is free (like the accommodations) is that it’s no big deal if you pay a bit more for airfare, as you’re still saving money. At least, that’s how we look at it! Glad to hear that you had a good time!