Mail and Comments: Large Families and Staying Off-Site

By Dave Shute

Joel recently commented on Large Families at Walt Disney World as follows:

“You don’t need to post this comment, but I’m wondering why you don’t at least mention some off-site alternatives for large families. We have 5 in our family and since we don’t have the budget for a deluxe on Disney we nearly always stay off-site.

We usually are able to find a really nice 3-bedroom (or more) condo with kitchen and living room within a couple of miles of the front gate for under $600/week.

I realize it’s not for everybody, but a lot of large families would probably enjoy the off-site option if guided to something good like a condo or pool house.

Love your site, especially the “pick a week” application. Spot on!”

I actually do have material on staying off site, starting here.

But because there was no link to that material on the large families introductory page, the one Joel commented on, Joel was in fact 99.9% correct.

I’ve fixed that by adding a link on that page to the off-site material.

Thanks to Joel, I also added a link to the off-site material to the Large Families Looking for Value Pricing page in the large families section of this site.

I had some hesitation adding this links—because I have absolutely no doubt that first time visitors should stay at a Disney owned and operated resort, and the more options I put in the more complex this site becomes…and the site is supposed to make things simpler, not more complicated.

That said, larger families looking for lower prices have limited options in the current set of Disney resort offerings—basically, just one of a small number of hard to reserve family suites at All-Star Music.

When many more family suites come on line at Disney’s Art of Animation Resort, things will become much easier for such families.