How Long Should Your Disney World Vacation Be?Operation Pixie Dust

Having decided that you want to take your family to Walt Disney World I know you’ll be keen to get on and book your vacation. But you can’t do that until you know how long you are going to be there for. There are three factors you need to consider when deciding how long your Disney World vacation should be and they are: how many days can you afford to take, how many days do you have available and how many days do you need.

1. How many days can you afford to take?

While it is possible to make a Disney vacation more affordable the fact of the matter is that they don’t come cheap. As well as airfare and hotel costs you also have to factor in park tickets, and dining, and souvenirs. Over a period of days these costs can really start to add up. So the first thing you need to do is work out how many days you can afford to take a Disney World vacation for.

>>Top Tip – you’ll find a budget calculator inside the Booking Basics Members Only Area.

2. How many days do you have available?

As much as we’d all wish to have extended vacations in reality they are just not possible. Once you have figured out how many days your budget will stretch to you then need to think about how many days you can physically spend on vacation. As with any vacation planning you need to think about work schedules and school schedules. How many vacation days do you have? Can you coincide your vacation time with school holidays?

3. How many days do you need?

The final factor to consider is how many days you’ll need to spend at Walt Disney World in order to see and experience everything you want to. You will need to think about:

The weather - If you are travelling between May and September then the conditions will be hot and humid and you will need to take an afternoon break away from the heat. This obviously cuts into the amount of time you can actually spend touring the parks.

On the flip side if you travel during the cooler months they are considered low season and some of the attractions may be closed for refurbishment. Only one of the water parks operates at a time from November through March and it may be too cold for swimming anyway!

>>Top Tip – here’s the information you need on the weather you can expect to experience at Disney World

The time of year - Those hotter summer months are also usually the most crowded, second only to the Christmas holidays period of course. The more crowds there are the longer it will take for you to experience the rides and attractions and therefore you might not be able to see and do everything you want to in a short period of time.

Again the cooler months are low season so the crowds are lighter, but the parks close earlier.

>>Top Tip – here’s the lowdown on the crowd levels and the best time to visit Disney World

The age of your children – If you are travelling with small children they you will need to think about leaving the parks to have a mid-afternoon break and a nap, as well as making time for distractions such as character interactions. A family with children will always tour the parks more slowly than one without and you need to take this into consideration.

The minimum number of days

Taking all of these things into account I believe that the minimum number of vacation days for a Disney World vacation is five. And that’s five full days excluding travel days. This will allow you to spend one full day at each of the four themeparks with a day over to visit the water parks or to spend another day at your favourite park.

Don’t worry if you can’t take five days vacation, you can enjoy a shorter Disney World break, you just need to accept that you won’t be able to spend time at all of the themeparks. I’m pretty sure Disney won’t be closing the doors any time soon so you have plenty of time for a return visit!

If you have longer than five days available then that’s brilliant. The longer you have to spend the more you will see and the more relaxing vacation you will have. My husband and I have taken a 21 day trip and enjoyed every minute of it.