Need suggestions for traveling with larger party

[UPbeekeeper]

I'm a seasoned WDW visitor, but my trips have always been just me, my husband, and our children. I'm looking into a future trip with my now adult children, which will include myself, husband, 2 adult children and their significant others (6 adults total). I'll be looking at all options, including 3 separate rooms at same resort, villas, renting DVC points, & offsite vacation homes.

If we choose to get 3 room packages, do we have to do them separately, or can I book (and handle) as just one party with 3 rooms in my name? I know we can link together in My Disney Experience, but when it comes to Dining Plan & Memory maker, I'm a little confused.

Also looking for any and all suggestions for traveling with larger adult parties...what worked for you and what was something you'd do differently?

 

[Worldlover71]

An offsite home will almost definitely be less expensive than three rooms or a villa so it depends on whether or not you want to be on-site. As far as suggestions go, I would say not to expect to spend every minute together. With three couples, everyone will need some time apart. This is true of any group really.

 

[Rob562]

To get things to operate properly in MDE, each reservation will have to be in the name of the people staying in it, though if you're booking online you should be able to still make the deposit payment yourself by checking a box that says "someone else is staying in this room" (or something like that, it's been a while since I've booked myself)

Getting set up in MDE, I'd suggest that at a minimum each family unit should designate a "leader" who creates a MDE account and adds each of their family members under their account as a "managed by them" profile. Each leader will then have to link to the other leaders as friends and *then* friend-request each of the sub-profiles under each leader. This will ensure maximum flexibility for different groupings to break off and do their own thing.

While I haven't booked a trip with this many people, I might be next year (with possibly even more than 6 people) so I've started doing my own calculations on lodging. Since my trip will be all couples, I approached it as a "cost per bedroom" basis, whether it was individual rooms at a Value or Moderate (including a conservative discount since there'd likely be *something* available), or renting DVC points for larger villas.

Pop Century was the cheapest, obviously. But before you get to the price of a Garden View room at Riverside was standard Studios at OKW, Boardwalk, Saratoga and AKL. What surprised me was that a 3-bedroom OKW was only about $50 more "per bedroom" than a 2-bedroom, and only about $400 per bedroom (for a 7-night stay) more than the room at Riverside. (If we end up with three couples, I think we're going to try for an OKW 3-bedroom)

-Rob

 

[Megbutnotmegan]

I frequently plan big group vacations for my family (12 people- 3 generations) We’ve stayed in a variety of configurations and honestly all have had their benefits. Off site is of course cheapest but we are bubble people so we prefer on property. We’ve done a 2 bedroom at OKW which was very nice but we didn’t love the transportation. We did the treehouse villas which were incredible but the transportation was even worse. We love Pop and have done separate rooms for each family there and had a great time. We also enjoyed the suites at AoA. My parents just bought DVC at the poly so we can book 3 studios but we’ve not tried that out yet.

When I book, I pick one family member to be the lead guest for each room. My parents often pay for all rooms but the rooms are still in the individual names of who stays there. I usually book all the fast passes and whole group dining we plan to do and then everyone goes into MDE and tweaks my plan to fit their family (except a few things we set as definite do togethers).

Have fun planning! Big group family trips are a lot of work but so much fun

 

[DisAl]

I always contact WDW directly and make reservations for all the rooms with my credit card paying. If you do it over the phone they can reserve all the rooms for you, but you still have to give them another name as "responsible" for each room.
While I understand them needing to know who is supposed to be in a room I consider it a HUGE flaw in their reservation system that I cannot have ALL the rooms listed in my name (since I am paying) and just give them the list of who is in each room.
If all the meals on the dining plan for all the rooms I reserved were pooled it would make it MUCH easier to manage the dining plan. As it is now I can't take the grandkids to a quick serve restaurant on my own because their meals are connected to the room with their parents, not my room. Even when dining together we have to have the server run two tickets and maker sure the kids meals get put on the right ticket. Being able to have ONE reservation and ONE meal plan for the whole family would surely make it easier.

 

[Megbutnotmegan]

I always contact WDW directly and make reservations for all the rooms with my credit card paying. If you do it over the phone they can reserve all the rooms for you, but you still have to give them another name as "responsible" for each room.
While I understand them needing to know who is supposed to be in a room I consider it a HUGE flaw in their reservation system that I cannot have ALL the rooms listed in my name (since I am paying) and just give them the list of who is in each room.
If all the meals on the dining plan for all the rooms I reserved were pooled it would make it MUCH easier to manage the dining plan. As it is now I can't take the grandkids to a quick serve restaurant on my own because their meals are connected to the room with their parents, not my room. Even when dining together we have to have the server run two tickets and maker sure the kids meals get put on the right ticket. Being able to have ONE reservation and ONE meal plan for the whole family would surely make it easier.

On our last big group trip we had a strange situation and ended up having my band connected to my parents room and my dad’s band connected to my room. This meant that he and my mom could purchase food for my kids with our meal plan when we went out for a date night. It also gave us the ability to access each other’s room when needed. So a little weird that I couldn’t open my own room but I always had my husband or a kid with me so it worked pretty well.