When Should I book?!

I personally always book as soon I know when we are going. I love to make the one payment and then have the convenience of monthly payments spread over a few months. I would say we typically average booking 10 months prior to the trip.

Any deals that come out after you book can usually can added pending availability.

My suggestion would be to book now and make payments. Other than the deposit, there are no set amounts on the payments. You can pay as much or as little as you can. When promotions become available, call and see if you can get it applied. I booked a room today for October of next year.

We usually book about 10 months in advance. As soon as we have our dates we book and make payments. If deals come up and you have booked thru Disney you can always call and see if you can get the deal. We always end up calling to get free dining. Next year we are going in November again so we will probably book by February.

Booking online you only have to pay $200 or $250 ( I am blanking on the amount for sure) as a down payment, and then you make payments up until the 45 day mark when you have to pay in full. Also, if you book a flight online through the Disney site that has to be paid in full immediately.

A package requires a $200 deposit with the balance due at 45 days out. If you are doing a room only reservation the deposit is the price of a one night stay with the balance due at check-in. And ditto the others, I always book as soon as I know I'm going Just under a year is definitely not too early!

Sounds like a great plan!

Based on my info, Feb is when Sept deals start. May is when Dec deals start. Packages start first, then the room only deals roll in. Orbitz is good for room only. I don't normally shop packages, since I live in FL. If you are doing Christmas, I'd do the first or second week in Dec - not Christmas week are you?? Crowd levels are low first part of Dec and everything is all decorated. Make sure to do some resort hopping to see all the resort decorations and ginger bread houses, Beach Club & Boardwalk, and the monorail resorts, Poly, GF, Contemporary. WL and AKL should be around $230 / night (room only) sometimes cheaper. AKL is my favorite over WL but both are good. Riverside is a perfect fallback plan. This year we got a sat night around $170.

A few things to consider for timing purposes:

1. Changing your existing reservation to a special offer can sometimes be difficult. I had to change someone from a room-only reservation to a free dining reservation last spring. I was on hold for more than 12 hours and talked to 4 different cast members before someone finally figured out that the only way to do it was to cancel the existing reservation and create a new reservation. Make sure that you offer canceling and re-booking from scratch as a possibility for changing your reservation if necessary.

2. On a related note, My Disney Experience is finicky. The site already randomly has randomly disappearing information (most of which reappears again). Every time you make a change, you open yourself up to something else on your account going haywire. I've had some really interesting things happen. I've had tickets disappear. I've had DH's annual pass be reassigned to me. I've had resort reservations "unlink" themselves. Every time I've had an issue and called Disney, the "missing" items were still "there", but something happened to the user interface and I couldn't see them.

3. Despite the potential pitfalls of making changes later, I would book at least 181 days out because it gives you access to dining for up to the first 10 days of your trip at day 180 from the FIRST day of your trip. So if you are trying to get a hard-to-get ADR, it can be easier to find it at day 8-10 of your trip than on day 1-7 of your trip.

4. Certainly if not before, you absolutely want to be booked by 61 days out so that you can take advantage of your onsite FP+ booking window.

So true. Great points, Holly.