Everything is a trade-off, it seems. If you fly, you have to pay to get from MCO to your hotel, or rent a car $$$. If you drive and stay at a Disney resort, you don't have to pay to park at the theme parks (or you can bus) but you DO have to pay, per night, to park at your resort.
Take a look at the Disney Springs hotels. Doubletree often has good rates (and they are suites). We stayed at the Hilton Disney Springs and could be at Earl of Sandwich within 10 minutes of leaving our hotel room. We found a rate that waived the resort fees (look at online travel agencies like DreamsUnlimited, sign up for Mousesavers, etc, to find deals) and as we took an Uber from the airport, we didn't have to pay for a rental car or pay to park at the hotel. The bus from the hotel ran regularly to the parks, and if we wanted to stay out longer we took the bus to Disney Springs and walked to the hotel from there (last bus to DS runs at 11:30 or something like that). If you book a room with a fridge, stock up on breakfast items and park snacks, which will save you some money and time. Being near Disney Springs is convenient in the evenings, too. They have GREAT restaurants, quick service options, and lounges/bars (a big consideration now that DD is 21+), and we could walk "home" after an evening out.
If you are close enough to WDW to drive, definitely look off-site. We have stayed in beautiful resorts for $100 a night or less. No resort fee, no parking... look at Orbitz, airbnb, etc to see what's out there. Check Marriott and Hilton for deals (AAA member rate, senior rate if you qualify, etc). NOT staying onsite isn't the end of the world.
Park tickets? Consider what you want to do before purchasing. Recently DD and I went to WDW for 5 days and got 3 day park-hoppers. We went to MK, AK, or DS during the day and hopped over to Epcot for dinner (Food&Wine Festival). I would never have bought park hoppers normally, but it was cheaper to get 3 day PHs than a 4 day ticket, and gave us access to F&W for supper several nights (no way to try everything on one trip). We also had a few "down" days which gave us a chance to explore other parts of Disney (rode the Skyliner, rode the monorail, went to resort lounges, etc) and also to have dinner at a couple of new-to-us restaurants (Toppolino, Toledo, Olivia's) that wouldn't have fit in with a park-day schedule. Yes, dinner was expensive, but the
travel agency I used gave us a $100 Disney gift card as a thank you, and I had $200 in Disney VISA rewards to help with the rest of it.
Best "deals" we've found is by juggling credit cards, but you have to be responsible with credit and it can take awhile to build up enough points for freebies, so that's probably not going to help you a whole lot at this point. Also, if you have a Disney Visa card, quite a few of the older resort restaurants will give you a 10% discount if you use the card to pay for your meal (Boma, Olivia's, Ale&Compass, Grand Floridian Cafe come to mind, but there are more... Biergarten too, I think, check the Chase website).
Anyhow.. think about how you will want to visit the parks before you buy your park passes. None of it is cheap anymore, but there are "cheaper" ways to do Disney World.