I guess that works if you plan on spending only part of the day at the parks, right? What time do you usually head back to your offsite place? Do you go grocery shopping at some point, etc? How much time do you spend in the room?
For us, that would be a total waste of time - we are park open, break in the room during the heat, back to the parks 'til late at night people. I'm on vacation and don't want to be anywhere near a kitchen or dirty dishes, LOL! I'm also not impressed with the area near WDW in Orlando. We've tried to extend that bubble, but only Universal has anything close to WDW for quality entertainment. Are there any restaurants out there that you would suggest that are not chain restaurants? We'd love a non-chain one to try, as we are usually on the road to/from our vacation at dinner time. But we haven't found anything worth exiting off 4 so far.
OP, I think it really depends on how you want to do your trip - long day at the parks, late nights - I'd do onsite. Staying together as a group the entire time, shorter days in the park, lots of downtime planned? Stay offsite to get the extra room for the same money, but I'd definitely get a rental car. How else are you going to get around to do other stuff, get food, etc? Uber everywhere?
Good questions. We have the fortune of being park veterans. We're also fortunate to do long trips, our summer trips have been 2.5 weeks (though those are now likely a thing of the past). Therefore, we don't spend the entire day and night in the parks. Even when we were park newbies, we never did open to close. I mentioned this in a recent thread, so sorry if I'm repeating myself for anyone who read it, but our days are either "AM parks/PM freestyle" or "AM freestyle/PM parks". The "parks" part is obvious. AM parks is roughly 10am-4pm in the parks. PM parks is roughly 4pm to 10pm. On that note, we never rope drop either. We get up at 4am on weekdays at home, we have zero desire to set an alarm clock on vacation. Besides, FP+ and refresh has rendered rope drop useless (from a getting on rides perspective), IMO. The "freestyle" part is exactly that...we do whatever we feel like at that moment. It could be going to DS, hanging at the pool, going for dessert, going to a gift shop, or hanging out at the house and relaxing.
Along those lines, we never plan mid-day breaks. The commute time savings of onsite vs off is largely myth IMO (there are exceptions of course, such as getting from MK to a monorail resort). From what I've read it takes 30-60 minutes to get from a park to an onsite resort. It takes us exactly the same amount of time. We timed getting to MK once, since it's the "hardest" to get into. From our front door to stepping onto Main St. in MK took 53 minutes. The other parks take less. So with that said, we just think mid-day breaks....offsite or on...are a waste of time. Why spend 1 to 2 hours round trip commuting? We'd rather stay in the parks until we're done and then call it a day. Having a full size house offsite makes it quite easy to comfortably relax there from 4pm until bedtime if we wish. Sometimes we do go back to the parks, but it's a spur of the moment decision, never pre-planned.
We love the offsite area around WDW. As I said, the gift shops, places to get dessert, we went to see Gaylord Palms at Christmas, etc... We don't eat out a lot, but when we do we're typically happy with chain stuff....we have very basic tastes. One non-chain place I can recommend if you like comfort food is "33 and Melt". It's grilled cheese based sandwiches and is fabulous!! Yes, we grocery shop. Since our summer trips are so long, we usually make two big trips. One when we first get there, and the second about halfway through. Beyond that, we'll stop on in to pick up little things if we need. We don't slave over a stove, I assure you. We make simple things that take little effort. Washing dishes? Nope, that's what a dishwasher is for. But that's just our style, I can understand why someone wouldn't want anything to. For us, the little time we spend per day is worth it. On a 2.5 week trip, our entire food bill for a family of 5 is maybe $800-$1000. That includes grocery shopping, buying desserts, going to a few restaurants....everything. From what I understand, people who eat in the parks on a budget still spend $50/person/day. That would be $4250. Most spend more. We literally save thousands of dollars...which allows us to spend so much more time at WDW.
OP, as for where to go offsite, there are endless choices. The "default" answer on these boards is Bonnet Creek or Windsor Hills. We've never stayed at either, but looked at them hard based on all the talk. They look very nice. To us, Bonnet Creek location is a deal breaker. The fact that it is on WDW property makes it harder to get to the local grocery store, gift shop or place to get dessert. And we just never picked Windsor Hills. The best advice I can give is to look on VRBO. Rt. 192 runs east/west along the south side of WDW. There are literally dozens, if not hundreds, if rental condo/townhouse communities within a mile or two of Rt. 192. Filter your search by price and you'll find so many options for a 3-4 bedroom place for around $100/night or less.
. Basically put in 10 to 12 hour days at the parks and then make sure our kids get to sleep 10 hours at night. At home all kids sleep 10-12 hours at night, so they are very accustomed to getting a good night's rest it would not be pleasant human beings if we shorted them.
