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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I don't completely agree with these articles. No doubt Disney has far outpaced inflation, and the quality inside the parks has gone down. Anyone who spent time in Disney World in the 1980s and 1990s knows the place isn't nearly as special as it once was. They're dirtier and the maintenance is just a joke in comparison.

That all said, you can make Disney World relatively affordable. The only "unaffordable" part of WDW is the tickets. Nobody has to stay on property. And the flights to Orlando couldn't be cheaper. I have an annual pass this year, and I'll probably end up making five trips. I stay off property most of the time and have no problem getting hotels for under $100 a night in places like the Marriott Village.

For the snobs, I do a couple international trips a year, and several ski jaunts. But WDW is easy and always fun, so it balances out my travel very well. And with passes, the incremental cost is quite low.[/quote]

You should start a thread about Disney World on a budget. We are a family of three and want to do a one or two day Disney World visit before our kid gets too old to enjoy it, and what you are suggesting here sounds good to me. I have just started looking at Disney travel advice online and a lot of it seems geared at a different kind of family having a different kind of experience. I just want to go for one or two days and get the most out of it (ride the best rides while minimizing line time, eat reasonably well without taking on a second mortgage). We don't need premiere pass everything and we have the endurance for one long park day (our kid is older and doesn't need to go back to the hotel for a nap or pool time after a few hours).

But much of the Disney advice seems to assume you are going for at least 3-4 days, that you HAVE to stay on property, that you HAVE to do a lot of these extras like the character meet and greets. I don't know that we need to do any of that for our kid to enjoy it? Also I know my DH will be a lot easier to deal with if we can keep it to a day or two.[/quote]
Not PP but...
1) Park hoppers aren't worth it in a case like yours IMO, which drives up ticket costs, and I've always thought they're only offered either for newbies who don't know or pros who really only want to hit 1-2 things and change parks. Every park has more than enough to exhaust a family with young kids. 
2) Lots of nearby hotels are more affordable (and in many cases more luxurious) than the Disney resorts. We recently loved the Hyatt Grand Regency Cypress Resort and its fantastic, massive pools. 
3) The 4 parks are all very different than each other, so I'm not surprised people have told you that you really need 3-4 days. Just doing Magic Kingdom means just doing the most intense/popular/crowded park, but skipping it means skipping the most iconic stuff. And as pointed out on 1), it's really hard to do 2 parks in one day (for one thing they're mostly far from each other so it's a lot of burned travel time). 
4) Lightning Lanes have to be arranged pretty intensively (immediately buy as soon as you can, start adding to the slate as soon as you use your first one) but make maximizing your time in-park a million times easier. [/quote]

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