For future reference, you can try mousesavers.com for information on buying tickets at a discount. If you're a AAA member, teacher, govt employee etc there are some options, but generally the discounts are minimal and the plans limited. For instance, I am a teacher but bought through Disney anyway because I couldn't get a 4-day pass through work. There were 3- and 5-day passes but I didn't want either of those. Pre-buying through Disney (purchase in advance) is about the same price or even less than most of the "cheaper" offers by the time you figure in shipping charges. You can also buy nicely discounted tickets through Costco sometimes, but they have restrictions that I don't like. A package plan (Disney resort hotel & tickets) through AAA gives you a Fastpass advantage that you can't get any other way, even through Disney itself. I don't exactly remember how it works--it's something like you can get more FPs in a given time. Usually you can only get one in a given time period.

If I had my way, I would stay onsite at Disney because you get extra magic hours which enables disney resort guests to enter early and leave later. We have stayed at pop century resorts before but they are very basic. Cinder block walls and small rooms but excellent pools. But if your budget is thin, do not hesitate to stay in Kissimmee somewhere. It is a close ride to the disney property. And there are many nice hotels. And you don't have to pay to stay for disney restaurants. Disney meal plan would not have been cost effective for us because our 2 kids (6 and 9) are not big eaters at all. And since it was hot NO one wanted to eat much. And food in the parks can be expensive. Stick to the counter service meals if you want to save. We just got back (early June) and it rained for short violent periods 4 of the 7 days we were there as it is getting to be hurricane season. Mid to upper 90s daily and superhumid. We anticipated this and brought our own raincoats. Although the plus is, in the summer, magic kingdom is open later til 11 and we took advantage of doing is at night. We took advantage of the pools during the day. Daytime in the magic kingdom it was just way too crowded to even navigate. We rode more rides from 5pm until 11pm than we would have if we came during the day when the waits are an hour plus. AND you can stay out of the heat. Other parks are different shorter hours though. And if you get your disney tickets through AAA club, we got a special diamond parking pass which enables you to park right up front. A bonus. We drove, we decided airfare was too expensive and we did not want the expense of renting a car. There are disney specific forums on the web that will help you also. Although be forwarned, even if you go basic and budget minded, it can still be expensive as your kids will want to buy everything in those shops there.

Yeah? I hope you don't equate doing consumer price comparisons on the internet with addressing medical and health concerns, that an understanding of which is usually not possible for the general public. And regarding medical stuff, a problem is that most people consistently will misunderstand both the information they find and misunderstand the authority and credibility of the sources they're reading. The danger is the failure to get competent medical care when it's needed. If you have a potential medical issue or problem, see an MD. If you're looking to buy a toaster, do a search. And for those doing price searches, hopefully you can understand the difference between legit sources (like AAA, a good example or TripAdvisor or others) versus the shady types. Many don't.

It took me a while to find this, and I had to do some odd searches to finally find it! Anyway, I did want to respond... IdaClaire - yes, I am somewhat of a compulsive story-teller, and when I was in First Grade, I won first place in the UL story-telling contest. I had to look up David Sedaris, but he does sound inspirational. I've always wanted to write in the style of James Thurber, which I think is somewhat similar. Anyway, I have to thank for this comment because it has gotten me back on the short story collection I was working on. I had started to write my autobiography, not because I think my life is special, but several friends have asked me to do this, including Dolores Deluxe, who is an actress and also an author. I met her in San Francisco in 1974 when I was living in a theatrical commune where she was rehearsing a play that some of my roommates at the time were in. Our commune was in a storefront on Valencia street that had been a dance studio before, and so it had one cavernous room with 8' high mirrors and ballet bars. I recently saw Dolores again at one of her book signings, and then we had lunch near her bungalow in Venice on the beach. I have her autobiography and thought that I should try to write something similar, but that really didn't work for me, but when I read your post, I got the idea that all I need to do is get a collection of short anecdotes - something that would be much easier for me to do. I've decided that they do not need to be sequential, and I can try to make sense or order out of them after I've finished writing them. BTW, when I was at Rice, I took Larry McMurtry's creative writing class and got an A in it. I was told that some of my writings were Kafkaesque, which I did agree with, but those were especially the ones I wrote in high school and college. They tended to be a bit surreal. 3katz4me, you would have to fly your cats to Palm Springs, which is Cathedral City adjacent. I just had my pool resurfaced, and it has new equipment as well, and the heater works well, although I certainly don't need that in the summer. In September the water temperature was 85° without using the heater. I'm going there this week-end to do some more work on the house.