Twenty years ago our first trip to Disney World with the kids was through a travel agency all-inclusive package that was far more expensive than if we'd pieced together the components to try to save money at every turn. We stayed in a bunkbed room at Wilderness Lodge with a view of the lake and the Electric Water Pageant every night, and ate every meal out: Narcoosee's at the Grand Floridian, whatever the Mickey gang character dinner was at the Contemporary, the Italian character dinner in the restaurant on Main Street in the Magic Kingdom, a couple nights at Trails End in Fort Wilderness because we ate there the first night and the kids LOVED it, the Hoop-de-Doo Revue, and I think I remember some kind of luau-type thing near or in the Polynesian hotel and a steak place in Epcot? Plus we had counter-service meals and snacks in every park. The meals were mostly good, Narcoosee's was EXCELLENT, and the shows were exactly as much fun as advertised. ALL OF IT was included in the package, as was entry to all the parks, Discovery Island and River Country. We used Disney transportation from the minute we landed at the airport throughout that entire stay, and we park-hopped and ate all over Disney World that week never paying a dime more than the package price.
Our next trip a few years later was pretty much the same except we stayed in a cabin in Fort Wilderness and rented a golf cart to get around, after which we never went back to a DW hotel room again. That was the trip where we learned that a full kitchen made a huge difference in breaking up the day with a lunch break followed by an hour or so of swimming.
I'd love to do every trip to Disney World as a package deal, even adding Brian's VIP tour on top, but we wouldn't have been able to afford to do that even going every few years. So then I found the disboards, first learning about the Disney VISA discounts on cash stays/park tickets and later learning about renting DVC points from owners. For a while we took advantage of specials at the local mall's Disney Store to buy park tickets and Disney Dollars, to take the sting out of paying full-price at the gate.
Everybody loves to save a few dollars when possible but there are things at DW that we won't give up - like accommodations with separate bedrooms and full kitchens, park-hopping every day so we can go where we want when the mood hits, and a little peace and quiet to decompress. My favorite lodging is still a Fort Wilderness cabin but the Old Key West and Beach Club timeshares run a close second. I've said before on this forum - if Don were as much a Disney World freak as me, we'd have bought DVC and not Marriott timeshares.
But it's been a while since we've been, a couple years before COVID, and I'm still not in any hurry to go back. Honestly, the amount of scheduling that has to be done in advance is a total turn-off, and the theme park admission prices are completely ridiculous. I always thought that once I had grandkids I'd be wanting to take them as soon as possible but now I can't imagine even trying until they're closer to 10YO - and that's because the scheduling craziness would probably irritate me much more than them.
<sigh> I really do long for the good old Disney days.