Flights near Montreal to Florida

Brandilovesdisney

DIS Veteran
Joined
Apr 13, 2010
Hello everyone,
We are a group of 5 (3 adults and 2 kids - 9 and 11) planning to visit Disney World December 16th - 22nd.
I have a few questions I'm hoping someone can help me with.
1. We are looking for cheap flights and I was wondering what US airport you would recommend flying out of near Montreal - would it be Plattsburgh?
We would like to fly into MCO (Orlando) but are also considering other airports if it is cheaper, especially since we may stay off property and rent a car.

2. Right now, the cheapest Disney offer for our group "on property" is Free Dining at the Carribean Resort but we are also considering a townhouse in Windsor Hills and possibly a Disney Springs Hotel (through Mousesavers). For those that have stayed off property, considering how inexpensive and spacious some of the townhouses are, and their close proximity to Disney World, why would someone stay at a Disney Springs hotel/resort?

3. I was also wondering where you would recommend getting tickets for Universal? I'm going to try to get a few with my airmiles but I don't believe I will be able to save for all 5 tickets before December. We are looking for one day hopper passes.

Thanks so much!
Brandi
 
Plattsburgh is the play to fly from. Both Spirit and Allegiant fly direct to Orlando from there. Note that Allegiant flys into Orlando Sanford airport, not Orlando International, so there’s no DME. I’ve purchased flights on Spirit for as low as $79US return so if you’re flexible with your schedule you can get some really good deals.

We’ve stayed at Windsor Hills before and it’s great as long as you have a car. Only a few minutes to the parks and lots of restaurants nearby.
 
For question 1, agree with @ccudmore, Plattsburgh is the way to go.

Question 2, sounds kind of rhetorical. Some people might stay at a DS hotel to be close to the DS action, or because they want to take advantage of the early FP+ booking window, or they want better shuttle service than many other resorts offer. All reasons I can think of. DS does have some some suite hotels as well that are great for families. Mostly comes down to what type of vacation you want.

Question 3, we buy our Disney tickets from Undercover Tourist almost always. For Universal, we often buy direct from Universal as they often have better deals than they offer through outlets, but all things (ie. cost and extra days) being equal I will buy from UT so I can single source all my tickets.
 
Upstate New Yorker here:

If you fly out of Albany, Frontier is new and has offered some pretty low deals direct to Orlando - right now you can get $136 RT for select days. FWIW
 


We flew out of Plattsburgh to FL on Allegiant twice and NEVER again. Both time we had long delays when coming back due to mechanical issues. I'm talking 4-6h waits both times. They also have one of the worst safety reports of the airlines due to their old planes.

I would personally check flights out of Albany, NY, Burlington, VT and even Manchester, NH.
 
We’ve flown from Manchester and Albany on Southwest, as well as from Plattsburgh on Allegiant. We were pleased with all these options. Plattsburgh got more expensive (we used Allegiant in 2008 and 2009) with time and the fact that you need to add fees for seat selection and luggage. Although Manchester and Albany are further away (4 and 3.5 hour drive for us), I absolutely love Southwest because of the prices and the free luggage! We can fly the 6 of us for under 1200$ rt! (U$ of course...) We never paid for Early Bird and were always able to get seats together as long as we checked in at the 24 hour mark.
And we don’t always stay onsite but we absolutely adored the ability to do the resort check-in for our flight when we stayed at ASMU :love:
 
Every time we've planned a Disney trip we've always taken a look at the possible options. But, so far, the price we pay for the convenience of travelling out of YUL direct to MCO, has trumped any savings we may net by travelling out of Plattsburgh. We too have heard some pretty bad tales from friends who tried flying out from there to Florida and back. The way we frame it...we're already spending loads of money to vacation, what's a couple hundred more to get better service, more convenience, less time wasted, etc. Of course, our idea of convenience may not gel with others' but...for the time being we have not seen prices low enough (on a decent air carrier) to take the time and effort to fly out of anywhere but YUL.
 


1. FWIW, we've flown on Allegiant at least twice per year since 2009 (maybe before) and I have to say that I'm perfectly happy with the service. We have had delays (I think the longest was about 4 hours) but how many people have never had a delay flying particularly during the winter ... How often do you hear about passengers stranded at airports because all flights are cancelled because of winter storms. Other than a few delays (I think maybe 4 out of about 40-50 flights), our flights have always taken off / landed within 30 minutes of scheduled time. We've flown Allegiant from Plattsburgh, Ogdensburg, Syracuse, Elmira, Scranton (which they don't appear to fly from anymore).

It's a low cost, no frills airline so if money wasn't an issue, I probably wouldn't fly for them but for us, the savings are worth it. I don't think we've ever paid more than $250US return for a flight to Florida and we go almost every year at XMas time and during Spring break (although we do often pick our days to maximize the savings (e.g. leaving a few days before XMas break starts or just after Xmas). I think the cheapest we've paid was $53/each one-way.

I believe you can also from on JetBlue from Burlington, VT but in my experience, they are quite a bit more expensive than the Allegiant, Spirit, Frontier, etc.

As someone else has mentioned, if you want to be able to benefit from DisneyMagicExpress, you have to fly to Orlando International but if you are staying offsite then there's no real great argument against flying to Sanford. MCO is a bit closer but it's CRAZY BUSY compared to SFB. From Disney, you can probably leave later for a flight from SFB than for a flight from MCO because your checkin will be much longer at MCO unless it's a 6am flight or something like that.


2. As far as staying onsite, you can argue that it's part of the experience and in the past, we've stayed onsite during most of our visits to Disney. My son loves just riding the various Disney transportation so we'll usually spend a few hours riding all the monorails, buses and boats. We've also visited a few of the hotels for fun. You also have a longer FP+ reservation window and have access to ExtraMagicHours which we usually try to take advantage of since you can get a lot of rides during that time and when our kids were younger, we'd often take a break during the day. We leave our RV in Florida every winter so we'd stay at Fort Wilderness but with recent price increases, it's now going to be over $100US/night pretty much any night of the year and peak periods will be around $175/night so that's probably more than I'm willing to spend (I can stay at nearby campgrounds for much less).

We've visited friends in Windsor Hills and I really like it but there are a lot of nice (arguably nicer than WH) resorts around and although WH is very well located, your probably talking about an extra 15 minutes travel time so it's really not that significant. Having said that, if I was buying a vacation property in the area, I would most likely buy at WH.


3. I pretty much always buy tickets from Undercover Tourist but unless you are going for multiple days, I don't think there are any savings.
 
Hi!
We have flown out of Plattsburgh with Allegiant twice (September 2015 and just last month) and out of Montreal with WestJet once (September 2017). I honestly do not believe we will be flying WestJet again. It cost a lot more and the large crowded airports (YUL and MCO) were just not for us. It's me, the husby and two kids (same age as yours). The first trip, a smaller airport (Sandford) made DH and I feel more comfortable with the kids. Just know that there is no DME from Sandford Airport and it is about 45-60 minutes away from Disney. We've never minded the drive. Allegiant isn't the most spacious, but there was no real significant comfort restrictions for us. We have never had any delay or problem from Plattsburgh to Sandford or back. The big thing was the price, really. When comparing trip one (from Plattsburgh) and trip two (from Montreal) we literally saved hundreds of dollars, even with the exchange and an overnight hotel in Plattsburgh. DH is still salty about it! I don't know how much flying in December will be. We have bought our Disney tickets from Dreams Unlimited in the past - I honestly don't know if they sell Universal. Last month, we were lucky enough to be able to stay at The Wyndham Bonnet Creek which is on Disney property, but not a Disney resort. Since the trip wasn't a Disney trip, we were fine with not being at a Disney resort, however, we prefer the full immersive experience when it is a Disney trip so we prefer staying at a Disney Resort.
ENJOY YOUR TRIP!
 

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