What Have Some Travel Agents Been Doing?
While this does not apply to every travel agent, of course, there are some travel agents who want your business and at times try to take advantage of excited guests who want to book their Walt Disney World trips as early as possible. This consists of taking bookings (and deposits) for dates that are currently not bookable. If a travel agent you're looking at is trying to sell you a Walt Disney World package and those dates are not yet available on the Disney Holidays website, I would be hesitant.
The Occasional Exception
There are exceptions from time to time. For example, at the time of writing, 2026 dates are not yet on sale through Disney but TUI and Virgin are taking some 2026 bookings; it's unlikely these won't be legitimate. But that must mean the Disney selling 2026 is imminent. This only applies to booking on-site Walt Disney World Resort hotels. If you're looking to book an off-site hotel, then there is less need to worry as those hotels (like on International Drive) are generally available further out.
What's So Bad About That?
It's bad because often the customer suffers and it makes Disney look bad. When Disney hasn't yet released dates (either to the public or to travel agents) and they're not officially bookable, what happens is that travel agents tend to guess how much it'll cost when they give you a price, and when you book it through them, nothing actually gets booked. It's often not too difficult to guess what Disney's pricing structure will look like for the following year as they'll have access to previous trends. It's unlikely the price will ever be dead on what they guess, and that leaves the travel agent with 2 options. Either absorb any increase in the guessed price through their commissions, or charge you more. If you've been the victim of this before - which I know several of you have - which is the reason for this article - you'll know all too well when you get a call to say that the price of your holiday is now more than your original quoted price when you booked it.
Ways To Book Walt Disney World
Although there's generally nothing wrong with using a travel agent, people have done it for decades! And I know some people do get good value from certain travel agents, especially if they book with them often. We generally recommend - based on many of our own experiences and the experiences of our readers - that you book directly with providers as much as possible.
This means booking a Walt Disney World package directly through Disney. Occasionally, you might want to arrange flights yourself (which we do at times) so you can book your Walt Disney World hotel & ticket package directly through Disney and then book flights separately directly with the airline you want to fly with. Alternatively, if you want to go through a travel agent, we generally recommend you book the package through the company who owns the airline you want to fly with. For example, if you want to fly with TUI, then book your Walt Disney World package through TUI. If you want to fly with Virgin, then book your package through Virgin Holidays. This can make it easier to deal with any issues for any parts of the holiday when it's all booked through the same ATOL protected package.
