Say Cheese! Capturing the Memories: A Disney Family Photo Session
I am picture fanatic and I am never in the pictures on vacation but always taking them! Photographs are one of the most treasured things you can bring back from your family vacation. Many don’t think about it but a vacation is the perfect time to get your family portraits taken. While you are out having the time of your life why not capture those memories? From the silly ones with your crazy hats in front of the castle or with a character to amazing family portraits there are several options available in all price ranges.
What a better place than to have family portraits taken in Walt Disney World! Disney is filled with beautiful backdrops, landscapes and just photographs beautifully. It’s so much better than those backdrops in a photo studio they use during the holiday season in the local mall. It’s something many don’t think about so I am here to tell you about several options as well as my own experience.
There are several options you can choose to have a family photo session done at the Walt Disney World Resort.
First there is the Disney’s PhotoPass Service you can add to your vacation package. Most of the Photopass photographers are located throughout the park in front of main attractions or characters. They take your picture,you can view them on the My Disney Experience app and then download them at home. 
Also be sure to ask for Magic shots, you might just find a surprise in your photo like Stitch, Mickey or Tinkerbell or my favorite from the Flower and Garden Festival Orange Bird!
You can pre purchase the Disney PhotoPass Service before your trip that offers an all-inclusive package with all your PhotoPass pictures and select attraction and dining photos for $169. You can download your photos while there with all the high resolution photos plus a limited license agreement, which allows you to print photos at any local photo processing center. I highly recommend this option for everyone traveling to Walt Disney World and can be booked through your Disney Travel agent. If you are looking for more professional portraits I would choose one of the next two options in addition to the PhotoPass.
The second option is scheduling a photo session with Disney Fine Art & Event Photography. Several packages are available from Mini Portrait Sessions at select resorts to Enhanced sessions that includes an hour at any Walt Disney resort locations. The price depending on the package and you work with someone from Disney Photography to pick the best package for you. The pros are that they are very formal and professional photos but the cons are it can be your most expensive option and you do not get to pick your photographer.
Finally, my favorite option is using an outside photographer. There are many in the Orlando area and a few that are well known for their work they have done photographing Disney Weddings. Many have reasonable family photo session prices and some provide you the copyrights to all the photos and a CD. It’s best to do your research before your trip, locate a photographer, look to see if their work is how you envision your family photos and contact them to go over the details. Keep in mind that all outside photographers cannot photograph inside aDisney Park but they can on the grounds of any Disney Resorts which are just as beautiful. My personal favorite is the Grand Floridian and Boardwalk Area. For fun Disney theming the Art of Animation Resort has the perfect backdrop of Finding Nemo, Cars and Lion King.On trip in May 2012 and May 2017 trips I chose an outside photographer for our family photo session. Economically it just made the most sense. We chose the same photographer that we used for our Disney Fairytale Wedding in 2007, Randy Chapman of Chapman Photography. We had a great photo session and chose for it to take place on the Disney Boardwalk and surrounding areas and the Grand Floridian in 2017. There are so many photo opportunities it made for the perfect location and our photographerspent about 2 hours with us.
We had fun using all of them. Our particular photographer provided us all the photos on a CD and the copyrights. For the price we paid it would have been just or more expensive to go to a local mall portrait studio and purchase a photo package and Cd. Our pictures turned out amazing!
The biggest dilemma I have now is to go through over the large number of photos he took to pick my favorites to print!
