We are going towards the end of August and plan to buy trip insurance (in case of hurricanes, illness, injuries before or during trip etc). Is it best to buy the plan that Disney sells or a different one? Does anyone know the cost of the Disney plan? I can’t find it online.
Most trip insurance has a very defined window of when you can buy it, usually within a few weeks to days of the first payment or purchase of your trip. Since trip insurance is a big money-maker, it’s best to go straight to the companies that offer it and try to cut out the middle man (in this case, Disney). Here’s a site that I’ve found useful in the past: https://www.insuremytrip.com You can find a plan that covers what you need, and avoid paying for coverage you DON’T need.
But trip insurance is kind of a racket, in my opinion. I pay for everything with a Chase Sapphire, which provides some free travel insurance.Before that we didn’t use trip insurance except for a subscription medevac plan which covers the whole family in case of illness (I have two in college) it will bring us back home. That’s a special policy though, we travel a lot so it’s worth it to us.
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I believe Disney’s Trip insurance plan is a good one for the money. For I and my wife it was about $154. That’s for the both of us. We both it when we booked the trip. They cover your trip and flight so for us it was a very good deal. I have checked with other companies but found them to be much more expensive. Others out here say they can find it cheaper but I haven’t found it to be a fact. Now we book our trip through MVT and I only buy flight insurance for about $56 for the two of us because MVT allows cancellation up until 5 days before your scheduled trip and after that you lose your deposit. MVT or Magical Vacations Travel saves us quite a bit of money so we use them. Hope this helps.
I’ve gone through MH Ross. We actually had to make a claim on one trip when there was a blizzard at home. Had to stay 3 extra days and it covered hotel, car, meals up to the amount that we had covered per person.
We were reimbursed within 3 weeks of returning home.
Disney’s trip insurance is generally regarded as not being a good value - you can usually get better coverage for less money elsewhere. MouseSavers have good info on trip insurance:
You know I went to MouseSavers for this advice and I checked out some of the prices from companies they suggested. Now for the flight and the trip for the two of us the policies were from $200 - $400. Disney is $150. The bad part is the documentation you must provide when making a claim. My wife’s brother was dying of brain cancer and we had to cancel a trip 3 days before we were scheduled to go. They wanted a doctor statement from his wife during this trying time so we could get our money back on the trip. Told Disney this and they refunded out money without going through insurance. I imagine that all insurance companies would demand the same.
I may be wrong, but I highly suspect that you were looking at policies that offered far more coverage than the Disney one. Disney does not issue travel policies, they merely sell Disney-branded policies on behalf of an insurance company, and there is an (often significant) upcharge for their services and branding. Also, these policies may have had a lot of unnecessary coverage - an important thing with travel insurance is to only buy the coverage that you actually need. For example, your credit card company may provide certain travel coverage for things paid for on their card, so you wouldn’t have to buy that coverage separately.
Which has nothing to do with where you got your insurance from - Disney decided to refund your money so you never had to make a claim. You would have to supply the exact same documentation to make a claim regardless of how you bought your policy.
I have used insuremytrip.com a few times for cruises. We actually needed to place a claim after the last trip, when we got to the airport in Baltimore and our flight home was canceled. It was a small trip, so our insurance for the two of us have only cost $104. Overnight hotel stay was $120. So it paid for itself. Filing the claim was a few simple clicks and filled in field’s on the online form, and I submitted a picture of the hotel bill and picture of the “canceled flight” image on the Southwest app. I had my money almost immediately. Now, maybe they don’t give much pushback on small, inexpensive claims where they would on a larger claim… nonetheless my experience was a good one.
Ok, you think Disney insurance is not the answer. Here’s the thing. We paid $154 for the two of us for a 14 day stay. I believe the total was about $7000. Our flight from ND to Orlando was $1300. When I get insurance it is to cover these cost and no extra’s. Now those are the figures. You say Mousesaver lead you to a travel insurance company that was better than Disney. I like to see the numbers on this company for said expense coverage. I couldn’t find it for less than $200. Now if you can I will be glad to check it out. I have a flight coming up to Orlando and for the two of us the flight was $850. This insurance via the Delta site cost $56. Now that is for the flight only. Figure that against the flight and the Disney vacation which included resort, Tickets, and Meal Plan and I think Disney does pretty darn good for $154. Yes I did not have to use them but Disney did provide the plan at a reasonable price. If you find a better plan of the same quality go for it. Just say’in.
Based on what you told me, it looks like you have hit a sweet spot with Disney’s travel insurance because of its fixed per-person cost. You have only two people staying for a longer time with a relatively expensive trip that has only Disney costs plus airfare. If you had more people, a shorter stay, a lower overall cost, and/or non-Disney costs (also going over to UOR, for example), then the Disney insurance becomes less competitive.
Like I said, you can usually get better coverage elsewhere, but you appear to have nailed it in this case. 
One thing to consider is that if you take multiple trips a year an annual travel policy might be an overall savings, especially if you take non-WDW trips as well.
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I decided to go with the Disney insurance. It cost $166 and covers all four of us for our airplane, hotel, luggage, personal belongings, park tickets, etc. We are staying for 8 nights/9 days of park passes during hurricane season and only doing Disney activities. I decided the peace of mind was worth $166 since we can only afford to go to DW every five years or so.
As far as I am concerned you made a smart move. 