Hi Acepepper -
I have to agree £2300 sounds pretty good to me, that's only around £460 each.
Does that include your all-inclusive car insurance?
I haven't time to do masses of research, but just looking at some of my favorite links.
For Car Hire, I like Choice Air, but they don't have their prices online, you have to email them - so for the purposes of comparison, I've looked at Florida Car Hire
http://www.floridacarhire.com/
I've assumed with 3 kids you'll need a Full Size car, although you might want a mini-van? that's £358, or £390 for additional drivers and a tank of gas.
There's about a million places you can rent a villa, I am guessing that you want something with at least 3 bedrooms? Looking at Premier Vacation rentals, you could get a 3 bedroom for $120/night - I think with a bit more research you could find something for $500 a week - I am sure I've seen them for that price on
http://www.vrbo.com/ - that might even be a bit low, which makes your flight portion of the price look even better.
So,
Full Size Car - All Inclusive £358 GBP
Villa at $1000 £685 GBP
That leaves £1230 for 5 flights, or less then £250 a flight - while there are flights out there for less than that, they are hard to find, so I think you've got a pretty fair price already. Virgin's price for your dates is £323 looking at travelocity
The one thing I would say is that with the package you may not be told where the villa will be, whereas if you book your own you get to pick the exact villa.
So, in this case, I would say that the package is a pretty good price - but I haven't done extensive research
I want to emphasise that I wouldn't say DIY is always cheaper than a package- or vice versa, DIY is certainly more flexible, you can split up your stay and spend a few nights at the beach, or in a Disney hotel and the rest at a cheaper hotel or a villa,
What I do always do, is make a list of every component in Excel, so that I can be sure I am comparing like with like - packages can have lots of supplements, and with DIY it's easy to overlook certain aspects, so this way you can get a true comparison
My list looks like this:
Flights
Flight Supplements
Car Hire
Car Hire Insurance
Travel Insurance
Hotel
Under Occupancy Supplements
Disney Passes
Other Passes
Hope that helps,
Bev