(*This is a post I started several months ago right after our first Disney trip. Since then we have made another trip to Disney and enjoyed it every bit as much. We LOVE the Magic Kingdom!)We just recently returned from our first family vacation to Disney (November 2008). We had the
TIME OF OUR LIVES with our girls and were so thankful for the getaway. It was a real challenge to us because Disney is really the kind of place where you could blow TONS of money! Since this was a spur of the moment trip we had to really do some quick planning to ensure that we didn't spend way too much money.
We found some really cheap tickets on
Southwest and a fairly
inexpensive hotel with a full breakfast, a suite, an indoor/outdoor pool and shuttle service to the parks. That definitely helped us out on the front end. For 4 round trip tickets we paid $670 and for 4 nights in the hotel we paid less than $500 with tax. We pretty much just sucked it up and paid full price for Disney tickets as it seems like cheap tickets really aren't to be found.
I read my friend
Mandy's blog before we left and she had some great tips for saving money and making great memories. My favorite was the daily visit from Tinkerbell. My friend Angel had taken her family to Disney last year and she told me that she bought lots of cheap Disney merchandise before they left on their trip so that her kids had some special treats without having to pay top dollar. I was able to find some cute t-shirts for $4 at the Disney store and some fun other little things that were clearanced after Halloween. Thanks to Mandy's tip "Tinkerbell" visited my girls each night. If they slept well at night they woke up to a little surprise under their pillow from Tinkerbell. My kids never ONCE asked for anything the days we were at the park because they were so excited to see what Tinkerbell brought them. Total I spent $20 on all of that stuff.
Our second trip to Disney was in April of 2009. We couldn't resist the trip when a friend offered us her time share for a week and Orlando seemed to be the only place left with availability. We normally do a beach trip that time of year, but since it was a free place to stay we couldn't resist. Back to Disney we went!
This time we opted for the "Time-Share" spill at the condo to get some cheap park tickets. Thankfully our youngest had not yet turned 3 and was still free at all the parks. For 2 hours of our time we were able to purchase 3 tickets for 3 days at the parks. (You could choose from any of the major theme parks for 2 days and then pick a water park for the 3rd). This saved us over half on our Disney tickets, plus they paid us $50 cash to listen to their little "spill" about the place. If you're like us and you have no problem saying no to things like this then it is well worth your time. We used that $50 to go out for a nice dinner while we were in Orlando.
We took the advice of many of our friends who had told us to leave plenty of time to enjoy the hotel where you're staying. Because Orlando is saturated with hotels it's very easy to find an affordable and nice place to stay. Our resort had numerous pools, water slides, mini golf, nightly movies and all sorts of kids activities that were free to guests. Since we were there for a full week this time we decided to spend one day at a park followed by a day at the hotel. This turned out to be a great decision as we had time to rest in between days. Even after visiting Hollywood Studios and Typhoon Lagoon, our favorite park was still the Magic Kingdom. It's just so magical that it really is hard to beat.
We also chose not to do a meal plan at Disney. Our girls really aren't that big of eaters so that saved us a TON of money. Our first trip we just ate the breakfast bar at the hotel and then took fruit, granola bars and sandwiches in our bags for lunch so we didn't have to buy anything until dinner. The park actually has some really reasonably priced food. We found that we could all eat dinner for about $16/day. The girls would share a kids meal (which is GREAT! About $4 for Hamburger or chicken nuggets, two sides and a drink), I would get a kids meal and Jason would get a wrap or burger. It worked really well for us to do that and saved us a ton of money. I even took my coupons and planned a Publix shopping trip on our next trip and found that we were able to spend about $100 for the week on groceries and only have to eat out at the parks and the one night we used the $50 at a nice restaurant. This plan worked best for our family and saved us a lot of money that could have been spent on food.
If you choose to stay at a Disney hotel (Any of the budget hotels count as well), you get free transportation to Disney so you don't really need a rental car. It's nice too because that saves you the $12/day price of parking at the theme parks. We had saved up points from our Visa to cash in for a rental car for the week so that was free as well.
In total, we found that we were able to do Disney for $1,500 for our week trip in April. Here is how we did that:
- We paid our friend $250 for the condo.
- We flew into Jacksonville b/c my best friend lives there and the flight was significantly less at that time than flying to Orlando. It was only about a 2 hour drive so that was nice. We paid right at $500 for all 4 of us to fly round trip.
- Rental car: free with Capital One points. (We saved for a long time to get these by putting larger purchases on our card and paying it off to get the reward).
- Disney tickets and souvenirs: $400.
- Food for the week: Groceries and eating our: $200.
- Miscellaneous (gas for the car and other random stuff like parking, etc): $150
Here are some websites with lots of great tips that I found to be very helpful in planning our trip and saving money:
Mouse Savers,
The Mouse for Less, and make sure you check our the links
here. These are just a few of the things that were helpful for us in planning our vacation. I hope they can be of help to you as well!