9 Budgeting Tips for Your Disney Vacation
Well December saw a lot of expenses for us. Aside from spending over $1000 on food at the grocery store, we decided to pony up for a family membership at the YMCA to ring in the new year. That’s another $90/month. Then we finally bit the bullet and bought a new hot tub cover which dinged our bank account for another $400 or so.
But that’s nothing compared to what we spent on our Disneyworld vacation. With adult tickets hovering over $110 for a single day, the cost can add up real quick. A trip to Disney World for a week for a family of four or five can easily match what you’d spend to go to France for the same amount of time.
So how do you save enough to go do Disney? Here are a few tips.
- Check out a budgeting blog, like this one, or this one. These guys are obsessed with finding ways to save money and help you figure out how to better manage your savings and income streams. Can’t say enough about them and how much they’ve helped us.
- Look for travel deals on certain websites.
- Check out http://www.mousesavers.com/ which posts tons of helpful coupons
- Consider a trip to Disneyland instead of Disney World. The difference? Disneyland is usually frequented by casual visitors who live nearby, while Disney World is much more a destination type place that involves more expensive hotels, plane fares and dining.
- Check Disney for deals. While they don’t offer the craziest discounts, it’s worth checking http://disneyworld.disney.go.com/special-offers for the latest offers.
- Buy a multi-day pass. If you’re going to be there for 3-5+ days, you can get a multi day pass that considerably drops the price from $89 to a more stomach friendly $50 or so.
- Go in the off season, between September and January. This is when hotel rooms are less expensive.
- Make your own meals. Eating out three times per day adds up real fast. Make some quick pb&j sandwiches and pack loads of snacks to fend off the hunger pangs (and dollars).
- Get the Disney hotel perks. Yes, hotels with “Disney” attached to their name usually have plenty of perks like free/discounted parking, cheaper meals, and free shuttles to get you in and out of the park easily.
I usually get decent customer service in Disney and this last trip was no exception! The first time someone went above and beyond for us was at about 11:30pm on a Sunday evening. We were at Bay Lake Tower so any items we needed had to be bought at the Contemporary. I realized we had no ointment for sores and Olivia had a sore that needed to be tended to. At 11:30 at night, where was I going to get this?
I called the front desk and they actually had a night manager come to the Pepper Market to open it up for us. Since it was late, he could not accept payment so he just gave us the ointment. (Cost was around $7) How is that for awesome customer service?! The next morning we did stop there and pay for it. Hey, karma and all that…
On our last full day there, we went to the Magic Kingdom for the evening. One of my husband’s favorite rides is The Carousel of Progress so of course we went on it. The bad news? He lost his phone on the ride. He reported the phone missing and they gave him a number to call the next morning. The next morning came and they had not recovered his phone. Unfortunately, we had to go home the next day so he figured it was gone for good. That is when panic set in.
We spent a small fortune in Disney this year because we took extra people so we really had no money to go buy a new phone. We were looking at about $800.00 to get a new iPhone. The first thing that came to mind was raiding the emergency fund but it never got to that.
Fortunately we got a call from? Disney Lost & Found! They located his phone on the ride Monday morning and they were in the process of mailing it back to him for FREE since we already came home!
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