How do you plan for a Disneyworld vacation on the cheap?

[hopefulfaith]

I am not sure you can use the words "Disney" and "cheap" in the same sentence. However, we are going to WDW in late October with my ILs, and I am trying to budget for it.

Any tips?

We will be staying in my ILs' timeshare place, so we have no lodging costs.
We are buying airfare with our tax return $$.

We are going the last week in October/first week in November, for seven days - five of them "vacation" days and two of them for travel.

My kids will be 5 and 4 at that time.

Does anyone have any experience with this? I have never been before.

TIA!

[SunshineJ]

Well nothing is really "cheap" about Disney. With airfare, lodging, tickets, etc. I think we could've stayed in Hawaii for a month with what it cost us for 8 days there. Sign up for their newsletter, it will tell you about deals they may have. Also definitely get their meal plan! You cannot eat that much food and it's SO much more cost effective. Yeah, you can live off of pbj and water for the week for less, but the food is one of the great things about Disney imo. Have fun!

[corrie43]

Have you seen the ads for give a day, get a day.. You volunteer one day at an approved site and get a ticket good for any disney park. Your whole family culd spend a sat volunteering and get into a park for free....

[corrie43]

Also for food, thefirst day buy the huge drink cups thy have that get free refills.You can refill them in many spots and don't need to pay for drinks the rest of the week.. I don't know the details, we have never been but my sister in law does it when they go for week.

[AlwaysByMySide]

Originally Posted by corrie43

Also for food, thefirst day buy the huge drink cups thy have that get free refills.You can refill them in many spots and don't need to pay for drinks the rest of the week.. I don't know the details, we have never been but my sister in law does it when they go for week.

These are resort-specific cups, and can be refilled at the food court at the resort you are staying at, not in the parks. It won't do you any good if you aren't staying at a resort.

(Former Disney travel agent...I have been to Disney more times than I can count, and even got married there. )

The best prices for tickets tend to come with resort packages, but since you don't have to worry about lodging, you'll save a little bit if you purchase your tickets at a Disney Store rather than at the parks themselves.

Bring a backpack into the parks with snacks and drinks to save money on that. My kids are told that they get to have ONE souvenir while we are there, because those can get out of hand quickly. I'm guessing you're renting a car while you're there, so take advantage of the off-site dining in the Kissimmee/Orlando area (or eat most/many of your meals at the timeshare), and buy souvenirs at the Disney outlet stores. Make your first stop, when you get off the plane, at a grocery store to stock up on food and drinks. If you want to do some eating at Disney, counter service is cheaper than sit-down meals, and sit-down meals are cheaper at lunch than at dinner. The menus with prices for all of the Disney restaurants can be found at allears.net.

The meal plan is a splurge. When you actually figure out the numbers (most people wouldn't normally get a dessert with the counter service meals, for instance, so don't figure them into the final number), it usually doesn't make sense to use the meal plan. I've only ever gotten the meal plan when it was free with one of their resort/ticket deals, with my then-2 year old who eats like a horse (and he wasn't included on the plan because he was under 3), and we STILL had meals leftover at the end of our trip. (And we are big eaters!)

You've picked a relatively good time to go - the Not So Scary Halloween Party will be going on while you are there (you need separate tickets if you want to go to it), so there will be some decent traffic prior to Halloween, but it should drop off after that. The weather should be good too.

Hope that helps!

[mommy2maya]

Originally Posted by SunshineJ

Well nothing is really "cheap" about Disney. With airfare, lodging, tickets, etc. I think we could've stayed in Hawaii for a month with what it cost us for 8 days there. Sign up for their newsletter, it will tell you about deals they may have. Also definitely get their meal plan! You cannot eat that much food and it's SO much more cost effective. Yeah, you can live off of pbj and water for the week for less, but the food is one of the great things about Disney imo. Have fun!

I'm surprisde by that! We are looking at a 6night/7day stay, with meal plan, park hopper tickets and flights for a family of six for less than it would cost to even FLY to hawaii much less stay there, lol. I think my quote is $3600 for everything.

[elsie]

I would ask the people on disboards

[SunshineJ]

Originally Posted by mommy2maya

I'm surprisde by that! We are looking at a 6night/7day stay, with meal plan, park hopper tickets and flights for a family of six for less than it would cost to even FLY to hawaii much less stay there, lol. I think my quote is $3600 for everything.

Our trip was more than double of that for a family of 4. However, keep in mind that we had finally reached a decent place financially and figured this may be our 1 trip there, so we stayed at Animal Kingdom which ran it up pretty fast. Add in park hoppers sans water parks, the Not So Scary Halloween Party and it was definitely up there. We did have the meal plan and for us we felt it was an awesome deal. The only thing we had left over were snack credits, so before we left I went and loaded up on things like chocolate dipped rice krispy mouse ear treats for the kids to take back to their friends. Airline tickets ran us just about $1000 as well, so that was added in.

[Drummer's Wife]

Originally Posted by elsie

I would ask the people on disboards

yup. I've lurked over there and got a lot of helpful hints before we went to WDW and Disneyland.

If you aren't doing a meal plan, food is expensive. Also, souveniers are $$. Of course, the biggest cost is park admission.

Have fun planning your trip!

[Thystle]

http://www.mousesavers.com/wdw.html

[StephandOwen]

For us- not getting the meal plans was a GREAT idea. It would have been a waste. DS doesn't eat much at all (very very specific to what he will eat, including brands, etc). So what we did was had a fridge in our room and that very first day we got there we went to Walmart down the road and loaded up on groceries. We bought bottles of water, bread, lunch meat, cereal, milk, snack foods, foods that ds eats, peanut butter and jelly, juice, salad fixings, etc. We usually ate breakfast in our room, went to a park, went back to our hotel for lunch and a break (no way could we spend more than a couple hours at a park with ds (who has autism). After lunch in our room we would relax for a little while (swim in the pool, walk around, etc) then head back out to a park. For dinner we usually ate out at a restaurant, sometimes at a park, sometimes at downtown disney, sometimes at a restaurant in the general area we were at.

We did one character meal (breakfast at animal kingdom) which was really really cool and worth the money (almost $100 for the 3 of us, after you add in the cost of the pictures we bought!).

We did not get parkhopper tickets, and I'm glad. There's no way we could have gone to more than 1 park per day. This will vary among families, but for our family we couldn't have done it (way too overstimulating for ds).

If you have a AAA membership you can get park tickets through them, cheaper than through disney (since you aren't doing a package deal).

[Sarah W]

Originally Posted by mommy2maya

I'm surprisde by that! We are looking at a 6night/7day stay, with meal plan, park hopper tickets and flights for a family of six for less than it would cost to even FLY to hawaii much less stay there, lol. I think my quote is $3600 for everything.

Yes, this. My parents took my brother and sister for a week and spent around $2k. (airfare wasn't needed)

You can say Disney isn't cheap, but if you stay at AK, you obviously aren't trying. It's not the GF, but it's one of the more expensive places to stay.

Your biggest expenses are going to be souvenirs and food. Eat breakfast in your room and bring snacks into the park and you'll save a lot of money. There are a lot of restaurants right outside of the park. Chevy's is right there and great for dinner. (my family is BIG into Disney and whoever is there ALWAYS takes a pic of the Chevy's menu and texts it to everyone else who isn't there as a "Ha ha")

(I got this from a girl on another board) With the souvenirs, get a few Disney things beforehand. You can find Mickey stuff anywhere or even at your local Disney store. Pick up a couple of things for each child and surprise them on different days, then let them pick one thing at the very end.

Let me say this--you guys are going to have so much fun! Your kids are right at that age where magic is as real as it ever will be. I cannot wait until DD is old enough to really remember going. WDW really is such a magical place and you'll bring home so many great memories.

[MyTwoAs]

I live on the other side of the country so I'm more familiar with Disneyland but I wanted to mention Costco for tickets. Our Costco sells the multi-day passes to Disneyland at a discounted rate. Perhaps something similar is available for Disneyworld.

[StephandOwen]

Originally Posted by Sarah W

(I got this from a girl on another board) With the souvenirs, get a few Disney things beforehand. You can find Mickey stuff anywhere or even at your local Disney store. Pick up a couple of things for each child and surprise them on different days, then let them pick one thing at the very end.

I forgot about that. Thankfully my ds didn't really care about anything like that. He did want a little stuffed animal so while we were at Walmart getting food right down the road from Disneyworld, we let him pick one of the little stuffed animals there (donald, I think). WAY cheaper than at disney. We also got him a disney t-shirt at one of the many little shops in the area, not at disneyworld. Both of those saved quite a bit of money.

We are going back this summer, I think, and I have a feeling ds might be asking for more. He's getting more aware of his surroundings now.

[Irishmommy]

We were there last Christmas. What we did (though our kids were 8 and 14, so older). They had their spending money saved. I told them that they were responsible for their own treats/purchases. If dh and I decided to buy a treat for us, of course we would buy for them, but they were not to ask.

Dd2 say a balloon she wanted (it was a clear ballone with a micky shaped dark balloon inside it, helium). She asked for it, I told her the rules, so she asked the vendor how much. $10. Because it was HER money, she decided it was too expensive, and moved on, fine. If it had been our money, we would have been pestered the whole week for it.

Same thing happened with a cup she wanted, too much money for her. Dh and I found it at the grocery store for less than half the price and bought it for her. Without prompting, she gave us the money!

So long way of saying, if possible, let them be responsible for stuff bought.

[Kailey's mom]

Bring all meals and snacks, including drinks. that will save you a ton of cash!

[Chicky2]

listening well, as we are planning to go in a year or two....

[SunshineJ]

Originally Posted by Sarah W

You can say Disney isn't cheap, but if you stay at AK, you obviously aren't trying. It's not the GF, but it's one of the more expensive places to stay.

Um I never said we were trying to do it on the cheap I said that Disney is expensive, and it IS no matter where you stay. Just because we chose to stay at a more expensive hotel however, doesn't mean that we didn't look at costs of other aspects or pick up on some money saving ideas.

I forgot the OP isn't staying at one of the hotels, so the food plan may not be the best option for them. Although if they want to do some of the "speciality meals" like the character breakfasts, the Cinderella dinner, the luau, etc. I'd look at the cost of a base meal plan vs the cost of the events they want to go to as it might work out cheaper for the mealplan in that instance. I haven't run a comparison so I don't know if it would or not. For us, we didn't rent a car and were reliant on Disney transportation, which ended up with us spending more than we would have on things like otc meds for dd when she got sick, basic groceries we ended up needed (milk for the kids in the evening) etc. It was still cheaper than renting a car, but not cheap overall.

One thing that I would have done differently that I felt ended up being a big waste of money was to get park hopper tickets for the entire time we were there. The kids were 4 and 6, and there were a couple days they just weren't into going to the parks. DD was sick one day, so we stayed home for that, and one day they just wanted to hang around the hotel. If I had to do it over, I would have only gotten tickets for 5 days, and only had the park hopper on 1-2 days worth.

Which reminds me something that would DEFINITELY be worth looking into for you. When I lived in FL Disney would always offer special rates on tickets for people who lived there. They were cheaper than anyone from other states could get. I don't know how the timeshare is set up but see if there might be a way to get tickets as a resident via that (also the timeshare company may have some options for tickets that way too).

[mommy2maya]

You can only get park hopper for the length of your tickets, it is one price $52 for the duration of your tickets, not a daily fee. You can only get the meal plan if you stay at a disney resort.

[Drummer's Wife]

I agree about not doing park hopper tix if there is a big price difference. with kids and shuttles, going to more than one park in a day is a PITA!