How You Can Actually Get to Disney
Most of the travels I share are free, or really close to it. Disney is not close to free. You can google a bunch of budget tips, and I’ll include the popular ones below, but I found little research that helped us actually get to Disney while living over $10,000 below our state’s poverty line.
What You’ll Find Online:
1. Buy your tickets in advance through a third party. (I was tempted by some offers on https://www.mousesavers.com/. Also, there are a lot of tourist information centers in Florida that sell discounted tickets)
2. Stay off-site.
3. Pack your own food.
4. Skip the park-hopper pass and any other frills or bonus experiences.
These are all good tips. I didn’t use any of them. We had an 11 day trip, including 6 days of theme park tickets, and spent just under $3,000 for our family of 5. First, let me acknowledge that $3,000 is still a lot of money. I’ll address how we managed that much money after my budget tips. Also, keep in mind that things change from year to year. When in doubt, call and ask.
What We Did:
1. Book in advance with a Disney Travel Agent. If you already have AAA, or a similar service, it doesn’t cost anything extra to book trips through them. When you book in advance, you can apply any coupons or discounts as you receive them. Every year, I get the mailer for the free dining package, and I wanted to make sure I could use that.
2. Stay on-site. This bit differs by family preferences and schedules. When we traveled, Disney parking was free to anyone staying on-site. That made a big difference for us. We wanted to have a vehicle because of the additional flexibility needed when traveling with young kids and kids with disabilities. Also, Disney offers the free shuttles to the park, with more frequent trips than any off-site hotel. That means if you don’t have a car, on-site is much more convenient and/or saves you on the cost of a rental car. We also wanted to be on-site to snag the dining deal and extra magic hours.
3. Get in on the Free Dining. Typically, Disney runs two big promos each year: the free dining, and the room discount (15-35%). Because there are five of us, the dining was a much bigger money-saver than the room discount. We went with the quick service meal plan, because that’s what comes totally free (park-hopper pass required, which was $14 per ticket per day based on the six day pass). Even though the meal plan was technically for three, it was more than enough food for all three meals for all five of us for every day of our stay. Wesley would typically split his meal, and then one additional side was enough to share between the three.
4. Go while they’re young. I get that you want to make sure the kids remember the magic. We’re planning to go again when the “twins” are eight or nine and we can do a big non-budget trip, but by then Wesley will be 13. I also wanted to go when it would still be magical for him. Because the “twins” were only two, they were free. Everywhere. We didn’t pay for park tickets, or lodging, or food in buffet or family style locations. Obviously, this was a biggie for us. We went with five people, but we really only paid for three.
5. Drive. For us, this was just over $200 in gas, vs. $1,500 in airfare (coming from PA). It’s also four additional nights in hotels, but we used our Marriott Rewards and spent nothing. Side note, the Marriott Visa card gives 80,000 to 100,000 bonus points when you spend $5,000 in your first three months. If you were to book your Disney trip on the credit card, along with your usual spending, you could earn over a week in free nights.
6. Open a Disney Credit Card. When you spend $500 in the first three months (on things you would be buying anyway, like groceries), you earn a $250 Disney gift card. No brainer. This got us our tickets to the Christmas candlelight processional (with five meals) and the Ohana breakfast – at no additional cost to us.
I get that my tips won’t work for everyone, and there’s a lot that goes into planning the Disney vacation that’s right for you. Look into all of the above and find your balance. Now, about spending $3,000…
How to get $3,000
1. Rob a bank. Ok, just kidding. I don’t have any tips for getting rich quick. What I do have are handy reminders of how we’re nickel and dimed out of our dreams.
2. Prioritize. A full year before our trip, Wesley was begging to get a happy meal. I asked him, “Do you want chicken nuggets, or do you want to go to Disney World?” He said he wanted to go to Disney AND eat chicken nuggets… lol. We don’t think about that five dollar happy meal, once in a while, as a special treat, or that $4 coffee. Skip them. Even if it’s just once a month for each of those things, that’s one hotel night paid for. Once you commit to no splurges, you’ll realize you’d been doing it more than you thought.
3. Save your change. We didn’t have $5 left over in our budget to set aside each month, but we always have left over change turning up in the dryer or couch cushions. Set those aside. They add up.
4. Drink water. Ok, maybe I’m getting extreme. The point is, we spend a large portion of our income on unnecessary things, without realizing it. $2 a day on a soda at work is $730 that could have been used on something so much more worthwhile. Write down where every single dollar you spend goes, and you’ll learn a lot and save a lot.
Stay for free by using your Bonvoy card.
