We recently spent a week in Disney World (our first time) and I wanted to share the process we used to plan the trip, attempted to cut costs as well as get cost saving ideas from this frugal forum for future trips to Disney World or travel in general. While this may be over the top for many, hopefully some of you can leverage a couple ideas to help if you have a Disney World trip planned in the near future. Ok this is lengthy so here it goes:
Criteria - As part of that planning process (and before DW would allow me to start “tinkering”) she had two criteria that could not be altered 1) we had to stay on Disney property for this trip 2) we had to bring (pay) for our oldest daughter (my stepdaughter age 23) who no longer lives with us. In total the party consisted of 5 family members (me, DW, 4 ½ year old son, two stepdaughters 19 & 23).
The Early Planning Process & Travel:
Decided When – We had a somewhat flexible schedule and could gear the trip a little more around our preference (i.e. crowds, festivals, etc.). For us the major driver was crowds as we are not crowd people and heavy crowds would completely ruin our trip. I know…. I know Disney World is almost always crowded but you can substantially reduce the impact of crowds by looking at off-peak dates. There are many websites you can use that leverage historical crowd sizes and project out the highest and lowest crowd size weeks for the upcoming year. I used and recommend getting a one year subscription to Touringplans.com (roughly $9) for additional benefits that will be spelled out below. The one con regarding the off-peak season is that we ran into a couple of attractions that were closed for restoration.
Plan Early – For us this meant planning a year ahead of time, January 2013 for a January 2014 trip, enabling us to get rough estimates on costs and dedicate a savings plan for the year to have the trip paid off before we departed. It should be noted that we were not be able to book any rooms or reservations this far in advance, but we were able to start framing estimated costs. Knowing that we were traveling in January and that January is considered offseason we researched other offseason months to get estimated costs using Disney’s website.
Used Credit Cards to our advantage – Although we had been saving up for the trip we leveraged a Southwest & Chase Sapphire CC to pay for the trip and simply paid the cards off each month (you do not need to charge the entire trip all at one time and we actually made three payments). In addition we switched to purchasing everything with a card (including daycare costs) to gain as many miles as possible. Again we paid it off each month. By using this strategy and starting the planning process so early we were able to accumulate miles and get 5 free roundtrip flights from Pittsburgh to Orlando.
Booking Reservations:
Contact a Disney Travel Agent – Disney prices are set prices and travel agents are paid by Disney based on the amount of dollars they bring in (at least this is what I told). What this means is that we got the same price for the room and park passes from our travel agent as we would by booking it ourselves. I did check the prices myself and they were the same as what was listed on Disney’s site. So what is the advantage of using a travel agent if you can get the same price yourself? The first advantage is that travel agents (at least ours) are tuned in to any specials that Disney may offer before your trip. For example, about three months prior to us leaving, Disney ran a special offer for 15% off room rates for a set week. Our travel agent contacted us regarding the offer, letting us know that all we had to do was move our travel dates by 1 day (arrive and leave a day later than our original plan) and we would qualify. She then handled all the leg work of changing the reservations. In addition, she handled all the park pass purchases.
Caution – Our travel agent tried to sell us on the Disney Dining plan and book our flights. She really pushed the Disney Dining plan telling us how much money we would save. Don’t book either of these until you do your homework (or you land a free Disney Dinning plan promotion).
Food
Food Costs (this is a biggie) – Disney food choices are expensive and so is the Dinning plan! After getting the quote for the middle of the road dining plan and picking ourselves off the floor DW and I began the research process. First we determined that we would do one table service meal a day and lunch would be just a simple quick service meal (we actually only did the quick service meal one time. Eating a big breakfast in the room and taking snacks ended up being more than enough). Knowing we were only going to eat one table service meal a day the next step was determining where. Our strategy was to pick one restaurant from each park or a late dinner at Downtown Disney (of course this was based on our research of the choices). I then pulled the menus from those restaurants and priced out what I thought everyone would order. I then built in a fixed cost for our counter service lunch meals and snacks and added them all together for the 7 days. After doing this exercise we were pleasantly surprised that our meal costs were much lower than the equivalent dinning plan we had been quoted. This made our decision not to get the Disney Dinning plan easy. We then made our restaurant reservations to lock in our restaurant choices.
Leverage Gas perks – Now that we were armed with our approximate food costs we purchased Disney gift cards from our local grocery store to gain fuel perks. In total we were able to fill up our SUV 2 times at $60 a pop for free. In addition, we used our CC to purchase the gift cards and gain some quick miles. At Disney we charged everything we did to the room and paid it off every couple days with the gift cards. Disney has a $500 running limit that can be charged back to the room so you will need to pay attention and pay this off accordingly.
Buy groceries and have the delivered to the room – To save money on food we wanted to eat breakfast in the room before leaving for the parks in the morning. In addition, we wanted to have snacks to take into the park in a backpack. To do this effectively we used an Orlando grocery service called GreenGrocer.com and ordered groceries delivered to our room. We ended up getting fruit, milk, yogurt, water, cereal, peanut butter, bread, etc. We even had beer delivered as part of this service. It was so nice to come back to the room after a day of walking and have the ability to pop open a normally priced ice cold beer! Also, having snacks with us basically eliminated the need for us to stop and each lunch….. we simply weren’t hungry.
Time!!
Leverage our time – A couple weeks ahead of time we created a plan of attack for each park based on the dinner reservation location. If our reservations were in Epcot we went to Epcot that day, if they were in Animal Kingdom we went to Animal Kingdom, etc... We then used the park brochures Disney sent us as part of the reservation process and determined what attractions we wanted to do at each park. After completing this we used TouringPlans.com again and plugged in the attraction for the appropriate park along with our Dinner reservation place and time and our fast pass times (you now can plan fast passes before you leave). The TouringPlans website optimizes the order of the attractions to give you the most efficient attraction order to visit the park. It even takes into account historical wait times, fast pass and dinner times! Being new to Disney this service was a game changer for our family and we really felt as though we leveraged our time effectively getting the most from what we wanted out of the parks.
Results
In all we ended up getting a suite at Art of Animation as it was cheaper than 2 rooms. We felt 1 room would have been too tight for 4 adults and 1 child. We stayed for 7 days and 6 nights.
Original quoted price from our travel agent for 5 people – A little over $7,000
Our actual price for everything (including stupid things like coffee and hot chocolate in the parks) – A little over $4,500
….. And the best thing about it is we did not feel as though we were cutting any corners! Oh and we had a blast!
Criteria - As part of that planning process (and before DW would allow me to start “tinkering”) she had two criteria that could not be altered 1) we had to stay on Disney property for this trip 2) we had to bring (pay) for our oldest daughter (my stepdaughter age 23) who no longer lives with us. In total the party consisted of 5 family members (me, DW, 4 ½ year old son, two stepdaughters 19 & 23).
The Early Planning Process & Travel:
Decided When – We had a somewhat flexible schedule and could gear the trip a little more around our preference (i.e. crowds, festivals, etc.). For us the major driver was crowds as we are not crowd people and heavy crowds would completely ruin our trip. I know…. I know Disney World is almost always crowded but you can substantially reduce the impact of crowds by looking at off-peak dates. There are many websites you can use that leverage historical crowd sizes and project out the highest and lowest crowd size weeks for the upcoming year. I used and recommend getting a one year subscription to Touringplans.com (roughly $9) for additional benefits that will be spelled out below. The one con regarding the off-peak season is that we ran into a couple of attractions that were closed for restoration.
Plan Early – For us this meant planning a year ahead of time, January 2013 for a January 2014 trip, enabling us to get rough estimates on costs and dedicate a savings plan for the year to have the trip paid off before we departed. It should be noted that we were not be able to book any rooms or reservations this far in advance, but we were able to start framing estimated costs. Knowing that we were traveling in January and that January is considered offseason we researched other offseason months to get estimated costs using Disney’s website.
Used Credit Cards to our advantage – Although we had been saving up for the trip we leveraged a Southwest & Chase Sapphire CC to pay for the trip and simply paid the cards off each month (you do not need to charge the entire trip all at one time and we actually made three payments). In addition we switched to purchasing everything with a card (including daycare costs) to gain as many miles as possible. Again we paid it off each month. By using this strategy and starting the planning process so early we were able to accumulate miles and get 5 free roundtrip flights from Pittsburgh to Orlando.
Booking Reservations:
Contact a Disney Travel Agent – Disney prices are set prices and travel agents are paid by Disney based on the amount of dollars they bring in (at least this is what I told). What this means is that we got the same price for the room and park passes from our travel agent as we would by booking it ourselves. I did check the prices myself and they were the same as what was listed on Disney’s site. So what is the advantage of using a travel agent if you can get the same price yourself? The first advantage is that travel agents (at least ours) are tuned in to any specials that Disney may offer before your trip. For example, about three months prior to us leaving, Disney ran a special offer for 15% off room rates for a set week. Our travel agent contacted us regarding the offer, letting us know that all we had to do was move our travel dates by 1 day (arrive and leave a day later than our original plan) and we would qualify. She then handled all the leg work of changing the reservations. In addition, she handled all the park pass purchases.
Caution – Our travel agent tried to sell us on the Disney Dining plan and book our flights. She really pushed the Disney Dining plan telling us how much money we would save. Don’t book either of these until you do your homework (or you land a free Disney Dinning plan promotion).
Food
Food Costs (this is a biggie) – Disney food choices are expensive and so is the Dinning plan! After getting the quote for the middle of the road dining plan and picking ourselves off the floor DW and I began the research process. First we determined that we would do one table service meal a day and lunch would be just a simple quick service meal (we actually only did the quick service meal one time. Eating a big breakfast in the room and taking snacks ended up being more than enough). Knowing we were only going to eat one table service meal a day the next step was determining where. Our strategy was to pick one restaurant from each park or a late dinner at Downtown Disney (of course this was based on our research of the choices). I then pulled the menus from those restaurants and priced out what I thought everyone would order. I then built in a fixed cost for our counter service lunch meals and snacks and added them all together for the 7 days. After doing this exercise we were pleasantly surprised that our meal costs were much lower than the equivalent dinning plan we had been quoted. This made our decision not to get the Disney Dinning plan easy. We then made our restaurant reservations to lock in our restaurant choices.
Leverage Gas perks – Now that we were armed with our approximate food costs we purchased Disney gift cards from our local grocery store to gain fuel perks. In total we were able to fill up our SUV 2 times at $60 a pop for free. In addition, we used our CC to purchase the gift cards and gain some quick miles. At Disney we charged everything we did to the room and paid it off every couple days with the gift cards. Disney has a $500 running limit that can be charged back to the room so you will need to pay attention and pay this off accordingly.
Buy groceries and have the delivered to the room – To save money on food we wanted to eat breakfast in the room before leaving for the parks in the morning. In addition, we wanted to have snacks to take into the park in a backpack. To do this effectively we used an Orlando grocery service called GreenGrocer.com and ordered groceries delivered to our room. We ended up getting fruit, milk, yogurt, water, cereal, peanut butter, bread, etc. We even had beer delivered as part of this service. It was so nice to come back to the room after a day of walking and have the ability to pop open a normally priced ice cold beer! Also, having snacks with us basically eliminated the need for us to stop and each lunch….. we simply weren’t hungry.
Time!!
Leverage our time – A couple weeks ahead of time we created a plan of attack for each park based on the dinner reservation location. If our reservations were in Epcot we went to Epcot that day, if they were in Animal Kingdom we went to Animal Kingdom, etc... We then used the park brochures Disney sent us as part of the reservation process and determined what attractions we wanted to do at each park. After completing this we used TouringPlans.com again and plugged in the attraction for the appropriate park along with our Dinner reservation place and time and our fast pass times (you now can plan fast passes before you leave). The TouringPlans website optimizes the order of the attractions to give you the most efficient attraction order to visit the park. It even takes into account historical wait times, fast pass and dinner times! Being new to Disney this service was a game changer for our family and we really felt as though we leveraged our time effectively getting the most from what we wanted out of the parks.
Results
In all we ended up getting a suite at Art of Animation as it was cheaper than 2 rooms. We felt 1 room would have been too tight for 4 adults and 1 child. We stayed for 7 days and 6 nights.
Original quoted price from our travel agent for 5 people – A little over $7,000
Our actual price for everything (including stupid things like coffee and hot chocolate in the parks) – A little over $4,500
….. And the best thing about it is we did not feel as though we were cutting any corners! Oh and we had a blast!
