Today I  will be giving you some tips that will help you save money and plan an affordable Disney Vacation that won’t break the bank!   I believe this post is probably the one that everyone has been anxious to read.  If you have already started planning your Disney Vacation, or have looked into it because you really want to go, then you know how expensive everything is!  I am going to share with you all the things that helped us save a lot of money!

When I contacted a Disney travel agent I was downright shocked at the quotes they sent back to me.  I was even more shocked that these quotes were during a 30% off resort sale and that they were for their standard and lowest priced resorts.  I cannot imagine what their luxury resorts cost! Here are those quotes so you can see how outrageous it is just for standard rooms in their lower end resorts. Quotes are for seven nights for four Adults & 2 Children (ages 6, 2) and 5-Day Magic Your Way Tickets for each of us.  Prices were given for 3 different resorts, $3,426.26, $4,498.46, and $4889.39!  These were all Standard rooms or 1 bedroom suites with a fold out sleeper.  So we either had to cram all 6 of us into 2 beds or it would be almost double these costs for two separate rooms!  I about fell out of my chair!!! On top of these costs were additional options to add such as upgrading to a park hopper pass $314.16, dining package quick service $1,220.36 & dining package Disney $1,774.64.  I’m sorry but what?  I would never in my wildest dreams spend that in 1 week to feed 6 people!   Now granted, we were going during Spring break and I am sure you can get a lot better rates off season. In fact, if you want to save even more money on your Disney trip I would suggest going at an off time, but this tends to be hard to do because kids are in school and they would have to miss.  On top of the outrageous cost, you are trapped! You are on Disney property and have tickets to only Disney’s 4 theme parks!  If you want to go to Disney and see only Disney and you have this kind of money to spend then that is wonderful and this deal is for you! I however was not one of those people!  This brings me to Tip #1.

Tip # 1:  Don’t stay at a Disney Resort

This one tip can save a ton of money! This was just too much money for us. I wanted to see other parks in Orlando too. I wanted my freedom to come and go from my resort without the hassle of taking a tram back and forth to my car.  I wanted the freedom to eat what I wanted and where I wanted so we definitely didn’t want a dining plan on top of it.  Staying at a Disney Resort was not important to us and it just wasn’t worth the money to us! Don’t get me wrong, there are a couple wonderful perks of staying on Disney Property but those perks just were not worth that cost to us! There are so many options in Orlando of places to stay and there were a lot of great options for us that gave us plenty of room for 6 people.   Did you know that you can go on vrbo.com (vacation rentals by owner) and rent an entire house close to Disney World for only $700, even one with a pool?  We almost went that route but we also wanted some of the perks of staying at a resort so we went the resort route!  One of my favorite travel sites is Tripadvisor.com and that is where I found our 3 bedroom condo at Floridays Resort that we rented for the week.  On TripAdvisor you can find resorts, see their rankings, read reviews, view travelers photos, find attractions and restaurants etc.  Our resort was #8 of #328 resorts in Orlando and I loved everything it offered.  The best thing about TripAdvisor is that they scan all the booking sites for you and you can compare prices and book your trip online through the best offer. We ended up booking the resort through Otel.com because it gave us the cheapest option. We ended up with a 3 bedroom condo that had a full kitchen, living room, master bedroom with a king bed and master bath, a second bathroom, and 2 additional bedrooms.  Both the additional bedrooms had 2 full size beds, giving us a total of 5 beds all for the bargain price of $1227.59 on a luxury resort with restaurants and pools for an entire week.  They even had a Starbucks, bonus!  You can’t beat that!   Especially if you are going to split that cost, which brings me to the next tip.

Tip #2:  Split the cost of your Disney Vacation with family and enjoy this special trip together

If you rent a house or condo big enough for everyone and then split the bill, you save even more money then if you were taking on the expense all by yourself. And there is nothing better than sharing a trip to Disney World with your family or closest friends!

Tip #3: Plan early & book earlier

I was curious how much the cost had gone up on our condo a month before we left so I checked it out and it had gone up a lot! We saved over $1400 buy booking our resort 6 months earlier!

Tip #4:  Get a house or a condo that has a full kitchen

You save so much money by having a kitchen and being able to eat some of your meals there.  We only ate out for 1 breakfast, 3 lunches & 2 dinners our entire trip!  Everything else was cooked off a small grocery bill that we split. There is no telling how much money we saved on food!

Now that we have covered where you will stay, lets move on to the next big topic. What you will be doing!  There is so much to do in Orlando, much more than just Disney.  There is Legoland, SeaWorld, Discovery Cove, Universal Studios & Islands of Adventure, Water Parks, etc!  We knew that we didn’t want to do just Disney. We actually only cared to go to Magic Kingdom and then everything else was outside of Disney. We knew we wanted to take Andrew to Legoland because our friends had told us how great it was and Andrew is infatuated with Legos!  Then I knew we really wanted to go to Islands of Adventure because I had been wanting to go to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter since it opened 4 years ago! Lol. Yep, thats right, I am a closet Harry Potter nerd! After we decided where we wanted to go, it was time to book the tickets, which brings me to tip #5.

Tip #5: Buy your tickets online

You can usually save money by purchasing your tickets online before you go.  Legoland was giving a $15 per ticket discount if you picked your day ahead of time and bought your tickets online. We ended up saving $60 for picking our day! Be sure to check for Military & Senior discounts if you have any in your party.  My husband got into Legoland for free for having a Military ID, and my mom got a discount for being a Senior (shhh, don’t tell her I told you that), which saved us even more. We saved $136 on admission to Legoland!  Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure were also offering a great deal for booking online!  In addition to getting $20 per ticket off the gate price, we got our 3rd day free with a 2 day park ticket purchase which was wonderful! We got to see and do both parks and then go back and do our favorites on the 3rd day of admission!  We saved another $150 on Universal Tickets by buying them online! Thats $286 that we saved by buying our tickets online!  There is also another handy website I will be telling you about in my 4th and final Disney post that you can check for other discount tickets.

Tip #6: Go before a 3rd birthday

All children under the age of 3 are free! Yep, thats right, they cost zero, zilch!  We knew that we wanted to take Andrew to Disney World to experience it once at his prime age, which is around the age of 6 or 7!  When we found out that Carlee was free until she was three we decided to plan the trip before this September when she will be turning three!  We didn’t want to go in the heat of the summer either so we decided Spring break would be perfect! A bonus there was that Andrew got to go for his birthday which was even better!

Tip #7: Take advantage of bundled deals  

Because we wanted to go to both Islands of Adventure and Universal Studios, we bought a 2 day ticket and saved money.  Legoland also offers a 2 day pass for only $15 more per ticket and they offer access to the watermark for only another $15 per ticket so if you wanted to spend 2 days at Legoland and enjoy their waterpark, this is a good deal. Other parks offer similar deals!  Discovery Cove has an awesome deal right now where you can purchase any day ticket to enjoy their property and you get admission to SeaWorld and Aquatica Waterpark for free.  For an additional $22 you also get into Tampa Bush Gardens and it upgrades your passes to all 3 additional parks for 14 consecutive days around your Discovery Cove Day Reservation. On your Discovery Cove Day you get to snorkel with thousands of tropical fish and rays in The Grand Reef, have encounters with playful otters and marmosets in the Freshwater Oasis, hand feed exotic birds, relax on pristine beaches, and float along their scenic river! There is even an optional upgrade to swim with the dolphins, which is something on my bucket list! A freshly prepared breakfast, lunch, and unlimited snacks, drinks and alcoholic beverages, and parking are all included on your day at Discovery Cove.  Discovery Cove can be pricy all on its own, but when they include all of these other parks,  and an all inclusive experience, it’s a steal! My kiddos are still really little and can’t swim so I decided to wait and do these parks on a later trip when they are a little older. It would be a wonderful option for a family with older children that loved roller coasters, wild life, and water!  I can’t wait to go back and do it one day!

Tip #8:  Buy Single Park Tickets and skip the hoppers

In my opinion, upgrading your park ticket to a hopper ticket is a waist of money if you know which parks you want to visit and how much time you want to spend at each. We spent one day at Legoland, one day at Magic Kingdom, 1 day at Universal & 2 days at Islands of Adventure.  We got 5 days worth of parks and saved $100 by buying tickets to different parks we wanted to go to vs. buying a 5 day Disney only ticket.  Had we bought a 5 day magic your way with the park hopper option on top of that, it would have cost us even more.  We saved $500 buy not adding on the park hopper option to any of our tickets!

Tip #9: Do not add on a dining package & pack your coolers

You can take a cooler with food and drink into the parks. So pack a lunch, pack snacks & pack lots of water and drinks for the kids!  When food is as expensive in the parks as it is, this tip saves a ton of money!  If you happen to be at a park all day you will end up having to buy only one meal, which for a family of 4, will cost you $40-$50 just for that one meal.

Tip #10: Limit the number of “special” events that you do 

There is a lot of special things to do at Disney that can add up.  Character meals, princess makeovers, pirate makeovers, shows, etc.  Pick one thing per child and one special event for the whole family and stop there.  Your kids don’t have to do everything!

Tip #11:  Give your children their own spending money  

All the great stuff that kids see is overwhelming, and of course, they want you to buy everything! The way to nip this in the bud is to put them in control of it.  We each allotted a certain amount of money to each child and they got to spend it on whatever they decided, but when the money was gone, that was it!  They usually would change their mind on wanting to buy something when we reminded them of this! Lol. This was fun for them though because they felt like they had their own money and enjoyed being in charge of it.

Tip #12: Make use of the resort shuttle

Most resorts in and around Disney have a shuttle that makes drops at all the theme parks.  Parking at each theme park is about $15 day which adds up.  If you can take your resorts shuttle it will save you money.  Three out of the Five days that we were gone, we got dropped off and picked up, saving us $45 in parking fees.

Tip #13: Ebay it before you go

I bought a lot of things on Ebay before our trip that I knew we would be buying that saved us a lot of money.  It was cheaper to find these things on Ebay then to buy them at the park.  One great thing you can do at any Disney Park is trade Disney pins with the cast members. You can find these on online cheap! Just be sure you are purchasing official trading pins with the logo on the back.  Another great thing to buy online is lanyards and pouches to keep your trading pins on and your park ticket & money in.  I also bought things like our autograph books online too!

Hope that you have enjoyed these tips and that they help you in planning an affordable Disney Vacation!  Be looking for my last and final Disney blog, which is my personal favorite, How to have the most fun! I will be sharing some of my best tips on how to get the most out of your vacation by telling you how to avoid the crowds, how to ride the most rides, how to know which days to go to which theme park, and other great tips like how to get a picture like this one on main street with no one else around!  I will also share with you our magical vacation and what we loved the most!

And if you missed them, catch up on the first two parts of the Disney Series…

Disney Part 1: 5 things to keep in mind when planning your Disney trip in order for it to be successful! Read it here.

Disney Part 2: The not so magical beginning to our trip! Read it here.

Disney Part 4: How to have a fun and “magical” Disney vacation! Read it here.