Going to WDW in May, on a VERY tight budget? Any tips?

[FutureAshleyDukes]

My fiance and I are planning on visiting WDW to see if it's the place we want to say "I Do!" We are both in college right now so of course we're both sort of broke.

We have a budget of about $2,800 and want to stay for 5 nights. My fiance kind of has his heart set on staying at a moderate resort. We can go up to about $3,500 but I would rather not considering we're also trying to save for a wedding.

A few questions before I start serious planning:

1. Do you think this is do-able? I have submitted quote requests to both Small world vacations and Dreams Unlimited. I also plan to call AAA travel agency tomorrow.

2. How much should we plan to budget on spending? We want a few souvinears and only really care to eat on meal at really nice restraunt. Other than that we want something kind of casual.

3. Any pointers on the best place to buy airline tickets. I usually get mine from priceline.

Thanks for any help!

Ashley

 

[dreams91]

First off, you will difintely want to get married at WDW if you love feeling like a . I had a blast!!

I bought my aunt cheap airline tickets through cheaptickets.com . They had the best price when we went.

We did the early morning calling when the AP rates came out to get cheaper hotel rooms. We ended up with CBR for ten nights for a total of $1,048 (includes tax). I don't know what season you are going in, we went in value season.

Good luck and congrats!

 

[frstimer128]

I got a great deal by booking right through Disney. My DD4 and I went for 8 days/7 nights for $1100 which included value hotel (pop) and UPH's.

We did a lot of special character meals so that jacked up our spending a bit but for my 4 y/o, it was well worth it. The counter service food was good and as far as souveniers, we spent a lot of our money on pins (our new obsession!) and gifts for the family. To us, photos in our scrapbook are the best souveniers. I really invest a lot of time into our books. The albums last a lot longer than little trinkets.

You'll have a blast!

What worked good for me was using all cash, no credit cards, and I divided it up equally into daily envelopes. Any excess $$ went into the next day's envelope.

Make sure you have plenty of 5's and 1's for tips, including skycaps at the airport for your return trip.

Best Wishes!

 

[turtle51]

that is a great idea about putting money in an evelope for each day. It is a really easy way to budget your money equally throughout the trip. I think i will do that on my next wdw trip.

 

[DiznEeyore]

Ashley -- first of all, congratulations on your upcoming marriage!

Now, as far as your trip questions .... you mentioned you're getting quotes from agencies -- I assume you're looking into packages? Very often, it's cheaper if you book your room separate from your tickets ... not always, so check both ways.

If you don't have a particular moderate in mind, can I suggest Port Orleans French Quarter? My dh and I found it to be very romantic! My best friend and her dh spent their honeymoon there and loved it, too.

Don't know if you and your fiance are big eaters, but dh and I often split meals at WDW, both at the nicer sit-down restaurants as well as the counter service ones.

HTH a little -- I'm sure you'll get lots of other good suggestions!

 

[ceecee]

Price everything yourself and skip the packages. Usually (not always) you can save quite a bit. Talk your DF into a value and save the nicer resorts for your honeymoon. Pop Century is new and clean and lots of fun!!! ASMo we love as well. Put the extra $$ you save on rooms into your wedding fund.....good luck!

 

[CheapMom]

I agree with CC about the value resorts. - I think $2500 for 2 people for 5 days is completely do-able. My family of 5 did a week for about that price in 2000. Get 4 day hoppers and spend one day visiting resorts to get an idea of where you would like to stay for your wedding trip.

 

[gigi1313]

$2800 for two people for five days?! totally do-able... even at a moderate resort, unless you have super-expensive airfare (where are you coming from?)! we figure our family costs $1000 per person per week at wdw...

since you are using this as a "scouting" trip to consider having your wedding there, you may want to contact the fairy tales wedding department (not quite sure how you do this, but it's worth looking into) to discuss various options that they offer... maybe even do a wedding tour and a food tasting (not sure if this is only offered after you've agreed to get married there and left deposit?)

 

[FutureAshleyDukes]

$2800 for two people for five days?! totally do-able... even at a moderate resort, unless you have super-expensive airfare (where are you coming from?)! we figure our family costs $1000 per person per week at wdw...

since you are using this as a "scouting" trip to consider having your wedding there, you may want to contact the fairy tales wedding department (not quite sure how you do this, but it's worth looking into) to discuss various options that they offer... maybe even do a wedding tour and a food tasting (not sure if this is only offered after you've agreed to get married there and left deposit?)

We're coming in from Oklahoma city... where the airfare is a little more expensive since you can never get a direct flight to hardly anywhere. So far I've been quoted $1600 for our room including a dream maker package from dreams unlimited. I still need to call my AAA travel agent, since we're members we hope that might help with our discount. I know it gets us a discount on park hopper tickets. So it might be cheaper to just buy the room seperately from our tickets.

Thanks for your help so far everyone!

Ashley

 

[CarolA]

For those of you doing the envelopes. PLEASE use Traveler's checks. If your envelopes are lost/stolen your vacation will be ruined if it is all your cash!

 

[gigi1313]

definitely look into pricing each piece of the trip separately... it's rare that packages save money, and typically you get components that you don't really need/want...

also, do you have a disney visa? if not, it may be worth it to get one... every little bit helps...

 

[TSirgey]

Try Expedia.com or travelocity for your airfare and tickets. We booked most of our trip earler this year on Expedia and got some of the best prices.

 

[EsmeraldaX]

We are staying at Pop Century starting Weds. night and 5 nights/6 days cost us $273 with our annual passes. You can also check mousesavers.com for special codes available to everyone that are about the same for discounts as the AP rates.

We also got flights very cheap on Jet Blue.

Check Mousesavers & various airlines daily for specials. You can do WDW for 5 days for $2500, probably much less.

 

[EsmeraldaX]

Also check www.wdwig.com for dining options. The menus are listed there, with prices. That will give you an idea as to what to budget for food.

 

[pearlieq]

This should be totally doable! I would stay away from packages--you'll probably get way more than you need. You could probably be fine with a 4 day hopper, but even a 5 day hopper plus would be cheaper than the Ultimate Park Hopper tickets you'd get with the package. Here's a worst case scenario budget:

Airfare - $800 (this is a generous estimate for tickets from Oklahoma City--you may be able to shave $200-$300 off of this by finding tickets on sale)

Hotel - $880 (this is rack rate at a moderate for Regular season (which includes all of May) You should be able to get at least a 15% discount through AAA or more if you can find a discount code)

Airport Transfers - $100 (this would be for a private towncar. You could go ask low as $55 dollars if you two took Mears)

Park Tickets - $550 (this would be for 2 5 day Park Hopper Plus tickets. You might be fine with a 4 day hopper if you're going to be busy with wedding stuff and/or you enjoy spending a lot of time at your resort. You could probably save about $100 here by either getting a plain 5 day hopper without the plus options or getting a 4 day hopper plus)

Meals - $600 (this is $100 dollars a day which would cover one sit down meal, two generous counter service meals, and a few snacks for each of you each day. You could easily get by on $50 a day if you only ate counter service meals, carried your own drinks/water bottle, and only had 1 snack each day)

Souveniers - $300 (this would cover a few splurges and plenty of T-shirts, ballcaps, and trinkets for the folks back home. Even if you only had half of this, each of you could get one big item and one or two smaller souveniers like pins, pens, small snowglobes, etc.)

So, even at an absolute worse case, highest estimate, the trip would still only cost a little over $3200.

If you found a sale on airfare ($600 for the two of you), got at least a AAA discount on your room ($700 total for 5 nights), kept the towncar transfer (money well spent, IMHO), got smaller tickets ($450), ate most of your meals at counter service restaurants with only 1 or 2 splurges ($400 food budget for 6 days), and got just a few souveiers for the two of you ($150 total for you both) the trip would come out to a very manageable $2400 .

Hope you have a good time and congrats on your upcoming wedding!

If you have any questions or would like any more information, let me know.

 

[disneysteve]

We have a budget of about $2,800 and want to stay for 5 nights.

We just got back from 7 days in a beautiful 2-bed, 2-bath offsite condo. Our entire trip cost us under $2000. If the budget is so tight, why not stay offsite? For under $50/nite, you could get very nice accomodations with Skyauction or Priceline. Save your money for the wedding.

 

[Microcell]

Look directly at Southwest airlines directly. I live in Kansas City and they are almost always the cheapest. Right now it is 89 each way from here, 72 to Tampa so we are going there and driving. Sale ends soon.

 

[GoldenAfternoon]

Also, if you are planning to do a character meal, why not switch to the ice cream social at Epcot? I believe it was only $8 or $9 per person, and the ice cream was sooo yummy. The characters also came to our table several times each. Good luck and happy planning

 

[Doug123]

My wife and I are also considering going in May. Here's a rough budget for the trip:

Flight for two: $500 (this will obviously vary for you; keep an eye on southwest.com, expedia.com and orbitz.com; if you're flexible, vary which day of the week you leave and return, it tends to make a lot of difference)

Lodging - 5 nights: $750 (very doable for a moderate - keep an eye on mousesavers.com)

Park Passes - 3 days: $350 (one way to cut down on the expenses is to not go to the parks on your first and last days; believe me, there's enough to do outside the parks to keep you busy for the time)

Transportation - car: $100 (this may be higher)

Food - 5 days: $500 (I agree with the $100 per day thought; if you want to save more, or save more for a larger dinner or more drinks, go to one of the nearby grocery stores and buy breakfast items)

Incidentals - 5 days: $250 (this one obviously varies too; be realistic, though, that you will want to spend SOME money when at the World)

Total $2,450

I may have forgotten a thing or two, but the bottomline is that your $2,800 to $3,500 budget is VERY doable. I'd also recommend buying/booking everything separatly. You can get a much better price.

 

[TSirgey]

One good character meal suggestion we found was to book a breakfast as late as you can manage. We booked Chef Mickey's at the Contemporary at 11:30 am and were able to go to the park for 2 hrs and then hop on the monorail for breakfast. Since it is so close to lunch time, this will actually be your lunch for the cost of a breakfast. By the time you sit down and actually eat, it will probably be close to noon. We did this back in Feb. and plan to do it again on our next trip in May.