1. 10-day Base tickets (no-expiry), purchased from a ticketbroker. Adding park hopping and w/p fun to a ticket drives the cost up considerably. You can have a very enjoyable vacation visiting just one park each day and skipping waterparks, DQ and PI.
2. Never pay for something that you can get for free. Free ME from the airport instead of a towncar, shuttle bus or rental, free dining plan, free airfare thru FF miles, free Disney Rewards Dollars from Disney VISA, free Disney Dollars from rewards programs (just got $25 from Creationsrewards yesterday!).
3. Use whatever connections that you have to bring the cost of the room down. Know a CM? Take them up on their offer to get you a room at the CM rate. Have AAA? Book using the discount. Got an AP? Are you a FL Resident? You can find room-only discounts most of the year. Know a
DVC member who might rent their points to you at a reasonable rate? Go for it!
4. Breakfast in the room can be healthier and quicker than in the food court or a restaurant. It's cheaper, too. A bowl of cereal, skim milk and fresh fruit eaten in shifts as everyone showers and dresses not only saves time and money, it's healthier than a stack of pancakes or a breakfast sandwich.
5. Paying $2.50 for bottled water is one of the biggest rackets going. Bring a filtered water bottle with you into the parks and refill with free ice from any of the snack vendors or CS restaurants. Brita Fill & Go bottles are hard to find but I did see a similar product called
Pure Water 2Go or from
Water Filters.net .
6. Be flexible. Change your dates. Change your resort. Change your itinerary. If there's a less expensive way to do it by switching from one resort to another, arriving a day or two later or earlier, or by reducing the number of park days, then do it to shave the cost.
7. Limit the souvenir purchases. It's so easy to go overboard with the souvies. Disney knows what they're doing when every attraction exits into a store with appropriately themed merchandise. Put on the blinders and move your crowd along.
8. Character dining is fun but expensive. It would be one of the first things to go from my budget if I had to make choices. There are plenty of opportunites to meet the characters in the parks and outside of the character dining locations.
9. Don't charge anything that you can't pay for when the bill arrives. The interest rate will kill off any savings you got. It's no fun paying for a vacation a year after you've taken it.