Average Cost For A Trip

[pms122765]

Family of 4 in Seattle wants to know what most people budget for a 1 week trip to WDW

Airfare-tickets-food-gifts etc...

 

[jel0511]

I can't help you with airfare from Seattle, but I'd guess at least $300 per ticket. For a week, we usually spend around $1,200 or so for food and souviners. We usually eat breakfast in, and some lunches so that helps with the cost. We always have a sit-down dinner and those usually run about $100 per night, for our family of 4. We don't drink, so that helps keep our prices down. For a week, tickets usually cost around $350 per person. To keep that down, we buy AP's. they cost $400 for adults and $375 for kids. We then will go say July 11 - July 25 (we go for two weeks every year) and then will go back June 25 - July 9 the next year to get two trips out of one AP. It brings down the cost of admission significantly. So, for us since we drive, our two weeks trips average about $4,000 or so, and our accomdations are paid for!!! A one week stay, if we flew and rented a car probably would be about $3,000, not including our dues. I'd say for a family of 4, who like us like to eat out on vacation, and fly in, that's a pretty good budget to stick to.

Edited to add: we usually don't buy much in the say of souviners since we're there often. We pack the spinning light toys from last year, always recycle or ponchos, and usually buy one t-shirt per person. I'd say we spend about $200 or so total in souviners, since we're there so often, and they don't change them that often, we already have a lot of stuff. DH and I are now starting to buy stuff at Art of Disney, but since it's expensive, I don't count it as a souviner, but part of our household budget.

 

[pms122765]

You are right about airfare - depending on the time of year $250-$300

& we figure $150-$200 per day in food - gifts - etc..

Thankfully - I like 1 beer at night in my room at most & the wife drinks maybe 4 oz of beer or 1/3 glass if wine at most. I know some people who spend more on booze than on food. DOn;t know how they can do it - but some people have different priorities.

Once we close escrow & actually stay at the BCV - maybe the food portion will go down a bit.

 

[tjkraz]

It's really hard to tell becuase there are so many variables.

Take food for example. We have small kids, so we're usually back in the room at lunch time. We'll spend $100 at the grocery store and that should give us enough food in our room for breakfast, lunch and snacks for a week. Then we'll eat our dinners at Disney restaurants--usually at least one character meal, a couple of other sit-down affairs, and the rest counter service.

Paying Disney prices for 3 meals per day for 4 people (plus snacks) could easily cost us 3x as much.

Tickets are also an unknown variable. We'll get three trips out of our current APs, but that was only an expense during the first trip. I'm sure as time goes on we probably won't feel a need to enter the parks every single day. In those cases, Park Hoppers may be more appropriate and we may even be able to spread a single PHP over more than one trip.

Transportation--although we're about 18 hours away by car, it's often an attractive alternative. Yes, we've flown before. But that can easily cost $1000 for our family, including a car rental or airport transportation. If we choose to drive, there is some inconvenience, but we pay less than $200 for gas and don't have to worry about the hassles inherent to air travel.

Good luck.

 

[Dan Murphy]

A big variable is resort, on/off site, if on, what level of accommodations. First two replies here sound like DVC probably, nit sure about third, and not sure what you might be doing, but that is a BIG part.

 

[JimC]

Excluding airfare (use FF), other transportation/parking) and park passes (AP holders) we budget $120 per person per day (two-thirds for food, one-third for recreation, shopping and misc).

 

[Micca]

There are so many variables you might want to spend some time on the resort and restaurant boards figuring out some priorities.
Just to ballpark it though, I am going to say you could have a nice trip in the $3000-$4000 range.

One major factor is food and drink. If you have sit-down meals it's easy to get to $60-$80 for lunch Dinner closer to $100.
If you include any alcohol your mileage may vary, but it gets expensive fast(maybe that's why you don't see too many drunk people at WDW )

 

[amee]

We live in Seattle and are a family of four. We are making our 6th trip tomorrow............all the above posters are correct in that there are just so many variables. However, the one thing that seems to be fairly unknown is that often(really almost always) the fares to Orlando from Seattle are well under $200. I checked a few days ago and there was a $124 fare. Alaska now flies non-stop twice per day to Orlando, too. Their fares are never very low, however FF account with them is nice.....we are going on miles this time around.

We own DVC now, but prior to that, we mainly stayed in moderates...........and were able to get them in the $100 per night range.....tickets...........we always get a ParkHopper......just like the freedom. However last trip we got an AP which we used for 10 days and are now going to use it for another 5........anyway.....food is wehre the real savings come. It really depends on how your family wants to eat. We normally eat B in the room(even when we didn't ahve DVC)....a late morning snack which we buy in the parks.........often we eat the latest lunch possible in a full service restaurant.........and then snack later on.........we budget 75-100 per day for food and almost always have money left. WE usually do one character meal too.

So, i would say if you budget $250 for airfare and another $125 per day for food.......then add in your accomodations cost.......car?.....and souvenir funds.....you should get a pretty good idea.

Feel free to PM me if i can answer any specifics.

Amee

 

[LisaSt]

Well since DVC we are down to about 2000.00 dollars Canadian with passes and gas and 1 nights stay during the drive etc. Prior to DVC we were around 5-6K Canadian per trip. These numbers are also for 2 weeks not just a week. Our 3 week honeymoon was quite a bit more like about 10 to 12K Canadian.

 

[LuvTigger]

I'm going to Orlando for a week in October, this is my breakdown of costs for 2 adults only (everything includes taxes/fees and are rounded up to the nearest $5):

Airfare from Honolulu (using miles, only had to pay a small fee), $20

Rental car for one week (using discount code), $145

2 nights at the Hard Rock Hotel, $390
3 nights at Pop Century (w/ a discount code), $165
2 nights at AKL standard savannah view (w/ discount code), $340

Universal tickets 2-day w/ 3rd day free (military discount), $190

WDW tickets 5-day hopper (NO plusses) (military discount), $490

Total fixed costs: $1740


Variable costs include things like:

Mousekeeping tips, $25
Food (I have a good idea of where we're eating, but I usually estimate $100-$125 per day for the two of us since we tend to eat at a few of the more pricey restaurants), $800
MNSSHP tickets, $75
Souvenirs (we tend to take care of some of our Xmas shopping on these trips), $1000
Gas/tolls, $40

Total budgeted variable costs: $1940

So that would bring our total budget to $3680, for two adults only.

But like everyone mentioned it really depends a lot on your preferences, particularly with the hotel and how you eat. Our airfare is basically free, but unless you're using miles, you'll need to budget for that.

With the hotel, had we chosen to stay the entire time at Pop Century, with the discount it would only be $400 for the entire week. What I try to do also is pay things off slowly so I don't have to pay a bunch of money at one time. So my hotel is almost all paid, and I got my Universal and MNSSHP tickets. Will be getting WDW tickets soon. And I've started saving dollar bills for Mousekeeping tips.

You might want to check the Budget Board as well too.

 

[MichDISer]

I think the MOST major factor to consider is TIMING. Are you going during Peak Season (especially when most kids have no school)?
You can literally save hundreds or maybe even over a thousand dollars by going off-season.

 

[LisaSt]

MichDiser you are correct we travel in early Dec now and take the kids out of school for the 2 weeks we go. Our honeymoon on the other hand was during Feb and over presidents week so peak time and very expensive.