Best money saving tips for 1st time visit to WDW

[Aliceacc]

Go this summer and take advantage of this:

from www.mousesavers.com:

Disney Visa Summer Vacation Package Offer

With this offer, get up to 35% off the room rack rates at select Disney resorts for stays 6/15/14 – 8/28/14. Pricing and savings will vary by resort type and date. As with all Disney promotional discounts, some resorts, room types and date combinations will not be available. Length of stay requirements may apply.

Sample rates:
•Value Resorts: get up to 15% off
•Moderate Resorts: get up to 20% off
•Deluxe and Deluxe Villa Resorts: get up to 30% off
•Save an additional 5% when staying 6 or more nights!
•Get an extra day FREE on your tickets when you include 6-day or longer Magic Your Way tickets!

*Offer excludes Villas at Grand Floridian, Bay Lake Tower, Little Mermaid rooms at Art of Animation Resort, All-Star Movies, Port Orleans French Quarter, campsites and 3-bedroom villas. Savings based on the non-discounted price for the same room. Additional per adult charges apply if more than two adults per room at Disney Value, Moderate and Deluxe Resorts. Advance reservations required. No group rates or other discounts apply.

Book by 6/6/14.

We amended our reservation yesterday. Since we're staying Deluxe and for a full week, we got 35% off.... that saved us just over $1000!! (no typo-- we saved one thousand eight dollars!!)

I did the math for a neighbor last night. She's planning to stay in a standard room at AoA, which isn't included in the deal. She could switch to POP and save $200, or upgrade to a moderate and still save $60.

 

[Darcy03231]

As other suggested, do your souvenir shopping at the end of our trip. Since almost every ride will dump you into a gift shop what we do is take pictures of what the kids think they want and the price. We spend the evening before our last day at Downtown Disney and they make their purchases, usually at the World of Disney. We don't do it the last day because I find it too rushed to try to pack up to leave plus get to DD to shop.

Another thing that helps to cut down on the "I wants" is to bring some small Disney themed stuff from home and have "Tinkerbelle" leave a small gift each night. Things I've done is trading pins, small toy, t-shirt, hat, etc. I shop at the dollar store and Target dollar spot and when I see things I get them and put them away and bring it with us.

We eat breakfast in the room as I find it saves time and money. Cereal, granola bars, fruit, yogurt, etc.

Bring glow necklaces/bracelets for the nighttime parades. Much less expensive than buying the light up things off the carts.

I'm not a big eater so a lot of times I'll order a kids meal for myself. Also, many meals are big enough to split. While I will bring some snacks into the parks, we do eat our meals there as I've found that by the time we're hungry we're usually a long way from the lockers and I hate wasting time traipsing back and forth across the park.

Have a great time!